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manager. "We had a couple meetings with the guys from Banger. I saw their passion for what they do. So they've come in and taken over."
Banger, which opened its own brewery and pub on Fremont Street in 2013, is now running the production of beer inside Barley's, turning out a lineup of new ales exclusive to the brand, including Blue Diamond blonde, Red Rock red ale, High Hops IPA and Buzz! Buzz! coffee stout. Limited-edition seasonals, like a chile lime beer finished with sea salt pegged to Cinco de Mayo, will also be released throughout the year.
"When the brewers came in, we didn't really have a portfolio of beers from really light to really dark," Veltri said. "We've gone from four to five beers to nine beers. You want to have something for everyone."
Everyone, Barley's hopes, will include guests who might not have considered the casino in the past. Barley's is redoing its cafe menu and trying to establish the brewery as a destination independent of the attached gaming.
"The goal is to attract a whole new demographic to Barley's," Veltri said.
Station is also considering the opportunity to leverage its microbrewery elsewhere in the company portfolio. Already Barley's beers are on tap inside all Wildfire properties, Station Casinos is thinking about expanding to its other properties like Red Rock, Green Valley Ranch and the Palms.
Veltri said the brewery produced 900 barrels (about 1,800 kegs) last year, and its hoping to double that figure in 2017.
"The system we have was the Cadillac of systems back 20 years, and it's still a phenomenal system," he said. "Barley's was built to produce a lot of beer, but it definitely was before its time. We haven't really capitalized on what we had in the past, but we're looking to do that moving forward."1791 The International System (formerly called the Metric System) is the decimal system of weights and measures based on the meter and the kilogram. The essential features of the system were embodied in a report to the French National Assembly by the Paris Academy of Sciences.
1799 Originally intended to be one ten-millionth part of the quadrant of the earth, the so called Meter of the Archives was based on a measurement of a meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona. A platinum bar with a rectangular cross section and polished parallel ends was made to embody the meter. The meter was defined as the distance between the polished end faces at a specified temperature and it was the international standard for most of the 19th century. It was compared to other bars with optical comparators as a means of disseminating the unit.
1859 J.C. Maxwell suggested choosing as a natural standard, the wavelength of the yellow spectral line of sodium.
1866 By act of the U.S. Congress, the use of the metric system was legalized in this country, but was not made obligatory.
1872 The International Commission of the Meter made the Meter of the Archives the official definition of the meter and the standard of length. It was admitted that its relationship to a quadrant of the earth was tenuous and of little consequence anyway. The Commission had 30 prototype meters made using the Meter of the Archives as the reference.
1875 On May 20, the Treaty of the Meter was signed by seventeen countries, including the United States, at the International Metric Convention. As a result, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (Bureau Intérnational des Poids et Mésures, BIPM) was established.
1889 A new modified Xshaped cross-section graduated platinum-iridium line standard was developed and adopted as the International Prototype Meter. The meter was defined as the distance between the two graduation lines at 0 °C. Each member country in the International Metric Convention received two copies of the standard with calibration reports relating them to the prototype. All meter bar calibrations were done by comparisons in optical comparators. Prototype Meter No.27 served as the U.S. primary standard from 1889 to 1960. Its length is known in terms of the international prototype, having been returned to BIPM for recomparison four times during that period. It is now on exhibit in the NIST Museum at Gaithersburg, Maryland.
1890 A.A. Michelson found that the red spectral line of natural cadmium was exceptionally coherent.
1892 Michelson used an interferometer that he developed to determine the length of the International Prototype Meter in terms of the cadmium red line wavelength. His measurements gave the meter a value of 1,553,164.13 times the wavelength of cadmium red in air, at 760 mm of atmospheric pressure at 15 °C.
1921 A. Perard began a systematic study of the radiations of cadmium, mercury, helium, neon, krypton, zinc and thallium, to determine which might best serve as defining lengths.
1925 The Michelson interferometer was in regular use at BIPM for measuring length.
1950 Cadmium 114, mercury 198, and krypton 86 were candidates to be a new definition of the meter based on the wavelength of light.
1960 On October 14, the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures redefined the International Standard of Length as 1,650,763.73 vacuum wavelengths of light resulting from unperturbed atomic energy level transition 2p 10 5d 5 of the krypton isotope having an atomic weight of 86. The wavelength is λ = 1 m / 1,650,763.73 = 0.605,780,211 µm At different times some national laboratories used light sources other than krypton 86 as length standards. Mercury 198 and cadmium 114 were among these and they were accepted by the General Conference as secondary length standards.
1964 Helium-Neon stabilized laser wavelengths were coming into use as length standards. Although the laser wavelength was generally accepted as a secondary standard, its widening use was mainly based on its remarkable coherence. Long distances could be measured by laser interferometry that would be impossible with atomic light sources. Line scales of length are measured by dynamic (fringe counting) laser interferometry at NIST.
1980 The iodine stabilized Helium-Neon laser wavelength was accepted as a length standard. It had a wavelength uncertainty of 1 part in 1010 at the time.Mars:
Sur'Kesh:
Tuchanka:
Other:
"British video game magazine called GameMaster also had exlusive preview of Mass Effect 3 in their latest issue. Basically nothing more than in GameInformer (they only saw Earth & Mars part of singleplayer), but there is some new interesting things. Enjoy smilie:
"(...) James Vega. We're told his personality is based on Sawyer from the Lost."
"A new reputation system rewards those players who'd rather not conform solely to Paragon or Renegade Shepard. Now playing it straight - sympathising with some people and snapping at others - will also grant you some unique dialogue options. Importing old saves will mean you start with extra reputation as well..."
"Fed up of your dying when you're off gallivanting around space? Well fret no longer: somewhere in the world is... [drumroll] an automated fish-feeder! It's like our prayers have been answered."
"(...) as you play ME3 you'll collect 'War Assets'. These are the people, places and armies you befriend along the way, and each one has a numerical value associated with. Asari Justicar Samara might be worth, say, +25, while a squad of soldiers is worth +65 to your asset total. Add them all up and you have your 'Total Military Strength' value, which is then multiplied by your 'Readiness Rating'. We're told all the external experiences - the co-op multiplayer mode and the social games - feed into this Readiness Rating to let you win with fewer assets. Plug in the numbers and out pops your 'Effective Military Strength' value - a total figure that seems to let you trigger the endgame once you hit a threshold. In a interesting twist, not every 'good' choice is going to bum your Assets.""Wall Street Journal columnist Karl Rove contradicted his previous analysis of the election to deflect responsibility for President Obama's reelection away from himself.
Throughout 2012, Rove used his Journal column to further the political and financial ends of his pro-Mitt Romney groups often without disclosure of his interests. After Romney lost, Rove's November 7 column blamed a wide variety of factors other than himself, including Hurricane Sandy, the "New York Times headline writer who affixed 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt' " to Mitt Romney's 2008 op-ed opposing the auto industry rescue, and the release of a secretly taped video in which Romney disparaged 47 percent of Americans as people who are "dependent on government" and see themselves as victims.
Rove also said that part of the reason Obama won because of a relentlessly negative campaign:
Mr. Obama was ruthlessly efficient in executing what his campaign manager, Jim Messina, told the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza was "a grand bet" -- an early negative campaign that started in May and targeted Mr. Romney's character, business ethics and wealth. A massive volunteer army armed with these same arguments then worked in the fall to convince family, neighbors and friends to support Mr. Obama. This strategy required money, lots of it. Team Obama convinced the president to attend a record-shattering 220 fundraising events over 20 months, with the campaign and Democratic National Committee raising around $900 million. If this grand bet had failed to raise serious doubts about Mr. Romney among ordinary voters -- or if the attacks on the GOP challenger's character and business background had been effectively rebutted -- the Obama campaign would have been without money or time enough to pursue a different strategy. But it succeeded.
But this directly contradicts what Rove said during the campaign itself. In prior Journal columns, Rove asserted that the Obama's campaigns supposed negative strategy would not work, in part, because Rove's own groups were in place to counter the strategy.
For instance, in a September 19 Journal column, Rove asserted that Obama planned "to bury Romney under negative ads over the summer," but that strategy didn't work because of ads from Rove's own group, American Crossroads:In our last blog post, Ciara Meehan looked at how Dublin housewives converted to electricity in the 1960s. In this latest post, Lorna Sixsmith explores the experience of the rural dweller.
Guest Post from author Lorna Sixsmith.
While townspeople were buying electric cookers, refrigerators and dishwashers for their kitchens, using electric irons for their clothes and electric tongs to curl their hair in the 1950s and 1960s, were country people able to avail of the same modern conveniences?
The contrast between town and country facilities was highlighted in many publications:
The townswoman has a supply of running water, a neat range that will not burn much fuel and will supply to wash-basin and bath in the bathroom and to the wash-up sink in the kitchen or scullery. She has hot and cold water, good sanitation, electric light, a plug for her electric iron … The countrywoman must drag in the cold water from outside the house. For every basin of hot water she wants, she must lift a heavy kettle on and off the fire. On washing-day, washtubs must be filled and emptied time and again; what it costs in labour to keep her churn and milk vessels clean! The open fire-place in the country house looks grand and when we think of the lovely cakes that come out of the pot-oven, it makes us quite sentimental – but the truth is that half the heat goes up the chimney with the draught and the old pot-oven is unwieldy and clumsy and out of date. Now when night falls, the townswoman presses a button and at once there is a light and cheerful glow about her. The countrywoman, like the Wise Virgin in the gospel, has had to clean and tend and fill her lamp before lighting it and else she has to depend on her halfpenny dip. Millions have been spent on the Shannon scheme but it is not the countrywoman who has the benefit of it. [1]
Much depended not just on the availability of an electricity supply, or the affordability but also the family’s attitude. Getting an electricity supply was often a long waiting game: waiting for the supply to come to that area and to hear if one was considered an “economical farm”. Would the ground rent charge mean it was worth running a supply to that farm? Could the farmer afford it?
My paternal grandparents lived within three miles of the most densely populated rural areas in Ireland: highly populated due to the work provided by the coalmines. My grandfather campaigned hard to get an electricity supply to the farm from 1948. It would have been fruitless if electricity hadn’t been supplied to a dormant coalmine nearby with a view to mining it again. The ground rent for the farm was calculated at £14 per annum so it was considered to be an “economical farm”. Many neighbours had to wait another 15-20 years for an electricity supply and one of the last to be connected waited until 1981.
The electricity supply meant the 14 cows could be milked two at a time by machine (called a bucket plant) and numbers increased to 21. If they had a busy day in the fields, they didn’t have to worry about finishing early to get the cows milked in daylight as they had electricity to light the cowsheds.
The electricity brought advantages to my grandmother too. She got an electric oven and could now attend church on Sundays – previously she had stayed at home to keep the fire burning in the oven, singing hymns as she cooked. They got a refrigerator and the highlight for the children was the big block of ice-cream on Sundays. In 1951, a travelling salesman called to the front door to show them an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, and once he’d demonstrated the dust that was suctioned up from the sitting room carpet, he only had to mention the easy payment plan and that a neighbour had purchased one, and it was a sale.
Strangely though, it was 1964 before they got piped water into the house. Even though they had a washing machine that heated the water and had a wringer on top of it, it still had to be filled with water by hand, buckets of water hauled from the tap in the yard.
Some farmers were reluctant to get electricity and piped water, often for monetary reasons. The National Farmers Union argued that the addition of piped water on the farm would increase the rates and they were successful in delaying many water schemes in the country. The Irish Countrywomen’s Association ran a campaign to “Turn on the Tap” in the early 1960s and argued that women were being asked to “love, honour and carry water” at a time when the technology was available to get rid of the drudgery. Such was the strength of the NFA opposition that they even picketed an ICA exhibition in Waterford. [2]
Some women may have been influenced by their peers in limiting their use of electricity and electric gadgets. My mother-in-law was told by her mother-in-law that she was too lazy to carry buckets when she got piped water installed shortly after getting married (1962). My mother got a dishwasher in 1968 and as you might imagine, at a time when some women were considered “too lazy to carry buckets”, she was the talk of the county for being too lazy to wash dishes! Her purchase of an automatic washing machine in the early 1970s was also frowned upon by her mother-in-law as it was considered to be a waste of water and washing powder (as the same water and powder in the twin tub washed all the clothes – from whites to good “coloureds” to the dirty farming clothes).
Therefore rural women often had to battle with the National Farmers Union, their husbands and their mother-in-laws before modern conveniences could be installed in the farmhouse.
However, some people, besides the ICA, were on the side of the farm woman. From the 1940s to the 1970s, there was concern about the number of young rural women heading for the bright lights of towns and cities rather than staying in the countryside to marry farmers. Some berated farmers for being so mean to refuse to spend money on modern amenities.
The Nenagh Guardian calculated that if a source of water was 100 yards from the house, the farm woman spent 76 cumulative days just walking to and from that well – time that could be spent more productively. (17 April 1965)
As late as 1973, newspaper editors were still trying to convince farmers to get piped water and electricity: using productivity and increased profitability as a “bribe”.
Pity the poor farm wife who is still toiling to the well or hand pump every day with buckets, barrels or milk churns. Think of what this drudgery is costing her in terms of time, labour and loss of output. Apart from the disadvantages, remember that a constant supply of fresh, clean water will improve weight gains in stock, is necessary for satisfactory milk yields from the dairy herd and is indispensable for quality milk production ~ Western People 5 May 1973
Single women were only too aware of the conditions of some farmhouses and those who wanted more than a long walk to the river on a daily basis were clear in their requests for a marriage partner when advertising in the personal columns.
Molly Bawn is a Longford farmer’s daughter. Early 30s, non drinker and non smoker, would like to get in touch with a farmer 36-40 with his own farm and modern home from midland counties with view to marriage. Snaps please ~ Irish Farmers Journal 19 March 1966
Some farmers’ daughters didn’t want to marry farmers. This lady, in possession of a substantial dowry, was doing her utmost to get away from farming life.
Farmers Daughter (R[oman] C[atholic]) good appearance and address with £1,200 dowry, wishes to meet a respectable RC shopkeeper or government official with a view to matrimony ~ Irish Examiner 30 May 1953
However, some women did marry farmers, be it by arranged marriage or for love. The work of collecting water was seen as the biggest stumbling block to progress in terms of being hard work and time-consuming. One Co. Clare woman remembered that wash day involved the carrying of twenty two buckets of water. Once electricity and piped water were installed, and a washing machine purchased, all the children sat down and watched it with pure joy.
While the town wife might have felt annoyed if her husband didn’t help with the washing up, even though Maura Laverty, agony aunt in Woman’s Way magazine, felt it was “most unfair to expect the breadwinner to wash dishes” (31 August 1963), many farm women would probably have been happy with hot water from a tap. Many still had to carry the water, pour it into the kettle to heat it, pour it into a basin, wash up, throw the water outside the door – and all before she milked cows and fed calves each evening too.
References
[1] Muintir na Tíre Official Handbook, 1941
[2] Aideen Heverin, The Irish Countrywomen’s Association: A History, 1910-2000 (Wolfhound Press, 2000).
More about Lorna Sixsmith
Lorna Sixsmith is a farmer and has independently published three books: Would You Marry A Farmer?, How to be a Perfect Farm Wife and An Ideal Farm Husband. Two short memoir pieces have also been published in anthologies (Around the Farm Gate and Then There Was Light). Her books are on sale in Irish bookshops, gift shops, through a number of online retailers, and in a growing number of farm shops within the UK.
Her second book How to be a Perfect Farm Wife won the Carousel Aware Prize for independently published books in 2016 (Non Fiction category) and her third book An Ideal Farm Husband was launched by the Irish Independent at Ireland’s largest agricultural event, the annual Ploughing Championships, in September 2016.
Lorna has been interviewed or had her books featured in numerous papers and magazines which include: Farming Independent, Irish Independent, Farmers Journal, Irish Examiner, Irish Country Living, Farming Life NI, Irish Farmers Monthly, Sunday World, Woman’s Way, NFU Magazine, Farmers Guardian, Writers Forum and the Ear to the Ground magazine. She has been interviewed on TV3’s Ireland AM, RTE’s Today Show and TG4’s Roisin, plus RTE’s Ryan Tubridy Show, Countrywide and Today SOR, Today FM’s The Last Word and Newstalk’s Breakfast Show and a number of regional stations. Lorna has also been a panellist on Midday, Prime Time, Claire Byrne Live and Vincent Browne either as an author or as a spokesperson for farming matters.
Is she a perfect farm wife? Well, with allergies to dairy products, grass pollens, straw and some animals, the chances are slim but she keeps trying!
Visit LornaSixsmith.com for further details, or follow Lorna on twitter at @IrishFarmerette.
Praise for Lorna’s Books
“Lorna’s second book on the up and downs of life as a farmer’s wife is a delightful read, full of sharp observations on the realities of an agricultural life, mixed with a little social history, the odd recipe and some priceless tips on how to achieve the mythical status of the Perfect Farm Wife” ~ Horse and Countryside, December 2015
“This excellent book is an effective antidote to the dominant model of Irish countrywomen’s experience during the last 150 years, where farm life has generally been presented as perpetuating a cycle of oppression, alienation and despair leading to a mass exodus of women from the countryside” ~ Jonathan Bell, Farming Life NI, March 2016
“How to be a Perfect Farm Wife captures the rich essence of life on Irish farms in the early 21st century and the always-changing, ever multi-functional, role of the farmers’ wife. But its delightfully witty and heart-warming style is sure to appeal to an audience far beyond the farm gate” ~ Farming Independent September 2015
“An Ideal Farm Husband is a book which works successfully on different levels. As well as being a source for social historians, anthropologists and novelists interested in the evolving roles and relationships of men and women on Irish farms, it is also a handbook for the modern male farmer” ~ Mervyn Watson
“I actually thought Would You Marry a Farmer? was a novelty book, the kind you would buy for a gentle joke at Christmas, but it is so much more. It’s partly social history, cultural exploration, gender-studies, satire, biography and it’s also a lot of fun” ~ Amazon Customer
AdvertisementsYou open the overstuffed kitchen cabinet and a drinking glass tumbles out. With a ninjalike reflex, you snatch it before it shatters on the floor, as if the movement of the object were being tracked before the information even reached your brain. According to one idea of how the circuitry of the eye processes visual data, that is literally what happens. Now, a deep anatomical study of a mouse retina—carried out by 120,000 members of the public—is bringing scientists a step closer to confirming the hypothesis.
Researchers have known for decades that the eye does much more than just detect light. The dense patch of neurons in the retina also processes basic features of a scene before sending the information to the brain. For example, in 1964, scientists showed that some neurons in the retina fire up only in response to motion. What's more, these “space-time” detectors have so-called direction selectivity, each one sensitive to objects moving in different directions. But exactly how that processing happens in the retina has remained a mystery.
The stumbling block is a lack of fine-grained anatomical detail about how the neurons in the retina are wired up to each other. Although researchers have imaged the retina microscopically in ultrathin sections, no computer algorithm has been able to accurately trace out the borders of all the neurons to map the circuitry. At this point, only humans have good enough spatial reasoning to figure out what is part of a branching cell and what is just background noise in the images.
Enter the EyeWire project, an online game that recruits volunteers to map out those cellular contours within a mouse’s retina. The game was created and launched in December 2012 by a team led by H. Sebastian Seung, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Players navigate their way through the retina one 4.5-micrometer tissue block at a time, coloring the branches of neurons along the way. Most of the effort gets done in massive online competitions between players vying to map out the most volume. (Watch a video of a player walking through a tissue block here.) By last week, the 120,000 EyeWire players had completed 2.3 million blocks. That may sound like a lot, but it is less than 2% of the retina.
The sample is already enough to reveal new features, however. The EyeWire map shows two types of retinal cells with unprecedented resolution. The first, called starburst amacrine cells (SACs), have branches spread out in a flat, plate-shaped array perpendicular to the incoming light. The second, called bipolar cells (BPs), are smaller and bushy. The BPs come in two varieties, one of which reacts to light more slowly than the other—a time delay of about 50 milliseconds. The SACs and BPs are known to be related to direction sensitivity, but exactly how they sense direction remains to be discovered.
Seung says the EyeWire map of how SACs and BPs are wired together holds the answer: a time-delay circuit. Because of the arrangement of BPs, the movement of an object across the surface of a SAC should make it fire up only in reaction to movement in one direction. The key insight is that BPs are not connected to the SAC branches willy-nilly, as was thought. Instead, the faster variety of BP clusters far out on the edges of the SAC, while the slower firing variety clusters close to the SAC center. Only if the light from an object moves from the center of the SAC outward does the signal from the innermost BP sync up with the faster outer BP, and that combined signal is required to activate the SAC. If instead the movement is in the opposite direction, those signals are out of sync and the SAC does not fire. Though it has yet to be confirmed experimentally, this mechanism could account for how the neurons in the retina detect the direction of movement of a moving object long before the information reaches the brain, the team reported online yesterday in Nature.
The study is “truly amazing,” says Alexander Borst, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany. Last year, Borst led the effort to map out a similar arrangement of neurons in the eye of a fruit fly. “This mechanism seems to be almost identical with the one proposed for direction selectivity in the insect visual system,” he says. If true, then some of the built-in functionality of the eye was likely invented more than 500 million years ago, when insects and vertebrates shared a common ancestor.Torrential rain and powerful winds of up to 185 km/h (115 m.p.h.) prompted authorities in southern Japan’s island of Shikoku to order a mass evacuation as Typhoon Nangka made landfall late Thursday.
The typhoon’s approach in the Pacific led Japanese authorities to warn at least 350,000 people to leave their homes. At least two people have died, according to the BBC, citing Kyodo news agency. Broadcaster NHK reported at least 31 have been injured.
While Nangka has since been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves north, officials worry strong winds and rain could still pose a danger.
On Friday morning, parts of the main island of Honshu were lashed by high waves, gales and thunderstorms, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency
Though the storm was clocked at just 15km/h, the agency reported a maximum sustained wind speed of 90km/h.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Yep. Operator error is the top reason for sewing machine “break down.” Time and time again, the only problem with a machine I am working on is something that could be easily remedied by reading the manual. There are several sub categories to this revelation, and I mean to run you through a the worst offenders.
Needle in backwards, sideways, or not inserted all the way up.
So let’s look at needle anatomy. There is the thick shaft on the top that is flat on one side: this is the back. Along the front, you will find a long groove. This is for the thread to slide into. The back has no groove, but it has a small scarf instead. The effect is that the thread gets pinned to the needle by the fabric in the back, but not the front. The hook can then swing by and pick up that loop, shrug it all the way around and thus form a stitch. Repeat endlessly.
This is why it’s so important to get that needle in correctly. If the eye is not in the right point in space and time, the needle cannot form a loop, and the hook cannot pick up this thread loop, and the sewing gets all wibbly wobbly resulting in no stitch.
Here is the hard and fast rule: The flat of the needle ALWAYS goes toward the hook. For some machines that means it goes to the back (front loading and top loading machines), and some to the right (left loading machines), and a few to the left (the left loading Singer Featherweight).
Damaged needle
The Golden Rule of sewing machines is, at the very least, to CHANGE YOUR NEEDLE EVERY PROJECT. Needles get worn out. They get burrs. They get bent. Damaged needles can damage your fabric. Again, if the needle eye is not in the correct space and time (it’s bent), it cannot make a stitch. Tiny differences will nix the stitch. If there is a burr, the thread may get caught on it causing tension issues, along with pulling threads in your fabric. Pro tip: If you hit something, like a pin, or the throat plate, stop and change your needle. Fresh needles glide through the fabric, and just plain make your work easier. Never work harder than you need to. Think of all the things you can complete if you are not spending time fighting your work.
Wrong needle for the job
There are needles for an amazing array of applications—some of them specialty applications like double and wing needles. We’ll keep it simple here: Fine needles are for lightweight fabrics. You must also make sure that you match your thread to the fabric and needle. Thin, light thread, like Madeira, is for batiste, china silk, and handkerchief linen fabrics. Heavier thread like Mettler is best for denim and velour fabrics. If you are going to use that heavy thread, the groove in the needle must be big enough for it to fit in there, so you guessed it: No loop. No stitch. Make sure your needle fits both thread and fabric.
Pro tip: You may have use for leather needles, but in my experience they are not necessary for most garment leathers. Because of their chisel shape, they leave a larger hole than is necessary and should be saved for heavy leathers only.
Junk thread or old thread
Bargain thread is no bargain. It’s fuzzy, and slubby and as such is rage-inducing as it will not move through the machine well. Likewise quality thread with price labels under $1.00 should be thrown away. They are far too old, and quite possibly dry rotted. Your machine will produce inferior stitches with inferior thread. Keep the wooden spools. People collect those now.
Wrong bobbin or bobbin in backwards
Bobbins are not interchangeable. Your machine is meant to work with one type. Find out what it is, and use no other. You might be able to put another type in there, but you will not be able to sew with it. Make sure your bobbins are wound smoothly, with no tails wrapped around the outside. Bobbins should be inserted with the thread going against the tension spring, making a U-turn under the spring. And please, ONE color thread per bobbin. You are not going to use that thread you are covering over with the 6 other layers of thread.
Bobbin case is not correctly inserted
The bobbin case goes in one way and one way only. Stop and take a look at it and see if it makes sense. Is there a place for the needle to go? If you have a front load, make sure it snaps all the way in.
Not correctly threaded
Usually you’ve missed the take-up lever. Without the take-up lever, the thread is just going to get caught in the hook and make a disproportionately loud and raucous noise, and no stitch will form. It will be a mess underneath. Some of you call it “bird nesting”. I have no idea why. It’s silly.
It’s in free-motion mode
If the presser foot is floating, it’s not going to be able to feed the fabric, nor will it make a stitch (because you will not have the free-motion foot on it). Some machines have a switch on the presser foot lifter, which I find annoyingly easy to engage by accident. Others have it under the head frame, or it might be be a button on a touch screen. If your presser foot is not firmly planted on the feed dogs, it can’t sew because the fabric is going up and down with the needle and the thread can’t make a loop. Look for the free motion button and be sure it’s in sew-mode. Don’t have a free-motion button? That’s not odd. Some machines require a spring foot for this technique and as such have no free-motion button. It just means that you won’t need to worry about this problem.
Tension is set wonky
Seriously, the tension is nothing more than a couple of disks with a spring pushing against them. There is nothing technical or difficult about it. Generally, leave your bobbin case tension alone once it is properly set, and adjust the overall tension with the top tension only. Your bobbin case should have a little drag on it. As a general ballpark across-the-board-for-front-loading-machines, if you load the bobbin case with a filled bobbin, and hang the whole kit from the thread, the bobbin case should not slide down unless you give it a soft shake.
You’re using monofilament thread
This stuff is the devil’s spawn. It gets caught in the take-up lever, where it can melt from the friction. It’s finer than thread, so it will be difficult to get good tension with it. Avoid it.
Never even considered cleaning the thing at any time during the 30 years you owned it.
If there is only so much lint, broken needles, and thread your machine can work around. Once it gets so bad it felts, you are not going to get a decent stitch out of your machine. Do the right thing. Take out the bobbin case, and brush out the lint from around the hook. Unless you have the kind of machine that is very open, like a Bernina 830 Record, avoid using canned air. It tends to just blow the lint into the machine where it will mess with other important parts. Yes. Cleaning is expected maintenance from you. If the thread cannot make it around the hook, it is not going to be able to make a stitch. Keep that thread path clear, and the yok out of the hook. Also look for any lint crammed into the bobbin case, or under the bobbin case spring. Use a pin to gently pull it out. Canned air can also be helpful with getting lint out of the bobbin case. Lint in the bobbin case will cause the bobbin tension to be off, usually making it too loose.
Never even considered oiling the thing at any time during the 30 years you’ve owned it.
This is one area the varies by make and model. The older machines all need to be oiled on at least one or two places about every couple of projects—usually the hook race. The newer ones have oil impregnated bushings that should not be oiled. Too much oil attracts lint, and gums up your machine. Don’t over oil! Please, find you manual and read it. Oil and service your machine as it instructs you. If you wait until it locks up, it might be too late. Sometimes a frozen machine can be freed up, sometimes not. If it’s the latter, you are out a sewing machine from what amounts to severe neglect. If the parts of your machine that are supposed to be moving smoothly are not, it will sound terrible, and it will not sew properly. You have plenty of warning. Don’t ignore it.
Avoid glitter or beaded fabric.
This stuff gets everywhere. It gets into the gears. It’s a mess. If you promise to use beaded fabric properly and not just sew over the beads, that’s okay to use. The beads must be removed from the seam allowances before the pieces are assembled. After the garment is sewn and fitted, you then apply the beads back over the seams by hand. Just always say no to glitter/cracked ice stuff the gets passed off as fabric.
You don’t let the machine do the work and all the tugging on the fabric you keep doing has rammed the needle into the throat plate and hook a million times rendering them full of burrs.
Are you pulling the fabric through your machine? Why? Your machine has feed dogs for that purpose. Their express reason for being is to move the fabric at the precise time that the needle is OUT of the fabric. Need to to go faster? Then push the foot control more. Got it floored but it’s still too slow? Get a better machine. At no time should you be pulling your fabric through the machine. Why would you want to work so hard anyway? Pulling the fabric will deflect the needle, sending it into the hook, or throat plate. This leaves burrs that will affect stitch quality, possibly knock it out of time, or impede the feed of the fabric. Guide the fabric. Do not pull.
The stitches are slanted!
No. 99% of the time they are not. Top and bobbin thread are necessarily parallel, and geometry requires that they must twist to cross. If you want to prove this, unthread your machine and sew on some lined paper. See? Perfectly straight.
You (or your husband) tried to fix it.
Yeah. About that. Don’t. It only means that some sewing machine tech somewhere needs to waste time figuring out what bizarre and unrelated-to-the-actual-issue thing you did. That |
prosecutor said: “Body parts were found on Wednesday at a property in the state of Saxony in eastern Germany and the 55-year-old man was arrested shortly afterwards. The victim has been missing since the beginning of November.”
Meiwes said at his trial that he was not alone in being drawn by the allure of killing and eating a human being. He said he had “numerous” enquiries from people wanting to be slaughtered and cooked, but many of them backed out at the last minute.
Brandes did not. He arrived at Meiwes’ remote farmhouse home where he drank a cocktail of cough mixture and alcohol. When he was virtually unconscious, Meiwes set up a video camera and taped as he cut off his penis, which he later fried and ate.
He put Brandes into a bath to “bleed out” and settled down to read a Star Trek novel until he was dead. He later cut up his flesh and packaged in his deep freeze and ate a portion of him for the next ten months every day, until he was arrested.
Initially sentenced to eight and a half years in jail, prosecutors successfully appealed and secured a life conviction.
It is understood that police traced the missing man in the Detlev G case back to him through the Zambian Meat website.Israeli reports accuse US of denying entry visas to Israeli spies
March 5, 2014 by Joseph Fitsanakis
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Articles in the Israeli media have accused the United States of quietly instituting a policy of denying entry visa requests from members of Israel’s security and intelligence agencies. In an article published on Tuesday, centrist newspaper Maariv cited “senior security personnel” who have allegedly been barred from entering the US. The centrist Hebrew-language daily said the past 12 months have seen “hundreds of cases” of employees in the Israeli intelligence community who have been told by US consular officials that they could not step foot on US soil. The paper said the visa rejections appear to affect mostly members of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, and the Mossad, which conducts covert operations abroad. Visa bans have also affected employees in Israel’s defense industries, said the article. The report suggests that the targeting of Israeli security and intelligence personnel appears to be deliberate, adding that it applies even to those Israeli intelligence or security officers that are already stationed on US soil. In what seems to be a change in policy, the latter are now being issued short-term visas, rather than multiyear entry permits. As a result, the paper says they are “forced” to cross from the US into Canada at regular intervals, in order to apply to have their visas renewed. However, many of them are now having their visa renewal applications rejected, or are made to wait “several weeks” before having their entry permits renewed by American consular staff. The paper quoted a “senior [Israeli] security expert”, who said he had been denied an entry visa to the US this past January, for the first time in his career, despite having visited the US numerous times in the past “without trouble”. He told Maariv that he had “traveled to the US dozens of times in the past for my job and never faced issues getting a visa” on time. The accusations come less than a month after figures released by the US Department of State suggested that there has been an unprecedented 80 percent increase in the number of rejections of visa requests coming from Israeli citizens during 2013. The revelation prompted an angry response from the Consular Section of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which accused the US of rejecting visa applications coming from Israelis for political reasons. Some in Israel believe that the rejections are part of a wider effort by American officials to strip Israel of its membership in the US State Department’s so-called “white list”, which consists of countries with a visa rejection rate of below 3 percent. Maariv said it had been unable to solicit a formal response to the story from American or Israeli officials.
AdvertisementsI’ve been meaning to do this since round one, but I never thought it would be so hard to find some decent high resolution IndyCar pictures! After waiting a few rounds and doing some digging, I think the time has finally come to belatedly go through the 2016 IndyCar liveries. With the Indy 500 around the corner (next week), the timing is perfect! Or perhaps the worst timing, considering there will be so many new cars and cars in altered liveries. Oh well!
Note: I’ve decided to not include the one or two off entries.
A.J Foyt Enterprises
ABC #14 Takuma Sato, #41 Jack Hawksworth
Looks like an unchanged livery this season for ABC cars and fair enough. It’s a pleasing sweeping design with just about equal parts of red, white and blue. How the design sweeps up from the rear, along the side of the cockpit and onto the sidepods is great use of the car’s own curves and looks organic, for lack of a better word.
★★★★☆
Andretti Autosport
#26 Carlos Munoz
This is a basic, mainly red livery. The engine cover is white and this carries on past the cockpit and half way down the nose. This section is outlined by a white pinstripe but is begging for a big sponsor beneath Honda. There’s a generic looking design on the sidepod which at least fills up some space. The saving grace for this livery are the accents in the colours of the Colombian flag. These bits on the front wing end plates, mirrors, rear of the sidepod and edge of the engine cover help to spice up an otherwise ordinary livery. The white rear wing is also nicely bordered by the red end plates and the silver nose, which is across all the Andretti cars, matches well.
★★☆
Snapple #27 Marco Andretti
The same design as Munos’ car, just with the yellow and blue colours of Snapple. Again, it’s kind of lacklustre, and despite not having the empty feel of Munoz’s livery, is disturbed by the variety of sponsor colours. I get a Sauber feel with this, in that the colours have great potential, but the design is too basic.
★★
DHL #28 Ryan Hunter-Reay
The DHL car has always looked brilliant and although this isn’t the best design they’ve used, it does look good. The deep yellow is a fantastic colour and goes really well with the red. The sponsors all work well together, but there isn’t much else to say considering the main design is the same as the others. As you can tell by now all the Andretti livery designs are the same, which annoys me a little, but at least there’s a large variety in colours.
★★★☆
Andretti Herta Autosport with Curb Agajanian
#98 Alexander Rossi
Obviously the same design as the other Andretti cars, but despite having just about the fewest sponsors, it doesn’t look the emptiest! These colours wear the design very well, with the black looking very classy and the white contrasting well as you’d imagine. I like how the winglets break up the solid black along the side. The black, almost speech bubble looking design behind the Castrol logo is a bit strange, but isn’t enough stop me thinking that this is a good livery.
★★★☆
Chip Ganassi Racing
Gallagher #8 Max Chilton
My type of livery this this. The top half is all white, with the bottom half all blue and is split nicely via an unbroken line, following the curves of the car from nose to exhaust. The blue seems to fade from a light to a dark shade going down the car, although that may just be the lighting in this image! There’s actually some light blue the sweeps along the split and onto the rear wing end plate that is subtly and well placed. The winglets and end plates are white which contrast well against the blue. Have to also mention that Chilton has a fantastic helmet. Clean and simple, unlike most helmets these days, and the claw marks and other accents have been painted blue tom match the car. Overall, clean, simple but well executed.
★★★★☆
Target #9 Scott Dixon
Chip Ganassi and Target have had an incredibly long relationship, going back at least 25 years from my quick and very informal research. It makes sense then that this livery is a straight up throwback to the Chip Ganassi cars of the late 90s and early 2000s. Despite the cars’ evolution since then, the lightning bolt looks great on the modern IndyCar. The bright yellow, which is thinly outlined with black, goes well against the red base layer of the car and evokes instant nostalgia, even for someone who has only very recently started to watch IndyCar regularly.
The many ‘Targets’ of varying sizes placed along the side of the car are interesting, but look more strange than attractive. Part of me would prefer a regular Target logo, but another part of me appreciates the odd design choice. The sponsors are all uniform in white, which allow for the lightning bolt to stand out further. Nostalgia alone isn’t enough for me to love this livery.
★★★
NTT Data #10 Tony Kanaan
Big change this season in that all the red has been removed, leaving a two tone blue and white car. It’s a great evolution, keeping the main sponsor looking fresh, rather than keeping the liveries looking too similar year on year. The colours work perfectly together, with a nice white rear wing, some neat flashes on the sidepods and white nose which tops it all off well.
★★★★
RaceWithInsuling.com #83 Charlie Kimball
This is a decent livery for me, but missing the wow factor. Charcoal is difficult to get right, but paired with a vibrant colour like this tennis ball green, it works well enough. The design kind of lets this one down though, with the thin grey lines over the green along the side not quite working, in my opinion. However, I think the livery may have been too plain without it, so it’s possibly the lesser of two evils. On the other hand, the grey on the top of the nose tip with the solid green on the sides looks great.
★★★☆
Dale Coyne Racing
Jonathan Byrd’s/Cancer Treatment Centres of America #88 Conor Daly
Well there’s your wow factor! Where do I start? First up, it’s not often you see multiple shades of the same colour work so well on a livery. The dark and the light greens match and contrast beautifully. The design harks back to the Minardi M198 with its diagonal lines across the side. The diagonal design is interrupted on the engine cover, cutting sharply toward the rear wing. Here, the CTCA logo cuts over the green lines, but rather than look jarring, gives the tree a three dimensional look which actually works very well, whether intended or not. The top of the nose is covered in white and is split from the dark green by a thin line of light green. All the sponsors work well together, although I kind of wish the Jonathan Byrd’s logo was dark green rather than red. I also would like to see the wings in white or dark green but overall, I love it!
★★★★★
Scouting! #19 Luca Filippi
This livery has the same general (lovely) design as the one above, but with more common blue and red in place of the green, it’s missing a lot of charm. It also looks a lot emptier without the third colour to fill up some space and complete the design. However, the black wings work a lot better on this car and match nicely with the black wheel rims.
★★★★
Ed Carpenter Racing
Fuzzy’s #20 Ed Carpenter
I do like the Fuzzy’s cars of the last few years, the metallic green looking awesome on the cars and being paired well with the gold. This livery is a little more basic, with just a single sliver of gold starting at the nose, widening as it almost reaches the rear wheels. This section is outline with white and although it adds something to the car, it looks a little generic and has a Need for Speed decal look to it. Perhaps a simple, all metallic green (shimmering beautifully in the sun here) with gold winglets and end plates would have sufficed.
★★★
Fuzzy’s #21 Josef Newgarden
Mainly white here, with gold accents, which is different colour combination but works well together. In fact, the ‘white’ parts all over the car have a thick, brick like pattern in very light grey, which is quite interesting to look at. Whether a tribute to the Indianapolis Speedway or not, it sure is unique. The thin gold stripe along the side of the nose is a fantastic bit of minimalist design which adds some bold colour on top of a subtle and very unusual base design.
★★★☆
KVSH Racing
Hydroxycut #11 Sébastien Bourdais
Talk about unusual designs! I’m not sure what this is meant to be, possibly a reptile with the face on the nose or some faux superhero armour? It’s probably staring me in the face but I’m not sure what it is. I don’t think it’s better than the green version from last year and certainly not as good as the designs before that either. It looks like an image printed onto the car which is most often a no-no for me. A little gimmicky and perhaps shouldn’t have been used for a second year, colour change or not.
★☆
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Steak ‘n Shake #15 Graham Rahal
A pretty basic red livery here. The sponsor logo on the engine cover fills up a lot of space which would have otherwise made the car empty. Black is used well on the rear wing and winglets. It looks a little crowded with sponsors in some areas which detracts greatly from the livery. The slogan “Home of the Original Steakburger” uses a terrible font and whilst it’s no Comic Sans, it has no place on a racing livery. Brings down the livery by at least one star. That said, the black trimming on some areas of the car, for example on the front wing elements, is a great intricate touch.
★★★
#16 Spencer Pigot
Mostly red here, with the sidepods entirely in white. It’s a nice way of splitting the colours, but the colours here don’t lend any excitement to the livery. Perhaps a darker shade or some metallic would have got this looking better than basic. The sponsors on this one are a little neater, but again everything is matching so no complaints there. I like how black is added on the wing, especially how all three colours are used on alternating front wing elements.
★★☆
Schmidt Peterson Motorsports
Arrow #5 James Hinchcliffe
There are actually a couple of liveries that feature gold on the grid but you wouldn’t really mistake them for each other because they are so different. The Arrow car uses a chrome, super reflective gold, which is night and bright. This is kept only on the ‘top’ side of the car, separated from the black on the rest of the car by a clean white line, front nose to exhaust. Black wings are a great choice here. The only thing I don’t love is the explosion or whatever that is behind the Arrow logo, which looks unusual and makes the logo a little hard to read in the middle. Perhaps it would be OK if the logo were outlined.
★★★☆
#7 Mikhail Aleshin
No main sponsor for the Russian unfortunately. You wouldn’t know it at a glance, but this livery has an almost identical design to the #5 car, but with the colours so drastically different, it disguises that fact very well. It differs in only a couple of areas that I can see, being the coloured wing end plates and the white stripe on the nose sweeping under the nose early, as opposed to ending at the tip. Russian colours perhaps at Mikhail’s request? Either way, it’s empty without much excitement, but it is clean.
★★
Team Penske
Verizon #2 Juan Pablo Montoya, #12 Will Power
Penske’s liveries were pretty annoying last season as you may already know. They were all the same OK livery with altered colours depending on the sponsor. It’s almost the same story this year, although it’s disguised much better.
The #12 and #12 cars are all silver. McLaren’s livery this season and last is a dull charcoal colour that I can’t enjoy. This livery is silver, just a few shades lighter than the McLaren and perhaps a little more metallic, and is awesome. That’s the difference that even small choices in colour or shades of colours can make to a livery. This livery is just as basic, with just the single red line wrapping around the nose and heading toward the rear. However, it looks good! Perhaps Mercedes need to take note. Less is more.
★★★★
Hitachi #3 Hélio Castroneves
Can you see the conformant design yet? The added two tone colour design of this livery keeps it well hidden. This design looks a lot like last years, with white on the top, black on the bottom and a red line splitting the two. It’s fairly simple, but it looks good. I’m not too keen on the rear wing end plate design, but perhaps it’s because it is on the inside of the end plates too, where it should really be black. The red trimming on the very front of the front wing looks great. No complaints with this, especially since the #2 and #12 are a different colour altogether.
★★★
Hewlett Packard/PPG/Menards #22 Simon Pagenaud
So by now it should be obvious that the designs are the same. This and the #3 are identical, but for the red swapped with an interesting turquoise colour, which brings some brightness and a change from the very common red. It’s an unusual combo, but I like it, not for that reason alone.
Pagenaud has had a number of sponsor and therefore livery changes already, with the PPG livery back to more traditional blue and white. I think this one is better, mainly due to the third colour being dark, which complements the other two colours much better.
The other livery is this incredibly bright fluoro yellow effort sponsored by Menards. Telefonica and Deustche Post eat your heart out! Thankfully, this design is a little more unique than the others, in more than just colour. Rather than a single white line like the Verizon cars, there are two pinstripes, one red and one black, following the same course along the car. There is also a second above the Menards logo on the sidepod, which is great. Did I mention the whole thing is covered in blinding yellow?? I do like it though. It’s the most unique and the best of the bunch. Also, it’s noteworthy that Pagenaud has changed his helmet colours to match the car’s livery which I’m warming to, especially since the design stays the same. Nice touch.
★★★★☆ (Based on my favourite, the Menards livery)
Well that took far longer to complete than I anticipated! Some great looking liveries on the grid this season and a few extra tomorrow too. Which is your favourite?
Advertisements6th February 2015
Scientists reprogram plants for drought tolerance
Plant biologists report that drought tolerance in plants can be improved by engineering them to activate water-conserving processes in response to an agrochemical already in use – an approach that could be broadly applied to other parts of the same drought-response pathway and a range of other agrochemicals.
An experiment with non-modified (left) and modified plants (right), after water is withheld for 12 days, to simulate drought conditions. Photo credit: Sang-Youl Park.
Crops and other plants are constantly faced with adverse environmental conditions, such as rising temperatures (2014 was the warmest year on record) and lessening fresh water supplies, which lower yields and cost farmers billions of dollars annually.
Drought is a major environmental factor affecting plant growth and development. When plants encounter drought, they produce a stress hormone, abscisic acid (ABA), which inhibits plant growth and reduces water consumption. Specifically, the hormone turns on a receptor (special protein) in plants when it binds to the receptor like a hand fitting into a glove, resulting in beneficial changes – such as the closing of guard cells on leaves, called stomata, to reduce water loss – that help the plants survive.
While it is true that crops could be sprayed with ABA to assist their survival during drought, ABA is costly to make, rapidly inactivated inside plant cells and light-sensitive, and has therefore failed to find much direct use in agriculture. Several research groups are working to develop synthetic ABA mimics to modulate drought tolerance – but once discovered, these mimics are expected to face lengthy and costly development processes.
The agrochemical mandipropamid, however, is already widely used in agricultural production to control late blight of fruit and vegetable crops. Could drought-threatened crops be engineered to respond to mandipropamid as if it were ABA, and thus enhance their survival during drought?
Yes, according to a team of scientists, led by Sean Cutler at the University of California, Riverside.
The researchers worked with Arabidopsis, a model plant used widely in plant biology labs, and the tomato plant. In the lab, they used synthetic biological methods to develop a new version of these plants' abscisic acid receptors, engineered to be activated by mandipropamid instead of ABA. The researchers showed that when the reprogrammed plants were sprayed with mandipropamid, the plants effectively survived drought conditions by turning on the abscisic acid pathway, which closed the stomata on their leaves to prevent water loss.
This finding illustrates the power of synthetic biological approaches for manipulating crops and opens new doors for crop improvement that could benefit a growing world population.
"We successfully repurposed an agrochemical for a new application by genetically engineering a plant receptor – something that has not been done before," says Cutler, an associate professor of botany and plant sciences. "We anticipate that this strategy of reprogramming plant responses using synthetic biology will allow other agrochemicals to control other useful traits – such as disease resistance or growth rates, for example."
Cutler explained that discovering a new chemical and then having it evaluated and approved for use is an extremely involved and expensive process that can take many years.
"We have, in effect, circumvented this hurdle using synthetic biology – in essence, we took something that already works in the real world and reprogrammed the plant so that the chemical could control water use," he said.
The study results appear this week in the journal Nature.
Comments »The housing markets in Oregon, Texas and North Dakota are booming, and residents are fleeing Northeastern states in droves.
At least that’s the story one can glean from Atlas Van Lines. The company issued its annual report Thursday that shows a snapshot of where people rented their moving equipment, and where they ended up. Significantly more traffic was headed into eight states and the District of Columbia, while more people moved out of 11 states, the data show.
Sixty percent of the moving traffic in Connecticut was headed out of state, the company reported. Among the other big population losers: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: North Dakota is booming. Two-thirds of the Atlas Van traffic in the state, which is experiencing huge growth due to the Bakken oil region, came from migrants who moved in. The U.S. Census Bureau said earlier this week that North Dakota had grown faster than any other state, at a rate of 3.1 percent, over the last year.
Graphic courtesy Atlas Van Lines, http://www.atlasvanlines.com/migration-patterns/
North Carolina and Texas also saw big influxes of movers. Over the last 10 years, two-thirds of all van traffic in the nation’s capital has been headed into Washington, D.C., reversing decades of suburban flight.
Graphic courtesy Atlas Van Lines, http://www.atlasvanlines.com/migration-patterns/
Meanwhile, residents in Midwestern and Atlantic states are most likely to wave goodbye to their neighbors. Van traffic has been most consistently outbound in New York, Indiana, New Jersey and Ohio over the last decade.
Graphic courtesy Atlas Van Lines, http://www.atlasvanlines.com/migration-patterns/
Atlas has released its study every year since 1993. The company’s data suggests that while the great recession slowed many internal migration patterns over the last few years, that flexibility appears to be coming back: The total number of moves increased 6 percent between 2012 and 2013.Court ruled in 1978 that Britain was guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment of 14 prisoners but not torture
The Irish and UK governments are about to clash in the European court of human rights over an infamous torture case involving the British army from the early years of the Troubles.
Dublin has decided to ask the ECHR to revise its judgment in the case of the hooded men – 14 suspects who said they were subjected to torture techniques during internment without trial in 1971.
The foreign minister, Charlie Flanagan, will make the request in light of recently unearthed military documents that appear to show Britain accepted that interrogation techniques used on the men amounted to torture. The evidence was revealed in an RTE television documentary in June this year.
In 1978 the ECHR admonished Britain for its inhuman and degrading treatment of the 14 prisoners but fell short of finding the UK guilty of torture. Last week several of the 14 lobbied the Irish parliament over the case.
Flanagan said: “The government is aware of the suffering of the individual men and of their families. The archival material which underlay the RTE documentary was therefore taken very seriously by the government and was subject to thorough legal analysis and advice. On the basis of the new material uncovered, it will be contended that the ill-treatment suffered by the hooded men should be recognised as torture.”
Amnesty International, which backed the men’s demand for the ECHR case to be reopened, welcomed the decision. Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty’s Northern Ireland programme director, said: “The then Irish government took a brave and unprecedented step when bringing the case against the UK back in 1971. Today’s Irish government has remained true to that pursuit of justice.
“Ireland is to be commended for playing its role in ensuring the UK is finally held responsible for what it did to these men in those interrogation rooms 43 years ago. We hope the UK government now announces without further delay the establishment of an independent investigation into what was revealed in the RTE programme.”
The decision averted a high court case that had been due to begin, brought by one of the hooded men, Liam Shannon, in an attempt to compel the Fine Gael-Labour coalition to challenge the 1978 ruling.
Shannon said: “We’re absolutely delighted by this. We’ve waited 43 years and we want to thank everyone involved – our legal team and all the researchers who turned up the relevant information in order that we could make a case, and we’d particularly like to thank Amnesty International for their assistance.”
The techniques inflicted on the detainees included hooding suspects, putting them into stress positions, sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation and the use of white noise. They were arrested as a result of the British policy of internment without trial in 1971 when thousands of suspects, mainly from Ireland’s nationalist-republican community, were rounded up.
Other detainees separate from the 14 have told the Guardian that they were blindfolded, put on to army helicopters and thrown out of the aircraft almost at ground level but unaware of their altitude.For the first time in over a decade, Congress is looking at a major copyright overhaul. But before it happens, the House Judiciary Committee is looking backwards, at both a 3-year-old copyright report and what it sees as an earlier, quieter time, when intellectual property debates were the province of the courtroom rather than the internet. Behind it all is a simple question: why are people so upset about copyright law?
"No sharp elbows."
Yesterday, the Judiciary held "A Case Study for Consensus Building," the first in a series of hearings on copyright. It focused on the Copyright Principles Project (CPP), a legal study group that released a nearly 70-page report on potential reforms in 2010. Five members of the original project were selected to testify: former Copyright Office General Counsel Jon Baumgarten, law professors Laura Gasaway, Pamela Samuelson, and Daniel Gervais, and Microsoft Assistant General Counsel for Copyright Jule Sigall.
Though the Judiciary Committee did not endorse the project’s findings, it held the process up as an example of the kind of discourse it wanted: "civil," pragmatic, and run by people willing to listen. In his testimony, Sigall recalled Samuelson telling him that "the group would have diverse perspectives on copyright but all members would share a common trait: ‘no sharp elbows.’" Baumgarten agreed. "When viewed from the perspective of today’s increasingly polarized, largely distrustful, and deeply antagonistic copyright debates," he said, "the process and report of the CPP was a breath of fresh air." Senators and witnesses alike bemoaned a coarsening in the copyright debate.
"Debates in the '60s and '70s were engaged in by people who respected copyright law."
That coarseness proved a point of tension: did it simply signal a lack of respect for copyright law, or was it the result of the law becoming more important than ever? Baumgarten, who served the Copyright Office in the 1970s, appeared to be in the former camp. "I don’t think the copyright system is broken or dysfunctional," he asserted. The problem, as he saw it, was that people simply no longer wanted to protect it. Despite disagreement in past decades, he said, "by and large, the copyright revision debates in the '60s and '70s were engaged in by people who respected and in many case loved copyright law."
Sigall expressed similar disappointment. "Over the past 20 years," he said, "I’ve watched the public perception of copyright deteriorate, from a positive — if little-known — means of enriching public knowledge to the increasingly negative, and even hostile, manner in which it is sometimes viewed today." But unlike Baumgarten, he believed the issue lay with the law, which "is straining to remain relevant" in a world of widespread, instant distribution. Gervais made a similar point, pushing for a copyright philosophy based on "maximizing authorized uses," not minimizing unauthorized ones.
"Copyright is now part of almost every American’s daily activities."
As reform advocates see it, the problem isn’t just that the law is irrelevant: It’s that it actively interferes with things modern citizens take for granted. "Before the internet and digital devices became what is now probably the most widely used way of accessing copyrighted material," said Gervais, "individual consumers and users had few reasons to think about copyright in their daily lives." But now, "copyright is part of almost every American’s daily activities, from simple email to online database access to entertainment consumed at home." When the possibilities for copying and remixing are nearly endless, copyright becomes extremely visible, whether it’s seen as a saving grace, a necessary protection, or an outright evil. And when it becomes visible, it’s much easier to see how baroque and complicated the law has really become.
Outside of perhaps Baumgartner, all panelists agreed that the present copyright system needed pruning, presenting a number of suggestions that have long been discussed by reformers. Nearly everyone saw a serious problem with orphan works: pieces of art, music, or literature whose copyright has no known owner, making them almost impossible to license or adapt without breaking the law. Several suggested updating the copyright registration system, which is meant to keep a record of who owns the rights to a given work. There were also calls to limit statutory damages — a form of legal compensation that can stick defendants with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for copyright infringement.
"I would love to see a law that is encompassed in 20 pages."
Their proposals didn’t always sit well with either the Judiciary Committee or people whose work depends on copyright. Shortly before and during the hearing, musicians and artists began to complain that the hearing would not involve members of the creative community: one blog sarcastically remarked that it presented "a ‘broad perspective’ that didn't include any filmmakers, musicians, artists, etc." Representatives, meanwhile, pressed the panelists to pare down the law even more. "There’s 68 pages of the article you wrote!" complained Representative Mel Watt (D-NC). "I would love to see a copyright law that is encompassed in 20 pages." He sometimes characterized critics as unrepentant pirates: "Free speech doesn't mean free stuff," he warned.
It’s no coincidence that the House chose to open its hearing series with a panel on consensus. The Stop Online Piracy Act was one of the most stunningly contested bills in recent years, drawing mass protest and hyperbolic warnings on both sides. Congress, though, is also hardly immune from dismissing critics of anti-piracy laws or exhibiting general bewilderment at how the internet works. A productive copyright debate will indeed need to start with toning down the rhetoric — both inside and outside the Beltway.The Chinese military is making preparations for the inaugural flight test of its newly designed unmanned combat vehicle, bringing the Asian powerhouse into the stealth technology race, Chinese media report.
China’s first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), known as the Lijian ('sharp sword'), is designed jointly by the Hongdu Aviation Industry Group and Shenyang Aviation Corporation. The project was launched in 2009 and the drone's first ground test was conducted on December 13 last year.
The Lijian, which makes China the third country to possess stealth drone capabilities, is now ready for flight testing, China Aviation News reported on Friday.
The Chinese UAV is designed for use by the PLA Air Force and Navy Air Force for combat missions, China Aviation News reported. It may also be used for tracking and reconnaissance along China’s lengthy and occasionally contentious border.
Beijing’s ambitious efforts at developing its drone capabilities have not escaped the attention of Taiwan, which has quarreled with Beijing in the past over questions of sovereignty and national identity.
“Taiwan should be concerned about China’s development of large numbers of sophisticated military UAVs,” Ian Easton, a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, told the Taipei Times.
China’s stealth drone is third such unmanned combat vehicle in existence, after the X-47 designed by the United States, and the nEUROn, a collaborative effort of various EU companies.
The nEUROn was launched in 2005 following an order by the French Defense Procurement Agency. The program is a collaborative effort between French, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Greek and Swiss defense companies.
The US Pentagon’s X-47 stealth drone, designed by Northrop Grumman, began as part of DARPA's J-UCAS program, and is now part of the US Navy's UCAS-D (Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration) program. The X-47 is still undergoing flight testing.
The unveiling of the prototype places the People’s Republic of China ahead of several nations in the development of stealth drone technology.
India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Sweden and Russia also have their own stealth UAV programs.Misono in Kobe – the first restaurant to offer teppanyaki
teppanyaki chef cooking at a gas powered teppan in a Japanese steakhouse chef cooking at a gas poweredin a Japanese steakhouse
Chef preparing a flaming onion volcano
Teppanyaki (鉄板焼き, teppan-yaki) is a post–World War II style of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook food. The word teppanyaki is derived from teppan (鉄板), which is the metal plate on which it is cooked, and yaki (焼き), which means grilled, broiled, or pan-fried. In Japan, teppanyaki refers to dishes cooked using a teppan, including steak, shrimp, okonomiyaki, yakisoba, and monjayaki.
The teppanyaki grills are called teppan and are typically propane-heated, flat-surfaced, and are widely used to cook food in front of guests at restaurants. Teppan are commonly confused with the hibachi (sic) barbecue grill, which is called Shichirin in Japanese and has a charcoal or gas flame and is made with an open grate design.[1] With a solid griddle-type cook surface, the teppanyaki is capable of cooking small or semisolid ingredients such as rice, egg, and finely chopped vegetables.
Origin [ edit ]
The originator of the teppanyaki-style steakhouse is believed to be Shigeji Fujioka of the Japanese restaurant chain Misono.[2] The restaurant claims to be the first to introduce the concept of cooking Western-influenced food on a teppan in Japan, in 1945.[3][4] They soon found the cuisine was less popular with the Japanese than it was with foreigners, who enjoyed both watching the skilled maneuvers of the chefs preparing the food and the cuisine itself, which is somewhat more familiar than more traditional Japanese dishes. As the restaurants became more popular with tourists, the chain increased the performance aspect of the chef's preparation, such as stacking onion slices to produce a flaming onion volcano.
Another piece of equipment in the same family is a flattop grill, consisting of a flat piece of steel over circular burners and typically smaller and round, like a Mongolian barbecue.
Ingredients [ edit ]
Typical ingredients used for Western-style teppanyaki are beef, shrimp, scallops, lobster, chicken, and assorted vegetables. Soybean oil is typically used to cook the ingredients.
Japanese-style teppanyaki may also use noodles (yakisoba) or cabbage with sliced meat or seafood (okonomiyaki), which are cooked using vegetable oil, animal fat, or a mixture. In Japan, many teppanyaki restaurants feature Kobe beef.
Side dishes of mung bean sprouts, zucchini (courgettes) (though this is not a popular vegetable in Japan and rarely found in that market), garlic chips (crisps), or fried rice usually accompany the meal. Some restaurants provide sauces in which to dip the food. In Japan, only soy sauce is typically offered.
In the US [ edit ]
Restaurants serving teppanyaki cuisine are often known as Hibachi or "Japanese steakhouses".
In the United States, teppanyaki was made famous by the Benihana restaurant chain, which opened its first restaurant in New York in 1964.[5] Though Benihana cooks their food teppanyaki-style, they serve dishes such as |
the investigators (Ani, Paul, Ray and Teague Dixon) to him, assuming he and his thugs — who started shooting first, indicating that they knew the cops were coming — would eliminate the cops. "Amarilla, too," Ani says. "He thought it was gonna go a different way, I think." Ray says that whoever trashed Caspere's home — "Burris, Holloway, Dixon, whoever" — was looking for diamonds. Ani says that the blue diamonds are the last piece of evidence for a decades-old murder, and ties in Tascha, Caspere's favorite high-class European prostitute, who planned on blackmailing him. "So Holloway, Burris, they killed Caspere," Ray says. "That doesn't make sense," Ani says. "Him dying bought them all exposure, kicked this whole thing off. And if they had Caspere, why wouldn't they torture him for the fucking diamonds? I mean, it's …" she trails off. Paul gets a text with more pictures. "Hall of Records midnight tonight… Pics for sale," it says. He says he's got to go. Before he does, they discuss what they might do next. Take it to state? Nope, Davis is dead. Geldof, the attorney general, was at the party they have evidence of. Ani says the Ventura Sheriff's Department has it out for her. And anyway, what do they really have? Documents for a holding company and a theory about rogue cops that goes back more than 20 years. They could take it to the feds, but they'd need more evidence. And unless someone has a friend there, Ray doesn't see any way they can get protection.
Frank, Austin Chessani and Osip Agranov at the Vinci Gardens Casino Austin Chessani talks to a hooker, bragging about his family's political dynasty, comparing them to the Kennedys. "Me? My family? We are Vinci." Frank approaches from behind the bar, motions for the blonde to leave. She does. He tells Chessani to leave. The drunk mayor balks, but Frank doesn't back down. He tells Chessani that everyone's working against him, just like they're working against Frank. "Your boy prince Tony, has been greasing the skids to slide into your chair," he says. "Buying the attorney general with his hookers. Working with a Russian named Osip Agranov, Jacob McCandless from Catalast. All this in your house behind your back." Tiny scene, big implications This brief exchange is a direct reference to a scene from episode two. It's its second half. It closes the loop. Even the phrase "boy prince" that Frank uses is a direct callback. So let's return to Mayor Chessani's office. Caspere is recently dead. The investigation into his murder has just begun. Frank just learned that Caspere never gave his $5 million to Catalast Group. Chessani, slumped behind his office desk, drinking, is watching TV. California State Attorney General Richard Geldof, citing Caspere's murder, is holding a press conference, announcing a criminal probe into Vinci. Frank arrives with his poker room kickback, short $10,000, in a manilla envelope. He's angry and worried. His working theory is that Caspere's murderer has his $5 million. Chessani, cool as lemonade, says that Geldof "just announced a shakedown." Not an investigation. A shakedown. "You're not worried whoever did Caspere might be part of something bigger?" Frank asks. " Muscling in on the corridor, secret handshakes and whatnot." "Ben had his own charity," Chessani says, "and what punched his ticket could have come from some personal pocket. Nobody muscles me, Frank. State attorney will get his piece, Caspere will get closed, the world will turn uncaring of our struggles." He's cocky, alarmingly uncaring. He is, we learn in episode five, entirely correct — at least about Geldof. Not so much about Tony, as we'll see. But that's not all they talked about. The mayor's son, Tony, comes up. And Chessani's reaction, which still sounds half moonbat-crazy, sets up a confrontation between father and son that will come to its conclusion before this season ends. Here's what Austin Chessani says about Tony Chessani: "My son, I fear, is losing his mind, like his dearly departed mother. Some people can't handle the deep trip. I fear he is a destroyer. In my day, you understand, it was about consciousness expansion. Tracing the unseen web. Children are a disappointment. Remain unfettered, Frank." And Austin isn't worried about Tony, either. He thinks he's got it under control. He has plans for Tony. "My farkakte offspring, I will set up with a club in Oakland. Let him be a boy prince elsewhere." His boy prince, see? Back in the present, Chessani leaves the bar. Osip Agranov approaches with a group of heavies and confirms what Blake told Frank: They now own the lease on the Lux and the casino. Frank can stay and manage them. Osip is surprisingly tender as he's screwing Frank. And Frank plays along, saying in effect that he knows he's screwed, so he'll make the best of it.
Miguel Gilb, Paul's old friend and sometimes lover
Paul and Miguel Paul walks a staircase to meet with the person who texted him. He calls Ray to say he might be getting into trouble, but doesn't give any details. He says he'll call Ray back. He ascends the steps and finds his old war buddy and sometimes sexual partner, Miguel Gilb, waiting for him. Black Mountain Security has rebranded, he says, and now it provides security for just one company: Catalast Group. Follow his lead, Miguel says, and Paul will make it out alive. And he continues the strategy of telling Paul that he should just be himself. He wouldn't be in this situation if he just acted as he is. They enter a building and descend a dark staircase. Ani and Ray Ani and Ray discuss what they're going to do next. They need an exit strategy to get out of the country, Ray says, because there's no way this situation will go to trial. Ani's not paying attention because she's shuffling through the covert pictures of the party that she got from the evicted woman. Something stands out. "Vera said this girl's name was Laura," she says, looking at a photograph. "Does she look familiar? I swear there's something," she trails off. "Her name is Erica. From the city manager's office. She was Caspere's secretary." Ray walks over to look. "No," he says. "Her name is Erica. From the city manager's office. She was Caspere's secretary." We've seen Erica twice. First, when Ani and Ray visited Caspere's office at the very beginning of the investigation and the season. They bumped into her briefly on the set of the movie being shot in Vinci, too. "Woodrugh said one of the orphans in that robbery, her name was Laura," Ani says. She's referring to the robbery where the blue diamonds they found in Caspere's safety deposit box originated. Paul interviewed a police officer in a previous episode who told the story of a jewelry store robbery by masked men who executed the store owners, leaving their children orphaned. Ray grabs the picture of the children that the retired cop gave Paul. They compare the two. It could be her, but it's far from clear.
Holloway
Paul, Holloway, Miguel and some Black Mountain Security thugs in the tunnels Paul, Miguel and a handful of armed men walk toward a shadowy figure in a dark basement, lit only by flashlights. It's Vinci Police Chief Holloway. "You've been looking for information about me, son," Holloway says. "Well, here's your chance to ask." Ani and Ray Ani gets off the phone with a Mr. Patterson. She tells Ray that Laura moved out of her apartment six weeks ago and quit the city manager's office around that time. (Remember that we skipped three months between episodes a few episodes back.) They figure Paul can try and locate her, given that he's the only one still ensconced with the police. Ray calls Paul again, but gets his voicemail. "What now?" Ani asks. "Ride it out 'till morning," Ray says and shrugs. "Guess we'll wait for Woodrugh." Frank in the casino Frank tells someone working at the casino that there's a gas leak and that they need to evacuate it for about three hours. The man gives some lip, Frank tells him to do it, and the man makes an announcement. People file out. Paul, Holloway, Miguel and some Black Mountain Security thugs in the tunnels Holloway begins with a bit of exposition: They're in tunnels that exist under the entire city, but for some reason, most people don't know about them. The pictures they're using to blackmail Paul, Holloway explains, were "a happy coincidence" uncovered in Teague Dixon's apartment after he died in the shootout at the end of episode four. Why did they have access to his apartment? Probably because, like Ray, Dixon lived in a building owned by the city of Vinci. "Teague always had a nose for secrets," Holloway says. "Teague always had a nose for secrets." So that seems to answer a long-standing question about Dixon. He probably wasn't working for anyone. He just collected incriminating information, likely to use if he ever needed it. Miguel interjects to tell Paul that, if he'd just been himself (meaning openly gay), Dixon couldn't have blackmailed him. Holloway says some documents disappeared from a "private gathering of citizens in Monterey." He is, of course, referring to the documents Paul retrieved during the sex party. He knows Paul is investigating him and believes he has the documents. Paul needs to stop and turn against Ani and Ray, and then everything will be fine. Paul says he doesn't know where the papers are, that Ray's turning them into the feds. He can call Ray, though, and set up a meeting where they'll find Ray and, I'm sure, kill him. If he does that, Paul says the condition is that he gets away. Holloway is skeptical. Paul ratchets up the rhetoric: Ani and Ray don't mean anything to him. He'll turn on them, as long as he gets every copy of the incriminating photos. Holloway says to call Ray and set up a meeting where they can capture him. Frank in the casino
Frank takes stacks of cash out of a safe and puts them in a duffel bag. He enters the casino bar at the same time as one of Osip's thugs. "Osip wants to know, where is gas leak?" the thug asks. "It's, uh," Frank says, then pulls out a huge silver revolver and shoots the thug in his head. Frank walks through the empty casino's kitchen, yanks a gas line and the cord from the fire alarm. With the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he lights a rag on fire. He's burning the place down behind him. Paul's mom and Emily Paul's mom and his fiancee are in the hotel room watching Splendor in the Grass, a movie about a young woman who falls in love with the son of one of the town's most wealthy families. It tackles themes like sexual repression, abortion and class. They lie on their beds amid a discarded Big Gulp and a pizza box. Paul's mom says she loves the movie. Emily, Paul's pregnant fiancee, says it looks old. It's old and sad, Paul's mom says. Paul, Holloway, Miguel and the Black Mountain guards in the tunnel Paul tries to call Ray, but he says he doesn't have service. Pretending he's walking to get better reception, he grabs Holloway, snags his gun and uses him as a human shield. He tells everyone to toss their guns and shut their flashlights off. He knocks Holloway out. Then he runs as the guards find their guns and fire. Ani and Ray in the motel room Ani and Ray sit in the motel room, drinking whisky out of plastic cups as a fake fire doesn't burn in the background. "You're not a bad man." Ray says that whatever happens will be hard on his son, having to hear about his father. Ani is optimistic. She says they can get out of it. If they get Laura's story and take her to the feds, they might wind up on CNN. "I'm sorry," she says. "I brought you back in this." "No, I made a choice," Ray says. "A long time ago. I, uh, I thought everything came from something else. But it came from there. You had something like that too once, right?" Ani pauses a few seconds. "It isn't something I talk about," she says. "It's one of the things I admire about you." They spend several seconds in silence. Ray pours a drink. Ani breaks the silence. "You're not a bad man," Ani whispers. It's a direct repudiation of what he thinks, of the accusations that his ex-wife leveled at him. "Yes, I am," he says with finality. Another few seconds of silence. "Do you miss it?" Ray asks. "What?" He grunts. "Anything." Silence again. Ani reaches across the table and holds his hand.
Paul and the Black Mountain thugs in the tunnel Paul makes his way through the tunnels. He's being pursued, but as we learned in episode four — and as Ray reiterated in episode five — Paul is an incredible warrior, at home on the battlefield. He's got this covered. He kills every one of the people chasing him, except his old friend, who dies as Paul uses him as a human shield. Also, somewhere back in the darkness, Holloway's not dead. Paul sees a ladder, jogs over to climb it. Ani and Ray in the motel They're standing, almost dancing without music. They kiss. Frank in the Lux Frank, with the duffel back over his left shoulder, clears out cash from the safe at the Lux. He pours liquor on the ground, lights it up and walks out, but not before turning the gas on in the kitchen. He stands in a rooftop a few miles away watching his old buildings burn — the buildings Osip just acquired. Ani and Ray in the motel They're in bed now, making out.
Lieutenant Kevin Burris and Paul outside a building Paul's running through a hallway in slow motion. He sees a door, breaks through it, escapes to the outside. He takes his cellphone out of his pocket, almost certainly to call Ray. Behind the door, behind Paul, is Lieutenant Kevin Burris of the Vinci PD. Burris shoots Paul in the back. "No, no, no," Paul says as he crawls on his belly toward his gun. "Fuck you." Burris shoots Paul in the back a second time, and Paul stops moving. Emily in the hotel room Paul's fiancee watches Splendor in the Grass. The actress Natalie Wood holds up a baby. "So now we're expecting another child," we hear the TV say. "I hope it's a girl this time." The baby on TV cries, and a woman says, "Oh, you're a fine boy." Emily begins to cry. "Well, I have to go now," says a woman on the TV. "Oh. You'll come back again sometime? Will you come back for dinner?" Burris and Paul Burris picks up Paul's cellphone. He runs up some stairs and hops into the passenger seat of a gray police car. The car pulls away. The episode ends with a shot of Paul's body, lying motionless on the concrete.
Episode eight: Omega Station True Detective season two was a jog, not a sprint. But both paces eventually cross the finish line. This is it, and actions will speak louder than words in "Omega Station." There were still many unanswered questions going into the eighth episode, and there was no assurance of answers for all of them. We'll get some. We'll even find answers to questions we never knew to ask. And, on a few occasions, we'll learn that things that felt important ultimately weren't. This, I think, is True Detective mirroring reality. Some things are just unknowable, and the message seems to be that we just have to accept a certain amount of the unknowable. Still, it's not as if we'll walk away wondering what happened. True Detective season two and most of its characters have definitive endings, good, bad and somewhere in between. So let's find out what happens to the Bezzerides, the Chessanis, the Semyons and the odd cast of characters in and around Vinci, California. Let's end season two, as we always have, one scene at a time.
The title sequence's final shot
Title sequence and theme song Leonard Cohen's poem turned song — you know, the one with the repeating line "I live among you, well disguised" — was a pretty good choice. It felt right. It conjured up the right emotions. It got you in the mood. Plus, it did something genuinely innovative: It changed with every episode, mixing lines and stanzas together to create a custom-tailored effect. I don't think it gave anything away, really, but it felt right. Maybe T. Bone Burnett, True Detective's musical director, found the song afterward. Maybe Nic Pizzolatto, the show's creator and writer, used it like Stephen King used "The Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." You can make a pretty good case for each. That's why it works. Here's the entirety of Leonard Cohen's "Nevermind," as it appears in the final episode. The war was lost
The treaty signed
I was not caught
I crossed the line I was not caught
Though many tried
I live among you
Well disguised I had to leave
My life behind
I dug some graves
You'll never find The story's told
Through facts and lies
I have a name
But nevermind Nevermind
Nevermind
The war is lost
The treaty signed There's truth that lives
And truth that dies
I don't know which
So nevermind My woman's here
My children, too
Their graves are safe
From ghosts like you In places deep
With roots entwined
I live the life
I left behind The war was lost
The treaty signed
I was not caught
I crossed the line I was not caught
Though many tried
I live among you
Well disguised
The first shot of episode eight
True Detective season two episode eight watchthrough: Omega Station Ani and Ray in the motel After sleeping together, Ani tells Ray about her abduction and molestation. She remembers trees, the woods again, a cave. Four days she thinks she might've gotten out. She remembers she got in a car, that the man who abducted her didn't force her. The scene unfolds in the present and intercuts with the moments they spent alone the night before as the other slept. "Baby, you made it all mean something, everything before we met. If they came to me through you, if they hurt you, I couldn't, I wouldn't deserve to live. If you love me — I cannot do the things I have to do unless I know you're safe. If I don't think you're safe, I'm lost. They got me. Nails has two tickets. Venezuela out of Oregon." "He didn't force me. He didn't even get near me. He called me pretty. I remember. I remember it made me feel — I liked," she trails off. "I got in the van with a stranger. Every time I remember that feeling, like pride, I get sick to my stomach. I could lie to myself, but I felt proud. I was proud that he thought I was pretty. Makes me sick." "None of that was your fault," Ray says. Next, Ray confesses. He tells the story of his worst moment when he killed the man he thought raped his wife. "I walk up behind him," he says. "It's him. It's the guy. I've been thinking about him, picturing him for months. I'm not sleeping. Passing strangers, wondering. He turned his head right as I was up on him. I planned to say it, but I didn't say anything. I got sick, and to keep from being sick, I raised up," he pauses, "right when he was turning. And I —" In a flashback to the night before, Ray looks at pictures of Chad, the son he left willingly, on his phone, as Ani sleeps. "It didn't make anything better," he says. "Made it worse. And I know now: the act, it described a trajectory." In other words, the act of murder — even if he believed he had a right to do so — foreshadowed Ray's life, which he lived thereafter as a man who acted like a murderer. "People," Ani says, "whole cultures wouldn't blame you. I don't." "It wasn't him. They got the real guy. Something in Venice, weeks ago." She asks who he was. Ray isn't even sure it matters. They dress in silence on opposite sides of the bed. "I haven't been like this in a long time," Ray says. "Years." "I can tell." "Why?" "You seemed like you were making up for lost time."
Jordan and Frank at a station Frank and Jordan are at a train station, saying goodbye. Or at least that's what Frank thinks. Jordan's not thrilled about splitting up. "I'd do anything for 10 more years," Frank says. "We should have met when we were young." "At least then we wouldn't regret the past," Jordan says. "Anyway, who said we don't have 10 more years?" There's money, $100,000, for her to take. She's going with Nails. The hell she will, she says. He says she doesn't have a choice. She says she always does. Frank switches tactics. "It's not going to work, the you and me thing. The way I see it, you weren't upfront with me. You can't have a kid, then what good is a design, see? You had me on the fairytale for a while, and it was good. Now it's time to go." The design he's referring to is his plan for the future: Getting out of a life of crime, having kids. He's spoken about it a few times this season. "You can't act for shit," Jordan says. "Take it from me. Where one goes, the other goes. That's what we said." "Baby, you made it all mean something, everything before we met. If they came to me through you, if they hurt you, I couldn't, I wouldn't deserve to live. If you love me — I cannot do the things I have to do unless I know you're safe. If I don't think you're safe, I'm lost. They got me." "That's not acting. Now take your payout, and get the fuck gone." He throws his wedding ring out the door. She refuses to leave him. "Whatever they do to you, they do to me." She calls what he's doing martyrdom, and she's not wrong. She says come with them. He says he can't run. They'll keep coming after him. He needs to finish this. She says it won't work, and they made sure of it. He says he has a play, one thing they don't know. "I cannot run," Frank says. "It'll never stop. If I do that, and I come home, and I find you — no. No." She remains unconvinced. He switches tactics again. He gets tender, not angry. "Baby," he says, "you made it all mean something, everything before we met. If they came to me through you, if they hurt you, I couldn't, I wouldn't deserve to live. If you love me — I cannot do the things I have to do unless I know you're safe. If I don't think you're safe, I'm lost. They got me. Nails has two tickets. Venezuela out of Oregon." "Not unless you're with me," Jordan says. "Otherwise the last six years are nothing." "No, they weren't. Never nothing." "I know. I know. That was never our story." "I got my ticket out. I'll meet you inside of two weeks. I promise." "Two weeks?" "Or less. Barquisimeto." "You'll meet me in two weeks or less." "El Obelisco. There's a park there. Wear a white dress." "You wear a white suit with a red rose in your jacket." "I'll wear a red rose in my jacket." "I'll see you coming out of the crowd, head higher than everybody else." "At first, I'm worried. I can't see you." "But then you do." "I see the white dress." They kiss. Frank and Nails at the station Frank hands Nails a stack of money in a manilla envelope, and Nails says it's not necessary. "Couldn't see," Nails says. "Blood in my eyes. Nail in my fucking head. I heard him saying leave me." "Fuckin' teamster," Frank says. "A nail gun." "Slung me over your shoulder. I don't forget that." "I know you don't." Nails is everything Frank admires. Grateful, trustworthy, loyal, dependable, tough as … well, you know. He's the last of Frank's men, and he's the best of Frank's men. And now it's his job to protect Jordan for two weeks — or less. Or more. "Nobody's going to get near her," Nails says. "I promise. We'll see you in two weeks." "Or less." They shake hands. Frank pats Nails on the shoulder. Nails gets in the car. Jordan's in the backseat. She rolls down a tinted window, looks at Frank, holds up two fingers like a peace sign. "Two weeks," she mouths, and they pull away. Frank doesn't believe a word of it it. You can see it on his face.
Ani and Ray at the motel, Burris at Paul's murder scene Paul's body is in a body bag. His murderer, Vinci PD Lieutenant Kevin Burris, speaks to unidentified cops, explaining who Paul is. Was. Nobody knows he did it. The phone in Burris' pocket rings. He answers. It's Paul's phone. Ray's on the other line. Burris lets Ray know that Paul is dead. And he makes it clear that they're framing Ray. "You know I know, right?" Ray says. "The robbery in '92. Caspere kept some diamonds. He was holding them over you, yeah?" Burris is taken aback. "We should meet," Burris says. "Let's talk his over. You could come out of this good, Ray. I can make it go away. Put you right. Get you paid." "Sure. Yeah, I'll drop by PD later today." "Where are you? Come on, Ray. You're one of us." "Why Woodrugh? There was no reason." "He was better than us. He saved our asses. Twice." "Why do you care? You know the guy was a fag, right? Come on, you're a player, Ray. Let's talk. We can work this out." "Yeah, sure thing lieutenant," Ray says and hangs up. Ani asks what that was. Frank tells her that Paul is dead. Ray goes to hung her, but he stops short. "Who — what — why — Jesus Christ, he was going to have a fucking kid," Ani says through tears. Ray delivers the straight news: "It was Burris. They're putting it on me. First Davis, now — fuck!" It's getting harder and harder to see a way out. "I can't, I can't," Ani says. "Jesus, he was—" Ray says. "After everything else." He has a point. How much more can go wrong? "He was better than us," Ani says. "He saved our asses. Twice." That's once during the shootout at the end of episode four and once at the party Ani infiltrated. "Three times. Now. He deserved better." He did. But that is not the way or the world of True Detective season two. Ani tries to regroup, think about the future. What do they have? The girl, Erica/Laura, but God knows where she is. And that's when it hits Ray: "There was two of them. The kids. Boy, girl." He rushes to the a stack of files, grabs a photograph of the two children murdered in the Sable Fine Jewelers robbery. "Field interviews, that movie set. We had a crew list. There's a guy there. Set photographer. She talked to him. The ages are right. Fuck, they even kind of looked alike. Set photographer. Lenny Tyler. That's the brother. Laura and Leonard. They might have the hard drive. Caspere's hidden camera." "Caspere's murder, if it was them, it just opened up all this other stuff. We were always set up." "So was Frank." "Your gangster buddy." "Yeah, he's actually not a bad guy, but, yeah, Caspere was playing him." "So we find Osterman. Tyler." Ray is going to check with Lenny's union for an address. "Unless you just want to take off," he says. "I'm pretty sure I can get us out of the country." "If there's a chance to get them," Ani says, "I want to take it." Ray nods in understanding. "I was never big on running, myself." "Woodrugh wasn't."
Frank, Mayor Chessani and Mrs. Mayor Chessani at the Chessani's Bel Air mansion Frank arrives at Mayor Chessani's mansion carrying a gun. He walks around the house to the pool out back. The last time we saw the pool was in episode three, when Ani and Paul showed up at the house. During their visit, Tony Chessani threw a woman off his balcony into the pool. Frank approaches the pool and discovers Mayor Chessani floating, face down, Sunset Boulevard style. There are pills and a bottle of booze next to the table, which makes it look like suicide. But Frank looks up at the balcony, and that's another connection to Tony. Frank walks into the house and finds sex party invitations on the table. Frank calls out. In the study, he sees a map of the high-speed railway. "Are you fuckin' dense? This is your boy, Tony. Made to look like some half-assed suicide. And my guess is you'll be takin' the fall." Mayor Chessani's wife, Veronica, is there calling for her husband and Tony. Frank asks where Tony is, and she says she doesn't know that — or what day it is. "There was yelling. A Russian man, Tony's parties. His new business or something. Hard to remember." His new business is, in all likelihood, the one he founded with Blake, McCandless and Osip — the one that the business papers Paul stole from the sex party detail. So Tony and his father, Austin, had a fight. She says she met Austin though Tony, who told him his father was lonely since his first wife got sick. She's Eastern European, remember, so Osip surely played a part in it, too. "But you were Tony's friend first," Frank says. She nods. It was a setup, all along. Tony's been scheming for a long while, including setting his father up with a woman he'd eventually pin his murder on. Frank grabs her by the arm and drags her out back to see Austin's body. She screams, freaks out. Frank covers her mouth. "How did this? I don't — he kill himself?" "Where's the daughter, Betty?" Frank asks, referring to Austin's second child, who we saw twice, briefly. The first time, she seemed to be studying land survey maps in her room, and she slammed the door on Ani. The second time, she described her father as a bad man. Veronica thinks Betty was there during the argument. "She's sick, like her mother," Veronica says. "I can't believe Austin would do this." "Are you fuckin' dense? This is your boy, Tony. Made to look like some half-assed suicide. And my guess is you'll be takin' the fall. Where's Tony now? Think. Where would he be?" She doesn't know. She says she has an allowance, no direct access to the Chessani fortune. "Then I hope you saved some of that Miss Ukraine money," Frank says and leaves.
Ani, Ray and Laura in a house Ani and Ray approach a house, enter the back yard through an open fence gate, weapons drawn. Before they do, Ray peers through a window sees see the raven's mask. Underneath is another mask. It was, surely, mask that the person who torched the burgundy Cadillac was wearing. So, yes, it was Leonard all along. They enter the house through the back for. There's the shotgun that shot ray. There's some non-lethal riot shells. Suspended on string, there's some photographs of Burris and Holloway. "Len? Len?" a voice calls from inside the house. They walk through the house and discover Laura, Caspere's secretary, handcuffed to the fireplace. They record her on an iPhone as she tells the story of what happened after their parents were murdered. She ran away from her foster family at 16, started hooking. Len went into a group home, had a really rough life. She met Caspere through Tascha, his favorite hooker, and she told Laura about the diamonds. "He used to visit my mother," Laura says. "I remembered him." She changed her name, died her hair red, got a job in Caspere's office. He didn't recognize her. She and Len found each other years ago. She got him the job as a photographer on the movie set. Then she explains Caspere's murder. "We didn't have the password. And the hard drive erased itself, some kind of security feature. It's blank." At Caspere's Hollywood house, Laura put a pill in Caspere's drink. Len showed up and knew what she was doing. The original plan was to use the acid to get Caspere to tell them who killed their parents, but Len got carried away with anger. Caspere sang like a bird, had a heart attack and died. On the day season one began, Len drove Caspere's corpse around to all the places Caspere confessed about and then dumped his body at the highway rest stop. Discovering it there was the catalyst for season two — the inciting event that brought Ani, Paul and Ray together. It was all because of Len. "I don't know why." Laura says when asked why he dumped the body there. "I think he thought it was funny. Caspere was confessing everything, begging. He told him about the rail corridor." Len left her in the house, handcuffed, because she was trying to stop him. From what? "He's going to meet up with that chief, Holloway. He's going to trade him the hard drive from Ben's place for the diamonds." "What's on the hard drive?" Ani asks. "Would have been footage of important men," Laura says. "You said would have," Ray says. "We didn't have the password. And the hard drive erased itself, some kind of security feature. It's blank." "He's going there to kill Holloway," Ray says. Laura nods. He left a couple hours ago because he wanted to get to the train station where they're meeting early. "We got her testimony," Ray says to Ani. "You stay here with her until we can walk her into a precinct." Ani gets up to stop him, but he's out the door too fast. Frank and Osip on the phone Frank drives down the highway. He's on the phone with Osip, the Russian-Israeli gangster. They've know each other a long time. Not long ago, Frank thought they were partners, buying into the railway corridor land together. But Osip, Frank knows thanks to Blake's confession, was screwing Frank out of all of it. "Saw the mayor went for a swim," Frank says. "Thought I should say goodbye." "What are you doing, Frank? This was very unlike you. Lashing out, childish. Now I have to answer." He's referring to Frank torching the casino and the Lux, both of which Osip was taking over and forcing Frank out of. "Oh, I'm long gone, cue ball. But we'll settle up later." "Like I had to answer this, you patronizing old fuck?" "Are you still in LA, Frank?" "Oh, I'm long gone, cue ball. But we'll settle up later." "We certainly will." "Good luck with that, you KGB kike motherfucker. I'll only need the one bullet. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but Osip, when the lights go out, that's me." He hangs up. His phone rings. It's Ray. Ani and Laura at a bus station Ani hands Laura a ticket to Seattle. She tells her to scram, and forget it, and maybe it'll blow over for her. "This is never going to blow over," Laura says. "My life ended that day." "Except it didn't. You can lay it down. I'm giving you that." "Why?" "Because, whatever debt there was, you're not the person who needs to be punished now." "What about Len?" "Lay him to rest. Sounds like you lost him years go." "What am I supposed to do?" "I don't know." Ani leaves. Laura gets on the bus.
Felicia and Frank at The Black Rose Frank brings a couple duffle bags to The Black Rose, the bar where he and Ray used to hang out. He and |
orna sold the GP rights back to Luongo (reportedly for pennies on the dollar). Now, under the guise of Youthstream (instead of Action Group), Luongo bought the rights to the World Motocross Championships until 2026.
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN LUONGO CAME BACK ON THE SCENE?
One of Luongo’s first policies was to increase race sanction fees. The fees were modest at first (around $25,000 a race), but soon rose sharply. Before long, clubs wishing to hold a GP were hit with sanction fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to the costs of putting the race on. With only the gate money as income, it increasingly became a financial impossibility for many of the legendary GP tracks, like Payerne, Sittendorf and Hawkstone Park, to afford to hold races. However, despite the ever-increasing fees, there was seemingly no shortage of other wealthier clubs or government/federation-backed promoters eager to step in.
WHAT IS THE SANCTION FEE FOR A GRAND PRIX TODAY?
According to reliable sources, the sanction fee for a promoter to hold a GP under Youthstream is approximately $435,000. It is hard to pin down the exact amount because it varies with the situation. Race promoters tell us that the exact fee depends on whether you are a private promoter or government-backed. It is rumored that private promoters in traditional GP countries get a better rate, while out-of-the-way places (like Turkey and Bulgaria) and government-run events pay much higher fees. It is estimated that on the current calendar there are only two or three private promoters who don’t have government or federation backing. Not surprisingly, Youthstream favors the far-off countries and government-funded events, irrespective of whether there is any significant offroad motorcycle market in that country.
WHAT DO THE RACE PROMOTERS GET FOR THE MONEY?
Promoters tell us that for the sanction fee, Youthstream supplies the GP riders, timing equipment, and what one promoter called the “pretty bits” (by which he meant the podium, pit-lane tents, Youthstream offices, hospitality tents and catering areas). Luongo also sets up the Red Bull arches, banners and other sponsors’ paraphernalia. Youthstream also films, edits and packages the television coverage of the event and distributes it to TV stations around the world.
WHAT DO THE LOCAL RACE PROMOTERS PROVIDE?
The race promoter picks up all the other costs of putting on the race, including the track construction, buildings, maintenance, fencing, watering, start gate, track workers, flag men, PA system, ambulances, toilets, garbage cans, security, policing, insurance, off-track entertainment, food concessions, advertising, promotion and the myriad other things that go into putting on a race.
Based on an unscientific poll of average fans, the man-made tracks, weak fields and poor racing seem to be common reasons for staying away. Adam Duckworth photo
WHAT ARE THE HIDDEN COSTS?
In addition, promoters have told us that they must also provide hotel rooms and meals for as many as 150 Youthstream staff and guests, and should those people choose to take their meals in Youthstream’s own hospitality facility, the promoter has to pay Youthstream $22 per meal. One GP promoter told us that his bill for Youthstream’s hotels alone was nearly $50,000.
DOES THE LOCAL RACE PROMOTER GET THE GATE MONEY?
Yes. In fact, the promoter’s primary income is the gate money. Any sponsorship that the promoter obtains has to be split 50/50 with Youthstream and is restricted to 50 percent of the signage area on the track. (All the prime banner locations are already taken for Youthstream’s own sponsors).
WHAT TRACKS CAN AFFORD ALL OF THE COSTS AND FEES?
Very few of the traditional GP tracks can crack that nut. And because Youthstream places so much emphasis on pit facilities, they increasingly favor automobile racing circuits as venues (even if there is no motocross track there). As a result, at many GPs the tracks are temporary and much of the infrastructure has to be brought in?at the race promoter’s expense. The race promoter also provides all facilities for the event, including phones, faxes, internet, electricity, water, showers, etc.
Youthstream has eschewed many of the traditional Grand Prix tracks in favor of race car tracks. Ray Archer photo
HOW DO THE RACE CAR TRACKS COME UP WITH THE MONEY?
Race promoters tell us that without government or federation backing (effectively a handout, with no commercial return expected) the economics of holding a GP under this financial arrangement don’t stack up.
Take Great Britain, for example. In the country that is perhaps the spiritual home of GP motocross, there have been a series of promoters who have tried and failed to make the British GP a financial success. Despite good crowds?as good, if not better, than could be expected?the succession of financial failures suggests that the Luongo business model is flawed. If the costs of putting on a GP are so high that even with good weather and a healthy fan turnout the event returns a loss, then how is this sustainable? And while the promoter carries all the risk (and the threat of financial ruin if it rains), Youthstream gets their fee regardless. It is rumored that some past British GP promoters are still paying off debts to Youthstream in installments, years later.
One team manager we spoke to estimated that the true situation is that only half the riders in the GP fields have any sort of salary or bonus, another quarter of the field races for nothing, and the balance are probably paying to take part. Adam Duckworth photo
HOW MUCH HAS SPECTATOR ATTENDANCE IMPROVED UNDER LUONGO’S REGIME?
The improved professionalism and higher profile that Youthstream strives for might suggest that spectator numbers would be on the rise. In a straw poll of race promoters, most thought that this wasn’t happening. And to make matters worse, Youthstream inflates its attendance figures so boldly that it gives credence to the “Big Lie” theory. Luongo’s optimistic spectator numbers seem at odds with the real figures. As an example, at the Budds Creek MXDN in 2007, the official spectator number was put at 80,000 fans. Budds Creek promoter Jonathan Beasley said it was 24,000. It turns out that Youthstream derives their figures by counting the same fans every time they pass through the gate on a weekend. Thus, one fan who comes to camp, watch practice, goes out to his car to get his hat and the races on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, might well be counted multiple times. Additionally, it is also rumored that all the free passes that Youthstream hands out to corporate sponsors, whether they are used or not, are also counted.
WHY HASN’T THE ATTENDANCE GROWN MORE?
Based on an unscientific poll of average fans, the man-made tracks, weak fields and poor racing seem to be common reasons for staying away. A second reason is ticket prices. At the Luongo-promoted 2009 Motocross des Nations in Italy, it cost nearly $150 for a ticket and pit pass. The third reason is that TV coverage bleeds off possible spectators. Why go to the race when you can watch it live on TV?
HOW ARE THE RIDERS FARING UNDER LUONGO’S SHARE THE WEALTH POLICY?
Youthstream claims that the start line is full of salaried factory riders and regularly boasts of the prosperity of the teams, pointing to their big semis, hospitality trucks and large staff numbers. Luongo recently publicly stated that GP salaries range from $29,000 up to $1.1 million, and also outlined his target of a minimum salary of $35,000 for all riders on the “Officially Approved Teams” list. However, the true financial health of the series cannot be judged by the affluence of the few (and claims of paddock-wide prosperity are simply not true). One team manager we spoke to estimated that the true situation is that only half the riders in the GP fields have any sort of salary or bonus, another quarter of the field races for nothing, and the balance are probably paying to take part. So, while it is a fact that there are more high-profile team rides around than there used to be, the sad fact is that some of those rides are not salaried.
The GPs have long since ceased to be about motocross or indeed even a legitimate World Championship. The product is now a TV program. Adam Duckworth photo
WHAT ABOUT PURSE MONEY?
Youthstream’s most controversial moves were the removal of purse money and elimination of start money. Not to mention the introduction of entry fees of $1470 per GP (or $14,700 for the season up front). According to Chuck Sun, even the Veteran’s class demands entry fees of up to $750. These moves, Luongo said, were necessary because the money needed to be invested back into the sport so that the riders could make more money in the future.
WHAT DOES IT COST TO RACE THE GRAND PRIX?
The true costs are substantial. In 1998, a rider averaging tenth place throughout the season earned start and prize money of just under $30,000 for the season. Luongo made that disappear overnight. For GPs as a whole, it represents a huge cash flow out of the rider’s hands and into Youthstream’s bank account. When you add up the entry fees, the canceled purse, the eliminated start money, and figure in the loss of travel subsidies for fly-away races (another long-standing financial arrangement that Youthstream annulled), you can see that in one fell swoop Luongo took nearly $2.5 million a season directly from the riders and teams.
HOW DOES LUONGO JUSTIFY NOT PAYING THE RIDERS A LIVING WAGE?
In short, he says that is someone else’s job. Luongo has always maintained that it is the team’s responsibility to pay its employees. There is, perhaps, a certain logic to that position, but its focus is too narrow. For a factory rider earning $350,000 or more a year, Youthstream’s spokesmen argue that losing $40,000 in prize and start money over the season isn’t a big factor (although we have yet to find a rider who considers a ten-percent-plus pay cut insignificant). As a test, Luongo needs to set up all of those fancy hospitality tents and see how many paying fans come to look at them without the riders being there. The riders are the stars. They are who the fans, TV viewers and magazine readers pay to see.
Marvin Musquin, after much strife, finally got out of the Honda contract (perhaps thanks to KTM’s largess) and went on to win the World Championship. Adam Duckworth photo
WHAT ABOUT THE MARVIN MUSQUIN STORY?
Let’s look at the story of Marvin Musquin as an example of life on the GP circuit. Part way through the 2009 season, French rider Marvin Musquin found himself in the lead of the MX2 (250) World Championship. In a well-publicized move, he switched to Team KTM midseason, alleging that he hadn’t been paid by his French Honda team. Later, rumors suggested that the real story was that his Honda deal, which he had signed following his respectable 14th place in the 2008 series, was for a small salary, but with Youthstream’s high entry fees, his struggling team had no option other than for Marvin to fund those entries himself or not race. Musquin, after much strife, finally got out of the Honda contract (perhaps thanks to KTM’s largess) and went on to win the World Championship.
WHAT ABOUT THE PRIVATEERS?
James Noble, a quality 450 GP racer and regular top-ten rider, was in 16th place in the 2009 series, but quit the GPs midway through the 2009 season. Noble claimed that it was just not possible to continue racing under the current financial structure. Despite his solid resume and berth on a high-profile team, James was earning nothing and having to pay his own entries. Overall, Noble was out of pocket nearly $50,000 per season compared to the pre-Youthstream era.
Noble’s British compatriot, Brad Anderson, 23rd in the 450 class in 2008, also quit the GPs, unable to finance entry fees (while also earning no prize money). Anderson returned to the better-paid British races and swept his National Championship, beating many current GP riders in the process. This was the first time in more than 30 years that the British National Champion had not contested the GPs. Noble and Anderson are not isolated cases. There are many more racers who are well capable of scoring good points in GP’s who are riding for nothing or next to nothing.
Where is the integrity of the series when fast riders, with proven track records, can’t afford to race? Adam Duckworth photo
DOES IT MATTER THAT THESE RANK-AND-FILE GP RIDERS CAN’T RACE?
Absolutely! For a championship to have any clout, it should be a contest between the 40 fastest riders. How can the present system be considered fair when a good number of those riders are excluded because they don’t have a factory ride or a rich backer? It is true that no rider has an automatic right to a big-money works contract. Surely a World Championship as wealthy as Youthstream claims to be should be structured to permit professional racers of the caliber of Noble and Anderson to continue racing GP’s as self-financing privateers for as long as they are fast enough.
WHAT DOES GIUSEPPE LUONGO SAY ABOUT ALL OF THIS?
In his self-penned “interview” near the end of the 2009 GP season, Luongo talked about the World Championship being an “exclusive series, and one which not many can access.” He wrote, “This is how it should be. The World Championship is the top of the pyramid, with a base of Continental Championships.” (The Continental Championships to which he refers are the MX3 (450cc+) and EMX2 (250cc) series, both of which are also run by Youthstream, with large sanction fees, high rider entry fees and no prize money). Giuseppe went on to describe the World Championship as being “for the elite, the very best; it is not for everyone. The World Championship must only be for the crme de la crme.”
IS IT REALLY ONLY FOR THE CR?ME DE LA CR?ME?
If a wad of cash is creme, then the biggest wad is the creme de la creme. Need examples? At the 2009 Turkish Grand Prix, Latvian Alojzij Fortuna paid his $1470 and raced the 450 class. He completed moto two in 26th place (and just missed a points-paying position by six spots). There is a catch about this creme de la creme rider. Alojzij’s best lap time was 36.5 seconds a lap slower than the leader. Would Luongo have us believe that a rider who gets lapped every three laps is the best the world has to offer?
The world’s most prestigious motocross championship had to be propped up by local South American riders, including Mariana Balbi. Adam Duckworth photo
NEED ANOTHER EXAMPLE?
At the Brazilian GP, only 16 regular 450 GP riders bothered to make the trip to Brazil. The world’s most prestigious motocross championship had to be propped up by local South American riders, including Mariana Balbi. Mariana became the first woman to score World Championship points when she finished 20th in thesecond 450 moto. Miss Balbi was three laps down, and her best lap time was 19 seconds a lap slower than the leader.
HOW CAN THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP PRETEND TO HAVE CREDIBILITY WHEN THE ONLY ENTRY CONDITION IS MONEY?
Where is the integrity of the series when fast riders, with proven track records, can’t afford to race, but wealthy Novices (and let’s be honest, 36 seconds a lap slower is Novice speed) can sign up and roadblock their way through a World Championship race?
HOW ARE THE RIDER TURNOUTS AT THE GP’S?
GP lineups are still at an all-time low. In theory, entries are open to 40 riders in each class, but after the 2009 season, Luongo stated (as he did 12 months earlier) that he wants to reduce the entries in MX1 to 30 riders “on safety grounds.” However, as soon as more teams applied to enter the 2010 series, safety took a back seat and the maximum was expanded to 40 again. Luongo says his longer-term goal is to further reduce the number of riders in the 450 class to just 24 “to increase the quality of the racing.” That statement makes no sense. At some 2009 GPs, as few as 26 riders lined up to race?a situation that shortchanged the fans who had paid to watch?and one which would never have happened under the old system of qualification.
HOW CAN THE RACING POSSIBLY BE IMPROVED BY REDUCING THE NUMBER OF RIDERS EVEN FURTHER?
And with no privateers welcome to fill in for injured factory riders, some GP’s might well be reduced to 15 or 20 guys riding around. In our opinion, this idea of reducing the field is nothing more than political spin to bolster demand for even higher-priced entries. It’s also a convenient smoke screen to obscure the fact that because of the costs imposed by Youthstream, they can’t find enough riders rich enough to fill a 40-man gate. Additionally, some people believe that the new maximum age of 23 for the 250 class in 2010 is also just another way of forcing riders from the oversubscribed 250 class into the struggling 450 class.
At the Luongo-promoted 2009 Motocross des Nations in Italy, it cost nearly $150 for a ticket and pit pass.
WHAT DO THE FACTORY TEAMS THINK ABOUT THE SITUATION?
The factory teams have big sponsors, so their general opinion is that the Youthstream model works. They have sponsorship dollars coming in, which they believe is due in part to Youthstream’s promotion and TV coverage. Although they do not agree with charging entry fees and paying no prize money, that specific issue is, for them, water under the bridge. They don’t really care about the breakdown of the costs.
WHAT DO THE FACTORY TEAMS CARE ABOUT?
The teams’ major complaints are focused on what they feel is unilateral decision-making, without any consideration for their views or input. They feel let down by the FIM’s total abandonment of their duty to represent the views, interests and concerns of the members?the teams and riders. While there is a committee at the GPs to make decisions called the “MX/SM GP commission,” this comprises just Luongo, his FIM counterpart, Wolfgang Srb, and one representative from the OEMs (at the moment, it is Mr. Tsubouchi from Yamaha). You can guess which way the voting on this three-man panel goes.
WHAT’S THE SITUATION FOR THE SMALLER, NON-FACTORY RACE TEAMS?
For many of the smaller teams, the financial situation is dire. While the big trucks may look impressive, the costs of competing are very high and most likely getting higher. The entry fees and lack of prize money contribute to the financial stress. Because budgets are stretched, many of the teams have no alternative but to seek riders who will ride for bonuses only, ride for free or, amazingly, pay the team for a chance to ride.
IF THE SITUATION IS SO BAD FOR THE NON-FACTORY TEAMS, WHY ARE THEY STILL PARTICIPATING?
Many of the teams are “ego trip” teams. They are owned by wealthy (or not quite wealthy enough, in some cases) fans of the sport, and largely funded by the team owner. These men have a passion for the sport and want to be part of the World Championship (think MDK in America). Most have been doing it for many years and feel a loyalty to the sport, the team they have created and the staff they employ. They continue racing (and paying) in the hope that their rider will make it big and they will someday attract the huge sponsors that Luongo has been promising.
For most, that hasn’t happened, and so many instead rely on heavy injections of private cash to stay afloat. None of the small teams that we spoke to were happy with the cost structure, but when they express their views to Youthstream, they are simply told that if they don’t want to (or can’t afford to) take part, then there are plenty more teams ready to take their place. In our opinion, Youthstream has proven to be very skilled at quashing dissent (and these constant adjustments of the number of riders and teams permitted in the series ensures that demand always just outstrips supply). This quickly silences rebellious teams and individuals, fearful of losing their place in the paddock. Rebellions have been proposed before, but solidarity never holds firm, and the smaller teams?those with a more fragile grip on their position within GP’s?are usually the ones that break rank first.
HAS ANYONE FOUGHT BACK AGAINST LUONGO’S DICTATORSHIP?
Yes, and you will be surprised, or perhaps not, that it was the women who stood up first. According to the women racers themselves, they were incensed at the implementation of an entry fee. They stood firm and refused to pay. Youthstream backed down, later twisting the facts to claim that they waived the fees as a goodwill gesture. However, it did prove that if the participants are united, things can be changed. For 2010 Youthstream has announced that the women will pay close to $750 per race if they want to be included. Will the women draw another line in the sand?
WHAT ABOUT THE GRAND PRIX RACE TRACKS?
With a few exceptions, like the deep Benelux sand circuits, many GP tracks are now jump-infested, cookie-cutter, Supercross-style circuits with little natural terrain or elevation change. Far from being “technical,” they are often too easy. Catering to the television programmers, the tracks have sub-two-minute lap times because it’s easier and cheaper to televise (this approach is coming to the AMA Nationals also). The modern GP track is sometimes very one-line, and because virtually every straight has a tabletop or double, there is little opportunity to set up a pass and make it stick before traversing some sort of fixed-speed obstacle. They are, in many people’s opinion, a shadow of what a GP track should be (and the AMA is leaning this way also).
WHAT ARE THE POSITIVES OF YOUTHSTREAM’S VISION?
There are two major positives to the Luongo run Youthstream management:
(1) There is no doubt that the professionalism and presentation at the races has improved, and the facilities in the paddock and pressroom are better.
(2) Each GP is televised, so the races are seen by a large audience. This TV coverage is generally well-produced and often shown live. Youthstream claims that this has brought large sponsors into the sport, but many observers believe that the primary beneficiary of that TV-derived investment is actually Youthstream, whose series sponsors (Braun, Teka, Hyundai, Red Bull and others) pay handsomely for the massive TV coverage through prime banner placement.
ARE THESE TWO BENEFITS WORTH THE TRADEOFF?
As one European motojournalist said to us, “What they have taken away is everything that defines it as motocross.” And therein lies the issue. The GPs have long since ceased to be about motocross or indeed even a legitimate World Championship. The product is now a TV program?where the participants, be they riders, teams, fans or race promoters, all pay Youthstream for the privilege of taking part.
IN OUR HUMBLE OPINION, MODERN GRAND PRIX MOTOCROSS IS…
…A sport where the promoter fails to remunerate the stars of the show and instead charges them to take part.
…A sport where the only criteria for inclusion is money, and many fast riders stay home while some wealthy Novices pay to live out their fantasies.
…A sport where it is close to impossible for a GP to turn a profit without government or federation handouts.
…A sport where Giuseppe Luongo, seemingly hand-in-hand with his FIM counterpart Wolfgang Srb, acts at will without due consideration for the impact on the sport, the traditions, the riders and teams.
…A sport that bans its critics and slyly threatens those who might support them.
…A sport where the official guardians of motorcycle racing, the FIM and its president Mr. Vito Ippolito,have made no visible attempt to intervene for the good of the riders, teams, fans and sport.
…A sport that will be ruled in the same manner or worse for the next 17 years.
…A sport that is a cash cow, milked for almost every cent by one individual.
In short, in our opinion, the current GP management system stinks from the head.Mike Kim grew up in San Jose and can deftly describe the transformation of the city’s downtown — its gradual, and at times painful, progress toward becoming an urban destination.
Planners and developers have been waiting for the day when there are enough feet in the street to create a big city vibe in the downtown core.
That day may be upon us now that plans are on the table to remake downtown San Jose into a massive, transit-centered Google village with up to 20,000 new jobs. Separately, Adobe Systems has announced its own expansion plans to bring 3,000 more workers downtown.
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WeWork’s new office — and brand-new WeWork Lab We turned to Kim to discuss the “sheer magnitude,” as he put it, of these proposed efforts.
As chief investment officer for Simeon Properties, Kim has skin in the game. Simeon developed the 21-story Centerra luxury apartment complex, which opened downtown last year. It plans to break ground by next spring on its 20-story Post Street Tower, bringing more luxury apartments to downtown. And Simeon continues to assess other development possibilities as Google advances with its plans.
Those plans “will forever change the trajectory of the city,” Kim said.
For more Bay Area housing affordability, home sales and other real estate news
follow us on Flipboard.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What’s your take on the Google proposal and its impact down the line?
A: It’s very difficult to wrap your head around the fact that in downtown San Jose — where the existing office stock is about 5 million square feet — Google is now proposing to build an additional 7 million to 8 million square feet. It is a game changer of epic proportions.
In real estate, the market makers are governments, capital markets and major employers. Employers such as Google make market opportunity because the instant they arrive and hire, that creates demand, and suddenly you’ve got to have real estate to live, work and play in. Look at the transformation in the Mid-Market district in San Francisco when Twitter moved in, or the Uber news in Oakland — and that’s only a fraction of what Google is proposing in San Jose. This Google news in San Jose is so big that it eclipses even the Adobe news, which is enormous — the addition of 717,000 square feet and 3,000 employees.
Q: What else do you see coming?
A: The strongest drivers of real estate are jobs and wage growth. Google is coming, Adobe is expanding, Apple is coming to north San Jose, Amazon is arriving – so locally, you have a pretty robust growth in jobs and income. This soon-to-arrive worker base — these are the same workers who created the massive housing shortage in SOMA (in San Francisco) and drove up rents and prices there. The same thing is going to happen in San Jose, but the impact will be more dramatic. Because in SOMA, it was already a fully built environment; it’s not like you could drop in 10 million square feet. But in San Jose, it can accommodate millions of square feet of new product, so the effect is going to be tremendous. And that same demographic that drove up prices across the board in San Francisco, whether in office, rent or retail, is going to do it again in San Jose.
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Q: How quickly do all these changes happen?
A: If you drop 5,000 new workers who are well paid onto downtown San Jose, that creates instant demand for housing, office space and retail. But new real estate lags behind the hiring pace, because the development process is a lengthy and cumbersome process. So until supply can come online, the demand’s going to be ramrod straight, and there’s going to be very little to satisfy that demand. Which results in a rapid rise in prices in rent in the existing stock until the supply can catch up with the demand.
Q: I’m not hearing much about addressing the issue of affordability.
A: One of the best ways to mitigate the affordability issue is to have a robust housing supply across the income spectrum. Unfortunately the general plans for Silicon Valley cities are really job-centric, not housing-centric. Everybody’s still looking to have more jobs in their communities than housing; nobody wants to be the bedroom community for Mountain View or Palo Alto.
Q: Cities don’t necessarily want a lot more housing, because it strains services.
A: You have to pay for parks, schools. That’s the conundrum and the difficulty of this debate. The burden on the city’s general fund to service more residents is a challenge.
Q: But again, what’s the solution for “regular people” who already can’t afford to live in San Jose and the region, generally?
A: One of the reasons gentrification happens is because people who can afford to pay more don’t have any places to go, so they push out people in older neighborhoods. So the entire housing spectrum needs to be filled, but if you don’t supply for the people at the upper income, they’re inevitably going to push out people at the next tier down, and in turn they push out the following tier and so on.
Q: I’m not seeing much “mitigation” of the problem here. There are so many jobs being created at the top of the food chain.
A: Yes, where we are in the market cycle, excess demand is being created through the hiring by these large companies, and the supply is lagging. That’s true, but there will be a down cycle where the demand drivers — new jobs — will subside. And that will afford some price relief.
Mike Kim profile
Age: 48.
Grew up: San Jose.
Place of residence: Lafayette.
Positions: Chief investment officer, Simeon Properties; serves as a trustee for the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
Previous jobs: Director of acquisitions, BRE Properties (now Essex), 2006-2008, San Francisco; vice president of development, Pulte Urban Group, 2000-2006, Pleasanton; naval officer, U.S. Navy, 1994-2000.
Education: United States Naval Academy, B.S. political science with concentration in general engineering, 1994; University of Southern California, master’s in public policy and urban planning, 2005.
Family: He lives with wife Sara and their seven children (one daughter and six sons).
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5 Facts About Mike Kim
1. His first job was as a newspaper delivery boy for the San Jose Mercury News: “Old-school style, on a bike at the crack of dawn. At the peak of my game, I could fling the Sunday paper from the opposite side of the street and land it center on a tiny porch.”
2. While in the U.S. Navy, he “visited over 30 countries across five continents, captured pirates on the high seas, swam across the equator, scuba-dived all the major oceans and seas of the world, almost crashed into an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and logged enough nautical miles at sea to circumnavigate the globe four times.”
3. Best way to relax and recharge: “Sailing alone on the San Francisco Bay, one of the most scenic and challenging sailing conditions anywhere in the world.”
4. Personal hero: His wife Sara, who “does the lion’s share of the work in raising our seven kids, runs the family ranch in Lafayette, and founded a thriving co-op school.”
5. Favorite colors: Black, “because it comprises and absorbs all colors,” and green, “because there are near infinite shades of green observable in nature.”It appears that Nokia isn't coming to Microsoft's developer conference empty-handed. Though the acquisition is still pending, Nokia went ahead and brought in some new hardware anyway. This time, the phone maker has announced the Lumia 930, which is essentially the international version of the Lumia Icon. Which is to say, it features a 5-inch full HD display and a 20-megapixel PureView camera with a Zeiss lens. The camera is clearly the star of the show here: not only does it have optical image stabilization, but the phone also ships with a Creative Studio app that'll let you add Instagram-style filters to your snapshots. There's also a new feature called "Living Images" that can be weaved into Nokia's Storyteller application. Photos and videos are automatically sorted by time and location, and if you want to be all fancy, you can add music to the background when viewing the images.
Other features include four high-performance digital microphones, directional stereo recording on-board, wireless charging and a 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 processor. Of course, it also runs the latest Windows Phone 8.1 firmware, which promises plenty of new goodies like a notification center (finally!) and Cortana, Windows' answer to Siri and Google Now. It also has something called "SensorCore," which apparently hooks into the Bing Health & Fitness app. Microsoft says the Lumia 930 will launch first in Europe starting in June, and will be available in Asia and other markets at a later date. It should land on more than 100 operators, priced at around $599. Unfortunately, US availability hasn't been announced, but that could be because we already have the Icon. In the meantime, have a peek at the video after the break to get your first taste of Nokia's latest flagship.
Update: You can check our hands-on of the Lumia 930 right here.OTTAWA — Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has ruled out any cuts to the number of men and women in uniform — making more difficult the Liberal government’s promise to transform the military into a leaner, more agile and better-equipped force.
The comments will be welcome news to military personnel worried the Liberals would shrink their numbers after troops levels were expanded by the Conservatives. But it also means the government will have to find other places to cut as the military’s financial situation is unsustainable.
The question of troop levels was prompted by the government’s promise to conduct Canada’s first real defence review in a generation. Speaking at a defence conference Thursday, Sajjan did not provide specifics on how the review will be conducted, but did say he hopes it will be finished by the end of the year.
“We need to consider what role we want Canada, and our military, to play on the world stage,” he said. “Our government is committed to a policy of re-engagement with the world. We need a defence vision that is firmly grounded in our broader foreign policy objectives, and that reflects the aspirations of Canada.”
The Liberals will attempt to find “that perfect mix of personnel, training and equipment” to create a military that is “flexible, appropriately resourced, and able to respond quickly to the challenges of the future,” Sajjan said.
But speaking to reporters afterward, Sajjan said the Liberals have no intention of cutting the military from its current mandated strength of 68,000 regular force members and 27,000 reservists.
“We are not looking at reducing our personnel,” Sajjan said. “In fact, the conversation I’m having right now is about where do we need to increase some of the personnel.”
The Conservatives were also sensitive about reducing the size of the military after criticizing previous Liberal governments for doing exactly that during the 1990s.
But the Tories’ refusal to reduce the number of personnel in uniform at the same time it was cutting billions of dollars in defence spending put a disproportionate amount of budgetary pressure on other parts of the military, including maintenance and procurement.
One former defence chief, retired general Rick Hillier, warned in 2013 that reducing the size of the military was the only way to ensure the force remained strong and stable. He said the number of full-time members should be reduced to 50,000 from 68,000.
Most analysts agree the mandated staffing levels and planned procurement projects are unsustainable under the current defence budget. But the Liberals have previously ruled out any significant budget increases for defence. Taking troop reductions off the table leaves even less flexibility.
“If they’re not going to be able to adjust on the personnel side, then they have significantly restricted options in terms of what they can do unless the budget’s going to go up by more than what they’ve promised,” said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Personnel account for more than half of defence spending, and Perry has previously estimated that cutting the size of the force by 1,000 regular-force members would save about $105 million a year.
National Defence isn’t exactly flush with money. Years of cuts under the Conservatives have had visible impacts: the army has parked a large number of its trucks and other support vehicles to cut back on maintenance, the navy has docked ships, and the air force has cut back on flying hours.
The Liberals say they plan to maintain budget increases planned by the Conservatives, but those are barely above inflation. Meanwhile, officials have warned the government that it will need to invest billions more into procurement projects such as new naval ships or else scale back on the numbers and capabilities.
“The big pressures they’ve got right now are on the capital side and how much money they have to invest in the future,” Perry said. “And if the baseline assumption is that you can’t sink below a certain (personnel) level, then that really fences off half the money they have.”
Sajjan said as it conducts its defence review, the government will be looking to other countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, both of which have gone through a similar exercise. It will also welcome input from opposition parties and experts.Me, Myself & bye.
CBS is pulling rookie sitcom Me, Myself & I off the air after six low-rated episodes, TVLine has learned. The new Monday entry |
the ones upholding the symbols and true values of America that make America great.Liu Hua holds up the diaries of torture and abuse that she had smuggled from the labor camp. After saying the line that appears in the subtitle in this picture, she said: "And had the women smuggled it out their vaginas." (Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Harrowing Documentary About Slavery and Torture in China Released
It would have been impossible even very recently in China to produce a documentary about torture and slavery in an officially-run labor camp, and not be thrown in jail for it. Chinese independent filmmaker Du Bin, however, has done just that, and he’s now in Hong Kong speaking at film screenings and blithely taking interviews from overseas media.
One of the protagonists of his documentary, Liu Hua, a petitioner who was tortured terribly and saw the intense torture inflicted upon others locked in the Masanjia Labor Camp, spoke directly to the camera in the film, making no attempt to mask her identity. She’s now in Beijing, and has not been picked up by the Communist Party’s secret police.
Both are signs that the times are changing in China, at least to some extent.
Masanjia, the labor camp that is the subject of Du Bin’s documentary “Above the Ghosts’ Heads: The Women of Masanjia Labour Camp,” has not been closed down, however. The last official word on the topic was that a special investigation team set up by the regime—more specifically, set up by a number of the officials and institutions that presided over Masanjia’s abuses—found that the accusations of torture were actually “malicious fabrications.”
The name of the camp came to the public in early April after Lens Magazine, known for its photography, published a lengthy exposé of the camp based on interviews with survivors. That article received a rapid and furious response on the Internet, as Chinese learnt about the extreme torture that took place at the camp, before censors shut down the discussion.
Du Bin’s documentary has been released in Hong Kong—it is still not possible to show such a film in mainland China—and will likely not gain the attention inside China as the Lens magazine article did. But it adds a great deal of texture and detail to what is known about the camp.
An example of the torture delivered at Masanjia was delivered in just the first few minutes of Du Bin’s documentary: the camera set nauseatingly upside down, with Mao’s portrait in Tiananmen Square foregrounded by Liu Hua, explaining how communist prison guards attacked the most sensitive and private place of her body.
“We emerged from our mothers’ wombs, but at Masanjia Women’s Labour Camp, we were tortured for petitioning for rights and for practicing Falun Gong,” she said. Falun Gong practitioners make up a large portion of the prisoners in Masanjia, and were used as a testing ground for much of the torture that is administered by the guards there.
“They struck our breasts and genitals with electric batons, inserted batons into our vaginas to shock us, filled our vaginas with red pepper powder, inserted toothbrushes into our vaginas and rotated them. They opened our mouths with vaginal dilators to force-feed and insult us. We don’t understand what has happened to our country.”
Liu Hua, who is not a Falun Gong practitioner, ended up in Masanjia after her husband became head of a village committee in their hometown in Shenyang of Liaoning Province, where the camp is located. He discovered corruption by the village Party secretary, and when he attempted to report it, was beaten and exiled. Later, Liu Hua was sent to Masanjia for four years for “endangering national security and opposing the party and opposing socialism.”
She was the wrong woman to have sentenced, though. She kept meticulous notes of what she calls “all the evil they did and the abuse we suffered, the corporal punishment, the beatings, the hanging in stretch positions, the Death Bed and the Tiger Bench.”
Her monologue continues: “I wrote all of this down, bit by bit. And had women smuggle it out in their vaginas.”
Much of the nearly 20,000 words of script describes the painful daily life of being locked in a labor camp and forced to work with high blood pressure and swollen legs, and food that was “a small bowl about this big of cabbage or radish that had been chopped like feed for chickens or ducks, as if it were for animals.”
Some surprising elements in the documentary include the reaction of disciplinary guards when they realize that Liu Hua is going to be released. “‘Liu Hua, don’t talk about what happened inside. It would be too revolting,'” said the brigade captain, Sun Bin.
Another guard piped up with: “Liu Hua, don’t talk about this. It would be too shameful,” she recounted. She then cursed them and said “You talk about glory all day long. What glory? The glory comes from skinning us and drinking our blood. We’re feeding you thugs. What do you have to say?” They did not have anything to say.
An informal panel discussion about the film was held in a Hong Kong bookstore, and Du Bin participated in it without appearing concerned about retaliation upon his return to China. (A blogger produced a full transcript of the event.)
NTD Television, an independent broadcaster based in New York, devoted an hour to discussing the documentary, including interviews with Du Bin and Liu Hua.
Du had first heard about Masanjia in 2004, when he was told about a torture that used toothbrushes to attack the vaginas of women. “I was shocked. I knew I had to write or create something about it.”
“The purpose of the work is very clear: it’s to give voice to the victims, and let the world hear it. And it’s to say that our world cannot tolerate this kind of abuse and torture, to prevent this torture from taking place again.”
He called the torture described “inhuman.”
“The reason I do this work is for human dignity. We’re not animals,” he said.
Heng He, a commentator on contemporary Chinese political issues who was interviewed on the show, noted that it was a “crucial time” for the Masanjia documentary to come out, amidst all the discussion of labor camp reform in China by the new Xi Jinping leadership.
“Recording history is incredibly important,” Heng He said. “We must record it today, now, so the perpetrators have no place to hide. In the past it was after the fact that Jewish people began collecting information [on the Holocaust]. But I think now, we don’t have to wait for the Communist Party to collapse to get this information.”
[email protected]It’s finally time to release the Minecraft Redstone Update pre-release!
The change log is as follows…
Added Redstone Comparator (used in Redstone logic)
Added Hopper (collects items and moves them to containers)
Added Dropper (similar to Dispensers, but always drops the item)
Added Activator Rail (activates TNT Minecarts)
Added Daylight Sensor
Added Trapped Chest
Added Weighed Pressure Plate
Added Block of Redstone
Added Nether Brick (item)
Added Nether Quartz and ore
Added Block of Quartz, with half blocks and chiseled variants
New command: /scoreboard
New command: /effect
Containers and mobs can have custom names
Inventory management has been changed, for example you can drag-place items over slots
Texture packs now have separate images for each block and item, and can have animations
Nether Quartz Ore now spawns in the Nether
Smooth lighting now has three settings (none, minimal, maximum)
More detailed death messages
Some hostile mobs now are harder in Hard difficulty
Many, many, bug fixes
Removed Herobrine
This update will be officially released next week on
Wednesday, March 13
Get the pre-release here:
// The Minecraft and Minecraft Realms teamsDr. Melina Abdullah — a California State University professor who is also a founding member of Black Lives Matter (BLM) — has called on all allies to move their money to black-owned banks.
“Wells Fargo and Citibank…they’re putting the dollars that you give them in the institutions that keep us oppressed,” Abdullah said on Saturday. “If you’re not going to bank black, you are funding white supremacy.”
Her comments came during a Facebook Live panel sponsored by OneUnited Bank — the largest African-American-owned bank in the United States — whose partnership with Black Lives Matter has thrived throughout 2017.
I'm down w dismantling capitalism. Until then, can we move our money outta the banks that finance our oppression? #BankBlack @oneunited — Melina Abdullah (@DocMellyMel) June 13, 2017
Joining Abdullah as a featured guest was Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin — the Florida teen whose 2012 shooting death gave rise to the Black Lives Matter brand. Fulton is sometimes referred to as “the mother of the movement” by BLM activists.
The broadcast was part of a Juneteenth celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
“We have to think about what our institutions are doing for us,” explained Abdullah, who went on the emphasize the necessity for black-owned banks and businesses to coalesce with Black Lives Matter in working toward visions that benefit the African-American community.
“We’re going to put our dollars with OneUnited because we know OneUnited is going to help us develop a reparations fund for our people,” Abdullah cited as an example. “We know OneUnited is going to help fund the movements that are going to help us get free.”
Panelists promoted a #WeOut hashtag, signifying “a collective show of economic force” that black people might actuate if they transfer their accounts to black-owned banks like OneUnited, despite its history of questionable dealings.
Several years before Black Lives Matter came into existence, OneUnited had already garnered a reputation for engaging “in unsafe or unsound banking practices and violations of law.”
The bank became the focus of a House ethics probe after receiving a $12 million bailout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) — which was supposed to help “healthy institutions” recover from the 2008 economic crisis. As the New York Times reported, “the aid surprised some bank analysts because OneUnited was then considered to be in precarious financial shape.” One study published by NBC News concluded that the bank “was the weakest” of the more than 700 financial institutions that received TARP money.
During the investigation, federal banking regulators discovered Rep. Maxine Waters’s husband once sat on the bank’s board of directors, which raised concerns over her family’s financial ties to the institution. The board had approved footing the bill for a lavish lifestyle for Kevin L. Cohee, OneUnited’s CEO, which included financing a Porsche, a Jaguar, a luxury condo in South Florida, and a $26,500 monthly lease for a beach house in Santa Monica, California.
As the Los Angeles Times reported:
Cohee’s high-flying perks came despite having been charged in 2007 with felonies after his arrest by the Santa Monica Police Department on suspicion of possessing cocaine, crack cocaine and concentrated cannabis, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The case was dismissed the next year after Cohee completed a drug diversion program.
More than eight years after OneUnited received its controversial TARP bailout, Cohee remains as the bank’s CEO. Last December, he met with organizers from Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles (BLM-LA). After the meeting, it was foreshadowed that “big things” were in the works.
(Organizers from Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, including Funmilola Fagbamila and Melina Abdullah, met with OneUnited Bank CEO Kevin L. Cohee in December 2016)
By mid-February, OneUnited announced it had teamed up with Black Lives Matter to launch a debit card and “organize Black America’s spending power.” It was a Black History Month promotion in which approved applicants would be able to use the card to fund Black Lives Matter efforts.
The following month Black Lives Matter partnered with the bank again, establishing a $10,000 trust fund for the son of Wakeisha Wilson — a woman who died in police custody last March after she was found hanging from her cell in a Los Angeles jail. Since her death, Wilson’s family has been closely aligned with BLM-LA. According to a OneUnited statement, “the establishment of this gift, on the one year anniversary of Ms. Wilson’s passing, is another way in which the organizations are working together.”
Four days later, the Washington Post published an article titled, “Move Your Money, Move Society?” The story featured a man named Greg Akili who had been encouraging the black community in Los Angeles to open bank accounts at OneUnited and apply for its debit card.
However, the article never mentioned that Mr. Akili is an activist with BLM-LA. In fact, Akili was a featured mentor at the chapter’s “Youth Activist Camp” last week.
As the Washington Post reported:
After 30 years of banking with Wells Fargo, Akili made the switch to OneUnited in February, the same month the bank announced a partnership with Black Lives Matter and debuted its debit card depicting the youth in the hoodie.
OneUnited anticipates its collaboration with Black Lives Matter will benefit both entities mutually.
The president of OneUnited, Teri Williams, who is married to Cohee, said the bank wants help Black Lives Matter obtain financial assistance. As she told The Root, “we’re going to ensure that we’re successful in getting them support.”
Meanwhile, taxpayers remain on the hook for the $12 million TARP bailout that OneUnited hasn’t repaid.Photobucket is cracking down on people embedding on third-party websites images it hosts, until now, for free.
The photo-slinging internet elder now says that anyone who wants to use its service to display photos it hosts on other pages – such as signature banners in forum posts – will now need to open up their wallets and plop down $399.99 a year for a subscription plan.
The new policy will be particularly annoying to longtime users who have relied on Photobucket's 14-year-old service to host the images they use to place images on forums or in blog posts.
Cheaper plans, including the free account option, will no longer have an option to allow third-party hosting.
The alert netizens now get from Photobucket for inlining images on third-party sites
The change of heart was quietly introduced by Photobucket earlier this week as an update to its terms of service.
On the one hand, it's reasonable for Photobucket to ask for some help in footing its bandwidth bills for serving up images for folks on other websites; on the other hand, it will break a lot of graphics posted on the 'net and inlined in forums and blogs.
"Photobucket defines 3rd-party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website," the updated T&Cs read.
"For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc, is definitively 3rd-party hosting."
Not surprisingly, the new rules went over with users about as well as a rattlesnake in a pinata... ®
Hope you go out of business with this strategy. Not paying a $400 ransom, I'll find someone else to host my pictures. — Ms. Virion (@Pathogenome) June 29, 2017
Special congrats to @photobucket for killing their own site. No more 3rd party image hosting unless I pay $400/year? I'll go elsewhere, ty. — Samantha Johnson (@srj_art) June 29, 2017
Anyone else surprised #photobucket isn't offering Bitcoin as the only method of payment? — McMike (@_McMike_) June 29, 2017Cannon on the Derry Walls. The Bogside is on the left.
The earliest references to the history of Derry date to the 6th century when a monastery was founded there; however, archaeological sites and objects predating this have been found. The name Derry comes from the Old Irish word Daire (modern: Doire) meaning 'oak grove' or 'oak wood'.[1]
Early history [ edit ]
Gríanán of Aileach, Donegal
In the 6th century, a Christian monastery was founded on the hill of Doire to the east of the River Foyle. The site was allegedly granted by a local king who had a fortress there. According to legend the monastery of Doire was established by Saint Colmcille/Columba. Colmcille founded many important monasteries in Ireland and Scotland, including Durrow Abbey in the Irish Midlands and Iona on an island off the west of Scotland. The claim that he founded a settlement at Doire is less certain, although that monastery belonged to the federation of Columban churches which looked to Colmcille as their spiritual founder and leader.According to local tradition the location of the first church was where St. Columba's Long Tower Church stands today. It is also the site of the medieval Templemore Cathedral, later wrecked and desecrated by an English expeditionary force in 1568. Nearby was a medieval Irish round tower. During the later Middle Ages the old monastery of Derry evolved into an Augustinian congregation. A small church of that monastery survived up to the 17th century on a site within the present walls of Derry and was used by the London colonists as their first place of worship when they came to build the walled city.
Although the Vikings sailed up the loughs and rivers of this area, the monastery of Derry escaped the worst effects of their raids. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Derry and the surrounding area saw settlement by Norman colonists, culminating in the early 14th century with the Earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgh, acquiring Derry from its bishop, from which it was part of the Earldom of Ulster until its collapse.[2][3]
Plantation of Ulster [ edit ]
After the collapse of the Earldom of Ulster in the 14th century, Ulster saw a Gaelic resurgence at the expense of the Norman colony. Throughout the second half of the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I's military leaders tried to conquer the province of Ulster, the only part of Ireland then outside English control. The English first came to Derry in 1566 but the garrison established there at that time lasted only a few years. A second, more successful garrison returned in 1600 during the Nine Years War against the Gaelic O'Neill and O'Donnell earls. On this occasion the English managed to hold on to Derry and, when the war came to an end in 1603, a small trading settlement was established and given the legal status of city. During the 1608 O'Doherty's Rebellion, this 'infant city' was attacked by Sir Cahir O'Doherty, Irish chieftain of Inishowen, and the settlement was virtually wiped out.
This attack came about shortly after the Flight of the Earls when the O'Neill and O'Donnell chieftains, together with their principal supporters, fled to the continent, leaving Gaelic Ulster leaderless. The new king in London, James I, decided on a revolutionary plan designed once and for all to subordinate Ulster. The 'Plantation of Ulster' required the colonising of the area by loyal English and Scottish migrants who were to be Protestant in religion. One part of this colonisation was to be organised by the ancient and wealthy livery companies of the City of London. In 1623 the new county granted to the Londoners and its fortified city, built across the River Foyle from the recently destroyed settlement, were renamed Londonderry in honour of this association. At this point the city was granted a Royal Charter by King James I.[4] The usage of "Derry" versus "Londonderry" is still controversial.
The City of Londonderry was the jewel in the crown of the Ulster Plantation. It was laid out according to the best contemporary principles of town planning, imported from the continent (the original street lay-out has survived to the present almost intact). More importantly, the city was enclosed by massive stone and earthen fortifications. It was the last walled city built in Ireland and the only city on the island whose ancient walls survive complete. Among the city's new buildings was St. Columb's Cathedral (1633). This is one of the most important 17th century buildings in the country and was the first specifically Protestant cathedral erected anywhere in the world following the Reformation.
Civil wars and sieges [ edit ]
Bishops Street Gate.
The new city was slow to prosper. By the 1680s it still had only about 2,000 inhabitants; and yet it was, by far, the largest town in Ulster. Along with most parts of Britain and Ireland, the city suffered from the upheavals in the 1640s.[5] This began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when the Gaelic Irish insurgents made a failed attack on the city. For the next ten years of war, Derry and its environs became a stronghold for the British Protestant settlers, who raised the "Lagan army" to defend themselves from the Irish Confederates. However, the Protestants were disunited about how to respond to the events of the English Civil War, with some of them supporting the King, some the English Parliament and some the Scottish Covenanters. In 1649 the city and its garrison, which supported the republican Parliament in London, were besieged by Scottish Presbyterian forces loyal to King Charles I. The Parliamentarians besieged in Derry were relieved by a strange alliance of Roundhead troops under George Monck and the Irish Catholic general Owen Roe O'Neill. These temporary allies were soon fighting each other again, however, after the landing in Ireland of the New Model Army in 1649. The war in Ulster was finally brought to an end when the Parliamentarians crushed the Irish Catholic Ulster army at the battle of Scarrifholis in nearby Donegal in 1650.
Among Derry's most famous citizens in the second half of the 17th century was George Farquhar, one of the so-called Restoration dramatists.
In 1688, Ireland became the battleground for the Glorious Revolution in England, when James II was deposed by William of Orange. Catholic Ireland strongly supported James, but many Protestants in Ulster secretly supported William. James II had his Catholic viceroy Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell take action to ensure that all strong points in Ireland were held by garrisons loyal to the Jacobite cause. By November 1688, only the walled city of Londonderry and nearby Enniskillen had a Protestant garrison. An army of around 1,200 men, mostly "Redshanks" (Highlanders), under Alexander MacDonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim, was slowly organised (they set out on the week William of Orange landed in England). When they arrived on 7 December 1688 the gates were closed against them and the Siege of Derry began.
On April 18, 1689, while his attempts to regain his throne in what became the Williamite war in Ireland with the Jacobites got under way, King James came to the city and summoned it to surrender. The King was rebuffed and actually fired at by some of the more determined defenders; tradition has the apprentice boys closing the gates and saving the city. As a policy of 'no surrender' was confirmed, the Jacobite forces outside the city began the famous Siege of Derry. For 105 days the city suffered appalling conditions as cannonballs and mortar-bombs rained down, and famine and disease took their terrible toll. Conditions for the besiegers were no better and many thousands of people died, both inside and outside the walls. The cannon used to defend the city can be seen on the walls and at other places around the city. Finally at the end of July, a relief ship broke the barricading 'boom' which had been stretched across the river, near where the new Foyle Bridge now stands. The Siege was over but it has left its mark on the traditions of the city to the present day (see Apprentice Boys of Derry).
18th and 19th centuries [ edit ]
The city was rebuilt in the 18th century with many of its fine Georgian style houses still surviving. George Berkeley, Ireland's most important philosopher, was dean of Derry (1724–33), and another well-known and eccentric cleric, Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, was Bishop of Derry (1768–1803). It was Hervey, the so-called Earl Bishop, who was responsible for building the city's first bridge across the River Foyle] in 1790. During the 18th and 19th centuries the port became an important embarkation point for Irish emigrants setting out for North America. Some of these founded the colony of Nutfield, later Londonderry, in the state of New Hampshire. By the middle of the 19th century a thriving shirt and collarmaking industry had been established here, giving the city many of its fine industrial buildings. Four separate railway networks emanated from the city, the interesting history of which can be examined at the Foyle Valley Railway Centre. The city became a university city when its Magee College was incorporated into the Royal University of Ireland in 1880. Magee College continues university scholarship today, as a campus of the University of Ulster.
Partition [ edit ]
Amelia Earhart Cottage
The early 1920s in Ireland were marked by political violence over the issue of Irish independence. During the Irish War of Independence, Derry was rocked by sectarian violence, partly prompted by the guerrilla war raging between the Irish Republican Army and British Forces, but also influenced by economic and social pressures. In July 1920, several thousand unionist ex-British Army servicemen mobilised a pogrom of murder against the Catholic population which they regarded as rebellious. Severe rioting ensued when the loyalists murdered several Catholics and launched an assault on the neighbourhoods around the Long Tower and St Columb's College, now Lumen Christi. This pogrom was resisted by armed IRA members. Many lives were lost and in addition many Catholics and Protestants were expelled from their homes during the communal unrest. After a week's violence, the British Army intervened when local IRA and Catholic ex-servicemen began to dominate and an uneasy truce was negotiated by local politicians on either side.
In 1921, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the partition of Ireland, Derry unexpectedly became a border city, with much of its natural economic hinterland in County Donegal cut off. Amelia Earhart gave the city a much needed boost when she landed here in 1932 becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Her connection with the city is reflected in a display at the Amelia Earhart Cottage at Ballyarnett.
During the Second World War the city played an important part in the Battle of the Atlantic with a substantial presence from the Royal Navy and a large number of GIs disembarked here. At the end of the war, 19 U-boats from the German Kriegsmarine surrendered in the city's harbour.
The Troubles [ edit ]
Derry perceived itself as suffering under unionist government in Northern Ireland, both politically and economically. In the late 1960s the city became the flashpoint of disputes about institutional discrimination and gerrymandering. Despite having a nationalist majority the city was permanently controlled by unionists due to the partisan drawing of electoral boundaries. In addition the city had very high unemployment levels and very poor housing. Overcrowding in nationalist areas was widely blamed on the political agenda of the unionist government, who wanted to confine Catholics to a small number of electoral wards. Yet another contentious issue was the reluctance of the authorities to grant Derry the new University of Ulster, supported by a broad coalition led by the University for Derry Committee. The university was instead granted to the predominantly unionist town of Coleraine.
Civil rights demonstrations were declared illegal and then violently suppressed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Special Constabulary, and Catholics were regularly attacked after loyalist parades. The events that followed the August 1969 Apprentice Boys parade resulted in the Battle of the Bogside, when Catholic rioters fought the police, leading to widespread civil disorder in Northern Ireland and is often dated as the starting point of the Troubles.
The city is often regarded as "the cockpit of the Troubles".[6] On Sunday January 30, 1972, 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead by British paratroopers during a civil rights march in the Bogside area. Another 13 were wounded and one further man later died of his wounds. This event came to be known as Bloody Sunday.
Because of these events, certain areas of Derry produced strong support for republican paramilitaries. Up to 1972, both the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Official IRA operated in the city. However, in 1972 the OIRA called a ceasefire following their unpopular killing a local 18-year-old who was on leave from the British Army. The PIRA, however, continued attacking security targets and bombing Derry's commercial centre. In the words of Eamonn McCann in his book, "War and an Irish Town", the city centre "looked as if it had been bombed from the air". Prominent among local Provisional IRA members was Martin McGuinness. After 1974, the smaller group, the Irish National Liberation Army also developed a presence in the city. In fact all three INLA prisoners that died in the 1981 Irish hunger strike were from Derry and County Londonderry.
The violence in Derry eased towards the end of the Troubles in the 1990s, even though street riots were still frequent, the violence gradually moved to Belfast at that time. Irish journalist Ed Maloney claims in The Secret History of the IRA that republican leaders there negotiated a de facto ceasefire in the city as early as 1991. Whether this is true or not, the city did see less bloodshed by this time than Belfast or other localities.
Derry has become known worldwide on account of the troubles. Less well-known is its reputation voted by the Civic Trust in London as one of the ten best cities of its kind to live in, in the United Kingdom.[7]
See also [ edit ]
Last remaining tower of Derry Jail, Bishop Street Without, 2007
References [ edit ]Paul Graham deserves credit for two things.
First, he has serious technical chops. Your typical "I'm going to make money off of nerds too unskilled to fight for themselves" MBA-culture douchebag is not writing On Lisp. Paul Graham is a programmer and at least was, at one time, a very good one at that. He's also a pretty good writer; that doesn't hurt him, either.
Second, he believed in technology startups through the bad times, and was vocal about it, in a dark, post-bubble time when very few people did. He was one of the last to carry the banner at the end of the last spell, and one of the first to carry it in the new one.
Paul Graham was able to monetize his reputation (earned for the reasons stated above, in addition to his sale of Viaweb) via YC. Whatever opinions you might have of that practice, it worked and most YC alumni are thankful that the program exists. YC probably is a good thing for the world, even though its success is completely non-replicable.Words In the beginning was the word The word is powerful Watch your tounge it is said Humanity did not listen Words bear divine meanings Words are not of supreme communication Words are manifested thoughts Words are vibrations We are vibrations Vibrations of thought Of intelligent energy Trying to catch up With ourselves But tripping on words Falling, down the stairs Get up son! Caught up on divine meanings Tripping on labels Falling on judgement Trying to find the path of truth In the jungle of dualism
Western Science Start reducing What can be questioned You are left with your thought Cogito ergo sum Understand it You are
Western science is a naive belief Their foundation is that of It needs to be captured on an instrument And reproduced, to be believed Yet the only thing without doubt – The thoughtform Does not exist According to science Science is merely an instrument Just like us We are instruments Instruments of understanding The mystery of the unknown The mystery of the infinite The mystery of creation The mystery of my story
The Law The law in society is no law The law in society Is but the thoughts of some The law is of free will So the law, is up to you You are the master What do you want? Creation is at your hands The reality is yours To create upon No side of the coin is unloved Both tell their story Both have equal rights Both sides it the side There are no sides No polarity To say you shalt not Is not in harmony With free will There is no good There is no bad There is only the difference Different journeys Journeys in ocean of unity
Art Art is a myth A myth in society It does not have a place In the society of greed Alejandro Jodorowsky All the movies, hollywoods movies, are saying This picture cost 500 million dollars and will make that amount of dollar, ah it’s fantastic They are not art, it’s business Then myself I will make art I will make a picture in order to lose everything i put inside Art is what holds truth It is not of price It is For the creator And the observer
Ourstory Turn away from history By learning history Many of us today Does not know history Does not care to look into history Does not question history History as we know it Is not always our story Our story contains much more. You must know from where you came In order to know where to go from here To know today Is to evaluate yesterday And envision tomorrow
No song tell the same story What is music? How can it be of such power? It moves your spirit. It moves your body. What is sound? Vibrations. What is a vibration? Something that you can be in harmony with. Something you can be in disharmony with. You decide
Compassion Your compass. Look at it. The nail. Where does it point? Do you know where? Do you know why? Towards compassion… or towards competition? Think.
To see What is it to see? Look around. Where is it? Some say, mind creates consciousness. Look around. Where do you see the surroundings? Your consciousness is out there. Yet in here. How can it be? What is light? It contains everything. It is intelligent. It is love. It is building ground. Watch it. It is the journey.
What do you judge upon? To search the truth, is to be able rationalise in harmony. The truth is the truth. The ground needs to be solid. Else the ladder will fall. The truth is the mystery. There is no them. There is only us. Know it. Feel it. Judge upon it.In 1966, a dyslexic sixteen-year-old boy dropped out of school. With the help of a friend, he started a magazine for students and made money by selling advertisements to local businesses. With only a little bit of money to get started, he ran the operation out of the crypt inside a local church.
Four years later, he was looking for ways to grow his small magazine and started selling mail order records to the students who bought the magazine. The records sold well enough that he built his first record store the next year. After two years of selling records, he decided to open his own record label and recording studio.
He rented the recording studio out to local artists, including one named Mike Oldfield. In that small recording studio, Oldfield created his hit song, Tubular Bells, which became the record label’s first release. The song went on to sell over 5 million copies.
Over the next decade, the young boy grew his record label by adding bands like the Sex Pistols, Culture Club, and the Rolling Stones. Along the way, he continued starting companies: an airline business, then trains, then mobile phones, and on and on. Almost 50 years later, there were over 400 companies under his direction.
Today, that young boy who dropped out of school and kept starting things despite his inexperience and lack of knowledge is a billionaire. His name is Sir Richard Branson.
How I Met Sir Richard Branson
Two weeks ago, I walked into a conference room in Moscow, Russia and sat down ten feet from Branson. There were 100 other people around us, but it felt like we were having a conversation in my living room. He was smiling and laughing. His answers seemed unrehearsed and genuine.
At one point, he told the story of how he started Virgin Airlines, a tale that seems to capture his entire approach to business and life. Here's the version he told us, as best I can remember it:
“I was in my late twenties, so I had a business, but nobody knew who I was at the time. I was headed to the Virgin Islands and I had a very pretty girl waiting for me, so I was, umm, determined to get there on time.
At the airport, my final flight to the Virgin Islands was cancelled because of maintenance or something. It was the last flight out that night. I thought this was ridiculous, so I went and chartered a private airplane to take me to the Virgin Islands, which I did not have the money to do.
Then, I picked up a small blackboard, wrote “Virgin Airlines. $29.” on it, and went over to the group of people who had been on the flight that was cancelled. I sold tickets for the rest of the seats on the plane, used their money to pay for the chartered plane, and we all went to the Virgin Islands that night.”
—Richard Branson
I took this photo right after he told that story. A few moments later I stood shoulder–to–shoulder with him (he's about six feet tall) and thanked him for sharing some time with us.
The Habits of Successful People
After speaking with our group, Branson sat on a panel with industry experts to talk about the future of business. As everyone around him was filling the air with business buzzwords and talking about complex ideas for mapping out our future, Branson was saying things like: “Screw it, just get on and do it.” Which was closely followed by: “Why can't we mine asteroids?”
As I looked up at that panel, I realized that the person who sounded the most simplistic was also the only one who was a billionaire. Which prompted me to wonder, “What's the difference between Branson and everyone else in the room?”
Here's what |
director, said they wanted the venue to be more than a student hangout: “It will be unique to Huddersfield, food will be served all day until 10pm then we’ll have DJs and music.
“The alcohol sales from 8am will be for occasional use, the early opening is intended for breakfasts and coffees.
“The day time will have a focus on food, drinks will not be heavily discounted and we want to offer ales, cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks.
“We are trying to mirror what we offer in Sheffield which is a venue for everyone.”
There were objections to the proposals, Aaron Mellor, landlord of the adjoining student flats said noise may impact his tenants and business, which generates £50,000-a-year.
Through his solicitor, Sarah Smith, they outlined public nuisance concerns from loud music, vibration from the music and noise from people in the area for longer than Varsity was permitted.
Ms Smith said: “It’s our view the venue will be good for the area, but we’re strongly against these houses, we feel they should operate on the existing licence for 12am or 2am at weekends, get a feel for the area and then come back in six months time for longer opening. At this stage we feel it’s a step too far.”
Mr Mellor, who also owns a number of licensed premises in the area, said his objection was to protect his student flats, and that he hoped noise concerns could be resolved with sound limiters.
Forum Cafe Bars run a number of venues in Sheffield and Barnsley with 25 years’ experience in the trade.
Refurbishment is currently taking place with a nod to the building’s theatre and cinema past with an art deco theme. Two American specialist slow cook ovens will be imported from Oklahoma for their smokehouse-style food.
Click here to take you back to more Huddersfield news.
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To follow us on Twitter click here'He's a Deranged Animal': Ex-Obama Aide Rips Trump For 'F***ing Lie' About Her Boss
Tomi Lahren: Final Thoughts for Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Eminem
Radio host and NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch said she's had to pack up her belongings in garbage bags and leave her home over threats from gun control advocates and other opponents.
Loesch said she and her family, including her young children, have received threats over her role in the National Rifle Association in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre.
She told Martha MacCallum it's been difficult to sell her home "conventionally" - through open houses and a realtor - due to the vile threats.
But, she praised the FBI and local law enforcement for their help during the situation.
She said she doesn't hate her opponents and knows that not all gun control advocates are guilty of such threatening acts.
Loesch said that activist Chelsea Clinton backed her up on Twitter, saying that the threats are "awful and unacceptable" and that peaceful advocates must condemn them.
Dana - this is all awful & unacceptable. Those of us who disagree with you the strongest have a particular responsible to strongly condemn. https://t.co/jJXk9VB54p — Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) October 16, 2017
"I just want someone to have that choice [to carry a weapon]," Loesch said, adding that she was unnerved when people posted photos of her house and threatened her children.
"I'll never stand down," she said.
'Master Legislator'?: Lisa Boothe Says Pelosi Is a 'Master' at Losing Democratic Seats
WATCH: Vets Replace Marine Widow's Stolen FlagsA possible human organ was spotted floating in a Detroit wastewater plant — the third discovery in less than a week that has deepened a mystery authorities are trying to solve.
The object was located just before 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Water Resource Recovery Facility, FOX2 Detroit reported. Authorities said it appeared to be an organ, but have not determined if it was from an animal or a human.
On Friday and Saturday, two organs, both thought to be kidneys, were found at the plant in two separate incidents.
"I know in the...past weeks we've had some other incidents. There is an investigation into it right now. The results are still not back from the medical examiner for the origin of the recovered organs in the past week, so it's an ongoing investigation," Detroit Police Capt. Darin Szilagy told FOX2.
The medical examiner will inspect the organs to determine the type and origin of the objects.
The mysterious objects sparked concern about the water treatment, but a spokeswoman for the Great Lakes Water Authority said it doesn’t affect the process because the suspected organs were found in the filtering process pre-treatment.
The Water Resource Recovery Facility, previously known as the Wastewater Treatment Plant, is the largest single-site wastewater treatment facility in the U.S., according to the Great Lakes Water Authority’s website.8 years ago
Washington (CNN) - Furloughed jobs, interrupted services, and the potential economic ramifications aside, top Republican strategist Karl Rove is warning a government shutdown is likely to strengthen President Obama's hand as he heads into his reelection campaign.
In his weekly polling memo, Rove notes the 1995 government shutdown bolstered President Clinton's image in the eyes of voters as a strong leader, positioning him for a relatively easy reelection victory one year later.
"The shutdowns helped improve Clinton's political standing, boosting both his approval rating and perceptions of him as a strong leader," writes Rove. "At the time, poll watchers noted that, 'the only time Clinton's ratings have improved substantially the past year as a result of his actions has been when he adopted a strategy of confrontation.'"
Rove reports Clinton's approval rating saw nearly a double-digit jump during the 1995 government shutdown and continued to climb as the reelection campaign began in earnest.
Meanwhile, while only 37 percent of voters viewed Clinton as a strong leader in June of 1995, that number shot up to 53 percent six months later as a result of his confrontations with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders over the budget issue.
"While the government shutdowns didn't jeopardize Republicans' hold on Congress, they helped President Clinton position himself for a successful 1996 reelection," concludes Rove. "President Obama's ratings as a strong leader have slipped this year…Republicans should be careful not to let him recover as he gears up for his 2012 reelection campaign."Nina
As a bride to be, we spend countless hours bringing our vision to life. From booking vendors, purchasing our bridal trousseau to finding the perfect jewelry – it all takes so much time, energy and effort, and the process can be quite daunting at times.
My mother and I worked hard to put each of my looks together in terms of clothing and jewelry, yet we both understood that having the right hair & makeup company was absolutely critical – because it really can make or break your look. So naturally, we knew we had to book the best in the industry – Harp & Shannon. For my morning bridal look, both of them listened to my ideas intently; their attention to detail combined with their expert guidance and a Sabyasachi masterpiece, produced an end result that was nothing short of breathtaking. Never have I felt
more beautiful than I did on my wedding day – looking back, there isn’t a single thing that I would have changed, it all came together so beautifully.
During my week-long wedding festivities, I had the opportunity to be pinked by teams 1 through 4 — and I have well and truly lost count of the number of times I was complimented on my hair and makeup. Each day I had a completely different look, which the girls at POS executed perfectly! As a bride with a full week of functions lined up, I had many small details about the wedding causing me stress & anxiety ( as I’m sure many of us brides have experienced), but the one thing I didn’t stress about was my hair and makeup teams. All of the POS employees were on time, professional, and absolute sweethearts. Therefore, I would recommend them to all future brides – they are phenomenal at what they do. I wish you girls and your company continued growth and success.The NFL has announced the development of a training video for coaches, players and referees to demonstrate what types of celebrations are acceptable and what aren’t.
Naturally, several of the league’s more outspoken players from past and present have had a lot to say on the subject. Much of the reaction has been negative, with most either disregarding the news or mocking it.
The NFL shows us videos every year on how to play the game to their standards. I believe this celebration video will be a great addition! — Johnny Hekker (@JHekker) March 22, 2017
Los Angeles Rams punter Johnny Hekker chose to do the latter, posting a revealing tweet that’s sure to catch the attention of league officials.
But Rams legend Kurt Warner had an interesting take on the celebration video news as well, taking the chance to ponder why the league has moved away from team celebrations and gravitated toward one-man celebrations as of late.
Can any1 explain 2 me why NFL has gotten rid of team/group celebrations & gone 2 "singular" celebrations, making it about 1 instead of team? — Kurt Warner (@kurt13warner) March 23, 2017
Warner, of course, played in the era of “The Greatest Show on Turf” — which made the “bob and weave” group celebration famous. Enjoy the nostalgia.
But let’s not forget that eight players were given a combined $90,000 worth of fines by the NFL after the celebration, which is a high price to pay for a good group celebration.
With the NFL’s instructional video on celebrations presumably being released sometime this offseason, it looks as if the referees will attempt to police celebrations more next season. Tightening the rules on celebrations could have a significant effect on games, especially in relation to field position.
Related Kurt Warner was one of the greatest postseason quarterbacks of all timeOops, they did it again. President Obama's grabby-handed environmental bureaucrats have earned yet another spanking from the federal judiciary over their "determined disregard" of the rule of law. Isn't it time to give these misbehaving government hooligans a permanent timeout?
Federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department Wednesday for defying his May 2010 order to lift its groundless ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. Nine months later, not a single permit has been issued. Several deepwater platforms have moved out of the area to take their businesses -- and an estimated 5,000 jobs -- overseas. Billions of dollars in potential oil revenue and Gulf lease sales-related rent have also dried up.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar -- a.k.a. The Loathsome Cowboy -- thumbed his nose at the judge's preliminary injunction last June and dragged his feet into July, when his bureaucracy lost its bid for a stay from the U.S. Court of Appeals. Salazar then concocted a second "revised" moratorium to replace the one Feldman had nullified as "arbitrary and capricious, and therefore, unlawful." The second deepwater drilling ban (which oil spill czar Michael Bromwich admitted was "roughly congruent with the original moratorium") was "lifted" in October, but still no permits were issued.
This is because Team Obama's eco-radicals never intend to approve them.
Every step of the way, the White House team has displayed unbridled defiance -- by continually broadcasting its intent and determination to impose the blanket moratorium in spite of the judicial order, and by ramming through a second sweeping ban that did nothing to address the court's concerns after the injunction was issued.
The Interior Department's contempt for the law is outweighed only by its contempt for sound science.
Remember: Salazar is the data doctor who falsely claimed that the administration's blanket moratorium report was endorsed and peer-reviewed by seven scientific experts -- when, in fact, eight of the scientists studying the issue for the government explicitly said they "do not agree with the six-month blanket moratorium" on floating drilling.
Remember: The Interior Department inspector general publicized e-mails in November showing that Salazar's office and former environmental czar Carol Browner's office collaborated on the false rewrite of the White House offshore drilling ban report. While the inspector general found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing and the White House denied any attempt to mislead the public, Feldman pointed out that "at the hearing on the first moratorium, in response to a question by the Court, the government's answer then was wholly at odds with the story of the misleading text change by a White House official, a story the government does not now dispute."
As GOP Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina would have put it more bluntly: "You lie."
In addition to the lost jobs and lost revenue already sacrificed at the altar of "safety," the Interior Department will now siphon tax dollars to pay for the "substantial" legal fees of the plaintiffs as a result of the contempt ruling. Another affected business, Century Exploration New Orleans, Inc., filed a drilling ban-related complaint against the department last week claiming breach of contract -- which could add yet more millions or billions to publicly subsidized legal costs.
Jim Adams, president and CEO of the Offshore Marine Service Association (OMSA), noted the massive gap between Obama's words and actions this week: "[T]housands of workers are out of jobs, Americans are paying more for gasoline and heating oil, and our nation is becoming even more dependent on unstable nations for our energy needs. President Obama talks a lot about jobs and energy independence. Now it's time for him to back up his words with action and call off his de facto moratorium. Americans want an end to this manmade disaster."
But instead of reining Salazar in, the White House is happy to let him wage the administration's continuing war on the West with impunity. Despite pleas from both Democratic and Republican officials at all levels of government to retreat from an administrative usurpation of wild lands that he slipped through during the Christmas season lame duck session, Salazar is moving full speed ahead. Adding audacious insult to economic injury, Salazar this week unveiled new "scientific integrity rules" to "end political manipulation of science" and "encourage an environment of rigorous open discussion."
The Obama culture of corruption meets the culture of contempt. It's a toxic slick that will ultimately be left to voters to clean up.(CNN) A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Ohio does not have to reinstate its so-called "Golden Week" -- a week-long period in the state where people can both register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time.
The opinion is a defeat for the Ohio Democratic Party, among others, which had argued that the elimination of the period imposed a disparate burden on African-Americans. Those voters predominately favor Democrats, and Ohio is expected to go down to the wire this November.
Ohio's Secretary of State Jon Husted defended the state regulation -- Senate Bill 238 -- that cut back early in-person voting from 35 days to 29 days. Tuesday's 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel of the appeals court reverses a district court opinion from May.
"Ohio is a national leader when it comes to early voting opportunities," Judge David McKeague of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, wrote in the opinion. The judge pointed out that nearly a third of the states offer no early voting at all.
"The issue is not whether some voter somewhere would benefit from six additional days of early voting or from the opportunity to register and vote at the same time," McKeague wrote. "Rather, the issue is whether the challenged law results in a cognizable injury under the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. We conclude that it does not."
The law afforded "abundant and convenient opportunities for all Ohioans to exercise their right to vote," the court added.
In a statement, Husted said there are multiple options for Ohio voters to cast ballots. "This issue has been dragged through the courts by political activists twice over the course of several years and both times it has ended with the same result: Ohio's laws are fair and constitutional. I hope the democrats will end their wasteful lawsuits so we can all move forward with this election," he said.
Marc E. Elias, general counsel for Hillary for America, tweeted that he was disappointed with the ruling. "Bad for voters," he wrote. "Bad for voting rights."
I am disappointed that a split 6th Circuit -- 2-1 -- has now OVERTURNED restoration of Golden week. Bad for voters. Bad for voting rights. — Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 23, 2016
Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, writing in dissent, said she agreed with the district's court finding in May that the law "improperly burdens the right to vote of African-American citizens of Ohio and constitutes a violation equal protection."
McKeague and Judge Richard Allen Griffin were appointed by President George W. Bush, while Stanch is a nominee of President Barack Obama.
The opinion comes as voting rights challengers are percolating in the lower courts in advance of the election. The Supreme Court is currently considering an emergency application from North Carolina concerning its Republican-led voting rights law.No matter what position you take in discussing rape and sexual assault policy, you can point to some statistic(s) to support your argument. That is largely due to the low quality and/or limited utility of a lot of data about sexual violence. If you do not have any interest in the truth, you can simply pick the statistic you prefer over the ones contrary to your narrative. If, on the other hand, you want a better sense of what is actually happening, you have to put the pieces of data in their proper context. Take, for example, the rate of sexual assault at large universities in the Figure below (based upon Clery Act reports) compared with the rate of forcible rape anywhere in the United States (based upon Uniform Crime Reports).
Taken at face value, you might conclude that sexual assault at large universities has rapidly increased since 2009 and forcible rape has been on a steady decline since 2001. Yet, I think the stronger evidence is that both of those claims are false. The reason that the data is likely misleading is that it relies on reports from institutions under different sets of incentives. As I wrote in my study about the UCR data, police have, based upon my analysis, increasingly been undercounting rape, in part, to meet unrealistic public pressure to continually, repeatedly decrease crime rates. As a result, there has likely been little to no decline (and a possible increase) in the rate of rape since rape rates began falling in the early 90’s.
Why wouldn’t universities have the same incentives to limit reporting of sexual assault incidents to assuage fears of potential applicants, avoid Title IX suits, and maintain a positive public image? I think the best answer is that they still have all of those reasons to undercount, but during the last couple of years another concern has trumped those incentives for a certain segment of large universities. The year 2011 is particularly important because that is when the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke. The figure below shows what happened to sexual assault reports at Penn State.
Since 2010, according to Penn State’s Clery Act submissions, sexual assault has increased by an unbelievable 1389%. Is that because sexual assault has been increasing on campus? Almost certainly not. As part of the fallout from the Sandusky scandal and the issuance of the Freeh report, Penn State had its lax Clery Act compliance exposed. Similar spikes have happened at other large universities which account for entire increase during the last two reporting cycles. Big 10 schools, of which Penn State is one, have had the change in their collective rates of rape outpace the national average increase by nearly three times. What seems to be happening since 2011 (when the largest increase in sexual assault occurred) is that increased reporting at some schools has led to a significant spike in reported crimes. Other factors during that time frame such as increased Clery Act audits and Title IX lawsuits might have played a role as well.
So, based upon that assessment, is there a sexual assault crisis on campuses? It depends. If by “crisis” you mean an escalating problem based upon increasing rates of sexual assault, then I don’t think so. However, if by “crisis” you mean a serious ongoing problem with significant ramifications, then the best evidence supports that conclusion.A security guard ties the shoes of Planning Minister Rachpal Singh at Nabanna on Monday. (Source: Express Photo)
Bengal Planning Minister Rachpal Singh on Monday courted controversy when his personal security guard was caught on camera tying his shoe laces at state secretariat Nabanna.
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The incident occurred in the afternoon after Singh — a former IPS officer — came out of Nabanna after paying homage to reputed sculptor Ramkinkar Baiji on his birthday.
Dressed in denim trousers and a half-sleeved shirt, as Singh started to wear his sneakers, his personal security guard bent down and not only helped him put his shoes on but also tied the laces.
[related-post]
Police officers posted at the secretariat expressed their dissatisfaction over the incident. “What can I say? This is how we work here… We can’t protest as we have to keep our jobs,” said an officer on condition of anonymity.
While Singh was not available for comment, the Opposition reacted sharply to the incident. BJP MLA Shamik Bhattacharya said that it showed the mindset of Trinamool Congress leaders.
“Looks like Rachpal Singh has not been able to come out of the ugly hangover of the time when he was an IPS officer. He has displayed that the TMC is ruling the people and not serving them,” he added.
CPM leader Anisur Rahman, meanwhile, raised the matter at the Assembly.
“As the Speaker was not present at that time, I took the permission of Chairman Parash Dutta and raised the matter. Trinamool Congress Minister Subrata Mukherjee tried to say that such issues cannot be raised just like that. But when I asked why and under what provisions, he had no reply. I raised the topic and called this act not only illegal but inhuman. This is the new culture of Nabanna,” he said.
Congress MLA Manas Bhuniya echoed similar sentiments. “What the honourable minister did to the policeman on duty shows that he has not been able to come out of his feudal character. I think Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should take this matter seriously and take corrective steps,” he said.
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A Trinamool MLA from Tarakeswar, Singh is a 1974-batch IPS officer and had joined Trinamool after retirement. Initially, he was the tourism minister in the Trinamool Congress government. Later, he was given the planning portfolio.Not a week seems to pass without some banker or trader committing suicide. Today we get news of the latest such tragic event with news that 28-year old Kenneth Bellando, a former JPMorgan banker, current employee of Levy Capital, and brother of a top chief investment officer of JPM, jumped to his death from his 6th floor East Side apartment on March 12.
From the NY Post:
Bellando, a former investment bank analyst at JPMorgan, is the son of John Bellando, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Condé Nast. His brother, John, a top chief investment officer with JPMorgan, works on risk exposure valuations. Several John Bellando emails were cited during testimony at the Senate Finance Committee’s inquiry into the bank’s losses during the infamous London Whale trade fiasco. Kenneth Bellando — who grew up in Rockville Center, LI, and was a Georgetown graduate — worked as a summer analyst at JPMorgan while in school. Upon graduation in 2007, he was hired as an investment bank analyst and worked there for one year before moving on, according to his LinkedIn page. The investment banker then went to Paragon Capital Partners, according to his LinkedIn page, until leaving at the end of 2013.
And so another young life is tragically taken before his time, the 11th financial professional to commit suicide in 2014, and the third in as many weeks. How many more to come?
In summary, here are all the recent untimely financial professional deaths we have witnessed in recent months:
1 - William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.
2 - Karl Slym, 51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.
3 - Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.
4 - Mike Dueker, 50-year-old chief economist of a US investment bank was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State.
5 - Richard Talley, the 57 year old founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.
6 - Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, however the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.
7 - Ryan Henry Crane, a 37 year old executive at JP Morgan died in an alleged suicide just a few weeks ago. No details have been released about his death aside from this small obituary announcement at the Stamford Daily Voice.
8 - Li Junjie, 33-year-old banker in Hong Kong jumped from the JP Morgan HQ in Hong Kong this week.
9 - James Stuart Jr, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO, found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say whatcaused the death
10 - Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, commited suicide by jumping in front of LIRR train
11 - Kenneth Bellando, 28, a trader at Levy Capital, formerly investment banking analyst at JPMorgan, jumped to his death from his 6th floor East Side apartment.The New York Police Department (NYPD) said that "no shots were fired" at the John F. Kennedy International Airport after responding to reports of a shooting that prompted the evacuation of several terminals.
In a statement posted to Twitter, the NYPD said their search came up with "negative results."
The airport was evacuated of passengers and put on lockdown following reports of an active shooter at Terminals 1 and 8.
JFK UPDATE: All terminals searched & cleared. Negative results. All affected terminals will resume operations shortly. No shots were fired. — NYPD Special Ops (@NYPDSpecialops) August 15, 2016
"To be cautious, the terminal was evacuated," Bloomberg quotes the Port Authority saying in an e-mailed statement earlier. "There are no injuries. At this time, no firearm, rounds or shell casings or other evidence of shots fired has been found."
The NYPD gave the all-clear and said affected terminals will resume operations shortly.
(Staff with agencies)While the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in Australia crossed a major hurdle Wednesday, the path to creating legislation is only just beginning.
Australians overwhelmingly voted in favor of marriage equality, with 61.6 percent of those surveyed voting yes and 38.4 percent voting against it. The survey results were cause for massive celebration across Australia, one of the last major holdouts in the fight for marriage equality. But there won’t be any change to the nation’s marriage laws until Parliament finishes writing, debating and passing legislation.
Although the survey results are nonbinding and Parliament theoretically doesn’t need to act on the survey results, they are moving forward with the process. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the right-leaning Liberal Party, said he’d like to see legislation passed by Christmas that overturns the 2004 declaration defining marriage as a union of “a man and a woman.”
The future of same-sex marriage in Australia now hinges on the language in the new law ― which likely will include some concessions to conservative causes ― and how members of Parliament decide to vote.
Scott Barbour via Getty Images People in Melbourne celebrate the results of the national survey.
Turnbull has given lawmakers a “free” or “conscience” vote on the matter, meaning that once the legislation is finalized, they are free to base their votes on their own opinions. However, several lawmakers have indicated their votes will reflect either the overall national survey result or the results from the electorates they represent, Australian outlets have reported.
The bill’s success may also hinge on the degree to which it makes allowances for Australians who morally object to same-sex marriage. The Senate has agreed to hear a bill from Liberal Party Senator Dean Smith, who wrote a provision allowing religious protections for ministers who object to officiating same-sex ceremonies. Labor and the Green party members have said they will support it, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
A bill from Liberal Party Senator James Paterson included more concessions to the religious right and was favored by conservatives, but Paterson decided to drop it once it became clear it would not earn the support of Labor party voters.
“It is clear the majority of senators believe my colleague Senator Dean Smith’s Bill is where we should start,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
Patterson’s bill would have extended religious protections to any business owners who refuse to provide services for a same-sex wedding ceremony, including venue owners, event planners, photographers, florists, caterers and others in the industry.
Those religious protection clauses may be enough to sway some of the lawmakers not to vote for the bill.Benedict Cumberbatch is set to play Senator William ”Billy” Bulger, brother of Johnny Depp’s Whitey Bulger, in the movie about the mob boss, entitled Black Mass.
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Cumberbatch and Depp in the same movie sounds very exciting. Cumberbatch as a politician claiming ignorance to his brother’s criminal interests, Depp heading up a gang and informing on his rivals to the FBI.
But hold on. Brothers? Sounds a bit fanciful, doesn’t it? Sure they’re both good looking men, successful actors, part of big franchises… but alike enough to be siblings? Well, actually, upon much Googling (also an excuse to look at pictures of the two actors all morning) they’re more alike than perhaps one might first think…
Pout? Sorted.
Wide-opened mouth yelling? Tick.
Own the throne? Done and done
Experience with handcuffs = achieved
Leaping off of a building? But of course…
Sleepwear in a public place is no bother for these guys
Work that bob hair ‘do fellas
Ability to puff smoke – done.
Work with anyone, including puppets? Ta-dah!
And of course, nail a hand-on-face thinking pose…
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We rest our case. For now.What You Need To Know About the Consumer Review Freedom Act
This article was updated on Dec. 16, 2015.
The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Monday that would give consumers the freedom to write negative reviews without punishment, according to a release.
The U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved the Consumer Review Freedom Act on Nov. 18, 2015, according to a release. The committee approved an amended version of the bill.
The committee held a hearing Wednesday, Nov. 4 to discuss the legislation.
At the hearing, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson argued that non-disparagement clauses disrupt the economy. Non-disparagement clauses restrict customers from negatively affecting an organization’s reputation.
“One of the defining benefits of the digital economy is the ‘wisdom of the crowd,’” he said. “Reviews create a virtuous feedback loop: When consumers review something they’ve bought, other consumers benefit from their experience and can take their feedback into consideration when they shop. Companies can use that market data to improve their products or services—and then, when they improve poorly reviewed features or add new ones, consumers can provide new reviews. Limiting these reviews to only positive feedback significantly reduces the benefits of this process.”
Jen Palmer also spoke at the hearing. Her and her husband were fined $3,500 by KlearGear.com for posting a negative review on RipoffReport.com.
Adam Medros, senior vice President and head of global product at TripAdvisor, also testified at the hearing. Medros and TripAdvisor support the legislation.
“Placing a muzzle on one’s customers with contractual boilerplate goes against everything we stand for at TripAdvisor,” Medros said. “Just as a consumer can tell her family and friends about her experience with a business in the ‘offline world,’ she also has a right to share that experience and opinion online, allowing businesses and other customers to learn and benefit therefrom. When a business includes a ‘gag order’ in its agreements with its customers, everyone is harmed.”
If everyone should play fairly in the world of online reviews, the voice of the customer should be heard, and customers should be able to express their honest opinions about businesses without fear, right?
Well, here’s what happening in Congress: senators introduced a new bill in September which would ban businesses from fining customers who write critical reviews online, the Washington Post reported.
The Consumer Review Freedom Act, the legislation would give customers the freedom to publicly criticize a business without risk of being charged because of one small section in the business’s terms and conditions.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Transportation and Science, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) introduced the legislation.
“Online customer reviews have become an integral part not just of e-commerce but of consumer choice everywhere,” said Thune. “This free market system, which empowers customers, cannot thrive if reviewers face intimidation against airing truthful criticisms. The Consumer Review Freedom Act protects the rights of reviewers, review readers, and those business owners who embrace the reality that they are accountable to customers.”
Yeah, this is real – it’s possible for customers to be punished for posting negative reviews online and it negates the purpose of online review sites, which serve as platforms for generating and sharing consumer opinion. In many cases, this has created a negative experience for the customer, caused unwanted media attention, and even led to libel and defamation lawsuits.
READ more: Fighting for the Right to Post Online Reviews: New Legislation Introduced to Protect the Voice of the Customer
Penalties and non-disparagement clauses are a bad idea
One review website penalized a couple for posting a negative online review after they tried contacting the business. KlearGear, an online retailer, said the review went against a non-disparagement clause in their terms of service, and the couple would have to remove the review or pay $3,500. After they refused to pay, the couple’s credit rating was impacted because KlearGear reported them to a debt collection agency. The case was taken to federal court and a judge awarded the couple at least $300,000 in damages.
Clauses in business terms are designed to help with reputation management. But writing a non-disparagement clause, which restricts customers from negatively affecting an organization’s reputation, could soon be against the law. These clauses are also a pretty bad idea and could reflect poorly on your business.
In 2014, a hotel in Hudson, New York had a policy that charged wedding parties $500 for every negative review posted by guests.
And last month, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Roca Labs, a weight loss supplement company, for threatening to sue customers if they wrote negative online reviews about the business’ products. The Florida-based Roca Labs allegedly sold defective products, and claimed their products could be used in place of bypass surgery.
“Roca Labs had an adversarial relationship with the truth,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in a statement. “Not only did they make false or unsubstantiated weight loss claims, they also attempted to intimidate their own customers from sharing truthful – and truly negative – reviews of their products.”
The Internet Association, an organization that represents Internet companies, supports the Consumer Review Freedom Act.
“Creating a strong national standard protecting freedom of speech online is fundamental to the success of the Internet,” said Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman in a statement. “Meritless lawsuits filed for the sole purpose of intimidating consumers and stifling public debate must be addressed by Congress. The Internet industry thanks Sen. Thune, Sen. Schatz, and Sen. Moran for their leadership on this important issue, and looks forward to the eventual passage of the Consumer Review Freedom Act.”
If a review is false, businesses will still be protected
Although the Consumer Review Freedom Act will prohibit businesses from fining customers who post honest reviews, online reviewers who post false online reviews can still be sued by businesses.
Last month, a municipal court judge ordered Yelp to give user information to a Boston-based jewelry company who claimed anonymous customer “Linda G” wrote false reviews about the business, according to Ars.
George Pelz, Pageo Jewlery’s co-owner, said in his affidavit that he doesn’t know who Linda G is, and although she claimed to spend a significant amount of money at Pageo, Pelz knows the customers who spend “large amounts of money.”
“Reviews on where to shop, eat, or stay on websites like Yelp or TripAdvisor help guide where consumers do business every day,” said Schatz in a release. “Honest reviews from real people have made these sites successful and are the reason why so many of us have come to rely on them. Every consumer has the right to share their experiences and opinions of any business. Our bill would protect that right and ensure consumers are free to share their views, free from intimidation.”We hope you’re having a great holiday weekend and we’re happy that you could drop in at the Underground Bunker for some Sunday Funnies.
It’s our weekly feature that allows us to show off the best Scientology mailers and fliers that have been forwarded to us by our great tipsters. And we’re going to start off with a slick new ad for the Sea Org that contains an interesting admission.
“Over 6,500 strong, Sea Org members operate on an international level and implement strategies LRH put in place to effectively clear the planet,” says the flier we’re about to show you. At the bottom of it, you can clearly see that this is an official message from the American Saint Hill Organization (ASHO), which is part of the “Big Blue” complex in downtown Los Angeles which was once the Cedars of Lebanon hospital.
Why is this significant? Because Scientology just gave up a key fact about its true overall size. Let us explain.
Scientology has always blatantly lied about how many Scientologists there are in the world. In 1969, |
Democratic primary opponent, Rep. Patrick Murphy, of being behind the OCE probe. Grayson's rebuttal to OCE's investigation asserts that "Murphy’s official staff illegally obtained confidential OCE information, and then disseminated it to the media for the benefit of Murphy’s Senate campaign. Rep. Grayson has asked that the Ethics Committee 'initiate an investigation of the Office of Congressional Ethics and Congressional staff, and take appropriate action against all those employees who have violated House Resolution 895, the OCE Code of Conduct and the Rules of the House.'"
Grayson, a wealthy trial lawyer and former telecom executive who is worth at least $30 million, won a House seat in 2008 but was then defeated in 2010. He returned to Congress in 2012.
In 2011, Grayson created a hedge fund and several other investment entities — using his name — that included millions of dollars of the Florida Democrat's money, as well as investments from his family and at least two other individuals. After winning a House seat in 2012, Grayson continued to run the hedge fund and other entities and may have violated House rules and federal law in doing so, according to OCE. "The OCE found that Representative Grayson received compensation as management fees from the Grayson Hedge Fund while serving in Congress," the ethics watchdog states. After OCE began looking into the investment funds in 2015, Grayson changed their name.
Grayson also controlled several law firms that provided "thousands of hours of free legal services over the course of multiple years" as part of a legal case that the Florida Democrat was involved in, OCE said. Grayson dismissed the allegation as "ridiculous."
And OCE alleges that Grayson "agreed to receive compensation for representational services" in lawsuits brought by other parties against contractors accused of defrauding the federal government, despite being in Congress. Grayson said the claim was inaccurate.
As for his unreported assets, Grayson says "these omissions have been corrected," and he bashed OCE for trying to make an example out of him.Bandh supporters shout slogans and burn tyres in Bongaigaon on Tuesday. Picture by UB Photos
July 7: A 12-hour bandh called by six organisations demanding Scheduled Tribe status paralysed normal life in a number of places across Assam.
A blazing sun and the bandh call kept people indoors in Upper Assam.
The region recorded the highest temperature so far this summer at 36.8 degrees Celsius. All activities, be it academic, official or business, remained non-starters; even roadside kiosks, which normally remain open during bandhs, chose to keep their shutters down.
"I have never witnessed such a bandh in recent times. Probably it is because of the heat that people opted to stay at home," Dipankar Baruah, a businessman from Gaurisagar in Sivasagar district, told The Telegraph.
"Today is the hottest day recorded this year," a scientist at the Assam Agricultural University here said.
Several passengers of a bus were injured when protesters threw stones at vehicles at Chabua in Tinsukia district. There were also reports of vehicles being damaged as they came under showers of stones and other missiles in Sivasagar and Golaghat districts.
Police arrested a large number of protesters while they were burning tyres on the roads to prevent movement of vehicles in all the Upper Assam districts.
The six ethnic groups - Koch-Rajbongshi, Moran, Chutiya, Muttock, Ahom and tea tribes - have been demanding Scheduled Tribe status for more than two decades now.
While five out of the six communities are considered among the indigenous people of Assam, the tea tribes are those who were brought to the region as indentured labour to work in the tea plantations during colonial times. They are classified as Scheduled Tribes in places from where their forefathers came but are deemed as Other Backward Classes in Assam.
"We will not rest till we are granted the ST status," Dhiraj Gowala, assistant general secretary of Assam Tea Tribes Students' Association (ATTSA), said.
"I am waiting for one hour and had not seen a single vehicle passing through Thana Chariali. I have to go to Mancotta but I don't know how will I go,'' said Sajal Das, a resident of Dibrugarh.
"The bandh was peaceful and no untoward incident was reported,'' a police official said in Dibrugarh.
On the other hand, a ceasework by workers of inland water transport department put paid to ferry services from all the 31 ghats in the state. The workers are protesting against an alleged move to privatise the department.
Biju Kumar Das, an office-bearer of the All Assam Inland Water-transport Workers' Union, told The Telegraph that the workers of the department would not agree to the move to privatise the department. "We were told that we will receive our salary according to the income of the department after it is converted to a corporation, but we will never allow that to happen," Das said.
He said ferry services at the ghats, including Neema-tighat and Kamalabari connecting Majuli, remained closed today and the river island remained cut-off from the mainland during the bandh period. "We are thankful for the support provided by the business community of Neematighat and Kamalabari who closed their shops today," he said.
The bandh also evoked a total response in Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and parts of Chirang and Baksa districts in lower Assam.
Activists of Hiteswar Barman faction of All Koch-Rajbongshi Student's Union (AKRSU) enforced the bandh by burning tyres on the street at Barpara near Swahid Bedi in Bongaigaon and shouted slogans in support of their demand.
"We will certainly respond to the government if it calls us for fruitful discussion on the Scheduled Tribe issue. Otherwise the agitation would be intensified further," said Troilokyo Ray, general secretary of the AKRSU faction.
The bandh, however, had no impact in Barak Valley and Guwahati and little impact in the north bank.Employees of Waco television station KCEN are reporting on social media that one of the station’s meteorologists was shot outside of the television station this morning.
Patrick Crawford, who grew up in Plano, Texas according to his website bio, was shot several times in the parking lot of KCEN-TV.
Breaking: @KCENNews Employee shot multiple times in station parking lot. Search continues for suspect. Station remains on lockdown. — KCEN News (@KCENNews) December 17, 2014
We can now say the employee shot this morning in @KCENNews parking lot is Patrick Crawford, a morning meteorologist. http://t.co/pmaWRgQTeg — Chris Davis (@KCENchris) December 17, 2014
A DPS spokesman says Crawford went into surgery this morning at Scott and White in Temple. http://t.co/pmaWRgQTeg @KCENNews #WatchKCEN — Chris Davis (@KCENchris) December 17, 2014
He was shot multiple times, and was talking to officers as he was taken away. http://t.co/pmaWRgQTeg @KCENNews #WatchKCEN — Chris Davis (@KCENchris) December 17, 2014
All of our thoughts are with @MeteorologistPC this morning. He's well-loved. Hoping for a full recovery. @KCENNews http://t.co/pmaWRgQTeg — Chris Davis (@KCENchris) December 17, 2014
According to an article from CBSDFW’s sister station KWTX, officers from state and local law enforcement agencies were actively searching on the ground and from the air for the gunman, who is described as a balding white man in his mid-30s, wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans.
Meanwhile Crawford is said to be recovering and doing well. He was taken to Baylor Scott & White Hospital in Temple.
Crawford began working at KCEN in September 2012, after working in Louisiana, Arkansas, Arizona and Illinois.Related Articles:
Remember that scene in Pleasantville, where Tobey Maguire helps Joan Allen try to blend back in with her grayscale surroundings by applying gray-and-black makeup to her skin and face? If you always thought that was one of the coolest scenes in that movie (we definitely did), then you'll want to get in on MAC Cosmetics' newest offering, "Grey Friday," which will launch on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) at Macy's MAC counters from midnight to 4 a.m.The color-coordinated lipstick and nail polish duo come in a perfect slate shade of dark gray—the lipstick is a black-gray flecked with silver shimmer,and the nail polish is a stunning gray with a silvery suede pearl finish.Don't worry if you prefer to sleep in on Black Friday, though—the colors will be avaialble online for US customers beginning December 6th and in stores for a limited time December 13th through January 17th.And in case you've never seen Pleasantville, here's what I'm talking about:Chancellor refuses to rule out cuts to policing in Wednesday’s spending review, which will include cuts to many government departments
The Home Office has agreed a deal on police cuts that are expected to hit frontline services despite heightened security concerns, George Osborne has revealed.
Confirming all government departments have settled their future spending plans for this parliament, the chancellor refused to confirm the exact nature of cuts to British policing.
Paris terror gives cost-cutting George Osborne a security headache Read more
He suggested, however, that he may still find the planned £12bn worth of welfare cuts, and at the same time introduce a transition scheme for those on tax credits.
He also hinted that the forecasts for the public finances, due to be published by the Office for Budget Responsibility on Wednesday alongside the spending review, will show a worsening deficit this year. He stuck to his commitment to secure an overall £10bn surplus by the end of the parliament.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Osborne refused to say the spending on frontline police could be protected but claimed the spending review would show a 30% increase in the overall counter-terror budget.
Asked if frontline police were going to be protected, he replied: “There had been difficult decisions.”
On welfare spending, Osborne said he had listened to those asking him to ease the transition to a “lower-welfare higher-wage” economy, but said his central judgment was that the government needed to make savings in the welfare budget.
He insisted the important thing was to get to the right destination. He said those who had asked the government to help with the transition for those losing tax credits have raised perfectly legitimate questions. “I have always been someone who has thought it is not a weakness to listen to good arguments,” he said.
Asked about the specific £12bn welfare cut target set out at the 2015 election, Osborne: replied “I am pretty confident we can deliver what we promised the British people we would deliver.”
His remarks suggest he is likely to slow the pace of the tax credit cuts, and find savings in the housing benefit budget to fund the loss of income.
The Observer view on the autumn statement | Observer editorial Read more
With police chiefs and former home secretaries arguing that further cuts to the police budget will hinder the intelligence fight against terrorists, Osborne said: “Every public service has to make sure it is spending the public’s money well and there can be efficiencies made in the police in how they buy their equipment and how they operate they run their back offices. Increasing the counter-terrorism budget by 30% involves money going to the police as well as our security services to make sure we can deal with marauding gun attacks. The resources are there to deal with the terrorist threat.”
But he said he was confident the security services would have sufficient resources to keep the population safe if Islamic State launched an attack in the UK.
“Precisely because we are making difficult decisions in other parts of our budget, we can give our military more kit, we can increase our counter-terrorism budget by 30% and we can also take action to prevent guns coming into this country and deal with gunmen on the streets.”
He said the spending review had been the smoothest of the three he had conducted, with nothing imposed on ministers and no deep disputes within government.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said Osborne’s deficit plans were in chaos. Only half the deficit will have been eradicated, debt will be £1.5tn, and last month we have borrowed more than in than any month in the last six years.
He said he was very worried by the cuts to the police service. “If he says the police cuts will not take place then I will support him. There will be no political game playing on this,” McDonnell said.New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant is aiming to ease provincial concerns over the proposed Energy East pipeline during his first premiers' summit at a time when other provinces are pushing for agreement around a national energy plan focused on climate change.
Even with the price of oil's dramatic plunge, Mr. Gallant said there is still a strong business case for the pipeline that would deliver western crude to New Brunswick refineries and ports for shipping abroad.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard outlined a list of seven principles last fall that would guide their decision on whether to support the pipeline. However, the two provinces appeared to soften their stand in December when they said they would not weigh the extra greenhouse-gas emissions generated by increased production to supply the pipeline as part of their decision.
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"It's important to understand what those preoccupations and concerns are if we're going to help the other premiers and help the country address them," said Mr. Gallant, who arrived for two days of meetings in Ottawa as the key proponent of the pipeline because Alberta Premier Jim Prentice and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall are not attending.
"I believe that they're very reasonable but I also believe they're achievable," Mr. Gallant said of Ontario and Quebec's list of principles. The apparent change in position from Ontario and Quebec disappointed pipeline critics. Environmental groups and some municipal councils have raised concerns about the risk that a pipeline break could pollute drinking water. A consultant's report for the Ontario Energy Board concluded TransCanada's application failed to spell out how it would protect major streams and ground water sources across the province.
The board is wrapping up hearings into the project and will provide a report to the Liberal cabinet, which then has to determine what position it will take in the federal regulatory review.
TransCanada, the company behind the proposed pipeline, is also facing opposition from Ontario– and Quebec-based utilities, including Union Gas and Gaz Métro, over its plan to convert the pipeline from gas to oil service. The local distribution companies argue the gas pipeline is often full in winter between North Bay and Cornwall, and that TransCanada's plan will shift costs and supply risks onto the shoulders of Ontario and Quebec consumers. TransCanada says it is willing to build new capacity for customers that are willing to lock into long-term contracts.
The annual meeting of premiers is taking place Friday, just a few blocks away from the Prime Minister's Office, but Stephen Harper will not be attending. Ms. Wynne arrived early Thursday to hold a meeting and news conference with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, where the two spoke of the need for Ottawa to work more closely with the provinces in areas such as energy policy.
"I'm not going to give up on the idea that we have a federal government that would be engaged at the federal level in taking a position on the world stage in terms of reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions," said Ms. Wynne.
Falling oil prices and a sliding Canadian dollar are expected to benefit the Ontario and Quebec economies, but will hit oil-producing provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador hard.
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Ms. Wynne said there's no doubt that a lower dollar helps manufacturers, but noted that the changing dynamics are not all positive and that more than 1,100 Ontario companies are linked to Alberta's oil sands.
"To pretend that somehow we are functioning on our own is not realistic," she said. "I don't believe that the way our economic union should work is that I'm looking for success at the expense of another province."
Mr. Trudeau said that if he became prime minister, he would commit to holding annual meetings with the premiers.
"We need to have a prime minister who understands that this is a federation and that means we work together," Mr. Trudeau said.‘Democracy’ in Labour Party terms is difficult to argue with as a word. It’s our party, and we should return it from being a Cadre Party to the mass party it once was.
Except this is, now at least, a farce. The idea that Labour is a ‘mass’ party is disingenuous. Labour’s membership in the post-war years reached a height of over one million (which pales in comparison to the Conservative’s two million, mind), but even this is merely under 4% of that era’s population. Now, Labour’s membership is less than 0.5% of the UK population.
But even that doesn’t really cover it. Because unlike, say, a poll’s sample, which is weighted to be representative of the nation, the membership does no such thing. By God, this is a middle class party. The recent intake has been, according to Tim Bale’s recent research, “younger, more educated urbanites… who used to vote Green”. They come disproportionately from affluent constituencies, and even in poor constituencies, they tend to be recruitments from university campuses, the hotbeds of middle-class liberal intellectualism. We’re talking the ‘liberal elite’, we are fulfilling the stereotypes of Nigel Farage.
So when we talk about ‘democracy’, what we really mean is a very small, middle class selectorate, or a very large suburb.
And there’s a problem with handing over policy-making and advising of what should be a mass party representing workers to a middle-class selectorate, so far removed -both ideologically and geographically- from Labour’s core vote and poorer voters; it won’t represent the masses at all, least of all our voter base. A party restricted to Urbanites is far from the mass party it proclaims to be. And if the voting mechanisms for policy-making are restricted to delegations to Conference which is way out of the budgets of a lot of working class voters, then the problem will only be exacerbated further. Simply put, the outcome will be policies that are more Green than red. And that means telling working class voters what is best for them rather than asking at all. With the result that the Greens got at the election: the votes of students and affluent dwellers of the well-to-do wards of Brighton, and little else.
Attlee, Wilson, they rode a tide of valence issues with the consent of the working class (such as the Beveridge Report) and made their own (like the NHS). We won’t get to do that if the membership refuses to believe today’s valence issues exist, refuse to acknowledge that working class people might believe what is best for them is different to what our party thinks is best for them. If we choose to lecture instead of listen.
So what can we do to make party democracy truly representative and consultative for who we work for? For those of us that need a Labour government?
We bring in Labour voters to our democracy, we ask them what matters. A consultation like 1987’s Labour Listens. Bring in cheaper prices for Conference and for membership. Reserve places on the NEC for disadvantaged members. Increase our presence in working class communities. Conduct door-to-door membership drives in the poorest constituencies and wards. Outside London. In places that may very well have, as Cruddas has noted, ‘settler’ working class populations.
But at the end of the day, if we appear an elitist party with an elite membership creating elitist policy, working class people won’t want to get involved, and we’ll become ever more an echo-chamber, repeating a cycle that will end, inevitably, in Tory hegemony and a betrayal of our voters. It’s time for diversification of, if not our membership, then our consultative processes. It’s time to listen.Epstein, convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution in 2005, is a multi millionaire with numerous properties including a private island
The millionaire had then used the ill-gotten gains to fund his champagne lifestyle, the suit alleges
Hoffenberg claims in his lawsuit that Epstein was involved in the scam
He had pleaded guilty to swindling investors at Towers Financial Corporation in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in US history
Hoffenberg was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 1995 prison for his role in a Ponzi scheme and ordered to repay $475 million
Epstein is accused of ripping off 200,000 small to mid-size investors in the suit brought by former business partner Steven Hoffenberg
Sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein is being sued by a former business partner who accuses him in a $1bn lawsuit of ripping off up to 200,000 investors, according to papers filed in a United States federal court.
Epstein, 63, is a fabulously wealthy Wall Street prodigy with ties to some of the world’s most powerful and famous people, including Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and filmmaker Woody Allen.
But he is also a convicted sex offender in his weekend home of Palm Beach, Florida, who has to register with authorities each time he moves to a different location eight years after he pleaded guilty to procuring teenage girls for prostitution.
Sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein (left) is being sued by former business partner Steven Hoffenberg (right) who accuses him in a $1bn lawsuit of ripping off up to 200,000 investors
And now, the multi-millionaire is being accused in a new civil lawsuit brought by a former business partner of ripping off 200,000 small to mid-size investors out of what could amount to $1 billion, including interests.
The lawsuit could finally lift the veil on how the secretive Epstein became rich enough to hire a dream team of lawyers to represent him in his now-closed underage sex criminal case, including star defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former Monica Lewinsky prosecutor Ken Starr.
In an unusual complaint filed late Friday, former New York Post publisher Steven Hoffenberg, the plaintiff, accuses Epstein of helping him defraud investors in the mid-1990s when Hoffenberg and, allegedly, Epstein ran a classic pyramid scheme through Hoffenberg’s Towers Financial Corporation.
The duo allegedly used money from the sale of bonds and securities and promissory notes from early investors to cover losses they incurred on behalf of newer investors and affiliated business, and personal expenses to keep a jet-setting-and-champagne lifestyle.
According to the lawsuit, the duo suffered losses in failed attempts to buy now-defunct Pan American Airways as well as a freight air carrier Emery.
Epstein, 63, a fabulously wealthy Wall Street prodigy, was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution in 2005 (pictured in court in 2008)
Steven Hoffenberg, himself convicted of a Ponzi scheme in 1995, has sued Epstein claiming that he was an accomplice and helped rip off 200,000 small to mid-size investors out of what could amount to $1 billion, including interests
What’s unusual about the new lawsuit is that Hoffenberg, who also happens to run a major PAC for presidential candidate Donald Trump, is also a convicted felon.
He was sentenced to 20 years in a federal prison for his role in the Ponzi scheme he ran from the late 1970s until 1993, when authorities figured out what was happening.
While prosecutors allegedly offered to reduce Hoffenberg’s sentence in exchange for information about Epstein’s role in the scam, Hoffenberg refused to cooperate.
He served 18 years before being placed on supervised release for three years. He also paid $1 million in fines and was ordered to reimburse investors about $475million.
So far, Hoffenberg has ponied up $200 million.
According to Hoffenberg’s new lawsuit, however, Epstein has been enjoying the spoils of the scam for the past 30 years.
In addition to a luxury townhouse at 9 East 71st Street in Manhattan, Epstein owns a $10.7 million-house in Palm Beach and a private island in the Virgin Islands. That’s where he lives currently, according to the Florida sex offenders registry.
What’s more, Epstein is the CEO of The Financial Trust Company, which runs a hedge fund estimated to be in the $50 billion-range. And if you believe Hoffenberg’s lawsuit, written by Manhattan attorney Alan P. Fraade, Epstein started that business by selling worthless securities for Hoffenberg.
“Mr. Epstein … was a full-time associate and expert consultant for Mr. Hoffenberg in financial services including raising capital by selling securities,” the lawsuit reads.
Epstein’s company, the lawsuit claims, was “created entirely with the monies in excess of $500 million fraudulently acquired through fraudulent Ponzi schemes.”
Epstein, who owns several luxury properties around the world - including his high end New York apartmet, is accused of running a classic pyramid scheme through Hoffenberg’s Towers Financial Corporation
Hoffenberg claims the millionaire had then used the ill-gotten gains to fund his champagne lifestyle (pictured is Epstein's private private Caribbean island, Little St James)
Because he didn’t have a broker’s license, the lawsuit reads, Epstein made his purchases traded stocks and bonds through third parties then used proceeds on himself.
However, Hoffenberg claims in his filing, Epstein wasn’t as good as he believed.
At one point, he lost at total $1.080 million in a failed attempt to buy failing Pan Am months before the downing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and purchase of a majority shares in Emery air freight.
Hoffenberg accuses Epstein of manipulating Emery’s stock to minimize his losses while costing Tower investors millions.
The lawsuit is for fraud, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence. It’s asking a jury to order Epstein to make whole Tower investors as well as pay unspecified damages.
Epstein made news over the past few years for his friendship with Prince Andrew and allowing former President Clinton to use his private jet repeatedly.
In unrelated lawsuit currently pending in Florida, unidentified women who claim they were abused by Epstein in the early 2000s when they were teens claim he made them into sex slaves who’s be passed on to his friends.
In a criminal court in Palm Beach County in 2008, Epstein was accused of having staff members recruiting troubled high school girls in suburban West Palm Beach to travel to his nearby mansion for massages, sexual performances and sex.
The victims claimed a room in Epstein’s waterfront mansion was set up to look like a dungeon.
In an unusually lenient deal with federal prosecutors that sparked allegations Epstein benefited from high-level political protection, Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to charges he procured minors for prostitution.Haas is expecting to make "tons of mistakes" in its first year in Formula One but is confident it will eradicate most of them by its second season in 2017.
Haas is joining the grid as a new team this year with drivers Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez lined up to pilot a Ferrari-powered Dallara-built chassis. It has been working closely with Ferrari in the development of its car but is still expecting to struggle as a result of its inexperience this year.
"It will be a building experience," team owner Gene Haas told Sports Business Daily. "We are going to this party without really knowing what it's like. We can sit there and watch what other people do but there's nothing like being there. That's going to be the experience."
Haas said there is only so much his team can prepare for ahead of its first race.
"I think we are prepared, I think we will do well at it but you have to really be there to learn it. All the reading you can do and talking to other people, the challenge is being able to do it. I'm sure we will make tons of mistakes, correct those mistakes and be better prepared for each race.
"After we are done with those 21 races [this] year, we will have a whole year behind us and our notebook will be full of what we need to know. And we will do better after that."From the earliest days of wine making, people have been infusing herbs into their vino for health and wellness as well as for flavor. A crisp Riesling or Rosé is the perfect backdrop for getting creative. Infusing wine with herbs is an old European tradition (and a new VINEBOX one) that adds a surprisingly modern twist to your next get together. You're sure to impress even the foodiest of your foodie friends. Here are some tips and mini-recipes to get you started.
How to Infuse Your Wine
The best wines for herbal infusions are ones best served cold because they'll need to chill in the fridge for several days. Rosés are perfect because they're so darn pretty, but a light Sancerre or not-too-sweet Riesling will also work. In general, you want to choose a gentle backdrop to let the herbal flavors shine through.
Open your wine bottle and pour out a glass. Pop a half-dozen sprigs of fresh, organic herbs, such as mint, sage, basil, rosemary, orange peels or ginger root, into the wine bottle. Use a bamboo skewer or the handle of a wooden spoon to poke them down below the neck of the bottle, then use a funnel to pour wine from your glass back into the bottle leaving just enough room to plug the cork back in. I find that I always have a little extra, which I sip as my reward for a job well done. Cap your wine and chill it in the fridge at least overnight and preferably for several days to allow the flavors to develop.
To serve, decant the wine through a mesh sieve to catch any herby bits leftover. Garnish with fruit or flowers for a real standout.
Recipes to Inspire You
There's no right or wrong way to make a herbal wine, so feel free to experiment with different combinations. Here are a few favorites to get you started:
May Wine: This German tradition uses dried sweet woodruff to infuse Riesling with a vanilla flavor. Add sliced strawberries for sweetness and garnish with the tiny, white woodruff flowers for a traditional spring punch.
Lavender White: Lavender wine is definitely a thing. You can make your own with just a single sprig of lavender in the white wine of your choice (careful here: a little goes a long way!). Garnish with a fresh sprig for aroma.
Rosy Rosé: Try adding highly fragrant rose petals to a rosé for your infusion. Garnish with rose petals and a plump raspberry for a sweet treat.
Amazin’ Deglazin': Add rosemary and sage to your leftover white wines and store the mixture in the fridge until the next time you have a pan that needs deglazing. The French call the leftover residue from pan searing “the fond.” I call it concentrated yumminess. Pour this herbal mixture into your pan, simmer and reduce on medium heat until it thickens. Finish with salt and pepper and serve as a sauce over your finished dish. This is ideal for poultry and pork.
Feel free to experiment as well. Let the world of wine be your oyster and VINEBOX your shucking knife. Wow, that was bad, but don't hesitate to reach out if you need some great wines this summer!
(Amazing photo courtesy of Sharon Garofalow at Cupcakes and Cutlery)When legislators pass laws there has to be a good reason for them doing so. Just jumpingon a bandwagon and passing laws because the neighbouring state has already done so isn’ta good enough reason. Legislators also need to look at the whole story not just take noticeof some bad publicity and decide it’s time to take action.It’s often the reaction to the passing of a law that is really important. Sooner or later onepiece of legislation will be passed that will make people realize that the legislators areoverstepping their mark. One such law was passed by the Minnesota City Council last weekand the reaction over the past couple of days has been a huge thumbs down.The Minnesota Daily newspaper reacted badly to the decision of the Minnesota City Councilto ban indoor public use of e-cigarettes. This means vaping can’t take place in stores,restaurants and at work but does allow people to vape at e-cigarette stores where samplingis necessary.The newspaper says that the bill is “premature” and come up with a reason for that beliefthat should shame all the local politicians who voted in favour of the new law. Havingactually done some research into the subject, they realize that e-cigarettes “are helpful topeople in quitting smoking, or at least significantly reducing their consumption of traditionalcigarettes.” Their view is that until “there is a scientific consensus” on the long-term healtheffects of vaping, it should be up to businesses and institutions not politicians to decidewhether vaping can take place on their premises.The papers anger at the legislation is summed up by this sentence: “This bill is yet anotherexample of the city overstepping its bounds and imposing an ill-conceived law that on thesurface is supposed to help solve a public health issue that in reality is not so simple.”Now it’s not uncommon for one paper to come out and heavily criticize a piece of legislation.However, the bungling politicians in Minnesota really seem to have totally misjudged theopinions of people in the state as the Star Tribune has also covered the story and it doesn’tmake happy reading for the bandwagon politicians of Minnesota.John McClay lives in Bloomington where the local council have also taken action against e-cigarettes. They even banned vaping in vaping stores which is totally insanity. His views areones that politicians should really take notice of. He’s carried out plenty of research into e-cigarettes and with that knowledge would never have passed the law that’s just been thrustonto the citizens of Minnesota.He knows that in recent years the number of people smoking tobacco cigarettes in theStates has fallen, while the numbers vaping have gone up and up. Why can’t politicians takenotice of those figures and work out just what they mean?It means the number of people smoking deadly tobacco cigarettes and putting their lives atrisk is falling. E-cigarette use increasing is a major contribution to those tobacco cigaretteuser figures falling but will it ever get credit for doing so?McClay blames the under-threat tobacco industry for a lot of the ill-feeling shown against e-cigarettes. It’s hardly surprising of course that industry is worrying about their future.McClay says “if e-cigs had become known by any other name -‘vaporizers, atomizers,inhalers’ – perhaps municipal officials would not be so inclined to conflate vaping andsmoking.”He makes it clear that the vast majority of vapers are adults and former smokers. He addsthat most e-cigarette stores actively discourage non-smokers from trying e-cigarettes ontheir site. As for minors using e-cigarettes he puts it down to experimentation and thewillingness to “do anything that makes them feel “cool” and look older, especially if it’s notlegally accessible, which makes it all the more fun.”Why can’t politicians see that? They were young once and you can bet your bottom dollarthat some of them tried a cigarette before reaching legal age. The same probably goes for aquick drink of alcohol, going into a bar or driving a car. They should realize that ifyoungsters are vaping then it’s not because the e-cigarette industry has targeted them.They should also be happy that they are using e-cigarettes rather than heading down thedeadly route that tobacco cigarette use will take them on.John McClay used e-cigarettes to end his addiction to tobacco. He smoked a pack a day for55 years and started as a teenager because he thought it was “mature, sophisticated andoh-so-cool.” When he realized how dangerous smoking is he tried to give up but despitetrying cold turkey, nicotine gum, lozenges and Zyban nothing worked for him but e-cigarettesdid.When politicians try and be clever they should listen to all sides of the story. They may hatethe fact that vaping looks similar to smoking and the product includes the name ‘cigarette’but they should delve deeper into the matter. McClay says that the fact e-cigarettes allowyou to “mimic the smoking experience” that’s why they help so many people give upsmoking.Politicians and health officials will complain about the fact e-cigarettes contain nicotine. Butthe fact is that nicotine is not especially harmful and not carcinogenic unlike the manychemicals in tobacco cigarettes. McClay asks the question if nicotine was severely harmfulwhy is it available over the counter, unprescribed in gum and lozenge forms.So come on politicians, why can’t you listen to people like John McClay or pay attention tothe opinions of newspapers and the occasional blog. They can’t just pass laws because itseems to be the flavor of the month. Health officials in particular should be pointing out thefact that e-cigarettes can be used to stop people smoking tobacco. That fact alone shouldbe enough to stop the witch-hunt that politicians are carrying out without overwhelmingpublic support for doing so.Dealerships push longer-term loans to make cars seem more affordable, but an undercover Marketplace investigation reveals some salespeople are either unable or unwilling to explain to customers how those seemingly sweet deals could load them up with debt down the road.
The industry's regulator in Ontario calls Marketplace's hidden camera footage of sales pitches at 10 Toronto-area dealerships "very troubling."
"This is my worry," says John Carmichael, CEO of the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council (OMVIC). "Consumers who aren't able to either understand or manage that situation and they find themselves in a transaction that's going to come back to haunt them."
John Carmichael, CEO of the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council (OMVIC), the regulator of dealerships, says longer-term loans shouldn’t be pitched to customers as the first and best option. (CBC)
A decade ago, four- and five-year loans were the standard in Canada. But the financial crash of 2008-09 took many people out of the new car market. So the automakers teamed up with banks and other lenders to create longer loans to make payments more affordable.
And it worked.
Today, more than half of new car loans are for seven years or longer, according to automotive research firm J.D. Power.
Outstanding car loans from Canada's federally regulated banks alone total $72.7 billion.
"Consumers get hooked," says Mohamed Bouchama, head of Car Help Canada, an automobile buying and advice service. "All they see is low monthly payments. This is the car they want, they have been dreaming to drive … and the dealerships take advantage of that."
I looked into getting a house and they won't approve me [for a mortgage] because of how much I have on my car, in debt. So you can |
(cut into individual tracks)
Big cover
Cue file
Style: Dubstep
Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/wc2/Pearsall-WobbleCity2.mp3
Tracklisting:
01. Kryptic Minds – The Weeping (Disturbed Dubz)
02. Distance – Clockwork (Tectonic)
03. Emalkay – Solid State (Storming Productions)
04. Jakes – Rhythm (Hench)
05. Fused Forces – Back Fire (Substance Abuse)
06. Reso – Armored Core (Civil Music)
07. Kutz – Grit Your Teeth (Soul Jazz)
08. Zero G – Bass Culture (Liondub International)
09. Instra:Mental – No Future (Skreamix) (NonPlus)
10. F-One – Murder Most Foul (Dubstar)
11. Kromestar – Head No Good (Dubstar)
12. Mistabishi – Printer Jam (Barbarix Remix) (Hospital)
13. Phokus & Mr Boogie – The Infect (Police In Helicopter)
14. Adam F & Horx – Shut The Lights Off feat. Redman (Caspa & Trolley Snatcha’s Dub Police Remix) (Breakbeat Kaos)
15. Rusko – Woo Boost (Mad Decent)
16. Crissy Criss – Blow Your Head Off (Terrorhythm)
17. Datsik – Gizmo (Basshead)
18. Trolley Snatcha – We Rock The Forest (Dub Police)
19. Sub Scape – Let Me Clear My Throat (Milf)
20. Rusko – Go Go Gadget (Dub Police)
21. Digital Mystikz – Earth A Run Red (Soul Jazz)
22. New Blood – Worries In The Dance (Dubstep Re-Rub) (White)
23. Kid Sister – Right Hand Hi (Caspa Remix) (Asylum)
24. The Prodigy – Take Me To The Hospital (Rusko Remix) (Take Me To The Hospital)
25. Mensah – Acid Dub (Hench)
26. Doctor P – Sweet Shop (Circus)
27. Taz Buckfaster – Crusher (Lime Dubs)
28. Foreign Beggars – No Holds Barred ft Noisia (Excision Remix) (Never Say Die)
29. Skream – Guitar Hero (Sin City)
30. Skream – Kinky (Ringo)
31. Tek-One – Broken String (Hench)
32. The Prodigy – Breathe (Numbernin6 Remix) (White)
33. Mavado – Gangsta 4 Life (Coki Remix) (White)
34. Skream & Cluekid – Sandsnake (Goth-Trad Remix) (Disfigured Dubz)
35. Redlight – Feel So Good (Wine Up Yr Body) ft. Dread, Redskin & Zaniah (Run Music)
36. Sully – Living (Urban Graffiti)
37. Skream – Burning Up (Digital Soundboy)
38. DJ Crystl – Warpdrive (Dee Jay Recordings)
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Cover: Taken from my bathroom window, Edinburgh, January 2010
So, twelve months on from the first Wobble City and, well … I’m still listening to lots and lots and lots of dubstep.
I love it!
I love the deep, moody, introspective stuff, and I really love the hard face-shredding bassy stuff, as featured on this mix.
Hard-edged, blocky beats with weighty subs and fierce mid-range action – fantastic.
Maybe it’s not so cool (since the trend-setters seem to have moved on to ‘post-garage’ and UK Funky, both of which are good), but life is too short to worry about that kind of thing. In any case, I’m nearly 30, so it’s well past time to stop worrying about being cool!
Anyways, clearly the moment was ripe for another edition of Wobble City, so a few weeks ago I started digging through the crates for some suitably nasty tunes. Track selection is one of the most entertaining parts of putting together a mix, requiring as it does assembling a selection of tracks to fit a certain mood and vibe. These tracks have to all work together, and provide a coherent sonic narrative (although I put more emphasis on the narrative when I do hard 4/4 mixes than I do with stuff like dubstep or jungle, as I explained in my post for Rampage Audio 6). Working through this process involves figuring out which tracks go well together individually and as part of the overall whole, as well as the optimum way to mix between any two tracks, whether to do a short mix or a long mix, whether to gently slide the new track in, or whether to just slam it straight into the mix. It’s always a bit time-consuming, because some tracks just do not work in the overall context of the mix, and others might fit in the overall vibe, but don’t work in between any individual tracks.
As with the previous mix, I’ve tried to season the new tracks with some older tunes, combining anthems with slightly more obscure tunes, and to take in somewhat different vibes and sounds as I move through the mix. The mix starts with chunky steppers from the likes of Kryptic Minds and Emalkay before hitting some nasty midrange action from F-One and Kromestar, passing through some party tunes from Trolley Snatcha and Rusko, a bit of old skool-influenced tunage from Mensah and Doctor P, some darker beats, before emerging at the other end with a few jungle-influenced tunes. Finally, to close the circle between (really) old and new, I’ve ended the mix by moving from Skream’s jungle tribute ‘Burning Up’ to DJ Crystl’s ’94 ambient jungle anthem ‘Warpdrive’. Along the way I’ve tried to vary the mixing, with some quick mixes, some longer mixes, a bit of trickery in the form of cuts and spinbacks, as well as some nasty double-drops (the mix from ‘Let Me Clear My Throat’ into ‘Go Go Gadget’ works particularly well in that respect).
It was quite a fun challenge putting this mix together, because it is not easy (at least for me!) to fit 38 tracks into only 72 minutes. When I wrote the accompanying essay for the first Wobble City, one of the things I talked about was how using vinyl makes you feel like you are physically interfacing with the sound, that you are controlling the beats with your hands, setting them in place. At times, when doing a mix like this, with so many tracks in such a short amount of time, it feels almost like you have embarked on some kind of weird cross between a juggling competition and mathematical exercise. It’s tricky!
Obviously, for some people this is not so difficult, but I make no pretentions about being the world’s best dj (although I do think I’m pretty good, if that’s not being too big-headed). As an example, check out the Keep Watch mix that Plastician did for Mishka NYC – it’s got like 50 tracks in only an hour! Insane stuff.
Still, though, I enjoy mixing dubstep, even if it is not yet as intuitive for me as mixing those styles like techno or acid that I have been playing for years now. It’s been fun getting into playing a new style of music over the last couple of years now, even if I’ve never actually played it out to a crowd.
One of the weirder aspects of my relationship with dubstep is that for me it’s basically a home listening music, even the ugly, heavy stuff. Which is strange, because there are probably not many styles of music that are so different in the club environment – after all, unless you have unusually tolerant neighbours, you’ll never get the same level of b a s s p r e s s u r e at home as you will in a club. But then again I don’t go clubbing any more, and I only rarely play at parties these days, and I haven’t played in a ‘proper’ club for about six years now … although if anyone wants to book me, please get in touch!
Enjoy!
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Embed Fundraiser for John McCain Arrested in Meth Bust 1:01 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog <iframe src="http://www.nbcnews.com/widget/video-embed/675125827771" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
PHOENIX — A Phoenix woman has been dropped as a political fundraiser for U.S. Sen. John McCain's re-election campaign after being arrested on suspicion of drug possession and other charges.
Maricopa County Sheriff's officials said Emily Pitha and her live-in boyfriend were taken into custody Tuesday after deputies served a search warrant at her north-central Phoenix home.
Christopher Hustrulid allegedly signed for a package containing more than 250 grams of Ecstasy.
Emily Pitha is seen in this booking photo distributed by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
Undercover detectives and U.S. Postal Inspectors raided the home after the delivery, according to sheriff's officials. Detectives also reported finding methamphetamines, LSD, heroin, cocaine, an active meth lab and about $7,000 and counterfeit cash, the officials said.
Neither Pitha, 34, nor Hustrulid, 36, had a lawyer at their initial court appearance Wednesday.
Each was being held on $20,000 bonds on various drug-possession charges along with child endangerment. Authorities said two children — ages 5 and 10 — live with the couple, but they were at daycare at the time of the bust.
McCain's campaign manager Ryan O'Daniel said in a statement Wednesday that the campaign had "terminated any relationship" with Pitha.
Pitha was working as a consultant arranging fundraisers for McCain. She also has worked for top Arizona Republicans, with her LinkedIn profile noting previously work for Sen. Jeff Flake and former Sen. Jon Kyl.New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, central England October 10, 2012. REUTERS/Darren Staples
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg took a shot at President Donald Trump's claims about his wealth during an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel.
Bloomberg touched on several topics during the interview, including his efforts to combat climate change after Trump pulled the US out of the landmark Paris climate pact, his take on the turbulent presidency so far, and possible 2020 presidential candidates.
When Der Spiegel asked whether he would run for president in the next national election, Bloomberg said he wouldn't and that he felt he could "change more" in his current position.
"Do you not find it ironic that it is two billionaires from New York who are now deciding America's climate policies?" interviewer Juliane von Mittelstaedt asked.
"I don't know if I would say it that way," Bloomberg replied. "Let me phrase this carefully so you get the message: I don't know how wealthy other people are."
"You mean that Trump may not be a billionaire?" von Mittelstaedt asked.
"I didn't say that," Bloomberg said. "You said that."
Trump made his wealth and business acumen key pillars of his 2016 presidential bid. He kicked off his campaign by saying he was "really rich" and worth $10 billion. As of February 2017, however, Forbes pegged Trump's net worth at around $3.5 billion, down $1 billion from last year.
Bloomberg's net worth, according to Forbes, is around $53 billion, making him the 10th richest person in the world. Trump's net worth didn't crack the top 500.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 is running nearly even in Hispanic support compared to Republicans' last two presidential nominees, according to a new poll.
In a two-way race against Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE, a Pew Research poll found that 24 percent of Hispanic registered voters support Trump.
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Those numbers reflect Hispanic support for the two last Republican presidential nominees, Mitt Romney — who polled at 21 percent — and Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) — 23 percent — before the 2012 and 2008 elections.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is currently favored by 66 percent of registered Hispanics in a head-to-head with Trump.
With Libertarian Gary Johnson Gary Earl JohnsonPotential GOP primary challenger: Trump's 'contempt for the American people' behind possible bid The Hill's 12:30 Report — Presented by Kidney Care Partners — Trump escalates border fight with emergency declaration Former Mass. governor takes step toward Trump primary challenge MORE in the mix, Clinton gets 58 percent support, Trump 20 percent and Johnson 13 percent. Among all demographic groups, Clinton's lead is cut to 45 percent, Trump jumps to 36 percent, and Johnson commands 11 percent of voter intent.
Trump's low numbers with Hispanics reflect a campaign that on several occasions has irked the voting bloc.
In his inaugural campaign speech in June of last year, Trump said Mexican immigrants are "rapists" who are "bringing crime." Trump further damaged his rapport with Mexican Americans, by far the largest subgroup within U.S. Hispanics, by promising to build a wall on the southern border.
In June, Trump said Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be objective in a case involving Trump University because "he's Mexican." Curiel was born in Indiana.
While Romney did not focus on immigration as heavily in 2012, he angered many Hispanics by promoting "self-deportation" for undocumented immigrants, ultimately receiving 27 percent of the Latino vote, according to exit polls.
Hispanic voters could decide the election in Colorado, Florida and Nevada, key battleground states in 2016.
Clinton's advantage in perception among Latinos is likely unsurmountable, but whether that translates to states won will depend on registration and turnout.
Latinos are less likely to register to vote, and less likely to vote once registered, than any other ethnicity. In the survey, Pew reported only 49 percent of eligible Latinos are "absolutely certain" they are registered, compared to 69 percent of African Americans and 80 percent of whites.
In the subgroup of Latinos who aren't sure if they registered, Clinton leads Trump 87 percent to 7 percent.The announcement by the European Central Bank that it has so far made €7.8bn in profits from its holdings in Greek government debt reveals the true nature of the so-called bailouts of Greek government finances that the EU leaders organised in return for massive austerity measures from 2012 onwards.
Back in March 2012, five years ago, a so-called private sector involvement (PSI) deal was agreed under which French, German and Greek banks who held the bulk of Greek government bonds agreed to take a ‘haircut’ on the value of their bond holdings. Under the PSI, they received in return new Greek government bonds with 30-year lives, paying about 3-4% a year in interest and guaranteed by the Eurozone financing operation, the EFSF. And they also got some cash upfront for turning in their old bonds. The Euro leaders and the IMF provided around €130bn in new money plus €34bn left over from the previous Greek package to fund the interest to be paid on the new Greek government bonds, repayments to the IMF, money to recapitalise the Greek banks and money for the cash on the PSI deal.
As part of the PSI, the ECB bought up some of these bonds, for which they were guaranteed repayment as they matured by the Greek government, as part of the bailout packages that ensued. In total, the ECB and national central banks bought €56.2 billion of Greek debt, according to analysis by a University of Munich academic. Of this, €29 billion has been repaid, with €27 billion still outstanding. The ECB bought bonds to be repaid up until 2028.
Well, not only have these bond purchases been repaid over the ensuing years as the Greek people took the pain of wage and pension cuts, a collapse in public services and the privatisation of public assets, but the ECB has made nearly €8bn in profits. The ECB said holdings of Greek sovereign bonds acquired under its Securities and Markets bond-buying programme (SMP) had resulted in €7.8bn of net income interest between 2012-2016. These profits are not being returned to the Greeks but distributed among the 19-country central banks in the eurozone.
Another cruel irony is that, having purchased these bonds from the French and German banks so the banks’ losses were minimised, the ECB has since refused to buy Greek government bonds as part of its quantitative easing programme to help the Greeks. Why? Because the Greek government debt is not sustainable!
And that is certainly true. When imposing the PSI on Greece, the Troika (ECB, EU, and IMF) aimed for Greece to get its public debt burden down from 166% of GDP before the debt default to 120% of GDP by the end of the decade through the austerity measures. But it would not do this by writing off any Greek debt but only by squeezing the Greek people dry to pay back the ECB and the IMF for their ‘bailout’ loans. Of the total €164bn funding in 2012, only €23bn went towards financing the Greek government’s budget.
So one hand gaveth and the other took it away.
Because the Greek economy imploded, Greek government debt, far from falling under the three bailout programmes, just rocketed further up to a peak of 180% of GDP. Austerity did not work and still is not working to reduce the debt and stop the unending interest payments to private bondholders as well as the ECB.
It’s probable that the IMF and the ECB have made more profits from the ‘bailout’ loans. An analysis from the Jubilee Debt Campaign in 2015 estimated the IMF had made €2.5bn in profits from its loans by then. And the IMF and the ECB will make even more profits from the ‘bailout’ loans. The JDC reckons that, based on the difference between the average effective interest rate the ECB has received on the debt of around 10%, the maturity of the debt, and the normal negligible cost of borrowing from the ECB, the accrued profit could be €22 billion in 2022, ten years since the PSI.
The IMF reckons that, without debt relief, Greece’s public sector debt to GDP ratio will not fall even with further austerity. Indeed, it would rise from around 180% now to nearly 300% by 2060 – in a ‘snowball’ effect where debt is repaid with more debt and interest payments keep rising on top.
And there is no sign of any such ‘relief’.
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedThe estimations by two US nuclear experts are in line with a report by the Institute for Science and International Security in August that suggested that North Korea has dramatically increased the size of the uranium enrichment facility at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.
More recent satellite images indicate that North Korea has started procedures to restart the reactor at the facility.
In an interview with Japan's Kyodo News, Joshua Pollack, an expert on nuclear proliferation, said it is likely that the North has been able to make powerful rare-earth magnets that are used in high-performance centrifuges, an extremely hard steel alloy known as maraging steel, vacuum pumps and frequency inverters that control the speed of the electric motor at the base of a centrifuge.
"The evidence is quite strong that they have been moving in this direction," said Mr Pollack, who monitored academic theses, patent documents and news reports with Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr Pollack is due to present his findings and conclusions at a conference in Seoul later this week.
"Up to a point, it is possible to get around sanctions if the North is determined enough as they will only serve to increase the cost of goods and services," Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University, told The Daily Telegraph.
The analysts' reports coincide with new satellite images provided by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University that suggest North Korea tested an improved long-range rocket engine in late August at the Sohae satellite launching facility.
The reappearance of Pak To-chun in public in North Korea is causing further concern in Seoul and Washington. Absent since May, the head of Pyongyang's missile and nuclear projects was assumed to have shouldered the blame for setbacks in the development of the North's weapons programmes.
Pak's return to favour has been interpreted as a signal that the problems have been overcome and that the North might be gearing up for a new missile launch, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.from subMedia.tv, Vimeo, Oct 7, 2015
Yesterday subMedia.tv witnessed the fierce spirit of the Tsimshian people and their supporters as they faced off with the RCMP, Prince Rupert Port Authority and Petronas LNG workers. The Tsimshiams attempted to disrupt the delivery of a barge with surveying and drilling equipment. The surveyors are subcontractors for Petronas, a Malaysian owned company that wants to build a fracked gas facility on Lelu Island, unceded Tsimshian territory. The Tsimshians have occupied Lelu island and have built a protection camp, to defend the island, and the Flora banks, a sensitive eco-system essential for the survival of juvenile salmon and migrating crustaceans. The Tsimshians have called on supporters to come to Lelu Island and stand with them, bring boats or send money and supplied. For more information visit bit.ly/leluisland
AdvertisementsBEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State has asked the Syrian Army and its ally Hezbollah to let it withdraw from Syria’s border with Lebanon to the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, an official in the pro-Assad military alliance said on Thursday.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of the hills near the mountainous border area between Lebanon and Syria is pictured from the town of Ras Baalbek, Lebanon August 19, 2017. REUTERS/ Ali Hashisho
Syrian government forces and their Lebanese ally, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, are trying to oust Islamic State militants from the western Qalamoun region of Syria on Lebanon’s border.
The offensive began on Saturday, coinciding with a Lebanese army campaign on Lebanon’s side of the border to drive Islamic State from the Ras Baalbek area in the country’s northeast.
“Islamic State asked for negotiations and a withdrawal, and the Syrian side and Hezbollah agreed,” the official said.
Deir al-Zor province, which borders Iraq to the east, is almost entirely under Islamic State control. The Syrian government has held on to a pocket of territory in the provincial capital of Deir al-Zor city, and at nearby air base.
Both the pro-Assad military alliance and the Lebanese army have advanced towards the Syrian-Lebanese border from their respective sides. The Lebanese army has said it is not coordinating the assault with Hezbollah or the Syrian army.
Earlier this month, dozens of Nusra Front militants and thousands of Syrian refugees were transferred from Lebanon into rebel-held Syria in a deal negotiated between Hezbollah, the Syrian government and Nusra Front.
Hezbollah has provided critical military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s six-year-long war.
Its involvement in Syria is a cause of political tension in Beirut and has strained Lebanon’s policy of “dissociation” from regional conflicts.
Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers of Syria’s war into Lebanon in 2014, when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal.LeBron James will walk away from 2017 with at least one mark in the history books: His tweet to Donald Trump after the President uninvited Steph Curry from the White House was the most retweeted tweet from an athlete of the year, according to Twitter. It’s the seventh on Twitter’s most Retweeted list of all Tweets globally in 2017.
U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up! — LeBron James (@KingJames) September 23, 2017
Here’s the rest of the top 10 list:
2.
Leo and I are donating 6 lbs of dog food to Houston for every retweet this gets!!!! RT RT RT RT!! pic.twitter.com/bcTT905knP — Sam (@SamMartin_6) August 31, 2017
3.
4.
5.
I'm ☠️☠️☠️ yall lol 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣 & can't STOP laughing at all!!! pic.twitter.com/ItarwS6ITu — Chris Rainey (@crainey3) June 21, 2017
6.
50 – 0 — Floyd Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) August 27, 2017
7.
THE FIGHT IS ON. pic.twitter.com/KhW0u3jRft — Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) June 14, 2017
8.
Sleep tight little one… 💙 pic.twitter.com/iGqLXdvlVi — Jermain Defoe (@IAmJermainDefoe) July 8, 2017
9.
10.For nearly two years, tech insiders whispered that Microsoft was designing its own computer servers. Much like Google and Facebook and Amazon, the voices said, Microsoft was fashioning a cheaper and more efficient breed of server for use inside the massive data centers that drive its increasingly popular web services, including Bing, Windows Azure, and Office 365.
It only made sense. Typically, when you run a web service the size of Bing, needing tens of thousands of machines to keep the thing going, traditional server hardware becomes far too expensive. But when this phenomenon was discussed in public, Microsoft typically stayed mum. In designing its own servers, it was moving away from commercial machines sold by the likes of Dell and HP – hardware makers that have long worked hand-in-hand with Microsoft in so many areas of the computer game – and it seemed that Steve Ballmer and company were wary of offending their longtime allies.
>Microsoft will not only lift the veil from its secret server designs. It will 'open source' these designs, sharing them with the world at large.
Not anymore. This morning, in San Jose, California, Microsoft will not only lift the veil from its secret server designs. It will "open source" these designs, sharing them with the world at large so that other online outfits can use them inside their own data centers. "We're trying to drive hardware innovation in cloud computing," says Bill Laing, the Microsoft corporate vice president who will reveal the designs at this week's Open Compute Summit, a conference dedicated to the free exchange of hardware know-how.
It's yet another sign that the worldwide market for data center hardware is changing in enormous ways. In the past, if you needed servers or data storage gear or networking hardware, you simply bought what was available from American hardware vendors like Dell and HP and Cisco. Now, massive web outfits like Google and Facebook and Amazon and even Microsoft are designing their own hardware, partnering with manufacturers in Asia and other foreign locales to build this hardware on the cheap, and – in some cases – helping others take the same route.
Facebook galvanized this movement in 2011, when it open sourced its first server designs and founded the Open Compute Project, the not-for-profit foundation behind this week's summit. The aim was to foster a vast community of companies that would freely trade their hardware designs and bootstrap a more efficient means of getting these designs built. Now, nearly three years later, this idea has come into its own.
Microsoft's New Stripes ———————–
Microsoft's move towards the Open Compute Project is particularly telling. It's not just that the company is a traditional ally of Dell and HP, with these hardware makers selling its Windows operating system on all sorts of computers, from desktops and laptops to servers. It's that, for so many years, Microsoft was staunchly opposed to sharing its intellectual property with outsiders. It avoided open source software and even actively battled against those who built the stuff. Now, it's embracing open source in both the hardware and the software world.
>'Microsoft is not doing this purely for the good of the community. There's some good in it for them too.' Al Gillen
As it released its server designs, the company also open sourced the software it built to manage the operation of these servers.
But this isn't mere altruism. By sharing its designs and software, Microsoft can push the web forward, helping others build more efficient data centers. But it can also boost its own cause, expanding the market for this custom-built gear and driving down its hardware costs even further.
"Microsoft is not doing this purely for the good of the community," says Al Gillen, a server and system software analyst with research outfit IDC. "There's some good in it for them too."
Microsoft's Bill Laing adds that the move can also help the company sell more software. Remember, Microsoft isn't just a web company. It's a software vendor. In addition to running cloud services like Windows Azure, it sells all kinds of software that buyers can use to build their own cloud services. If the company shares the server designs that underpin Azure, the thinking goes, it will only encourage others to erect their own Azure-like services with Microsoft software.
"We've learned a lot from operating at scale," Laing says, "and we've heard from customers and
service providers we work with that they want to take advantage of our learnings and our knowledge."
More Than Just Spin ——————-
As Microsoft releases its server designs, it's careful to paint the Dells and the HPs in a positive light. Though Google and Facebook have openly said they go straight to low-cost Asian manufacturers in fashioning their own data center hardware, sidestepping the Dells and the HPs, Microsoft declines to say who builds its machines. And it says that, in addition to Asian manufacturer Quanta, both Dell and HP will sell systems based on its open source designs.
But this is more than just spin. The fact of the matter is that Dell and HP see where the world is moving, and they too have begun to embrace this new way of doing things.
>'We're being aggressive and going after an opportunity. We want to give our customers choice – as opposed to worrying about whether it hurts our existing business.' Tom Burns
A company like Quanta is the main beneficiary of the Open Compute movement. In the past, Quanta worked behind the scenes to build machines on behalf of American hardware vendors like Dell and HP. Now, it's selling hardware directly to buyers, cutting the middlemen out of the equation. But in an effort to maintain their place in the world, Dell and HP are working just as hard to court the many web companies who have their eye on a cheaper and more streamlined breed of hardware.
Thus, Dell and HP will sell machines based on Microsoft's designs, just as they've backed similar designs from Facebook. When Facebook created the Open Compute Project, Dell was on hand, and HP soon jumped in as well.
This morning, Dell revealed it has also embraced the Project's effort to overhaul the world's network gear. Web giants such as Facebook are moving to towards "bare metal" networking switches – commodity hardware that can be loaded with any software – and now, through a partnership with Silicon Valley startup Cumulus Networks, Dell is helping other outfits make the same leap.
In a way, Dell is eating its own business. For years, it has sold more expensive and more complex networking gear through a subsidiary called Force10 networks. But the company realizes that a growing number of companies need cheaper and more flexible gear – and that it must serve these companies too. "We're being aggressive and going after an opportunity," says Tom Burns, vice president of networking at Dell. "We want to give our customers choice – as opposed to worrying about whether it hurts our existing business."
That too is big news. The Googles and the Facebooks and the Amazons started this movement. But when Microsoft and Dell get involved, it's proof the rest of the world is following.Gawker has reached a settlement with Hulk Hogan, bringing to an end the legal battle that led to the demise of Gawker.com.
The company will pay $31 million to settle the lawsuit and contribute proceeds from its $135 million sale to Univision, according to news reports. That's instead of the $140 million judgment that drove the company into bankruptcy earlier this year.
Gawker founder Nick Denton announced the settlement in a blog post Wednesday.
"Yes, we were confident the appeals court would reduce or eliminate the runaway Florida judgment against Gawker, the writer of the Hogan story and myself personally. And we expected to prevail in those other two lawsuits by clients of Charles Harder, the lawyer backed by Peter Thiel," Denton wrote.
"But all-out legal war with Thiel would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight. The Valley billionaire, famously relentless, had committed publicly to support Hulk Hogan beyond the appeal and 'until his final victory.' Gawker’s nemesis was not going away."
Hogan sued Gawker over a 2012 post that featured a clip of a tape that showed the professional wrestler having sex with the wife of a friend of Hogan. His legal battle was funded by Peter Thiel, the billionaire PayPal founder and Facebook investor.
David Houston, a lawyer for Hogan, said in an emailed statement: "As with any negotiation for resolution, all parties have agreed it is time to move on."
Many had expected that the $140 million judgment that drove Gawker into bankruptcy and forced the media company to auction itself off to Univision would be overturned on appeal.
Instead, Gawker is opting to end this fight now. The settlement will also clear Denton and former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio of personal debts imposed by the Florida jury's judgment.
Denton said in his post that the legal fight represented less than 1 percent of Thiel's net worth, compared to the consequences for Gawker's employees named in the suit.
As part of the settlement, Gawker will remove three stories from its site: The post involving Hogan, a story about a claim by Shiva Ayyadurai that he invented email and a story about a feud between the founders of Tinder. Those stories were also under litigation backed by Thiel's lawyer.
The settlement will have to be approved by a bankruptcy court.
"It’s a shame the Hogan trial took place without the motives of the plaintiff’s backer being known," Denton wrote of Thiel. "If there is a lasting legacy from this experience, it should be a new awareness of the danger of dark money in litigation finance. And that’s surely in the spirit of the transparency Gawker was founded to promote. As for Peter Thiel himself, he is now for a wider group of people to contemplate."
Can we relaunch Gawker now — Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) November 2, 2016Senior Labour MPs and former advisers who have previously criticised Jeremy Corbyn were expressing notably different attitudes towards the Labour leader as the election result emerged on Friday morning.
Many from within the party praised the leader after it became Mr Corbyn had succeeded in preventing Theresa May from obtaining the majority she sought in the general election.
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.
Here are some of the high-profile Labour figures who have altered their stance on the Labour leader:
Owen Smith, Labour MP and former leadership candidate
Then:
Mr Smith stood against Mr Corbyn in Labour’s leadership election last year and has hit out against him on a number occasions.
In July 2016, he described his rival's political principles as “just hot air” and said there is no real prospect of him leading the Labour Party into power.
“He's a principled man and someone who has got deep Labour values, but our question is 'can he take the Labour party to where we need to be?',” he said.
”Because without winning elections, without Labour being a serious party of government again, then all the principles are just hot air."
Now:
But speaking to the BBC following the election, Mr Smith said: “I was clearly wrong in feeling that Jeremy was unable to do this well and I think he’s proved me wrong and lots of people wrong and I take my hat off to him.”
When asked whether it was Mr Corbyn’s or Labour’s policies that won the election, Mr Smith said: “It has to be both. I don’t know what Jeremy’s got but if we could bottle it and drink it we’d all be doing very well.
“We were hearing people who hadn’t voted for a long while voting Labour yesterday evening, who were inspired by the policies, and it has to be said by Jeremy, to vote Labour last night.”
Chuka Umunna, Labour MP
Then:
Mr Umunna criticised Mr Corbyn’s leadership during the EU referendum campaign, saying: “Our main striker often wasn’t on the pitch, and when he was, he failed to put the ball into the net.”
In 2015, Mr Umunna hit out at the Labour leadership’s plan to let its MPs vote according to their conscience and political beliefs on certain issues, saying: “It’s not plausible for us to have a position not to have a position on the defence of the realm."
He later criticised Mr Corbyn’s stance on military action in Syria with thinly veiled comments directly target the Labour leader. “Ultimately there are some people who are pacifists in our party who would never ever sanction the use of force or military intervention in any circumstance. I don’t share those views,” he said.
Now:
But speaking after the election result became clear, Mr Umunna said of Mr Corbyn: “He |
brain."
***
I write narratives for a living. And so, seated at my Jerusalem window last year, ready to at last look back and write, I was familiar with the task at hand, the need to gather information and to then look for patterns in it.
But as a writer, I also knew to be wary of pareidolia, the perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not exist. I knew that each of us is apt to overlook those patterns that do exist if they are inconvenient or painful. And I knew that particularly those narratives we write about ourselves can be as detached from the truth as those we inherit.
And so, when written records -- hospital files, diaries, photos -- contradicted my memories, I deferred to them and tried to learn from the difference. That I misremembered that a girl in college had canceled our date after seeing my wheelchair a first time (when in fact she had long known that I used it) reminded me that I had long seen the shadow of disability where it was not present. And it was then I saw how similarly intent my crash-mates were to see God in a wrecked bus.
Yaakov, the Chasid, told me that God had saved his family because grandmother Etel had said Psalms before boarding the bus. He did not note that the family had headed to Jerusalem only because Etel had suggested they go to the Western Wall (or that God might have done better by them by not causing the crash at all).
The widow of the slain bus driver said that God had taken her husband. She did not note that he had died at a bend in the highway known by some in Israel as "sivuv hamavet," the turn of death, where between 1980 and 2010, according to the State of Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 144 accidents with casualties.
Abed, the truck driver, said that God, not he, had caused the crash (adding that he had lived an unholy life before the crash, partying in Tel Aviv and Haifa). He did not note that he had ignored large yellow signs instructing him to shift his truck into a low gear (evidenced by police photographs of his brake pads). And he did not note that he had already been guilty, at age 25, of 26 driving violations.
But I noted these things. And what for so many years had seemed to point to the arbitrariness of life was soon evidence of the opposite -- my broken neck the almost inevitable consequence not of a divine plan, but of a reckless driver, a truck loaded with four tons of tiles, a backseat with no headrest, and a dangerous road. And it was out of this recognition that the narrative of a slim book grew, careful always to make sense, to reflect, to contextualize -- the obvious efforts of a once passive victim to exert agency over an ungovernable act.
That agency is important for the writer. It is what enables him or her to wring meaning from facts and observations, and then be free of them. And because agency informs the narrative, it is important for the reader too. Millennia after Job suffered, my Chasidic crash-mates put him forth to me as an example of faith in the face of sorrow. But he had ached to write his own narrative too.
"Oh that my words were now written!" Job said. "Oh that they were printed in a book!"Ron Artest is escorted off the floor in Detroit following a brawl with Pistons fans. (Photo: Getty Images)
A whistle stops the clock during the Pacers-Pistons game at the Palace of Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, 2004 with 45.9 seconds remaining.
Using an estimated start time of 8:05 p.m., the official game time of 2:49 and the timer on video of the Malice at the Palace, here is a breakdown of the events that followed Ron Artest's hard foul on Ben Wallace nearly 10 years ago.
10:54 p.m.: Artest fouls Wallace with the Pacers leading 97-82.
Pistons' Ben Wallace and teammates are kept apart from Ron Artest by Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle and official Tommy Nunez Jr. (Photo: Getty Images)
+2 seconds: Wallace shoves Artest, then pursues him as players and coaches from both teams spill onto the court.
+8 seconds: Artest lies down on the scorer's table as players from both teams continue to push and shove.
Video broadcast captures Ron Artest fighting in the stands. (Photo: TV / FSN)
10:56 p.m.: Just as things had settled down, a cup hits Artest, and he charges sending him into the stands. Stephen Jackson follows him in immediately, igniting a fight with fans. Artest hits a fan, John Green punches Artest. William Paulson throws liquid at Artest, Jackson retaliates. Fred Jones is punched by David Wallace, Ben's brother. Eddie Gill and David Harrison also go into the stands.
10:57 p.m.: Artest returns to the court and punches a fan, Jermaine O'Neal hits the same man.
10:58 p.m.: Artest, Jackson and several other Pacers make their way to the locker room while fans pour trash on them. Bryant Jackson throws a chair into the crowd as the players are leaving the court. O'Neal goes after another fan while making his way to the locker room. Anthony Johnson also throws a punch at a fan on the court. Harrison is later identified as hitting a fan while walking off the court.
10:59 p.m.: Pacers are cleared off the court.
Nov. 20, 2004: Artest, O'Neal and Stephen Jackson are suspended indefinitely for the Pacers. Ben Wallace is also suspended indefinitely for the Pistons.
The Pacers lose to Orlando 86-83 without their three stars. Jones scores 31 points, Harrison 19 as Indiana uses just six players.
Austin Croshere tries to hold Ron Artest back following the Malice in the Palace. (Photo: AP)
Nov. 21, 2004: NBA commissioner David Stern cites personal "shock, revulsion and fear" upon viewing replays of the brawl and hands out the following suspensions (with lost salary):
Artest — 73 games, $5,288,545
Stephen Jackson — 30 games, $1,865,854
O'Neal — 25 games, $4,510,975 (later reduced to 15 games, $2,706,585)
Ben Wallace — 6 games, $439,024
Johnson — 5 games, $120,000
Reggie Miller ($60,000), Pistons Elden Campbell, Chauncey Billups and Derrick Coleman — 1 game each for leaving the bench
Harrison is identified hitting a fan after the suspensions are handed out and is not punished by the NBA.
Nov. 22, 2004: Green is identified as the fan who threw the plastic cup full of liquid at Artest.
Nov. 23, 2004: NBA Players Association files an appeal on behalf of all nine players saying the penalties were not in line with penalties of the past, Artest's history should not have been a factor and the players' actions should be considered in light of the "total chaos."
Nov. 24, 2004: Jamaal Tinsley and James Jones combine for 51 points in a victory over Boston, the Pacers' first after the brawl. It's the first of three consecutive victories before the team hits a seven-game losing streak.
Nov. 29, 2004: The fan who threw the chair, Bryant Jackson, is identified, though not immediately named.
Dec. 1, 2004: Green and Charles Haddad are banned from the Palace of Auburn Hills for their roles in the brawl.
Dec. 8, 2004: O'Neal, Artest, Harrison, Johnson and Stephen Jackson are charged with misdemeanor assault and battery, with a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail or a $500 fine, or both. O'Neal is charged with two counts. Five Detroit fans — Green, Bryant Jackson, David Wallace, William Paulson and John Ackerman — were charged with misdemeanor assault and battery, with Jackson also drawing a charge of felonious assault for throwing a chair.
Dec. 9, 2004: Arbitrator Roger Kaplan hears six hours of testimony during a grievance hearing over the suspensions.
Dec. 20, 2004: Haddad files a lawsuit against O'Neal and Johnson in Detroit for being hit by the players.
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Dec. 22, 2004: Arbitrator reduces O'Neal's suspension 10 games to 15, citing previous conduct, including awards attesting to his character, community involvement and citizenship. The suspensions of Artest and Jackson are upheld.
Dec. 23, 2004: A U.S. District Court judge in New York issues a temporary restraining order that allows O'Neal to return to the court Dec. 25 against the Pistons.
Dec. 25, 2004: Pistons defeat the Pacers 98-93 despite 21 points and 7 rebounds by O'Neal in his return.
Dec. 30, 2004: A federal judge upholds the reduced suspension for O'Neal.
Jan. 26, 2005: Stephen Jackson returns to score 17 points in a 100-86 loss to Boston.
April 20, 2005: The Pacers finish the regular season 44-38. It is the last time they finish over.500 until 2011-12.
Pacers average 16,994 fans, 17th in the league. They drop to 16,179 (24th) in 2005-06, 15,359 (28th) in 2006-07, bottoming out at 12,221 (30th) in 2007-08. The Pacers don't return to their 2004-05 figure until 2013-14, drawing 17,501 (15th).
May 3, 2005: Bryant Jackson was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay $6,000 in restitution.
David Wallace was sentenced to one year of probation and community service for punching Fred Jones, though the specific date could not be verified.
May 7, 2005: The Pacers eliminate the Boston Celtics 4-3 in the first round of the playoffs.
May 19, 2005: The Pistons eliminate the Pacers 4-2 in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Sept. 22, 2005: O'Neal, Artest and Stephen Jackson are sentenced to a year probation after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor assault charge. Each is also ordered to perform 60 hours of community service and pay a $250 fine.
Sept. 30, 2005: Harrison is sentenced to a year probation after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor assault charge. He is also ordered to perform community service, undergo anger management counseling and pay a $250 fine.
Oct. 7, 2005: Johnson is sentenced to a year of probation after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor assault charge. He is also ordered to perform 100 hours of community service, attend counseling and fined $250.
Nov. 2, 2005: Artest returns to the lineup for the season opener, scoring 16 points.
Jan. 25, 2006: Artest is traded to Sacramento for Peja Stojakovic.
Feb. 16, 2006: Charges against Paulson are dismissed after it was determined he was merely defending a friend against Artest.
May 1, 2006: Green is sentenced to 30 days in jail on an assault and battery charge and two years probation for punching Artest. He was not charged with a second count for throwing the cup at Artest. He was also ordered to attend anger management classes and Alcoholics Anonymous and stay away from the Pacers while on probation.
Oct. 19, 2006: The lawsuit by Hadded against O'Neal and Johnson is dismissed. Haddad said O'Neal's punch left him with migraine headaches, memory loss, trouble sleeping, inability to socialize and aversion to bright lights and loud noises. But the defense presented evidence Haddad flew to Las Vegas the day after the brawl and regularly visited the city.
Jan. 16, 2007: Stephen Jackson is traded with Al Harrington, Sarunas Jasikevicius and Josh Powell to Golden State for Ike Diogu, Mike Dunleavy, Keith McLeod and Troy Murphy.
June 10, 2008: Lawsuits against the Pacers by Ackerman and Paulson are settled. Terms are not disclosed.
July 9, 2008: Pacers trade O'Neal and Nathan Jawai to the Toronto Raptors for Maceo Baston, T.J. Ford, Roy Hibbert and Rasho Nesterovic.Barrister’s in Clayton hosted the first Blues Caravan for 2015. Head Coach for the St. Louis Blues Ken Hitchcock came through and of course spoke hockey with Chris Kerber & Chris Hrabe. A lot of Blues hockey fans turned out for this and enjoyed themselves. Barrister’s has some very tasty food and its a great place to enjoy some St. Louis Blues hockey. You can join us each week from 6 to 9 p.m. for the Blues Summer Caravan show on KMOX 1120 AM. The show will feature Blues players and other special guests, autograph and photo opportunities and prize giveaways at each show, which will be broadcast live from a different location each week. Here are some photos from the event and if you are a Blues fans make sure hop on the caravan.
http://www.barristersclayton.comScientists decode breast cancer DNA
Posted
Canadian scientists have made a breakthrough in medical science, becoming the first to decode the DNA of breast cancer cells.
The British Columbia Cancer Agency study represents a major step towards determining how cancer begins and what makes it spread through the body.
Researchers have decoded all three billion letters in the DNA sequence of a spreading breast cancer tumour.
They have also identified the mutations that caused the original cancer to spread.
Until now scientists have not been able to to find all the mutations present in a given tumour.
Medical experts say the finding brings unprecedented information about breast cancer; there were genetic distinctions between an original tumour and after it spread, and that could lead to new cancer drugs and more personalised medicine.
Topics: breast-cancer, health, diseases-and-disorders, cancer, medical-research, science-and-technology, genetics, canadaScala Saturday: Static vs dynamic typing
Type inference makes static typing easy in Scala
Mark Canlas Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 29, 2017
Scala is statically typed. “Boo, types!” you might be thinking. “So restricting and tedious! Jeeves, drive me back to my scripting language!” Before you write off static types completely, let me share a bit about my background with types.
A Tale of Two Types
I wasn’t always Mr. Monad. I didn’t always “push my errors into the compiler”. Nope, I would just let it fly. “Ship it and see if it survives!” I’d write and run. I’d write some more and then I’d run again. But little did I know what I was running from… was types.
In my formative years I was a user, a big time user of dynamic typing. For more years than I care to admit, I was a professional Perl programmer with some JavaScript on the side. I knew my Perl Best Practices. I bled Modern Perl. And I slept soundly with my copy of Higher Order Perl tucked beneath my pillow. I’d look around at my peers, fellow Perl folk, PHP-ers, Pythonistas, Rubyists, and I‘d think, “Aren’t we all a productive pod of programmers that mostly start with the letter P?”
“Static typing is for academics,” we’d trumpet. “We have no time for types. We’re too busy being more productive by not writing them!” Sound familiar? At some point a dichotomy arises of “static languages are boring because you have to specify the types and dynamic languages are funner because you never have to specify any”.
Gel pens are serious business.
But the code eventually catches up to you. Things get more complex. The code base grows, teammates change, and you can’t hold it all in your head anymore. “Was that an array or an object?” What was once an integer is now a string, or sometimes nothing at all. Have you ever woken up in a cold sweat thinking, “Was that a real class? Or just a hash dictionary? Did I spell those keys correctly?”
Living a professional life of second-guessing my own work had taken its toll. I was looking for something else, something with consistency.
Duly noted
Here comes the big bad, static typing in Scala. Contrast with Java and C#, the types go on the right of the identifier.
Unlike Java, type annotations go on the right.
Every value, parameter, and method has a type associated with it known at compile time. Without running the program, the compiler can tell if your program is correct based on the types that flow through it. This handles basic, logical mistakes like “you gave me a String but I needed an Int ".
One of the chief complaints with static typing is the need to explicitly specify types for everything. Right away, we can see a bit of redundancy. The type annotation on the left is often the same as the value being constructed on the right. It becomes even more cumbersome when using a type like Map which takes two type parameters. Twice the duplication and twice the friction!
Type inference to the rescue
Many languages nowadays feature some form of type inference where the compiler can guess your types at compile time. Often, the type of your value will be based on the expression that it is being assigned. In the case below, we can tell that age will be of type Int since 13 is an Int literal. Likewise, we can infer that the type of pet will be Dog since we are constructing one on the right side.
So pleasant and easy to read.
Scala can even infer the two type parameters of Map. Recall that Map is a type that takes two additional types within it, one for keys and one for values. In this case, the full type of dictionary is Map[String, Int]. In this case as well, the Scala compiler is smart enough to infer the kind of Map we are building based on the literals passed into its constructor. Likewise, when we want to case/match against the individual elements in dictionary, we can relax the annotations there because the compiler can infer from context.
Even the describePets method has its type inferred. In Scala, the last expression in a block will be that block’s return value and type. Since descriptions is a Seq[String] and is the last line of the method, the entire method describePets must also return Seq[String].
Having type inference of this level of power is extremely convenient. We can depend on the compiler to help us during development. Firstly, we don’t need to annotate everything. If the type of some domain concept changes, that new type will propagate to all of the areas where its type is left to be inferred. The compiler will automatically infer that new type without us having to change any annotations. Secondly, if we happen to miss any spots or leave the code in an illogical state, the code wouldn’t compile, preventing any surprising runtime errors.
Let’s revisit that dichotomy from earlier. Is it still true that all languages with static typing come with a high usability cost?
The Axes of Eval
Newer languages have increasingly powerful forms of type inference, relieving you of the burden of annotations while enabling you to reap the benefits of compile time safety.
Dynamic dud
We can take a look at dynamic types through the lens of a static type system. We can describe a dynamic program as having all values, variables, and functions belonging to one type whose behavior isn’t resolved until runtime. In Scala, we call this type Any. Dynamically typed code can take in Any type as an input and return Any type as an output. This amount of power could be a blessing or a curse, but more often curse than not.
In my entire career as a Perl and JavaScript programmer, I haven’t found a strong enough or frequent enough use case for the ability to take in arbitrary input or return arbitrary values. In 99% of the cases, functions would take in one type and always return some other type. And because we didn’t have explicit types written anywhere, I would need to double check the documentation to make sure. In the first example function increment we’re always expecting an Int and returning an Int, but our annotations are under-specified. In theory increment could take anything and return anything. Is that true in practice? Is that expectation ever violated? What would our code do if that wasn’t the case? Why leave any of these suspicions to chance? Why not say this up front and have the spec match our expectations? It’s this constant stream of doubt that has made me shy away from dynamic types in favor of typed code that has much more consistent, targeted behavior.
There may be some cases where you do want to match on the type of some input. But these cases are much more limited in scope than the ability to match on anything at all. There is almost always a way to accomplish what you want using a static workflow and types. For example, if you were dead set on having a function that could take in or return either a String or an Int but no other types, there’s actually another mechanism you could use called Either. Your output type would be Either[String, Int]. With this container type, we’ve narrowed the scope down from Any to two specific types can be analyzed during compile type, free of any ambiguities or problems at runtime.
Level up
Having been on both sides of the static/dynamic fence and building a career on both, I’m highly skeptical of ever returning to dynamically typed languages. Newer languages and stronger type inference systems have made the path to static typing much more palatable and fun.
Special shout out to Ryan LeCompte who detailed a similar experience with Scala in his 2013 Scala Days presentation Confessions of a Ruby Developer Whose Heart Was Stolen By Scala.Ballou High School in Southeast Washington, D.C., is about five miles from the U.S. Capitol—a 10-minute drive. The neighborhood is mostly poor, guns are common and it’s hardly news when another youngster from the area is killed. In the past decade, assailants have murdered dozens of Ballou students or recent graduates. Yet the teenagers at the school, 98 percent of whom are black, largely view the police as the enemy.
At a time of national debate about police brutality, race, urban violence and wide disparities in opportunities for young people of different backgrounds, Politico Magazine organized a wide-ranging and revelatory conversation with eight Ballou students to hear their views on the challenges they face growing up. They spoke about why they distrust—even despise—the police, and about a code of silence that forbids them from “snitching” on criminals. They also discussed the juvenile justice and prison systems.
Story Continued Below
In the days before the discussion took place, violence struck the Ballou community once again. It apparently began with an argument at a basketball game on January 14 against rival Anacostia High School. After police and school administrators escorted arguing fans out of the game, gunfire erupted near the campus. One or more gunmen killed Phillip Jones, 17, and wounded at least one other juvenile. In a separate incident five days later—on Martin Luther King Jr. Day—assailants shot and killed former Ballou student Kevin Owens, 22, on a Southeast street at 2 in the afternoon.
One week after that, the participants in the Politico Magazine roundtable gathered in a conference room at the high school, a gorgeous, new $142 million facility that replaced the dilapidated school building next door. Gabriel Benn, a former Ballou administrator and Peabody Award-winning hip-hop artist who also goes by the name Asheru, led the discussion. The following excerpts have been condensed and lightly edited for purposes of clarity and space. — Jeffrey Bartholet
***
Gabriel Benn: Can anyone recall his or her first impressions of police as a child living in this community?
Malik: When I was young, they kicked doors in and took my uncles, so ever since then, I ain’t never liked them.
Harold: I didn’t really pay attention to the police because my daddy always used to be locked up. So I used to want to be different from that.
Photographs by Melissa Golden for Politico Magazine
Benn: If you encounter a police officer right now, if you see one on the street or if you’re riding in the car and one pulls up behind you, what are your initial feelings?
De’Azia: What did I do?
Doné: This is going in a real bad way. Real bad.
DeAngelo: I feel like I’m dirty.
Benn: What if you’re not, though?
Doné: Half of the time, they pull you over, or if you walking and they stop you, [it’s because] oh, you fit a description. A million people got black hoodies, black jeans and black shoes. Why it got to be me?
Benn: Do you ever see a police officer and feel relieved?
[ A chorus of “no’s”]
Martina: Never. The only cool officer in the world to me is Officer Buck, and the other ones in the school. [Edwin Buckner of the Metropolitan Police Department has been stationed at Ballou High School since a homicide occurred there in 2003.]
Benn: What about you all? How do you feel about Officer Buck?
Malik: That’s the only police I ever sit and talk to.
Doné: I ain’t never had no personal sitdown, like man-to-man with him, or nothing like that. But the part where I feel he is most cool with me is the sports part. He might see me and say, “I see you scored this week,” or something like that. Other than that, I just draw that line: At the end of the day, you’re still a police officer, and I’m still who I am.
Benn: Do you get the feeling that Buck genuinely cares about y’all?
De’Azia: Yeah, he do.
Benn: Why do you think he’s that way and the other officers are not?
Donyell: He interacts with us.
Malik: He understands the situation we’re going through, and he probably been there before. He just took the route he took.
***
Benn: Do you think race plays a factor in this? Do you think white police officers treat you differently than black police officers?
Malik: In some situations.
Martina: [Black or white], in some cases, they just look at it as, “They’re from Southeast, they up to no good.” If you got dreads, they just know you up to no good. If your pants sag, they know you up to no good. If you’re not doing nothing, they just know you up to no good. They always assume.
Benn: Does that make you alter your appearance?
Malik: One day, I want to dress like I always dress and, one day, I want to go outside in a suit and a tie, and see what the difference is—how they treat me.
Benn: Do you think they will treat you differently?
Malik: Yeah, I think if the jump-outs come [when police jump out of an unmarked car to frisk people] and I’m standing with the same people I’ve been standing with, wearing what I wear, I’ll have to go through the searches and all of that. But if I wear a suit or something, they might really let me go.The identity of the person in the grave has been hanging over this season of Arrow, but it's also haunting for members of cast, who have been left just as much in the dark as the fans regarding the unknown victim. TVGuide.com spoke to star David Ramsey about who he thinks is in the grave, who he thinks is safe and Wednesday's episode, which puts the spotlight on Diggle's tumultuous relationship with his brother Andy (Eugene Byrd) and their connection to the clandestine organization Shadowspire. Check out everything Ramsey revealed below.
Wednesday'sepisode is another big Diggle-centric hour. What's it been like for you getting to get to explore so much of Diggle's life outside of Team Arrow and his past?
David Ramsey: It feels great. Diggle's married again for the second time, has a child, is probably the most evolved and adjusted character on the show. He has a uniform, so to speak. He's come in contact with his once thought dead brother. There's a rich, rich character that four seasons in that we can really sink our teeth into. We see that he can lead Team Arrow in the absence of Oliver (Stephen Amell). His wife is intimately involved in A.R.G.U.S. There's a lot of story to tell with this character.
How would you describe where Diggle and Andy's relationship stands before this episode and where it goes from there?
Ramsey: Going into the episode we see just one more example of how opposite these guys are. He's not the same person that he knew. He's not the person that he mourned. But this episode is the first time we really get to see the man he did love. When we met Diggle, he was mourning the death of his brother. That really affected his life. And we see no virtuous elements to this guy up to this point. But I think by the end of this episode we really do see the man Diggle loved. We really see a different side of Andy. And there's a ray of sunshine in terms of what he can offer, in terms of helping us take Damien Dahrk (Neil McDonough) down.
How Legends of Tomorrow will intersect with Arrow and The Flash
Diggle obviously feels very conflicted toward Andy, but how would you say Andy feels towards Diggle?
Ramsey: Andy says very profoundly that he never took to the military the way Diggle did. He just wasn't wired, didn't have that circuitry. So there's always been a sense of "You're the good guy, I'm the bad guy," even when they were young. And we see some of that in the flashbacks. But there's a courageousness and a bravery and a heart that just seems to be in the nature of the Diggle family in general. We're going to see that in this episode: They both share the same heart at the core. They both are incredibly brave. They both are incredibly courageous. They both have a strong sense of right. It's just that Andy kind of went his own way... I think he regretted that, but as he went through life, Andy probably just accepted that they were different and this is just the way he'll be.
What do you think is the best case scenario for Diggle and Andy's relationship? Could they ever become as close as they once were and truly rebuild the trust between them?
Ramsey: Just knowing the characters in that universe, John isn't accepting or forgiving enough to accept Andy back in the fold. I don't think Andy is that person. I don't think Andy is far gone, but he's gone enough to the dark side that he accepts that that's who he is. For the most part, he's the bad seed and he's OK with that. The conflict in Oliver doesn't really exist in Andy, I don't think. The conflict that exists in Diggle with playing with shades of wrong, doesn't exist in Andy. Like Amanda Waller, Andy is OK if 30 percent of the hostages die in order to save the other seventy. And that's just the philosophy that he has.
We get to explore Diggle and Andy's past in the Army together. What can you say about that and how they were tied to Shadowspire?
Ramsey: We see some of that in this episode, how they got tied into Shadowspire. And we spend a good portion of time on that, but really this is about Shadowspire's involvement with Andy because of his involvement with H.I.V.E. and H.I.V.E.'s involvement with Damien Dahrk. And we get back to that pretty quickly because that's really where we want our focus to shift back to: how this all connects to Damien Dahrk, because he's ultimately the baddie. It's H.I.V.E. and Shadowspire but all of it is connected to this magical force that is connected to Damien Dahrk.
How long before Diggle and Oliver connect the dots between their shared encounters with Shadowspire and Baron?
Ramsey: I think there's still some story left to be told about that. I can't say how long it's going to take. I don't know the full arc of the season, but the dots will get connected. There's still a lot of story left to tell in terms of how that happens. What happens to Felicity [Emily Bett Rickards] is part of that, how that affects the team is part of that. So every single part of this affects our response to this mystical force that is Damien Dahrk, including Felicity's physical trial right now.
We know it's not Felicity, but who else do you think is the least likely to be in the grave?
Ramsey: I think we all have a bull's-eye on our backs, so to speak. It could be any of us. I've got to tell you, that really helps the morale on the show on set every day when we go to work. We're on our best behavior! The least likely I would guess would be Capt. Lance (Paul Blackthorne), only because of the reaction. To get our sweet Felicity to say to Oliver, "You know what you have to do. You've got to kill this son of a bitch." I was like wow! She's talking like Lyla, Amanda Waller or even Oliver. So to get her to say that would have to be a very, very meaningful death. And not to say that Lance wouldn't be meaningful, but it would have to mean something to the team. And Lance, even though he's been a great ally, I don't think she would be affected that way by Capt. Lance's death. So, it has to be someone closer to the team. And I hate to say it but, you know, I'm right there. I'm on the chopping block. So, we'll see.
Arrow airs Wednesday at 8/7c on The CW.
(Full Disclosure: TVGuide.com is owned by CBS, one of The CW's parent companies.)France is clearly worried about the cultural loyalties of its Muslims and what that may mean for the future. The lower house of Parliament voted overwhelmingly this summer to ban the wearing of full facial veils in public places, and the Senate is expected to take up the matter in the coming months. The expansion of halal has also stirred protest, with some government officials denouncing it as spreading “sectarianism” and inviting discrimination against non-Muslims.
Proponents of the phenomenon agree that the expanding array of halal food here is a sign that the blending of religion, commerce and culture has been more extensive than many realize. But they have a very different take on the trend.
“It’s a sign of integration,” said Abbas Bendali, the director of Solis, a market research agency, who says the halal market is growing nearly 10 percent a year and should reach about $5.7 billion this year. The younger segment of France’s Muslim population, he said, “no longer lives with the myth of returning to their home country.”
Regardless of the emotions it stirs, the growth of halal in France is undeniable. In the last five years alone, spending per household on halal food has grown twentyfold, according to the daily newspaper Le Figaro.
Halal offerings have also moved upscale, from the traditional neighborhood butcher who sold meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law, to a significant presence in French food industries, supermarkets and even restaurants.
A number of major French supermarkets devote entire aisles to halal food products, including chicken sausage, paella and lasagna. One supermarket chain, Auchan, carries a total of 80 certified-halal cured meat products, along with 40 kinds of halal frozen goods and about 30 precooked halal meals.
Even iconic French charcuterie and catering brands like Fleury Michon, Herta and Pierre Martinet have introduced halal lines, while Évian put a halal stamp on some of its bottles to reassure its Muslim clientele that the bottles had never been in close contact with alcohol, which would render the water haram, or unclean.
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The gleaming aisles of Hal’Shop, which opened last year, bear little resemblance to the blood-stained walls of the halal butcher shops of Paris’s working-class neighborhoods. Hal’Shop has 1,600 products, including traditional French dishes like boeuf carottes and cervelas de volaille; cans of foie gras; and bottles of Night Orient, an alcohol-free champagne made from grape pressings.
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“Until now, the halal market was reserved to workers over 55,” said the supermarket’s owner, Rachid Bakhalq. “The products were ‘ethnic,’ like couscous or spices, and badly packaged — the kind of low-quality products that Muslim customers would have bought in their own home country.”
Mr. Bakhalq, 30, studied at a top business school in France and later worked in a pharmaceutical company in England. He sees himself as part of a new generation of halal gourmets, as a member of a social layer often referred to here as the “beurgeois,” a play on “bourgeois” and the word “beur,” a slang word for Arab.
Sensing opportunity, brands like Roger Vidal, a quintessentially French manufacturer of foie gras and terrines, have invested in |
ance of good times.
We must tell others they are wrng and that we are right and that we should all just get along and that we can be happy and that.
Mistress Sekhmet is a maiden goddess of love and peace. She is calm at all times and wants us to hug more people. image src="alllove.gif" alight="rigt'> THIS IMAGE IS SUPER IMPORTANT. We must tell others they are wrng and that we are right and that we should all just get along and that we can be happy and that.Mistress Sekhmet is a maiden goddess of love and peace. She is calm at all times and wants us to hug more people. image src="alllove.gif" alight="rigt'> THIS IMAGE IS SUPER IMPORTANT.
The worshippers of Ap/oop were drowned by the burning tears of Isis, and from the fires rose Sekhmet and Set, Lover-Gods of Chaos. WE MUST NEVAR FORGETSY THIS BEAUTIFUL ACT OF SELFLESS RESPECT AND LOVE The worshippers of Ap/oop were drowned by the burning tears of Isis, and from the fires rose Sekhmet and Set, Lover-Gods of Chaos. WE MUST NEVAR FORGETSY THIS BEAUTIFUL ACT OF SELFLESS RESPECT AND LOVEWORDS
Less is more.
This has always been the case in music. But never more so than now. In an unfiltered world where there’s so much music being released each week that all of us – and our nans, and their dogs – could play a five hour set and not one of us play the same tune, why add to the noise and throw out something simply satisfactory when you could invest more time and thought into something that’s truly special to you and make it stand out from the rest?
This is why Hazard hasn’t released anything since Bricks Don’t Roll in 2014. Of course he’s written some badboy tunes in that time (if you’ve seen him DJ you’ll know a strong proportion of his set is on dub) but nothing that he feels is special enough for him to officially release. It’s not for the want of trying; he admitted in an interview recently that he’d spent three months in the studio and not been (mr) happy with anything…. So he hasn’t returned to his studio since.
Gutting news for fans of his productions? Yes. But also reassuring. This is the reason why his tracks resonate with such chaotic harmony we can all sing along to the bassline: he doesn’t settle for ‘just another banger’ and will wait – for years if he has to – until the time is right.
And while that right time isn’t looking too soon, there’s a whole load of other reasons why Hazard (a self-described grumpy bastard) is actually in a really happy place right now. Thanks to the recent development of his b2b sets with Hype, he’s had to deal with an issue that’s dogged his career for years. Once unable to even think about setting foot on a plane, he’s now able to return to countries he’s not played in over a decade.
Ahead of the 10 year anniversary of Mr Happy, we caught up with Hazard to see how his year’s been so far…
I was going to start by asking you where the hell some new music is. But then I read an interview with you saying you’d spent three months in the studio but didn’t like what you’d made during that time…
Yeah. Three months at the start of the year. I’ve not been back in the studio since.
This is really sad to hear!
It happens man and you have to go with that. It’s happened my whole career. Years ago I’d be like ‘shit! Why I can’t write tunes?’ But now I’m used to it. When I get that feeling I just go ‘ah, one of them again’ and ride it out. When it’s time to go back in again, you feel it and nothing can stop you. It’s a feeling.
Writer’s block is a killer – you hate yourself and drive yourself crazy
I used to think it was writer’s block. But writer’s block is when you’re actually in the studio trying to write. With this I just can’t get in the studio at all. I don’t wanna look at it. I know nothing good will come from sitting in here trying to write. It’s not writer’s block. What would you call it?
Studiophobia?
Yeah or laziness maybe? I don’t know… But I know if I force it then it’s counterproductive. This is one of the longest bouts of this I’ve had but I’m getting those feelings creeping in like it could be time soon.
What triggers it? A sample you hear or a hook comes into your head?
Anything. A sample, an idea, a moment in life, anything. I’ve had many different ideas or inspirations or things that put me in the mood.
I know you’ve got loads of unreleased tracks – I hear them when I see you and Hype play
Yeah there’s a whole EP ready to go bar one track. I’m just waiting for that one special track to bring it all together. I never got round to finishing that track. So I’ve been playing a load of stuff for a few years and actually wrote a few years before that. They’ve been floating around; I got them, Hype plays them. That’s about it. They might not get released. Some of them might. Who knows?
A lot of people are putting out single tracks because our attention spans are so bad we can’t even handle EPs any more. Ever thought about just dropping cheeky one-trackers?
I could. They’re good for release but I want something special. Not in a massive stand out gimmicky way, but just something that’s special to me. Something I love and don’t care if other people like it or not. It needs to mean something to me. They got to touch me in some way. And hopefully other people.
A year has passed since Bricks got that vocal. How do you feel about that now?
I don’t think about it at all to be honest. It was a case of being offered money for something I’d made and got paid for without me having to do anything. Why not? Kids need feeding and clothes and all that.
Subsidise your studio time a bit…
That’s what it was supposed to do! But obviously that didn’t work. It subsidised my telly watching time.
You have been busy though… Lots more international shows this year.
Yeah I got some mad travel sickness tablets from the doctors now and I can fly again. It’s amazing. I used to play in these countries years ago but haven’t been to them for over 10 years. It’s revolutionary actually.
So you haven’t always been travel sick?
Oh no, I was flying around the place all the time when I was younger. I got sick through exhauastion and too much travelling. DJing is one of the easiest jobs in the world but travelling, for me, is the worst job in the world. I used to be fine – I’d be all over Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia and that. But then all of a sudden I was sick in a German hospital. Crying. I had panic attacks, depression, anxiety. That was it. It scared the shit out of me and I knocked long haul flights on the head.
Wow!
Yeah it was down to lack of sleep and way too much caffeine. The doctor told me not to have any more energy drinks because they heighten the anxiety I feel before I fly. I wouldn’t just get anxious about flying but about how sick I would get because of flying. It’s like this endless circle. But yeah these tablets are mental I haven’t been sick once. I’ve been buzzing and really relaxed at these shows. Let It Roll, some Belgium gigs, it’s been great. I don’t get scared about being sick so my vibe isn’t spoilt. Now even bigger or further international shows are on the cards for next year.
Like you said, this is a revolution.
It is! I actually went to the doctor for sleeping tablets so I could have a good night kip before the flight but the doctor said they don’t do that, because sleeping tablets are addictive, instead have these tablets. People who get sickness form leukemia are prescribed them. To know that I can travel, and be relaxed about it, has been amazing and opened up the chances to play even more parties
Last time I spoke to you earlier this year, you said the parties have been the best you’ve ever seen, right?
They have. The next generation who’ve come into the music and the older generation who are still there are rubbing off on each other and really making an effort. A party is only what you make it. Whether you’re a raver or a DJ or whatnot, it seems like people are making an effort to enjoy themselves. That’s how I feel – I look out at the crowd and think ‘did I enjoy this that much when I was younger?’ I don’t think I did!
You are a miserable bastard though
Ha! Yeah but I haven’t always been. I loved partying when I got into this and I don’t think I was as buzzing as the crowds I see now.
Hype mentioned the size of the crowds when we spoke to him earlier this year. The Boomtown one was especially significant, right?
That was mad. We had no idea how big that was until we watched the video. I left thinking ‘yeah it was alright’ He rang me the next day and told me to watch the videos. He said ‘what we saw wasn’t what happened’ When you see the scale of the crowd it’s mental. At the time it was like ‘gig done, let’s go’ It’s like how did we miss that? We were there!
You didn’t enjoy the first few b2bs right?
Nah not really. I think we both thought it was a gimmicky thing but more and more people booked us and were really enjoying it. At first we weren’t into it but when we got our transitions between us smoother it’s really good. It’s natural now and we’ve developed these funny hand signals so we know what we’re both doing. We haven’t practiced them but they work and we know when each other come in. It’s pretty smooth now.
You play on different set-ups, don’t you?
Yeah it’s awkward as hell. He’s on Serato with two decks and a mixer, I’m on four CDJs with a mixer. First we were wired into each other now we’ve got it going into another mixer so we can both play live at the same time if we like. I’m not sure who came up with that. I was just been rolling with it thinking ‘yeah I’m just doing these back to backs, it’s a couple of them get over it, bite your tongue’ but yeah it started working and we realised we were happy now we know what’s going on.
Because both of you love having control and don’t like feeling you’re out of control?
There’s definitely a bit of that. The big difference between us is that I’m grumpy and he’s a moaner. He’ll tell you what he’s not happy about which makes me look the nicest guy in the world. He’ll be moaning at everyone to get things right and I just sit back and smile… I know everything will be right, because he’s moaned, and I look like the good guy.
Good cop / bad cop!
Ha, maybe. Bottom line, it works and loads of people are really interested in booking us. The biggest fear was that I couldn’t do the international shows, because we’re getting some amazing invitations to play around the world, but now even that’s not an issue because of my travel sickness tablets.
You might not be able to face the studio but at least you can face flying!
This is it. Without being over the top, it has actually changed my life. And don’t worry about the studio stuff, that’ll pass, it always does. I’m getting those odd thoughts and feelings again… It won’t be long, trust me.
Trust DJ Hazard: Facebook / TwitterDA Southern attitude, balance, define yourself, direct your own life, direct your power, ego, egoic nature, emotions, enlightenment, excellence, harmony, how to feel happy, inspiration, joy, judgement, life balance, life coach, life journey, life purpose, limiting thoughts, living present, now moments, personal development, self betterment, self development, self help, self improvement, self talk, struggle, success in life, true self, worthiness balance, define yourself, direct your own life, direct your power, duality, ego, egoic nature, emotions, excellence, feminine side, harmonious existence, inner conflict, inspiration, joy, judgement, life balance, life journey, live in the present, now moments, self betterment, self help, self improvement, self talk, self-reflection, struggle, true self, yin yang
There is a duality within us all that we fail to embrace that will, ultimately destroy us if not dealt with.
The duality is constant fodder for TV and movies in the way of good and evil, Yin and Yang, and our male and feminine side, among other things. It is this duality that ‘keeps us in line’ or keeps us from stepping on toes so we can have a life full of no hassle.
But is that a way to truly live?
This is what we have been taught by parents, the way we have been schooled and the way our laws are designed all in the name of a harmonious existence as a society.
While i am not here to debate the nuances of the way societies are structured, i am on a mission to embrace the inner dynamic that allows us to function and it is this inner conflict, that if fully embraced, would have a far-reaching effect on the very fabric of society.
If every soul attempted to embrace the duality that we are endowed with, quite frankly many of our laws would become obsolete. Many of the scriptural references make mention to the fact that there is a certain aspect of our nature that is written upon our heart, essentially we know all we need to know to function without senseless laws that seek to control us.
In other words, we are endowed by our creator to know the way but it is when we release ourselves to the egoic tendencies that we then tend to become more at war than in balance with life and within ourselves.
What is it that pulls us? While that is a different question for most, it is a question that must be asked.
Again, just look at reality shows, and while most scoff at their heighten attempt at drama, it is a compressed look at the nature of souls when put in certain conditions that allow the process to unfold in a way that is all of our natures.
There is a battle that wages, but it need not be. It is like we are constantly bargaining within ourselves for a certain percentage of the company so that one part can retain control over the other.
3 Ways to Begin the Process of Alignment Within
Way 1: Embrace the Emotions
I lose many men here as men, by and large, have been taught that emotions are not the realm of ‘real men’. That emotions make us weak and that we are to ‘power through’ them and ‘man up’.
Have i used enough cliches here?
This is a fairly dynamic aspect of the unification process as there is a certain aspect of your nature that must me expressed emotionally; be it happiness or sadness or frustration or whatever else we experience within. It is when we bury these feelings that we become detached from that balance.
Now, notice i said to embrace them. They are nothing more than guideposts to the truth that the emotions are hiding. That truth that is the real you that seeks a way out through the balance within.
Acknowledge that they are there. Respect them for showing you the way and then look to the way they are pointing. They are the off-ramps for the truth. Allow them to lead you for t is when you pull off within the emotions that cause you to go astray.
Get past them and see the truth they obscure.
Way 2: Understand that Life is a Moving Target
Where many get caught up is in the granite-like approach they seem to take to life. There is right and wrong, good and bad, and this way and that way and, my favorite, my way or the highway. Of course no one ever explained where that highway would lead one.
More importantly, within the very framework of this approach, seems to be an ever-increasing amount of judgement that seems to come along with this way of thinking.
Shakespeare penned in Act 1, Scene 3 of Macbeth, “This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
What is true for you, may not be another’s truth. That does not make it good or bad, right or wrong, it just is what it is. If nothing else, if we live life as our own truth, others will respect it and desire to model it.
More importantly, when we reside in our own life of inner balance there comes naturally a peace that many see in you, but, more importantly, you see in the way you now live. When you live within your own truth, you are on the journey of a life of balance.
Way 3: Understand That in any Situation, Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way, is the Answer
In an given situation, we must understand that if we are in a state of balance and awareness of who we are, there are situations that we do indeed lead. But in other situations, we follow, not with a spirit of anger for not leading, but because we can because of our inner truth.
We know when we are able to become a driving force and when we need to simply become a team player. And, more importantly, we know when to get out of the way. The key here is not allow the ego to become involved in such a way so as to assert itself as the one who should always lead.
A soul with a sense of inner peace knows the exact moments to become the Yin to anothers Yang but it is only from a sense of inner balance.
This is a process, but all stems from within.
Begin the journey, if you have not already, for life awaits you. You await you.
Be a Person of Quality. Direct Your Power.
Until then…
Be Excellent, Expect the Best!
Let me Know your Thoughts Below, Follow this Blog, and be Social with this Post, for the more people we have living successfully in this Now Moment and discussing the value of doing so, the higher we lift all others around us.
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DA Southern is an Author, Speaker, Blogger and a Personal Development Life Coach, teaching the spirit of living in Now Moments with the principles he experienced during over 35 years as an actor and director in live theatre. DA coaches his clients to rid life of limiting beliefs that have kept them from achieving miracles in all areas of their life by embracing Mindfulness of the Present Moment with a renewed Vision for life. Contact DA Southern for Coaching or Speaking @ dasouthern@directyourpower.comJenny Lawton took a somewhat circuitous route to the helm of 3D printing leader MakerBot.
Before joining the company as “Head of People” in 2011, Lawton spent ten years in retail, running her own bookstore in Greenwich, Connecticut. And though physical book selling might appear the polar opposite of 3D printing, which takes digital ideas and makes them physical, Lawton told me she learned a lot in the “down and dirty” retail business. “Retail is tough, tough work,” said Lawton and her bookstore taught her valuable lessons about small business, inventory management and the critical nature of customer relations.
Lawton was able to layer that knowledge on top of a rather rich and impressive background in startups and technology. The 51 year old Quantico, Virginia, native studied applied math at Union College before going to work at the MIT in the late 1980s. In 1991, Lawton (along with Christopher Caldwell) launched the Web consulting firm Net Daemon Associates and rode the Internet wave (they created Monster.com) and subsequent bubble right up to the 1999 burst when Lawton sold the company to Interliant. After that, Lawton spent a couple of years in venture capital.
Then 9/11 happened.
It was, for Lawton, a pivotal experience. She been living what she called a “a go-go” lifestyle. After the terrorists attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, Lawton took stock and thought, “Hey, there’s a different way to do this.” Her love of reading led her to buy the bookstore and build it into a community based service. “I can’t tell you how cool it is to turn a kid onto reading.”
A different passion
Now, however, Lawton is turned on by the sound of 3D printers and whenever she gets to bring kids into her home to show them any of her five 3D printers in action. She’s also excited about the future of MakerBot, even if the short term does not include new 3D printing hardware.
“I am happy to say that we’re not going to be launching new hardware products at CES,” said Lawton sounding gleeful. She told me that MakerBot introduced five new products at CES 2014, including a giant $7,000 3D printer capable of printing 10 objects at once.
All that hardware leaves MakerBot with lots of work to do on many fronts, including solidifying the ecosystem and polishing the projects that are still just rolling out to customers (the mini started shipping in May.)
“We really feel like they need time in the market. Next year is not the year of hardware: Focus on ecosystem and material space,” said Lawton. In other words, MakerBot’s new smart extruder will likely take the company well beyond printing with tradition 3D printing materials like the biodegradable PLC.
Growing up
A little more than a year ago, MakerBot was acquired by another 3D printing company, Stratasys. Little has changed since then, with the notable exception of the company leadership. Over the summer, MakerBot Co-Founder and CEO Bre Pettis shifted to a new role within Stratasys.
Lawton characterized the change as part of a plan. She was, after all, already MakerBot’s president. “We didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Hey Bre, why don’t you do this.’” said Lawton. MakerBot and Stratasys wanted, explained Lawton, to “give Bre a platform to innovate and to be a spokesperson for larger world of 3D printers.”
Looking at MakerBot's financial performance, there's little indication a change was needed at the top. In its Q2 financial statement, Stratasys reported that MakerBot's sales had grown 100% year-over-year and, at $33.6M, the company accounted for nearly 20% of Stratasys's sales.
Still, it’s worth noting that MarkerBot is a considerably different company than it was three years ago when Bre hired Lawton to be, essentially, “HR Plus-Plus.” Back then there were just 40 employees. Today there are 600 and identifiable departments like R&D and Quality Control. It’s no longer “about being [in] that highly moving, fast moving entrepreneurial phase,” said Lawton.
As part of the transition, Lawton put a new management team in place that should help guide MakerBot and its customers into the next phase of the industrial revolution. “We’re not focused on the DIY marketplace,” said Lawton. Instead MarkerBot wants to transform the design process and help move real-time 3D prototyping into the mainstream.
It won’t be alone.
Competition
MakerBot already has competition, but will soon face a small army of more affordable desktop 3D printers. When I asked Pettis in August how he felt about this, he was evasive and essentially dismissed the idea that anyone could be happy with a $200 3D printer.
Lawton’s more sanguine. “I gave a keynote a few weeks ago…and stood up in front of everyone and said, ‘We need more competition.’”
“We’re in such early adopter stages with the world we’re in and there’s so much room to grow,” she added.
As Lawton sees it, there’s a lot of untapped potential in the market. She also noted that soon-to-expire patents should spark even more 3D printing innovation, which could mean better 3D printers from MakerBot – and everybody else. Lawton remains unconcerned. “I don’t think we’re anywhere close to a knife fight yet. I like coopetition instead of competition.”
Lawton hasn’t completely left the book world behind. She made a lot of publisher contacts and, when we spoke, was preparing for a fireside chat with author Walter Isaacson. She also doesn’t appear to miss the book business and is clearly enjoying running MakerBot… and 3D printing bowls. She has them all over her house and “I give them as birthday and wedding presents.”The embouchure of a trumpeter.
Embouchure or lipping[1] is the use of the lips, facial muscles, tongue, and teeth in playing a wind instrument. This includes shaping the lips to the mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument or the mouthpiece of a brass instrument. The word is of French origin and is related to the root bouche,'mouth'. Proper embouchure allows instrumentalists to play their instrument at its full range with a full, clear tone and without strain or damage to their muscles.
Brass embouchure [ edit ]
While performing on a brass instrument, the sound is produced by the player buzzing his or her lips into a mouthpiece. Pitches are changed in part through altering the amount of muscular contraction in the lip formation. The performer's use of the air, tightening of cheek and jaw muscles, as well as tongue manipulation can affect how the embouchure works.
Even today, many brass pedagogues[who?] take a rigid approach to teaching how a brass player's embouchure should function. Many of these authors[which?] also disagree with each other regarding which technique is correct. Research[which?] suggests efficient brass embouchures depend on the player using the method that suits that player's particular anatomy (see below). Individual differences in dental structure, lip shape and size, jaw shape and the degree of jaw malocclusion, and other anatomical factors will affect whether a particular embouchure technique will be effective or not.[2]
In 1962, Philip Farkas hypothesized[3] that the air stream traveling through the lip aperture should be directed straight down the shank of the mouthpiece. He believed that it would be illogical to "violently deflect" the air stream downward at the point of where the air moves past the lips. In this text, Farkas also recommends that the lower jaw be protruded so that the upper and lower teeth are aligned.
In 1970, Farkas published a second text[4] which contradicted his earlier writing. Out of 40 subjects, Farkas showed that 39 subjects directed the air downward to varying degrees and one subject directed the air in an upward direction at various degrees. The lower jaw position seen in these photographs show more variation from his earlier text as well.
This supports what was written by trombonist and brass pedagogue Donald S. Reinhardt in 1942.[5][6] In 1972,[7] Reinhardt described and labeled different embouchure patterns according to such characteristics as mouthpiece placement and the general direction of the air stream as it travels past the lips. According to this later text, players who place the mouthpiece higher on the lips, so that more upper lip is inside the mouthpiece, will direct the air downwards to varying degrees while playing. Performers who place the mouthpiece lower, so that more lower lip is inside the mouthpiece, will direct the air to varying degrees in an upward manner. In order for the performer to be successful, the air stream direction and mouthpiece placement need to be personalized based on individual anatomical differences. Lloyd Leno confirmed the existence of both upstream and downstream embouchures.[8]
More controversial was Reinhardt's description and recommendations regarding a phenomenon he termed a "pivot". According to Reinhardt, a successful brass embouchure depends on a motion wherein the performer moves both the mouthpiece and lips as a single unit along the teeth in an upward and downward direction. As the performer ascends in pitch, he or she will either move the lips and mouthpiece together slightly up towards the nose or pull them down together slightly towards the chin, and use the opposite motion to descend in pitch. Whether the player uses one general pivot direction or the other, and the degree to which the motion is performed, depends on the performer's anatomical features and stage of development. The placement of the mouthpiece upon the lips doesn't change, but rather the relationship of the rim and lips to the teeth. While the angle of the instrument may change as this motion follows the shape of the teeth and placement of the jaw, contrary to what many brass performers and teachers believe, the angle of the instrument does not actually constitute the motion Reinhardt advised as a pivot.
Later research supports Reinhardt's claim that this motion exists and might be advisable for brass performers to adopt. John Froelich[9] describes how mouthpiece pressure towards the lips (vertical forces) and shear pressure (horizontal forces) functioned in three test groups, student trombonists, professional trombonists, and professional symphonic trombonists. Froelich noted that the symphonic trombonists used the least amount of both direct and shear forces and recommends this model be followed. Other research notes that virtually all brass performers rely upon the upward and downward embouchure motion.[10][11] Other authors and pedagogues remain skeptical about the necessity of this motion, but scientific evidence supporting this view has not been sufficiently developed at this time.
Some noted brass pedagogues prefer to instruct the use of the embouchure from a less analytical point of view. Arnold Jacobs, a tubist and well-regarded brass teacher, believed that it was best for the student to focus on his or her use of the air and musical expression to allow the embouchure to develop naturally on its own.[12] Other instructors, such as Carmine Caruso, believed that the brass player's embouchure could best be developed through coordination exercises and drills that bring all the muscles into balance that focus the student's attention on his or her time perception.[13] Still other authors who have differing approaches to embouchure development include Louis Maggio,[14] Jeff Smiley,[15] Jerome Callet.[16][17] and Clint McLaughlin.[18]
Farkas embouchure [ edit ]
Most professional performers, as well as instructors, use a combination called a puckered smile. Farkas[3] told people to blow as if they were trying to cool soup. Raphael Mendez advised saying the letter "M".[19] The skin under the lower lip will be taut with no air pocket. The lips do not overlap nor do they roll in or out. The corners of the mouth are held firmly in place. To play with an extended range one should use a pivot, tongue arch and lip to lip compression.
According to Farkas[3] the mouthpiece should have 2⁄ 3 upper lip and 1⁄ 3 lower lip (French horn), 2⁄ 3 lower lip and 1⁄ 3 upper lip (trumpet and cornet), and more latitude for lower brass (trombone, baritone, and tuba). For trumpet, some also advocate 1⁄ 2 upper lip and 1⁄ 2 lower lip.[citation needed] Farkas claimed placement was more important for the instruments with smaller mouthpieces.[3] The lips should not overlap each other, nor should they roll in or out. The mouth corners should be held firm. Farkas speculated that the horn should be held in a downward angle to allow the air stream to go straight into the mouthpiece, although his later text[4] shows that air stream direction actually is either upstream or downstream and is dependent upon the ratio of upper or lower lip inside the mouthpiece, not the horn angle. Farkas advised to moisten the outside of the lips, then form the embouchure and gently place the mouthpiece on it.[3] He also recommended there must be a gap of 1⁄ 3 inch (8 mm) or so between the teeth so that the air flows freely.
Arban vs. Saint-Jacome [ edit ]
Arban and Saint-Jacome were both cornet soloists and authors of well respected and still used method books. Arban stated undogmatically that he believed the mouthpiece should be placed 1⁄ 3 on the top lip. Saint-Jacome to the contrary said dogmatically that the mouthpiece should be placed "two-thirds for the upper and the rest for the under according to all professors and one-third for the upper and two-thirds for the under according to one sole individual, whom I shall not name."[20]
Buzzing embouchure [ edit ]
The Farkas set is the basis of most lip buzzing embouchures. Mendez did teach lip buzzing by making the student lip buzz for a month before they could play their trumpet and got great results. [21] One can initiate this type of buzz by using the same sensation as spitting seeds, but maintaining a continued flow of air. This technique assists the development of the Farkas approach by preventing the player from using an aperture that is too open.
Stevens–Costello embouchure [ edit ]
Stevens–Costello embouchure has its origins in the William Costello embouchure and was further developed by Roy Stevens.[22] It uses a slight rolling in of both lips and touching evenly all the way across. It also uses mouthpiece placement of about 40–50% top lip and 50–60% lower lip. The teeth will be about 1⁄ 4 to 1⁄ 2 inch (6 to 13 mm) apart and the teeth are parallel or the jaw slightly forward.
There is relative mouthpiece pressure to the given air column. One exercise to practice the proper weight to air relationship is the palm exercise where the player holds the horn by laying it on its side in the palm of the hand, not grasping it. The lips are placed on the mouthpiece and the player blows utilizing the weight of the horn in establishing a sound.
Maggio embouchure [ edit ]
A puckered embouchure, used by most players, and sometimes used by jazz players for extremely high "screamer" notes. Maggio claimed that the pucker embouchure gives more endurance than some systems. Carlton MacBeth is the main proponent of the pucker embouchure. [23] The Maggio system was established because Louis Maggio had sustained an injury which prevented him from playing. In this system the player cushions the lips by extending them or puckering (like a monkey). This puckering enables the players to overcome physical malformations. It also lets the player play for an extended time in the upper register. The pucker can make it easy to use to open an aperture. Lots of very soft practice can help overcome this. Claude Gordon was a student of Louis Maggio and Herbert L. Clarke and systematized the concepts of these teachers. Claude Gordon made use of pedal tones for embouchure development as did Maggio and Herbert L. Clarke. All three stressed that the mouthpiece should be placed higher on the top lip for a more free vibration of the lips.
Tongue-controlled embouchure [ edit ]
This embouchure method, advocated by a minority of brass pedagogues such as Jerome Callet, has not yet been sufficiently researched to support the claims that this system is the most effective approach for all brass performers.
Advocates of Callet's approach believe that this method was recommended and taught by the great brass instructors of the early 20th Century. Two French trumpet technique books, authored by Jean-Baptiste Arban and Saint-Jacome, were translated into English for use by American players. According to some, due to a misunderstanding arising from differences in pronunciation between French and English, the commonly used brass embouchure in Europe was incorrectly interpreted.[citation needed] Callet attributes this difference in embouchure technique as the reason the great players of the past were able to play at the level of technical virtuosity which they did, although the increased difficulty of contemporary compositions for brass seem to indicate that the level of brass technique achieved by today's performers equals or even exceeds that of most performers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Callet's method of brass embouchure consists of the tongue remaining forward and through the teeth at all times. The corners of the mouth always remain relaxed, and only a small amount of air is used. The top and bottom lips curl inward and grip the forward tongue. The tongue will force the teeth, and subsequently the throat, wide open, supposedly resulting in a bigger, more open sound. The forward tongue resists the pressure of the mouthpiece, controls the flow of air for lower and higher notes, and protects the lips and teeth from damage or injury from mouthpiece pressure. Because of the importance of the tongue in this method many refer to this as a "tongue-controlled embouchure". This technique facilitates the use of a smaller mouthpiece and larger bore instruments. It results in improved intonation and stronger harmonically related partials across the player's range.
Woodwind embouchure [ edit ]
Flute embouchure
Flute embouchure [ edit ]
A variety of transverse flute embouchures are employed by professional flautists, though the most natural form is perfectly symmetrical, the corners of the mouth relaxed (i.e. not smiling), the lower lip placed along and at a short distance from the embouchure hole. It must be stressed, however, that achieving a symmetrical, or perfectly centred blowing hole ought not to be an end in itself. Indeed, French flautist Marcel Moyse did not play with a symmetrical embouchure.
The end-blown xiao, kaval, shakuhachi and hocchiku flutes demand especially difficult embouchures, sometimes requiring many lessons before any sound can be produced.
The embouchure is an important element to tone production. The right embouchure, developed with "time, patience, and intelligent work",[24] will produce a beautiful sound and a correct intonation. The embouchure is produced with the muscles around the lips: principally the orbicularis oris muscle and the depressor anguli oris, whilst avoiding activation of zygomaticus major, which will produce a smile, flattening the top lip against the maxillary (upper jaw) teeth. Beginner flute-players tend to suffer fatigue in |
had been blocked since 1996.
The advocates said the lack of federal funding for gun violence research has almost entirely stopped gun violence research. They said the lack of comprehensive information leaves policymakers, health care practitioners, researchers, and others without scientific information about gun violence, and information on how to prevent future incidents. The ban on research was lifted by President Obama in 2013, but no money has appropriated in the federal budget for the CDC research. Obama proposed a series of executive actions on guns earlier this year.
Blumenthal and Murphy said the federal government can provide resources similar to the fights against cancer, HIV and other diseases.
The National Rifle Association has been in favor of the ban on research and funding since the early 1990s.Study Design
We conducted this study using data and DNA samples from 16 case–control studies and cohort studies. All study participants provided written informed consent for genetic studies. The first and last authors designed the study. The institutional review boards at the Broad Institute and each participating site approved the study protocols. The first and last authors vouch for the accuracy and completeness of the data and all analyses.
Study Participants
During the first phase of the study, we sequenced the 20 protein-coding exons in NPC1L1 in samples obtained from 22,092 participants from seven case–control studies and two prospective cohort studies (see Table S1 in the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org). The case–control studies included the Exome Sequencing Project Early-Onset Myocardial Infarction (ESP-EOMI) study conducted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute,11 the Italian Atherosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology (ATVB) study,12 the Ottawa Heart Study (OHS),13 the Precocious Coronary Artery Disease (PROCARDIS) study,14 the Pakistan Risk of Myocardial Infarction Study (PROMIS),15 the Registre Gironi del COR (Gerona Heart Registry or REGICOR) study,16 and the Munich Myocardial Infarction (Munich-MI) study.17 The prospective cohort studies included the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study18 and the Jackson Heart Study (JHS).19
During the second phase of the study, we genotyped the most common inactivating mutation in NPC1L1 on the basis of data obtained during the sequencing phase (p.Arg406X) in nine independent sample sets from a total of 91,002 participants (Table S2 in the Supplementary Appendix). These nine sample sets were from participants in the ARIC study (participants who did not undergo sequencing), the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Biorepository (BioVU),20 the Genetics of Diabetes Audit and Research Tayside (GoDARTS) study,21 the German North and German South Coronary Artery Disease studies,22 the Mayo Vascular Diseases Biorepository (Mayo),23 PROCARDIS (participants who did not undergo sequencing), the Women's Genome Health Study (WGHS),24 and the Women's Health Initiative (WHI).25
Clinical Data
Data obtained for all the participants from both the sequencing and genotyping phases of the study included a medical history and laboratory assessment for cardiovascular risk factors, as described previously for each study. The participants were of African ancestry (2836 participants from ARIC, 2251 from JHS, and 455 from ESP-EOMI), South Asian ancestry (1951 participants from PROMIS), or European ancestry (all the other participants).
For each study cohort, available clinical data were used to define coronary heart disease. The definitions, which therefore varied from cohort to cohort, are provided in Tables S1 and S2 in the Supplementary Appendix.
Sequencing and Genotyping
Sequence data for NPC1L1 were extracted from exome sequences generated at the Broad Institute, the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine, or the University of Washington with the use of protocols that are described in the Supplementary Appendix. Briefly, sequence reads were aligned to the human reference genome (build HG19), and the basic alignment files for sequenced samples were combined for the purpose of identifying variant positions. Single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and indels were identified, and quality control procedures were applied to remove outlier samples and outlier variants, as described in the Supplementary Appendix.
For the purposes of this study, we defined inactivating mutations as any one of the following: SNVs leading to a stop codon substitution (nonsense mutations), SNVs occurring within two base pairs of an exon–intron boundary (splice-site mutations), or DNA insertions or deletions leading to a change in the reading frame and the introduction of a premature stop codon (frameshift mutations). The positions of nonsense, splice-site, and frameshift mutations were based on the complementary DNA reference sequence for NPC1L1 (NM_013389.2) with the ATG initiation codon, encoding methionine, numbered as residue 1 or p.Met1.
To obtain additional data for a particular nonsense mutation (p.Arg406X) observed from sequencing NPC1L1, we genotyped the variant site in additional samples using the HumanExome BeadChip Kit (Illumina), according to the manufacturer's recommended protocol. (See the Methods section in the Supplementary Appendix for details.)
Technical Validation of Sequencing and Genotyping
To assess the accuracy of next-generation sequencing methods, we performed Sanger sequencing on samples obtained from all participants who carried inactivating mutations in the ATVB study. To assess the accuracy of the genotyping of NPC1L1 p.Arg406X with the HumanExome BeadChip kit, we compared these genotypes with those derived from next-generation sequencing for a subset of samples.
Statistical Analysis
We first tested the association between NPC1L1 protein-inactivating mutations and plasma lipid levels. For participants who were receiving lipid-lowering therapy, we accounted for an average reduction in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels of 20% and 30%, respectively,26 by adjusting the measured values accordingly. We did not adjust levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol or triglycerides in these participants. Status with respect to the use of lipid-lowering medication was available for participants in ARIC, JHS, Munich-MI, PROCARDIS, REGICOR, and WGHS. When possible, we combined primary data for studies that included only one participant with an inactivating mutation with data for other studies involving participants of the same ancestry in order to create a larger data set. We performed regression analysis with a linear model that was adjusted for age and sex, along with an indicator variable for the study if applicable, to test for an association between the presence of inactivating mutations in NPC1L1 and levels of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and log-transformed triglyceride levels in each sample set. We combined results first within ancestry groups and then across ancestry groups, using fixed-effects meta-analyses.
We next tested for an association between protein-inactivating mutations in NPC1L1 and the risk of coronary heart disease. In each study, we estimated the odds ratio for disease among carriers of any NPC1L1 inactivating mutation, as compared with noncarriers. We then calculated the summary odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for coronary heart disease among carriers, using a Mantel–Haenszel fixed-effects meta-analysis without continuity correction, a method that is robust with low (and even zero) counts and resultant odds ratios. A P value of less than 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance. The R software program (R Project for Statistical Computing) was used for all analyses.172
Being latin I have tried many different Chimichurri recipes, I added lots more garlic, lots more Parsley and half the salt.
This recipe needs a lot of work. Use 1 bunch of fresh Parsley, minus stems. Use 1 bunch cilantro with the stems. Use 1/2 red onion, and 2 cloves fresh garlic. Nix the cumin, dried oregano and ad...
COOKINGBUNCHES 237 38
Being latin I have tried many different Chimichurri recipes, I added lots more garlic, lots more Parsley and half the salt. Read more
Kristen Swart 116 63
SOOOOO AMAZING!!!! I made this dipping sauce today to go with a roasted chicken recipe on here- but I did change it a bit... I didn't have fresh parsley but since I always have (and love) fresh... Read more
AmandaB 89 53
I made this as written except I used cilantro (and plenty of it) instead of regular parsley. It is very good and stores well in the fridge. We also served it with the Simple Whole Roasted Chick... Read more
Ken Swift 88 7
This recipe needs a lot of work. Use 1 bunch of fresh Parsley, minus stems. Use 1 bunch cilantro with the stems. Use 1/2 red onion, and 2 cloves fresh garlic. Nix the cumin, dried oregano and ad... Read more
BAJATHECAT 87 36
CookinCowgirls Rock! I live in Mexico and there are an abundance of Argentinian restaurants serving Chimichurri Sauce. None, and I mean None, serve a better sauce than this. I will make this... Read more
vtangitau 79 8
I made this to go with the Simple Roasted Chicken Recipe that was recommended and it blew my wife away. The first time I made the Chicken dish on its own and my family still enjoyed it. Howev... Read more
shannonparmentier 97 21
Yummy! I had been looking for something yummy to serve with my grilled chicken. I did add a little extra parsley and garlic. I also chopped up some green onion as well and added them. Taste... Read more
redfoxcooks 59 4
I had been looking for a good chimichurri recipe ever since my visit to our local(and extremely popular) Cuban restaraunt. This was perfect! Made flank steak...rare. What a combo with this sauce... Read morePhoto: ROBERT SORBO / Associated Press Image 1 of / 25 Caption Close
Image 2 of 25 Who remembers the Rainier Beer ads of croaking frogs, the "RainBeer" herd, and its namesake mountain? (Nostalgic videos below.) This ad with Mount Rainier in the background ran in the '70s. Who remembers the Rainier Beer ads of croaking frogs, the "RainBeer" herd, and its namesake mountain? (Nostalgic videos below.) This ad with Mount Rainier in the background ran in the '70s. Photo: P-I file
Image 3 of 25 Just a motorcycle pulling a giant bottle of Rainier in 1974. Just a motorcycle pulling a giant bottle of Rainier in 1974. Photo: P-I file
Image 4 of 25 The neon, red Rainier "R" sat atop the Rainier brewery in Georgetown for nearly 50 years. Pictured in 1971, it was one of Seattle's most recognizable cultural icons. The neon, red Rainier "R" sat atop the Rainier brewery in Georgetown for nearly 50 years. Pictured in 1971, it was one of Seattle's most recognizable cultural icons. Photo: P-I file
Image 5 of 25
Image 6 of 25 An old Rainier Beer truck in 1955. An old Rainier Beer truck in 1955. Photo: P-I file
Image 7 of 25 Back to the RainBeer dance in 1997. This chorus line happened two years before Pabst bought Rainier Beer in 1999 and closed the Seattle brewery that year. Back to the RainBeer dance in 1997. This chorus line happened two years before Pabst bought Rainier Beer in 1999 and closed the Seattle brewery that year. Photo: ELLEN M. BANNER / P-I file
Image 8 of 25 Choreographer Cheryl Johnson is pictured coaching the Rainier RainBeers before their last dance on top of the old brewery along I-5 in 1997. Choreographer Cheryl Johnson is pictured coaching the Rainier RainBeers before their last dance on top of the old brewery along I-5 in 1997. Photo: ELLEN M. BANNER / P-I file
Image 10 of 25
Image 11 of 25 A year after Pabst closed the Rainier brewery, Tully's Coffee moved its headquarters into the building in 2000, and replaced the iconic "R" with a green "T." A year after Pabst closed the Rainier brewery, Tully's Coffee moved its headquarters into the building in 2000, and replaced the iconic "R" with a green "T." Photo: PHIL H. WEBBER
Image 12 of 25 The 12-foot "R" that lit up Seattle's skyline for nearly 50 years is lowered in 2000. The 12-foot "R" that lit up Seattle's skyline for nearly 50 years is lowered in 2000. Photo: PHIL H WEBBER
Image 13 of 25 Tully's "T" stands on the old Rainier brewery, now called the Rainier Commons. Bought from bankruptcy in 2013, Tully's is moving out of the building, which prompted building owner, Shimon Mizrahi, to want the Rainier "R" back. "They cannot go and leave the 'T'," Mizrahi recently told seattlepi.com. "We thought naturally to replace the 'T' with the 'R'." less Tully's "T" stands on the old Rainier brewery, now called the Rainier Commons. Bought from bankruptcy in 2013, Tully's is moving out of the building, which prompted building owner, Shimon Mizrahi, to want the... more Photo: PHIL H. WEBBER / P-I file
Image 14 of 25 New Tully's owner Michael Avenatti said Tully's had the right to keep the "T" at its current spot until about 2020. But he said the "T" never should have gone up in the first place. "The replacement of the ‘R’ with the ‘T’ some 13 years ago was a mistake," Avenatti said in a statement. "That part of the Seattle skyline has always truly belonged to the ‘R’ - some things should never change and this is one of them.” less New Tully's owner Michael Avenatti said Tully's had the right to keep the "T" at its current spot until about 2020. But he said the "T" never should have gone up in the first place. "The replacement of the... more Photo: Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com
Image 15 of 25
Image 16 of 25 Rainier Commons co-owner Shimon Mizrahi said he's working with Pabst to bring back the "R." Pabst, which owns Rainier Beer, said the "R" will be back on Oct. 24. "This is something we’ve been working on for months in cooperation with Columbia Distributing and MOHAI, as well as Western Neon and the owners of the building, Ariel Development," said Pabst spokesperson Dan McHugh in a statement. (Pictured is the old Rainier brewery in the '70s.) less Rainier Commons co-owner Shimon Mizrahi said he's working with Pabst to bring back the "R." Pabst, which owns Rainier Beer, said the "R" will be back on Oct. 24. "This is something we’ve been working on... more Photo: P-I file
Image 17 of 25 The original "R," pictured, went to MOHAI in 2000. The comeback "R" will be a replica made by Western Neon. The original "R," pictured, went to MOHAI in 2000. The comeback "R" will be a replica made by Western Neon. Photo: DANIEL SHEEHAN / P-I file
Image 18 of 25 Pabst says it will host a free public party at the Rainier Commons to celebrate the "R" return, with proceeds going to MOHAI. "The party will be a chance to celebrate the history of Rainier in Seattle and see the restored, glowing icon back in its rightful place atop the old brewery after a 13-year absence," said Pabst spokesman Dan McHugh. (Pictured is the old Rainier brewery; date unknown.) less Pabst says it will host a free public party at the Rainier Commons to celebrate the "R" return, with proceeds going to MOHAI. "The party will be a chance to celebrate the history of Rainier in Seattle and... more Photo: P-I file
Image 19 of 25 The original Rainier "R" is pictured in MOHAI's gift shop. To help mark the return of the icon to Seattle's sky, Pabst will also do a "neighborhood crawl" with the "R" next month. less The original Rainier "R" is pictured in MOHAI's gift shop. To help mark the return of the icon to Seattle's sky, Pabst will also do a "neighborhood crawl" with the "R" next... more Photo: Joshua Trujllo / P-I file
Image 20 of 25
Image 21 of 25 Pictured is the Rainier brewery in 1949, when 500,000 bottles were processed in the plant per day. Pictured is the Rainier brewery in 1949, when 500,000 bottles were processed in the plant per day. Photo: P-I file
Image 22 of 25 Here's another photo of the Rainier Beer brewery in 1949, when it was owned by Sicks' Seattle Brewing & Malting Company. Here's another photo of the Rainier Beer brewery in 1949, when it was owned by Sicks' Seattle Brewing & Malting Company. Photo: P-I file
Image 23 of 25 The old brewery in 1989. The old brewery in 1989. Photo: P-I file
Image 24 of 25 A look at Rainier Beer's old holding tanks on Airport Way South in 1998, with "master brewer" Joe Thorner in the foreground. A look at Rainier Beer's old holding tanks on Airport Way South in 1998, with "master brewer" Joe Thorner in the foreground. Photo: ROBIN LAYTON / P-I fileMcCain connections coming back to haunt him Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday October 7, 2008
Print This Email This Shared stage with abortion doc shooter sympathizer John McCain, who along with his running mate has been attacking Obama over decade-old associations with unseemly figures, is not without his own nefarious associations.
One association, which seems to have gone unreported until now, involves a delegate who represented McCain at this year's Republican convention and previously expressed sympathy for an activist accused of shooting a doctor who performed abortions.
Applying the same logic as Sarah Palin, one could argue that the members of the GOP ticket are "palling around" with abortion clinic attack sympathizers, supporters of right-wing militants, perpetrators of political espionage and revolutionaries seeking to secede from the United States.
More attention is falling on the Arizona senator's own past since his attacks on Obama and former radical Bill Ayers. The Obama campaign's disquisition on Charles Keating just scratches the surface of what's out there, as reporters and liberal activists dig into McCain's web of connections.
Blogger Jed Lewison highlighted McCain's opposition to a 1994 law that made it a federal crime to bomb or blockade abortion clinics or to attack abortion doctors. McCain's vote against the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act put him in league with the Senate's most radical anti-abortion advocates, who split with more than two dozen anti-abortion senators who voted to crack down on clinic bombers as a matter of preserving law & order.
What's received less notice is where McCain was a few months before casting that vote.
In August 1993, McCain traveled to the Pacific Northwest where he earned the illustrious distinction of becoming the first major politician to address the ultra-far-right Oregon Citizens Alliance. He was apparently making good on a promise he had made to the group the year before as he and other GOP leaders negotiated to prevent the Christian conservatives from running a third-party candidate against Sen. Bob Packwood, who would resign a few years later amid a sex scandal.
The OCA attracted national attention in 1992 for sponsoring an anti-gay ballot initiative in Oregon, and McCain ignored advice to steer clear of the gathering. At the Portland fundraiser, McCain gently admonished the group to observe the "essence of tolerance," according to contemporaneous news reports.
His speech was preceded by some kind words for an anti-abortion activist accused of shooting a doctor. McCain quickly got a first-hand flavor for the OCA. Marylin Shannon, the vice chairwoman of the Oregon GOP, had a spot on the program to give an opening prayer. In short order, she praised the Grants Pass woman accused of shooting an abortion doctor in Wichita and thanked the Lord ``for Lon Mabon and the vision you put in his heart.'' Shannon, the GOP chairwoman, referred to the accused shooter of the abortion doctor as a "fine lady," who shouldn't be judged solely based on the single act of violence, according to a letter she wrote to The Oregonian, which was accessed via Lexis Nexis.
While she did not endorse violence against abortion providers, she wrote, she recognized the "debate stirring within the anti-abortion movement" over whether killing abortion providers was a "just cause." My kind comments about Shelley Shannon, the Grants Pass woman accused of wounding abortion provider George Tiller, (``I'm not related to Shelley Shannon, but I think she's a fine lady,'') reflected what I had learned about her from people who have known her for many years. They say she has led a responsible life as a wife, mother and concerned citizen and don't want her judged by this one action.
Acknowledging this side of her does not meant that I approve of others doing what she did. I do not. However, since that night I have learned much about the current debate stirring within the anti-abortion movement: Is killing abortion providers a ``just cause''?
There's no indication that McCain took issue with Shannon's comments, and it's unclear whether any group members lobbied him regarding the abortion clinic protection bill. A search of the Congressional Record in 1993 and 1994 indicates McCain did not speak during debate over the bill, and McCain's campaign did not immediately return RAW STORY's request for comment.
Shannon traveled to the Republican convention as a McCain delegate, and she proclaimed herself a huge fan of Palin as McCain's VP pick. She could not be reached for comment.
To be sure, there is nothing to suggest that McCain supports bombing abortion clinics. But there's also nothing to suggest Obama supports the Weather Underground bombings, which by the way were carried out when he was 8 years old. McCain at least was a sitting member of Congress who took a legislative position on clinic bombings when they were a current issue.
Other ties McCain might prefer to forget include his membership on the board of the US Council for World Freedom, which The Associated Press describes as "part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America."
McCain was something of a de facto member of the group as he launched his political career in the early 1980s, just one of several prominent "names on a letterhead," as the council's founder told AP. But, that membership at least seemed to indicate a tacit endorsement of its goals in Central America, supporting the contras. Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub's council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.
Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up the secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.
[Retired Army Maj. Gen. John] Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation. McCain says he was unaware of the full extent of the group's activities and claims to have resigned from the council in 1984 and asked to have his name removed from its letterhead two years later. According to AP, that's all news to founder Singlaub.
"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing," Singlaub said. "If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us."
Earlier this year, when Obama's past connection to Ayers first crept into national headlines, some observers began to remember McCain's "own Bill Ayers -- in the form of G. Gordon Liddy." The Watergate break-in mastermind, who spent more than four years in prison for his crimes, has called McCain an "old friend" and hosted the candidate on his conservative talk radio show.
Palin, McCain's running mate whose "gloves off" approach has aided Ayers return to the headlines is not without her own questionable connections. Her husband is a past member of the Alaska Independence Party, and she has addressed the group on several occasions. The party's goal is Alaska's secession from the United States and its founder has said "the fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government."
Beyond a 13-minute documentary on Keating, who was a key player in the savings & loan crisis of the late 1980s, the Obama campaign doesn't seem too concerned about publicly digging for dirt in McCain's past.
Economic concerns have spurred a spectacular rise in Obama's poll numbers, and a struggling McCain campaign seems to be doing all it can to stop the election from slipping away.More than 90 percent of Italian families drink coffee at home, and there is one coffee bar for every 490 Italians, according to Illy, one of Italy’s leading coffee producers, and a local organization that studies food and drinks. Espresso comes in seemingly infinite forms: ristretto (strong), lungo (more water), macchiato or schiumato (with a bit of milk or milk foam), or corretto (a kick of liquor added).
Image Receipts are left to be claimed by those who are unable to afford a cup of coffee. Credit Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
Drinking one is an act rigorously performed standing at the counter for a few quick minutes. It naturally sets the passing hours of the day. It is both an intimate and a public ritual.
Many bartenders attribute a soul to the coffee-making process and take pride in knowing their customers’ preferences, even before they lay an elbow on the counter and start talking about the sun — or lack thereof — or complaining about the government.
“Coffee consumption predated the unification of Italy by more than 200 years, so the rituals and traditions around it are very ancient,” Andrea Illy, chairman of Illy, said in a phone interview. “In Naples, coffee is a world in itself, both culturally and socially. Coffee is a ritual carried out in solidarity.”
That solidarity is spreading. In 2010, an ensemble of small Italian cultural festivals gave form to the tradition of generosity by creating the Suspended Coffee Network.
The purpose was to weather the severe cuts to the state cultural budgets by organizing and promoting their own activities together. But it also started solidarity initiatives for those in need. Encouraging a donated coffee was one of them.
Now, across Italy, the bars that have joined the network display the suspended coffee label — a black and brown sticker with a white espresso cup — in their windows.
In participating coffee bars, customers might toss receipts in an unused coffee pot on the counter, where the needy can pull them out and use them. In others, customers pay in advance for an extra coffee, and the cafe keeps a list or hangs the receipts in the shop window.Halle Berry is determined to raise awareness about domestic violence. Last week, she attended The Mayors Fund Benefit In New York City in support of the family justice centers, where she shared her personal experience of watching her mother abused by her father. Halle speaks on how as an adult she chose men who were just like her dad. The actress decided to break the cycle after losing 80 percent of her hearing. Christopher Williams had taken the blame for this for many years until he made it clear that Wesley Snipes was responsible for causing Halle to lose her hearing in one ear. Check out a few excerpts from her speech below.
“When I was a girl and my mother had the s–t kicked out of her, her self-esteem moved onto me.”
“I devalued myself and thought I wasn’t worth it. I chose partners that mimicked my father. It was only when I was in an abusive relationship and blood squirted on the ceiling of my apartment and I lost 80% of my hearing in my ear that I realized, I have to break the cycle.”
“I want women to stand up and break the silence and get rid of the shame and the fear and find a way to stand up for themselves.”
“I never had to run to a shelter, but I did choose the wrong partners. Not always good men. Luckily, in recent years, I have been smart enough to hit the door when violence even becomes a possibility. That is something I will not tolerate.”
Spotted @NecoleBitchie
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Halle Berry Goes Deep In “Dark Tide” [MOVIE TRAILER]
Three Curses Celebrities Should Be Cautious OfBy Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
The Madison County Republican Executive Committee will present the 2nd biennial Freedom Gala: A Celebration of Freedom on Thursday, Oct. 12, at the Jackson Center in Research Park in Huntsville. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore will be the Keynote Speaker.
Moore is a life-long Alabamian and outspoken constitutional conservative that has stood up for liberty and religious freedom his entire career. He is an alumnus of Etowah High School in Attalla, Alabama, and an alumnus of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Arts and Engineering. Moore also has a 1977 law degree from the University of Alabama.
Moore served in the U.S. Army as a company commander with the Military Police Corps in Vietnam. Judge Moore was the first full-time deputy district attorney in Etowah County, Alabama from 1977 until 1982. In 1984, Moore went into private practice of law in Gadsden, Alabama.
In 1992, Moore was appointed a judge of the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit of Alabama by Gov. Guy Hunt, and served until his election as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000. In 2003, he was removed from his position as chief justice by a judicial panel for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he installed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.
From 2003 until 2012, Judge Moore served as president of the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery, lecturing throughout the country and filing amicus curiae briefs regarding the United States Constitution in Federal District Courts, State Supreme Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeal and the United States Supreme Court. Judge Moore was re-elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in November of 2012 and took office in January of 2013.
In 2016, Moore was suspended for refusing to sign an order ordering Alabama probate judges to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Moore retired to seek the office of U.S. Senate in 2017. Moore won the GOP primary runoff on September 26, despite being outspent by appointed Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., almost 15 to 1.
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Moore and his wife, Kayla, have four children and five grandchildren. They are members of First Baptist Church in Gallant, Alabama.
Moore faces former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones in the Dec. 12, 2017, special election for the vacancy created by Jeff Sessions appointment as U.S. attorney general.
The general and VIP receptions will begin at 6 p.m. The dinner and gala starts at 7 p.m.
This newly created biennial event is expected to be the single largest gathering of Republican officials, and supporters in North Alabama. The Freedom Gala will showcase the influence of North Alabama within the Republican Party.
Individual tickets are $125 per person and include general reception, plus dinner and gala admission. They can be purchased at:
https://mgop2017.eventbrite.com.
Sponsorships are still available. Please direct inquiries to David Pinkleton at 256-714-1142 or [email protected].
For more information about the Madison County Republican Party, please visit www.mgop.org.Thanks to the kind folks at Fantasy Flight Games, today we will be talking all about a gorgeous new Netrunner card coming out in Upstalk, the latest DataPack that kicks off the Lunar Cycle. Take a look at Mutate!
Mutate looks like a blast to play, turning small early ice like Pup (or maybe Bullfrog) into giant ice that the runner struggles to deal with like Janus 1.0 or even Wotan. What is especially good about Mutate, is it’s ability to ignore additional costs that would otherwise be very prohibitive (like sacrificing an agenda to Archer). Mutate will only improve as more expensive ice gets printed.
The ice that you cheat into play with Mutate maintains the same position on the server as the ice trashed to Mutate. This allows you to Mutate positional ice like Cell Portal or Curtain Wall into the ideal position on a server, especially if you happen to know what is coming up next in R&D.
Here is a Jinteki list looking to take advantage of Mutate’s ability.
Tennin Mutate (49 cards)
Tennin Institute: The Secrets Within
Agenda (11)
3 Braintrust
3 Clone Retirement
3 Medical Breakthrough
1 Philotic Entanglement
1 The Future Perfect
Asset (5)
3 Jackson Howard
2 Shock!
Operation (15)
3 Celebrity Gift
3 Hedge Fund
3 Mutate
3 Precognition
3 Trick of Light
Barrier (4)
2 Hadrian’s Wall
2 Himitsu-Bako
Code Gate (6)
1 Inazuma
3 Quandary
2 Yagura
Sentry (8)
3 Archer
3 Pup
2 Susanoo-No-Mikoto
This list looks to lock your opponent out of your central servers early by Mutating out big ice like Archer, Susanoo-No-Mikoto, and Hadrian’s Wall. Using Tennin’s ability to generate advancement counters, you then score agendas directly from your hand with the power of Trick of Light. Your ideal Mutate trash targets are Quandary and Pup, especially after setting up for Mutate with Precognition.
Hadrian’s Wall is used for it’s ability to be advanced, allowing you to use Trick of Light even if your identity ability is not triggering enough. You could also try fitting in Shiro to help improve your Mutate’s effectiveness when not using Precognition.
Let us know what you think of Mutate in our forums below. What lists do you think Mutate has a place in?India's biggest industrial group has named a new chairman as it tries to draw a line under an ugly battle over its leadership.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will become chairman of the $100 billion Tata Group in February, the company said Thursday.
TCS is India's biggest tech firm and Tata's most valuable company with revenues of $16.5 billion.
Chandra, as he is widely known, joined TCS as a software developer in 1987 and became CEO in 2009. He will take up his new position on Feb. 21, the company said.
"Mr. Chandrasekaran has demonstrated exemplary leadership," Tata Sons, the group's parent company, said in a statement. "We believe he will now inspire the entire Tata Group to realize its potential."
The appointment of Chandra, 53, caps a months-long saga that began when the Tata Group abruptly removed its previous chairman Cyrus Mistry in late October.
Mistry's ouster set off an ugly war of words between him and his predecessor, family scion Ratan Tata -- a battle that has now gone to court.
Chandra replaces Ratan Tata, who took over as interim chairman when Mistry was forced out.
He now oversees a massive business empire spanning over 100 countries. Tata Group owns global brands such as Jaguar Land Rover.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
With Japanese drummers, a Chinese lion, and a traditional Sake toast, Walt Disney World officially opened Morimoto Asia as the newest addition to Disney Springs, the shopping and dining district formerly known as Downtown Disney.
In attendance at the new restaurant’s grand opening were the Iron Chef himself Masaharu Morimoto as well as Walt Disney World president George Kalogridis and, donning his own chef outfit, Mickey Mouse.
WATCH:
Later, Morimoto filleted a huge tuna before turning it into a 60-foot long sushi roll with the assistance of attending press and VIPs along with Mickey.
WATCH:
The super fresh sushi was served as an entree to all in attendance at the grand opening between samplings of the new restaurant’s signature drinks, appetizers, and desserts.
Menu:
Among the best starters and dim sum served at the grand opening were the tuna pizza (deliciously crunchy) and shumai (perfectly steamed).
Naturally, all the sushi served at Morimoto Asia is made fresh and is perfectly prepared. The main kitchen is downstairs, open for diners to see (check out that row of ducks!), and a sushi bar is located upstairs as well.
Dessert highlights included an elevated churro and a beautiful presentation of what amounts to a mango pudding, but made much more complex by the expert chef.
Only a small sampling of the restaurant’s premier entree were served, a wonderfully succulent peking duck. The cuisine of Morimoto Asia is definitely not the same as his namesake restaurant in New York. That NYC restaurant serves gorgeous takes on classic Japanese fare – some |
, I do believe these parallels are of deliberate significance.
* * *
What you’re left with is a solid amount of evidence that seems to strikingly conflict with the known nature of Jon Snow. To make my assertion perfectly clear:
Jon is not himself when he is assassinated, he has been drugged.
He was drugged with sweetsleep that was in the flagon of mulled wine served by Satin.
The sweetsleep debilitated Jon such that he could be killed or otherwise subdued.
There are a few lingering issues that probably need to be addressed:
Why bother with sweetsleep as a poison… why not make the Tears of Lys or the strangler?
Since Aemon is gone, it is unlikely that Clydas knows how to make these more exotic poisons. It seems much more likely that he knows the draughts necessary to treat common ailments at the Wall: milk of the poppy, dreamwine, and sweetsleep.
Why not just give Jon one massive dose that would put him into a ‘permanent’ sleep?
Well first of all, that might be a bit too obvious of a poisoning. Furthermore it would require drinking a poisoned wine that would ‘kill’ anyone else, thus it would be suspicious to give him a wine shared with no one else. Another problem is that Clydas may not know the right dosage for such an effect. Recall that Cersei is a fan of poisoning attempts that are not readily identified as such.
In essence, the sweetsleep allows for Jon to be debilitated such that he can be killed or subdued, provided he is separated from Ghost.
<table of contents>
* * *
SECURING THE COUP
Readers have long wondered: why would Marsh be stupid enough to attack Jon Snow when Jon has hundreds of wildlings attached to his cause?
It is indeed a conundrum: it seems suicidal for Bowen to stage his coup right when there are a great many wildlings lurking around Castle Black.
However there are several brilliant reasons and likely methods to his coup, some of which were even implied by Jon himself.
The Wildling Chieftains
First off, Marsh would have an immediate problem after assassinating Jon Snow:
What to do about all those wildling chieftains who just roared their approval, hoping to march south with Jon?
I do believe that there is one perfectly good plan that Marsh may have had. This explanation is not backed by evidence, only by its exclusive appropriateness to his needs.
Bowen Marsh will trap the wildlings in the Shieldhall and set fire to the building.
As I said, I cannot prove this. However, it takes little imagination to see why this is perfect.
Per A Dance with Dragons, the Shieldhall comfortably seats two hundred, three hundred if they crowd. Thus Jon’s meeting concentrates a vast number of wildlings in a single enclosure. It also concentrates the entirety of the wildling leadership. Jon has created a “single point of failure”.
The Shieldhall is entirely unnecessary to the Night’s Watch. Jon only used the building because he wanted to seat hundreds of wildlings. From Marsh’s perspective however, the buildling could be entirely razed to the ground and it wouldn’t affect other Nights Watch operations.
The wildlings decide to linger in the Shieldhall after Jon’s speech:
Then Tormund was pounding him on the back, all gap-toothed grin from ear to ear. “Well spoken, crow. Now bring out the mead! Make them yours and get them drunk, that’s how it’s done. We’ll make a wildling o’ you yet, boy. Har!” “I will send for ale,” Jon said, distracted.
— JON XIII, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
This means that the wildlings will continue to remain in their singularly risk location.
The description of the Shieldhall lends itself to being a fire hazard:
As a dining hall, it left much to be desired—it was dark, dirty, drafty, and hard to heat in winter, its cellars infested with rats, its massive wooden rafters worm-eaten and festooned with cobwebs.
— JON XIII, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
I’m not sure if you know this but cobwebs are a definite fire hazard and the wooden beams coupled with the ‘drafty’ airflow suggest a place where a fire could rage quite handily.
* * *
The Burning in Tirgoviste
Believe it or not, I’m not just pulling this idea completely out of my ass. There is an anecdotal historical basis for eliminating undesirables in this fashion:
Vlad Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once notice that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. The guests ate and drank late into the night. Vlad himself then made an appearance and asked them, “What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?” When they responded positively Vlad ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Vlad explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this “in order that they represent no further burden to other men, and that no one will be poor in my realm.”
— VLAD TEPES, THE HISTORICAL DRACULA
Although apocryphal in its historical legitimacy, this is a certainly compelling way to eliminate “problem people” with minimal fuss.
From Marsh’s perspective, the net benefit of such a terrifying act is tremendous:
He eliminates all of the wildling chieftains in one fell swoop, and hundreds of their men.
It’s undeniably the lowest cost, most effective means of stopping the forthcoming wildling invasion that Jon has declared.
Furthermore, Marsh will still have the wildling hostages at Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower… a means to quell further dissent from the remaining wildlings.
* * *
But Why Let Them In?
So if Bowen Marsh planned to stage a coup, why would he wait until after the wildlings had been allowed through the Wall?
There is actually a pretty obvious reason when you think about it. We know that Bowen’s principal concerns in A Dance with Dragons is provisions: the Night’s Watch and the wildlings are going to starve.
Obviously burning the chieftains would alleviate that burden, but you would think that Marsh could have simply conducted his little coup prior to admitting wildlings into the realm.
So again, why wait?
It’s because the wildlings have assets that can be traded for provisions:
Bowen Marsh sighed. “If they do not slay us with their swords, they will do so with their mouths. Pray, how does the lord commander propose to feed Tormund and his thousands?” Jon had anticipated that question. “Through Eastwatch. We will bring in food by ship, as much as might be required. From the riverlands and the stormlands and the Vale of Arryn, from Dorne and the Reach, across the narrow sea from the Free Cities.” “And this food will be paid for … how if I may ask?” With gold, from the Iron Bank of Braavos, Jon might have replied. Instead he said, “I have agreed that the free folk may keep their furs and pelts. They will need those for warmth when winter comes. All other wealth they must surrender. Gold and silver, amber, gemstones, carvings, anything of value. We will ship it all across the narrow sea to be sold in the Free Cities.” “All the wealth o’ the wildlings,” said The Norrey. “That should buy you a bushel o’ barleycorn. Two bushels, might be.”
— JON XI, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
Bowen may or may not have known about the loan from the Iron Bank: Satin was presumably present during the negotiations. In any case, the wildling wealth is a valuable commodity that could help the Night’s Watch survive the winter… especially if the wildlings could be “dealt with” as well.
Thus Bowen has incentive to allow the wildlings through, if only for whatever wealth they have.
* * *
The Gate at Eastwatch
We know that there are hundreds of mammoths and giants headed to Eastwatch because it is the only place with a gate large enough to accommodate their passage:
“Boys first, aye. Mammoths go the long way round. You make sure Eastwatch expects them. I’ll make sure there’s no fighting, nor rushing at your bloody gate. Nice and orderly we’ll be, ducklings in a row. And me the mother duck. Har!” Tormund led Jon from his tent.
— JON XI, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
Presuming that Marsh was ready to stage his coup, there is an interesting detail:
Calm seas today. Eleven ships set sail for Hardhome on the morning tide. Three Braavosi, four Lyseni, four of ours. Two of the Lyseni barely seaworthy. We may drown more wildlings than we save. Your command. Twenty ravens aboard, and Maester Harmune. Will send reports. I command from Talon, Tattersalt second on Blackbird, Ser Glendon holds Eastwatch. “Dark wings, dark words?” asked Alys Karstark. “No, my lady. This news was long awaited.” Though the last part troubles me. Glendon Hewett was a seasoned man and a strong one, a sensible choice to command in Cotter Pyke’s absence. But he was also as much a friend as Alliser Thorne could boast, and a crony of sorts with Janos Slynt, however briefly. Jon could still recall how Hewett had dragged him from his bed, and the feel of his boot slamming into his ribs. Not the man I would have chosen.
— JON X, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
Now I’ve already shown Clydas capable of sending messages with Jon’s approval. The very moment that Cotter Pyke departs, Marsh could begin sending messages to Hewett.
Now this might not happen immediately, but it seems painfully obvious: once Marsh decides to stage his coup, he needs to act quickly to prevent more wildlings from coming through the Wall. The most logical suggestion for Marsh to contact Glendon Hewett and cave in the Eastwatch tunnel.
It’s interesting to note that in some ways Jon actually substantiates Marsh’s plan to collapse the tunnels:
“Donal Noye died to hold the gate. A gallant act, yes … but if the gate had been sealed, our brave armorer might still be with us. Whether we face a hundred foes or a hundred thousand, so long as we’re atop the Wall and they’re below, they cannot do us harm.” He’s not wrong. Mance Rayder’s host had broken against the Wall like a wave upon a stony shore, though the defenders were no more than a handful of old men, green boys, and cripples. Yet what Bowen was suggesting went against all of Jon’s instincts. “If we seal the gates, we cannot send out rangers,” he pointed out. “We will be as good as blind.” “Lord Mormont’s last ranging cost the Watch a quarter of its men, my lord. We need to conserve what strength remains us. Every death diminishes us, and we are stretched so thin … Take the high ground and win the battle, my uncle used to say. No ground is higher than the Wall, Lord Commander.”
— JON III, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
And later, when Bowen Marsh learns of the number of Others that could be coming:
“Cotter Pyke’s galleys sail past Hardhome from time to time. He tells me there is no shelter there but the caves. The screaming caves, his men call them. Mother Mole and those who followed her will perish there, of cold and starvation. Hundreds of them. Thousands.” “Thousands of enemies. Thousands of wildlings.” Thousands of people, Jon thought. Men, women, children. Anger rose inside him, but when he spoke his voice was quiet and cold. “Are you so blind, or is it that you do not wish to see? What do you think will happen when all these enemies are dead?” Above the door the raven muttered, “Dead, dead, dead.” “Let me tell you what will happen,” Jon said. “The dead will rise again, in their hundreds and their thousands. They will rise as wights, with black hands and pale blue eyes, and they will come for us.” He pushed himself to his feet, the fingers of his sword hand opening and closing. “You have my leave to go.” Septon Cellador rose grey-faced and sweating, Othell Yarwyck stiffly, Bowen Marsh tight-lipped and pale.
— JON VIII, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
Combining Marsh’s earlier plans with the data suggesting the size of the wildling—or Others—army implies that Marsh would have every desire to collapse the tunnels.
Collapsing the tunnel at Eastwatch keeps two-hundred giants and eighty mammoths out of the Seven Kingdoms, as well as more wildlings. This further slows the declining provisions on the Wall.
* * *
So you can see, in one fell swoop, Bowen and his stewards would enact a powerful move that dramatically changes things at the Wall:
Jon Snow is dead or otherwise out of commission, Marsh becomes the acting Lord Commander.
Marsh is much more conservative, will take fewer risks with his men, ergo fewer unnecessary deaths.
A majority of the wildling chieftains are dead as well as many of them fighting men.
Wildling hostages are still held by the Watch at the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch.
The tunnels are collapsed, preventing more wildlings from coming in, and presumably the Others as well.
This reconciles the Night’s Watch with King’s Landing.
The Night’s Watch benefits from having the wildling treasures which can be bartered for winter provisions.
Marsh will have Stannis’s forces hostage: Selyse, Shireen, Melisandre.
You can see how this pretty much decimates a major portion of Stannis’s campaign.
Or does it?
There are some elements here that give us a whisper of something possibility happening:
There is no mention of the Thenns. We know that Sigorn of Thenn has two hundred Thenns with him. Remember what I said in Honor has its Costs: Sigorn swore allegiance not to Stannis but perhaps to Val. Remember that Stannis originally planned to give Sigorn land and castles, (and as long as Harrion Karstark lives, Sigorn will not inherit Karhold).
We know that Sigorn of Thenn has two hundred Thenns with him. Remember what I said in Honor has its Costs: Sigorn swore allegiance not to Stannis but perhaps to Val. Remember that Stannis originally planned to give Sigorn land and castles, (and as long as Harrion Karstark lives, Sigorn will not inherit Karhold). According to the same essay, I strongly believe that Val escaped some time prior to Jon’s assassination.
some time prior to Jon’s assassination. Tormund had thirty men missing from his band that returned to Castle Black. There are curious happenings at the Wall that suggest Val and Tormund may have been collaborating on the escape plan. Remember that he had a dozen or so men who were extremely dangerous, “his best men”.
NOTE: I wrote the details surrounding the missing men in an older essay, but it is no longer online. I will repost it after some cleanup.
I would also point out that the last time Jon rides a horse—during the wildling surrender—Jon rides a different horse from his usual grey palfrey. He rides a magnificent stallion. He even comments that it’s not the kind of horse he’d want for a ranging.
Why does this interest me?
Because it means that his grey palfrey—the one extremely well-suited to long riding—was left behind for an entire day in the stables. I strongly suspect that when Val escapes, she takes Jon’s normal riding horse.
The point I’m driving at is this:
There is a compelling story behind Jon’s assassination, one that could be extremely debilitating to the Stannis campaign.
However, there is a possible inkling that the speculated wildling mission survives the coup, no one aware that a moderately sized wildling force might be descending on the Dreadfort as part of Stannis’s strategy.
<table of contents>
<the mannifesto>
* * *DETROIT -- The Detroit Red Wings’ recent history is loaded with players who spent all or most of their lengthy careers with the Original Six franchise.
The list includes Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom, Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, Chris Osgood and Tomas Holmstrom.
Defenseman Niklas Kronwall would love to join that group. And he sees no reason why his relationship with the team that drafted him in the first round in 2000 won’t extend beyond this season, the final year of his contract.
"As an organization with the history and tradition of Detroit, I think anyone who is fortunate enough to have a chance to play here for many, many years would love to take that," Kronwall said. "Hopefully, I can do the same."
The Red Wings are likely to begin contract talks with Kronwall this month or shortly after the start of the season.
"Everyone knows I like it here a lot," Kronwall said. "I want to stay. Hopefully, they want me to stay as well. So whenever they feel it’s the right time to start negotiating we’ll be ready for it."
Kronwall will earn $3.75 million in the final season of a five-year deal that has a $3 million salary-cap hit. Getting him signed to a long-term deal is one of general manager Ken Holland’s top priorities this season.
Kronwall, 30, is a good puck-mover with offensive ability and a penchant for delivering crushing open-ice hits. He is coming off a strong season, picking up 11 goals and 37 points in 77 games.
He was strong in the playoffs, too, leading the team in ice time (23 minutes, 4 seconds per game) and delivering a big check on Ryane Clowe that gave the San Jose Sharks forward a separated shoulder.
"Last year was a good year for me overall," Kronwall said. "I felt I took a step in the right direction. Hopefully I can build off that, keep getting stronger and keep playing hard out there. Hopefully I can take another step this year."
Kronwall joined a handful of teammates for an informal practice Thursday at Joe Louis Arena.
The highlight of his summer was his first hole-in-one during a weeklong golfing trip to Scotland and Ireland with seven other Red Wings. He used a 6-iron to ace the 206-yard, 15th hole at Turnbery.
"It was kind of surreal," Kronwall said. "We had caddies and he just gave me a club at every hole. I wasn’t really sure about the club, but he said ‘hit this one.’
"I thought it was long at first because I hit it pretty well. The other guys kind of froze for a second and said, ‘I think that went in.’ They heard when it hit the pin and landed in the hole. Unfortunately, I missed that experience because I couldn’t believe it went in."
He was paired with Osgood in a match against Jimmy Howard.
"I’m not a huge golf fan," Kronwall said. "I love going out and just hitting some balls, play a round or two with friends. But this was very intense. We had some real good golfers on the trip.
"By the end of the week I was thrilled as anyone. The courses and atmosphere and everything around it, it was a great experience."Trannies (Men) Want, Trannies (Men) Get. What ‘Erasure’ Looks Like On the Ground. March 31, 2013
Posted by FCM in feminisms Tags: erasure
ive been doing this awhile now, and i can report that i have been a target from day one or thereabouts, when the fun fems and sex-pozzers first tried to silence me. this was even before i received my first rape or death threat — it was the women that nearly did me in! granted, half these “women” were probably men, but not all of them.
in the beginning — notably, before i had even found my voice or gone anywhere near the ends of my thoughts — in order to amass currency and credibility, i was invited to “check my privilege” to the point of nearly (even clearly) identifying myself publicly. (i declined that invitation.) in the same vein, accusations were lobbed at me of various “privileges” (and continue to this day) inviting me to reveal details of my life as a “rebuttal” lest i encounter negative outcomes (like losing currency and credibility, due to all the privilege). or to, you know, ignore it.
this is no accident BTW. this “privilege checking” business mirrors doxing and outing exactly. the outcome at least is identical, where the result is to make radical feminist bloggers more vulnerable to violent men in real life, in order to silence us, or cause us to self-censor out of fear. this outcome — womens identities and personal information being revealed in order to silence radical women or original, female-centered thought — is what men want, and this is what men get. handed to them on a silver fucking platter. by us, via “privilege checking.”
luckily, even way back then, although this was my first blog, it was not my first rodeo — i continued. at some point my focus changed, and i came to realize that what i was doing was qualitatively (and quantitatively) different than what anyone else was doing at this time and place (online, now). very recently, and very painfully, and painstakingly, and like REALLY SLOWLY, as if i had some kind of mental block against realizing this particular truth as a matter of fact, i realized that reformist-oriented radical feminists have taken over the movement, and are trying very hard to silence dissent. here is what i mean by that.
i mean that there are radical feminists who are without a doubt radical — they recognize the importance of getting to the root of womens oppression by men. that is not a small thing. in order to fulfill that most basic requirement, one must first believe in women and men — in todays pomo, queerified environs, almost everyone who identifies as “feminist” fails. reformist-oriented radical feminists believe in women and men as sexual classes, and they want to get at the root, and notably, they have chosen to utilize legal and social reform as a tool to dismantle what they consider the root, which is usually identified as dom/sub. the ugly part of this is not that they are utilizing a specific strategy towards ending male dominance — to each her own. the ugly part, as it always is, is the disingenuous part, the silencing part.
to wit, and these are but 2 examples, men and trannies have been really pissed off about mary daly and her very existence for a long time — they see her as an “evil” woman (HA!) and resent her audacity in every way. they have identified her “sexism” against men and her female-centered vision as offensive to themselves and thus they want activate towards complete erasure of daly and her genius and her exceedingly excellent work and legacy from the face of the earth. indeed, if mary daly were alive today, her work likely wouldnt even be published, and her physical safety would be in serious danger because of the escalating threats and violence of men against women and the attempted and successful silencing of specifically radical feminist ideology.
so within this political and material context, where men vehemently wish activate towards mary daly and her work being wiped from the face of the earth, what does one (relatively) well-known reformist-oriented radical feminist do, in a public letter to the UN (subject: trannie politicking) but throw “essentialists” like mary daly and all feminists who think like mary daly under the bus — we are erased from feminism. mary daly! not a feminist! because she noted that men are unlikely to be changed, and that its likely biological. thats rich. no, the real feminists are the social determinists, like gloria steinem — and steinem herself seems especially quotable when she herself is quoting a man. srsly, read the UN letter if you havent already. now thats good erasure i mean reformist politicking.
next, and of personal and political significance to myself (and others) men and trannies set their sights on the radfem HUB early on. they wanted it GONE. erased. they activated towards that end mercilessly; notably, they failed. and yet, be that as it may…has anyone seen the HUB lately? gee, where did it go, who was involved, and what lead up to it — even more to the point, what has been so distracting, stressful and time consuming of late (erasure complete) for 2 of the most prolific radfem bloggers out there, 2 radfem bloggers who are decidedly against reformist politicking and have been calling shit on both reformism and the tendency of reformist feminists to hold out hope for men against all evidence — and why oh why arent they (they, specifically) writing anything?
and rounding out the picture nicely, including who wants/activates towards what ends for the HUB, and why, is this: “liberation collective” has just today republished a series originally published on the HUB — but “lib coll” doesnt mention the HUB at all, or mention that this is not the first time this series has been published, or where. its as if HUB never existed, but of course erasing the HUB is the entire reason lib coll exists — it was created a year after HUB was, and hosted exclusively republished/recycled content from the HUB but without acknowledging the HUB at all, or the fact that the posts were *not* first published at lib coll, but in fact were created previously and exclusively for/within a specific context, and were first published “somewhere else.” and what that “context” was and where that “somewhere else” might be was and is specifically omitted. get it? all of that has been erased. a very fine point has been added now that the HUB itself has been destroyed. from the inside.
now, anyone can investigate the connections here if they want to: are the organizers of lib coll and the organizers of radfem 2013 the same people? was the owner and dispositor of the HUB domain involved in any way in either lib coll or radfem 2013? if so, was it in a “public relations” capacity? im just asking.
and for those who plan to go, i hope you will report back as to whether the entire point (intent and effect) of radfem 2013 was to advance the agenda and numbers of reformist-oriented radical feminists, while simultaneously erasing and negating the fact that there is any other kind. and that we were very vocal, once.
this is what “erasure” looks like, on the ground, in real time. in case anyone has ever wondered. it looks like reformist activating, or at the very least, reformists and reformist activating routinely and demonstrably produce a very specific result — to erase radical feminism and radical feminists, including our radical feminist history and our work. do they not? we are absolutely swimming in the erasure of radical herstory right here, right now. remember this.1
Adding Insult to Injury:
Acquisition of Erectile Dysfunction from Circumcision
Dan Bollinger Our new study published in the
Internation al Journal of Men’s Health
showed that circumcised men have a 4.5 times greater chance of suffering from erectile dysfunction (ED) than intact men, revealing what appears to be a significant acquisition factor.
1
Robert S. Van Howe, M.D., M.S., FAAP and I found a surprisingly strong secondary finding between circumcision and ED in our survey of 300 participants (OR = 4.53, p=.0058). It was outside the scope of our article to delve deeper into this topic, but our finding does raise some questions:
Are there other studies showing a similar connection? What could be the underlying cause?
Eighteen percent of adult American men
—
three-fourths of whom are circumcised
—
have ED, affecting 18 million men.
2
Circumcision’s role
as a risk factor may be reflected in ED drug sales; while the United States
represents 5% of the world’s population
, it also accounts for 46% of Viagra sales.
3
Other studies have previously observed that circumcision
’s
damage results in worsened erectile functioning,
4
inability to maintain an erection,
5
and reducing overall penis sensitivity by a whopping 75%.
6
Premature ejaculation, ED, and circumcision are inextricably linked; a recent study revealed that premature ejaculation is fi ve times more likely when adjusted for ED and circumcision.
7
A new Danish study
8
found that circumcised men are three times more likely to have sexual dysfunction.
9
Case studies of men circumcised as adults are revealing since they compare sexual function and satisfaction before and after the surgery. They are also alarming. Circumcision was suppos ed to correct a problem ostensibly resulting in entirely favorable outcomes, but this is not the case, as these failure rates illustrate. In one study, circumcision worsened erectile function and decreased penile sensitivity, and 38% reported sexual harm.
10
Another survey found that 27% of recently circumcised adult men reported dissatisfaction with erectile functioning.
11
In a third study, the number of men reporting erectile dysfunction almost doubled after circumcision, and ED severity increased, too.
6As the Marlins continue to look for upgrades at first base, the team is considering free agent Michael Morse and trade target Justin Morneau of the Rockies, Joe Frisaro of MLB.com reports on Twitter. Miami is looking for a left-handed bat, but Pedro Alvarez of the Pirates does not seem like a fit.
Morse, 33 in March, enjoyed a strong season with the bat in 2014 with the World Series Champion Giants, batting.279/.336/.475 with 16 homers in 482 plate appearances despite playing in the cavernous AT&T Park. Morse’s offensive contributions were 30 to 33 percent above league average, per park-adjust stats like OPS+ and wRC+. Late last month, the Marlins were said to have lukewarm interest in Morse, but things have apparently picked up since then. Last week we learned that the Orioles were showing strong interest in Morse.
Morneau, 33 (34 in May), enjoyed a bounce back year with the Rockies in 2014, batting.319/.364/.496 with 17 homers in 550 plate appearances. He offers not only solid production but a palatable contract as well. He’ll make $7.25MM next season (that’s including the extra $500K he earned by reaching 550 PA last season) along with a $750K buyout on a $9MM mutual option for 2016.OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken up the federal government’s battle with Boeing Co. with the governor of Missouri, where the U.S. aerospace giant builds its Super Hornet fighter jets. In what appears to have been a frank phone call Tuesday with Gov. Eric Greitens, Trudeau made note of the number of Missouri jobs that depend on the jets and the fact Canada is the state’s largest trading partner.
The prime minister didn’t rule out buying Super Hornet jets, shown in this file photo, but blasted Boeing for its dispute with Montreal-based Bombardier, and accused the company of receiving billions in government support. ( REMY DE LA MAUVINIERE / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS )
The prime minister didn’t rule out buying Super Hornets, but blasted Boeing for its dispute with Montreal-based Bombardier, and accused the U.S. company of receiving billions of dollars in government support. Read more: Boeing won’t back down in standoff with Bombardier and Liberal government
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Defence officials know the cost of buying Super Hornet jets, but won’t reveal numbers A brief, terse summary of the call was released late Tuesday by the Prime Minister’s Office. Greitens’ office did not immediately return a request for comment. The call between Trudeau and Greitens ups the ante in the fight between Canada and Boeing, and comes after a senior Boeing official said the company had no intention of backing down in its fight with Bombardier. By highlighting Missouri’s trade relationship with Canada, and the number of local jobs tied to the Super Hornet, the Liberals are clearly hoping Greitens will put pressure on Boeing to rethink its position. Boeing’s plant in St. Louis, Missouri, which focuses on the defence and space sectors, employs some 15,000 people, of which an estimated 5,000 are involved in building Super Hornets. The main assembly plant for Boeing’s well-known passenger jets is located in Everett, Wash.
The government announced last November it would purchase 18 “interim” Super Hornets to fill a critical shortage of fighter jets until a full competition to replace Canada’s entire CF-18 fleet could be run starting in 2019. The government said at the time that the Super Hornet was the only aircraft able to meet its immediate requirements, which include a mature design that’s compatible with U.S. fighters.
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But that was before Boeing complained to the U.S. Commerce Department that Bombardier was selling its CSeries jet liners at an unfair price with assistance from federal government subsidies. American authorities are currently investigating the complaint and are expected to present their preliminary findings on Sept. 25, which could lead to fines or tariffs against Bombardier. The Liberal government has linked the trade dispute to its plan to purchase Super Hornets, cutting off contact with the company and threatening to walk away from the fighter purchase if Boeing doesn’t drop the case. Boeing has shown no signs of reconsidering, however. One of the company’s top executives, Marc Allen, described the dispute Monday as being about protecting the firm’s broader interests.
Read more about:There are a lot of ways to come at the patriarchy and white supremacy. I've written about the power of protest and the importance of language. But one of the most obvious and practical ways to dismantle the systematic oppression of such a large portion of the population is to defund it.
We know that money is power—power to lobby on your issues, to buy politicians, to pay for lawyers, to give to the charities that are important to you. This power has been greedily hoarded by white people, mostly white men for all of American history.
Every time you shop at a business owned by white men you are supporting the patriarchy and white supremacy. Every time you invest in a company owned by white men you are supporting the patriarchy and white supremacy. Every time you eat at a restaurant owned by white men you are supporting the patriarchy and white supremacy. WHY ARE YOU FUNDING YOUR OPPRESSOR?TRIPOLI (Reuters) - One of the most senior figures in Libya’s outgoing government has denounced its leaders as an unelected elite, supported by “money, arms and PR,” and warned that 90 percent of Libya is politically voiceless.
Tripoli's revolutionary fighters take part in a military parade in Tripoli November 17, 2011. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Outgoing acting Prime Minister Ali Tarhouni’s comments were the strongest criticism to date by a senior politician of the country’s new rulers, who led the rebellion that ended Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule and have been in charge since his fall.
The National Transitional Council (NTC) also had a say in Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib’s provisional government line-up, which was announced on Tuesday and mandated to steer the country towards democracy.
“The voices that we see now are the voices of the elite, the voices of the NTC who are not elected and the voices of other people who are supported by the outside by money, arms and PR,” Tarhouni said on Thursday, hours after a new cabinet was formed.
“It’s about time we heard the true voices of the masses... we need to start rebuilding this democratic constitutional movement,” he told a news conference.
Tarhouni was in charge of the oil and finance portfolios in Libya’s outgoing transitional government and briefly served as acting prime minister until Thursday, when a new cabinet was sworn in.
Having been a frontrunner for a post as finance minister in Keib’s cabinet until the eleventh hour, Tarhouni said he had been asked to join but declined due to the challenges of the transitional period and because he wanted to speak freely.
“I see danger for the sovereignty of Libya. I see a threat for the wealth of the Libyan people,” Tarhouni told reporters, without elaborating.
“I see the economic issues as a major challenge,” he added.
“FAILED MISERABLY”
Tarhouni said that NTC had “failed miserably” in melding the myriad armed militias that still roam the country into an official national army.
Listing the many security and economic challenges that lie ahead for a nascent government as the country emerges from a bloody civil war, he said the safety of oil installations was a critical issue.
“My hope that the new government will take this issue seriously,” he said.
However, Tarhouni repeatedly wished the new line up “success” and said “they should be given a chance.”
On Tuesday, the NTC named a cabinet favouring appointees who will soothe rivalries between regional factions, but specific groups, including the Amazigh, or Berber, have boycotted the new government complaining of the lack of representation.Oleg Bahtiyarov was arrested while sitting on a park bench in the center of Kiev on March 31. Ukraine’s state security service says that, working in the guise of a civil society activist, he had trained a group of about 200 people to seize parliament and another government building.
According to Ukraine state security, Bahtiyarov is part of a large wave of Russian spies and operatives who have been flooding into the country before crucial presidential elections on May 25. Bahtiyarov’s people supposedly were promised $500 each. He was going to supply the equipment his group needed—wooden bats, Molotov cocktails and telescoping ladders—for use in storming the buildings.
The mastermind also arranged, with some Russian TV channels, to film the incident, which would then |
a shit about them?” But with his fans, they are comedy fans, so they’re there to see a comedy show that happens to be headlined by Patton Oswalt. They are open to seeing a comedy show, not just there to see a famous person do lines from a movie or from a TV show. So that’s the big difference with his crowd. I owe him a ton. That got me a lot of recognition, and it opened a lot of doors.
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AVC: How did February’s Comedy Central Presents special come about?
KK: It was a combination of a lot of things, especially last year. The album came out, I had just got the Variety “10 comics to watch.” Things just really came together last year, so I don’t know if it was because of that, or just involved with that. And also having management that’s involved and hands-on with things like that is nice. I’ve had previous experiences with just completely absentee representation. Things just all came together really well last year. And I’m scared shitless to find out how to keep momentum.
AVC: How close are you getting to a new album?
KK: What I would like to have and what will happen are obviously two different things, but I would like by the end of the year to have a new album at least ready to record. I had 10 years of material to pick and choose from for the last one, because nobody knew who I was. Now I’ve got—on top of that, which was recorded in ’09, came out beginning of last year, I did a half-hour special that had different material on it than the album. Then I did the John Oliver special this year, which had a collection of about 15 minutes in addition to the mash-up special. So basically, all that material was another album in itself. That was another 45 minutes to an hour that came out after the album. I don’t want to repeat any of that, so it’s back to working on even more material. I don’t want to put it out there just to have it out there, I want it to be good. So once I feel it’s good, that’s when it will come out.
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AVC: You just wrapped a pilot, right?
KK: It was Matt Braunger’s pilot that he shot for Comedy Central. We were friends from back in Chicago. I play his sidekick in it. I managed to pull getting the role of “Kyle.” He just submitted it last week, I haven’t heard anything back yet about it. It’s one of those things, I hope for my best friend’s sake they pick it up. For my own well-being, I put that stuff out of my mind. It’s something that’s been shot and done, it’s not up to me. You see too many people like, “This thing’s gotta work out, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll just go nuts!” I don’t ever want to be like that. When he hears something, he’ll let me know. Right now, I’m just like, “We shot it, I hope I did a good job, I hope I didn’t embarrass myself or Matt for having me on his show.”
AVC: Where do you want to take your career?
KK: I will welcome any kind of decent opportunity that comes my way. There are some voiceover things that have come up that I never particularly shot for, but the opportunity came up, and I’m like, “Yeah I’ll give it a shot.” Just like the thing with the pilot with Braunger, to act in that. I was like, “I don’t fancy myself an actor, but why not? Why would I not?” You know, as long as I feel like I’m not doing something that compromises any kind of beliefs or—I mean, I don’t have any kind of reputation, but as long as I can go to bed at night and I’m not doing a prank show, or tricking somebody and being mean, then why not try these things?Given all the headliners about US cellular carriers this week, we thought we’d follow-up with a simple poll. Unlimited this, unlimited that, limited, or not unlimited that, what kind of wireless plan do you pay for out of all the options? Or more simply put, who’s your current cellular carrier?
If you don’t live in the US, hold your horses for next week’s poll or vote in last week’s. Because this week, the news-wire was flooded with US carrier news.
The question of which cellular network is the best in the US, has seen nearly equal division among consumers. If cell carriers have ever come up in discussion, your initial attitude towards your network will most likely be, either you hate it, or you love it. Over the years, there have been 4 major options when it comes to cellular networks. They are, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T. Which carrier is best for you ultimately comes down to what you have what it is that you want.
The cellular space was shaken up big time this week. It all started with Verizon, who re-introduced their unlimited data plan consisting of unmeasured talk, text and 4G LTE data. This caught just about all of us by surprise, considering that it was just a few weeks ago the carrier had advertised people lack the need for unlimited data. On the heels of Verizon’s big story, T-Mobile’s John Legere was quick to jump-in, as normal, and announced a tweak to the carrier’s own ONE unlimited plan, which debuted in Q4 of 2017. The carrier added 10GB of monthly wireless hot-spot data at full-speed and will now include HD video streaming to match that in which Verizon is offering. The carrier also noted that two lines of unlimited go for just $100 a month, which translates to less than half the price of Verizon’s unlimited service.
Just before the week’s end, AT&T joined the mix. Its unlimited data plan that had before been limited to only DirecTV customers, would now be open to all. For a variety of reasons, AT&T hasn’t been the most competitive carrier of the four in terms of pricing and providing bonus extras. That trend has continued, but depending on what you want, AT&T’s service could be what you’re looking for.
There’s a lot to weigh in and take into consideration here before one can discover what’s truly the best deal for them-self or family. However, whichever carrier you go with, whether it be Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, or one of Sprint’s cellular plans, you’ll have to pay a shiny penny. The cost for cellular data remains high, despite all the extra freebies and notes made by each respective carrier. So…now that you have most of the information, which carrier will you choose?
Listed below are this week’s major carrier headlines. Click or tap on any of the links to learn more.
Click here for the latest carrier news!
This brings us to our weekly poll aka question of the week. Which plan are you currently on, or better yet, which cell carrier actively provides you with service? Let us know as well as the reasoning behind your choice in the comment section below this post. The poll will remain open all week. We look forward to hearing your response.Video
Photographer Oliver Hellowell has Down's syndrome, which his mother says means he sees the world differently from most people.
Oliver's unique way of capturing the natural world has recently gained him a lot of fans.
Just over a year ago, his mother Wendy O'Carroll set up a Facebook page for the 18-year-old's photography. That page now has more than 10,500 followers.
"It's not just the numbers that have surprised the family, it's the range of people," says Wendy. The page has fans from Brazil to Alaska.
Oliver hopes that photography - particularly of birds - can become his full-time profession.
To watch a subtitled version of this video, click here.
Video journalist: Kate Monaghan
Follow @BBCOuch on Twitter and on Facebook, and listen to our monthly talk showImage copyright Getty Images Image caption Could chemicals from wild plants be the key to a new generation of contraceptives?
Two compounds normally found in wild plants could make good alternatives to emergency contraceptives - if scientists only knew where to get enough of them.
Chemicals from dandelion root and the "thunder god vine" plant have long been used in traditional medicines.
Now, Californian researchers have found they can also block fertilisation.
A UK sperm expert said the discovery could lead to a new and novel approach to male contraception.
But the compounds existed at such low levels in plants that the cost of extraction was very high, the US team said.
In tests, chemicals called pristimerin and lupeol stopped fertilisation by preventing human sperm from whipping its tail and propelling itself towards and into the woman's egg.
The chemicals were acting like "molecular condoms", the study authors wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The chemical lupeol is found in aloe vera leaves, in very small quantities
In other words, they successfully blocked progesterone - which triggers the sperm's forceful swimming - but didn't damage the sperm.
"It doesn't kill sperm basal motility. It is not toxic to sperm cells; they still can move," said Polina Lishko, assistant professor of molecular and cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
"But they cannot develop this powerful stroke, because this whole activation pathway is shut down."
Lupeol is found in plants such as mango, dandelion root and aloe vera, while pristimerin is from the tripterygium wilfordii plant (also known as "thunder god vine") and is used in traditional Chinese medicine.
The researchers found that the chemicals worked at very low doses and had no side-effects either, unlike hormone-based contraceptives.
They concluded that the compounds could potentially be used as an emergency contraceptive, before or after intercourse, or as a permanent contraceptive via a skin patch or vaginal ring.
'A good bet'
Prof Lishko and her colleagues are now going to test how well these chemicals work in primates, whose sperm cells work in a similar way to humans.
They also are searching for a cheap source of the chemicals, which are very expensive to extract from wild plants because they are present at very low levels.
Allan Pacey, professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield said there was a real need for a non-hormone base male contraceptive.
"This is a very interesting study which shows that two natural compounds can knock out a key molecule on sperm that regulates how they swim in the final moments before fertilisation.
"Moreover, because the molecule is specific to sperm, it seems a good bet that this could be a novel contraceptive target that might lead to a male contraceptive pill without any of the side-effects so far seen in trials with hormone-jab contraceptives."
However, he said clinical trials were needed to show whether it worked in real people and this was likely to take a few years.The Iowa Department of Transportation says people ask them why they don't put "deer crossing" signs in areas where it is safer for the deer to cross."We actually get this question on a pretty regular basis," the post reads. "Deer can't read signs. Drivers can. This sign isn't intended to tell deer where to cross, it's for drivers to be alert that deer have been in this area in the past."The post received a lot of attention on social media, with many stunned that people were confused over the purpose of the signs. "You might want to make note of those individuals so that their driver's license can be revoked. Seriously?" one person commented. The DOT made the post to remind people fall is breeding season for deer.In Iowa from January 1 to October 23, 2017, there have been 3, 344 crashes with animals.According to their data, there has been 156 injuries and one fatality from the accidents.If that's not enough to make you be more alert when you see deer signs, from those accidents, there has been $14,690,650 in property damage reported.
The Iowa Department of Transportation says people ask them why they don't put "deer crossing" signs in areas where it is safer for the deer to cross.
"We actually get this question on a pretty regular basis," the post reads. "Deer can't read signs. Drivers can. This sign isn't intended to tell deer where to cross, it's for drivers to be alert that deer have been in this area in the past."
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The post received a lot of attention on social media, with many stunned that people were confused over the purpose of the signs.
"You might want to make note of those individuals so that their driver's license can be revoked. Seriously?" one person commented.
The DOT made the post to remind people fall is breeding season for deer.
In Iowa from January 1 to October 23, 2017, there have been 3, 344 crashes with animals.
According to their data, there has been 156 injuries and one fatality from the accidents.
If that's not enough to make you be more alert when you see deer signs, from those accidents, there has been $14,690,650 in property damage reported.
AlertMeAlexander Lebedev, chairman of Russia's National Reserve Corporation, speaks during an interview with Reuters journalists in Moscow on Sept. 25, 2012. (MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS)
A billionaire former KGB agent who has been financing an independent newspaper has been charged with hooliganism for getting into a fight on a television show a year ago, Russian news agencies reported Wednesday, in yet another sign of a crackdown on dissident voices here.
Alexander Lebedev, who along with Mikhail Gorbachev has been providing funds to the crusading Novaya Gazeta newspaper, faces criminal charges for taking two swings and knocking a fellow television guest off his chair, Russia’s Investigative Committee told the Interfax news agency.
Until recently, former KGB agents appeared to derive some degree of protection from their membership in the secret police. But this month, Gennady Gudkov, an ex-agent, was stripped of his seat in parliament. He was accused of running a business in violation of parliamentary rules, but he asserted that he was targeted by President Vladimir Putin — also formerly of the KGB — for joining opposition marches.
The charges against Lebedev, 52, come as Putin, who returned to the presidency in May, has overseen a methodical attack against any perceived opposition. Laws governing protests have been made harsher, human rights and election-monitoring groups that receive foreign money must register as foreign agents, and the U.S. Agency for International Development has been expelled because it offered grants to those groups.
Lebedev, whose other media interests include Britain’s the Independent and London’s Evening Standard, told a Reuters Russia Investment Summit on Tuesday that Putin had turned on him because he suspects him of financing the opposition — a charge that landed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky in prison.
1 of 25 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Images from around the world View Photos Here is a look at some of the week’s best photographs from around the globe. Caption Here is a look at some of the week’s best photographs from around the globe. Sept. 28, 2012 A new portrait of Mao Zedong is hung from a truck onto Tiananmen Gate in Beijing ahead of China's 63rd National Day on Oct. 1. Jason Lee/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“He thinks it is true that I have been funding” the opposition, Lebedev told Reuters, “so I was violating rule No. 1 — if you have money, you should not interfere [in politics].”
He denied the accusation.
Lebedev, whose wealth has been estimated at $1.1 billion by Forbes magazine, nominated anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny to the board of directors of the national airline Aeroflot earlier this year. Lebedev has a stake in the company and has been trying to sell his Russian businesses, he said this year.
He got into a fight on a talk show last year with a developer named Sergei Polonsky when Polonsky said he was mad enough to punch someone. Lebedev said he took the remark as a threat. Putin described the incident as hooliganism. That is the same charge brought against three members of a feminist punk-rock group who were sentenced to two years in jail last month.
The charge carries a maximum sentence of seven years behind bars.Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.
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It’s tricky to trust the things a politician says. Take Donald Trump, for example.
Two weeks ago, the Republican Party’s front-runner in this year’s presidential election called for people, including himself, to stop using Apple’s products over the tech company’s unwillingness to create a backdoor for the FBI to access the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooting terrorists.
I use both iPhone & Samsung. If Apple doesn’t give info to authorities on the terrorists I’ll only be using Samsung until they give info. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016
Boycott all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Cal — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016
Two weeks later, Mr. Trump has ignored his own boycott. Marketing Land analyzed the most recent 200 tweets the candidate has sent — dating from February 23, four days after his boycott call, until Friday morning — and found that Mr. Trump, or someone tweeting on his behalf, sent more than half of those tweets using Twitter’s iPhone app.
Of the 200 tweets Marketing Land checked out, 101 were sent using Twitter’s iPhone app, 98 using the company’s Android app and one using Twitter’s site. Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, didn’t respond to a question sent through Twitter on Friday asking why the candidate continues to tweet using an iPhone.
For comparison’s sake, the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton tweets mainly using TweetDeck. Of her most recent 200 tweets as of Friday morning, Ms. Clinton sent 147 through TweetDeck, 52 through Twitter’s site and one through Twitter’s iPhone app.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.PulpTunes is a free software program for Microsoft Windows that offers music serving capabilities to stream music over the Internet.
Apple iTunes is one of the most popular music managers and players. While it can be used to play music locally, it does not offer any means to play music over the Internet which might be interesting for users who work on different computer systems, e.g. a home computer and one at the office.
Pulptunes is a iTunes music server that can stream mp3 and m4a files over the Internet. The music can then be accessed in any modern web browser including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Opera.
Basically, what it enables you to do is access your iTunes music library over the Internet, provided that the computer that iTunes is installed on is connected to the Internet and pulpTunes is running on it.
Pulptunes
PulpTunes is available for Windows operating systems and also Linux and Macintosh. The software program tries to find the location of the iTunes XML file automatically on first start. This worked fine on our test system, but if that does not work for whatever reason, there is an option to add the path to the file manually.
Songs can be played directly in the web browser or downloaded with a right-click. All iTunes playlists and genres are available in the interface which makes it easier to locate albums or songs. A search is also provided to search the music collection.
Advanced options are available that include a basic user management so that only authorized users have access to the web service. Other options include:
Displays cover art if found
Generate direct links to songs or playlists to send to your friends
iTunes DJ integration
Command-line mode for server environments
Adjustable buffer level
PulpTunes needs to be running on the local computer system so that users can connect to the service over the Internet.
Verdict
PulpTunes is a handy software program for iTunes users who want access to their music library on other devices as well without having to sync the library to all these devices.
Please note that the program has not been updated for several years; the project appears to be dead, but it should work just fine nevertheless.
Summary Author Rating no rating based on 0 votes Software Name PulpTunes Operating System Windows Software Category Multimedia Landing Page https://sourceforge.net/projects/pulptunes/
AdvertisementWhen Front Defense released earlier this year it packed a lot of promise into a less-than-impressive package. The shooting and cover mechanics felt great, but it just needed a bit more time in the oven to really shine. Now just mere months after its release the developers at Fantahorn Studios and publishers at Vive Studios are back again with a follow-up titled Front Defense: Heroes. However, instead of being a stationary wave shooter like its predecessor, this is a fast-paced, online, 5v5, multiplayer shooter.
I’m not the only one that thinks that’s a pretty big shift, right?
The popularity of military shooters is no new thing, even for the young VR industry. Onward is one of the most popular VR games to date, with similar titles such as Pavlov springing up in its wake, and other entries such as Bravo Team due to release early next year. According to the official press release, Front Defense: Heroes will include not only deathmatch, but also capture the flag and defense-based game modes. The release also mentions a unique locomotion system called “V-Move” but there aren’t any details on what that means exactly.
“With Front Defense: Heroes we’ve built upon our experience with Front Defense to engage the community and offer new challenges with every match,” said River Ho, Front Defense producer in a prepared statement. “As a dynamic multiplayer shooter, Front Defense: Heroes lends itself perfectly to the competitive ethos of VR e-sports, an important feature as VR gaming matures.”
Vive Studios is also announcing a new game from developer 2 Bears Studio today (Arcade Saga) titled Super Puzzle Galaxy, which is a physics-based puzzle game. Both games are expected to be available in early December.
Perhaps most surprisingly of the news about Front Defense: Heroes is that during its launch window it will be available at a price point of only $4.99. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Tagged with: Fantahorn, Front Defense, vive studiosI apologize for the poor quality of the video. It was done on a cheap microphone with a cheap headset, because that's all I have, and I kept having to look away because I get sick of messing up the script and ended up reading it.
Inspired by the stories of Katawa Shoujo, a couple friends and I decided to put together a musical group, with myself writing all the lyrics and helping write the music, Sam writing and playing the music, and Haley singing. Everything is currently done here in my bedroom, which is why it sounds so demo-y. We hope to raise the money to record the EP properly in a studio in Denver. The finished project will have six songs, one related to each girl (including Misha), and there will be a second EP with the same format released sometime in the summer.
Below are links for the two finished demos so far. There are a couple rough patches that will need to be ironed out, but we feel this should give you a decent idea of our sound!
The long wait comes from the the three of us finishing up classes, especially with finals coming up, and so we'll be able to really get to work in earnest following May.
http://www.facebook.com/cagedheartband
http://soundcloud.com/josh_mccathern/sun-shine-improved-final-demo
http://soundcloud.com/josh_mccathern/touch-lilly-improved-demoInvestigators leave the home of Micah Xavier Johnson in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas, Friday, July 8, 2016. A Texas law enforcement official identified Johnson, 25, as the sniper who opened fire on police officers in the heart of Dallas during protests over two recent fatal police shootings of black men. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
The man who police now say was the lone actor in the deadliest single night for police in the United States since 9/11 had all the makings of a terrorist in his home, say Dallas police.
Micah Xavier Johnson, who stated his support for Black Lives Matter as one of the reasons for his murderous rampage, is now deceased, killed by police after killing police. Johnson was a member of a Facebook group that promoted the killing of police officers.
A search of his home revealed the extent of his planning to do just that, and perhaps shows that he intended to survive, escape, and attack again. Among the items found in his home were materials for making bombs, “AK-47-type” rifles, ammunition, bullet proof vests, and even a “personal journal of combat tactics.” Dallas police chief David Brown stated for the record this morning that Jones told them he “wanted to kill white people,” and it seems clear he plannd to do so in as big a way as possible.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” Chief Brown said. Police added that Mr. Johnson had no criminal record and that “others have identified him as a loner.” Two civilians were also wounded in the shootings, which broke out in downtown Dallas Thursday night during a protest sparked by the fatal shootings of black men by police in Louisiana, and Minnesota. On Friday morning, Dallas police and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents searched a two-story beige brick home where Mr. Johnson lived with his mother, neighbors said.
Not merely a murderer and an assassin, but a fledgling terrorist plotting his terrors. A former soldier executing uniformed, armed protectors. It is the ultimate betrayal. And despite his latching on to a protest movement, it is clear that injustice was not what he hated, it is what he dealt in. His anger came from within, not from without. He betrayed his service and his country, he betrayed his community and his city, and he betrayed a peaceful protest by bringing death and horror into its midst.
A truly evil, unjust, indefensible, hideous act of terror. And it seems clear he meant it only to be the beginning.The stated goal of Texas’ HB 3859 is to provide “religious freedom” to adoption and foster care agencies that receive funding from or have any sort of contract with the state.
What it actually does is create a way for Christians running those facilities to discriminate against atheists, Muslims, Jews, LGBT people, single people, or anyone else they find objectionable for religious reasons. (Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin would still be illegal.)
That’s not all. Christian foster parents would have the ability to put children under their care in private religious schools. They would also be allowed to refuse contraception to those kids — and they wouldn’t have to help them procure an abortion if needed.
That’s not all.
Foster care organizations could also require children to follow their religious requirements, which, in some religious organizations could mean sending LGBT youth to so-called “conversion therapy,” a dangerous treatment that claims to change a person’s sexual orientation. Conversion therapy has been broadly condemned as psychologically damaging, particularly for youth, and has been outlawed in a number of states.
“It’s about as limiting a bill as we have seem,” Terri Burke, executive director for ACLU Texas, told CNN. “You say you have a sincerely held religious belief and you are a private adoption agency or private entity that helps place foster children — you can say you will not place that child with gay parents …. If I’m Catholic I can say I don’t want any Baptists to raise the child,” Burke said.
Basically if your faith says it’s okay, it’s okay, and Texas will continue supporting you.
What’s incredible is how the sponsor of the bill, State Rep. James Frank, defended it:
“My guess is if you have an LGBT agency they’re going to pick an LGBT family, and if you have a Baptist agency they may be more likely to pick a Baptist family,” Frank told CBS. “They’re free to do that and should be free to do that.”
Everyone would discriminate if they had a chance, he argues…
Quick: Name an “LGBT” adoption agency. I dare you. It’s no surprise that Christians usually have the money and infrastructure necessary to run these sorts of agencies — and more power to them. But for the state to say they’ll help some of these groups while giving them permission to put their faith-based bigotry ahead of the needs of the children in their care is incredibly irresponsible.
The Texas House was supposed to vote on this bill on Saturday, but that was postponed to today. Given the GOP majorities in the House and Senate, this bill likely won’t be stopped by legislative means, but it may lead to a lawsuit if passed.
(Image via Shutterstock)OROVILLE (CBS13) — A class action lawsuit was filed Friday against the Department of Water Resources by evacuees who were forced to leave their homes during the Oroville Dam Spillway emergency.
The suit could include close to 200,000 potential plaintiffs.
The lines of traffic stretched for miles, as folks frantically fled on that Sunday night in February. Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway was on the brink of failure, and officials worried its waters could wipe away homes in multiple cities downstream, so they ordered 188,000 people to evacuate the area.
Now, three of those evacuees are suing the state. Attorneys say the Department of Water Resources has to be held responsible, claiming for years it failed to adequately maintain the Oroville Dam, which led not only to the crisis, but now the concern of residents, who are still worried about a future disaster, as well as property values.
The class action follows a legal claim filed last week by JEM Farms in Oroville, which claims dozens of acres of its walnut trees were washed away when officials opened floodgates during the dam crisis with no warning to surrounding residents and businesses.The South Korean military has continued loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as North Korea shows no signs of backing off its threat to target the facilities.
A military official in Seoul said broadcasts from all eleven loudspeakers were made as scheduled in the wee hours of Monday, but no reaction has been seen from the North.
The North, however, is keeping its firepower on standby on the frontline so that it can target the loudspeakers as soon as an order is given.
Since Thursday, the South Korean military has remained on its highest alert after the North launched artillery fire across the border.
The Seoul official said that South Korea and the U.S. have also put in place a joint defense posture, including deploying the U.S. Forces Korea’s multiple rocket launchers near the demarcation line.
Seoul and Washington are also maintaining WATCHCON, an intelligence and surveillance status system for North Korean provocations, at its second highest level. Under WATCHCON level 2, satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, and on-ground reconnaissance facilities are monitoring movements by the North Korean military around the clock.Sherron Paige with her family in her home in Red Hook Houses, where she says her son Kyan was poisoned by lead paint the city ignored. Photography by Scott Heins for the Village Voice
Last Tuesday morning, Sherron Paige and three of her neighbors from Red Hook East, one of the city’s oldest public housing projects, split a cab to lower Manhattan. Members of the City Council were set to grill New York City Housing Authority chair Shola Olatoye on the agency’s growing lead paint scandal, and Paige had been promised a chance to share her story. So, after taking a personal day from her job as a NYCHA custodial worker, Paige ascended the steps of City Hall to accuse Olatoye and the city of New York — both her boss and her landlord — of poisoning her four-year-old son, Kyan.
Back in November, a bombshell report from the New York City Department of Investigation revealed that the city stopped conducting required lead paint safety inspections in public housing in 2013, then knowingly lied about the inspections to federal authorities. Grabbing a seat near the front of the unusually packed council chambers, Paige watched as the councilmembers, led by the chair of the Committee on Public Housing, Ritchie Torres, spent four hours tearing into the embattled NYCHA leader on the wide-ranging failure, and questioning why the public was not immediately notified once the lapse was discovered.
Admitting that “communication could have been more precise,” Olatoye refused to answer repeated questions about when, exactly, she first learned that the agency was issuing false compliance reports.
“You don’t recall?” Torres pressed. “I find that incredible.”
When the councilmembers’ questions for Olatoye had finished, she exited the chamber alongside her staff, followed by a gaggle of reporters. Many of the aggrieved tenants, having only taken off work for the morning, left as well. But Paige hung around, waiting patiently as DOI Commissioner Mark Peters testified that it was still unclear how many apartments had tested positive for lead, and how many had not been properly tested at all.
When Peters was finished, Torres thanked him for his testimony, then announced that he’d be concluding the hearing early, on account of a “personal emergency.”
“That made me so mad,” Paige, thirty-four, recalls. “How they gonna talk about us like we’re not here, then just dismiss us like that?”
Most of the information gleaned from the hearing, Paige fumes, had been apparent to anyone living in NYCHA housing even before the DOI’s report came out. “They don’t listen to the people who actually live in these buildings,” she remembers thinking.
So instead of leaving, Paige marched defiantly to the front of the council chamber, holding a photo of Kyan. “My son is affected by elevated lead levels,” she announced to the room, as the councilmembers packed their things. “He’s lived in Red Hook since the day he was born, and I still don’t know if he’s safe.”
***
Paige learned that her son was at risk for lead poisoning this past summer — over a year after both Olatoye and Mayor Bill de Blasio were made aware of the gap in lead paint inspections, but months before they got around to informing tenants. She was compacting trash in Red Hook, one of her responsibilities as a NYCHA worker, when someone from the city health department called her with the news: A routine checkup had shown Kyan’s blood-lead levels were at 12 micrograms per deciliter, significantly higher than the maximum acceptable level of 5.
Immediately, Paige thought of the large hole in her wall, the result of a burst pipe, that exposed layers of paint in the hallway just outside Kyan’s bedroom. Over the past two years, she says, she’s filed at least half a dozen maintenance requests to fix both the pipe and the wall, to no avail. “I still couldn’t believe it,” she says. “That damn hole gave my son lead poisoning.”
While the initial diagnosis left her confused and angry, Paige says it also helped “connect some of the dots.” Kyan had hit all his milestones as a baby, but had started showing signs of a learning disability as a toddler. “He still struggles to form sentences,” Paige says. “He can’t hold a pencil like the other kids, and throws tantrums in class when he gets frustrated — it’s a lot for him.” Days before the hearing, Paige met with Kyan’s pre-K teacher and principal, who recommended he be placed in special education classes when he starts kindergarten next year.
Shortly before that, Mayor de Blasio had belatedly admitted to NYCHA’s lead paint inspection failures, saying he’d been informed of “the possibility of non-compliance” in March 2016. He said residents should have been told of the “whole picture” sooner, and defended Olatoye, whom he appointed in 2014. “Thank God,” the mayor told reporters, “there has not been harm done to any child because of the mistakes that were made.”
In the weeks since, as the mayor has dug in his heels on the claim that no was hurt, Paige’s voice has been among the loudest to challenge that narrative. As the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed last month, she’s alleging that the housing authority “knowingly and intentionally” failed to inspect her apartment for lead, and ignored repeated requests to fix the gaping hole in the wall adjacent to her son’s bedroom. “Kyan suffered serious and permanent injury as a result of NYCHA’s actions,” the suit claims.
Even after Kyan’s diagnosis, NYCHA steadfastly refused to acknowledge Paige’s apartment contained lead, despite an inspection from the city health department that determined this was the case. Only after the health department conducted a second test of the apartment’s dust, in which it again found lead, did NYCHA concede that something should be done. Finally, in October, a NYCHA employee arrived to cover and repaint the hole in the wall adjacent to Kyan’s bedroom, just as Paige had been requesting for years.
Reached for comment, mayoral spokesperson Olivia Lapeyrolerie maintained that there have been no medical consequences for any children in NYCHA housing as the result of lead exposure, and refused to comment directly on the lawsuit’s allegations. Asked directly about Paige, the mayor said he was “not going to speak to an allegation,” and assured reporters that this has been the “opposite” of an “ongoing, pervasive, continuous health problem.”
According to Paige and her attorney, Corey Stern, the city’s refusal to acknowledge the consequences of its actions may be putting thousands of children in harm’s way. “The universe of people affected by what NYCHA didn’t do and covered up is six times larger than the total population of Flint, Michigan,” Stern, who is the lead counsel for all plaintiffs in Flint, told the Voice. “It’s so much worse than people realize, and they don’t even know where to begin to fix the problems they’ve created.”
***
If Mayor de Blasio has met the lead scandal’s victims with deflection and denial, the city’s housing authority has taken that strategy a step further, actively blaming tenants for the lapse in inspections. On Saturday, the Daily News reported that NYCHA has been sending “breach of lease” notices to dozens of Red Hook tenants with young children, chiding them for a “failure to comply with [lead-based] paint regulations” and warning that eviction may |
best to run their own workplace. They could run it far better than the current bosses. They never make such suggestions to their boss, as they would find themselves out of work! “Efficiency” today means how best to make more money for the capitalists, with fewer workers doing more work. Under a rationally-planned society, efficiency would mean massive benefits for all. Of course, we would welcome the help of technicians, computer analysts and engineers in this enterprise. Scientists could help to build a better world with new inventions that could save labour and reduce the working week even further.
If production was planned, there would be no unemployment. Everyone would be guaranteed a decent job on a proper wage. As production increased, so would wages.
The colossal wastage under capitalism would be done away with under a socialist planned economy. Today, for example, arms expenditure which has become a massive drain on society. There are now 15,700 known warheads on the planet, with enough power to destroy us several times over. Governments intend to spend one trillion dollars on weapons of mass destruction in the next decade. What a scandalous waste! It would be far better to covert factories producing bombs to producing socially-useful things, and so raise our standard of living.
We would use our potential resources, not for wars and conflicts, but to increase our well-being. The talent of scientists would not be wasted on building bigger bombs or more sophisticated weapons of destruction, but put to productive use for all.
From each according to their ability; to each according to their need
“Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges,” explained Steve Hilton, a leading Tory political strategist. “Regardless of who’s in office, the same people are in power. It is a democracy in name only, operating on behalf of a tiny elite no matter the electoral outcome.” There we have it; straight from the horses’ mouth. Capitalism is a system for the rich, by the rich and of the rich. In place of this dictatorship of bankers and capitalists, we will have the democratic rule of working people. A society run by working people for working people.
Socialist planning of our resources is the way forward. Even the capitalists, who preach the virtues of the market, do not apply the market in their own factories and workplaces. Here everything is planned down to the last item, using the latest technology. That is the only way production in a factory can be organised. There is no market system here! All we are saying is that the whole economy should be run on such a planned basis, rather than being left to the vagaries of blind market forces. Of course, by planning, we do not mean the dictates of unelected managers, but the democratic involvement of all.
The economic levers of society – the banks and giant industries - should be taken over without compensation and run under democratic workers’ control and management. Power would finally be in the hands of ordinary people. This will allow us to democratically plan the economy and finally live our lives to the full. Art and culture, which was the preserve of a privileged minority, would now be available to the mass of people.
Eventually, as productivity expands and the last remnants of capitalism are eradicated, society will be based on the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” In other words, a classless society based upon solidarity and the harmonious satisfaction of everyone’s needs. The miseries of capitalism could finally end up in the dustbin of history and we could finally progress to a new future of peace and prosperity for all.
Don’t stand on the side-lines, join us in this fight!The Breitling Windrider Crosswind is a incredibly attractive and assertive timepiece that represents the top of the Windrider series. It is certainly a incredibly elegant and contemporary chronograph which differentiates its do it yourself with a stylish design and style and an outstanding efficiency. Everything about this check out advises improvement, functionality and great top quality. Breitling’s esteem and worth happen to be the primary characteristics that define the beautiful appearance of the Crosswind, a watch that gives features, durability and variation.Photograph OF Authentic WATCH
One thing is usually for sure, this timepiece is not your regular sports watch. It is usually a extremely complicated unit both in conditions of appears and features. The complex call is usually one of the primary factors why the Windrider Crosswind is certainly quite complicated to replicate. There happen to be simply a few of fraudulent suppliers out there ready of beautifully cloning this version. For those who happen to be interested in acquiring out how to differentiate a imitation from the serious package, the below comparability will absolutely come valuable.
The adventurous identity of the watch is advised by the bold and sturdy good sized stainless steel case that gravitates around a individually designed black face. As just about all Breitling wristwatches, the deal with of this version incorporates various stylish specifics that happen to be amazingly valuable for is certainly owner. The sterling silver roman numbers, the bright white time frame screen located at 3 o’clock, the 3 sub-dials and the interior tachymetric degree disappear in a exquisite horological balance. Receiving this face structure proper is certainly certainly not that convenient, as these photos exhibit. A swift seem will notify you that the hour creators happen to be in the incorrect size, that the day windows offers an wrong form and size, that the little knobs characteristic entirely diverse indexes and that the composing is usually method off. For example, under the silvery B-winged logo design it should state “Breitling Chronograph Auto”, but on the imitation view we observe “Breitling Chronometre Auto”. Another large difference is usually the consistency of the call. The genuine view offers a simple dark call whereas the imitation offers a central round region that offers a elevated covered design.
The bezel is also full of style flaws. The many apparent types will be the gradations. The initial Crosswind bezel offers a huge embossed baton gun rather of the indexes for 5, 10, 20, 25, 35, 40, 50 and 55 moments. The imitation will not really possess this type of guns, but standard gradations. Likewise, the elevated 15, 30 and 45 moments indexes possess the incorrect font, size and width. And the errors continue with the domed turning top and keys. The convenient traction padded embossed style on their area is certainly erroneously cloned. The lines happen to be deeper spread out besides than on the primary wristwatch.
Possibly nonetheless this make-believe Breitling check out is manufactured from metal material, it is visible from the photographs that the top quality of the material and finish is quite poor. The accessory is certainly the excellent model for this. The primary one features a slick area while the fake possesses a blown one. As well the structure of the links is certainly incredibly unique. The Crosswind brings out a different type of Breitling accessory that alternates lines of 3 links with lines of 4 links. The clone features the basic Navitimer bracelets.
One of the newest Breitling feelings is, without a good question, the Crosswind. This extremely manly and complicated watch was produced for stylish males who choose contemporary wrist watches with a sporty nature. It is definitely merely that type of unit that is aware how to stability smooth class with a great informal character.LONDON — The deputy speaker of the House of Lords has resigned his position after publication of photos and a video allegedly showing him using cocaine with prostitutes.
John Sewel’s alleged behaviour is “shocking and unacceptable,” Lords Speaker Baroness D’Souza said Sunday, adding she is calling in police to investigate on an urgent basis.
“These serious allegations will be referred to the House of Lords commissioner for standards and the Metropolitan Police for investigation as a matter of urgency,” D’Souza said, adding that “the House of Lords will continue to uphold standards in public life.”
She said Sewel, who is married, has stepped down from his special position in Britain’s upper house. He remains a member of the House of Lords.
The Sun on Sunday newspaper published photographs of him naked and appearing to snort cocaine along with snippets of his conversations with women said to be prostitutes.
As deputy speaker, one of his roles was enforcing standards in the House of Lords. He was an ally of former prime minister Tony Blair.
Sewel, 69, a former minister whose duties included enforcing parliamentary standards, appeared to be the target of a sting by The Sun newspaper on Sunday, which released video images purporting to show him using drugs.
The Sun reported that he had stripped naked and snorted cocaine from the breasts of one of the women he had invited to the apartment in the Pimlico district of London, close to Parliament.
The Sewel convention, which outlines some rules on the relationship between legislators in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and those in London, is named after him.
Sewel does not represent any political party in the House of Lords, a fact that could limit the fallout from the allegations.Our reservation campaign is coming to an end in Europe! Reservations placed this weekend (before 10:00 am PDT on Monday) will still be eligible for free international shipping.
Starting Monday, customers in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the Netherlands can order a 2nd generation board without a reservation. Best of all, boards ship in 7-10 business days.
For those who really want the extra range, you can reserve an extended range battery pack for free. Your reservation gives you the opportunity to purchase an extended range pack for $199 (a $399 value) once they become available.
Australia & New Zealand
Our reservation campaign remains in place for customers in Australia and New Zealand. We’ll have an update on timing within the next couple of weeks. Reservations are still eligible for free shipping, so be sure to place your $100 deposit now!
-The Boosted TeamCLEVELAND (Reuters) - The idea that college freshmen gain an average of 15 pounds in their first year of school is a myth — the average is really between 2.4 pounds for women and 3.4 pounds for men, the co-author of a new study said Tuesday.
Clients work out on machines at the Bally Total Fitness facility in Arvada, Colorado June 15, 2009. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
“Not only is there not a ‘Freshman 15,’ there doesn’t appear to be even a ‘college 15’ for most students,” said Jay Zagorsky, research scientist at Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resource Research and co-author of a study on college weight gain.
No more than 10 percent of all college freshmen actually gained 15 pounds or more — and a quarter of freshmen reported actually losing weight during their first year.
The results, published in the journal Social Science Quarterly, show that college students gain weight steadily during their college years, with women gaining on average seven to nine pounds, and men between 12 and 13 pounds.
Zagorsky said that most of us do gain weight as we get older, and “it is not college that leads to weight gain - it is becoming a young adult.”
Zagorsky said that women who do not go to college gained about two pounds and non-college males gained about three pounds during the year they could have been freshmen. That means that college freshmen are only gaining about a 1/2 pound more than similar people who did not go to school, says Zagorsky.
The study, conducted with Patricia Smith of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, used information from a study of more than 7,000 people nationwide. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 interviewed people between the ages of 13 and 17 in 1997 and continues to interview the same people each year since then.
A variety of factors thought to be associated with freshman weight gain were considered, including living in a dormitory, going to school full or part-time, pursuing a two-year or four-year degree and heavy alcohol drinking (the consumption of six or more drinks on at least four days per month.)
The only factor found to make a significant difference in weight gain was heavy drinking. Even then, heavy drinkers gained less than a pound more than students who did not drink.
The researchers also examined what happened to the students’ weight after graduation and found they typically gained another 1.5 pounds a year in the first four years after college.
Zagorsky said he came up with the idea for the study after seeing a flyer for a fitness center aimed at combating the “Freshman 15.”
“I wondered if there really was a Freshman 15,” Zagorsky told Reuters. He had the data from the Longitudinal study, and decided to use it to test the “15” theory.
SOURCE: bit.ly/rDFVT4 Social Science Quarterly, online October 18, 2011.Why do you want Lollipop so bad?
We can’t blame Sony Xperia owners endlessly question when the Android Lollipop will arrive. The same thing happens every time there is a major Android build on the horizon. The comments section gets filled up with irate Xperia owners asking exactly when the said update will arrive.
Whilst we can understand the desire to be using the latest Android builds, we aren’t in the same situation we were even two years back where the major revisions brought significant improvements. As we move forward those updates will no doubt start to become more incremental.
There are a number of changes that Android Lollipop brings – the one that most people are aware of is the new Material Design UI. However, not everyone is on the same page as Google in terms of the direction it is taking its UI. Android KitKat had a certain elegance and simplicity that gets lost in Lollipop’s flat and brighter design (at least natively). We’re all intrigued in which direction Sony will be heading with its Lollipop update, but is a new design a killer reason for you to update?
Other additions that Lollipop brings include the now default ART runtime, expanded notifications, lock-screen notifications, 3D recent apps, 64-bit chipset support and security enhancements.
This particular author is still currently running Android 4.4.2 KitKat on a Xperia Z2, mainly because it just works so well. So why not upgrade? Well battery life is superb, performance is great, all of the apps I need are compatible with the OS and I have root. Apart from being on the latest number, there’s no particular reason to upgrade right now.
Judging by those that have upgraded to Android Lollipop on other devices, a performance hit is likely. So we’re puzzled why so many are looking forward to the update? Is it just to be on the latest build? Is it because you’re looking forward to a new (material) design? Or is it because there are actual Lollipop features that you want? We’re intrigued to hear why you want Android Lollipop so badly?Nepal Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Image: MEA India
Nepal’s new government led by Prime Minister K P Oli extended an olive branch to India on Sunday, as its Deputy PM Kamal Thapa told External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj that Kathmandu was ready to resolve outstanding political differences through “dialogue” at an early date, sources told The Indian Express.
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New Delhi agreed to let 300 trucks carrying fuel supplies enter Nepal through border crossing points apart from Raxaul, where the situation is particularly tense.
When Swaraj met Thapa at about 12.30 pm at Hyderabad House on Sunday, she is learnt to have asked him about the “political situation” in Nepal and the concerns of the “disaffected population” — which includes the Madhesis and Janjatis.
[related-post]
Thapa, who is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, briefed her on the situation and gave the Indian side an understanding about the “constitutional amendments” that the ruling coalition is planning to bring in Nepal’s Parliament. These are expected to address some of the grievances and concerns of the Madhesis, who have been protesting in the Terai region over the last two months.
Thapa, according to sources, asked Swaraj, “Can you help us… since Dashain (Nepal’s Dussehra festival) is here?”
Working for peace, stability & reconciliation in Nepal. EAM @SushmaSwaraj meets Deputy PM & FM Kamal Thapa in Delhi pic.twitter.com/nkjdHVO1p6 — Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) October 18, 2015
Swaraj is learnt to have replied, “It is not in my hands… wherever we can, we will be able to help. But Indian truckers are complaining bitterly about waiting at the borders, since there is unrest on Nepal’s side of the border.”
At this point, Thapa is learnt to have requested Swaraj to let 300 trucks of fuel supplies, which are stuck at the Raxaul border crossing, be re-routed through other points. Swaraj is understood to have given her consent, and said that India had no issues about such re-routing, provided Nepal’s border infrastructure at other crossing points was ready to handle such heavy cargo movement.
Sources said the meeting was “good and positive”, and pointed out that the Nepal embassy’s statement did not mention the “blockade” but said the ministers discussed “easing of obstruction of cargo vehicles to Nepal”.
Sources said the two sides were “flexible” in their position and the Indian side conveyed that “peace and reconciliation” is necessary for the “stability” of Nepal — an apparent reference to the Madhesi agitation.
“The meeting remained positive. I am confident that initiatives would be taken to resolve our mutual problems,” Thapa was quoted by Nepalese media as saying.
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Thapa also met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, NSA Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar.We are pleased that you have come here. Let us tell you about your Farflung experience. It is a tabletop game about the ends of the universe, where nothing has been undone and everything is permitted. You will be one of the heroes who rages against the dying of the star-light. From transhuman zetta-tech androids, to the bewildered time-traveler who came to see new wonders, down to the humble robot who yearns for freedom, the only limits are your imagination.
In a future where everything is possible, then what makes for an interesting story? Farflung introduces you to a world of challenges from the simplest of tasks to the most complex of emotions. When space, time, death, life, hate, love, and everything else have passed beyond binary meaning, we will show you the many new stories that wait for you:One of the most interesting news stories to come out of Computex Taipei, for my money, was Nvidia’s Max-Q — it’s a whole new design approach to gaming laptops, helping manufacturers put powerful GPUs like the GTX 1080 inside slim notebooks. It was a little amusing, then, to see Zotac use the same show to announce the world’s smallest version of Nvidia’s fastest gaming GPU: behold the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Mini, which absolutely will not fit into any laptop.
It’s not a fair comparison, of course: Nvidia’s laptop GPUs are already clocked lower than their desktop counterparts to reduce the need for giant cooling systems like you see here, and Max-Q devices use software to further optimize their performance. Zotac’s GTX 1080 Ti Mini is for PC builders who aren’t willing to compromise on power but still want a reasonably small system — at 8.3 inches long, it shouldn’t have any problem fitting into a mini ATX tower.
The card’s size is more impressive when you view it next to the rest of Zotac’s hulking GTX 1080 Ti range, as seen below. Zotac hasn’t announced pricing or availability just yet.Buried in President Bush's proposed budget for next year is a story of broken promises. It's a story that puts our nation's honor -- and our environment, economy and families -- on the line.
The president wants to increase spending on every major category of our government's nuclear program except one: cleaning up the toxic legacy that lurks at nuclear reservations and facilities around the nation.
The administration wants more funding for nuclear weaponry, nuclear energy, nuclear science and management. But it would spend $800 million less on environmental cleanups at 20 federal nuclear sites in 14 states.
Its request for cleanups at nuclear sites in several states is the lowest since 1997.
Federal cleanups are not yet completed in Washington state, New York, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky, California, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Nevada or Utah. Our government is turning its back on long-standing commitments.
Nothing better illustrates why America must clean up the enormous quantities of waste at these sites than Hanford, our country's most-contaminated federal nuclear reservation. Here, the United States produced weapons-grade plutonium, unlocking the code to the power that helped win the Cold War.
The legacy of that era is a witches' brew of the world's most dangerous materials, housed in half-century-old storage tanks, that are contaminating nearby soils and aquifers.
Will America keep its promises and clean up this toxic legacy? Will our nation and Congress allow the administration to turn its back on millions of Americans?
Success won't come easily. Conscientious Americans must join the states that are living with unfinished nuclear cleanups to compel the Energy Department to get its program moving again.
And time is not on our side.
Just below ground at the Hanford site are 177 enormous steel tanks. They contain 53 million gallons of heavy metals, acids, solvents and highly radioactive elements, including plutonium, cesium, strontium and uranium. Sixty-seven tanks are confirmed leakers, and nearly all are well beyond their design lifespan.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the federal government and its contractors also buried thousands of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste in unlined landfills and injected 450 billion gallons of liquid waste into ponds, ditches and drainfields at the site. That is about the amount of water that flows through the Potomac River in a month.If the Ravens are going to make a serious push for a playoff spot, they'll need improved play from what they've delivered through seven games.
Like, way more improved.
Sure, the Ravens began the season 3-0 and have been within one score in every game, but that was against some of the lightest competition they'll face all year.
Heading into Sunday's game, the record of the seven teams the Ravens have played subtracting the results of those very games — was 17-25 (.405). The Oakland Raiders were the only opponent who would make the playoffs if the season ended before Sunday.
Looking ahead, five of the Ravens' last nine regular-season are against playoff teams, and three others are against teams still in the hunt. The combined record of the remaining opponents heading into Sunday was 32-29 (.525).
Here's the rest of the Ravens' schedule, with a quick recap of how each opponent had fared heading into Week 8...
Nov. 6 vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (4-3): As much as it seems the Ravens' season is a lost cause, this game, remarkably, could be for first place in the division. The storyline of the week will be the health of Ben Roethlisberger, who had surgery Oct. 17 to repair a torn meniscus and is flirting with a return against the Ravens. Landry Jones went 29-for-47 for 281 yards filling in for Roethlisberger in a home loss against the New England Patriots. Regardless of who starts at quarterback, the Steelers have two of the most dangerous weapons in the league, in running back Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown. Even in a down year, the Ravens won both meetings last season, and have taken four of the past five.
It isn’t quite midseason for the Ravens, but with their bye coming after seven games, it’s a good time to assess the team. The Ravens (3-4) began the season 3-0 but lost the next four games. Grades have rapidly dropped in recent weeks for some position groups, and no unit has earned an “A.” Here’s how each position grades out so far.
Nov. 10 vs. Cleveland Browns (0-7): Sometimes it seems these Thursday night games are battles of attrition. The human body isn't built to play football on three days of rest. Being home for consecutive weeks has to help the Ravens in that regard. The Browns, since the Ravens beat them in Week 2, have cycled through a handful of quarterbacks, and they're back with their starter from that previous meeting, Josh McCown. Who knows which quarterback will start for the Browns two games from now? While the Browns are on the fast track to the No. 1 overall pick this spring, they weren't a complete walkover when the Ravens beat them 25-20 on Sept. 18.
Nov. 20 at Dallas Cowboys (5-1): The Cowboys have provided one of the best storylines of the season, as rookie running back Ezekiel Elliott is putting up rare numbers, and rookie quarterback Dak Prescott has directed five straight wins. Oh, and there's the whole plot of Tony Romo, injured in the preseason, just about ready to return to a team that doesn't look like it needs him anymore. Owner Jerry Jones has remained loyal to Romo, saying it's his team when he's healthy, but logic says there's no way Prescott loses his starting job if the Cowboys keep winning. Dallas still has to play the Philadelphia Eagles, Browns and Steelers before it hosts the Ravens, so a lot could change in that time.
Nov. 27 vs. Cincinnati Bengals (3-4): The Bengals have reached the playoffs in five straight years (and lost in the wild-card round each time), so their slow start has been a bit disappointing. But the four teams they've lost to — the Steelers, Denver Broncos, Cowboys and New England Patriots — are all potential Super Bowl contenders. Their offense underwent big changes, mainly losing coordinator Hue Jackson to the Browns, and has not been as potent as last year. Still, A.J. Green (775 yards so far) is one of the most dangerous wide receivers in football, and he has excelled against the Ravens in past games. The Bengals have won the past five meetings.
Dec. 4 vs. Miami Dolphins (3-4): Through five weeks, the Dolphins looked like one of the worst teams in the NFL. Then second-year running back Jay Ajayi announced himself to the world. Heading into Week 6, Ajayi had with 304 career rushing yards. Then he ran for 418 combined yards in consecutive wins, becoming the fourth player in NFL history to go for 200 yards back-to-back. Important to Ajayi's and the Dolphins' recent success is the renewed health of their offensive line. With winnable games the next few weeks, the Dolphins could still be fighting for a wild-card spot by the time they play the Ravens.
Dec. 12 at Patriots (6-1): The Ravens have been poison ivy to the mighty Patriots — irritable but not all that harmful. Last time they met was in the playoffs following the 2014 season. The Patriots won and continued being the Patriots; the Ravens lost and haven't been the same since. New England will be heavy favorites at home for this Monday Night Football game. Tom Brady hasn't missed a step after his suspension, and the Patriots have looked like the most complete team in the league. The only other Monday meeting between the franchises was in 2007, when the undefeated Patriots barely slipped past a bad Ravens team.Every New Year most people talk of resolutions. Unfortunately, most of the talk is about how resolutions don’t work and end up causing more frustration and discouragement than any type of help. The thing is, I’m fairly certain that unless we focus on what we do want and what’s important to us, we likely end up with a year that looks similar to the one before, or worse, one that is significantly less fulfilling. In fact, without such clarity we’re like a person starting out on a journey with no purpose or destination in mind, or an airplane taking off without navigation. So rather than eliminate resolutions altogether, I came up with a new W.A.I (Welcome-Accept-Intentions) of looking at hopes and dreams for the coming year so that we may be better able to enjoy the journey for the next 365 days.
The first letter of my new W.A.I. is the “W” which stands for “Welcoming.” I first learned of this idea from a friend, author and workshop leader named Mandy Evans. Several years ago Mandy invited Thom and I to her house for a New Year’s Brunch. After spending time sharing great food and conversation, Mandy asked, “Would you all be willing to do an exercise?” We all agreed and this is what she asked us to do.
Mandy directed us to take a pen and paper and start writing down, “I welcome in 2013 ________________________”. It was, and is, a different way of thinking what you want to experience in the days ahead. She didn’t ask us, “What do you want?” Instead, she made the distinction, “What are you willing to welcome?” If I remember correctly, a large focus of what Mandy hoped to inspire in each of us was the awareness of who we were and what was of prime importance to us at that time in our lives. It wasn’t about getting stuff, or achieving goals, or even making plans for the year ahead. Instead, it was an excellent reminder that what we think about, we bring about. Or as the Buddha said, “What we dwell upon we become.”
The next letter in W.A.I. is the “A” and evolved out of that New Year’s Day so many years ago. Beyond using the “W” for “Welcome,” I decided that the word “Accept” added something essential to the equation. Every year on New Year’s Day or as soon as possible, I sit down and write out a list of things or experiences that I want to “Accept” in my life in the coming year.
The reason that I believe “Accept” is such a powerful word is because so few of us actually know what it is that we want and thereby accept in our lives and experiences. Years ago I heard Oprah Winfrey explain how one of her biggest frustrations was dealing with so many people who really didn’t know what they wanted. On several occasions she made the offer to make people’s dreams come true but when asked, most people came up with puny dreams that were hardly impressive. For example, instead of saying they wanted to work and train for an entire year so that they could finish the Boston Marathon and finish in the top 10—a woman would say she wanted to join the local spa and lose 10 pounds. Instead of asking for a trip around the world—another woman would ask for enough money to get her car fixed. Instead of asking for the financial aid and resources to go back to college and become a doctor—a woman said she’d like to get a raise of $10 more per hour. See what I mean? Most people want so very little and Oprah was astonished that they couldn’t dream bigger.
When I heard those examples I realized that instead of asking what people “want,” maybe Oprah should ask, “What are you willing to accept?” In the case of my examples, the women above could only see themselves accepting a small request instead of a huge dream that Oprah would have been happy to provide. I happen to believe the Universe is a bit like Oprah. If we believe in an omnipotent and unlimited Universe, then we are the ones putting the limits on our good.
Perhaps going deeper behind both accepting and welcoming our good is that some people don’t allow themselves to dream big or want much because they believe it is wrong to ask for it in the first place. It may be the way they were raised or even religious baggage, but some people don’t believe they deserve something extra-ordinary when so many others seem to have it tough. Some deeply believe that sacrificing for others somehow makes them appear more spiritual or compassionate. So rather than allow themselves to welcome and accept certain kinds of good—some people pretend they don’t want (or need) experiences or things, when what they are really saying is they don’t feel they deserve them. Ultimately, welcoming and accepting ask us to look at the benevolence (or lack thereof) of the Universe itself. It also reminds us that we choose a large portion of what we want to express and experience during our life here on Earth—and the Universe just says, “Yes!” Or as I’ve written about before, “Argue for your limitations and they’re yours.”
So this year—what are you willing to Accept? Another way to ask that question is, “What are you going to settle for this year? While there is certainly nothing wrong with hoping for a small raise at work, to lose a couple of pounds or to get your car fixed—all of those dreams are a willingness to accept or settle for a rather small amount in the scope of the unlimited Universe. But make no mistake, that choice is up to us.
The last letter in my new “W.A.I.” is “I” and stands for Intention. What do I mean by that and why does it matter? One of the best books I’ve read about how powerful our intentions are is called, “The Intention Experiment” by Lynne McTaggart. In the book, McTaggart defines intention as, “the projection of awareness, with purpose and efficacy, toward some object or outcome.” She goes on to say, “Even your current state of mind carries an intention that has an effect on life around you.” More importantly she says, “The evidence convinced me that we can improve our health, enhance our performance in every area of our lives, and possibly even affect the future by consciously using intention.” McTaggart’s book is filled with compelling facts and studies that remind us that while we are not in charge of the Universe, we do have an amazing influence on our individual lives. Keeping that in mind when deciding what is that we both welcome and accept in our lives every day, and every year, is paramount.
Hopefully now that I have shared some of these ideas about the W.A.I. to approach your future, you’ve been motivated to think about it a little more deeply than the casual New Year’s Resolution. Remember, this isn’t about what you’re going to get this year or another “to-do” list—but rather a better idea of what you hope to “be” in the days ahead. And, the details of what each of us hope to experience and express in the coming year is far less important than the clarity and the awareness of how we individually approach our future. On New Year’s Day 2013, I sat down, wrote out my W.A.I. list for the year ahead, and at the bottom, just like was suggested so many years ago, I signed my name. The good news is there’s plenty of time for you to do the same.AKRON, Ohio -- Another year passed and scam artists found another round of ways to rip off people over the phone, often with threats or enticing promises.
The Better Business Bureau of Akron published five scams it detected in the Akron metropolitan area this year, starting off with a scam the Internal Revenue Service started warning people about in July.
"Impostors prey on people's emotions," Akron Better Business Bureau CEO Christy Page said. "Pretending to be government agents, lawyers, debt collectors, police officers, they can catch even the savvy off guard."
1. The IRS scam
Someone calls claiming to be from the IRS and threatening the recipient with jail time or legal consequences if they don't pay back taxes. The caller ID is spoofed to appear as a police or a government agency, and often includes a 202 area code.
In reality, the IRS will not call people directly to collect taxes in this manner. Anyone with questions about their taxes can call the IRS at 800-829-1040.
2. Government grant scams
In another scam reported by the bureau, victims either take a phone call or receive an email that says they have qualified for a government grant. In order to get the grant, the recipient has to send money as a processing fee or delivery fee.
No one receives government grants without applying for them, however, and government grants are very rarely awarded to individuals. Those who sent in money under this scam never saw it again, the bureau reported.
3. Gift or'sweepstakes' scams
Many received phone calls offering a prize or gift, the bureau reported, often an Android tablet. To receive the gift one must call for further instructions or send payment to cover expenses like delivery, processing or insurance.
The prizes weren't real, though, and the bureau said that you should never have to pay money to claim a prize you've won.
4. Debt collection scam
Some folks received calls from alleged debt collectors, claiming they have unpaid debt and threatening wage garnishments, lawsuit and even jail, the bureau reported.
Phony debt collectors will use fake caller ID names that claim to be a government or law enforcement agency to invoke a sense of fear. Any debt collection information should be sent in writing, the bureau advises.
5. Advance fee loan scam
While searching for loan information, victims will see an ad for a loan and click through to a different website. After filling out an application the victim will receive an email or phone call advising that they are approved for the loan, but must first send a processing fee, security deposit, or insurance.
"Don't pay that 'fee' or you'll have less money than you started with," the bureau advises.
How to avoid scams
When in doubt, the Better Business Bureau says its best to just hang up the phone, close the website and ignore the emails.
"The best way to avoid these scams is to avoid the scammer," advises Page. "One of his tactics is to build a relationship with you. The more time a scammer spends with you; the more opportunity he has to influence you. Hang up the phone, don't click that link, and don't be pressured to make a hasty decision."Apparently, it does not get better
Photo by Lissandra Melo/Shutterstock.
Which were you? Popular kid, nerd, normal, artist, or loner? Wait, don’t answer that—instead, tell me: What makes that question so seductive?
Not the answer, although the answer may be more important than you realize, according to a long, rich essay by Jennifer Senior in New York Magazine about the enduring grip of our high-school years.
Senior pulls together a wealth of studies on adolescence to argue that our experiences in high school mold how we see ourselves, cope with stress, and relate to others forever. She floats a few explanations for why this might be: Grades nine through 12 coincide with the fine-tuning of the prefrontal cortex, which processes abstractions and controls self-image, so that teenagers are constantly converting their |
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During the last night of the marathon, the Upright Citizens Brigade took the stage for the first of their three performances of the evening. Joining them were some guests: Sarah Silverman, the stand-up comic; Jon Glaser, a writer for ''Late Night With Conan O'Brien''; Mr. Sanz and Ms. Dratch from ''Saturday Night Live''; and Rachel Hamilton, a performer from Chicago's Second City troupe.
Ms. Poehler asked for a suggestion to get started. Someone in the crowd yelled out ''clown.'' Ms. Silverman stepped forward and began talking about how she was the class clown in school and that her mother sent away an application for her to go to clown college so she could ''learn how to tumble.''
Mr. Besser and Ms. Poehler soon started a scene. Mr. Besser, as a hospital administrator, warned Ms. Poehler that ''hospitals don't need a class clown.''
''I've got two words for you, Patch Adams,'' replied Ms. Poehler.
Mr. Besser immediately snapped, ''I've got two words back to you -- Patch Adams!''
Ms. Poehler appeared miffed at first and then responded resignedly, ''Fine, I'll do my nursing duties.''
Mr. Walsh joined the scene as a patient moaning in agony. Ms. Poehler approached him, dancing, singing, flashing a killer smile. ''I've got something in my pocket, I've got something in my pocket!'' she sang to the patient.
''The liver I've been waiting for?'' Mr. Walsh asked hopefully.
In a later scene, Ms. Poehler and Mr. Besser were working in a university admissions office. ''We should take another look at some of these applications -- this university needs a shake-up,'' Ms. Poehler said.
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''Maybe we should start reading some of these essays,'' Mr. Besser responded.
Ms. Dratch arrived as an applicant to the college. She started to read her essay out loud, only to be cut off by a question.
''Have you ever dated a black guy?'' Ms. Poehler asked her.
''I kissed a Puerto Rican once,'' Ms. Dratch replied.
''That's the kind of diversity we're looking for,'' Mr. Besser said. The audience howled. The clown college reference had been turned into a satire about the university admissions process.
Earlier, remembering Mr. Close, Mr. Walsh had said: ''He was all about, 'Show me something disturbing or new.' His whole focus was, 'Let's do something interesting.' He was about exploring and pushing the levels of improv.''
Speaking of the Harold, Ms. Fey said: ''You learn how to regain the sense of play, something we do as children that we all forget how to do.''
As for Mr. Close himself, his skull sits in an acrylic box in the office of Robert Falls, the Goodman Theater's artistic director. It is to be used as Yorick, the king's jester, in a future production of ''Hamlet,'' with the understanding that Mr. Close's name will be listed in the credits.BOUNDARY WATERS CANOE AREA WILDERNESS, Minn. – The two canoeists from the Twin Cities knew they were in trouble when they had to start bushwhacking and carrying their canoe through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
They had already missed their portage on the way out of the backcountry and decided to continue down a river they were hoping would lead them to another, the Nina Moose River, that would lead them back to the Echo Trail northwest of Ely. Glimpses of open water in the distance kept them hopeful, so they kept pushing.
It wasn’t until 8 p.m. on May 26, the seventh day of their trip, when the two confirmed they were lost.
Pamela Scaia, 65, of New Hope, and Charles Kelley, 66, of Brooklyn Park, were determined to complete a well-prepared canoe trip in no longer than nine days, but that goal was looking bleak considering they no longer knew where they were.
They set up camp and decided to try again in the morning, only to find themselves so deep in swampland that it was best to stay put and wait for help.
Scaia, who is nurse- and wilderness-certified in medicine, started rationing their food. For the next six days they lived on water and 250 to 300 calories a day, alternating between a single packet of oatmeal and a packet of vegetarian Indian food as their lone daily meal.
“You lose energy fast,” Scaia said. “You’re not feeling real energetic on that few calories. We were a great team and didn’t complain or blame. We kept up our spirits.”
For three days they endured wind, rain and low temperatures that left Scaia bundled in five layers of clothing as they patiently awaited help.
When they weren’t collecting wet, rotten firewood to create a visible smoke, the friends kept dry in the tent and played games of cribbage and cards to pass the time. Kelley said they always knew they were going to make it out eventually; that wasn’t a question. But he didn’t know if it would be a week or a month before help arrived.
“In the back of my mind, at least it wasn’t in the late fall,” Kelley said. “I figured maybe about a week and everybody would start worrying and start calling wondering where we were. That was about the correct timing.”
On June 1, the day before help found them, a float plane passed near their campsite as the two flashed mirrors in a failed attempt to catch the pilot’s attention. It was one of the lowest points of the entire ordeal, Scaia said — but whether or not the plane was part of a search crew, they thought, at least people were in the area.
Early the next morning, around 1 a.m., the sounds of a nearby plane shook Kelley from sleep. The St. Louis County sheriff’s office had started a search around noon the previous day after Scaia’s daughter reported that the canoeists were overdue in returning from their trip.
“I ran out there like crazy with the flashlight,” Kelley said. “… And I put my emergency beacon out there and was flashing SOS.”
The crew aboard a Minnesota State Patrol plane — a Cirrus aircraft built specifically for the State Patrol — spotted them and reported the location.
Meanwhile, four Minnesota Air National Guard members based out of St. Cloud were on the ground in Ely and preparing their Black Hawk helicopter to begin assisting in the search. The helicopter — also carrying members of the St. Louis County Rescue Squad — arrived to the campsite eight minutes after they took off, said pilot Nathaniel Anderson. The two canoeists were airlifted to Ely Bloomenson Community Hospital for precautionary measures. Both were uninjured. Related Articles MN county Republican group shares post comparing Bernie Sanders to Hitler; Jewish group calls it ‘deeply anti-Semitic’
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Scaia and Kelley said they want others to know what they learned from their experience, and how they could have prevented it.
Leave a detailed map with someone that outlines the planned route, Kelley said, and don’t panic. Stay put. He said they made their campsite visible to search crews because it sat in a couple acres of clearing. Scaia agreed — know when to stop pushing on, she said, while also noting that she is lucky to live in a place that has the resources to rescue those in need.
“If you’re not sure where you’re going, don’t keep going,” Scaia said. “Know when to go back instead of pushing on forward.”All this week I've resisted putting something terrible into words.
All this week I've been wondering why the Jerusalem burial ceremony for Ruth and Udi Fogel, their infant daughter Hadas and their two small sons Yoav and Elad, seemed so much like a funeral for the State of Israel itself.
The funeral of five members of the Fogel family, who were murdered in a knife attack in the settlement of Itamar, March 13, 2011. Daniel Bar-On
What was the meaning of this funeral, and of the monstrous crime of slaughtering a lovely young family in its sleep? For the religious right, it seemed to be saying: This is what you can expect, now and forever, over and again, until the Messiah comes to put an end to this unbearable, unextinguished anguish.
For the rest of us, it seemed to be saying, if possible, something even worse:
This is exactly what you can expect. This is your future. An endless procession of killings and escalation and enmity and settlement and condemnation and heartbreak and no negotiations and a broken Jewish people and no compromise and more settlement and a shattered Judaism, until the day that a vote is taken and the Palestinians are more numerous than we, and the flag which is based on the prayer shawl and the Shield of David is pulled down for the last time.
For years now, and especially over the last decade, the adults on both sides have made children into legitimate targets. And now we, the adults on both sides, have made slain children into legitimate tools - for incitement, for escalation, for the production of more deaths of the innocent and the defenseless.
The length of this unbearable week, the Fogel family has been all but forgotten in the welter of uses that have been made of them, polemic, political, personal. No one felt this, nor expressed this, more powerfully than Motti Fogel, Udi's younger brother, whose quiet words at the funeral struck chords deeper than did the agenda-ridden speechmaking of the high and mighty.
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All the slogans about Torah and settlement, the Land of Israel and the people of Israel are attempts to forget the simple and pain-torn fact: you are dead. You are dead, and no slogan will bring you back.
"You are not a symbol or a national event. Your life was a purpose in and of itself, and it should be forbidden for your terrible death to turn your life into some sort of tool."
We are not the same people that we were before these murders. On both sides, the killing of children leaves terrible scars. The scars tempt us to feel the deaths of our own children and somehow process or deny or legitimize or excuse away the deaths on the side of our neighbor. Our enemy. Even worse, in some respects, than an eye for an eye, is the state to which we have descended – a blind eye for a blind eye.
If there is any meaning at all to this week and to this tragedy, it is this: No child is an enemy. No child.
If there is any hope in this, it may be in the words of a Palestinian shopkeeper in Nablus, the city a few miles north of the Fogels home in Itamar, a city Israelis have long feared as a center of some of the bitterest of their enemies.
"They were people who were at home, sleeping, in their place of safety," the merchant said of the Fogels, out loud, on television. "Just like that – to come in and kill them with a knife? Where is your heart? Where is your sense of mercy? Where is your humanity? Where? This is simply – this man has no heart. He has nothing. Whoever did this is an animal."
If there is any lesson in this, it is that the children of Itamar, of Nablus, of Jerusalem, of Rafah, of Tel Aviv, deserve better from us. We can choose to believe that the Gaza child throwing candies to celebrate the murders represents the will of the Palestinian people as a whole, just as Palestinians can decide that the Jewish child in the Sheikh Jarrah settlement who will on Sunday night sing Purim songs celebrating Baruch Goldstein, represents the will of the Jewish people as a whole.
Or we can choose to believe that all of us, Palestinian and Jew, are nothing more or less than human beings, loving, caring and, yes, mortally imperfect. And that most of us, on both sides, are people who, despite everything - despite their grief and their rage and their one-sided, blind-eye narrative and their truly unjust history and the guaranteed injustice of any possible solution – actually want the same thing: a future for their children in an independent country living alongside and at peace with the people who are now their enemy.
For every child. Both sides. For every child.by Justin O’Connell The Dollar Vigilante
Previously by Justin O’Connell: CIA and Pentagon Fusion Revolutionizes Modern US Covert Action Complex
Hi Kids,
Do you find yourself locked down at your local dangerous public school between the hours of 7am and 3pm five days a week (six if you have Saturday school) for nine months a year (ten if you have Summer school)? Do you find it a waste of time? Well, there’s no need to worry anymore, because The Dollar Vigilante is here to give you the lowdown on how to handle your plight. Be sure to share this information with a friend in the same situation!
I was recently speaking with my twelve-year-old nephew. I asked him:
“What grade are you in?”
“I am in sixth grade?”
“Do you like it?”
“Why would I?”
Of course, I am proud of him for this answer as is his extended TDV family. But his answer was also disturbing. Because by my public school-educated estimates, if he is currently in sixth grade, that means he has, like, six more grades to go until he is freed from the physical and mental confinement of public school. A lot of damage lies ahead for this fertile, active mind. So I wondered, what could TDV suggest to this kid (and others like him) to help? I looked back on my elementary school, junior high and high school days and I thought to myself: If there is one thing I would do differently, what would it be?
Would I a) study more, b) have more casual sex, c) do everything in my power to undermine the authority of all the robotic and totalitarian teachers and administrators, as well as campus officers?
Well, the answer is an undeniable "c." (Technically, I guess, "b" could fall under "c.")
So what does this choice entail? Simply enjoying the privileges being under the age of eighteen in the USSA? I figure that if I had to do it all over again, here is what I would do in certain situations. If you’re currently in school, you have a choice now: Every time a teacher disrespects you, treating you as a subhuman, you can either submit to their illegitimate violence-backed authority or you can develop your social skills.
Here’s an example of how to do the latter:
I remember the first week of junior high when a kid took my hat off. I received detention for having my hat taken off. The Vice-Principal Nordquist took me by the arm and dragged me into the office. I was scared. She must’ve loved it the power, the authority, the skin contact with a young life. Back then, I submitted, just hoping I wouldn’t be seriously reprimanded with weeks of detention or something for nothing.
Kids, this is how this would go over for me knowing what I know now, and I urge you to consider standing up for yourself, without fear of “expulsion.” So what if your high school grades won’t get you into college? Take the GED, go to community college, and then do whatever you want, whenever you want. Instead of ending up in debt and working for someone else, start a business. Use TDV Weekly to help with your investments.
VP: “Do you know why I brought you in here today?”
13 year-old me: “Fuck you, why did you touch my person without my permission?”
VP: “Excuse me, don’t you use that language with me!”
13 year-old me: “I will use whatever language I want this isn’t church. Now I need to speak with your supervisor because you just grabbed me by the arm without my permission. Bad enough I am here against my will, forced to consume your sub-par services my parents are paying for at gunpoint. You need to let me speak to your supervisor and it needs to happen now or I will be calling my parents to tell them you’ve assaulted me. Do I make my 13 year-old self perfectly clear?”
My girlfriend's sister recently received no credit on a very important five-page paper in her English class. She now risks failing and being held back. My girlfriend had helped both her cousin and sister (they have the same English class) write the essay, and so the quality of both were about the same. But her sister received no credit (F-) because she hadn’t accurately done one part of the essay, while her cousin received an A. The teacher told the sister that she received the grade she earned, an F, despite the fact that she spent hours doing the project. So the message is that all her work is rendered worthless (Isn't the point of “grading” to measure the various degrees between perfection and getting everything wrong?).
The sister and cousin have pointed out to us that the teacher makes quite a few grammatical and spelling errors on the board (I, too, have witnessed many an English teacher who could not spell. With that said, there are many people who spell words differently, and I believe that if I understand what is being expressed, then that's generally okay by me). But since the teacher is an unreasonable hag, my girlfriend's sister's spelling and grammar problems are completely unacceptable.
Were it I in this situation, I would raise my hand in class…
Me: “Teacher, teacher who the hell taught you how to write English and then made you a teacher?”
Her: “Excuse me?”
Me: “You suck at spelling and grammar and I am supposed to sit here and respect you and trust your judgment on the subject? Give me back the time I’ve wasted in this class.”
The moral of the story? Be yourself in high school and don’t bend over. If you are out on recess and a teacher asks you to hand over an iPod just because you were enjoying music during what should be your break, refuse to hand it over; If a teacher insists that you raise your hand to go to the bathroom, don’t just go. As TDV has expressed over and over again, public schools are nothing but concentration camps for you to waste your time and brain. Let’s take a look at some very rich individuals who never graduated high school:
Richard Branson (Virgin) With an estimated net worth of $4 billion, Richard left high school at age 16 to start an arts and cultural magazine called Student. Eminem (Rapper) With a net worth over $300 million, Eminem once failed the ninth grade three times before dropping out. Jay-Z (Rapper) With a net worth of nearly $500 million, Jay Z never graduated high school. Andrew Jackson (President of the United States, picture on twenty dollar bill) With little formal education, Andrew studied law in his late teens and became a lawyer. Jack London American author Ray Charles American musician Dizzy Gillespie American musician Peter Jennings US/Canadian journalist Ansel Adams US nature photographer Louis Armstrong American musician Humphrey Bogart Actor Rosa Parks Activist 007 Superspy (Neither Sean Connery nor Pierce Brosnan graduated) Charles Chaplin Actor-writer-director-producer Thomas Haffa German self-made double digit billionaire
This list goes on and on and on. I think one might have more of a chance for success by dropping out of high school than staying the course…
In fact, your chances for success in just about every area rises dramatically when you swim against the usual advice in this world full of brains so addled by government indoctrination. Nowhere can this be better seen than in the realm of investing. The short answer is to bet against the crowds of sheep in every developing mania, usually brought on by some government interference or another. The more complete answers can be found in TDV's Weekly Newsletter.
Justin O’Connell studied History and German Language at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, where, in his spare time, he researched current events and their relationship to history. In his studies he has found that societies have been managed by philosophically-kindred ruling classes seeking persistently a singular, total order across the planet. Justin does not believe in government as a medium for human relationships, preferring instead the race of human ideas stemming from a diverse, vibrant culture. Currently, he is a proponent of physical silver as a means of wealth preservation and disobedience to the financial system, and lives in southern California. He writes at the Dollar Vigilante-inspired site, Silver Vigilante.
The Best of JustinPhoto taken on Dec. 22, 2016 shows the morning scenery of the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Li He)
China has become one of the safest countries in the world, with an average of 6.2 murders for every 1 million people in 2016, the country's top political and legal affairs official has reported.
The rate of major violent crimes in China dropped 43 percent from 2012 to 2016, the rate of major traffic accidents was down 56 percent, while the public's satisfaction with social security rose from 87.5 percent in 2012 to above 91 percent in 2017, Meng Jianzhu, head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said at a meeting on public security and social management in Beijing on Wednesday.
In commenting on this, a People's Public Security University expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Thursday, "While the country maintains strong control over society, it still manages to grow its economy at a considerable rate. The combination of the two is what leads to a low crime rate."
China started overhauling its police force in 2015 to increase efficiency and improve its public image, with more than 100 reform measures, covering domestic security, administration, personnel and law enforcement.
In June, the People's Public Security University worked with Peking University and a National Bureau of Statistics poll center on a survey of the results of reform measures. It showed a satisfaction rate above 90 percent in vehicle inspections and household registration.
Another assessment that is still going on includes the protection of lawyers' rights.
These figures also show the social security improvements following the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012. The 19th National Party Congress will be held in October.
At the Tuesday meeting, Meng laid out the tasks ahead, pointing specifically to economic risks that are likely to become public security threats.
In the past month, police across the country have been detaining people involved in a pyramid scheme called Shanxinhui, who got other people involved in pyramid selling schemes, then cheated them out of large amounts of money under the guise of helping the poor.
In July, some Shanxinhui members gathered in Beijing to protest against the treatment of Zhang Tianming, the organization's legal representative, who was held on suspicion of organizing a pyramid scheme.
Intelligent detection
Meng also spoke about how crimes have become intertwined with the Internet, which was affirmed by the anonymous expert, who said that investigating Internet financial scams has been a recent focus of police work. He added, "Most of the online financial products that boast of a rate of return above 6 percent are fraudulent. These crimes touch a broad base of people and can easily trigger protests."
Meng went on to propose that public security departments explore new ways to use AI to study terrorist cases and other public security problems, to find out how they evolve, and to use that to build mathematical models based on the data.
"To prevent security risks in places with a large number of people, we need to use intelligent sensing technology to detect sources of dangers," Meng added, then called for a uniform database and the greater integration of surveillance resources at the township, county and city level.
Another expert from the People's Public Security University, who also requested anonymity, told the Global Times that more than 50 percent of the cases solved by Chinese police now depend on surveillance.
"The most commonly used technology is surveillance cameras, fingerprint databases, and facial recognition, but the use of artificial intelligence for investigations is still at a primitive stage, but big data is the inevitable approach," the expert concluded.The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it. Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. — and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices. The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond.
There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.
There are a number of ways to evaluate the doctrine. One obvious question to ask is: What happened when the Russian threat disappeared in 1989? Answer: everything continued much as before.
The U.S. immediately invaded Panama, killing probably thousands of people and installing a client regime. This was routine practice in U.S.-dominated domains — but in this case not quite as routine. For first time, a major foreign policy act was not justified by an alleged Russian threat.
Instead, a series of fraudulent pretexts for the invasion were concocted that collapse instantly on examination. The media chimed in enthusiastically, lauding the magnificent achievement of defeating Panama, unconcerned that the pretexts were ludicrous, that the act itself was a radical violation of international law, and that it was bitterly condemned elsewhere, most harshly in Latin America. Also ignored was the U.S. veto of a unanimous Security Council resolution condemning crimes by U.S. troops during the invasion, with Britain alone abstaining.
All routine. And all forgotten (which is also routine).
From El Salvador to the Russian Border
The administration of George H.W. Bush issued a new national security policy and defense budget in reaction to the collapse of the global enemy. It was pretty much the same as before, although with new pretexts. It was, it turned out, necessary to maintain a military establishment almost as great as the rest of the world combined and far more advanced in technological sophistication — but not for defense against the now-nonexistent Soviet Union. Rather, the excuse now was the growing “technological sophistication” of Third World powers. Disciplined intellectuals understood that it would have been improper to collapse in ridicule, so they maintained a proper silence.
The U.S., the new programs insisted, must maintain its “defense industrial base.” The phrase is a euphemism, referring to high-tech industry generally, which relies heavily on extensive state intervention for research and development, often under Pentagon cover, in what economists continue to call the U.S. “free-market economy.”
One of the most interesting provisions of the new plans had to do with the Middle East. There, it was declared, Washington must maintain intervention forces targeting a crucial region where the major problems “could not have been laid at the Kremlin’s door.” Contrary to 50 years of deceit, it was quietly conceded that the main concern was not the Russians, but rather what is called “radical nationalism,” meaning independent nationalism not under U.S. control.
All of this has evident bearing on the standard version, but it passed unnoticed — or perhaps, therefore it passed unnoticed.
Read moreWhile Microsoft has been filing patents Lenovo has been creating products.
At Lenovo Tech World 2017 they showed off the Lenovo Folio concept.
The device features a flexible touch screen which expands from 5.5 to 7.8 inches. It runs a Qualcomm Xiao Long 800 processor with a 1920 x 1440 display and 4.2 mm fold radius and narrow bezel bonding technology with any angle stop. The larger surface area of the device allows for a larger battery and therefore longer battery life.
The device comes with an e-SIM and runs Android 7.0, which may turn off our readers, but Lenovo often release both Windows and Android versions of their devices (e.g. Lenovo Yoga Book), so if the device does become real it may support Windows 10 after all.
On the other hand, this is the second year Lenovo has been showing off this device, so maybe Microsoft has some time to catch up after all.
What do our readers think of the concept?HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — The trouble for Henry Liem begins every time he prepares to return to his homeland.
Getting the required visa from the Vietnamese government is a breeze. It’s the “second visa” — from his wife worried that he will stray over there — that requires diplomatic skills.
“My wife is always cranky every time I go,” said Liem, a philosophy instructor at San Jose City College who visits Vietnam twice a year to teach at a university. “So I rarely disclose my upcoming trip until the last minute. It’s pain minimization. The longer she knows, the longer I have to bear the pain.”
Thirty-six years after the Vietnam War ended, Communist government officials openly welcome Vietnamese-Americans back, even those who fought against them. But another Civil War has erupted, this one pitting Vietnamese-American women against their husbands and boyfriends who want to return to the Southeast Asian country. The men’s significant others contend that Vietnamese women lie in wait to ambush them, often eager for the financial stability such a match would bring.
“All the girls in Vietnam are aggressive. They attack!” said Ha Tien, 38, who owns an accounting business in San Jose. She said she lost her man to such a love guerrilla a few years ago.
Women are worried
The tension over this issue has reached epic proportions in the Bay Area Vietnamese community and elsewhere. Vietnamese comedy skits poke fun at the household strife and pop performers sing about it. It’s the No. 1 topic for women, Tien said. Any time a man travels back alone, she added, it’s assumed he’s not just going to visit Uncle Vu or Cousin Thuy but to play in a country with an abundance of attractive young women.
“There is not a Vietnamese family (in Silicon Valley) that doesn’t know a man who has done this,” Tien said.
Hien Nhan, who owns the Polo Bar in the central part of bustling Ho Chi Minh City, said that Vietnamese-American women do have reasons to worry.
“The problem is, Vietnamese women are getting prettier and prettier,” said Nhan, perched on a stool at his cozy establishment that serves up draft beer, hamburgers and female employees in short shorts who flirtatiously brush against male customers they like. “They wear more cosmetics. They eat better. They exercise.”
And they are not afraid to let foreigners know they are open to a frolic, a fling or something more serious.
“The tradition has been the male chases after the female,” Liem said. “Now, it’s the other way around in Vietnam.”
Said one Vietnamese-American tech executive from Silicon Valley who didn’t want to reveal his name for fear of causing his own second visa problems: “You get hit on all the time. Even at the hotel. You check in and they hit on you. I can’t do more than 10 days in Vietnam at a time. Otherwise, I get into trouble.”
Those who get a second visa often have strict limits placed on them, said San Jose’s Peter Nguyen, who until recently had a girlfriend in Ho Chi Minh City. Not long ago, a buddy of his overstayed a two-week second visa issued by his girlfriend. “When he came back, she tossed all his stuff out onto the street,” he said.
“He was having so much fun,” Nguyen added. “The temptations are so great. Guys 50 and over can get girls who are in their 20s and look like models. It’s too good to pass up.”
A friskiness permeates the culture in Vietnam that many men visiting from other countries find irresistible.
“There’s a certain charm here that you don’t see in Singapore or China,” let alone the United States, said Chung Hoang Chuong, a faculty member in the Asian American Studies department at City College of San Francisco, who spends about half his time in Vietnam. “If you make a pass at a girl, she won’t push you away. She’ll answer with a smile.”
The apparent role reversal is driven in part by the popularity of Western culture and poor economic conditions in Vietnam. Indeed, Nguyen, a 40-year-old who works in customer service but is now unemployed, said his girlfriend in Vietnam recently dumped him because he failed to find a good job in Vietnam.
It’s a money thing
Vietnam is a demographically youthful society — about 70 percent of the country’s 90 million citizens are younger than 35 — and young people flow into the big cities from the countryside every day looking for opportunities. Viet Kieu, the term for ethnic Vietnamese living overseas, and foreigners are seen as ideal catches for some women because they can support them and their families.
“Good-paying, decent jobs are extremely difficult to find,” even for Vietnamese with college degrees, Nhan said.
Nguyen Le, a 29-year-old who operates a Ho Chi Minh City sidewalk cafe, says she and other women are attracted to Viet Kieu and foreigners for a number of reasons, the first being financial security.
“They have more money, more earnings,” said Nguyen. “And they are more considerate, more tender and caring with their women. In the eyes of a foreigner, love is more important than it is with Vietnamese gentlemen.”
Suspicions unfounded
Still, some men say the suspicion that most Vietnamese-American males come here just to play is overblown — plenty of Viet Kieu come back only for business or family visits.
“We love fun, but we are not stupid,” said Khanh Tran, a retired teacher who lives in San Jose. “I am still healthy, but I am not going to (misbehave in Vietnam) at the expense of my family, my wife. We have been together for more than 40 years.”
Nonetheless, his wife, taking no chances, refuses to issue the former officer in the South Vietnamese military a second visa. “I would love to go back,” he said wistfully.
Increasingly, some Vietnamese say, the appeal of foreigners is waning because of a new class of wealthy Vietnamese, including many multimillionaires. And some Viet Kieu males have a bad reputation because they act like playboys who throw money around and convince women they are sincere in their affections — only to disappear when they return to the United States.
But at times it’s the Viet Kieu who end up on the losing end. Some who marry and bring their new bride home to the United States have discovered the women envisioned a much richer lifestyle than they can provide, leading to strife and divorce.
Viet Kieu men receive little sympathy from Viet Kieu women for their dalliances, whether they lead to love or heartbreak. “We blame the men for their weakness, for not being responsible,” said My Hanh, a 31-year-old San Jose resident.
Returning to Vietnam holds little appeal for women like her: “There’s a saying, ‘If a girl goes back to Vietnam, it’s like bringing wood to the forest.’ ”A gay Oregon teen was taken off of life support after hanging himself in the playground of a local elementary school.
Komo News reports that 15-year-old Jadin Bell attempted suicide by climbing on a playground structure and hanging himself. Family friend Bud Hill, who said he considered Bell his nephew, told the news station that the high school sophomore had been the victim of intense bullying both in person and on the Internet because he was gay.
"He was different, and they tend to pick on the different ones," Hill told the news station. He remembered Bell fondly: "If someone was down and out he would walk into a room and say a couple quick words and everybody would just forget about their problems and smile. He just had a gift."
The LaGrande Observer reported that over 200 people, including family members and classmates, turned out at a candlelight vigil for Bell last week.
He was remembered as an outgoing member of the LaGrande High School cheerleading squad and a gentle, caring friend.
"He is amazingly sensitive," pal Jody Bullock told the publication. "If he saw a wounded butterfly [as a child] he wanted to heal it... He is an amazing young man who is smart and very social; he has a persona and a presence that you want to be a part of."Opposition corrections spokesman Ed O'Donohue – who chaired a parliamentary committee that examined end-of-choices earlier this year – said he would vote in favour of assisted dying laws if the issue was put to a conscience vote.
"Our report has created a pathway for reform that deals with the perceived risks, and by world standards is a relatively modest regulatory framework," Mr O'Donohue said. "If the committee's recommendations were to be reflected in legislation, I would vote in favour of that."
The push to give terminally ill people the ability to choose the timing and manner of their death intensified in June, when Mr O'Donohue's Legal and Social Issues Committee handed down a report that the Andrews government must respond to by the end of the year.
Based on a 10-month inquiry and more than 1000 submissions, the bipartisan report recommended an assisted dying regime be available to adults who are suffering from a serious or incurable condition at the end of their life and which is "causing enduring and unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a |
to decide what to get he automatically chose what he wanted, rather than considering her feelings. He proposed to Ellie in the Season 1 finale with his great-grandmother's ring,[2] and helped plan the wedding.
Devon sees Chuck as a surrogate brother and the man of Ellie's family in the absence of their father; he feels it is important that he have Chuck's permission before proposing marriage to her.[2] On several occasions in the series, Devon has advised Chuck on his relationship with Sarah.[7] He personally singled out several "candidates" for Chuck to date at the birthday party he and Ellie held for him, and when Ellie followed up on how Chuck was doing he noted "not awesome."[11] He also teaches Chuck to tango when, unbeknownst to Devon, Chuck prepares for his first mission; Devon inadvertently taught Chuck the "women's part" of the dance.[17][18] He coaches Morgan on his appearance, including tucking in his shirt and a focus on hair care products,[19] and is impressed with Casey's physique.[20]
Devon also mentors certain characters and makes an effort to get along with Chuck's friends. Although he's well aware of Morgan's crush on Ellie,[21] Devon is not at all threatened by him, and when he finds Morgan on the bed with and comforting Ellie after she and Devon have a fight, Devon doesn't even suspect that she slept with Morgan.[22] Devon shows signs of considering Morgan as something of a friend. He offers him advice on the finer points of being a man when Chuck is upset with Morgan's immaturity,[19] and turns to Morgan for advice on how to woo Ellie. Devon also loans Morgan money for an apartment, but is later angered to find Morgan impulsively used the money to buy a used, barely functioning DeLorean.[15] Devon allows Morgan to stay on the couch for a few days to escape Big Mike's relationship with his mother.[23] He attempted to outsource some of his wedding-preparation responsibilities to Chuck by asking him to find a band. Jeff and Lester offered their services, and after a miserable audition, Jeff convinces Devon to give them a second chance. Although Jeffster! is still less than impressive, Devon tells Ellie that he can still let them live their dream for five minutes.[24]
Devon has difficulty empathizing with other characters due to his awesome nature; when Jeff asks, "Have you ever had a dream that's never come true?" Devon has to think for a moment before admitting, "No." When trying to comfort Casey about his life, believing at the time that John is merely a Buy More employee, Devon tells about a time when his life was disappointing and unfulfilled, then confesses that such a time never actually happened.
Devon is confident about his appearance and masculinity. He frequently wears form-fitting sports attire or little to no clothing at all, a practice which bothers both Ellie[7] and Chuck (though Chuck does congratulate Devon for what God gave him). He teaches Chuck to tango while wearing only underwear and his bathrobe (which he discards at one point) and has Chuck put his hands on his butt. For Halloween, he dresses up as Adam while wearing only flesh-colored underwear fitted with a fake fig leaf.[19] This comfort level also extends towards sex in general, as he frequently makes suggestive remarks about Chuck and Sarah's sex life[7][25] and his and Ellie's relationship.
In spite of his easy going, "valley" personality, Devon is highly intelligent and observant. Although he was not aware at the time that Chuck and Sarah's relationship was just a cover, he accurately recognized that Sarah's feelings for Chuck were genuine.[8] He may have observed more than is good for him when going under due to a tranq and later a glimpse of General Beckman on Chuck's computer monitor.[9] When he later learns of Chuck's secret life[26] he is highly impressed with his brother-in-law as Chuck is not "just a loser who worked at the Buy More." Due to this knowledge he lets Morgan stall his wedding upon learning Chuck asked for it.[3]
However, Devon does have moments that bring his intelligence to question. Mostly these are minor bouts where he seems devoid of common sense, such as packing a set of dumbbells for his trip to Africa or loaning Morgan, who is notorious for his immaturity and irresponsible behaviour, a sizable amount of money. But the few times Devon has been required to lie, Devon has either been unable to speak, or his lies have been so extravagantly transparent, Chuck has had to step in to spin a more believable yarn (to which, Devon, again, begins to overdo it, until Chuck interrupts and continues); Devon admits to being a terrible liar, to which a sardonic and disappointed Chuck can only respond, "Clearly."[27]
Josh Schwartz indicated that Devon's knowledge of Chuck's secret life will lead to his becoming increasingly involved in Team Bartowski's spy operations as Season Three develops, and he got his first taste of the spy life in "Chuck Versus the Angel de la Muerte." Devon was initially enthusiastic about spy work and asked Chuck several times for a chance to participate for the adrenaline rush, but he eventually came to realize the sacrifices Chuck has had to make in his real life and decided he would rather live his whole life with Ellie than to give up any of it for a double life as a spy.
"Chuck Versus the Nacho Sampler" has shown that Devon was deeply affected by his capture by the Ring, leaving him jumpy and nervous, and showed a great deal of difficulty covering for Chuck with Ellie. He was shocked by the ease with which Chuck has learned to lie to his sister, and as a result refused to accept tickets to Paris Chuck gave her as part of his cover.
When his getaway with Ellie in "Chuck Versus the Beard" is interrupted by news that The Ring may be putting him and Ellie in danger, he grows very upset, especially since Chuck had told him that he and Ellie would be safe. He is then informed that it was a false alarm, but he later confronts Chuck, and is not comforted by Chuck's assurances that the government is doing everything possible to keep them safe. He proposes to Ellie that they get away-far away to Africa, working for Doctors Without Borders. In "Chuck Versus the Tic Tac," however, Ellie is accepted to a neurology fellowship at USC, a dream of hers since childhood, and despite his desire to get them both away from danger, he eventually sees how important it is to her and decides to try to make it work.
In "Chuck Versus the Role Models" Devon is poisoned by a Ring agent while in Africa in such a manner as to appear to be stricken by malaria. Devon returns to Burbank to recover in "Chuck Versus the Tooth," and expresses to Morgan his realization that even without spies life is dangerous, setting him at ease over his involvement in Chuck's double life for the first time since "Chuck Versus the Angel de la Muerte."
While Devon knew Chuck was a spy since the end of the second season, it is never made clear whether or not he is aware of the Intersect. It is unlikely, however, as the only time Devon asked about Chuck's training was when Chuck tranquilized a slew of CIA guards at a distance in "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome". Chuck then responded that he honed the skills by playing Duck Hunt. He is made aware of the existence of the Intersect in the fourth season as Ellie uncovers information about the project via the laptop and, one may assume, fully aware of Chuck's Intersect after Chuck's confession to Ellie and a demonstration Chuck provided in "Chuck Versus the Last Details."
In "Chuck Versus the Leftovers", Devon learns that Chuck has resumed his trade in espionage and, with restrained anger, expressed that he didn't want Ellie brought into that life. He demands that Chuck keeps his life away from Ellie, and expresses that he doesn't want to know about his spying. He does, however, accept Chuck's vocation, as he hands over Stephen's laptop, saying "I don't wanna know, and neither does Ellie, but if you're spying again, maybe it can help you."
Major plots [ edit ]
Although typically part of each episode's "B" plot, Devon has infrequently been involved in the main plots. When Sarah is injured in an explosion and Bryce Larkin shows up to visit her, Devon takes it on himself to run interference and chase him off.[8] Their ensuing conversation convinces Bryce that Sarah is no longer in love with him and that her feelings for Chuck are genuine.[8]
Chuck and the male Buy More employees kidnap Devon for a bachelor party, though Chuck only participated because of its implications in a mission to steal Devon's hospital access card. Devon seemed pleased with the event, calling it "awesome," and explained to Ellie that Chuck and the boys kidnapped him into participation. He reaffirmed his love for Ellie during the bachelor party, declining to compromise his relationship with inappropriate behavior. However posing as a lady cop-themed stripper, Agent Alex Forrest lured him into the home theater room, where she attempted to remove the access card from him under the guise of a strip-search. When he refused, she tranquilized him. While in a state of momentary confusion before passing out, he overheard Chuck talk of the CIA.[9] These glimpses did not seem to have a lasting impression, however. He later got a brief glance of General Beckman on Chuck's TV when he inadvertently triggered a video conference by uttering Chuck's CIA alias, Charles Carmichael. Ellie later viewed some photos taken of him with Agent Forrest, somewhat damaging Ellie and Devon's relationship.
In "Chuck Versus the Colonel" Devon, while trying to find Chuck, learns of John Casey's extensive surveillance of him from Lester and Jeff and uses keys from his locker to enter Casey's apartment. While attempting to access Casey's computer Devon unwittingly triggers a lockdown, with metal bars blocking the windows and doors of the apartment. When Casey arrives and begins to put a silencer on his pistol, a major confrontation ensues between Devon, Casey, Sarah, and Chuck during which Chuck admits to being a high-level CIA asset with Casey and Sarah as his handlers. Devon considers it "awesome" and agrees to cover for Chuck with Ellie. Devon later allows Morgan to stall his first wedding with Ellie when he tells Devon the order comes from Chuck. The second ceremony takes place later on the beach.[3]
Devon is on call when Alejandro Goya, president of the nation of Costa Gravas, is nearly assassinated.[1] Devon saves his life and is invited, along with Chuck and Sarah, to a gala event at the Costa Gravas embassy, where the team attempts to protect Goya. He eventually becomes directly involved in the team's mission when he accidentally mistakes Casey for the assassin, and takes advantage of the third assassination attempt to sneak Chuck and Sarah in to rescue him. At the end of the episode Devon is captured by the assassin,[27] who works for the Ring. Being held hostage by Ring Operative Sydney, he is believed by the Ring to be an undercover CIA agent in the local area. Being forced into the spy world, Chuck has to handle Devon as Sydney assigns him to assassinate a man later revealed as Daniel Shaw; as planned as a setup to convince the Ring of Devon's abilities of a spy. While successful, this required Devon to become an asset in order to infiltrate the Ring, or at the least lure Sydney in order to cover his personal information. Chuck refuses, and devises a plan to remove Sydney without involving Devon.
References [ edit ]For years, I suffered numerous problems in my body such as constant bloating, leaky gut and SIBO, chronic migraines and lack of energy. Eventually, I figured out that I was eating way too much sugar and that my sugar addiction was causing my health problems. So I decided to cut out the sugar – do a sugar detox. Drastically reducing my sugar intake was the best thing I did for my physical and mental health!
Before cutting out sugar, I thought I lived a pretty healthy lifestyle. I worked out regularly and watched what I put into my body. But I never realized that my endless green smoothies (loaded with dates, coconut water, bananas, and mangos), or the bowl of vegetables I consumed at every meal, plus the raw desserts, were actually doing more harm than good. I thought large amounts of fruit, vegetables, smoothies, and treats made with dates and juices were healthy, right?
It wasn’t until one day I started to really take a look at what I was eating: the amount of fiber, fat content, sugar, and calories in my food to see what could possibly be wrong. The recommended amount of sugar you are supposed to eat is 25 grams or 6 teaspoons per day, not necessarily counting sugars that come from vegetables or fruit, but rather processed sugars. I, on the other hand was eating more than 100 grams of sugar a day… yes 100 grams. This was added sugar too! Think protein bars, nut butters, salad dressings, yogurts, granola, etc. Yes, something as simple as yogurt can have as much as 24 grams of sugar in a serving.
I was eating over triple the amount of the daily-recommended added sugar intake for females. Yikes!
My overabundance of fruit and vegetable sugar intake, in addition to the added sugar in my diet from other foods, was damaging to my body. Why? For starters, I have an intolerance to sugar. And I was suffering from leaky gut and SIBO, all of which made sugar in any form an enemy for me. Chemically speaking, there isn’t a major difference in the way your body treats sugar, whether it is found naturally or if it is added to things such as protein bars or baked goods. Sugar, whether it is natural or added, is broken down into fructose and glucose into your body and metabolized once it reaches your gut. Since fruit and vegetables are filled with water and fiber, they are released at a slower rate into your body. This helps keep you fuller longer and gives you energy, however, foods with added sugars are empty nutrients and cause your sugar blood levels to spike. This causes you to crash and then crave more, creating a vicious cycle.
When I was consuming over 100 grams of sugar daily, I constantly felt bloated and was actually diagnosed with a distended abdomen. I had to call out of work regularly and often ended up in the hospital because unbearable migraine pain. I also was constantly craving sugar. On top of it all, I had terrible mood swings and always felt irritated.
I tried countless antibiotics and different diets trends to help with the bloating, leaky gut and SIBO, but nothing seem to work. I went vegan, I tried the low FODMAP diet, I gave up certain spices, went gluten free, etc. It was simply a temporary fix and within a few months my symptoms would only surface again and come back even worse!
I also tried exercising-a lot. Often two times a day just to reduce the bloating and the stress, yet I was gaining weight week after week. Turns out, the amount of sugar that I was eating every day was causing my metabolism to slow down and weight gain to occur.
How I Cut Out the Sugar
At first, I had no idea where to begin and felt overwhelmed. I began to read the labels of everything that I was buying, learning what was in the product and how much sugar it contained. I also started to cut out packaged food and started making everything at home, such as almond milks, snack bars, or salad dressings. I started making my smoothies without frozen bananas and use steamed or frozen cauliflower instead to thicken my drinks. I made time each week to meal prep, which is a huge lifesaver when you are always on the go and don’t have time to cook after a long day at work. Mostly, I tried to focus on eating a large variety of foods so I wouldn’t become bored of what I was eating.
Fast-forward a year: Reducing sugar and often times completely cutting it out has helped reduce the number of migraines I suffer from. I am hardly ever bloated unless I overeat, but I now know what to do to fix it and what caused it originally. My skin has completely cleared up, I have more energy, do not suffer from that 3 p.m. crash nor feel the need to drink coffee. I also haven’t had to take any antibiotics for over two years which is a huge win in my book!
I am still extra conscious of the amount of sugar I eat daily. I try and keep my sugar intake to a minimum, whether it is natural or processed. If I overdo it one day, I make sure that I balance everything out the next day by eating a wide range of low sugar vegetables and proteins.
And this doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy an occasional treat here and there, but it seems just a few pieces of chocolate satisfies my cravings now.
When cutting sugar out, listen to your body to figure out what works best for you. Determine the root of why you are craving sugar and establish what nutrients you might be lacking in your diet in order to help reduce those cravings. Understand that cutting out sugar from your diet takes time. Figure out what your body needs, listen to it, and nourish it properly. You will begin to feel more balanced and eventually will know how to eat more mindfully without even trying.
Here are some tips that help keep me balanced:
1. Eat protein at every meal.
2. Always eat breakfast within an hour of waking up. Even if I am not hungry, I try and eat a little snack (almonds, toast, turmeric almond milk).
3. Keep a stash of healthy snacks in your office, purse, gym bag, etc.
4. Always make your own protein bars and keep packaged healthier ones for emergencies.
5. Set aside an hour or two each week to meal prep.
6. Drink water throughout the day and before your meals.
7. Probiotics and kombuchas are your friend.
8. Exercise – Pick something you love to do, and you are more likely to engage in exercise.
Ready to cut sugar out from your life? Take the #SugarPledge and sign up for our FREE 7-Day Sugar Detox Challenge
Trying to get more protein into your meal? Try adding a scoop of Further Food Collagen into your morning routine to get that extra protein boost!
Want to read more?
5 Surprising Reasons Why Sugar is Making You Age Faster!
Take the Sugar Pledge and Join Our Free Sugar Detox Challenge!
Success Story: I Went on a Sugar Detox and Lost 50 lbs and Got Off Painkillers!In the shadowy, wood-lined study of his London home, Peter Sutherland’s oval face drifts in and out of the pool of light cast by a green desk lamp. His alert eyes are restless as he worries about the future and ponders his past.
Now 69, he has straddled the peaks of private industry and the public service (which he says he prefers). His is a remarkable career, but it is one that could have turned out very differently had the voters of Dublin North-West elected him a Fine Gael TD in 1973. Instead he became Ireland’s youngest attorney general, in 1981, and then, at 38, a European commissioner.
In the years since, Sutherland has acquired more influence and power than most politicians can dream of. Presidents, prime ministers and popes have him on their Christmas card lists – and speed-dial. Sutherland enjoys the influence he has acquired but says that he has always used it to advance the “noble project” of European integration.
“I am a strong believer in European integration as the taming of nationalism,” he says. Dressed casually in a pink sweater, grey trousers and suede slip-on shoes, Sutherland concedes these days that the European integration project, and defenders of it such as himself, are “under siege”.
There’s no sign of a siege outside on the quiet Kensington square where he lives. The white plaster facades are as pristine as the gated private garden in the centre, surrounded by Jaguars and Land Rovers. Yet, in this age of anxiety, appearances are deceptive. Down the road in Westminster the British government has both hands full. With one it is renegotiating its EU membership, a risky business that many fear will break EU integration or even the EU itself. With the other hand London has gone to war against Islamic State (or Isis) while refusing to accept significant numbers of refugees fleeing Isis – a movement that critics say blossomed thanks in part to a previous British-backed war, in Iraq.
It’s a similar mess across continental Europe, where solidarity, strained by recent financial and euro crises, is at breaking point as EU member states accuse each other of betraying the bloc’s core principles in responding to a refugee crisis of historic dimensions.
‘I am absolutely an internationalist’
As special representative on migration to both the United Nations and the Holy See,Sutherland now has a ringside seat for historic events that will either make or break European integration.
“This is the challenge of our generation, and we will be judged by history by our reaction,” he says. “I think Angela Merkel is right in saying this is the terminal crisis for the EU if it goes wrong.”
At the recent EU summit in Valletta Sutherland found himself standing for the group photograph beside the German chancellor, someone he has met regularly over the past decade. “I said in her ear, ‘You’re a hero,’ ” he says. “She looked at me in surprise and said: ‘But it’s for Europe.’ I said: ‘I know: that’s why.’ ”
For him the exchange captures how the European integration project and migrant challenge must converge if both are to succeed. “Angela Merkel has associated the morality of the migrant issue with trying to hold Europe together at a time when it is in danger of breaking,” he says. “It’s exactly how I feel.”
Sutherland, who was born in April 1946, was educated by the Jesuits at Gonzaga College in Ranelagh. “We were expected to lead in society if we could,” he says.
Sutherland could, and did. In 1974 the young barrister married his Spanish wife, Maruja, with whom he has three children. Aged just 35, he was appointed attorney general for the first of two Garret FitzGerald governments.
Barry Desmond, a FitzGerald cabinet member, remembers Sutherland as a “calm and highly effective” political figure. In the 1983 abortion debate the young AG predicted that the amendment’s “ambiguous and unsatisfactory” wording would lead to “confusion and uncertainty”.
“He was hugely emphatic and hugely courageous,” says Desmond, describing Sutherland as a “stand-out” figure in a fraught era.
His appointment to the European Commission’s competition portfolio in 1984, which started him down an international path, was welcomed at the time by The Irish Times for ending a run of “Irish rag-bag portfolios” in Brussels.
Contemporaries remembered the young commissioner later as someone who was “happy to go through you for a short cut” in his crusade to liberalise competition restrictions.
Looking back on his start in Brussels, Sutherland suggests that his outward-looking approach is what has made him, alongside Mary Robinson, one of the few Irish figures to last in international circles. He employs his Irish charm to network and admits being the happy beneficiary of positive stereotypes left by Irish missionaries around the world.
“But I am probably making more of my Irishness to you than in reality,” he says, leaning back in his leather chair. “I am absolutely an internationalist, and Garret was too. That is what we came together on and why he appointed me to Europe.”
Midwife to the birth of globalisation
Leaving Brussels in 1989, he took his work there on economic and financial integration – the so-called 1992 project – to the next, global level when approached by the US and Europeans to transform the general agreement on tariffs and trade, or
Gatt, into the World Trade Organisation. As its first director general, for two years until 1995, he had a midwife’s role in the birth of what we now call globalisation.
But, like the European idea, globalisation is also under attack. Last week in Geneva President Michael D Higgins warned a UN debt conference that globalisation was not a force of nature but a man-made global phenomenon in urgent need of global regulatory structures.
Sutherland agrees with the president. “Clearly he is right that the architecture of global multilateral governance needs to be reformed and improved,” he says. But he disagrees with the argument that globalisation is a negative force, pointing to a recent World Bank report showing that it has lifted record numbers of people out of abject poverty.
But what of globalisation’s effect on his fellow Europeans? Would they perhaps feel more welcoming towards refugees if they didn’t feel so vulnerable in this globalised age of uncertainty?
“Obviously if a country and people believe they have been badly done by economic distribution, then the mood towards people coming in is going to be negatively impacted,” he says. “But I think most arguments against immigrants are based far more on a sense of nativist interests: ‘We are different, we are here, and we don’t want them here.’ ”
Those attitudes, compounded by an official resistance to cede national sovereignty on migrant matters, have burdened his involvement in migration issues.
Combating ‘negativism towards migrants’
He was approached two decades ago to be UN high commissioner for refugees, but work commitments as chairman of BP forced him to decline.
In 2006 the UN’s secretary general, Kofi Annan, came calling again – and won Sutherland as his special representative on migration issues. Since then he has worked pro bono to co-ordinate UN migration policy, setting up the Global Forum on Migration and Development, which attracts up to 140 countries annually over five days.
“It’s done a lot of good work but in a very informal, unstructured way,” says Sutherland, who is hopeful that next September’s conference will deliver overdue global agreements for both refugees and economic migrants.
After a decade advising the Holy See on financial affairs Sutherland, a practising Catholic, was approached a year ago to become the pope’s special representative on migration issues.
After sounding the refugee alarm long before European governments woke up, he now devotes himself full time to a crisis that has seen 12 million Syrians flee their war-torn homeland.
Sutherland despairs of Britain’s deteriorating migration debate but reserves special odium for Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Their restrictive line on asylum seekers threatens the Schengen principles of free movement of people, he says, and is a “body blow to European integration”.
As someone who has fought, but never won, an election, Sutherland concedes that elected politicians have to factor public opinion into their actions.
“But what I object to is that public opinion is allowed develop a negativism towards migrants which could be combated by senior politicians explaining the facts,” he says. Facts such as the net positive economic contribution migrants make to societies, he says, and lower rates of criminality or welfare fraud.
But are there negative effects, too, of framing the refugee crisis in exclusively humanitarian terms? Are people wrong to be concerned about the consequences of accepting large numbers of people into their countries on the basis of universal values – from gender equality to gay rights – that new arrivals do not necessarily share?
“I accept that if someone comes into your society and does not accept your values they have no right to stay and no right to come in in the first place,” he says. But given the scale of the migration, who is checking that? “Only in context of time can you can establish if someone adheres to values.”
Tension between short-term refugee actions and concerns about long-term societal effect have affected even Merkel. Her open-door policy to refugees has been a “tremendous example”, Sutherland says, one that he regrets other countries – Sweden excepted – have not followed.
“If you took a vote tomorrow on who should be president of Europe on a universal-franchise basis, she would win hands down,” he says; it is a remarkable achievement given her country’s history. “She has repositioned Germany as a moral leader in Europe.”
Was he surprised, then, when Merkel threw her usual caution to the wind last August and made a spontaneous show of support for Syrians trapped in Hungary? A pause but no answer. Would he have advised her against that line, for fear it would ease pressure on others to assist?
Another long pause. With a million asylum applications this year and counting, Sutherland says, he “understands but regrets” growing German demands to cap its refugee numbers. “We can’t just have open borders,” he admits. “But do I regret anything [Merkel] has done? Absolutely not.”
When he meets leaders, Sutherland says, they can share Syrian refugees, in the spirit of European solidarity, or choose from three unpalatable alternatives: leave them on the beaches, lock them in camps or send them back to the hell they’ve escaped.
“Our only real alternative is to deal with this,” he says. “We’re talking about less than than 1 per cent of the total European population, about doing something that is doable if we got our head around it.”
‘Typical Irish bulls**t’
Ireland is playing its role but could do more, he says, pointing to the successful integration of Kosovo refugees in Carrick-on-Shannon as proof of what can be done when people are given ownership of migration.
Even setting aside the moral issue to save refugees, he says, Ireland has a geopolitical interest in bringing about an EU burden-sharing deal.
“Our primary issue has to be to keep the show on the road and integration moving forward,” he says. “If European integration collapsed tomorrow we would be the Skibbereen Eagle, bleating into the Atlantic, an irrelevant appendage on the extremities of Europe.”
Given his engaging personality and lightly worn intelligence, it’s not surprising that Peter Sutherland has a stand-out reputation in international circles. But not all are members of his fan club. In a poisonous 2012 profile the Daily Mail suggested that his considerable collection of national honours had given him an “armature of absolute self-belief and the certainty that he is on the side of history”.
It’s a point echoed by a former senior civil servant who worked with Sutherland in 1980s Dublin. The retired official praises Sutherland’s liberal migration stance but suggests that, if the mass immigration goes wrong, the Irish-born plutocrat can escape to a gated community in Switzerland.
“Typical Irish bulls**t,” snaps Sutherland. “That’s typical of the Irish, to sneer.”
Irish begrudgery is a constant companion for Peter Sutherland, a cross he carries with another Irish humanitarian high-flyer, Bono. The Irish swipes have left Sutherland operating a permanent self-censorship buffer, driven by an acute awareness of how things will play back home.
It’s a complex so deeply rooted that it’s difficult to discern which came first: the snide Irish begrudgery towards Sutherland’s undeniable achievements or his thin skin towards criticism.
The skin is particularly thinly stretched over his career at Goldman Sachs International, the investment bank’s UK subsidiary, where he has just finished up after 20 years as chairman. In September the investment bank announced a £2 million donation to aid Syrian refugees. Given total revenues of $40 billion in 2014, and a reputation for extracting profits from every kind of global instability, isn’t Goldman Sachs’s Syrian refugee contribution a bit of a joke?
“The only people who have ever raised the name of f***ing Goldman Sachs to me in this context of this debate are the Irish; it’s totally irrelevant,” he says.
But, given his belief in the moral obligation of states and their peoples to act in the refugee crisis, what of the moral obligation of the globalised business he helped foster?
“The private sector is very difficult to involve in this; they don’t want to be involved in a hot political issue, and this is a hot political issue.”
Given that he is still an adviser to Goldman Sachs, and has served on the boards of 13 major companies, has he been able to shake down contacts to help finance the refugee crisis response? “I’ve been trying to get the European round table of industrialists [involved] and World Economic Forum companies collectively to be involved... There’s no more I can do.”
After 35 years straddling public service and private industry, Peter Sutherland shows no sign of slowing down ahead of his 70th birthday next year. He still relishes being at the heart of world affairs – even if the knots are getting knottier than ever before. “Getting it in the teeth all the time to some extent goes with the territory,” he says. “But there is a certain degree of satisfaction in feeling that you may, in a minor way, be moving the barometer in a direction you agree with.”The San Francisco 49ers added an outside linebacker to replace Aldon Smith on the depth chart. Jim Tomsula announced that the team signed outside linebacker Shawn Lemon. He has spent the bulk of his career in the CFL, but signed a reserve/future contract this offseason with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Lemon initially signed with the Steelers on January 20, and was waived on July 29.
Fooch's update: As pointed out by stultus, Lemon was dealing with an Achilles injury with the Steelers. He was on the Active/PUP list. The team waived him and when he was not claimed off waivers, he reverted to their Reserve/PUP list. The team agreed to an injury settlement, which made him a free agent.
Lemon is 26, and turns 27 in August. He initially signed in the CFL back in 2011 as an undrafted free agent out of Akron. He bounced around the CFL, the Arena Football League and the Indoor Football League. In 2014, he had his best year as a pro, finishing with 13 sacks and eight forced fumbles in 18 games. The team released him following the season so he could sign with the Steelers.
Our friends at Behind The Steel Curtain broke down some film on Lemon back in June. They found a guy who could get to the quarterback from both sides of the field. He is primarily a speed rush guy, but they saw some variations on that. They saw speed and athleticism that could benefit him on special teams, as well as depth at outside linebacker.
He comes in a week and the full offseason behind some of the other guys. Given that, his roster chances are likely pretty slim. However, it is not impossible following Aldon Smith's release. Ahmad Brooks, Aaron Lynch and Eli Harold are all locks to make the roster. Corey Lemonier would be the favorite for the fourth OLB spot, but Lemon will get some opportunities along with Marcus Rush. And on a side note, his Twitter handle is SLemonator. I'm probably a little too excited about having two Lemon names.Even though Google announced the Nexus 6 back in October, saying at the time that it would be available at all major US carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon), there is still one who has yet to sell the device in stores or online – Verizon. We could speculate all day as to why that is, but what we do know for sure is that Big Red confirmed to us shortly after Google announced the phone, that they planned to carry it. They wouldn’t offer up a timeline, price, or any other detail, only that they would carry it at some point down the road.
We are now almost four months removed from that initial announcement and confirmation, yet the phone has still not surfaced through Verizon in stores or on its website. In fact, other than the confirmation that their communications team gave directly to us, they haven’t even mentioned the phone’s name publicly. Until today, or some time recently.
If you cruise over to Verizon’s site today, jump into their on-site search box, and type out “Nexus 6,” you will arrive at the screen we captured below. Look! The Nexus 6! And it’s “coming soon!” I know, that isn’t much to go on, but the fact that the phone is showing up on their site is at least something to get excited about.
You may have been able to buy the phone for some time through a variety of other outlets (and use it out of the box on Verizon’s network), but there is a good chance that you were waiting for Verizon to sell it to get on-contract or Edge pricing. That time may be almost here.
If Verizon finally starts selling the Nexus 6 (rumored launch of February/this month), are you ready to pick one up?
Verizon Link
Cheers Kyle!Coming soon to warmups near you: Ian Oland in spandex. With an empty-net goal against Toronto Sunday, Troy Brouwer netted his 20th goal of the season. Ian had a bet with the Brouwer Rangers that if Troy scored 20 this year, he would go to a game with Nathan and Ryan dressed in a red unitard. Time to buy a fanny pack.
“I’m excited!” Brouwer told me of Ian’s future gear.
Brouwer’s goal was made possible by a kind turn from Nicklas Backstrom. After Brouwer banked the puck off the boards from the defensive zone, Nicky followed the puck towards the net. The Swedish center neglected to touch the puck, allowing Brouwer to hit the milestone.
“That’s the most unselfish thing I’ve ever seen in hockey,” Brouwer said.
Video
Head coach Adam Oates agreed.
“What a great play,” the coach said. “That’s who he is; isn’t it?”
“That’s a very unselfish thing,” Oates added. “He’s smart enough, he probably knows he didn’t have the assist on it either, so he doesn’t get the point. We all know that too. Just a fantastic thing. That’s who he is.
“It might’ve stopped with our ice,” Oates joked.
Brouwer also added another goal to open scoring in the first period, wristing the puck from his usual diamond position on the power play. Troy has 10 goals in his last 14 games.
I defiantly owe @backstrom19 dinner after that unselfish play tonight #fivedollarfootlong — Troy Brouwer (@TroyBrouwer36) March 17, 2014
Backy's play/decision on that empty net goal sums up why he is the ultimate teammate/person #respect #caps — Karl Alzner (@KarlAlzner) March 16, 2014
And how about that play by @backstrom19 leaving the puck at the end for the empty net #notashellfish — Tom Wilson (@tom_wilso) March 16, 2014
Headline photo: Paul Frederiksen
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PinterestSports Mole looks back on how 2013 has unfolded so far for Cristiano Ronaldo with a host of facts and figures.
Cristiano Ronaldo sent out an emphatic reminder as far as the Ballon d'Or is concerned last night by scoring all |
front of a small audience. They asked not to be identified, so that they could express themselves freely.
‘Incredible mistrust’
One of the officials described as “incredible” the level of mistrust in the small Balkan country since leaked wiretapped conversations revealed gross cronyism, corruption, vote rigging and autocratic practices.
>> Read: Macedonian opposition releases new wiretaps exposing the government
Macedonian political parties will probably not find a way to engage in constructive dialogue, or in any kind of dialogue, he said, referring to the ruling VMRO-DPMNE of Prime Minister Grievski, and the Socialist opposition, led by Zoran Zaev.
The EU should be engaged in facilitation of such dialogue, he added, explaining that an attempt would be made in two weeks’ time to see if the parties are ready to shape “their contribution to the compromise”.
It is unacceptable to delay further the start of negotiations. It is not moral. It is extremely stupid, he said.
The differences are very deep, the distrust is incredible, the animosity is very strong and there are all kinds of threats, the speaker added, hinting that the EU role in trying to find a political solution was not going to be easy.
Macedonia has already been through a very dramatic period, he said, referring to armed conflict between the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army and Macedonian security forces, which was stopped by the Western-brokered Ohrid Agreement of 2001.
He warned that in a certain situation, when there would be no tangible European prospect, this interethnic relation could explode in a very serious manner.
The official also said that it was likely that this time the European Commission would not propose the start of accession negotiations. In its ‘Progress Reports’ in 2013 and 2014, the Commission recommended that such negotiations be opened, but this recommendation was not followed by the Council, where member states sit, because of the ‘name dispute’ with Greece (see background).
The official said that the country’s political elite should be aware that Macedonia could suffer such setback. Reports are normally due in the autumn.
Gruevski government under fire
A second official was even blunter and more critical towards the ruling party, which in his words “ignores the importance of political dialogue”.
He blamed the Gruevski government for the crackdown on media freedom, stating that according to the Media Freedom Index of Reporters without Borders, Macedonia has gone down from 34th place to 134th place, just above Angola.
Similarly, he deplored the violence in the country on 24 December 2012, when all the opposition MPs were expelled from the Parliament, together with journalists.
>> Read: Macedonian opposition: EU ignores democratic backslide
For many in the EU, this had been a red line in terms of the democratic process, he said, adding that a mission by the then-Enlargement commissioner Štefan Füle was dispatched and produced a report, which he said had been completely ignored by the governing party.
>>Read: Füle heads to Macedonia ‘at critical juncture’
The official said he didn’t hold up much hope for this mediation, but said it was worth giving it a try.
Lack of political culture
The official spoke of a “lack of political culture” and “lack of maturity” which he said was extremely serious given the interethnic dimension. He referred to a very recent Macedonian law authorising police to use rubber bullets against protestors, which even Northern Ireland excluded during the so-called “Troubles” between 1968 and 1998.
A new draft law was directly directed against the Albanian minority, he said, calling it “another knife in the back of interethnic relations”. He explained that it had not been passed because the junior coalition partner had refused to accept it.
“But this is another example of the lack of sensitivity of the ruling party towards the interethnic issues and toward the broader situation,” the official said.
Regarding the wiretapping scandal, the official said that in any normal society, the government would have resigned. “But this is not a normal democratic society,” he added.
He said that Gruevski’s government continues to deny the revelations of the wiretaps, saying that this was the work of foreign intelligence services.
>> Read: Macedonia opposition leader says PM ordered ‘massive wiretapping’
The official said that nobody in the international community believed one word of that assertion, and explaining that it was standard practice for Gruevski to invoke foreign intelligence, including when he arrested over 15 people, including the head of cabinet of the Parliament’s speaker, for alleged espionage.
He explained that this was the way for the government to divert attention from the content, before turning to the content of the leaked wiretaps.
He called the wiretaps, translations of which already exist, “absolutely appalling”. He said that the language that was used, the “racist tone”, the “bigoted tone”, whether talking about Roma voters, the way the Minister of Interior refers to Roma voters talking to the head of security who is the cousin of the Prime Minister, “is nothing short of racist”.
Among the other examples he provided were the “dirty tricks of vote rigging that wouldn’t be out of place in Chicago in the 1930s”, as well as the revelations of kickbacks from tendering, the most blatant being with Chinese companies, referred to by Gruevski as “the yellow people”.
“He [Gruevski] talks about 15 million kickbacks for each of the contracts, and now the latest revelations refer to the kickbacks the head of the security received from the Israeli intelligence,” he said, referring to the wiretapping equipment which was sold to Macedonia by Israel.
The official said there were also references of judicial appointments. “You name it – it’s all in there,” he said, adding that all voices were highly identifiable and that none of those wiretapped had refuted their authenticity.
Diplomats told EURACTIV that what the EU would try to press upon Gruevski is that he accepts a one-year transitional government to be put in place, to prepare for fair elections.
British Ambassdor Charles Garrett was even quoted on record saying something similar. Another idea is that an EU special envoy is appointed until a new democratically elected government takes over.
>> Read: Macedonia opposition leader says PM ordered wiretapping of journalistsWe cannot predict the future, and most attempts at prophesying have ended in spectacular failure.
Nonetheless, I would dare to suggest that there is a pretty good chance the Kim dynasty will one day collapse in North Korea—pretty much like similar regimes collapsed in Eastern Europe a quarter century ago.
If this is to happen, how can the average North Korean prepare for the post-Kim future? How can they ensure that the regime collapse will not adversely affect them?
It is difficult to prepare for a post-Kim future even if you have money. Firstly, only a handful of North Koreans have enough money, and secondly, there is almost no way to invest money in this country.
Perhaps it is real estate that provides the only realistic option for investment.
Theoretically, North Korean law does not recognize private property rights. All land and almost all housing in the country belong to the state. However, the sale of residency rights has nevertheless become quite common in the last twenty years.
One can of course argue that residency rights are distinct from actual property rights, but in the former Soviet Union, officially recognized residents usually had little trouble transferring their residency into ownership.
Post-Kim North Korea is unlikely to be much different.
Admittedly, most North Korean housing is really in not good shape. Thus, depreciation is likely to take a toll on nearly all buildings in present-day North Korea.
However, if this is to be the case, residents of the buildings are likely to receive rather generous compensation. Hence, real estate investment makes solid business sense—especially if we are talking about real estate in Pyongyang and other major cities.
Now a good house or apartment in Pyongyang would cost tens of thousands of dollars—not a small amount of money, but in post-Kim future it is likely to yield much greater profit.
'Social capital'
However, it seems to be a better strategy still to invest in ‘social capital’, or put more simply, the education of the younger generation.
The experience of post-communist Eastern Europe has shown clearly: People who fair best under the new system are either officials of the old regime or young educated people with valuable skills.
In post-communist Russia and Eastern Europe, it is largely engineers, IT specialists and accountants—often together with former party officials and secret police officials—who are successful in the new post-socialist system.
Most of such people are young, but there are exceptions like my father-in-law, a construction engineer in his mid-70s.
He suddenly discovered about 10 years ago that his skills are in great demand in new Russia, so he is now enjoying a lifestyle and level of creative freedom impossible under the old system.
Admittedly, it took some time before professionals and engineers in the former Soviet Union recovered from the initial shock that was inflicted upon them by the disintegration of the state socialist economy: the first post-Soviet decades were tough for the professionals, too.
But by now it is clear: People with education weathered the storm much better than their less educated compatriots.
'Education will pay off'
There is little doubt that similar things will also be applicable to post-Kim North Korean society, whenever it arises and whatever shape it takes.
Education will pay off—of course, not an education in Juche philosophy or on the ‘revolutionary history’ of the Kim family members—education in subjects like engineering, mathematics, hard sciences, computers, and even economics and finances (although economists and accountants will probably have to undergo a very thorough retraining).
Thus educating one’s children may be the best investment strategy available for North Koreans and, unlike investment in real estate, it does not require the really large amount of money which would be well beyond the average person’s reach.
It seems that the North Koreans now understand the value of education quite well.
The last decade saw the emergence of a private tutoring industry in the North as well as a great upsurge of enthusiasm for college and university admissions.
This is a good trend that should be further encouraged as much as possible. With or without the Kims, education is an investment that is likely to pay off well and this is, perhaps, the only investment North Koreans can afford to make now.
Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, is a Russian historian, North Korea expert, and regular RFA contributor.Update April 2012: The flight limit has been raised to 5,000m.
Nalates Urriah keeps her finger on the pulse where all things server and scripting are concerned, as well as keeping an eye on other technical aspects of SL. Today she reports on server scripting, and carries an interesting little nugget on flight limits.
Apparently the Lab is considering whether or not to raise the current flight “ceiling” for unassisted avatars. As we’re all aware, if you fly without any kind of scripted / client-side assistance, you’ll start slowing down from around 165m onwards, and come to a complete halt at about 180-190m. To go any further, scripted / Viewer assistance is required.
I’ve no idea why this limit was set – there has to be some solid reasoning for it in the depths of time. However, for as long as I’ve been involved in SL, build height has (I think, my memory is getting fuzzy in some areas) always been at least 768m (prior to being raised to the current 4096m), so the brake-point at 180-190 to “natural” flight does seem rather arbitrary.
Simon Linden apparently puts forward an argument that raising the limit will shoot people using flight assistance systems into orbit. I’m not entirely sure I follow his logic. There is a plethora of flight assistance alternatives available across SL, from the ubiquitous Flight Feather or Flight Ring of old, through to fancy backpack attachments to options built-in to a range of tools such as Em Dash and Mystitool. Many of these include accelerators which allow the rate of vertical ascent to be adjusted by the user – some of them quite ridiculously so. Yet none, so far as I’m aware, have resulted in people ending up in orbit on the click of a button / key, even when employed at altitude. So would the removal of the current limit suddenly cause these tools to behave any differently?
It’s not even as if flight assistance tools are required, either. Firestorm bypasses the current limit by adding flight assistance to the LSL bridge. Milkshake (prior to being withdrawn from public use) demonstrated that it is possible to override the flight limit directly from within the Viewer without even resorting to any form of bridge attachment. Both of these capabilities tend to make the current limit somewhat pointless.
As it stands, and with maximum build height sitting at 4096m, it would make sense for LL to lift the limit to that altitude (as I’m sure they are only too aware). This would not only make mobility at altitude easier for all (especially around the more expansive higher-altitude builds where flying is allowed), it might even lessen people’s dependency on attachments, be they wearable or HUDs (not that this is a critical issue, given the threatened script limits project is now apparently shelved).
It’s not what I’d call a priority in any way shape or form, but it would potentially make people lives a little bit easier in-world; so if LL are considering the move – I for one say, “go for it – and push it to 4096!”
With thanks to Nalates Urriah
AdvertisementsYou’re a Republican thinking of running for president. It’s a dangerous world, and your foreign policy credentials are a little thin.
Time to see Henry Kissinger.
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Scott Walker did it. So did Marco Rubio and Chris Christie. Rick Perry paid a visit in September — he even tweeted a photo to prove it.
“It was an honor to speak with Dr. Kissinger today and hear his thoughts on America’s foreign policy challenges,” tweeted the then-Texas governor.
Rubio has “met with Kissinger a couple of times in the past, and always appreciates his insights,” says a spokesman for the Florida senator, adding that Rubio has been reading Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order.”
At 91 years old, the former secretary of state, national security adviser and intellectual-cum-celebrity has come to occupy a unique place in the foreign policy firmament. Though some historians blame him for countless deaths in places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, Kissinger is more revered than ever in Washington. He has become a Yoda-like figure, bestowing credibility and a statesman’s aura to politicians of both parties, including ones who may not actually share his worldview.
They may want more than a message: A Kissinger endorsement could be a major boost in a crowded GOP field. Though he often sits out primary contests, Kissinger backed John McCain in December 2007 when the Arizona Republican was still fending off other challengers. (He even granted a much-needed private audience to McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, the next year.)
“People treat him as an oracle,” says James Mann, a resident fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of several books on foreign policy. “Candidates running for president like to be seen with or described as having talked to Kissinger, because they think it sends a message that they themselves are serious about foreign policy — when in fact they may not even know much about what Henry Kissinger believes or what he has done.”
Kissinger’s many admirers call him brilliant, with an unmatched grasp of history. They revere him for diplomatic feats like masterminding Richard Nixon’s history-altering 1972 opening to China.
But the GOP’s Kissinger crush is also surprising in some ways. The man who largely guided American foreign policy for a decade under Nixon and then Gerald Ford is a longtime proponent of the “realist” school of foreign policy. Realists prioritize order and stability above human rights, democracy and other internal affairs in foreign countries. Many of Kissinger’s GOP admirers, including McCain, champion democracy promotion and military action to prevent atrocities.
And Kissinger disciples like Walker, Rubio and Perry may not share their tutor’s support for diplomacy with Iran and engagement with China, nor his caution against “posturing” against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Even more surprising, however, is Kissinger’s embrace by Democrats, including providing private counsel to Barack Obama. A batch of White House visitor records released on Jan. 31 show that Kissinger visited the president in the Oval Office on Oct. 22. Unlike the Republicans who brag about their proximity to Kissinger, the White House did not publicize this meeting and would not characterize its substance. Kissinger’s office did not comment for this story.
But other Democrats haven’t been shy about their admiration for a man who was long reviled by the left, who regularly counseled George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during the 2000s, who endorsed John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 — and whom credible historians say has not been held accountable for reprehensible actions during his Nixon administration tenure.
During his confirmation hearing to be secretary of state, John Kerry cited Kissinger’s book “Diplomacy” as a “superb” guide to the modern world and met with him privately as the Obama administration built its later-aborted case for bombing Syria in September 2013. Last fall, Hillary Clinton wrote a glowing Washington Post review of Kissinger’s late-2014 tome, “World Order,” which she called “vintage Kissinger, with his singular combination of breadth and acuity along with his knack for connecting headlines to trend lines.”
Most unlikely of all, perhaps, is the kinship between Obama’s close adviser and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, with the Cold War-era diplomat five decades her elder. Last April ESPN tagged along with Power, a die-hard Red Sox fan, and Kissinger, a Yankees lover, for a trip to the ballpark in which the two likened their sports rivalry to their divergent worldviews. The two hold nearly polar opposite views of the role human rights should play in foreign policy, making Power what some call an idealist to Kissinger’s realist. At Yankee Stadium, those differences were papered over with banter: “Wait until Samantha says ‘realpolitik,’” Kissinger joked. “It means: He’s a German and watch out for him.”
But the partnership between Kissinger and Obama officials can be serious business. Still connected around the globe by dint of his reputation and business activities as the founder of Kissinger Associates, a lucrative Manhattan-based international consulting firm, Kissinger is a constant traveler and source of valuable information from abroad.
For instance, Kissinger has been an important — if informal — conduit of information about Putin. The former U.S. diplomat is among a small handful of Americans granted audiences with the Russian leader. Kissinger has reported back to Washington on his contacts, including at least once directly to Obama’s national security adviser, according to Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow until last year.
Before his occasional meetings with Putin, Kissinger would first visit McFaul in Spaso house, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow, where photos of Kissinger visiting the same building in the early 1970s adorn the walls. He would “find out what the pulse of the [current U.S.] policy was” before seeing the Russian leader. Then, after seeing Putin, Kissinger would report on his contact back to officials in Washington.
“I was totally amazed at Henry’s vigor, both intellectually and politically,” McFaul added.
He has sometimes undertaken more specific assignments, as when, in August 2011 Hillary Clinton turned to Kissinger amid an international crisis following a bloody Israeli assault on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla. Clinton enlisted Kissinger to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Turkey in the name of preserving an important regional relationship. (The account, described in Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices,” does not say how the message was received, but Netanyahu did not apologize until much later.)
The cross-partisan relationship between Clinton and Kissinger is particularly notable. Soon after Clinton’s review of his book appeared, Kissinger told USA Today that Clinton “ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” He soon followed up by telling NPR that Clinton would be “a good president,” adding that he planned to vote Republican.
Foreign policy analysts say the friendliness illustrates the extent to which Obama, for all the idealism he once represented, has pursued a cold-eyed policy of realism in the classic Kissinger style — for instance, through his unwillingness to intervene more aggressively to prevent atrocities in Syria’s civil war.
Modern foreign policy debates are less about partisanship and more “between people who focus primarily on states and people who focus on people,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former top official in Clinton’s State Department who now heads the New America Foundation. “He sees the world as a chessboard.”
Some historians are harsher, questioning whether Kissinger should be accepted in polite company at all, citing actions and statements he made in the Nixon and Ford administrations that stretched the concept of realism to cruel callousness. In 1975, for instance, Kissinger said that the U.S. “will be friends with” the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, adding: “They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way.” A Nixon Oval Office tape from 1973 recorded him expressing little sympathy for Jews trying to flee oppression in the former Soviet Union. “If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern,” Kissinger said.
“People in Washington have a remarkable ability not to ask questions about what their guest of honor actually did in Cambodia or Bangladesh,” says Gary J. Bass, a Princeton professor of politics and international affairs and author of “The Blood Telegram,” which is harshly critical of Kissinger for allowing thousands of preventable deaths during the 1971 creation of Bangladesh.
During his Jan. 28 testimony before McCain’s committee, Kissinger was partly encircled by a group of protesters with the anti-war group Code Pink, who held a banner and chanted slogans calling for his arrest as a “war criminal.” An outraged McCain threatened to have them arrested, calling one protester “low-life scum.”
Republicans like McCain are totally unmoved by the charges against Kissinger, and recent GOP candidates have welcomed his support. Romney was grateful for Kissinger’s backing in 2012, though — like so many others — couldn’t resist an impersonation of his German-born advocate’s distinctive accent. “I saw Dr. Kissinger” in New York, Romney said at a surreptitiously recorded 2012 fundraiser. “I said to him, ‘How are we perceived around the world?’ And he said one word: ‘ Veak!’”
As the 2016 campaign kicks off, a competition is already underway to gain Kissinger’s favor. One early favorite could be Chris Christie. As the former New Jersey governor later told The Washington Post’s Dan Balz for his book “Collision 2012,” Kissinger summoned him to his midtown Manhattan office in mid-2011 and urged him to run for president, saying he had a rare connection with voters. When Christie replied that he knew little about world affairs, his host told him not to worry. “We can work with you on that. Foreign policy is instinct, it’s character,” Christie recalled Kissinger saying.
But Kissinger — whom Bob Woodward once described as having “a powerful, largely invisible influence” over George W. Bush’s foreign policy — is also friendly with Bush’s brother Jeb. Last spring Kissinger told the Post that he would be “delighted” to see Jeb Bush run, calling the former Florida governor “experienced, moderate and thoughtful.”
Since Bush began signaling his intention to run for president in 2016 this winter, the two have not yet had a publicized meeting. If recent history is any guide, that tweet should be coming soon.Whistler is considering a bylaw to help crack down on illegal overnight rentals in its residential neighbourhoods, which would also affect short term rentals through websites like Airbnb.
Any home rental under four consecutive weeks is illegal in Whistler, but enforcement has become an issue as rentals continue to proliferate, reducing the available housing supply.
Mayor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden says Whistler wants to preserve its rental stock for people that need and want to live in Whistler, including employees who are being thrown out of residential housing.
"We don't want our employees shoved out the back door, so that tourists can now rent those units on a nightly basis," said Wilhelm-Morden. "That's not the model that works for us."
<a href="https://twitter.com/RMWhistler">@RMWhistler</a> this is becoming all too common nowadays. <a href="https://t.co/jJtirl6zMF">pic.twitter.com/jJtirl6zMF</a> —@WhistlerBrewer
The proposed bylaw would require all tourist rentals, like hotels, condos, hostels and bed and breakfasts to have a business licence for an annual cost of $165.
"You can't get a business licence unless you're properly zoned, so we simply monitor the marketing and if people are marketing their units as available for nightly or short term rental, and they don't have a business licence, they will be issued a ticket with a fine of $1,000 per day," said Wilhelm-Morden.
In a notice to residents, the municipality outlined the bylaw's intent and appealed for feedback at a June 6 meeting.
The municipality says council and staff received feedback from 65 people, and the recommendations will come before it at an upcoming meeting.
Beyond the crunch on workers' housing, Wilhelm-Morden says tourist accommodation isn't suited for residential subdivisions, because they don't have infrastructure like street lights and garbage pickup.
In addition, she says illegal rentals put their own insurance at risk and risk the safety of their guests.
"We've had instances where someone has called 911 for some kind of emergency service, and they don't know the address of the place they're staying at. They don't even know what subdivision they're in, so our subdivisions simply are not set up for tourist accommodation."
Whistler's mayor says Airbnb is appealing to Whistler residents and city staff to change its zoning system to permit home sharing. (John MacDougall/Getty Images)
Airbnb responds
According to one resident, Airbnb learned of the municipality's proposed changes and sent an email to some Whistler residents a few days ago, warning them that a ban on home sharing in residential zoned neighbourhoods would create "a confusing and imbalanced system for residents and guests."
The email went on to urge members of the home-sharing community to communicate to the mayor and city council why home sharing should be permitted in all zones.
While the mayor of Whistler says the bylaw is not directed towards Airbnb, but illegal nightly rentals, she says Airbnb has sent a letter to her pleading that Whistler change its zoning system.
With files from On the CoastFor the first time ever, American homebuyers chose solar energy over natural gas to finish off a surprising year for the solar industry.
The U.S. Solar Market Insight Report by Green Tech Media shows a steady growth in solar power due to a rising residential market, decreased costs and federal and state tax credit programs.
One of the key findings from the report is that the solar market is on pace to grow a staggering 119 percent this year.
The residential market saw a 66 percent increase in solar installations from 2014 to 2015, with residential now making up 30 percent of the U.S. solar market.
Aside from rooftop solar systems, new community solar arrays will play a large role in driving demand across different residential markets throughout this year.
The federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which provides a 30 percent tax incentive on all solar projects, was also cited as a key factor. Last year, the ITC was extended until 2019.
According to the report, 16 gigawatts of solar will be installed in the U.S. in 2016, more than doubling the record-breaking 7.3 gigawatts installed last year.
This data is good news for tech builders on the fence about solar power, as it shows that homebuyer interest is high, costs are shrinking and the payoff could be substantial.© 2014 Electronic Arts Inc. EA, EA SPORTS and the EA SPORTS logo are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. Offi cial FIFA licensed product. © The FIFA name and OLP Logo are copyright or trademark protected by FIFA. All rights reserved. Manufactured under license by Electronic Arts Inc. The Premier League Logo © The Football Association Premier League Limited 2006. The Premier League Logo is a trade mark of the Football Association Premier League Limited which is registered in the UK and other jurisdictions. The Premier League Club logos are copyright works and registered trademarks of the respective Clubs. All are used with the kind permission of their respective owners. Manufactured under license from the Football Association Premier League Limited. No association with nor endorsement of this product by any player is intended or implied by the license granted by the Football Association Premier League Limited to Electronic Arts. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Important Information:
* THIS OFFER IS BEING ISSUED TO YOU FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A CREDIT, CHARGE, DEBIT OR GIFT CARD. OFFER EXPIRES SEPTEMBER 22, 2014. GOOD ONLY FOR NEW PURCHASES OF FIFA 15 ("PRODUCT") FOR THE PLAYSTATION 3, PLAYSTATION 4, XBOX ONE, XBOX 360 AND PC CONSOLES. CODE INCLUDED WITH PURCHASE GOOD FOR 1 GOLD PACK ENTITLEMENT EACH WEEK FOR USE IN FIFA ULTIMATE TEAM GAME MODE ("ULTIMATE TEAM") FOR A TOTAL OF 15 CONSECUTIVE WEEKS. CODE MUST BE REDEEMED BY OCTOBER 6, 2014 TO RECEIVE ALL 15 GOLD PACKS. LATE CODE REDEMPTION WILL RESULT IN FORFEITURE OF PREVIOUS WEEKS' GOLD PACK ENTITLEMENT. CODE TO REDEEM GOLD PACKS CODES EXPIRES JANUARY 26, 2015. EACH GOLD PACK WEEKLY OFFER IS VALID FOR 7 DAYS AND MUST BE REDEEMED WITHIN THAT TIME PERIOD. FAILURE TO DOWNLOAD AND/OR USE THE GOLD PACK IN ANY GIVEN WEEK WILL RESULT IN FORFEITURE OF THAT WEEK'S GOLD PACK OFFERING. EACH GOLD PACK CONTAINS 12 ULTIMATE TEAM ITEMS, MOST ARE GOLD ITEMS AND 1 RARE ITEM. VALID ONLY WHEREVER PRODUCT IS SOLD. OFFER MAY NOT BE SUBSTITUTED, EXCHANGED, SOLD OR REDEEMED FOR CASH OR OTHER GOODS OR SERVICES. MAY NOT BE COMBINED WITH ANY OTHER OFFER, GIFT CARD, REBATE OR DISCOUNT COUPON. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED, TAXED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW. SEE FINAL PRODUCT DETAILS, EULA AND CONTENT PROTECTION TECHNOLOGY ATWWW.EA.COM/1/PRODUCT-EULAS IF AND WHEN AVAILABLE. INTERNET CONNECTION, ORIGIN ACCOUNT, REGISTRATION WITH SERIAL CODE AND ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT MAY BE REQUIRED TO PLAY. EA ONLINE PRIVACY AND COOKIE POLICY AND TERMS OF SERVICE CAN BE FOUND ATWWW.EA.COM. YOU MUST BE 13+ TO ACCESS ONLINE FEATURES. EA MAY DISCONTINUE ONLINE FEATURES AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE AT WWW.EA.COM/1/SERVICE-UPDATES.BRAMPTON — A young puppy is recovering at a veterinary clinic after being found alone on a park bench in Brampton, suffering several broken bones and unable to walk.
He was found around 4:15 a.m. on May 5 by a passerby in Cantrill Park, injured and in pain, on a bench in the children’s play area.
Named Clinton by an Animal Control officer, the 12-week-old terrier’s story has sparked an outpouring of sympathy and $2,800 in donations to help pay for the multiple surgeries he needs to fix two broken legs and other injuries he has suffered.
“His spirits are great,” said Allison Rosagastaldo, a registered veterinary technician at Caledon Mountain Veterinary Hospital, where the pup was taken and is being cared for. “He’s such a lovely, lovely dog, a typical puppy. He loves attention. He’s not shy at all.”
The clinic’s vet, John Brajkovich, performed surgery for five broken bones, all on the right side of the puppy’s body. His front and back right legs were both broken in two places, and pins and plates were used to help fix the breaks.
He has an adoptive home now, after the clinic posted his pictures on Facebook and asked for help to pay for his medical needs.
His new home is north of the clinic, near a facility where he can undergo rehabilitation and close to one of the clinic’s technicians for any additional help his new owner may need.
He still has difficulty walking, and can’t put a lot of weight on his broken legs.
“He can stand, but not for long,” Rosagastaldo said.
He also needs at least one more surgery.Earlier this month, the journalist, novelist, theologian, and activist Michael Novak died.
Novak leaned left in his earlier years, starting off writing speeches for the John F. Kennedy campaign and penning essays that were influential in the nascent student movement. But by the late 1970s, he had made the rightward trek along with others who would come to be known as neoconservatives, like Irving Kristol and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.
Novak distinguished himself with his defenses of what he called “democratic capitalism,” working to shore up religious support for capitalism even after the Cold War came to a close. The man who once described himself as a “radical Leftist” found the well-funded environs of right-wing think tanks a comfortable place.
In the weeks since his death, eulogies to Novak’s life and career have appeared at friendly institutions like National Review and the Weekly Standard, and the websites of the American Enterprise Institute, the Acton Institute, and the Foundation for Economic Education.
These remembrances are right about one thing: the significance of Novak is difficult to overstate. He was tireless in his writing, apparently a generous scholar and friend to many, a shrewd activist, and a person of his time. His death, in the early days of the Trump presidency — with all of its political deracination and possibilities for various realignments — is an occasion to ponder what his life meant and what the passing of Novak’s generation might mean for the future of religion and anticapitalism.
Michael Novak belonged to a cohort of neoconservatives who had traversed the partisan lines from the student movement of the 1960s to the Reagan ascendancy of the 1980s. Clustering in new or reinvigorated magazines and think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, First Things and Commentary, these intellectuals and activists would alternatively take up the cause of liberal international interventionism, anti-abortion, deregulation and tax cuts, and the “intermediating institutions.”
Neoconservatives made sense of their rightward turn in different ways. Neuhaus, a Lutheran convert to the Roman Catholic priesthood, believed that the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left made a profound mistake in embracing abortion rights. Like Jesse Jackson and others in those transitional years, Neuhaus thought opposing abortion was the most consistent civil rights position. He offered a soul-searching account of his political conversion and a defense — I didn’t leave, they left me — of his new station.
Novak, for his part, was less introspective about his intellectual and political journey. According to his own recollections, he had been naïve about economics, especially for a supposedly credentialed leftist. By the 1970s, he had grown alarmed that many of his left-leaning friends spoke so critically of capitalism and so sympathetically of leftist governments in Latin America and elsewhere. He began to question, he said, his colleagues’ anticapitalism and to learn more about, for example, the decline in global poverty in the twentieth century.
At the same time, he grew increasingly committed to anticommunism and worried about the dangers of “statism.”
Novak presented himself as a reluctant supporter of capitalism. He was, in this portrait, an intellectually honest searcher who had finally come to believe that there were no other practical alternatives to the free market, even if he criticized capitalism’s excesses. “What is new is my willingness to be as critical of the left as I ever was of the right, and to examine the history and theory of democratic capitalism with fresh eyes,” he explained in the late 1970s.
Distancing himself from followers of Ayn Rand and libertarians generally, Novak argued that his theory of “democratic capitalism” distinguished itself from less humane defenses of the free market. He considered capitalism a political, economic, and cultural system that needed democratic and religious institutions to make it liberating and virtuous. He insisted that religion — specifically Christianity and Judaism — could temper the system’s inherent vices.
But he also argued that capitalism itself was a democratizing force in the world. “Between capitalism and democracy there is an underlying system of mutual reinforcement, an internal harmony,” he wrote. And in his view, the existence of social-democratic countries did nothing to diminish this point: “There are examples of welfare states (they are more properly called socialist), that are democratic — Great Britain, Sweden, Israel, among others. But in all of these, underlying traditions owe much to a liberal capitalist past,” he wrote.
Novak described his shift from the left to the right in plainly heroic terms, and he thought of himself as a realist, perhaps even in the tradition of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Cold War stance. The irony, however, is that his initial apologias for a purportedly embattled democratic capitalism appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just as austerity, declining labor unions, and deregulation were showing capitalism to be increasingly aggressive and confident.
His self-conception as a paragon of intellectual integrity notwithstanding, Novak played a crucial role in providing ideological and theological cover for neoliberalism’s ascendancy. He took up the cause quite publicly, calling on intellectuals, business leaders, and think tanks to vigorously defend “democratic capitalism” in the 1980s.
Novak’s prescriptions shrewdly focused on the fight for cultural hegemony. He suggested, for example, that each major corporation fund an “in-house study group for scholars-in-residence for defensive and purpose work,” and hire a small staff of “issue-watchers and firefighters.” He urged business leaders to build a network of “sympathetic intellectual workers” near their corporate headquarters and pay close attention to the “ideas and symbols” implicit in advertising campaigns |
’m a jerk?” One would think this would be a moment of clarity for the Nice Guy and he’d realize the truth of what his ‘misogynist’ Game-aware friends had been trying to enlighten him about for so long. You’d think, until,..
“They put up a front, acting differently when talking to women, deceiving them into getting them into bed.”
Ah! Well there you have it! They’re really just Alpha cads playing at being nice in order to bed these women,..how fiendish! Now, not only are women jaded by the players, but they’re also more wary of the ‘Nice’ men due to the players utilizing their own Beta Game. Dammit! The Jerks have poisoned the Nice well!
What they fail to realize is the inherent ridiculousness of the premise – niceties never got a man laid – and of all men, the Nice Guy knows the difficulty of actually consolidating sex upon ‘niceness’. While I have no doubt that many a Game savvy man has gotten laid by misrepresenting himself as being more interested and pleasant than he actually was, it’s understandable that no woman would ever want to admit to her active participation in that deception. Solution? Paint Nice Guys with the broad brush of the Bad Boy Jerk.
“And if they fail to get them in bed with them, they go on the internet and rant about their misogynist views on women.”
Well, we could debate the social implications of women defaulting to the easy epithet of ‘misogynist’, but that’s an old post for me. You know the more I pick this apart the more I have to empathize with the truly Nice Guy; his is a particularly cruel hell. The Nice Guy in this definition isn’t necessarily the Alpha in sheep’s clothing. This is the guy who, most likely, believed he was going about ‘courting’ his woman-to-be by the rules he knows were established as the sensible proper means to arriving at a woman’s intimacy. The fact that he plays by those rules is integral to his sense of not-like-typical-guys uniqueness.
He subscribed to the Sniper Mentality, played friends, and unfortunately after taking his big shot, got rejected by his (most likely ONEitis) target girl. If men of this stripe are one thing, it’s dedicated to their personal investments into a particular girl they know will one day appreciate their stand-out qualities,..some day. What they fail to grasp is that hypergamy doesn’t care about the equity he believes he’s building for a future relationship. That’s one thing to realize when you’re deep into an LTR, but it’s really a lesson that should be learned when you’re the chump trying to prove to your paramour how perfect a boyfriend you’ll be for her – once she’s done fucking the Jerks she can’t get enough of.
This is a tough lesson for a guy who’s ideology about women and dating is virtually a mirror of his ideology on a ‘strong work ethic’. Work hard, pay your dues and you’ll be rewarded compensatory with your efforts. So, again, it’s unsurprising that this guy would get upset (maybe vindictively so) when his ‘dream girl’ proves to him that hypergamy doesn’t care about compensating all his efforts.
“Real men act the same with everyone. They’re not there to put up a front nor do they bitch about their failures with women.”
In the meantime, back in solipsistic girl-world the narrative, as always, continues to revolve implicitly around how his ‘pseudo-niceness’ impacts her reputation and her, now damaged, self-impressions. Because, of course, no genuine Nice Guy would ever feel slighted enough by her rejecting him intimately so as to feel the need to broadcast his displeasure on FaceBook. ‘Real’ Nice Guys would just shut the fuck up and accept her rejection; which then completes the circular fem-logic of being attracted to guys with the wherewithal to stand up for themselves, speak their minds and not stand for the injustice of being sold one message and having another’s intent proved for him. Sometimes, we call those guys Jerks.
You see, behavioristically, what women mischaracterize as ‘nice‘ is usually the male-methodology they misinterpreted when they couldn’t find a way to reject a guy in an efficient fashion. So yeah, Nice Guys, you’re the real Jerks and Alpha Jerks, you’re the truly nice guy’s because you “act the same with everyone.”
Ladies, stop complaining about the sheep when you’re looking for a wolf.
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How much do anti-gay groups hate the new Harvey Milk stamps from the U.S. Postal Service? One organization refused to even open a mailed donation to their cause using one such stamp as postage. Staying true to their announcement that they would boycott all mail with the Milk stamps, the American Family Association told The Wire that the organization had mailed back our attempted $5 donation to their anti-gay group unopened. Speaking to The Wire, AFA's Director of Issues Analysis Bryan Fischer said that the very existence of the Harvey Milk stamp was akin to "honoring Jeffrey Dahmer on a postage stamp designed to honor the culinary arts." That's because Fischer and the AFA, citing a line from a biography of Milk, believe that Milk was a sexual predator. "He is not somebody that should ever be honored on a postage stamp," Fischer said.
In an email to The Wire, AFA Special Projects director Randy Sharp said that the group marked our $5 donation "'Return to Sender' and returned it to the post office the next day." We still haven't received the rejected donation at Wire HQ, but Sharp included photo evidence (above) of the unopened donation on its way to a somewhat-expected round trip. Since announcing their boycott in late May, Fischer told us that the organization has received "several dozen" pieces of mail with Harvey Milk stamps on them. Unlike our attempted donation, few of those letters came with a return address. "There has been a juvenile effort to tweak us on this," Fischer added. The unopened, orphaned letters are currently sitting in a box in the AFA's offices.This is an open-source, cross-platform, unofficial skill tree planner for Path of Exile. I have been slowly but steadily working on this project for a few months now, and it's finally starting to feel like a real piece of software.
That said, there are a few big TODOs on my list:
Currently incompatible with Ascendancy classes
Graph planning still buggy at times -- search algorithm needs refining
Character detail pane text overflows for some lengthier attributes
Would like to be able to save more than one build at a time
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to post here or on the repository issues board.
The source and bug tracker for this project can be found below:
Source: https://bitbucket.org/tcfunk/poe-planner-love
Issues: https://bitbucket.org/tcfunk/poe-planner-love/issu...
DISCLAIMER
I am not affiliated with Path of Exile or Grinding Gear Games in any way. Just a fan who wants to make a helpful tool.
See devlog for information about updates.In April 2015, I was hit by lightning.
Not really. At least, not in the physical sense. I was sitting at my computer, working, when I received a message from one Joe Martin — publisher of Ragnarok Publications — asking if I’d be interested in writing a mech short story for a new anthology they would be producing. I replied almost instantly, “I’m not a mech person AT ALL. But I do love robots and could probably come up with something.”
And that “something” hit me like lightning. In the very next minute, I sent Joe, “My initial idea is a young ten year old girl and her floating robot companion come across a “dead mech” out in an apocalyptic desert. No idea why that just came to me.” He told me to follow the idea.
That brings us to now. I wrote that short story — titled The Tempered Steel of Antiquity Grey — and I’m quite proud of it. It’s the best thing I’ve written, I think, a new world with intriguing possibilities. Mech: Age of Steel will be publishing in the next few weeks and soon you will be able to read it in its entirety.
But the short story hasn’t let me go. The lightning got bottled, mine when I want it. And after talking to an editor who showed interest in it at Emerald City Comicon, I decided to uncork that bottle.
I’m working on Antiquity’s story again. And I love it.
That’s all I’m going to say about it. For now.
But since today is #1stChapterFriday, I decided to ask permission to post the first chapter from that book — the very first part of my Mech: Age of Steel short story.
I hope you enjoy it.
The Tempered Steel of Antiquity Grey
by Shawn Speakman
The fingers and thumb stuck out of the desert, unmoving, waiting.
Antiquity Grey bit her lower lip—a habit her grandmother scolded the fifteen year old daily. It was a dangerous situation. The mech hand was more than just some slag the wind had brought to the fore. It had likely been buried since the Splinter War, when mechs had battled over her planet’s ore reserves during her grandmother’s childhood. Chekker said shattered metal had fallen from the sky like meteors during the most violent of battles, burning Hellfire that pockmarked the desert with glass. The wastes had once been a graveyard of broken mechs and plating but no longer; those who pirated the past had scavenged it over the decades for profit, leaving almost nothing behind. Metal arms, metal legs, metal weapons. To be melted down and reconstituted on world as well as off.
But no one had discovered this. This was hers. The people of Solomon Fyre would sing her name long into the night when she returned with it, a treasure worth years of rummaging the sands.
And who knew what else was attached to the hand, buried beneath this horrible desert of her world.
An arm.
A shoulder.
A torso.
Dare she hope possibly an entire body?
Excitement moved Antiquity toward her airbike. She would ride down to the mech hand, blast away the sand, and see for herself.
“Wait! You are not going down there, Grey-child.”
Antiquity stopped, glaring at CHKR-11, the spherical bot spinning in the air but still safe behind the giant outcropping of rock that hid them from the sands.
“You don’t know what I am going to do, Chekker.”
“Grey-child, I know you.” CHKR-11 whirred, slowly spinning and stopping as it considered her, its soccer sport-paint once proud but now faded with decades of time. “The moment you came upon this mech I knew your actionable intentions.”
“There is no one around, Chekker!” She pointed in all directions, to the High Dringlam Mountains at her back and across the entirety of the desert, to its north, east, and south. “Look to the wastes! I see no dust movement. None!”
“That is true. None. For now.” The bot flew nearer her face in emphasis, his voice the static of his kind. “But I have been privileged to teach the children of your family for more than a century. None of them have possessed your proclivity for attracting danger.”
Anger rose up inside Antiquity. She no longer needed a nursemaid. Not anymore. “Do you see what’s down there, Chekker? Are your sensors shot? Look!”
The bot was unimpressed. “I do. I see trouble.”
“Trouble finds me all by itself, you old bot!”
The ancient floating ball did not reply. It just spun in front of her.
“What do you think we should do then?” she asked, waiting for the fight.
CHKR-11 wasted no time. “We return to Solomon Fyre. And inform the Elders.”
“No!” Antiquity argued, wanting to hit the bot. She had done it before and it had been like hitting a rock face. “No. No. And no. Why should they take what I have found? Why should they get to own what I find?”
“Because of your family’s past. And they are the Elders.”
“They are thieves!”
“Maybe,” CHKR-11 said. “But your family is no longer in the position they once were, Grey-child. Grey has become your surname. And Grey is your legacy now. We will return to Solomon Fyre. If not the Elders, we will certainly tell your matriarch.”
“No, we will not,” Antiquity declared.
Before Chekker could respond, she gained the airbike’s seat, released the grav-stabilizers that kept it from floating away, and punched the throttle. No electric tase from Chekker stopped her as she thought it might; he obviously did not think leaving her immobile would be safer than letting her reach the mech. Instead, the old bot followed as he was programmed, meant to teach but also protect. She did not know how he arrived at his decisions but she was glad he had not stopped her.
Taking a final scan of the wastes and finding no evidence of metal scavengers, Antiquity rocketed down the mountain to the sands and pulled her airbike up next to the mech hand, its fingers longer than she was tall. Up close, she could see there might be more of it beneath the desert surface, lumpy hills of sand that could be other parts of the giant robot. Using her airbike’s thrusters, she began blasting away the desert, revealing a forearm, an elbow, a shoulder. The sun beat down on her, blisteringly hot, but she kept at it, her excitement fueling her adrenaline even while sweat became the glue that adhered grit to her tanned skin. The shifting of the sands over time had reduced the mech from a painted dark blue to a grayish one, but the metal retained its make, unmolested by wear.
As her work continued through the afternoon and with enough desert removed, Antiquity could see the mech had landed on its stomach—and the white-tinted faceplate of its massive head stared right at her.
“Help me, Chekker.” Antiquity could not see beyond the glass. “Run a diagnostic on the mech?”
The bot flew to where she stood beside the head.
“I cannot, Grey-child.”
“The mech is dead then.”
“Quite the contrary,” Chekker answered. “Its fuel cells are depleted from decades in the sand but they are not extinguished. It lives. And it is blocking my attempts.”
The mech still had power. Antiquity stood stunned. It was still a mystery what had brought down the giant warrior. But it hadn’t been a lack of power.
“Can you access its last moments?” she asked. “See why it crashed?”
“I can try, Grey-child. Security will have been one of its primary functions. It is technology not unlike my own though, built at the time of my own creation. There is a chance, no matter how poor the odds.”
CHKR-11 began spinning this way and that, each change in direction accompanied by a click as if unlocking a multi-number lock. Antiquity waited. She ran her hand over the smooth glass of the faceplate, wondering how the ancient treasure had been brought so low so long ago. After more than an hour and Antiquity’s patience with the bot spent, a series of clacks reverberated through the glass. Shocked, she jumped back from the mech, trying to figure out what was happening.
Then an explosion sent her flying through the air.
She landed hard. Fighting the darkness swimming before her eyes, Antiquity gazed up at the massive head. The faceplate had shot open—knocking her aside.
Revealing the mech’s cockpit.
And a corpse.
“Are you safe, Grey-child?” Chekker asked, now hovering over her.
Chekker had somehow instructed the mech to open its cockpit. The heat of surprise still coursing through her, Antiquity waved the bot away and, regaining her feet, warily approached the giant robot again. Its driver remained strapped in his harness, twistedly slumped to the side, his long hair pulled back into a single platinum braid similar to the one Antiquity wore herself. She had seen dead bodies before, but not like this; the skin of the driver had sunk inward, paper pulled tight over his skull. The driver had become mummified, like one of the horrors told to scare children before bedtime.
To get a better look, Antiquity half-stepped into the cockpit.
That’s when she saw the crest on the driver’s dark blue uniform.
“I had to copy and insert my system to gain access to the mech,” Chekker said, hovering behind her. She barely heard him.
“What?” she asked absently, mind a swirl.
“Why are you not listening to me, Grey-child?” the bot said, unable to hide the annoyance in its voice. “I had to copy my system. Great skill built this mech. I believe it belonged to a person of high import. Its systems mirrored that. The security features did not allow access to the mech. Therefore, it required replicating my system. Two against one are better odds.” Chekker went silent, a shadow at her shoulder. “If the deceased has left you unsettled, you may vacate the vehicle. Although it is my opinion you should have been prepared. These machines did not operate autonomously. All had drivers. You know this.”
“It’s not that, Chekker,” Antiquity said, pointing at the crest—an insignia featuring flame between unfurled angel wings.
“As I said, Grey-child, danger finds you all too easily.”
Antiquity thought Chekker meant their find—and maybe he did—but he had already disappeared from her side, flying toward the edge of the wasteland where the desert met vast distances. She scrambled over the sands, fearing to see what she already knew was there.
“Dust rising,” she growled, barely able to breathe.
“It is.”
“Scavengers?”
The robot gained altitude, just enough to get a better view without compromising their whereabouts. “Too far away. But the dust pattern suggests it.”
“Close that cockpit, Chekker,” Antiquity ordered, already moving to bury the giant mech again with her airbike. “Remember this location. And let’s get out of here. Now.”
“I could not agree more, Grey-child.”
Antiquity went to work.
With hope her find would remain hidden.
To read more, pick up the fantastic anthology Mech: Age of Steel edited by Tim Marquitz & Nick Sharps. It isn’t available yet but I will let you know when it is!Mumbai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet schemes 'Make in India' and 'Swachh Bharat' got a support from Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the spiritual head of Dawoodi Bohras, who on Tuesday assured the community's support to the PM's "developmental initiatives".
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiatives to uplift the life of Indians and to take our country forward are laudable. The Bohra community will support all his initiatives for the country. I pray that he stays in good health always," Syedna Mufaddal said while addressing a gathering on the first death anniversary (Urs Mubarak) of the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq and his father Dr Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin here today.
Syedna Mufaddal, the 53rd Dai al-Mutlaq (spiritual head) of the community, delivered a sermon in remembrance of his father and offered prayers. The event was broadcast live across Dawoodi Bohra centres worldwide.
According to a press release by Anjuman-e-Shiate Ali, the association administering the affairs of the Dawoodi Bohra community, over 10 lakh Dawoodi Bohras received the blessings and gift of participating in this remembrance.
"For the smooth and efficient hosting of this solemn event and to ensure that the city of Mumbai is not inconvenienced, elaborate arrangements were made by Anjuman-e-Shiate Ali," it said.
Syedna Mufaddal also appreciated the "help and support" extended by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in organising the mega event in Mumbai.
"More than three hundred thousand Dawoodi Bohras from around the world gathered in Mumbai to remember the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq and do 'ziyarat' (pay respect) at Raudat Tahera, the mausoleum where the 51st Dai al-Mutlaq and the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq are buried," the release said.India has been shamed by a flurry of high-profile sexual attacks and parents must do more to raise their sons to ensure they do not assault women, the country’s recently elected leader has declared in his first major comments on the issue.
In a speech delivered to mark India’s 68 years of independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also said there was no dignity for women forced to defecate in the open at night. He vowed to ensure every school in India had a toilet within a year.
“When we hear about these rapes our heads hang in shame,” he said, speaking without notes for an hour from the ramparts of the 17th century Red Fort in Delhi.
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“Young girls are always asked so many questions by their parents, such as ‘where are you going’. But do parents dare to ask their sons where they are going?”
He added: “Those who commit rape are also someone’s sons. It’s the responsibility of the parents to stop them before they take the wrong path.”
Ever since the December 2012 gang rape and murder of a young student in Delhi, India has been engaged in an unprecedented debate about the role and position of women within society.
In comments never before made during an Independence Day address, Mr Modi referred to India’s gender imbalance, where the practice of female foeticide has created a situation where there are just 940 girl children for every 1,000 boys born.
The broader debate has also included issues such as access to sanitation; three months ago two young girls were allegedly raped and murdered and their bodies hanged from mango trees after they had gone to defecate in a field after dark. The two girls belonged to a family that did not have a proper toilet.
“Has it ever pained us that our mothers and sisters have to defecate in the open,” declared Mr Modi. “Can’t we just make arrangements for toilets for the dignity of our mothers and sisters?”
He added: “I don’t know if people will appreciate my talking about dirt and toilets from the Red Fort but I come from a poor family. I have seen poverty and the attempt to give dignity to the poor starts from there.”
Mr Modi’s comment about sanitation was immediately welcomed by those trying to help the estimated 640m Indians who do not have access to a toilet.
“This is a clear sign of the highest level of political commitment to improving sanitation in India and is very much welcomed,” said Barbara Frost, of the international charity WaterAid. “For millions of people who currently lack toilets, the Prime Minister’s personal commitment could provide the necessary impetus for their lives to be transformed.”
Mr Modi was elected in May when his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a massive landslide following a campaign in which he had promised to bring change to a country that was hungry for jobs, development and proper infrastructure.
The 63-year-old, Mr Modi, the low-caste son of a tea salesman, promoted himself as someone who had overseen economic growth in the state of Gujarat, where he served four terms as chief minister.
Yet in recent weeks, a flurry of reports have quoted supporters of Mr Modi expressing disappointment that he had yet to announce any major plans or outline of what he intended his term in office would achieve. An interim budget was seen as cautious.
Mr Modi’s speech on Friday, delivered while wearing a bright-red turban, may go some way to answering those critics. He stressed the need for better governance in a nation where corruption and unaccountability are endemic.
He also outlined plans to provide bank accounts for the 40 per cent of the population who do not have one and are obliged to use money lenders.
He said he wanted to boost manufacturing in the country as a way of creating jobs. He urged investors to come and “make in India” and said he would be scrapping the central Planning Commission, a socialist-era institution that has overseen the country’s long-term policies.
“The Prime Minister has a vision. He is pointing out what needs to be corrected. He is using the power of the government,” Meenakshi Lekhi, a member of parliament and a spokeswoman for Mr Modi’s BJP, told The Independent.
Not everyone thought Mr Modi’s speech was to the point. Kavita Krishnan, an activist and Secretary of the All India Progressive Women Association, said Mr Modi should not be lecturing parents but rather addressing members of his party, and his supporters, who have made inappropriate remarks about women.
“Recently a member of the RSS [the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu-nationalist movement closely linked to the BJP] was saying women should be shy not shameless,” said Ms Krishnan. “Mr Modi should be speaking to ensure women have their freedom.”
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Subscribe nowJune 15, 2017
19-Year-Olds As Sedentary As 60-Year-Olds, Study Suggests
Teen years represent highest risk for inactivity; increases in activity levels only seen in 20-somethings
Physical activity among children and teens is lower than previously thought, and, in another surprise finding, young adults after the age of 20 show the only increases in activity over the lifespan, suggests a study conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. And, the study found, starting at age 35, activity levels declined through midlife and older adulthood.
The study also identified different times throughout the day when activity was highest and lowest, across age groups and between males and females. These patterns, the researchers say, could inform programs aimed at increasing physical activity by targeting not only age groups but times with the least activity, such as during the morning for children and adolescents.
The findings, which were published online June 1 in the journal, Preventive Medicine, come amid heightened concern that exercise deficits are contributing to the growing obesity epidemic, particularly among children and teens.
“Activity levels at the end of adolescence were alarmingly low, and by age 19, they were comparable to 60-year-olds,” says the study’s senior author, Vadim Zipunnikov, assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Biostatistics. “For school-age children, the primary window for activity was the afternoon between two and six P.M. So the big question is how do we modify daily schedules, in schools for example, to be more conducive to increasing physical activity?”
For their study, the researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 survey cycles. The 12,529 participants wore tracking devices for seven straight days, removing them for only bathing and at bedtime. The devices measured how much time participants were sedentary or engaged in light or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. The researchers broke down findings into five age groups: children (ages six to 11); adolescents (ages 12 to 19); young adults (ages 20 to 29); adults at midlife (ages 31 to 59); and older adults (age 60 through age 84). Forty-nine percent were male, the rest female.
Activity among 20-somethings, the only age group that saw an increase in activity levels, was spread out throughout the day, with an increase in physical activity in the early morning, compared to younger adolescents. The increase may be related to starting full-time work and other life transitions.
For all age groups, males generally had higher activity levels than females, particularly high-intensity activity, but after midlife, these levels dropped off sharply compared to females. Among adults 60 years and older, males were more sedentary and had lower light-intensity activity levels than females.
The study confirmed that recommended guidelines were not being met. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a day for children ages five to 17 years. The study found that more than 25 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls ages six to 11 and more than 50 percent of male and 75 percent of female adolescents ages 12 to 19 had not met the WHO recommendation.
While WHO formulates its recommendations in terms of moderate-to-vigorous activity, the researchers say there is a growing consensus for the benefits of reducing sedentary behavior and increasing even low-intensity levels of physical activity.
“The goal of campaigns aimed at increasing physical activity has focused on increasing higher-intensity exercise,” says Zipunnikov. “Our study suggests that these efforts should consider time of day and also focus on increasing lower-intensity physical activity and reducing inactivity.”
“Re-evaluating the effect of age on physical activity over the lifespan” was written by Vijay R. Varma, Debangan Dey, Andrew Leroux, Junrui Di, Jacek Urbanek, Luo Xiao and Vadim Zipunnikov.
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants 5R01HL123407-02, 5R01AG049872-02, 5R01AG050507-02). Vijay R. Varma was supported by the Intramural Research Program, the National Institute of Aging.
# # #
Media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Barbara Benham at 410-614-6029 or bbenham1@jhu.edu and Lauren Mari at 443-287-5054 or lmari1@jhu.edu.Shaking, sweating and swooning are par for the course among the passionate young fans of the "Twilight" series. But reports that a scene in "Breaking Dawn" has been sparking seizures in theaters nationwide has epilepsy experts on the alert and parents thinking twice about letting their kids see the movie.
Officials at the Maryland-based Epilepsy Foundation issued a warning this week to their nearly 11,000 followers on Facebook, saying people prone to certain types of seizures might want to skip the film, which has been the top-grossing movie in the country for two weeks straight.
"If you were parents of a child with epilepsy, you would not send your child to the movie," says Mimi Carter, the foundation's director of communications. "Why would you risk it?"
There have been at least nine reported instances of people suffering seizures during "Breaking Dawn," the latest installment in the teen vampire series. The trigger seems to be a particularly intense birth scene that involves a strobe effect with flashes of red, white and black light.
In one widely reported instance, a California man at the theater with his girlfriend began to convulse during the graphic scene.
According to CBS Sacramento, paramedics rushed Brandon Gephart to the emergency room after he was "convulsing, snorting, trying to breathe." Gephart remembered nothing of the attack, but his girlfriend, Kelly Bauman, told reporters, "He scared me big time."
In another instance, a woman who took her daughters to see the movie in Oregon starting feeling "strange" during the birth scene.
I "[s]tarted feeling sick to my stomach, like I was going to be sick," Tina Goss told television station KATU in Portland. "Really hot, really sweaty, like on the verge of vomiting."
Goss told reporters she wasn't coherent again until arriving at a hospital. "My hands were completely blue for like two to three hours," she said. "The next day, I was so lethargic I felt like I'd, you know, like ran eight marathons."
No instances have been reported in Maryland. But others have occurred in Maine, Utah, Massachusetts and Canada.
Many more people say they have gotten sick during the movie — for reasons that have nothing to do with epilepsy. On Twitter, for instance, dozens of teens say they got queasy and even vomited or fainted during the movie's grislier interludes, which include a fair amount of blood and gore.
A retired physician in California, Zach Pine, began documenting cases on a website after his 18-year-old son, who had never had a seizure, suffered one during the movie. He lists nine reported instances on his Google page.
People susceptible to this sort of attack suffer from what's known as photosensitivity, a stimulus-induced seizure disorder.
While epilepsy is relatively uncommon in the population — about 3 million Americans have it — photosensitivity is even rarer, occurring in just 3 percent of those with epilepsy.
According to Dr. Tricia Ting, an assistant professor of neurology at University of Maryland School of Medicine, people with this disorder often don't realize they have it until they suffer a seizure. "They may have gone their whole lives without having a seizure, but in this circumstance, when presented with a flickering light, it can induce their first seizure."
A seizure trigger for a photosensitive person can be any number of things — strobe flashes as in the movie, driving past a repetitive pattern like a picket fence, watching sunlight flicker through some trees. And the seizure itself could be quite noticeable, with convulsions, or undetectable, with a person simply staring or seeming unresponsive.
"The stimulus triggers … an abnormal electrical discharge in the brain," Ting says. "That spark can lead to an electrical storm, which is a full seizure."
Though "very upsetting and disturbing," Ting says, these types of seizures are typically not life-threatening.
A well-known instance of a photosensitive reaction happened in Japan in 1997, when nearly 700 children were hospitalized after suffering seizures while watching the Pokemon cartoon on TV.
Kanye West's video for "All of the Light" comes with a warning, saying it could trigger seizures and that "viewer discretion is advised."
The phenomenon has also been known to occur in people playing video games.
Jessica Solodar, a Newton, Mass., mother, began blogging and trying to raise awareness about the problem after her daughter, Alice, suffered a seizure while playing a game.
"It takes an event like this 'Twilight' movie to get people to even consider the fact that we have a public health problem that is much more extensive than people realize," she says.
Solodar said Alice, who is 18 now, had, like many teenagers, wanted to go see "Breaking Dawn," but doesn't want to go now that she's heard about the seizures. "She'd rather not take any chances," she said.
The film's production company and American distributor, Summit Entertainment, declined to comment on the reported seizures.
Though Ting and epilepsy experts advise anyone prone to photosensitivity to skip the film, they have some advice for those who go anyway and might begin to feel ill.
"If people are seeing the film and they start to feel funny, they can stop that by not continuing to look at the screen," Ting says, adding that closing one's eyes might not be enough. "They need to block it with their hands. You really have to cover it completely."
Baltimore Sun reporter Michael Sragow contributed to this article.
jill.rosen@baltsun.comImage: Andrew Cline/Shutterstock
President Trump's Federal Communications Commission chief, former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai, is moving swiftly to dismantle Obama-era rules protecting net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be treated equally.
Now, with one less than one week to go before an initial FCC vote on Pai's proposal—which would allow broadband giants like AT&T and Verizon to favor their own online services or discriminate against rivals—top Democratic lawmakers are urging Pai to slow down the process in order to allow more time for the American people to weigh in on the matter.
In a letter to the FCC delivered on Thursday, Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania—both senior Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee—urged Pai to extend the deadline for public comments on the net neutrality rollback by at least one month.
"The issue is critically important for the millions of Americans who do not normally participate in FCC proceedings and who cannot afford Washington lawyers to file comments on their behalf," Pallone and Doyle wrote. "We should all agree that their opinions should count nonetheless."
In a Twitter message posted late Thursday, FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the agency's sole Democrat, backed the lawmakers' request, but Clyburn's support may fall on deaf ears, because Pai controls the agency's agenda. A FCC spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
In their letter, Pallone and Doyle cited serious technical issues with the FCC's public comment filing system, after the agency's website crashed following a deluge of traffic, the origin of which is still unclear.
The problems started last Sunday night when HBO comedian John Oliver urged his viewers to flood the FCC's website with comments opposing Pai's plan, almost immediately rendering the agency's website inaccessible. Shortly thereafter, the FCC claimed that it had been the victim of "multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos)" designed to make it "difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC."
"It's absolutely crucial that there is enough time for the agency to receive feedback from the public."
"It's absolutely crucial that there is enough time for the agency to receive feedback from the public on this issue that has profound implications for the future of freedom of expression," Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit digital rights group, told Motherboard.
In addition to the FCC's recent technical difficulties, Pallone and Doyle cited the fact that the deadline for final comments on Pai's proposal is currently set for the middle of August, when "many small business owners, students, internet users, and workers are away."
The lawmakers pointed out during the FCC's 2014 open internet process, which led to the strong net neutrality rules that are currently under threat, the agency extended the deadline for final comments until mid-September. That timeline "not only gave Americans time to more fully consider their responses, it also allowed the public to return to school, to home, and |
known as one of the best four-man linebacking corps in NFL history. Those same Saints teams also had a strong running game, mostly led by Rueben Mayes and Dalton Hilliard, as well as a conservative but efficient passing game led by quarterback Bobby Hebert and wide receiver Eric Martin. During his time as the Colts' head coach, Mora was able to benefit from having an explosive, more potent offense, featuring quarterback Peyton Manning, running back Edgerrin James, and wide receiver Marvin Harrison.
In Mora's eleven seasons with the Saints, he won 55.6% of his games on a team that had never recorded a winning record prior to his arrival. And during his four seasons with the Colts, he built a then-struggling team into a respectable playoff contender. Nevertheless, despite his overall solid regular season record coaching both the Saints and Colts (125–106), the biggest criticism of Mora has been his NFL teams' inability to win any playoff games in six appearances. His critics, both among fans and media reporters, often blamed his lack of success in the postseason to his conservative approach. Mora did not appear to take the criticisms seriously, as evidenced in another famous Mora quote from a press conference during his years in New Orleans.
"You don't know when it's good or bad. You really don't know, because you don't know what we're trying to do, you guys don't look at the films. You don't know what happened. You really don't know. You think you know, but you don't know. And you never will."
Critics continued to argue that this conservative approach prevented his teams from closing out big games against good teams, like the Marty Ball approach Marty Schottenheimer used during his coaching career. The most frequent complaint was that his teams' offenses would no longer be aggressive late in these football games. They accused him of trying to run out the clock and not make mistakes, and over-relying on his defense to hold the lead (instead of trying to build on the lead and score more points). Critics argued that this aspect of his conservative strategy backfired on him. They point to the fact that his teams had second-half leads in four of his six playoff games, but won none of them. In three of those games, Mora's teams had leads in the fourth quarter.
Another factor that worked against Mora during his coaching career with the Saints was how his team played in an NFC West with a brilliant San Francisco 49ers team, and earlier in his tenure a strong LA Rams outfit. Twice his Saints team recorded twelve wins without winning the division. Another time his Saints went 10–6 and still missed the playoffs.
In an NFL Network program naming Jim Mora the #10 "Coach Who Never Won a Championship," former Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman Brian Baldinger said of the Saints' playoff loss to the Eagles in 1992, "We beat 'em. But that's only because they called the dogs off. Whatever reason, they called the dogs off in the second half. I don't know what Jim Mora was thinking about that day." In that game, the Saints led 17–7 at halftime and 20–10 after the 3rd quarter. However, the Eagles scored 26 unanswered points in the fourth quarter and won the game, 36–20.
Head coaching record [ edit ]
College [ edit ]
Year Team Overall Conference Standing Bowl/playoffs Occidental Tigers (Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) (1964–1966) 1964 Occidental 5–4 3–2 T–3rd 1965 Occidental 8–1 5–0 1st 1966 Occidental 5–4 3–2 4th Occidental: 18–9 11–4 Total: 18–9 National championship Conference title Conference division title or championship game berth
NFL [ edit ]
Life after coaching [ edit ]
In 2003, Mora became an on-air analyst for NFL Total Access, the primary analysis show on the newly launched NFL Network, a job he holds to this day.
Mora was a sports radio commentator for Fox Sports Radio's GameTime Saturday and GameTime Sunday with Dan Moriarty. On Thanksgiving Thursday, November 23, 2006, Mora made some critical comments about the Atlanta Falcons' quarterback Michael Vick which became controversial because the Falcons were coached at the time by Mora's son, Jim L. Mora. Craig Shemon of Fox Sports Radio called Vick a "coach killer" and Mora quickly agreed with that assessment, saying that Vick was not a good passer and expressing concern for his son's prospects of keeping his head coaching job while the popular Vick was the team's quarterback[7] (The younger Mora was indeed fired a month later).
On Wednesday, December 6, 2006, according to ESPN and confirmed by FSR, Mora quit his radio show because of the controversy he caused with his comments about Vick.
Currently, Mora is part of the New Orleans Channel 4 News Krewe.
See also [ edit ]Groundbreaking research aimed at shedding some real light on the attitudes, realities, and resilience of the some 400,000 members of Toronto’s black community found that more than half of its participants felt targeted because of the colour of their skin.
The study is called the Black Experience Project. It was conducted by the Environics Institute along with the United Way of Toronto, York Region, the YMCA of the Greater Toronto Area, Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, and the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at York University.
In-depth, one-on-one confidential interviews were held with over 1,500 people from across the GTA. Although the project was meant to look at the diversity and real-life experiences of individuals who self-identify as black and/or of African heritage, and to provide a better understanding of the lives of people in the black community, the negative experience of being labelled and stereotyped has overshadowed some of the successes.
READ MORE: 55% of black Toronto-area residents report being stopped by police: survey
According to the study, among the greatest challenges facing the black community are racism and stereotyping at 35 per cent, distrust and lack of unity at 29 per cent, internalized racism and lack of confidence at 26 per cent, and lack of education and ambition felt, also at 26 per cent.
Participants interviewed recalled regular occurrences where they were targeted or labelled because of the colour of their skin.
“Institutional racism is quiet violence. It is stuff that goes on behind the scenes that you don’t even see but you feel,” one participant is quoted as saying.
“It’s a personal racism, that quiet violence gets legs. It moves, it becomes seen rather than unseen. It’s the pimple not the dirt.”
READ MORE: Black Lives Matter Toronto outdoor photo exhibit vandalized
Others talk about having a harder time starting a business, and feeling safe at school because they are black.
One student is quoted as saying, ”I’ve watched my friends and kids get bullied because of their skin colour. People don’t like other people because of their differences. Everybody finds it hard to connect with people on a level because they aren’t the same or with people who look different or act different.
“I hope for the best in the future, but it doesn’t look like anything will change because nobody wants to accept they are wrong, which makes things worse and causes more problems”.
READ MORE: University of Toronto to hold graduation celebration today for black students
The study found that 67 per cent of respondents say they experience unfair treatment because of the colour of their skin, and that includes harassment by police. Here are the numbers: 55 per cent say they have been stopped by police in public places – 79 per cent were men aged 24-44 years old – while 38 per cent reported being harassed or treated rudely by police.
Global News spoke with Marva Wisdom, director of outreach and engagement for the Black Experience Project, about the findings and what needs to be done to move forward towards solutions.
Wisdom said although the findings are startling, they are not surprising. She says the focus now will be on working with law enforcement and other agencies to educate and remove the stigmas faced by Toronto’s black community through policy and other initiatives, and to help the community focus on its successes, to expand on them, and to make the Black community more inclusive within the GTA.A Disciplinary Committee Report submitted to the BCCI by Arun Jaitley had found Lalit Modi guilty of having indulged in ‘bid-rigging’ by favouring two specific parties, Adani Group and Videocon, during the IPL franchise bidding process in 2010.
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The Adani Group has been a long-time commercial partner of Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA), that was headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2010. Modi was replaced as GCA president by Amit Shah in 2014.
The panel found that the then IPL chairman introduced two ‘unreasonable and onerous’ clauses in the final draft of the Invitation to Tender (ITT) without the knowledge or approval of the IPL Governing Council (GC) in a deliberate attempt to restrict the number of bidders.
The two contentious clauses that were not part of the original draft approved by the GC — according to the report — called for the bidder to have ‘a net worth of US$ 1 billion’ and ‘to give a bank guarantee of Rs 460 crore’.
As it turned out only two bids were received, and upon receiving complaints from other aggrieved parties — Sahara and Dainik Jagran — the BCCI decided to scrap the tender. Jaitley was BCCI vice-president when the report was submitted and the others in the committee included Jyotiraditya Scindia and Chirayu Amin.
“While incorporating such conditions, Modi did not seek the approval of the Governing Council. The object of such unreasonable conditions was to exclude healthy competition and favour two bidders which is evident from the fact that only two bids were received pursuant to the ITT,” the report said.
In his defence, Lalit Modi backed the net worth clause by insisting that since franchises become ‘cash positive’ only in the eighth year it was crucial that they had ‘deep pockets’. “The condition of bank guarantee is sought to be justified on the ground that it ensured the stability of the IPL,” the report said.
While admitting that he had inserted the clauses, Modi claimed he had received an oral approval from then BCCI president Shashank Manohar for the two conditions. But the report concludes that “Modi had only informed the President about the changes and he did not read the onerous clauses.”
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The Adani Group and Videocon didn’t respond when asked about the bid rigging.T-Mobile's self-imposed deadline to bring Android 2.2 to Samsung Galaxy S owners by 1 December has passed, but the network is still unable to give a reason for the delay.
UPDATE: T-Mobile has now posted another update on the Support Forum, claiming the over the air update has been scrapped for now and the upgrade will be available next week:
"Unfortunately the 2.2 update will not be available via KIES today as expected and Samsung have confirmed that FOTA will not feature as part of this update, but should appear at a later date.
"Samsung are indicating the firmware will be made available at some point next week. We'll keep you posted with further updates as we get them."
The original promise was to have the update made available over the air to Galaxy S owners by 30 November, but failing that would offer it through Samsung Kies, the dedicated PC software.
Vague response
Both those deadlines lapsed, and TechRadar only received the following (very vague) response:
"Regarding the Galaxy S [Android 2.2 update], T-Mobile are working on getting the update out as soon as possible.
"More information will be provided in due course."
We're still pushing T-Mobile for more information on why the delay has happened - the network promised a deadline and the passing of that and the lack of information on why no update is forthcoming has understandably riled many users on the forum.
We'll update you with more information on this story as we get it.It was a bad day for Adam Rippon. Five months earlier, his father Tom had died of cancer. Today would have been Tom Rippon's birthday.
It had been a bad day for Adam Rippon. But things were about to get a whole lot better.
By 11 p.m., he was overcome with a different kind of distraction. Whether it was the result of the shock from the robbery or the dark cloud of his father's death finally lifting, he felt compelled to do something. His brain was buzzing. A programmer by trade, he hopped on his computer and channeled this sudden burst of energy into finishing a job he had been pecking away at. He was working on a user interface system, making tables and graphs that would be used for other people's games. But the adrenaline-pumped Rippon didn't stop there. He started creating tiles and sprites and laying them out on a grid.
"We went home and my mom was there, and we basically sat there shivering," Rippon remembers.
On a day when he really just needed a hug and some beer, he had a loaded gun pointed at him instead. Neither he nor his wife was harmed, but neither slept that night, either.
Adam Rippon was having a rough time coming to terms with the fact that one of the most important people in his life was gone for good, and today felt even tougher than usual. It was about to get even worse. He went out with his wife to sell a laptop. Too deflated and distracted to pay attention to his surroundings, he was robbed at gunpoint.
Just another guy Just another guy
The little maps and sprites he created would form the basis of Dragon Fantasy Book 1 — a reinvention of the abandoned Talisman. Instead of having a cast of Final Fantasy-inspired characters with afros of cotton-candy hair, the lead character would be his father — a man with no hair.
That night in his house, after the robbery, adrenaline pumping, brain buzzing, he finished coding a user interface system that could be used for other people's games. When he was done, he just had to test it. In order to test it, he put together some virtual tiles and made a little video game map. He then decided to see if he could get an animated person to walk around on this map. He drew a tiny sprite of his father. He then drew more people and put them in a town so that his dad would have someone to talk to.
When his father died of cancer in December 2010 after a 25-month battle with the disease, it dawned on Rippon that, unlike his father, he hadn't made anything of his own. He'd spent the past 11 years making other people's games. He'd written thousands of lines of code to bring other people's ideas to life, but his own stories — his own Final Fantasy 2 — remained in a bunch of notes he'd written when he was 14. He was just another guy. This was not what his father had taught him to be.
For a long time, Rippon thought he was content. After all, he'd always wanted to be a game developer (except for when he wanted to be a mad scientist), and now he had a job in the game industry.
"We didn't touch Talisman for years," Rippon says. "After leaving my first job, I spent six months trying to bring it back, but just gave up. Ever since, I've just had a Regular Joe job in the game industry. I'm a good programmer, but I'm just another guy."
Both Sawler and Rippon spent several years working at medium-sized studios, mostly making handheld licensed games. Sawler later formed the indie studio Muteki Corp., and Rippon signed on to be its creative director.
"It was Dad," Rippon says. "He had called to ask: 'What do I do to get past this part of Zelda?' He really got into Zelda. He played all of them. I actually inherited his Nintendo DS and his unfinished save game for Spirit Tracks. One of these days I'm going to finish it for him."
On Rippon's first day as a professional game developer, his father dropped him off at work. "But he didn't linger, because that would have been weird," Rippon says. "Dad always loved video games. So he went back home and picked up my Game Boy Color and started playing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening."
The teenagers taught each other to code over internet chatrooms, and were eventually able to scrape together a very basic version of the game playable on Game Boy Color. Off the back of this very rough RPG, both got jobs in the game industry, where they would spend the next few years working on licensed handheld games.
He wanted to make a role-playing game. He loved games like Final Fantasy 2. He loved to tell stories. When he was 14, he started plotting an RPG called Talisman with his friend Bryan Sawler. They came up with a detailed plan to make a game so big that it had multiple books and chapters, taking a colorful cast of characters from unforgiving deserts to punishing, blizzard-ravaged mountains.
As a kid, Adam Rippon wanted to be a mad scientist. His dad made incredible, surreal sculptures, so he planned to one-up that by inventing time travel. When he realized he couldn't invent time travel, he decided to make video games instead.
Tom Rippon was an artist and a professor of fine arts at the University of Montana. He made colorful, playful sculptures that were bright and surreal — sculptures that made people smile. His art was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and at the Yellowstone Art Museum. He was a creative who loved to make things that were his own, and he encouraged this in both his sons.
It's time It's time
"He looked at it; I looked at it," Rippon says. "Then Bryan said, 'We're going to do this. We have to. It's time.'"
There was no way the studio could work on the game full-time. It relied on contract work to pay the bills, and Muteki already had a full plate making game engines and user interfaces for companies like Electronic Arts and Disney. It was even commissioned to make a poll app for the U.S. election. To the studio, time spent not working on contract projects was time spent not making money. And here they were, Muteki's co-founder and creative director, looking at an RPG that was unlikely to make them any money at all.
"When I got the doors and treasure chests working, I figured I would show Bryan," Rippon says. "I said, 'Bryan, don't get mad. I made Talisman.' And he was like, 'What?', and I showed him the character walking around and talking to people. The character was able to buy stuff from another character, and it was all made with our own engine and [user interface]."
But Rippon couldn't let go of Dragon Fantasy — not this time. Over the next two weeks he programmed doors and treasure chests into the game and implemented a crude battle system that involved the options "fight" and "defend." The "defend" option was scrapped when it became clear that the battle system was so crude that no defending was actually happening.
"At Muteki, we have a long-running policy of no RPGs allowed," Rippon says. "They take too long, they're too resource-intensive and they don't make financial sense for a small indie studio."
Sony comes calling Sony comes calling
Dragon Fantasy: Book 1 is about a 46-year-old knight who, when he was 16, was the hero from all role-playing games. He slayed all the dragons, rescued the princess, saved the world and, when the princess became the queen, was made captain of her royal guard where he spent the next 30 years doing absolutely nothing.
The 46-year-old, Ogden, is based on Tom Rippon. In Book 1, the character is forced back into action when he is called upon to save the world again. For Rippon, this reflects his own creative journey; he's a writer finally telling stories again after a long hiatus. The game plays out through three chapters, which introduce new characters and take Ogden on travels through colorful environments full of history and lore.
"I've had this story in my head for a billion years now," Rippon says. "I love stories. I like getting to know characters. I think a lot of American RPGs — and a lot of games in general, with a few exceptions — don't give you a sense that these seven or eight other characters are your friends and you're banding together. There's very little character development.
"We never called them because we had the feeling that Sony couldn't possibly be interested in talking to indies seriously."
"Japanese RPGs are, to me, one of the few genres where there's really serious character development in almost every game. Unfortunately, a lot of them these days have a lot of serious development of characters who are completely one-dimensional tropes brought out again for the millionth time. So as a writer, I really try to explore all elements of their character — bald 46-year-olds and princes who I imply are drunks."
Muteki worked on the game only during weekends and evenings, continuing with its contract work to pay the bills. After two years of working on Dragon Fantasy in these little pockets of spare time, the company finally released it on mobile devices and PC.
The game was a critical success, garnering comparisons to classic RPGs like Dragon's Quest, Final Fantasy, Lufia and Earthbound. It performed modestly in terms of sales, but Rippon was just relieved it sold at all. Muteki took Dragon Fantasy to the Minecraft convention Minecon and, after some encouragement from fellow developers, showed it at PAX East in Boston.
On both occasions, Rippon and Sawler were approached by representatives from Sony Computer Entertainment, but they didn't think anything of it.
"I ran into one of them in an elevator and they said we should talk and gave me their card," Rippon says. "We never called them because we had the feeling that Sony couldn't possibly be interested in talking to indies seriously. We really felt like nobody would be interested in this game other than kids."
At PAX East, Sony insisted that Muteki email. At that point, Rippon had started working on a sequel to Dragon Fantasy, which would tell the stories that were left untold in Book 1. He'd thought of introducing a character based on his mother. Maybe Ogden would meet her. Maybe it would be cute. Or maybe it would be too weird.
"Sony invited us to their office in Foster City, Calif., to show them what we were working on, and as we were driving down there in Bryan's car, we kept saying there's no way anything's going to come out of this. There's maybe a 1 percent chance."
Shane Bettenhausen, an account support manager for Sony's developer relations team, was the one who saw Dragon Fantasy at PAX East two years earlier. He'd recently joined the company and was tasked with looking for games that would work well with PlayStation's devices.
"There's a deeper level to this game that, on the surface, you might not see."
"I'd heard of Dragon Fantasy on iOS and, personally, I'm a big fan of traditional role-playing games, and whenever I see something that looks like a game of my childhood I'm just drawn to it," Bettenhausen says. "When we met with Muteki, we could tell they were a little nervous. They actually had a relationship with my boss Adam Boyes — I believe that in the past he had worked with the Muteki guys on a Spy Kids game for Game Boy Color, and maybe it wasn't the greatest game ever. So maybe they were worried that we were going to remember the Spy Kids game and never hire them.
"We did remember them from that, but we saw their new pitch and it was so much better."
Muteki showed the nascent levels of Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 to Sony's developer relations team, and talked about its plans for multiplayer. In Dragon Fantasy: Book 1, the art has an 8-bit aesthetic that deliberately mimics games made for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In Book 2, the game "advances" to the 16-bit era of the Super Nintendo.
Sony was interested. A week later, Sony offered to pub-fund and publish Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. The game launched on September 10, 2013.
According to Bettenhausen, part of the reason Sony had confidence in Muteki was because it had made games before and shown that it had an understanding of meeting deadlines. The team members also clearly knew their RPGs, despite the studio's long-standing rule of not making them.
"And the other part that drew me to Dragon Fantasy was the personal side of the story," Bettenhausen says. "The fact that the game was partially inspired by the lives of the guys who made it and they put a bit of themselves into this product — it's real, it's from an emotional point of view and I think that resonates with a lot of players — and with me.
"There's a deeper level to this game that, on the surface, you might not see, and I think that's what's really, really compelling about Book 1 and Book 2. I think the reason why this franchise will keep going is because, ultimately, Muteki actually has something to say with this game."At first glance, 2013 won’t go down in history as one of the most enjoyable years to live in the District of Columbia.
The mayor was still under investigation (though he did, just before the year ended, decide to run for another term). Yet another former member of the D.C. Council was caught in yet another federal probe. Everything got more expensive, and the housing market got tighter and tighter. The daily paper got sold. The baseball team disappointed. (The football team—well, they were entertaining, at least, but for all the wrong reasons.) The federal government cut back, then shut down. (And when it came back, we still didn’t have a vote.)
But with a few months’ distance, maybe things don’t look quite as bad. After all, pot might soon be basically legal. There’s another baby panda. A new theater east of the Anacostia River is thriving, despite regulatory obstacles that could have crushed it. The cabs take credit cards. Even the shutdown, once it finally ended, came with a silver lining: D.C. won’t get trapped the next time Republicans in Congress decide that pointless temper tantrums are preferable to governing. (And even with all those corruption investigations, the city kept running the whole time, anyway.)
Before the year finally slips away, flip through the 2013 edition of our Encyclopedia of D.C., and take a few minutes to remember the good stuff and learn from the bad.
What will the 2014 edition bring? We’ll find out soon enough. Two predictions, though: Those drinks aren’t getting any cheaper. And Rusty’s staying put.But instead, Johnson will spend the next eight years in a Wisconsin prison for trafficking heroin in Superior.
"Mr. Johnson needs to get the message he cannot come into our community and sell drugs," said Douglas County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Thimm during a sentencing hearing earlier this month. "We are not going to tolerate drug dealers from Chicago coming up and selling it here."
Johnson maintained he came to Superior with his cousin, 19-year-old Michael Elijah Jenkins of Chicago, to meet girls. Yet he ran from police executing a search warrant at a home on the 1500 block of Ogden Avenue where large amounts of heroin were found on Oct. 27. Jenkins told police that they brought heroin with them on the bus from Chicago to make some quick money, according to the criminal complaint. They allegedly stayed with Lydia Shanae Higgins, 21, and Matthew Aaron Thompson, 32, providing the couple with free heroin to traffic drugs out of their residence.
On March 16, a jury found Johnson guilty of party to possession with intent to deliver 16.5 grams of heroin with a street market value of more than $2,000. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Bork argued Johnson carried the drugs over state lines — from Illinois to Minnesota to Wisconsin — and that could have made it a federal case.
"This is most certainly not the first individual who has been sent up from Chicago," Bork told the court. "He has not been the last."
Douglas County has at least six open cases involving drugs coming from Chicago for sale in Superior, many of them involving alleged drug dealers selling from the homes of addicts in return for free drugs.
Last Monday, Daryl Williams, 21, of Chicago and Jordan Anthony Achin, 24, of Superior were arrested at a Superior hotel where more than 11 grams of heroin was found. Both made initial court appearances Tuesday on felony charges of party to possession with intent to deliver heroin and possession of narcotic drugs. According to the criminal complaint, Achin rented the room for Williams under his name and allegedly has done the same for out-of-town drug dealers several times before in exchange for free heroin.
At Johnson's sentencing hearing on May 13, Thimm noted that the defendant had been convicted of "a very serious offense.... Heroin is killing people in our community."
He sentenced Johnson to eight years in prison followed by 10 years of extended supervision.
Johnson has no prior criminal record. No weapons were found at the residence or on the participants. Teachers offered letters of support for the young man and defense attorney Ken Kratz pointed out the loving support of Johnson's mother and aunt.
"The Mr. Johnson sending those letters is not the Mr. Johnson who came to Superior and started slinging drugs," Thimm said. "He made the choice to get on the bus."
And his life took a sudden turn.
"This is a snapshot to everything that's wrong with heroin," said Douglas County District Attorney Dan Blank. "That you can have people that have a life, that have a future, that have potential, that have strengths, that take the easy way out to make a quick buck through drug dealing, or to carry the drugs for the drug dealers... that's a huge problem."
Thimm said he hoped to send a message to Johnson, the community, and the drug dealers targeting Superior that "this behavior is not going to be tolerated."
"We don't care if they're from Chicago," Blank said. "We don't want someone from Duluth coming over; we don't want someone from Solon Springs or Ashland. We don't want anyone bringing heroin here. We don't want a heroin supply at all because sadly we know people will use it, they'll get addicted, they'll have addicted babies, they'll lose their jobs, they'll steal from their families, they'll burglarize cabins and we'll just have a big mess. That's what's going on and we have to stop it."
Jenkins pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge of party to possession with intent to deliver heroin, according to online court records. He's scheduled to be sentenced on July 14.
Higgins pleaded guilty March 18 to one count of possession of heroin. She was sentenced to two years of probation and three days in jail with the possibility of expunction if she completes probation successfully. She also was ordered to continue treatment and provide a DNA sample. A count of felony party to possession with intent to deliver heroin was dismissed.
Thompson faces felony charges of possession of narcotic drugs and party to possession with intent to deliver heroin. His next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 1.
Achin and Williams will make their next court appearances Wednesday.Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn
Noah Smith is generally an excellent blogger, but when he switches over to Bloomberg.com, he... well let’s be charitable and assume the editors forced him to dumb things down. Waaaaay down:
One crowd-pleaser is Scott Sumner, a professor at Bentley University, who is the champion fighter of a team that calls itself the market monetarists. They believe that it’s the Federal Reserve’s job to fight recessions, doing whatever it takes in the way of monetary easing in order to get nominal gross domestic product (click on the link for a full explanation) back to a healthy trend.
Just for the record, I don’t think the Fed should fight recessions, and indeed I believe they should ignore RGDP entirely. I believe the Fed should prevent NGDP shortfalls (and overshoots.) Aren’t they the same thing (some commenters always ask me?) Check out NGDP during Zimbabwe’s 2008 recession. Or the 1980 recession (which Volcker did “fight,” and was wrong to do so.)
The basic market monetarist case against the Keynesians is that U.S. federal government spending, and deficits, have both been decreasing relative to GDP in recent years, and that this hasn’t brought us to economic ruin.
Readers of this blog know that this is not the “basic market monetarist case.” They know that monetary offset was the consensus Keynesian view in 2007. They know that MMs believe there is no reason to abandon that consensus. They know that the deficit fell by an astounding $500 billion in calendar 2013. They know that $500 billion is an extraordinary amount of austerity. They know that Paul Krugman and Mike Konczal called this a “test” of market monetarism. They know that 350 Keynesians signed a letter warning of recession if just a bit more than $500 billion in austerity were to occur. They know that RGDP growth in calendar 2013 nearly doubled over 2012. But of course readers of Bloomberg learn none of this.
Yes, if it were just a matter of the deficit decreasing in “recent years” then I’d entirely agree with Smith, it would tell us nothing. Smith makes it seem like we have no good reason to dismiss Keynesianism:
As you can see, government spending flatlined for about four years (and deficits declined) but GDP kept right on growing. In the mind of the market monetarists, that’s case closed — Keynesianism is dead.
That’s not my “mind.” Smith continues:
Others might claim that what matters is total government spending, including state and local governments, which boosted outlays quite a bit in 2013. Sumner, in his post, waves away these objections, accusing Keynesians of a “shell game” in which they claim to care about whichever method supports their thesis.
This is like those headlines stating, “Is the earth flat? Opinions differ.” I mean seriously, is there any Keynesian model that treats state and local spending differently from investment? If you are going to add S&L spending to Federal spending, then why the hell don’t you add investment too? They both have a multiplier effect. Neither are controlled by fiscal policymakers. This is why I use offensive language like “shell games.” It fits. And by the way, adding S&L spending to the 2013 experiment doesn’t significantly change anything, even if it should be included—which of course it shouldn’t.
Market monetarists have it even easier. Their credo is that the Fed is basically omnipotent, and so everything that happens is a result either of A) Fed actions, or B) expectations of Fed actions. If government spending goes up and GDP goes up, the market monetarists can say that it wasn’t because of fiscal stimulus, but because the Fed decided to be more dovish, and people realized that.
Obviously this is false. For instance, I don’t believe the Fed can prevent Noah from writing misleading opinion pieces. Or cure cancer. I do believe what almost all respectable economists believed in 2007, that central banks can and should target nominal aggregates like inflation or NGDP. I still believe that. Why so many other economists have changed their minds is an interesting question that Smith doesn’t address.
To make things worse, all the gladiators in this combat are looking at noisy time series data with very short samples, and making inferences about policy that might or might not operate with a lag, in an environment in which everything is changing at once. And the gladiators are free to pick out any data point that supports their thesis, and ignore the others. A time-series econometrician would blanch if you presented her with that kind of analysis. She wouldn’t even give it the time of day. Instead, she’d do a historical study, using data as far back as she could go, instead of picking one or two recent points. She would have to use some theory to guide her along, too. And even then, her conclusions would come with huge uncertainty.
I’ve spent most of my life studying older historical examples. And as far as I can tell it’s the Keynesians who favor making sweeping claims based on one or two data points. All I did is call them on it.
So who’s right? The answer is that we can’t really know. Chris Sims, winner of the 2011 Economics Nobel Prize, has found lots of evidence that monetary policy has an effect on the economy. Prestigious macroeconomists such as Robert Hall have found that fiscal policy has an effect as well. Maybe the market monetarists and the Keynesians are both a little bit right and a little bit wrong.
Of course Hall found that fiscal policy can affect the economy. There are lots of ways that can occur, even within the MM model. Sharply higher government spending can depress consumption, and make people work harder, as in the early 1940s. Lots of types of tax cuts can shift the AS curve. If the central bank is targeting inflation then lower VATs or employer-side payroll taxes will cause the central bank to boost AD. Then there is fiscal policy in scenarios with no monetary offset (fixed exchange rates, members of the euro, etc.)
Unfortunately a reader of this Bloomberg column would learn essentially nothing about market monetarism. But I’m less pessimistic than Smith. In the 1960s most economists believed that fiscal policymakers could and should try to do stabilization policy, even when interest rates are positive. By 2007 Milton Friedman had convinced the profession (including Krugman) that the Fed should steer the nominal economy when rates are positive. Now we just have to convince the profession that they should also do so at zero rates. And that’s what I’m trying to do.
HT Saturos, Travis
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This entry was posted on February 07th, 2015 and is filed under Monetary Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.The co-author of 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’s bestselling book “The Art of the |
, as now you don’t have missing logs, you have misleading logs. In a less-simple scenario it would be absolutely impossible to tell whether or not that correlation-id was correct, and you might end up diagnosing bugs that don’t exist within your system because of this.
Java 8 and CompletableFuture make this much more plausible by making it very easy to use the ForkJoinPool. CompletableFuture provides a number of methods to create a new CompletableFuture, or to take one CompletableFuture and transform it into another. Most of these methods have at least two signatures: x and xAsync. The former will do all the work on the current thread, the latter will automatically use the ForkJoinPool to execute asynchronously. Optionally you can provide your own Executor, which might be backed by your own managed thread pool.
From a performance standpoint, this is amazing. I can separate the business logic from the execution strategies completely. With very minor code changes, sometimes only a method name, I can turn synchronous code to asynchronous or back again. But from a logging stand point this is very fragile. Correctly using the MDC depends on staying on the current thread, and Java 8 makes it very easy to hop threads by design. Worse, the above incorrectness is subtle, so your logs could be left incorrect for years without any immediate impact.
Recommendations
Don’t use the MDC, it’s too unsafe. Every time you change threads, you will either get an empty MDC (best case scenario), or MDC values from an older request (worst case scenario). At every single point where you might hop threads, it will be necessary to copy the current MDC settings to a local variable, close over it in your next lambda, and set the new thread’s MDC to the correct value before logging on the new thread. If any new asynchronous step is introduced without doing the above work, the correct values are lost for the rest of the request resulting in malformed or incorrect logs. Considering that adding “Async” to the end of a method name is enough to hop threads, this is a lot of work.
The easiest solution is to forgo logging request specific identifiers. Remove any reference to the MDC from your code and log configuration, and move on. If your request volume is relatively low, this might be a perfectly reasonable solution for you.
If you must track every single action down to a single request, you will need to pass around an object for each request which will contain any request specific information you want to log. You can setup logging interfaces that require the Request object to ensure log uniformity, which means that failing to pass this object will be a compilation error. As a side benefit, these custom logging interfaces would be extremely useful in enforcing consistent log messages, and a good place to inject statistics gathering.
Addendum
The MDC docs are incorrect, with sections of the documentation explicitly referencing out of date information. I draw your attention to the section titled “MDC and Managed Threads” which says the following:
A copy of the mapped diagnostic context can not always be inherited by worker threads from the initiating thread. This is the case when java.util.concurrent.Executors is used for thread management. For instance, newCachedThreadPool method creates a ThreadPoolExecutor and like other thread pooling code, it has intricate thread creation logic.
As it turns out, a copy of the mapped diagnostic context will never be inherited by a worker thread. This change guarantees that each thread gets a new, empty MDC. This documentation is correct for older version of logback, but it is not correct anymore. I’m sure the quote above was accidentally left in place, as the correct behavior is mentioned at the top of the document. It’s just a good reminder to read documentation carefully, and understand that humans can make mistakes in the docs too.0 Officer's post goes viral for all the right reasons
RALEIGH, NC - A Raleigh police officer’s Facebook post is going viral for all the right reasons.
Officer JD Boyd posted a photo on his timeline Tuesday evening of himself in his uniform alongside a man in his community. Just looking at the picture, you would never know the history that exists between the two men.
“Almost a year ago this man and I were involved in a major altercation where he tried to stab me in the head and I nearly shot him,” Boyd begins in his Facebook post.
But now, Boyd says that’s all behind him.
“Today we ran into each other again and I learned that after his time in prison and some help from probation he now has a full time job and has another son on the way that will be here in November," Boyd wrote. “I was glad it ended well for us both that day and I am ecstatic now to learn that he has turned his life around and we can embrace as friends.”
Boyd ends the post by writing, “No one is ever lost forever and as long as you continue to work to be a better version of yourself than you were yesterday things will work out eventually.”
Boyd’s post has been shared more than 20,000 times.
<div id="fb-root"></div><script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document,'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1516315555326137&set=a.1387179638239730.1073741828.100008431206669&type=1" data-width="500"><div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1516315555326137&set=a.1387179638239730.1073741828.100008431206669&type=1"><p>Almost a year ago this man and I were involved in a major altercation where he tried to stab me in the head and I nearly...</p>Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JDBoydRPD">JD Boyd</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1516315555326137&set=a.1387179638239730.1073741828.100008431206669&type=1">Tuesday, September 8, 2015</a></blockquote></div></div>Training to win has never been more scientific. Here we look at winning by numbers, and how one young rider became a podium finisher at the Tour de France
Every pro measures their optimum power output, heart rate and a host of physiological data. Mostly they keep the figures secret so rivals can’t tell their strengths and weaknesses.
Thibaut Pinot, the FDJ team leader, has risen swiftly from being a promising junior to standing on the podium of the Tour de France in seven short years. His performance in every single race and training session has been measured, and he’s revealed all so every ambitious youngster can learn from his data.
Remarkably, the figures have just been published because his coach and brother, Julien Pinot, and the FDJ director, Fred Grappe, want others to see how it’s done.
So, here’s how to go from wannabe to yellow jersey challenger.
Starting in the year you turn 18, race and train for 515 hours, over 14,733 km (9,155 miles).
Step it up each birthday so that, aged 23, you’re on the bike for 942 hours, and covering twice the distance – 29,383 km (18,258 miles), much of it on tougher roads than before.
You should make your biggest improvements in the first few years. Pinot got stronger by about 20% each year before turning 21. Then gains will be more elusive, averaging just 10% a year – but you’ll still be getting better.
It’s not all pain. You may have to indulge in your favourite foods, within moderation, to reach your optimal racing weight. Analysis showed that France’s hottest prospect, at 62kg, was too light to be able to perform at his best so he had to add 3kg to his 1.8m frame.
Like Pinot, you won’t be measuring your unstoppable progress simply by hours, kilometres or race results. The conventional way is to measure your maximum oxygen consumption – known as VO2max. The higher the number, the fitter you are.
It’s quantified in the lab. Put simply, you pedal an ergometer (a wired, hi-tec exercise bike) while its resistance is increased until you collapse. The breathing mask you have to wear allows your oxygen consumption to be calculated.
Stay on the programme and your maximum oxygen consumption could be as high as Pinot’s – 85 millilitres per minute for every kilogram of body weight (85mL/min/kg). How good is that?
Well, the VO2max of his coach is 79mL/min/kg. That 6mL/min/kg may seem small but it’s the difference between a fit human and a superfit world class cyclist.
But Pinot’s coach believes the key is not VO2max alone – your power output is the real biz and you should put a power meter on your road bike for every training session and competitve race. Pinot did so for six years, for 2208 sessions in all – 1727 workouts and 481 races, including 68 time trials.
The numbers show his workouts got harder by 62% in that time and yet his power output rose – by more than 10% at almost every intensity, over every duration from a finish line sprint up to a Grand Tour stage of four hours.
For a five second sprint as a junior his power output was 17.3 Watts per kilo of body weight (W/kg). In 2012 as a pro the training focused on sprinting and output peaked at 19 W/kg.
When you’re almost at the limit, perhaps climbing Alpe d’Huez, and Pinot attacks you, you’ll need to match his power, which has risen over six years from 9.6 W/kg to 10.5 W/kg for that crucial 60 seconds.
Your chances of stopping him in an “average” break away have also diminished. For a serious move lasting 10 minutes his power is now 6.9 W/kg, up from 6 W/kg in 2008.
And when you’re in his team on a typical flat stage of the Tour, bear in mind that since Pinot turned pro, his power output over four hours has rocketed from 4.3 W/kg to 5 W/kg.
How can you achieve a similar improvement? Sadly the study doesn’t detail the training regime and, anyway, that should be tailored to your own stengths and weaknesses because everybody is different. For example, approximately half of your VO2max potential is down to the genes you’ve inherited from your parents (so that’s another thing to thank them for).
But two secrets have been spilled by the researchers. First, they say Pinot regularly focuses his training on heavy exercise, for up to an hour at a time. Secondly, he frequently endures severely intense exercise in sessions lasting up to 20 minutes – mostly on climbs.
All world tour squads will be doing this kind of analysis but nobody has ever published the data and analysis of a top contender in such detail. His coach, Julien Pinot, says they’ve published his brother’s data because they want to show how effective their training processes can be.
“Moreover, the publication of his record power profile allows us to be transparent about the level of his physical potential,” says Julien Pinot, with an eye on the future.
Now, knowing the numbers you need to match, you, too, can determine your own successful future. Allez!
You can read more here: “A six-year monitoring case study of a top-10 cycling Grand Tour finisher” by Julien Pinot and Frederic Grappe is published in the Journal of Sports Sciences10/28/2015 Held at the desk.
10/28/2015 Message on Senate action sent to the House.
10/28/2015 Received in the House.
10/27/2015 Passed Senate with an amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 74 - 21. Record Vote Number: 291. (text: CR S7522-7534)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Amendment SA 2716 agreed to in Senate by Voice Vote.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2749 Amendment SA 2749 agreed to in Senate by Unanimous Consent.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2749 Amendment SA 2749 proposed by Senator Burr to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7521) To improve the substitute amendment.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2581 Amendment SA 2581 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 22 - 73. Record Vote Number: 290.
10/27/2015 Cloture motion on the measure withdrawn by unanimous consent in Senate. (consideration: CR S7520)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2552 Amendment SA 2552 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 41 - 54. Record Vote Number: 289.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2612 Amendment SA 2612 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 35 - 60. Record Vote Number: 288.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2582 Amendment SA 2582 as modified agreed to in Senate by Voice Vote.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2587 Amendment SA 2587 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 37 - 59. Record Vote Number: 287.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2548 Amendment SA 2548 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 47 - 49. Record Vote Number: 286.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2621 Amendment SA 2621 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 41 - 55. Record Vote Number: 285.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2557 Amendment SA 2557 ruled non-germane by the chair.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2626 Amendment SA 2626 ruled non-germane by the chair.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2557 Point of order raised in Senate with respect to amendment SA 2557.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2626 Point of order raised in Senate with respect to amendment SA 2626.
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2548 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7502-7503, S7504-7505)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2552 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7520)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2557 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7503)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2581 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7511-7512, S7519-7520, S7520-7521)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2582 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7508-7509, S7520; text as modified: CR S7508-7509; text as further modified: CR S7520)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2587 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7505, S7507-7508)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2621 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7503, S7504)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2626 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7503)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7503, S7521)
10/27/2015 S.Amdt.2612 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498, S7509-7510)
10/27/2015 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7498-7510, S7510-7522)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2564 Amendment SA 2564 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 32 - 65. Record Vote Number: 282.
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Cloture on amendment SA 2716 invoked in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 83 - 14. Record Vote Number: 281. (consideration: CR S7434; text: CR S7434)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430, S7434)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2548 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2552 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2557 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2564 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430, S7434-7435; text as modified: CR S7435)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2581 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2582 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2587 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2612 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2621 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 S.Amdt.2626 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430)
10/22/2015 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7430-7439, S7441-7445)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2612 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7381; text as further modified: CR S7381)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2621 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7387-7388)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2626 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7388-7397)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2548 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2552 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2557 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7397-7398)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2564 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7407-7408)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2581 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7381-7387)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2582 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374, S7404-7405)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2587 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374)
10/21/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374)
10/21/2015 Considered by Senate. (consideration: CR S7374-7406, S7407-7408)
10/20/2015 Cloture motion on the measure presented in Senate. (consideration: CR S7342; text: CR S7342)
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Cloture motion on amendment SA 2716 presented in Senate. (consideration: CR S7342; text: CR S7342)
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2621 Amendment SA 2621 proposed by Senator Feinstein for Senator Wyden to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7336; text as modified: CR S7336) To improve the requirements relating to removal of personal information from cyber threat indicators before sharing.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2626 Amendment SA 2626 proposed by Senator Feinstein for Senator Whitehouse to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7335-7336, S7339-7340; text: CR S7335-7336; text as modified: CR S7339-7340) To amend title 18, United States Code, to protect Americans from cybercrime.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2557 Amendment SA 2557 proposed by Senator Feinstein for Senator Mikulski to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7335; text: CR S7335) To provide amounts necessary for accelerated cybersecurity in response to data breaches.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2564 Amendment SA 2564 proposed by Senator Burr for Senator Paul to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7335; text as modified: CR S7335) To prohibit liability immunity to applying to private entities that break user or privacy agreements with customers.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2587 Amendment SA 2587 proposed by Senator Feinstein for Senator Leahy to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7335; text as modified: CR S7335) To strike the FOIA exemption.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2548 Amendment SA 2548 proposed by Senator Burr for Senator Heller to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7335; text as modified: CR S7335) To protect information that is reasonably believed to be personal information or information that identifies a specific person.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2612 Amendment SA 2612 proposed by Senator Feinstein for Senator Franken to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7334-7335; text as modified: CR S7334-7335) To improve the definitions of cybersecurity threat and cyber threat indicator.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2582 Amendment SA 2582 proposed by Senator Burr for Senator Flake to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7334; text: CR S7334) To terminate the provisions of the Act after ten years.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2552 Amendment SA 2552 proposed by Senator Feinstein for Senator Coons to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7333-7334; text as modified: CR S7333-7334) To modify section 105 to require DHS to review all cyber threat indicators and countermeasures in order to remove certain personal information.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2581 Amendment SA 2581 proposed by Senator Burr for Senator Cotton to Amendment SA 2716. (consideration: CR S7333; text as modified: CR S7333) To exempt from the capability and process within the Department of Homeland Security communication between a private entity and the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the United States Secret Service regarding cybersecurity threats.
10/20/2015 S.Amdt.2716 Amendment SA 2716 proposed by Senator Burr. (consideration: CR S7333) In the nature of a substitute.
10/20/2015 Measure laid before Senate by unanimous consent. (consideration: CR S7332-7342)
08/05/2015 Cloture motion on the motion to proceed to the measure withdrawn by unanimous consent in Senate. (consideration: CR S6342)
08/05/2015 Motion to proceed to measure considered in Senate. (consideration: CR S6329-6348, S6350-6351; text: CR S5329)
08/04/2015 Motion to proceed to measure considered in Senate. (consideration: CR S6256, S6257-6262, S6263-6264, S6266-6267, S6271-6272, S6279)
08/03/2015 Cloture motion on the motion to proceed to consideration of the measure presented in Senate. (consideration: CR S6228; text: CR S6228)
08/03/2015 Motion to proceed to consideration of measure made in Senate. (consideration: CR S6228)
04/15/2015 By Senator Burr from Select Committee on Intelligence filed written report. Report No. 114-32. Additional views filed.
03/17/2015 Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 28.
03/17/2015 Select Committee on Intelligence. Original measure reported to Senate by Senator Burr. Without written report.Our consumers’ health and safety have always been an absolute priority for L’Oréal. As is the support of animal welfare.
L’Oréal has developed a very rigorous safety evaluation procedure of its products, backed by Research. Well before the question of animal testing was raised by civil society or within a regulatory framework, L’Oréal has been committed to new methods of assessing safety that don’t involve animals. A true pioneer, L'Oréal has been reconstructing human skin models in laboratories to elaborate in vitro safety tests since 1979, as an alternative to animals. In 1989, L’Oréal completely ceased testing its products on animals, thus 14 years before the regulation required so. Today, L'Oréal no longer tests its ingredients on animals and no longer tolerates any exception to this rule.
Certain health authorities may nevertheless decide to conduct animal tests themselves for certain cosmetic products, as it is still the case in China. L’Oréal has been the most active company working alongside the Chinese authorities and scientists for over 10 years to have alternative testing methods recognized, and permit the cosmetic regulation to evolve towards a total and definite elimination of animal testing. Thanks to this, since 2014, certain products manufactured and sold in China like shampoo, body wash or certain make-up are no longer tested on animals.Image copyright AFP Image caption The blaze is believed to have started on the ground floor before quickly spreading into the stairwell and then upper floors
French police have arrested a man suspected of starting a fire that killed eight people, including two children, in northern Paris.
The apartment block blaze in the 18th district of the French capital broke out in the early hours of Wednesday, and took more than 100 firefighters to contain it.
Four survivors - some of whom are in a critical condition - are in hospital.
A police source said the suspect was found with "a candle and lighter".
The French website TF1 adds that the man in his 30s was already known to the police.
Police sources say that the arrest was made on the basis of eyewitness testimony and CCTV footage.
The cause of the fire in the building at 4 rue Myrha, located at the foot of the famed Montmartre hill, is being investigated by criminal prosecutors.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Europe 1 radio that the investigators were "focusing on the possibility of criminal intent".
Fire crews were first called to the scene at about 02:20 local time (00:20 GMT) and quickly put out the blaze, but they were then called back again two hours later to extinguish a second, much larger fire.
"It's clear that when you have two call-outs in the same night... this could be a malicious act," interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
Image copyright AFP Image caption More than 100 firefighters were deployed to tackle the blaze
The larger blaze is believed to have started on the ground floor before quickly spreading into the stairwell and then upper floors.
Some of the residents reportedly attempted to escape through windows.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Firefighters used ladders to inspect apartments on upper floors of the building
The fire broke out in a private building, not a block of flats for low-income families, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said.
She added that about 15 other buildings in the area had been affected by the blaze.
This is believed to be one of the deadliest fires in the French capital in the last decade.
In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said: "Everything is being done to shed light on the cause of this tragedy."ANKARA - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has strongly denied any claims that his government had prepared arrest lists before Friday’s failed coup attempt. Taking him by his word, things could be even worse. The government could be acting out of pure anger without thinking thorough what would be the consequences of rounding up thousands upon thousands of people from the military, the judiciary system, other state institutions and from academia.
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This failed military coup could become Turkey’s Iraqification moment. After the occupation in Iraq, the first thing on the American agenda was to remove all Baath party members from Iraq's state institutions. That led to the collapse of the state structure in the country. The mass arrests in Turkey now could lead to a similar situation.
The Turkish government was in a convenient marriage with Fethullah Gülen’s movement up until the corruption scandal of December 2013. Since then, they have been going through an ugly divorce crowned by a scandalous bloody coup attempt. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now the sworn enemy of the Gülenists and seeks to cleanse all state institutions from them in one fell swoop.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: AFP)
Turkish media is reporting that over 10,000 state employees have lost their jobs—some by getting arrested, others by having their contracts suspended. For any structure to kick out such a massive amount of employees at one time, this would spell out institutional crisis.
When Erdoğan took power, he was eager to put his loyalists in place and mounted a large-scale shuffle of Turkey’s state insitutions. This turnover continued until the government was convinced it had all state institutions under its control. Among these newly-instated loyalists were surely Gülenists, who made their way up the political ladder with the blessings of the government.
For its current purge, the Turkish government was able to come up with a list of Gülenists in the blink of an eye. It could be because they knew who these Gülen followers were from the very beginning, while still allowing them to gather strength within the state’s institutions. Alternatively, the government is leading yet another cleansing, including those who have no connection to the government or the Gülenist camp. The question then is, who are replacing these people; where are they coming from; how qualified are they?
Fethullah Gulen (Photo: Reuters)
Turkey borders Iraq and Syria, where a significant battle is being waged against radical Islamist groups. The country is now coming under attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant more frequently. Its fight against the separatist Kurdish terror organization, the PKK, is escalating. At this moment in time, Turkey needs to be at its best and remain vigilant to avert future terror attacks. These mass arrests, however, make one wonder how vulnerable the country is today.
In the face of such serious challenges to the country’s well-being, the government should have taken gradual steps to cleanse itself of the Gülenists. Yet the whole shuffle of state employees for the past 14 years has already made the country less secure and less confident. With this last move, the challenge is only getting more serious and promises a dark path ahead.Hales city budget goals: cops, gangs, homeless Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Mayor Charlie Hales (center) unveils his City Budget outside City Hall, May 2, 2016 (MayorPDX tweet) [ + - ] Video
Chris Holmstrom and KOIN 6 News Staff - PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- Though he has less than a year left in office, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales unveiled an ambitious city budget Monday.
The mayor wants to add 90 police officers, combat record-setting gang violence, add 800 shelter beds for the homeless and invest nearly $43 million toward those goals.
Hales also wants to invest almost $43 million in homelessness, public safety and housing affordability.
It will be paid for, he said, by slicing $5.3 million from the city bureaus, adding $8.7 million in business license fees and use the surplus of $25.6 million.
"In public safety, we do have a staffing crisis. We need to add at least 90 officers," Hales said. "The gang violence crisis is real and it affects everybody. We had 1,000 bullets flying around our streets last year and we had 15 people killed, 73 wounded. This is a big deal and getting worse."
So far in 2016, Portland has seen 58 incidents of gang-related violence, significantly more than at this point a year ago. With 64 police positions currently vacant, the PPB is stretched thin.
$43 million investment : -- $31 million to affordable housing -- $11 million to public safety
Paid for by: -- $26 million surplus -- $5 million in bureau cuts -- $9 million in business license fees
"We need officers out there to interfere with that. We need gang outreach workers to try and stop it from happening in the first place, so that's a real investment in the safety of our community," the mayor said.
But Hales understands recruiting is no easy feat, which is why he wants to add incentives for potential officers -- raising the starting pay, adding sign-on bonuses and giving awards for employee referrals.
Hales also wants to invest more than $31 million in homeless and affordable housing. Some of that funding will come from an unexpected surplus of nearly $26 million, plus $5 million in cuts to the city's bureaus plus and increase in the license fee for businesses.
"It doesn't really affecte small businesses," Hales said. "That's one of the good things about this because there's 60,000 really small businesses and another 15,000 that pay the $100 minimum tax, and they won't be affected by this."
The tax, he said, is a.3% increase that affects only larger businesses.
The last time city businesses saw an increase in the business license tax was 1977.
In an email to KOIN 6 News, the Portland Business Alliance said Hales did not ask for their input on this plan, which they oppose.
"The city's revenues from business income taxes grew 20 percent from 2014 to 2015, and the city's budget is currently at an all-time high. In addition, the city has had a budget surplus for the past two years," the email said.
Cuts to the parks budget is not among the items in the proposed budget.
The Portland City Council will vote on this plan in 2 weeks.The sale of a 58-unit condo project overlooking Lady Bird Lake is now final, paving the way for more high-rise residential development in the Rainey Street area on downtown Austin’s eastern edge.
More than 80 percent of the owners of the decades-old Villas on Town Lake condominiums — the statutory requirement for a sale to occur — agreed to sell their units at the 2.3-acre waterfront property, which is tucked at the foot of Red River Street adjacent to the hike-and-bike trail.
The sale closed June 30. The share of proceeds to the 54 owners was determined by individual unit appraisals. Owners must be out no later than the end of this year.
Dallas-based Genesis Real Estate Group is the new owner of the Villas property at 80 Red River St. Two apartment towers are in store for the site, Gordon Ip, president of Genesis, told the American-Statesman in an exclusive interview.
"We’re excited to be in Austin," Ip said. "This is a great property. I’ve been looking at sites in Austin a long, long time — at least three years — but there are very few sites" that weren’t already spoken for, or that had development restrictions to protect views of the Capitol.
Preliminary plans for the first phase call for a tower of about 40 stories with approximately 400 apartments, Ip said. A second tower would be timed to market demand, Ip said.
Genesis will be required to get a site plan approved by the city of Austin before starting construction. Ip estimated it could be sometime next year before the project breaks ground. The cost of the project has not been determined, and Genesis will have to obtain construction financing.
Founded in 1987, Genesis has developed high-profile towers in cities including Houston; San Francisco; Long Beach, Calif; and Dallas, where it is building the Katy, a 30-story, 463-unit high-rise in Victory Park.
Genesis bought the Villas property from the Sutton Co., based in Austin, for an undisclosed amount. Sutton had the property under contract last year for $50.8 million.
Sutton previously had teamed with Dallas-based Koa Partners on a proposed project to build two high-rise towers on the site, including one of up to 60 stories, which if built could have become Austin’s tallest building to date.
Sutton Co. and Koa Partners are no longer the developers, but retain a partnership interest, Ip said. Sutton Co. also owns nearby land on Waller Creek where it plans more high-rise development.
Ip said Genesis has "no desire" to build the tallest building in Austin, nor does it aspire to be "the hippest property."
"We want to respect what’s around us, which is Waller Creek and Lady Bird Lake," Ip said. "We want to do something that’s respectful and appropriate and |
our full review of Barrio 47 here. 47 8th Ave, brunch served 12 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.
Boozy Brunch
Corkbuzz is celebrating Easter Sunday with a brunch buffet featuring an egg station, French toast, ham carving, granola, and an assortment of meats and cheeses. Signature brunch favorites will also be available to guests. The champagne will be flowing with Corkbuzz’s Champagne Campaign – a.k.a half-off bottles of all champagne! 13 E 13th St, brunch served 12 – 3 p.m.
Authentic Italian Brunch
Family is tradition at Paola’s in the Upper East Side. In fact, we got a tour of the kitchen by Paola herself. Generations of New Yorkers dine atop white tablecloths every Sunday after church and we suspect Easter Sunday won’t be any different. The full brunch menu will be served this Sunday; stand outs included the poached eggs with truffled mushrooms and polenta and the asparagus salad with poached eggs. Read our full review of Paola’s here. 1295 Madison Ave, brunch served 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
Build Your Own Bloody Brunch
Head for a taste down under this Easter Sunday for brunch at Aussie-inspired Burke & Wills in the Upper West Side. The restaurant will offer its entire brunch menu until 4 p.m. Carbs are king at Burke & Wills and we recommend the housemade gnocchi topped with an egg and the Nutella French toast. Read our full review of Burke & Wills here. 226 W. 79th St, brunch served 12-4 p.m.
Bistro Brunch
Sarabeth’s is a brunch staple in the city and one of our first stops when reviewing for the site three years ago. On Easter Sunday, Sarabeth’s will offer a $55 prix fixe menu featuring three courses with specialty items like lamb loin and vegetable consomme. Read our full review of Sarabeth’s here. Various locations, brunch served from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.Demi Lovato is fired up about last week’s court decision in Kesha‘s legal battle against longtime collaborator Dr. Luke and Sony.
The 23-year-old took to Twitter early Sunday morning, writing, “Frustrating to see women come forward with their past only to be shot down, not believed & disrespected for their bravery in taking action.”
Demi Lovato and (inset) Kesha Startraks;Raymond Hall/GC Images
A Manhattan Supreme Court judge decided Friday that Kesha, 28, cannot be let out of her six-album contract deal with Sony, despite the fact that she’ll have to work with Dr. Luke.
The “Tik Tok” singer claims that Dr. Luke drugged and raped her shortly after she turned 18, but he was never criminally charged. Although Kesha can record without the producer, she contends that the label won’t promote her music as well.
What’s Wilmer Valderrama’s Favorite Demi Lovato Song?
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“Happens way too often. I’m ready for women to be taken just as seriously as men,” Lovato continued on Monday. “Someone tell me why anyone would ever feel brave enough to come forward if they are most likely to be ignored or called a liar?”
She added, “I’m also ready for self-proclaimed feminists to start speaking out or taking action for women’s rights.”
Frustrating to see women come forward with their past only to be shot down, not believed & disrespected for their bravery in taking action — Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) February 21, 2016
Happens way too often. I'm ready for women to be taken just as seriously as men.. — Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) February 21, 2016
Someone tell me why anyone would ever feel brave enough to come forward if they are most likely to be ignored or called a liar? — Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) February 21, 2016
I'm also ready for self-proclaimed feminists to start speaking out or taking action for women's rights. — Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) February 21, 2016
Lovato, one of many stars to stand behind the singer, went on to explain how she defines “women empowerment.
“Women empowerment is speaking up for other women even when it’s something uncomfortable to speak up about,” she wrote. “Women empowerment is using your voice to help the voiceless women be heard. Women empowerment is taking action now, not when it’s convenient. Women empowerment is leading other women to make actual changes in our society.”
Finally, she concluded, “Women empowerment is tweeting at 2:30 am knowing the consequences of these tweets and not giving a single f—.”
After the initial verdict was released, Lovato wrote on the social media website, “#FreeKesha. This is only gonna make you stronger, you brave and beautiful girl. Prayers are with you.”
Throughout the entire ordeal, Dr. Luke has vehemently denied all the allegations – which also include that the 42-year-old has verbally and emotionally abused Kesha.
“Kesha and her mother are engaged in a campaign of publishing outrageous and untrue statements about Dr. Luke to third parties, including scurrilous and false statements of purported physical and mental abuse of Kesha,” Christine Lepera, his lawyer, previously told PEOPLE.SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email
Photographer: Leon Neal/Getty Images Photographer: Leon Neal/Getty Images
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s government will publish the bill to trigger Brexit on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The bill will simply be published in a first reading -- the first stage of it going through Parliament -- and will be debated at a later date, the person said, declining to be identified because the plans are private. Some details of the proposed legislation are expected to be set out when Brexit Secretary David Davis answers questions from lawmakers in Parliament at 9:30 a.m.
May has failed in her attempts to bypass Parliament in invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the formal mechanism for Britain’s exit from the European Union. The government decided to publish a bill after losing its appeal against a High Court ruling that required May to seek a vote among lawmakers before triggering Brexit. She also promised on Wednesday to publish a White Paper setting out her plan for the process.
Davis said on Tuesday the bill will be “straightforward.” A short tightly worded bill would help the government rush the legislation through Parliament before its self-imposed deadline to begin exit talks by the end of March, giving lawmakers as little opportunity as possible to table amendments.Harold Hamgravy, better known as Ham Gravy, is an American comics character from the Thimble Theatre (later Popeye) series, created in 1919 by Elzie Segar.[1][2]
Hamgravy was the original fiancé of the better-known character Olive Oyl, but was often attracted to other women who were considerably wealthy. Hamgravy was depicted as a slacker who preferred getting rich quick rather than earning money honestly.
In a later strip, Hamgravy hired a sailor named Popeye to man his ship for a treasure hunt.[3] Intended as a minor supporting character, Popeye proved so popular with readers that he was made a permanent member of the main cast.[4] As time passed, Hamgravy was replaced by Popeye as the prize for Olive's affections. Hamgravy made occasional appearances in the later Popeye strips, but never had the fame he once held.
Hamgravy makes a supporting appearance in the 1980 film, Popeye, where Olive has recently left Hamgravy and has since begun dating Bluto at the film's opening. He was played by Bill Irwin.
References [ edit ]NVIDIA has been a busy technology bee recently. Its Tegra SoC (System on a Chip) is at the heart of an increasing number of Android-based gaming products, including the Kickstarted OUYA and (likely) Mad Catz' MOJO, announced last week at E3—not to mention numerous smartphones and tablets. But NVIDIA, which issued the first Tegra chip back in 2008, is no longer content to produce components for other vendor's products. At the end of June, the Santa Clara-based company will be releasing its SHIELD game controller/console, which it showcased to the public at E3. SHIELD is an all-in-one device that will allow gamers to play Android games natively on its gamepad, which also sports a built-in screen. According to NVIDIA, several developers are working on games to take advantage of SHIELD's control scheme and abilities, with more than two dozen titles designed for the console or enhanced to work at launch. More than a tech toy, NVIDIA sees SHIELD as an enhanced entertainment device, allowing users to stream music and movies, as well as AAA games from NVIDIA's cloud gaming solution, GRID. But the knock-your-socks-off feature of the SHIELD is the streaming feature, which, if all goes according to plan, will allow gamers to pause in mid-game and continue the action on their televisions. And when your significant other kicks you off the big screen, you can go back to your game on the smaller screen—instantly. This means NVIDIA has plenty to talk about. I caught up with senior software engineer Clay Causin, and separately, director of product marketing Jason Paul to hear more of their plans and expectations for SHIELD and Android gaming. What can gamers expect from a SHIELD device? Jason Paul: There’s over thirty games we’ll have at launch [for] SHIELD. That means they have full controller support as well as graphic enhancements. In addition, we have our PC streaming feature, which provides an awesome way to experience PC games around your house. In addition to its core gaming value, it is a great way to listen to music and a great way to see movies. You can plug it into your TV and watch movies on your big screen. It also offers a built-in tablet with all of your favorite apps: Facebook, Twitter etc. It’s a powerful gaming device that provides a lot of entertainment capability as well. NVIDIA doesn’t typically make end-user peripherals. So why are you making SHIELD? Clay Causin: Well, PC gaming can use it. As a gamer, I want to sit on the couch with my significant other instead of being separate locked in a room. I can sit down and game side by side while she watches TV. At $349, isn't it kind of expensive, when you consider a console like the PS4 will be priced at $400? JP: Look at the game business model. Most consoles…subsidize the hardware and then sell the games for a lot of money. Our model is you may pay a little more for the hardware, but you can get full console-quality games for $4.99. So you look at the full capabilities of the platform, and you look at total cost of ownership, and I think it makes a lot of sense. UPDATED: NVIDIA recently lowered the price of the SHIELD to $299. Do you like gaming with the SHIELD? CC: Being a PC gamer, I didn’t know about gaming with a controller in my hand. I didn’t like the idea at first, but I'm finding myself using my SHIELD unit more at home than I ever thought I would. JP: The feedback has been great. Everyone has been able to get their hands on the device just loves it. And the developers that get the device are really delighted to have a platform that enables their vision for their game…in terms of graphics capabilities, the audio, the visuals, and the controls. Does SHIELD have second-screen capabilities? JP: Not today, no. There are certainly opportunities to do some cool things there. If you connect the device to your TV via the HDMI, you can actually do some second-screen things on your TV. There are one or two Android games like Real Boxing that have the capability; on your device you sort of have your first-person view, and the TV is the spectator view. But in terms of our PC streaming, it’s primary display-only right now.
How is NVIDIA’s cloud gaming solution GRID coming along?
JP: At the show here, we are showing our great technology, which allows us to stream PC games from our cloud servers to a variety of devices. It's streaming to PCs, to tablets and phone devices, as well as to NVIDIA SHIELD. This is the first time we’ve shown streaming from GRID to SHIELD.
We also have some partners here on the show floor that are showing off their streaming services using the GRID's video servers.
Are you working with Valve?
CC: Yes, we are working closely with Valve. Steam's Big Picture is going to play an important role for SHIELD gaming. Really? Tell me more. I'm not near a team that would actually be able to share that information with you.
Is Android gaming going to be big?
CC: Android gaming is already big. I've only recently gotten into Android gaming, and I’m just trying to keep up with the major popular titles. Through social media, I’m getting leads and pointers to other Android games, more than I’m seeing other titles or other platforms.
JP: We believe so. Back at GDC in March, there was a survey done, asking all of the game developers which platforms they were developing for. Mobile was #1, with about 55 precent, PC was #2 with about 40 precent, and each of the consoles had between 10 and 20 precent. Looking at that, as well as software revenue forecasts, Android and PC are…leading the way in terms of gaming platforms, compared to the consoles.
We think Android will make up the majority of units shipped for tablets and smart phones in the world, so we think it’s going to be enormous. We’re investing heavily in Android gaming.
How much business will Android gaming generate for NVIDIA and SHIELD?
JP: We think Android gaming is a big opportunity. Not just for NVIDIA SHIELD as an Android gaming device but also for all of our Tegra-based tablets and smart phones. So game developers can create one game, and [while] SHIELD is the best way to experience that game, it also runs all of the bigger tablets and smart phones out on the market.
What does NVIDIA think about the other Android gaming consoles, like OUYA, Gamestick, and MOJO?
CC: NVIDIA's excited about Android gaming consoles getting more popular. Our product’s going to deliver more than Android gaming. We are going to provide the cleanest, the best Android gaming experience with our controller system, our screen, and the Tegra chip. I would love to see what other people are doing… Right now I think they are playing catch up with us.
JP: From our perspective we’re excited to see all of our partners bringing to market different Tegra-based devices for Android gaming. We’re trying to support and encourage a wide variety of prices that provide different value propositions.
For us, the Android ecosystem offers opportunity for a wide variety of hardware that is going to play a large catalog of Android content. It's sort of different from a console model, where you sort of have one piece of hardware that sort of stays constant for years and years and years. With Android you have a ton of hardware that continually gets updated and refreshed and innovated.
NVIDIA's clearly excited about the potential for SHIELD, and the effort they're putting into it and the GRID platform are evident: Between them, GRID and SHIELD occupied more than half of NVIDIA's booth at E3.
Is $349 $299 the right price for the SHIELD? It depends. Will developers continue to produce games that integrate with the console? Thirty titles is a strong start. But until that number grows, SHIELD's traction in the marketplace will be hard to judge. And as for streaming, transferring a game's display from TV to console and back is a neat feature… but it's not necessarily a compelling one in a house that has two TVs.
NVIDIA have demoed streaming to SHIELD from GRID, but local streaming is obviously more interesting to PC gamers, many of whom use Steam. Details are still scant, but we should expect to learn more when SHIELD launches at the end of this month.
(NVIDIA also had plenty more to say on the subject of PC gaming. I'll be covering that, and NVIDIA's announcement yesterday of licensing its GPU technology to third parties, in a future article.)
SHIELD is available for pre-orders now at Game Stop, Micro Center, and CanadaComputers, Newegg, and SHIELD.NVIDIA.com.
You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and here at Forbes.The 90’s were a golden age of cartoons. We had a blast putting together the 20 best, and we’re sure this list will inspire some discussion. Our only criteria was that the cartoon had to start in the 90’s, meaning a couple of very late in the decade entries were still eligible. We did make a small exception for one show, but we think you’ll agree it was warranted. Enjoy!
20. Darkwing Duck
Production Period: 1991-1995
This Disney smash followed Drake Ballard and his alter-ego, Darkwing Duck. Darkwing and his adopted daughter, Gosalyn Mallard resided in the town of St. Canard and used their powers to perform good acts all over their town. Darkwing Duck was a spin off of the Disney Series Duck Tales.
19. Doug
Production Period: 1991-1994, later 1996-1999
Doug Funnie and his best friend Skeeter got into all kind of adventures in the fictional town of Bluffington. Alongside Doug’s dog Porkchop, the trio got into all kind of trouble. Although the show eventually switched from Nickelodeon to Disney, it ran for a total of 116 episodes and even spawned one feature film.
18. Talespin
Production Period: 1990-1994
Using characters adapted from the 1967 movie, The Jungle Book, Talespin was set in the town of Cape Suzette. Baloo the Bear is out of work until he lands a job as a pilot. An orphan boy and former air pirate named Kit Cloudkicker attaches to Baloo and becomes his navigator. The pair share their adventures as Baloo becomes a permanent fixture in the child’s life.
17. Rocko’s Modern Life
Production Period: 1993-1996
Rocko’s Modern life followed the life of wallaby Rocko. The show, which was more adult than anyone could have imagined, was full of sexual innuendos and was written by a man who had no experience with cartoons or kids. After 52 episodes, the show called it quits, but the unique animation and brilliant storylines earned it a place on our list.
16. Pinky and The Brain
Production Period: 1995-1999
Originally starting as a recurring segment on the hit show Animaniacs, Pinky and The Brain finally landed their own show in 1995. Pinky and Brain are genetically enhanced laboratory mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Each episode involves one of Brain’s plans for world domination with Pinky’s assistance, and the ultimate failure of that plan. The series took home several Emmys, including the 1996 Award for Best Animated series.
15. The Critic
Production Period: 1994-1995
The Critic focused on movie-critic Jay Sherman, who gained a reputation for hating most films he saw. The Critic brought satire to the masses, in his negative review of each film, frequently offering a list of diseases he would rather have than seeing a movie again. The show ran for only 2 seasons, getting canceled after just 23 episodes. We think it was just a little too brilliant for it’s time.
14. Tiny Toon Adventures
Production Period: 1990-1995
Another animated venture by the great Steven Spielberg, Tiny Toon Adventures followed the toons at Acme Acres. Following the everyday lives of characters set to resemble Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Elmer Fudd, they attended school at Acme Looniversity, where they learned how to be funny. Tiny Toon Adventures took home 2 different Daytime Emmy Awards for Animated Show and is ranked 41st in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows.
13. Bobby’s World
Production Period: 1990-1998
Bobby’s World was truly a unique show. Created by Howie Mandel, the world was shown through four-year-old Bobby Generic’s over-imaginative eyes. Bobby faced the same trials as most young kids, but dealt with it through comedy and laughter. The show ended its run on February 23 1998 after an 80 episode run. FOX Kids has released some episodes on DVD, and even created a game based on the intellectual property.
12. Animaniacs
Production Period: 1993-1998
Animaniacs was presented by Steven Spielberg and was the second highest rated cartoon in the 2–11 and children ages 6–11 demographics. The storyline followed The Warners, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, three cartoon stars from the 1930s that were locked away in the Warner Bros. water tower until the 1990s. Upon their escape, they often interacted with some of the human characters working at the studio. The Animanics took home several awards, including multiple Daytime Emmy Awards. It also comes in at #17 on the All-Time Best Cartoon Lists.
11. King of the Hill
Production Period: 1997-2009
King of the Hill follows the Hills, a Methodist family from Texas, and their mundane, everyday sort of life. Since it’s creation in 97, King of the Hill has been nominated for 7 Emmy’s with 2 wins, and was even named one of Time Magazines Top 100 Television shows of all times. ‘Hill’ was recently canceled to make way for ‘The Cleveland Show’ (a Family Guy spin off), but the show finishes as one of the longest running prime time animated shows of all time.
10. Space Ghost Coast to Coast
Production Period: 1994-2004
Space Ghost Coast to Coast was one of the most refreshing and inventive cartoons to come out of the nineties. Set up like an animated talk show, the series brought back 60’s cartoon Space Ghost as the awkward, and sometimes painful show’s host. Space Ghost’s question often left the guests feeling confused and the audience was sometime led to believe the guests didn’t even realize they were on a talk show. The cartoon was even equipped with a laugh track. Space Ghost opened up the network to other “talk show” concepts, which eventually made the way for spin offs like Cartoon Planet and The Brak Show.
9. The Tick
Production Period: 1994-1996
The Tick is one of the animated series that didn’t run for very long, but reached cult status quickly. The Tick focused on a super hero who was well known for his “Spooooooon!” battle cry and his skin-tight blue suit. This satirical take on the super hero craze is considered one of the best animated series of all time, even though it only ran for 36 episodes.
8. Ren and Stimpy
Production Period: 1991-1996, later 2003
Ren and Stimpy, a dog/cat pair, were one of the most neurotic duo’s to hit television in the 90’s. When the show first started, it was described as frightening and often violent, which paired with the slow production schedule, caused the shows first director to be fired. When the show came back in 1993, it was re-formatted to suit the masses, and eventually led to four years of success for the show. The duo returned to television briefly in 2003, only to be removed once it began delving into plot-lines that were considered “too adult” for television.
7. Spongebob Squarepants
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Production period: 1999-Present
When Spongebob Squarepants premiered on May 1 after the 1999 Kids Choice Awards, Nickelodeon didn’t know they had just launched one of the most popular kids cartoons of all times. Spongebob reached popularity in the middle of its second season, and hasn’t slowed down since. The low-budget show proved that you didn’t have spend a lot of money to make a lot, and eventually made way for cartoons like ‘The Fairly Odd Parents’ and ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’. The show follows a sea sponge (Spongebob) and his best friend star fish (Patrick) on several of their adventures around their hometown of Bikini Bottom. The show is made to be enjoyed by kids and their parents by including more adult innuendos and soundtracks that feature artists like Wilco, The Shins, Twisted Sister and David Bowie (who appeared in the shows most watched episode of all times). Spongebob is still going strong and can be viewed on Nickelodeon!
6. Daria
Production Period: 1997-2002
Daria, a spin-off of Beavis and Butt-head, also aired on MTV. Daria followed a misanthropic, intelligent high school aged girl (Daria) and her daily encounters with the world around her. The show often referred to the unfortunate circumstances that usually affect teens as well as references to pop culture, especially music. The series followed Daria through her awkward high school years and ended eventually with her graduation and acceptance into college. After 65 episodes and 2 TV movies, the series called it quits on January 21st of 2002.
5. Family Guy
Production Period: 1999-2002, 2005-Present
Much like Futurama, Family Guy took everything positive from the cartoons of the early 90’s combined it with the lack of political correctness of the 2000’s and forged it’s way through the depths of animated comedies. Family Guy, which first aired on January 31 of 1999, is one of the most iconic cartoons of all time, even producing a spin off show in ‘The Cleveland Show’. Focusing on the Griffin family, the show follows their day-to-day life in suburbia. The show often features other characters (Cleveland, Quagmire) but most story lines revolve around Peter, Lois, Chris, Meg, Stewie and their trusty talking dog, Brian. Nothing on Family Guys is what it seems, but it seems like everything you’d want to see in a cartoon.
4. Futurama
Production Period: 1999-2003
Futurama might barely make our list, only premiering on March 28, of 1999, but the quality of the show makes it a must include. The show is essentially a workplace comedy, focusing on three main characters, Bender, Leela and Fry as they go about their days as ‘Planet Express’ delivery employees. Futurama was officially canceled in 2003, but can still be seen as syndication on Comedy Central.
3. Beavis and Butt-head
Production Period: 1993-1997
Beavis and Butt-head first appeared on television on MTV back in 1993. Beavis and Butt-head are two teenage guys who get by obsessing over music videos, contemplating their sarcastic version of life and testing out really bad ideas. The show ended in 97, but it is still considered a pop icon of the nineties.
2. South Park
Production Period: 1997-Present
A cartoon that focuses on 3rd graders at a Colorado elementary school. It doesn’t exactly sound the like the recipe for a successful television series. But South Park is possibly the most successful animated series of all times. Since 1997, Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny have been presenting political topics and taboo topics with a comedic ease that leaves audiences laughing, even when they know they shouldn’t be. In 2000, the boys made the switch from third to fourth grade, where they have remained ever since. During the first 5 seasons, the show was infamous for killing Kenny near the end of every episode, then bringing him back the next week with no explanation of his death or return. The show always reflects pop culture phenomenons, or current fads in society, addressing everything from ‘High School Musical’ hysteria to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ madness. After a motion picture and over 180 episodes, South Park is still going strong, and will be for at least a couple of more years as it has been renewed through 2011!
1. The Simpsons
Production Period: 1989-present
Probably one of the most iconic cartoons of all times, we realize ‘The Simpsons’ didn’t technically get their start in the 90’s, but since it was just a couple weeks shy we felt we could bend the rules a bit. The original run date was December 17, 1989, which was a date that set the bar for all cartoons in the next decade. The Simpsons quality has certainly declined of late, but during the 90’s it was consistently cranking out top notch entertainment, and easily takes the top spot on our list of best 90’s cartoons.Quotes About Go Programming
“After Go, programming in anything else seems as difficult as balancing the State of California’s budget.” – Charles Thompson
“Most of the appeal for me is not the features that Go has, but rather the features that have been intentionally left out.” – txxxxd in Hacker News
“Go is not meant to innovate programming theory. It’s meant to innovate programming practice.” – Samuel Tesla
“One of the reasons I enjoy working with Go is that I can mostly hold the spec in my head - and when I do misremember parts it’s a few seconds' work to correct myself. It’s quite possibly the only non-trivial language I’ve worked with where this is the case.” – Eleanor McHugh
“In Go, the code does exactly what it says on the page.” – Andrew Gerrand
“[the Go authors] designed a language that met the needs of the problems they were facing, rather than fulfilling a feature checklist” – ywgdana in reddit
“I have reimplemented a networking project from Scala to Go. Scala code is 6000 lines. Go is about 3000. Even though Go does not have the power of abbreviation, the flexible type system seems to out-run Scala when the programs start getting longer. Hence, Go produces much shorter code asymptotically.” – Petar Maymounko
“Go seems to be a counterpoint to the old stroustop adage ‘There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.’ Go seems to be a language people complain about without being used.” – tef in reddit.
“Go is like a better C, from the guys that didn’t bring you C++” – Ikai Lan
“Go doesn’t implicitly anything.” – Steven in golang-nuts
“If the few lines [of Go] are that difficult for you, then go type away in Java for a few minutes, then come back and tell Rob, Ian, Ken, and Russ that they aren’t mad geniuses.” – Cory Mainwaring
“From the tutorial: "The language forces the brace style to some extent.” Well, that’s it. If I can’t have a brace-war tearing the dev group apart for months and kill productivity, I want nothing to do with that language.“ – SoftwareMaven in hackernews
“I like that Go forces you to clean up little messes, like unused variables, for example.” – @jkakar (Jamu Kakar)
“Go is no Erlang, Smalltalk or Scheme, nothing pure. But it works great and is fun!” – Frank Mueller (@themue)
“If I had to describe Go with one word it’d be ‘sensible’.” – Christoffer Hallas
“Go isn’t functional, it’s pragmatical. Why pure paradigms like FP or OOP are always a must? (sigh)” – Frank Mueller (@themue)
“C++ is about objects. Go is about algorithms.” – Unknown
[Go] really fells like “the C for the 21st century” – Petr Hošek
“Oh I love Go. I’ve spent more time coding than debugging and it’s so simple, fast and funny…” – Roberto Costumero (@rcostu)
“Why would you have a language that is not theoretically exciting? Because it’s very useful.” – Rob Pike paraphrased by Roger Peppe
“Go is such a refreshing language to program in, there is very little clutter just the stuff you need to get the job done” – Matt West
“Porting my code review tools to Go from Python. Surprised to see a reduction in line counts.” – Scott Dunlop
“as someone who has written a fair bit of code in functional languages and a fair bit of Go, I find that the more Go I write the less I care about the language features (or lack thereof) that I was horrified by at first, and the more I see most other languages as overcomplicated. Go isn’t a very good language in theory, but it’s a great language in practice, and practice is all I care about, so I like it quite a bit.” – supersillyus in hackernews (full post)
“Porting a Google App Engine app written in Python to Go: Although I’m new to Go I get much quicker results than I’ve got with Python. Never used a language before that empowers you to solve problems as quick as Go does” – Alexander Orlov
“Go has turned into my go to language when i need to hack stuff. Really a pleasure to use.” – Aschobel, Co-founder of Catch.com
“The more i think about what a good language should do for us, i am more and more convinced that Go is the best language we have so far.” “Ruby deliberately fights against the SOLID principles, whereas Go encourages them” – Steven Degutis, former Go-skeptic
“We used it to write our own simple distributed computing software after realizing hadoop was too complicated (and thus bug prone) for our embarrassingly parallel needs. It took us less time to get the system written, stable and up and running then it had to get hadoop setup” – micro_cam in Hacker News
“Go is like a very delicious trifle - the further into it you go, the more delicious things you find. The quality is clear throughout. Go is very unassuming. You start by wondering what the big deal is + getting annoyed with the minor differences from other C-syntax languages before slowly progressing towards quite liking it, then eventually once you grok how simple + elegant and well engineered it is you come to love it.” – Lorenzo Stoakes
“[Go] is the most elegant imperative language ever (including dynamic ones like Lua, Ruby, and Python)” – Quoc Anh Trinh
“Go is most fun I’ve had with a compiled PL since I’ve discovered Turbo Pascal as a kid.” – Bojan Marković
“Go has brought together a set of features that make it compact, fast, readable, expressive and fun to program in. I’ve programmed seriously in tons of languages (both functional and not) and Go is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.” – John Graham-Cumming
“Go is that awkward, silent girl that always sits in the back of the bus. Nobody quite knows what to make of her, but if you make a tiny bit of effort to get to know her, the sex is amazing.” – Jim Teeuwen
“Go is like an oasis in the middle of the desert.” – nsf
“Programming in Go is like being young again (but more productive!).” – Anneli
What Other Language Designers Say about Go
“I like a lot of the design decisions they made in the [Go] language. Basically, I like all of them.” – Martin Odersky, creator of Scala
“I think it goes back to the Unix C traditions back to basics and other compiled languages and it remedies other deficiencies in C, I don’t think C++ was an improvement but I do think Go is a definite improvement on C and we’ve got Kernighan and things in the background there and obviously they’ve got wonderful experience on building languages. It’s very nicely engineered and actually when it even came out impressive documentation, and all this stuff that you need. Even when it first came out it has a level of maturity that you would think would actually have been there for many years, so it is very impressive actually.” – Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang
“[Go] just works. I don’t have any problems, which is the reason I am writing this post. I have used C++, C, and script languages for many years, but started to use Go at about a year ago. I am surprised how efficient and effective it is for me. When I design a new algorithm, it just works at the first attempt surprisingly often. Suddenly, programming is much more fun. I can’t say for sure why, but I think it is a combination of many factors.” – Lars Pensjö creator of LPMud and the LPC programming language.
“Go is an awesome language and, as this talk illustrates, we aren’t competing with Go; Go and Rust have totally different goals and Rob Pike’s languages were quite the influence on Rust.” – pcwalton of the Rust Mozilla team
“The complexity of C++ (even more complexity has been added in the new C++), and the resulting impact on productivity, is no longer justified. All the hoops that the C++ programmer had to jump through in order to use a C-compatible language make no sense anymore – they’re just a waste of time and effort. Now, Go makes much more sense for the class of problems that C++ was originally intended to solve.” – Bruce Eckel, author and founding member of the ANSI/ISO C++ standard committee.
“Four out of five language designers agree: Go sucks. The fifth was too busy [to answer] actually writing code [in Go].” – aiju
About (Missing) Features
Generics
“The more I use Go, the more I think generics would be a useless misfeature, why do so many people think they need them” – Aram Hăvărneanu (@aramh)
“I’ve been programming Go "professionally” for months now without a single “oh, generics would make this easier” moment outside of reading mailing list posts about algorithms and math.“ – Kyle Lemons
List Comprehension
“I thought I would miss list comprehensions a lot, but I find that their absence results in cleaner code that is easier to understand even when compared to relatively simple list comprehensions [in Python].” – Thirsteh
Exceptions
“The way errors are handled in Go as opposed to the old exception model is huge. I’m talking the next evolution of programming languages huge. Knowing where nearly |
in sterling, which occurred in mid-July 1931. Runs ensued and the Bank of England lost much of its reserves.
Depression and World War II
[33] Ending the gold standard and economic recovery during the Great Depression
Some economic historians, such as Barry Eichengreen, blame the gold standard of the 1920s for prolonging the economic depression which started in 1929 and lasted for about a decade. In the United States, adherence to the gold standard prevented the Federal Reserve from expanding the money supply to stimulate the economy, fund insolvent banks and fund government deficits that could "prime the pump" for an expansion. Once off the gold standard, it became free to engage in such money creation. The gold standard limited the flexibility of the central banks' monetary policy by limiting their ability to expand the money supply. In the US, the central bank was required by the Federal Reserve Act (1913) to have gold backing 40% of its demand notes.[35] Others including former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman place the blame for the severity and length of the Great Depression at the feet of the Federal Reserve, mostly due to the deliberate tightening of monetary policy even after the end of the gold standard.[36] They blamed the US major economic contraction in 1937 on tightening of monetary policy resulting in higher cost of capital, weaker securities markets, reduced net government contribution to income, the undistributed profits tax and higher labor costs. The money supply peaked in March 1937, with a trough in May 1938.
Higher interest rates intensified the deflationary pressure on the dollar and reduced investment in U.S. banks. Commercial banks converted Federal Reserve Notes to gold in 1931, reducing its gold reserves and forcing a corresponding reduction in the amount of currency in circulation. This speculative attack created a panic in the U.S. banking system. Fearing imminent devaluation many depositors withdrew funds from U.S. banks.[39] As bank runs grew, a reverse multiplier effect caused a contraction in the money supply.[40] Additionally the New York Fed had loaned over $150 million in gold (over 240 tons) to European Central Banks. This transfer contracted the US money supply. The foreign loans became questionable once Britain, Germany, Austria and other European countries went off the gold standard in 1931 and weakened confidence in the dollar.[41]
The forced contraction of the money supply resulted in deflation. Even as nominal interest rates dropped, deflation-adjusted real interest rates remained high, rewarding those who held onto money instead of spending it, further slowing the economy.[42] Recovery in the United States was slower than in Britain, in part due to Congressional reluctance to abandon the gold standard and float the U.S. currency as Britain had done.[43]
In the early 1930s, the Federal Reserve defended the dollar by raising interest rates, trying to increase the demand for dollars. This helped attract international investors who bought foreign assets with gold.[39]
Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act on 30 January 1934; the measure nationalized all gold by ordering Federal Reserve banks to turn over their supply to the U.S. Treasury. In return the banks received gold certificates to be used as reserves against deposits and Federal Reserve notes. The act also authorized the president to devalue the gold dollar. Under this authority the president, on 31 January 1934, changed the value of the dollar from $20.67 to the troy ounce to $35 to the troy ounce, a devaluation of over 40%.
Other factors in the prolongation of the Great Depression include trade wars and the reduction in international trade caused by barriers such as Smoot–Hawley Tariff in the US and the Imperial Preference policies of Great Britain,[44] the failure of central banks to act responsibly,[45] government policies designed to prevent wages from falling, such as the Davis–Bacon Act of 1931, during the deflationary period resulting in production costs dropping slower than sales prices, thereby injuring business profits[46] and increases in taxes to reduce budget deficits and to support new programs such as Social Security. The US top marginal income tax rate went from 25% to 63% in 1932 and to 79% in 1936,[47] while the bottom rate increased over tenfold, from.375% in 1929 to 4% in 1932.[48] The concurrent massive drought resulted in the US Dust Bowl.
The Austrian School asserted that the Great Depression was the result of a credit bust.[49] Alan Greenspan wrote that the bank failures of the 1930s were sparked by Great Britain dropping the gold standard in 1931. This act "tore asunder" any remaining confidence in the banking system.[50] Financial historian Niall Ferguson wrote that what made the Great Depression truly 'great' was the European banking crisis of 1931.[51] According to Fed Chairman Marriner Eccles, the root cause was the concentration of wealth resulting in a stagnating or decreasing standard of living for the poor and middle class. These classes went into debt, producing the credit explosion of the 1920s. Eventually the debt load grew too heavy, resulting in the massive defaults and financial panics of the 1930s.[52]
World War II
Under the Bretton Woods international monetary agreement of 1944, the gold standard was kept without domestic convertibility. The role of gold was severely constrained, as other countries’ currencies were fixed in terms of the dollar. Many countries kept reserves in gold and settled accounts in gold. Still they preferred to settle balances with other currencies, with the American dollar becoming the favorite. The International Monetary Fund was established to help with the exchange process and assist nations in maintaining fixed rates. Within Bretton Woods adjustment was cushioned through credits that helped countries avoid deflation. Under the old standard, a country with an overvalued currency would lose gold and experience deflation until the currency was again valued correctly. Most countries defined their currencies in terms of dollars, but some countries imposed trading restrictions to protect reserves and exchange rates. Therefore, most countries' currencies were still basically inconvertible. In the late 1950s, the exchange restrictions were dropped and gold became an important element in international financial settlements.
Bretton Woods
After the Second World War, a system similar to a gold standard and sometimes described as a "gold exchange standard" was established by the Bretton Woods Agreements. Under this system, many countries fixed their exchange rates relative to the U.S. dollar and central banks could exchange dollar holdings into gold at the official exchange rate of $35 per ounce; this option was not available to firms or individuals. All currencies pegged to the dollar thereby had a fixed value in terms of gold.
Starting in the 1959–1969 administration of President Charles de Gaulle and continuing until 1970, France reduced its dollar reserves, exchanging them for gold at the official exchange rate, reducing US economic influence. This, along with the fiscal strain of federal expenditures for the Vietnam War and persistent balance of payments deficits, led U.S. President Richard Nixon to end international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold on August 15, 1971 (the "Nixon Shock").
This was meant to be a temporary measure, with the gold price of the dollar and the official rate of exchanges remaining constant. Revaluing currencies was the main purpose of this plan. No official revaluation or redemption occurred. The dollar subsequently floated. In December 1971, the "Smithsonian Agreement" was reached. In this agreement, the dollar was devalued from $35 per troy ounce of gold to $38. Other countries' currencies appreciated. However, gold convertibility did not resume. In October 1973, the price was raised to $42.22. Once again, the devaluation was insufficient. Within two weeks of the second devaluation the dollar was left to float. The $42.22 par value was made official in September 1973, long after it had been abandoned in practice. In October 1976, the government officially changed the definition of the dollar; references to gold were removed from statutes. From this point, the international monetary system was made of pure fiat money.
Production of gold
An estimated total of 174,100 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, according to GFMS as of 2012. This is roughly equivalent to 5.6 billion troy ounces or, in terms of volume, about 9,261 cubic metres (327,000 cu ft), or a cube 21 metres (69 ft) on a side. There are varying estimates of the total volume of gold mined. One reason for the variance is that gold has been mined for thousands of years. Another reason is that some nations are not particularly open about how much gold is being mined. In addition, it is difficult to account for the gold output in illegal mining activities.[53]
World production for 2011 was circa 2,700 tonnes. Since the 1950s, annual gold output growth has approximately kept pace with world population growth (i.e. a doubling in this period)[54] although it has lagged behind world economic growth (approximately 8-fold increase since the 1950s[55], and 4x since 1980[56]).
Theory
Commodity money is inconvenient to store and transport in large amounts. Furthermore, it does not allow a government to manipulate the flow of commerce with the same ease that a fiat currency does. As such, commodity money gave way to representative money and gold and other specie were retained as its backing.
Gold was a preferred form of money due to its rarity, durability, divisibility, fungibility and ease of identification,[57] often in conjunction with silver. Silver was typically the main circulating medium, with gold as the monetary reserve. Commodity money was anonymous, as identifying marks can be removed. Commodity money retains its value despite what may happen to the monetary authority. After the fall of South Vietnam, many refugees carried their wealth to the West in gold after the national currency became worthless.[citation needed]
Under commodity standards currency itself has no intrinsic value, but is accepted by traders because it can be redeemed any time for the equivalent specie. A US silver certificate, for example, could be redeemed for an actual piece of silver.
Representative money and the gold standard protect citizens from hyperinflation and other abuses of monetary policy, as were seen in some countries during the Great Depression. Commodity money conversely led to deflation and bank runs.
Countries that left the gold standard earlier than other countries recovered from the Great Depression sooner. For example, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had a silver standard, almost entirely avoided the depression (due to the fact it was then barely integrated into the global economy). The connection between leaving the gold standard and the severity and duration of the depression was consistent for dozens of countries, including developing countries. This may explain why the experience and length of the depression differed between national economies.[58]
Variations
A full or 100%-reserve gold standard exists when the monetary authority holds sufficient gold to convert all the circulating representative money into gold at the promised exchange rate. It is sometimes referred to as the gold specie standard to more easily distinguish it. Opponents of a full standard consider it difficult to implement, saying that the quantity of gold in the world is too small to sustain worldwide economic activity at or near current gold prices; implementation would entail a many-fold increase in the price of gold.[citation needed] Gold standard proponents have said, "Once a money is established, any stock of money becomes compatible with any amount of employment and real income."[59] While prices would necessarily adjust to the supply of gold, the process may involve considerable economic disruption, as was experienced during earlier attempts to maintain gold standards.[60]
In an international gold-standard system (which is necessarily based on an internal gold standard in the countries concerned),[61] gold or a currency that is convertible into gold at a fixed price is used to make international payments. Under such a system, when exchange rates rise above or fall below the fixed mint rate by more than the cost of shipping gold, inflows or outflows occur until rates return to the official level. International gold standards often limit which entities have the right to redeem currency for gold.
Advantages
Long-term price stability has been described as one of the virtues of the gold standard. The gold standard makes it difficult for governments to inflate prices through expanding the money supply. Under the gold standard, significant inflation is rare, and hyperinflation is essentially impossible because the money supply can only grow at the rate that the gold supply increases. High inflation under a gold standard is seen only when warfare destroys a large part of an economy, reducing the production of goods, or when a major new gold source becomes available. [63] In the U.S., inflation occurred during the Civil War, which destroyed the economy of the South. [64] Inflation also followed the California Gold Rush that made large amounts of gold available for minting. [65] Historical data shows that the magnitude of short run swings in prices were far higher under the gold standard. [66]
In the U.S., inflation occurred during the Civil War, which destroyed the economy of the South. Inflation also followed the California Gold Rush that made large amounts of gold available for minting. Historical data shows that the magnitude of short run swings in prices were far higher under the gold standard. The gold standard provides fixed international exchange rates between participating countries and thus reduces uncertainty in international trade. Historically, imbalances between price levels were offset by a balance-of-payment adjustment mechanism called the "price–specie flow mechanism". [63] Gold used to pay for imports reduces the money supply of importing nations, causing deflation, which makes them more competitive, while the importation of gold by net exporters serves to increase their money supply, causing inflation, making them less competitive. [67]
Gold used to pay for imports reduces the money supply of importing nations, causing deflation, which makes them more competitive, while the importation of gold by net exporters serves to increase their money supply, causing inflation, making them less competitive. A gold standard does not allow some types of financial repression.[68] Financial repression acts as a mechanism to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors, particularly the governments that practice it. Financial repression is most successful in reducing debt when accompanied by inflation and can be considered a form of taxation.[69][70] In 1966 Alan Greenspan wrote "Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."[71]
Disadvantages
Gold prices (US$ per troy ounce) from 1914, in nominal US$ and inflation adjusted US$.
The unequal distribution of gold deposits makes the gold standard more advantageous for those countries that produce gold. [72] In 2010 the largest producers of gold, in order, were China, Australia, U.S., South Africa and Russia. [73] The country with the largest unmined gold deposits is Australia. [74]
In 2010 the largest producers of gold, in order, were China, Australia, U.S., South Africa and Russia. The country with the largest unmined gold deposits is Australia. Some economists believe that the gold standard acts as a limit on economic growth. "As an economy's productive capacity grows, then so should its money supply. Because a gold standard requires that money be backed in the metal, then the scarcity of the metal constrains the ability of the economy to produce more capital and grow." [75]
Mainstream economists believe that economic recessions can be largely mitigated by increasing the money supply during economic downturns. [76] A gold standard means that the money supply would be determined by the gold supply and hence monetary policy could no longer be used to stabilize the economy. [77] The gold standard is often blamed for prolonging the Great Depression, as under the gold standard, central banks could not expand credit at a fast enough rate to offset deflationary forces. [78]
A gold standard means that the money supply would be determined by the gold supply and hence monetary policy could no longer be used to stabilize the economy. The gold standard is often blamed for prolonging the Great Depression, as under the gold standard, central banks could not expand credit at a fast enough rate to offset deflationary forces. Although the gold standard brings long-run price stability, it is historically associated with high short-run price volatility. It has been argued by Schwartz, among others, that instability in short-term price levels can lead to financial instability as lenders and borrowers become uncertain about the value of debt.
Deflation punishes debtors. [80] [81] Real debt burdens therefore rise, causing borrowers to cut spending to service their debts or to default. Lenders become wealthier, but may choose to save some of the additional wealth, reducing GDP. [82]
Real debt burdens therefore rise, causing borrowers to cut spending to service their debts or to default. Lenders become wealthier, but may choose to save some of the additional wealth, reducing GDP. The money supply would essentially be determined by the rate of gold production. When gold stocks increase more rapidly than the economy, there is inflation and the reverse is also true. [83] The consensus view is that the gold standard contributed to the severity and length of the Great Depression. [84]
The consensus view is that the gold standard contributed to the severity and length of the Great Depression. Hamilton contended that the gold standard is susceptible to speculative attacks when a government's financial position appears weak. Conversely, this threat discourages governments from engaging in risky policy (see moral hazard). For example, the U.S. was forced to contract the money supply and raise interest rates in September 1931 to defend the dollar after speculators forced the UK off the gold standard. [87] [88]
Devaluing a currency under a gold standard would generally produce sharper changes than the smooth declines seen in fiat currencies, depending on the method of devaluation. [89]
Most economists favor a low, positive rate of inflation of around 2%. This reflects fear of deflationary shocks and the belief that active monetary policy can dampen fluctuations in output and unemployment. Inflation gives them room to tighten policy without inducing deflation. [90]
A gold standard provides practical constraints against the measures that central banks might otherwise use to respond to economic crises.[91] Creation of new money reduces interest rates and thereby increases demand for new lower cost debt, raising the demand for money.[92]
Advocates
A return to the gold standard was considered by the US Gold Commission back in 1982, but found only minority support.[93] In 2001 Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad proposed a new currency that would be used initially for international trade among Muslim nations, using a Modern Islamic gold dinar, defined as 4.25 grams of pure (24-carat) gold. Mahathir claimed it would be a stable unit of account and a political symbol of unity between Islamic nations. This would purportedly reduce dependence on the US dollar and establish a non-debt-backed currency in accord with Sharia law that prohibited the charging of interest.[94] As of 2013 the global monetary system continued to rely on the US dollar as the main reserve currency.[95]
Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan acknowledged he was one of "a small minority" within the central bank that had some positive view on the gold standard.[96] In a 1966 essay he contributed to a book by Ayn Rand, titled "Gold and Economic Freedom", Greenspan argued the case for returning to a 'pure' gold standard; in that essay he described supporters of fiat currencies as "welfare statists" intending to use monetary policy to finance deficit spending.[97] More recently he claimed that by focusing on targeting inflation "central bankers have behaved as though we were on the gold standard", rendering a return to the standard unnecessary.[98]
Similarly, economists like Robert Barro argued that whilst some form of "monetary constitution" is essential for stable, depoliticized monetary policy, the form this constitution takes—for example, a gold standard, some other commodity-based standard, or a fiat currency with fixed rules for determining the quantity of money—is considerably less important.
The gold standard is supported by many followers of the Austrian School of Economics, free-market libertarians and some supply-siders.[100]
US politics
In the United States, strict constitutionalists object to the government issuing fiat currency through central banks. Some gold-standard advocates also call for a mandated end to fractional-reserve banking. Many similar alternatives have been suggested, including energy-based currencies, collections of currencies or commodities, with gold as one component.
Former congressman Ron Paul is a long-term, high-profile advocate of a gold standard, but has also expressed support for using a standard based on a basket of commodities that better reflects the state of the economy.[101]
In 2011 the Utah legislature passed a bill to accept federally issued gold and silver coins as legal tender to pay taxes.[102] As federally issued currency, the coins were already legal tender for taxes, although the market price of their metal content currently exceeds their monetary value. Similar legislation is under consideration in other US states.[103] The bill was initiated by newly elected Republican Party legislators associated with the Tea Party movement and was driven by anxiety over the policies of President Barack Obama.[104]
In 2013, the Arizona Legislature passed SB 1439, which would have made gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debt, but the bill was vetoed by the Governor.[105]
In 2015, some candidates for the 2016 presidential election advocated for a gold standard, based on concern that the Federal Reserve’s attempts to increase economic growth may create inflation. Economic historians did not agree with candidate's assertions that the gold standard would benefit the US economy.[106]
Critics
In 2012 a poll of 40 U.S. economists in the IGM Economic Experts Panel found that none of them believed returning to the gold standard would result in "price-stability and employment outcomes [that] would be better for the average American." The panel of polled economists included past Nobel Prize winners, former economic advisers to both Republican and Democratic presidents, and senior faculty from Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and other well-known research universities. The specific statement with which the economists were asked to agree or disagree was as follows: "If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a 'dollar' as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American."[3]
The economist Allan H. Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University presented arguments against Ron Paul's advocacy of the gold standard from the 1970s onward. He sometimes summarized his opposition by stating simply, "[W]e don’t have the gold standard. It’s not because we don’t know about the gold standard, it’s because we do."[107]
See also
International institutions
References
SourcesOptimism soared. Public expectations swelled to levels not seen since the 2007 "Rudd-slide".
Tony Abbott held a late night press conference to announce the Coalition would hold a plebiscite or referendum on same-sex marriage. Credit:Andrew Meares
In a triumph of hope over reality, voters overlooked that he carried the same party room as Abbott. And many even ignored the specific revelation that in order to salve reactionaries within, he had capitulated, agreeing to Abbott's transparently cynical denial of marriage equality.
The form of that denial, a lame camel that had limped from a shambolic talkfest in the joint party room, bound Liberals to the current definition of marriage. A deliberately vague "plebiscite" would follow at some point. Doubtless, Abbott would have insisted on a formal referendum – with its near-impossible bar for success – had that been an option. But it wasn't. No constitutional amendment was necessary. The Parliament was, and is, entirely responsible. End of story.
Yet under Abbott's model, now legitimised by Turnbull, the nation's 226 federal parliamentarians would take the pay but shirk the responsibility. Spurious rhetorical arguments would ask what could be wrong with letting the people decide? And conservative hardliners would flag their intention to ignore a pro-change result in the Parliament.What’s in a game? FEBRUARY 24TH, 2016 — POST 051 Daniel Holliday Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 23, 2016 The first moment of the Far Cry: Primal experience starts with the numbers “2016” on screen. The sounds of today fill the speakers as the number starts to tick backwards. The sounds lose their contemporarity, then their modernity. Back and back the numbers tick. Singing monks of the Inquisition, clanking shields of the middle ages, the crack of whips over the groan of slaves backs in Ancient Egypt. …Until the numbers settle on “10 000 BCE”. The next hour of gameplay involves hunting a mammoth with a spear, crafting a club, and fleeing a sabretooth tiger. All the while, the box the game comes in still says the words “Far Cry”. This caveman simulator is in the lineage of a franchise that, generally, sees a white guy enter an exotic landscape to liberate it from the control of a gun-weilding group. And of course, he’s packing his fair share of heat. There’s plenty of destruction, plenty of vehicular terror, and the occasional sprinkle of winking humour. When none of these are (so far) present in Far Cry: Primal, how is it still a Far Cry game?
A departure from modern times isn’t entirely unprecedented in the Far Cry series. The 2013 spin-off release Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon placed the player in a 2007 seemingly imagined by someone in 1987. It laid the humour thicker than usual and had a zanier air than Far Cry 3. The presentation aside though, it remained consistent with the games that preceded it in its (albiet more “futuristic”) weapons, vehicles, and liberation narrative. However, the degree of departure between Primal and the other Far Cry games is arguably more than exists between entirely discrete titles: League of Legends and DotA 2, Forza and Gran Turismo, Tekkan and Dead or Alive are all closer. Far Cry: Primal is much more than a simple reskin. Without anything amounting to technology (though you do have a club, bow, and spear), the gameplay loop is shaken up considerably and the sense of self one has as protagonist Takkar is unlike any of the games before it. Far Cry 4, the most recent numbered release, relished in sitting the player on a spectrum of stealth and direct engagement in its approach to combat. The stealth was often punishing in the ability for enemies to detect you but direct engagement was forgiving in the fact that, well shit, you’ve got a grenade launcher. The combat spectrum is dramatically tighter in Primal and sits far closer to the stealth end than previous releases. Every action requires foresight and planning. The wild landscape forces you to think moves in advance, the constant changes in elevation shortening lines of sight and the long grass obscuring prey and enemy alike. With (so far) only a club, bow, and spear to defend yourself with, any encounter that you didn’t initiate can become maddeningly overwhelming without the failsafe squeeze of a trigger to get you out of it. This raises the stakes of each encounter as your capacity to handle multiple enemies is severely impeded by the accuracy and fire rate inherent in the use of manual weapons. For me, this is the core innovation of the game: cutting your hero down to size. Gone is the saviour-drivel, instead Takkar is just a guy trying to survive.Sen. Richard Blumenthal may have thought he put his “stolen valor” controversy to rest during an apologetic press conference in 2010.
Then President Trump picked up his cellphone.
Trump on Thursday morning hit Blumenthal for allegedly exaggerating details of a conversation with Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch – while shining a light on the seven-year-old uproar over the Connecticut Democrat's apparent misrepresentation of his military service.
“Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” Trump tweeted. “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!”
Trump kept up the barrage Thursday afternoon, telling reporters Gorsuch's "comments were misrepresented, and what you should do is ask Sen. Blumenthal about his Vietnam record, that didn't exist after years of saying it did...he misrepresented that just like he misrepresented Judge Gorsuch."
Asked to comment Thursday about the tweets, Blumenthal told Fox News "this isn't about me" and denied embellishing or misrepresenting his meeting with Gorsuch.
Blumenthal received five deferments, from 1965-1970, before enlisting in the Marine Corps Reserve, though he was never sent out of the U.S. During his six years in the Reserve, Blumenthal was stationed in Washington, focusing on a slew of local projects, such as a Toys for Tots drive.
During his political career, however, Blumenthal frequently walked a precarious line, often framing his service just ambiguously enough to give the impression that he had spent time fighting in Vietnam.
“I served during the Vietnam era,” Blumenthal said in 2008. “I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.”
He told a gathering of families who were expressing support for returning American troops in 2003 that, “when we returned, we saw nothing like this.”
Blumenthal, however, crossed the line when speaking to a group of veterans in March 2008.
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” he said.
The New York Times published those quotes and others in a bombshell report during the 2010 campaign, noting that Blumenthal was described as having served in Vietnam in at least eight Connecticut newspaper articles published between 2003 and 2009.
Linda McMahon, the Republican who ultimately opposed Blumenthal in 2010, claimed her campaign had leaked the tip about Blumenthal to The Times. McMahon is currently Trump’s nominee to lead the Small Business Administration.
Speaking with The Times in 2010, Blumenthal said he couldn’t recall if he had seen the articles and wasn’t sure if any steps had been taken to correct the claims.
“I don’t know if we tried to do so or not,” he said.
During a 2010 press conference in which he was surrounded by veterans, Blumenthal claimed he had “misspoken.”
“On a few occasions, I have misspoken about my service, and I regret that and I take full responsibility,” said Blumenthal, who explained he meant to say he served “during” Vietnam, not “in” Vietnam. “But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.”
Fox News' Peter Doocy contributed to this report.We may not approve of the jobs they're doing, but we're also unlikely to take a risk by replacing our elected representatives—especially when economic times are tough.
You know things are going poorly for Congress when pollsters abandon their implicit goal of discovering useful information and instead give us link-bait about how our elected officials compare (spoiler: not well) to universally hated things like dog poop, hemorrhoids, toenail fungus, and Honey Boo Boo.
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When the dust settles in early November 2014, though, most Congressmen will still have their jobs. If case you've forgotten, last year Americans showed their displeasure with Congress by re-electing 90 percent of incumbents.
Why won't voters follow through on the displeasure they’re so eager to report?
When the economy is weak, higher risk aversion helps incumbents. Given that we're still waiting for a true economic recovery, incumbents ought to get another boost in 2014.
Perhaps the most discouraging explanation comes from a new study led by David Eckles of the University of Georgia. The study explores how individual risk aversion—as measured by the desire to avoid financial risks—influences the tendency to vote for an incumbent. Eckles found that in both the 2008 and 2010 congressional elections voters who were more risk averse were more likely to support an incumbent. The effect was strongest among independent voters, and, surprisingly, it held even when controlling for factors such as partisanship and campaign spending.
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Why is risk aversion important? Because research has shown that economic downturns make people more risk averse. A recent study (PDF) found that Italian investors became more risk averse after the 2008 crisis, and that a general feeling of fear made people less willing to take risks. A study (PDF) released in 2009 examined U.S. survey data from 1964 to 2004 and found that people who experienced lower stock market returns during their lives were less likely to take risks. These findings are backed up by a survey released in August that showed that people between the ages of 24 and 35 are now more risk averse than they were in 2007.
The implication is somewhat depressing. If politicians allow the economy to deteriorate, the resulting increase in risk aversion could make many voters more likely to support delinquent incumbents. That's not to say sabotage is a good electoral strategy. Job and income growth will always be the most important factors. But it would seem that regardless of performance, the economy mitigates its own impact on the election by altering the level of risk aversion in society. When the economy is strong, lower risk aversion harms incumbents. When the economy is weak, higher risk aversion helps incumbents. Given that we're still waiting for a true economic recovery, incumbents ought to get another boost in 2014.
Increased risk aversion isn't the only reason to doubt that a congressional exodus is forthcoming. Poll numbers may paint a unique and snark-worthy picture, but they don't tell the whole story.
When you hear that 80 percent of voters disapprove of Congress, it could be a result of 40 percent of them disapproving of Democrats and another 40 percent disapproving of Republicans. Even a poll showing that three-quarters of voters disapprove of Congressional Republicans likely overstates the degree to which such disapproval will carry over to Election Day. Just as the number of people opposed to the Affordable Care Act includes a chunk of critics from the left who believe the law does not go far enough, the group that disapproves of the GOP likely contains people who believe the party isn't doing enough to combat Obama's agenda.
Incumbents also posses a variety of structural advantages. Researchers have found that they tend to be higher quality candidates, in part because they have already run in and won an election (PDF), and in part because the difficulty of unseating an incumbent often drives away high-quality challengers (PDF). There is also research demonstrating that incumbents have an easier time raising the necessary funds and serving constituents, and there is even evidence that suggests incumbents benefit because they have access to free postage. (The extremely underrated term for these benefits is "Franking Privileges.")
All of this considered, the news isn't great for incumbents. Some of their advantages ought to translate into higher poll numbers, and so dismal approval ratings do provide reason to think 2014 will be a bad year for them. The high incumbent re-election rate is also a function of strategic retirements by the most vulnerable, and so there could be a lot of turnover even without electoral defeats.
But make no mistake: Replacing an elected representative is an uphill climb. The best you can do is recruit a good candidate, raise a lot of money, and try and paint your opponent's re-election as a bigger risk than your flawless focus-group tested policy platform. Even if everybody sticks to that script in 2014, don't be surprised if 90 percent of incumbents find themselves victoriously telling a reporter how voters knew they couldn't risk picking the other guy.What are your favorite films of 2008?
Choose one or more answers:
21
10,000 BC
27 Dresses
35 Shots of Rum
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Anything for Her
Appaloosa
Australia
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Ballast
The Bank Job
Be Kind Rewind
The Beaches of Agnes
Bedtime Stories
Blindness
Body of Lies
Bolt
Bottle Shock
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Bronson
The Brothers Bloom
Burn After Reading
The Burning Plain
Cadillac Records
Changeling
Charlie Bartlett
The Chaser
Che, Part One + Two
The Children of Huang Shi
The Children
Chocolate
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Class
Cloverfield
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
Death Race
Defiance
Definitely, Maybe
Departures
Disaster Movie
Il Divo
Doubt
The Duchess
Eagle Eye
Easy Virtue
Eden Lake
Elegy
The Escapist
Everlasting Moments
The Express
Far Cry
Felon
Female Agents
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Flame & Citron
Food, Inc.
The Forbidden Kingdom
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River
Get Smart
Ghajini
Ghost in the Shell 2.0
Ghost Town
Gomorrah
The Good, the Bad, the Weird
Goodbye Solo
Gran Torino
Hancock
Happy-Go-Lucky
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
The Headless Woman
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hipsters (Stilyagi)
Horton Hears a Who!
The House Bunny
Hunger
The Hurt Locker
I've Loved You So Long
In Bruges
The Incredible Hulk
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Ip Man
Iron Man
JCVD
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Julia
Jumper
Keith
Kung Fu Panda
Let the Right One In
Loft
LOL (Laughing Out Loud) ®
Lorna's Silence
Love Exposure
The Love Guru
The Lucky Ones
The Machine Girl
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Mamma Mia!
Man on Wire
Marley & Me
Martyrs
Max Manus: Man of War
Max Payne
Meet the Spartans |
passion you want to share with everyone. I’ve done shows for a small group of 25 and a large group of well over 1,000. One thing never changes, my passion. I’m not doing this to compete with other educators. This isn’t a contest. I want more people doing this. Everyone who does these shows should be talking with one another we should be making each other better. Like I tell everyone who does these shows or wants to start, if you need help I’m always here. Take that leap of faith. You won’t regret it.
And always remember, what will these kids say about you in the years to come? One of these kids may take your place when you are gone. Live to inspire our youth and great things will happen.
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I love my original X Hot 3 Deep (13 degrees). It always stuns me when I nut that thing out there past my playing partner's drivers. My friends think I am crazy for ever hitting a driver off the tee at our course (6500 yards). I played one of my best rounds last year, when I left my driver at home. I may have to try that again this spring. Unfortunately, I am a driver ho, and just love buying and hitting them. My purchase this year is the Adams XTD. It will get the tee honors to start with, but the 3Deep will be lurking in the bag, just in case.
Ryoma Maxima type D driver with Tensei Pro Orange 60 stiff shaft
Callaway Rogue SZ 15 degree with Diamana X Limited 70 stiff shaft
P790 3-A with Fujikura Pro 95i shaft stiff tour spec
Cobra F8 22 degree hybrid with Tensei Pro Blue 80 stiff shaft
Titleist SM7 54 and 60 degree wedges
Lajosi Damascus Steel mallet with copper insertThe groundswell of American states that bent toward legalization last week may give a big boost to Canada’s marijuana industry — not because Canadian producers want to move south, but because the drug’s murky U.S. legal status positions them to have their weed and smoke it too.
California, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine voted to legalize recreational marijuana last Tuesday and four more states voted in favour of medical marijuana use.
The vote sent cannabis stocks in Canada and the U.S. soaring. Shares of Los Angeles-based Pineapple Express Inc. rose 29 per cent Wednesday while the legalization news pushed Canada’s largest marijuana company, Canopy Growth Corp., to a billion-dollar valuation.
One in five Americans now live in states where pot is legal for adult use and the U.S. market for recreational marijuana is twice the size of Canada.
However, U.S. producers face a major problem with their product: It is still on the federal government’s list of Schedule I narcotics, alongside heroin and LSD.
Marijuana companies in the U.S. are hamstrung by their federal outlaw status, which prevents them from receiving corporate tax breaks and exporting products across borders. Conflicting U.S. laws also dissuade investment in research and development — which could help determine potential benefits and side effects — because patents are federally issued.
That disconnect between state and federal laws presents Canadian companies with a unique competitive advantage.
“The longer it takes for U.S. federal law to deem marijuana legal, the longer the Canadian licensed producers have to establish more international partnerships and create higher barriers to entry,” said Dundee Capital Markets analyst Daniel Pearlstein.
With U.S. competitors weakened by regulatory risks and Canadian companies already leaders in the nascent global marijuana market, Canada’s marijuana producers are well-positioned to become the pre-eminent marijuana multinationals, Pearlstein said.
“Canada is probably three to four years ahead of any other country in terms of the scale of companies that we’ve been building,” he said.
Canada’s large-scale commercial medical marijuana program is the most sophisticated in the world, which has created demand for Canadian licensed producers to share their expertise in exchange for fees, royalties or shares of their businesses.
As legalization takes hold south of the border, Canadian companies have a massive opportunity to export their knowledge — if not their product — to the U.S., said Brendan Kennedy, CEO of Privateer Holdings, which holds a portfolio of marijuana-related companies including Vancouver Island-based Tilray.
“Canadian firms are able to operate at a scale that doesn’t really exist in the United States, where no one is willing to invest that amount of capital,” he said.
“Canadian companies have expertise in business operations, in cultivation, in regulatory compliance and other intellectual property that is applicable in the U.S.,” Kennedy added. “So that’s a huge opportunity for Canadian firms.”
Tilray and others have been approached by U.S. companies for partnerships and licensing deals. Some, such as Toronto-based cannabis luxury brand Tokyo Smoke, already have licensing deals in U.S. states.
Still, the risky regulatory environment limits Canadian business opportunities in the U.S., which adds to the incentive to concentrate expansion efforts elsewhere, said Khurram Malik, head of research at Jacob Capital Management Inc.
“The only thing Canadian companies can do in the U.S. is send their know-how down and earn royalties — the whole franchise model,” he said. “If they start getting exposure to the U.S. market that could make some of their U.S. investors skittish.”
Investors have long preferred funding Canadian cannabis startups, drawn to the ability to invest in a completely legal system.
Donald Trump’s surprise victory Tuesday night has added another level of uncertainty for U.S. companies, as his stance on marijuana is unclear. The president-elect has said he supports medical marijuana and softened his stance on recreational use during the campaign, saying the issue should be left up to each state. However, he is also surrounded by tough-on-crime politicians and plans to appoint conservative Supreme Court judges.
“The prospect of Donald Trump as our next president concerns me deeply,” Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, wrote in a post-election press release. “His most likely appointees to senior law enforcement positions — Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie — are no friends of marijuana reform, nor is his vice president.”
The Obama administration practiced non-interference, with the federal justice department issuing a notice in 2013 advising local authorities to take a hands-off approach except in dangerous situations. But if Trump were to reverse that position, it could further chill investment, which could lead to increased interest in Canadian companies.
California was among the states that voted to legalize marijuana on Tuesday and, at 39 million, it has a population comparable to Canada’s. California’s proposed recreational regulations — which some have called the “gold standard” of policies — appear similar to Canada’s in that it would require industry standards and a licensing system for sellers. It also plans to reinvest government profits into anti-drug programs.
Canada’s Liberal government announced last year that it plans to table legislation this spring that will make recreational marijuana use legal. The Canadian recreational market, expected to be operational by 2018, has been estimated to be worth as much as $10 billion.
Knowledge transfer can work both ways, Malik said, and Canada can learn to avoid the mistakes of recreational markets that came before it.
“From a regulatory standpoint I think California and Canada are looking at it to see who does what and how they move forward, because there are some pretty strong parallels,” Malik said.
Despite the increased number of states tipping toward legalization, Bruce Linton CEO of Smiths Falls, Ont.-based Canopy Growth isn’t convinced the U.S. is a good place to expand any time soon — at least as long as Trump is in the White House.
“Mr. Trump has been pretty clear there may be a medicinal platform he thinks is reasonable and practical, but there’s no chance he thinks recreational has any place in society,” Linton said. “So when you have a poor boundary between medical and recreational, it’s going to continue to be fractured and chaotic.”
Linton pointed to the healthy black market operating in Colorado, one of the first U.S. states to legalize recreational weed, where companies considered legitimate at the state level are still considered illegal at the federal level. While they have to pay federal taxes, they can’t claim tax breaks the way other companies can.
“That’s a pretty material disadvantage (compared to) the criminals who pay no taxes let alone 100 per cent tax rate,” he said.
The companies also cannot use legitimate auditors such as Deloitte because their businesses are technically illegal.
“Any publicly-traded company that wants to become active in America will find that they have a portion of their statements that can’t be reviewed by an auditor, which makes for a difficult time to become a reliable public reporter,” Linton said.
The riskiness of investing in the U.S. also compels Canadian companies to focus expansion efforts on countries where the drug is legal at the federal level, including Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Brazil and Australia, marijuana analyst Pearlstein said.
“You are already seeing Canadian licensed producers establishing partnerships elsewhere in the world to take advantage of progressive regulation in different countries that aren’t the U.S.”
Canopy, for one, is focusing its international expansion efforts in countries like Brazil and Germany, Linton said.
“Why not use that as the basis to create distinct offerings which become copyrighted,trademarked or intellectual property in some fashion, all properly preserved?” he said.
“Then when America is ready, we can enter with strength rather than participate in the evolution of a frayed market.”
Financial PostUFC lightweight Darrell Horcher was involved in a horrific motorcycle accident this past Wednesday night that left the fighter’s bike mangled and torn after a car pulled out in front of him near his home in Pennsylvania.
According to Horcher’s manager, Brian Butler of Suckerpunch Entertainment, the UFC fighter hit the Jeep that pulled out in front of him and he flew 240 feet while skidding on the pavement below.
There’s no helmet law in Pennsylvania for motorcycle riders, but Horcher was wearing his when he got hit. Otherwise, his manager believes the fighter probably wouldn’t have survived.
Article continues below...
photo courtesy of Brian Butler, Suckerpunch Entertainment
"He’s grateful to be alive," Butler said about the accident when speaking to FOX Sports.
While his motorcycle was destroyed, Horcher only suffered minor injuries in comparison as he walked away with a broken arm, torn ligaments in his ankle and a huge amount of road rash after sliding on the pavement after the crash.
Horcher, who has been a motorcycle enthusiast for quite some time, has decided after this very scary crash to sell both of his bikes and vowed not to ride again any time soon.
photo courtesy of Brian Butler, Suckerpunch Entertainment
As far as his return to action, Horcher just recently signed with the UFC where he accepted a short notice fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov at FOX UFC Fight Night in Orlando.
The motorcycle accident will likely sideline the up-and-coming lightweight for approximately six to eight months while he recovers from the ordeal.
The good news is Horcher is expected to make a full recovery, but he’s currently in the hospital following the accident.Image copyright Tesla Image caption Tesla's lowest-cost car yet, the Model 3, will also have the self-driving hardware
Electric carmaker Tesla says all cars it now builds will have hardware needed to drive completely on their own.
But despite the cameras, sensors and radars being introduced, it is still expected to be years before the vehicles become fully self-driving.
Tesla introduced its Autopilot system last year, allowing some self-drive functions such as auto-braking.
But it is now temporarily disabling Autopilot on all new cars to allow "robust" testing with the new systems.
Gathering data
Tesla founder Elon Musk said its hardware was "basically a super-computer in a car," but added it would be up to regulators and the public to decide when self-driving vehicles could actually be used on the roads.
He said it made sense to build in the self-driving tech now - even if it cannot be used for some time - because trying to retrofit the hardware at a later stage would cost consumers more than buying a new vehicle.
For now, the hardware will run in "shadow mode", gathering information on when the technology may have caused or avoided accidents had it been in command of the vehicle.
Mr Musk said he hoped that Tesla could one day show regulators significant data which demonstrated the self-driving technology was safer than having humans behind the wheel.
Investor confidence boost - Dave Lee, BBC North America technology reporter
Image copyright Tesla Image caption Tesla's cars are powered by the firm's supercharger facility
This is a statement of intent from Elon Musk but there's no real technological leap.
Google and pretty much everyone else in this game has the necessary sensor technology at the ready, but the research and development task in making the computer smart enough to intelligently work out what is going on around it. That's what's holding self-driving technology back right now.
What Tesla will gain by doing this, however, is a huge fleet of cars gathering data on the world's roads, something which could hasten the introduction of self-driving technology.
It's an announcement that seems more designed to keep up investor confidence that Tesla is still worth backing despite missing sales and revenue targets over the past year. He'd promised they'd be comfortably making a profit by now, but he certainly hasn't managed that.
Press attack
Tesla has an Autopilot feature in its Model S and Model X vehicles, allowing them to automatically change lanes and keep up with traffic.
But it suffered a setback in May when a man was killed driving a Tesla Model S while using the Autopilot function. A preliminary US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report into the incident said the driver had been speeding moments before he collided with a lorry.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Musk is unhappy about the way Autopilot accidents had been reported by the media
Mr Musk was critical of press coverage of this and other related Autopilot accidents, saying there had been a "paucity of media coverage of the 1.2 million people that die every year in manual crashes".
He claimed that publishing such negative stories risked dissuading people from using autonomous car tech, which would result in deaths.
To underline the point, he retweeted an account of how Autopilot had prevented a Tesla Model X rear-ending another car.
But one expert said it was right that critical articles be published.
"It's a revolutionary technology, so it's inevitable that it will attract a lot of attention," said Prof David Bailey from Aston Business School.
"If it was positive attention he wouldn't be complaining. But the point is that the press will pick up on things that go wrong, and things will go wrong.
"This technology will radically change the way we get around our cities, and as it's introduced it's absolutely right that it be scrutinised both by policy makers and the media."
New customers
In its last set of financial results, Tesla said it had missed production targets, saw sales below expectations and reported its thirteenth consecutive quarterly loss.
In April, Tesla unveiled plans for its Model 3 vehicle, its lowest-cost to date, due for release next year. It has been reported that so far 400,000 have been pre-ordered. That vehicle will now also include the new hardware.
The basic model will start at $35,000 (£28,500) and have a range of at least 215 miles (346km) per charge. Analysts say the price and range of the five-seater should make the vehicle appeal to new types of customers and could boost interest in other electric vehicles.
The firm faces competition from other similarly priced electric cars that will become available first, including General Motors' Chevy Bolt and BYD's Qin EV300.Roy Hodgson has told Marcus Rashford he will make his England debut on Friday after the teenage Manchester United forward was passed fit for what will be his only chance at international level to show he should make the final cut for Euro 2016.
Rashford joined England’s squad on Monday for the first time after a scan revealed there was no significant damage from the injury that forced him off during the FA Cup final and the 18-year-old is being lined up to win his first cap only 92 days after making his United debut.
Hodgson is deliberating whether to include him when the squad, now comprising 26 players, is whittled down to 23 before the deadline a week on Tuesday and the England manager acknowledged that Rashford would be under pressure to make an immediate impact.
“I don’t really know what to expect from him,” Hodgson said. “Don’t forget Rashford was a bit unlucky because the amount of time we are going to have with him is very short. It will be Wednesday and Thursday [training], Friday’s match and then we have to make a decision on the 23 players.
“There is no doubt I made the right decision putting him in this large group because the lad has enormous talent. You will know from my past record that I’m not afraid to give young players a chance and I don’t dismiss them on the basis of their age, but you will also know that in the position he plays we have a lot of competition for places.
“There isn’t an awful lot of chance for him to stamp his authority on myself and the coaching staff when there is such a short period of time. But I am ruling nothing out. I thought his performance in the FA Cup final was very good. I’m delighted I shall be seeing him and then we will have to wait to see whether I will be seeing a lot more of him in the summer.”
To the question of whether Rashford would make his debut, Hodgson said: “We’d hope so, yes. I’m not planning an experimental team but we have only three preparation games and already quite a lot of people – seven players – have missed the first one. I have to take those things into consideration and also the juxtaposition of players who need games and others who don’t because they have had so many games during the season. I will take all those things into account because by the time we come to the Portugal match [at Wembley on 2 June] I want a pretty good idea of the team I’m thinking about for the start of the tournament.”
The team selection on Friday may also be swayed by Jack Wilshere’s need to increase his match sharpness, with Hodgson making it clear that as long as the midfielder is sufficiently fit he will be included in his final squad. Wilshere lasted 66 minutes of the 2-1 win against Turkey on Sunday but Hodgson said he was not unduly concerned if the Arsenal player still lacks fitness.
“The sharpness is coming,” Hodgson said. “He certainly didn’t show any signs of physical problems. It was still the Jack Wilshere that I remember. What bothered me most about him was: ‘Was he going to be limping around? Was he going to be able to do the running and the movements I associate with him?’
“I’m rather hoping he is going to be able to join us, and we hope that with every training session and every week he is going to get fitter. We also hope to stay in the tournament a little while, so I don’t think we should be too worried about him at this time. We should be thinking ahead to the middle or end of June and saying: ‘Could this be a guy who helps us win a match?’ He’s definitely got that ability.”
Hodgson, who said he was encouraged by an improved display from Raheem Sterling against Turkey on Sunday, accepted that it was not ideal that Jamie Vardy’s wedding on Wednesday had led to him being excused from the game on Friday.
However, the manager also made it clear that it would not be held against the Leicester City striker. “There are two points. One, I thought it was commendable when I called him up last June and he told me he was getting married. I said: ‘Oh, does that mean you want to refuse selection?’ and he said: ‘No, no, I want to be selected so I will cancel the wedding.’ I thought that was good.
“I’d have liked him to have rescheduled it for a bit earlier, or a lot later, than he has done. The reasons for that, I don’t know, but I guess he probably thought he would get a week to 10 days off at the end of the season because that is what we have done traditionally.
“I hope he will be sensible and I believe he will be sensible. I know he really is desperate to go to the Euro and do a good job, so I’m pretty confident that when I see him on Saturday he will be fine. By all means feel free to ask him if he intends to let down his hair and do some stupid things and if the answer is yes, feel free to batter him in the press.”It's time for A.D. to reveal everything!
During Tuesday night's series finale of Pretty Little Liars, Troian Bellisario sent shockwaves through the fandom when the ultra-mysterious identity of A.D. was revealed to be Spencer Hastings' long-lost identical twin, Alex Drake. (Gasp!)
Now that the series is officially over, Bellisario is opening up to ET about all the behind-the-scenes secrets that she's been keeping for years -- including the original way PLL was supposed to end, Spencer and Toby's romantic future, and which pretty little cast member had the best reaction to A.D.'s unveiling!
MORE: 'Pretty Little Liars' Series Finale: The 8 Biggest Questions Finally Answered!
ETonline: Troian! We haven’t chatted since the day of your PLL directorial debut when we told you our spot-on theory about Spencer having an identical twin! What was going through your mind at the time?
Troian Bellisario: I know! Do you remember my face? [Laughs] You were so vocal and talking about other things and then you were like, "OK, so here’s what we think is happening…" and I was like, looking at you and I was thinking, "Oh no! Please stop. Stop talking. Stop talking because I'm not going to be able to confirm or deny this." Like, what was I supposed to say? [Laughs] Like, "Wow great theory, uhh..." But it turns out, that was entirely accurate.
Take us back to the conversation when PLL showrunner Marlene King first told you that A.D. was going to be Alex Drake, aka Spencer's identical twin. What was your reaction to the news?
TB: Basically, I'm so nosy and I really like knowing all the storylines before they all come out, because I love to be a part of them. And I did this for everybody, like, "Tell me about what's going on with Aria! Tell me what's going on with Hanna! What's next for Emily?" And I said to Marlene, "What's ultimately going to happen to Spencer?" And she was like, "I could tell you what I ultimately think is going to happen to Spencer, but it would take a bit of time." And I was like, "What else am I doing? I'm just on set. Tell me the plan." And then she proceeded to tell me the entire ending plot of the show and I was like, "Wait -- what?! Oh my god!" and then I had this moment where I was like, "Wait, you're not going to be hiring someone else to play my twin though, right?" And she was like, "No it would be you!" And I was like, "Yes!" But it was just so much, and when she told me it was a crazy turn of events, but I trusted that she would layer it in beautifully. It was a total blast.
Which cast member had the craziest and most exciting reaction when he/she found out that you were also going to be playing A.D.?
TB: It's always Ashley [Benson]. Ashley is just the greatest. Even last night, we were watching it together -- and she was at the table read, and she filmed this episode with me -- but she was always leaning over and goes, "Is that you or your twin?" And by "you," she meant Spencer. It was so funny because she just kept saying, "Is that you or your twin?" And I was like, "That's the twin," and she'd go, "Oh my God! So creepy!" And then she'd be like, "Is that you or your twin?" And I'd be like, "No, that one is me -- that’s Spencer," and she'd go, "Oh God! OK!" But it was just so much fun to watch the episode with the cast and to dress up. I got to bring my mom [to the screening] and in the first moment that the twin was revealed, it was so funny. She turned around at me and she gasps and goes, "You bitch!" and Marlene basically fell off her chair laughing. It was so funny! And I was like, "But, Mom! I'm also the person being held captive!"
WATCH: Here's Everything the 'Pretty Little Liars' Cast Has Spilled About the Series Finale!
Let's talk about that accent! What was the decision to give Alex Drake that specific dialect of a British accent?
TB: It was funny because it was something that we were all super nervous about, because I'm obsessive when it comes to accuracy. I don’t want to ever do an approximation of something, and the people on our show who are British like Julian [Morris] and like Huw [Collins] they have very beautiful and very erudite white London accents. So when Marlene told me the story of Alex, I was like, "I've got to tell you, if this girl is a working girl and she has had, like, a rough upbringing, I don’t want her to be speaking like how Wren speaks. I want to be very clear from the beginning that she's had a different life than Wren has had." To me, the best way to communicate that was to give her a very specific accent, so I really wanted to learn the Essex accent. Essex girls are kind of fun, and there's this reality show called The Only Way is Essex and and once you hear that cadence, and you listen to the way that these girls talk to each other when they get excited or passionate, I was like, "That's this character. I can base a character on that." What I was a little bit afraid of was when Marlene said that she's going to be from the U.K., I was like, "OK here we go. Here comes the British bad guy, like, a James Bond villain or something like that." So I was like, "I kind of want her to be something unexpected." And because Spencer is so sort of refined and poised and slow and methodical, I really wanted Alex to vibrate on a different level. It was fun getting to work on the accent, but it's been totally nerve wracking during filming because people were like, "Wait, people really talk like that?" And I was like, "Yes, yes they do go watch that show."
What was your favorite scene to play when you were Troian playing Alex playing Spencer?
TB: When I was Alex pretending to be Spencer? Oh gosh, It was really fun in all the finale scenes, that was great, but probably the cabin scene with Toby. It was a few episodes back when she goes up and they end up sleeping together, that was the most fun to play.
What little mannerisms did you give to Alex that Spencer didn’t have?
TB: Oh! Well because of her accent -- this is going to sound so nerdy -- but we Americans have a very flat, kind of broad "A" sound. If you look at the way that we use our mouths, it's a little bit more wide. Alex is so fast and so quipped and she's really colorful, but if you notice there's a lot of tension around her mouth, so even when she's impersonating Spencer, I really wanted to kind of have her struggling with that exact kind of freedom in the American accent. There's just a lot of tension around her American accent and literally sort of a stiff upper lip. Then there was also something that was really fun that she does that I got to kind of play with this season, which is Alex is a little bit of a nail biter. She's kind of constantly trying not to do that. But it was really fun and I was actually surprised with how it all turned out. I was really worried that there wasn't going to be enough of a distinction between them, but I was really of happy to look back and sort of be like, "Yup!" I can totally see the differences, particularly in the finale, where I'm like, "Yup that's Alex and that's Spencer." It was so fun.
EXCLUSIVE: 'Pretty Little Liars' Creator Marlene King Drops 21 Series Finale Spoilers!
Let's talk about the final scene where it's revealed that Mona is keeping Alex and Mary Drake hostage as her living dolls. What was your reaction to reading that scene and how do you feel about the ending now?
TB: I loved it! It was so fitting and it was so fun to film. And that was actually our last day of filming and there was nothing that felt like a more fitting way to end Pretty Little Liars then to be trapped in a dollhouse, in a tea dress, and grumpily eating a crumpet. It was just really fun. There was actually an amendment to the ending. Originally -- I don’t know if I'm supposed to say this -- but I think originally the ending was supposed to be a little bit different where Alex had kind of gotten away with it a little bit more, and the only person that was onto her was Toby. But I think that ultimately would’ve left things too much up in the air and we would've been worried for Spencer. So it was really fun because this way, Spencer got a happy ending, and all the girls got a happy ending, and Alex got to be with her family - which is great, but also in a little bit of a tricky situation.
Speaking of happy endings, can you talk about Spencer and Toby? When we left off, they were on good terms and it was revealed that they were starting to date again, so in your mind, where do you envision they end up?
TB: I mean, I always felt like Spencer and Toby were going to end up being just like, the most badass domestic partners. I always felt like if they were to get married, it would be such a [quiet] elopement that the girls would be mad. Almost like the way that Hanna and Caleb did, because they didn’t tell anybody and then it happened and then they were married. So I feel like the cool thing about Spencer and Toby is, they're such independent characters and their relationship is so nontraditional that I feel like they would just end up dating but for the rest of their lives. They would have children together, and they would live together, but they would also be like, "We are independent people." If he needs to go backpack through the Himalayas for year, he could totally do that. And if she needs to go live on her own in Paris for a year, she could totally do that. But I think that they would always end up coming back to each other.
And have family Scrabble nights together?
TB: Oh yeah, those poor kids! [Laughs] Those poor nerdy kids!
RELATED: 'PLL' Stars Reveal if Their Characters Will Have a 'Happy Ending' in Series Finale!
Now that Pretty Little Liars is officially over, what are you going to miss most about playing Spencer and Alex?
TB: Well with Alex, it was really just the tip of the iceberg. It was so much fun to get to create an entirely new character, but then you want to live in her. You want to relax in her. I sort of feel like watching Alex last night was very similar to the way that I felt watching my performance as Spencer in the pilot. When I saw myself as Spencer in last night's episode, there was just such easiness and it was a fully fleshed out, three-dimensional character that you lived with and people have gotten used to over the last seven years. Every move that she makes is very in her skin. But Alex, like it was with Spencer in the first episode, is a very shiny new car. When you're trying to change gears in it, it was very different. It's got a lot of energy and speed that you're not used to. It's fun and it was so much fun to play both of the characters, but I wish that I could have more time to really stretch Alex's legs and sink into her a bit more. And then what am I going to miss the most about playing Spencer? I mean, Spencer is hands down one of the coolest characters I've ever had a chance at playing and I can't believe that I will never play her again. Like, that's the weirdest. That's the thing I'm going to miss the most.
How are you feeling about Pretty Little Liars' ending? Were you a fan of the A.D. reveal? Which Liar are you going to miss the most? Share your thoughts (for one last time!) with our pretty little expert @LeanneAguilera on Twitter!Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday.
E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots.
However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device.
"Brazilians unconditionally believe the [security of the] country's electoral authority and processes. The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks," says Unicamp professor and encryption specialist, Diego Aranha.
Another issue is that the Brazilian machines, which are based on the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) model, do not produce a physical proof that the vote has been recorded. This means there is a constant danger of large-scale software fraud, as well as other non-technical tampering that could be perpetrated by former or current electoral justice staff and go totally undetected, according to Aranha.
The Brazilian Electoral Tribunal (TSE, in the Portuguese acronym) did not allow new public tests since the faults were discovered by Aranha's team in 2012, when the TSE granted access to more than 10 million lines of code for five hours. Since the system holes were found, the Tribunal said it would not allow further independent tests.
"[The TSE] said that my attitude was disrespectful and a threat to democracy, which is bizarre given that I am a professor at a public university," Aranha says.
"The reality is that there appears to be a conflict of interests, since the government wants to portray the system as bullet-proof and at the same time cover up these vulnerabilities," the academic adds.
In an attempt to introduce more transparency to the voting process in Brazil, Aranha then created a mobile app, Você Fiscal ("You Inspector," in Portuguese), that captures information from images sent by users of printed statements from the voting machines with the total vote counts, which are displayed publicly upon closing of the ballots.
The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks."
— Diego Aranha
The results produced from the information in the public's photos is then compared with the official results, creating an alternative version of the truth.
"If anything out of order has happened to the voting machine after the closing of the ballots, the system will detect it," the professor points out.
The Você Fiscal app has received over $30,000, more than double the amount of funding it originally sought on Brazilian crowdfunding website Catarse.
The professor's medium to long-term goal is to develop a prototype of a new electronic voting system that offers not only a printed proof that the vote has been processed, but also a more robust fraud detection system as well as auditing.
The Brazilian Electoral Justice system has made efforts to disseminate the electronic voting system, with trade missions to countries including Mozambique, South Africa and Guinea-Bissau, as well as Japan.
According to the government, Peru, Bolivia, Haiti and Panama have requested technical information on the Brazilian electronic voting system, while the UK and US have made recent visits to learn more about the platform.
Professor Aranha, who has presented several times about the Brazilian e-voting system to international audiences, remains skeptical about its possible replication elsewhere.
"The government likes to promote our voting system as one of the most advanced in the world, mainly because we can get the results a lot faster than other countries using more traditional methods. However, speed is desirable, but not the most important feature of an e-voting platform," Aranha points out.
"And the TSE presents the international interest in the system in a way that is convenient to them. But the reality is that many countries have been here, the Brazilian government presents it all through rose-tinted glasses, but how many countries have actually adopted our system?" he adds.
"These countries haven't done so because our system does not have appropriate transparency features that you would expect."
The TSE states that the electronic voting process has "essential mechanisms to ensure voters' safety" in place, such as digital signature.
Security tests in the voting machines were not carried out ahead of this year's elections, but a security working group has been put together by the TSE to map requirements in that area and plan for a roadmap of e-voting security, counting and auditing in Brazil.
However, the group's agenda is moving at a slow pace and has no specific deadline to deliver the recommendations.The recent federal trials that ended in the quick convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean G. Skelos laid bare a world of greed, flagrant corruption and abuse of power in Albany, with evidence showing payoffs taking a deceptively circular route from business interests to the elected officials whose help they sought.
But one man who was a key player in both cases — and identified by the government as a co-conspirator at the trial of Mr. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate, and his son, Adam — never appeared in the courtroom.
That man was Leonard Litwin, the 101-year-old owner of Glenwood Management, an influential developer of luxury high-rise apartment buildings in Manhattan that is among the state’s most prodigious political donors. Prosecutors named Mr. Litwin as a co-conspirator during a sidebar conference |
, as the room before the two Pyramid Heads has NINE save points. That is a bit of a clue to save…
I did replay of the game on Hard/Hard for the HD version, and got to the final bosses with 9 ampoules, 4 first aid kits, 15 health drinks, 81 pistol, 147 shotgun and 80 rifle bullets.
I used it all apart from about 120 shotgun shells. I took one hell of a beating from the two Pyramid Heads. So Hard is much harder…
Story part 2 (SPOILERS/ALLUSIONS TO SPOILERS)
After all your schlepping around you start to realise that maybe James has been drawn to this town for a deeper reason, it is foreshadowed by Eddie, that “you’re here for the same reason as he is”. And one of the videotape reveals shows the “reason” you’re there. At this point you think about the game differently, you see that it is James’ guilt that is propelling him on, and not some mystical cult.
Everybody that features in the game is there for a reason, Angela, Eddie, Laura and Maria.
Peoples realities cross slightly, but everybody sees Silent Hill differently, Eddie can’t see Pyramid Head, Laura doesn’t see any of the bad stuff, and Angela asks if James can see the fire.
There are a lot of character information that are scattered around. You really needed to explore fully to understand everything. Since I don’t know the game inside out, I may have missed stuff, but peoples motives/raison d’être aren’t always immediately clear from a normal playthrough.You really have to dig around for everything to make sense.
Towards the end of the game, you find out the truth about Mary, and James’ involvement, and it is a really good reveal. It isn’t a Final Fantasy type convoluted twist, it isn’t as tired and predictable as a Resident Evil reveal. It is genuinely shocking, both in the fairly graphic nature you’re shown, but also it doesn’t come out of the blue. Yes, it is forshadowed, but the foreshadowing is subtle. I started to pick up on it towards the end, but you can miss the clues. And if you do miss ALL the clues, it still makes sense.
Silent Hill is a construct of James’ spiral into depression and his way of dealing with his own guilt. It is James who is James’ worst enemy. The faceless nurses, Pyramid Head, they are all symbols of James’ frustrations.
These are some of Silent Hill 2’s many strong points, everything is “right”, there aren’t plot holes. Silent Hill 2 is completely separate to 1, so there is no attempt at continuity, no Zelda forced timelines, no PLOT-HOLE APLENTY Resident Evil connections between games. Everything is thought through, and it everything makes sense.
Bosses?
The only thing I don’t like in Silent Hill 2 are the bosses. They are all a bit too easy, and frankly a little disappointing. All bosses are; run to one side of the room, shoot, run to other side of the room.
The final boss is also a flying bed. The flying bed has meaning, but it is still a flying bed.
Negatives
I’m trying to not sound like a fanboi here, but I didn’t really have any negatives. The game doesn’t look great, but it is a PS2 game, and it looks alright for a PS2 game, the graphics certainly hold up better than Silent Hill 1.
The boss fights are a bit shitty in how you fight them, but the meaning behind them is harrowing. The Abstract Daddy which looks like a Door Monster, is somewhat repulsive, especially after reading what it symbolises!
Other than that, honestly can’t think of any thing.
The combat can be described as being naff, but I don’t count it as a negative. It makes sense to the game. Just like Harry in SH1, James is just a normal bloke so isn’t proficient in using guns, and like most of us, he struggles to bludgeon scary monster nurses to death with a crappy lead pipe.
On hard mode, the Pyramid Head chase in the basement is a little difficult to do the first few times. There are only a few spots you can shoot at him and miss Maria so some in game guidance on what you were supposed to have done is needed.
Alternate Endings
On the PS2 version there are 5 endings, and they are all different. They are also all awesome!
What is particularly impressive -though can be frustrating on replays- is that the endings are not binary. It isn’t a “set thing” no, do A for X result. I got the Maria ending on my playthrough, and after reading a guide on how to achieve this, I actually did very little of it. I did all the “suicidal” things (because I was inquisitive), I looked at the Mary picture/letter, I listened to the whole HARROWING conversation with Mary in the corridor.
So while it could be frustrating if you’re trying to get all the endings, it is nice that it doesn’t boil down to one decision.
Conclusion
Silent Hill 2 is a great game, and there is a tonne to discover. With loads of endings there is a huge amount of replayability to be had. Personally, I am too drained to play it again. The full letter that reads before the end credits is gut wrenching. It is excellently written, and voice acting is remarkable, I was in pieces and just wanted it to end.
Not since I watched the finale to Breaking Bad have I felt this bruised, and if all games were like Silent Hill 2, I’d be heading for an “In the Water” ending…
Pros: Drenched in symbolism, genuinely heartbreaking, Puzzles are awesome, endings are non-binary
Cons: Bosses, crying like a little bitch because of the end narration
97%
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Dec. 30, 2014, 6:33 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 30, 2014, 10:33 PM GMT
A 22 percent drop in cancer death rates during the past two decades has spared the lives of more than 1.5 million people in this country, the American Cancer Society reported Tuesday.
In its annual dissection of cancer diagnoses, mortality and survival data, the group pinned the ongoing decline in cancer death rates on a downturn in U.S. smoking habits, extra attention to cancer prevention, improvements in various cancer treatments, and advances in early detection methods.
The pace of cancer deaths is falling in every state, but Southern states have generally posted the smallest decreases (15 percent) while Northeastern states have marked the biggest reductions (25 to 30 percent), according to the data, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Between 2007 and 2011 – the most recent five years for which data are available – the average, annual decline in cancer death rates was slightly better among men (1.8 percent) than women (1.4 percent). Death rates from cancers of the lung, breast, prostate, and colon all fell.
“The continuing drops we’re seeing in cancer mortality are reason to celebrate, but not to stop,” said John R. Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. “Cancer was responsible for nearly one in four deaths in the United States in 2011, making it the second leading cause of death overall.”
IN-DEPTH
-- Bill BriggsDolores Huerta, the activist, is a Clinton supporter and said on Twitter that she was offering a Spanish-language translation in Las Vegas at Harrah's casino.
LAS VEGAS — On Saturday, Bernie Sanders supporters chanted "English only!" at a longtime labor and Latina activist, two neutral sources unaffiliated with either campaign told BuzzFeed News.
I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced Si Se Puede! #ImwithHer #NVcaucus
Actor America Ferrara — a Clinton surrogate — also tweeted about the incident at Harrah's casino in Las Vegas.
BuzzFeed News obtained video from the event from a third source, but in this video, it's difficult to make out what people are actually saying:
Two sources — both of whom are neutral and not affiliated with the Sanders or Clinton campaigns — told BuzzFeed News that it happened the way Huerta described.
Others have disputed that this is what happened, including Susan Sarandon and Gaby Hoffmann who were in the room.
Huerta reiterated the claim in an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday.
In another video posted of the event (the exchange begins around the 53-minute mark), there are protests when Huerta is suggested as a translator — because she is pro-Clinton. There are no organized chants. However, it's difficult to distinguish what people in the audience are actually saying when they object to her on stage because of the shouting in the room. The man running the event asked for people who could translate to come to the stage, and after objections and shouting in the room, eventually says that the event will proceed in English only without a translator.
Update: BuzzFeed News reached Huerta Sunday morning at her home in California a day after the raucous Harrah's caucus.
She described "belligerent" Sanders supporters whose protest of her efforts to serve as a translator at the Harrah's event had a racial tinge, even if the calls for her not to serve as Spanish-language interpreter weren't meant that way.
"When you're not conscious of the outcome of the actions that you're taking, that ends up being the ends up being the end result," she said.
BuzzFeed News asked Huerta about the specific wording of Ferrara's tweet: "Harrah's casino site- Bernie supporters chant "English-only" to stop civil rights leader @DoloresHuerta from providing Spanish translation."
She didn't quibble with it. "It is exactly what happened," she said. "At the end we didn't have translation!"
But asked to detail what happened, she described a scene different from the image of a legion of Sanders faithful engaged in a racist chant that some read into the Ferrara tweet. When videos of the Harrah's site posted online didn't show a scene of mass chants, some dismissed the Huerta story entirely.
BuzzFeed News asked for Huerta's detailed recollection.
"What happened was this," Huerta began. "We were there as observers, Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters in the back of the room. Somebody said, 'we need translation' and the gentleman running the caucus said we can have translation and the first person on stage can be the translator. I started walking toward the stage. Bernie supporters chanted, 'no, no, no.' A Bernie supporter said he wanted to translate. The gentleman running the caucus said we're not going to do that. It got very loud, and I stepped off the stage."
An individual or individuals yelled "English only" Huerta said, part of general yelling and chanting by Sanders supporters at the Harrah's site aimed at her.
"They're whole attitude is, I call it crash and burn, which is if we can't do it we'd rather not have anyone do it," she said of the translation scene.
Throughout the morning at Harrah's, Huerta said, Sanders supporters loudly confronted her and other Clinton supporters who were detailing Clinton campaign talking points on Sanders' immigration record to potential caucus goers, attempting to sway them.
"When a Bernie supporter found out that the HRC supporters were doing this, [the Sanders supporters] became very rude," she said. "They're very belligerent."
"Bernie supporters need to shape up," she added. "It really turns people off."
The confusion at Harrah's, and the chants and belligerence that Huerta said greeted her there, are part of the general chaos of a caucus.
Huerta said that process needs to change.
"I would definitely support a primary process instead of a caucus process," she said, citing the lack of absentee voting and ability for some would-be caucus goers to get off work. "It's not representative."2016: The Warmest Year on Record, with a Dip in the Second Half of the Year
2016 was the warmest year since humans began keeping records, by a wide margin. Global average temperatures were extremely hot in the first few months of the year, pushed up by a large El Nino event. Global surface temperatures dropped in the second half of 2016, yet still show a continuation of global warming. The global warming “pause”, which Berkeley Earth had always stressed was not statistically significant, now appears clearly to have been a temporary fluctuation.
Robert Rohde, Lead Scientist with Berkeley Earth, said “The record temperature in 2016 appears to come from a strong El Nino imposed on top of a long-term global warming trend that continues unabated.”
In addition, 2016 witnessed extraordinary warming in the Arctic. The way that temperatures are interpolated over the Arctic is now having a significant impact on global temperature measurements. Zeke Hausfather, Scientist at Berkeley Earth said, “The difference between 2015 and 2016 global temperatures is much larger in the Berkeley record than in records from NOAA or the UK’s Hadley Centre, since they do not include the Arctic Ocean and we do. The arctic has seen record warmth in the past few months, and excluding it leads to a notable underestimate of recent warming globally.”
Elizabeth Muller, Executive Director of Berkeley Earth, said, “We have compelling scientific evidence that global warming is real and human caused, but much of what is reported as ‘climate change’ is exaggerated. Headlines that claim storms, droughts, floods, and temperature variability are increasing, are not based on normal scientific standards. We are likely to know better in the upcoming decades, but for now, the results that are most solidly established are that the temperature is increasing and that the increase is caused by human greenhouse emissions. It is certainly true that the impacts of global warming are still too subtle for most people to notice in their everyday lives.”
Richard Muller, Scientific Director of Berkeley Earth, said: “We project that continued global warming will lead us to an average temperature not yet experienced by civilization. It would be wise to slow or halt this rise. The most effective and economic approach would be to encourage nuclear power, substitution of natural gas for future coal plants, and continued improvement of energy efficiency.”
Additional figures on Berkeley Earth’s 2016 temperature results are available at www.BerkeleyEarth.org
Source: http://berkeleyearth.org/a-second-half-dip-but-2016-hottest-on-record/
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RedditPullman teens visit an Ethiopian restaurant in Edgewater. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Andrea V. Watson
PULLMAN — About 20 teens from Pullman and Roseland traveled to Edgewater on the Far North Side for the first time over the weekend, where they made jewelry, tried Ethiopian food and visited a frozen custard shop.
“I think the best part was the Ethiopian restaurant because we got to explore a different type of culture and food,” said 15-year-old Dontreal Dismuke, a Roseland resident.
Chatham resident Jahmal Cole, 32, is the founder of "My Block, My Hood, My City," a program that exposes teens to neighborhoods outside their own. To fund these trips, Cole sells T-shirts, hoodies, tank tops and jerseys with the group’s name at his website, mbmhmc.com.
Dontreal Dismuke (r.) visits Edgewater for the first time. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Andrea V. Watson
An advocate for educational reform, he started volunteering in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, where he would speak to the teen inmates.
“They told me they had never been Downtown,” he said, adding that he quickly realized there was a lot of pride in where each person was from. That’s where the program's name came from — "My Block, My Hood, My City."
The principal from Butler College Prep, which is in the Pullman neighborhood, reached out to Cole. He asked him if he could organize an exploration trip with some of his sophomore and junior male students.
“In just speaking with them about different neighborhoods, [I realized what] they’ve been exposed to is very limited,” said Butler’s assistant principal Topher Bordenave. “So speaking with Jahmal, our visions align as far as helping them get to know the different cultures in the city.”
DNAinfo's Neighborhood News on WGN:
The energetic tourists, who all wore their group hoodies, made their first stop of the morning at Blue Buddha Boutique, 1127 W. Granville Avenue. The jewelry supply store offers tools, materials, patterns and classes for crafting chainmaille pieces.
The teens made bracelets, necklaces and keychains. Small groups of four and five sat at tables with their jewelry-making tools and listened closely to the class instructor.
“It was fun,” said Dismuke. “It was something different. I think I would try it again; it was cool.”
The next stop was Ethiopian Diamond Restaurant, 6120 N. Broadway. The group was seated at a long table in the middle of the eatery and greated by the owners. The table shared a traditional platter of whole lentil, spinach, potato, chicken and beef. In keeping with the tradition, everyone ate with their hands. Hot tea was brought out toward the end of the meal.
“The Ethiopian food was new to me,” said 16-year old Nathan Brown. “I’m so used to getting, like McDonald's, chicken and stuff, but the lamb, it was banging.”
When the meal was over, the teens excitedly shared their opinions on the Ethiopian food with one another as they walked down Broadway to their last stop of the day. Lickity Split specializes in frozen custard, but it also has candy, cupcakes and other desserts.
Store owner Ken Anderson welcomed the group. He said he likes Cole’s mission.
“I think it’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s nice to get people from different neighborhoods to check out the city’s different neighborhoods. One thing about Edgewater is that it’s such a diverse community, so I personally love this.”
Teens from Pullman visit Blue Buddha Boutique in Edgewater. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Andrea V. Watson
The teens took note on the differences between their communities and Edgewater’s. They said they definitely plan to visit again.
“I noticed they have a lot of old-fashioned things, like the structure of the buildings is very small, and I like it,” said Brown. “It looks nice. It’s just something I’ve never experienced before.”
“I learned, like with the food, that it’s always good to try new things because you might be in a big shock about it," Brown said.
Dismuke said he had never been to the North Side.
“Back home, I see the 'hood when I look around, but here, it’s not the same,” he said. “There is lots of different stuff and it’s more diverse.”
Cole said he enjoys introducing young people to new things.
"This was a fish-out-of-water experience,” he said, adding that he chose Edgewater for a reason.
“When I was thinking about where they are located in the city in Pullman, it’s like a farther south community. I thought it would be interesting to take them to [a Far North Side neighborhood] Edgewater.”
“Today was a new experience. If anything, we are expanding their world view... so to get them out their comfort zone and try something new, it’s good for them.”
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:Sony has confirmed it plans to shut down Guerrilla Games Cambridge, the veteran studio behind PlayStation VR launch title RIGS: Mechanized Combat League, and lay off all employees.
The studio has existed in various forms for over 25 years, beginning as part of James Pond creator Millennium, and subsequently working on titles such as MediEvil and Primal for Sony as Studio Cambridge, with the shift to the Guerrilla name coming in 2012.
The console maker confirmed the news to GamesIndustry.biz, explaining the decision was made following a review of all current PlayStation resources and projects.
Sony described the move a "regrettable," but insists it's one that's "necessary" if it hopes to meet its current strategic objectives.
"Whilst we accept that this decision will mean that we risk losing high caliber staff, by focusing on other studios with exciting new projects in development we believe we will be in a stronger position going forward," reads a company statement.
"This decision should not take anything away from the incredible games and services that Guerrilla Cambridge has delivered."
Sony will try to reallocate those affected by the closure onto other projects. Developers from outside the PlayStation family have also lent their support, highlighting a huge list of job openings through Twitter.
Guerrilla Games Amsterdam, currently in charge of Horizon: Zero Dawn and the Killzone franchise, hasn't been affected by the closure.Most people looking to get into better shape will at some point be exposed to the traditional methods of bulking and cutting. After all, it is the most widely adopted principle to packing on muscle and getting bigger. However, there’s a good deal of scientific evidence that traditional bulking and cutting may actually lead to diminishing muscle gains and increased fat gain over time. The two main reasons why this type of approach to building a more swole physique is not ideal; the metabolic adaption and hormonal response your body has.
It’s why you’re seeing a shift of view on traditional bulking and cutting by many of today’s top bodybuilders. Top bodybuilders and fitness experts like Ben Pakulski and Vince DelMonte are recommending a relatively new technique called cyclical bulking.
What is Cyclical Bulking?
Cyclical bulking is essentially very similar to the traditional bulking and cutting approach. The exception is that the periods between bulking and cutting are much shorter. It is a relatively new approach to building a bigger physique that allows you to bypass typical “plateaus” in the traditional bulking and cutting phases. This means that you can consistently build muscle and burn fat without the side effects of a traditional bulk.
And multiple studies prove it. In fact, one of the most popular studies on it was done in the 80’s by Forbes et al, “Hormonal Response to Overeating.” It concluded that when a group of adult women went from a maintenance caloric diet to a 1,200 to 1,500 calorie surplus diet for three weeks that blood tests showed significant and progressive increases in insulin, testosterone, and insulinlike growth factor 1 – three of the most important anabolic hormones. They also gained a significant amount of muscle weight.
What Are The Benefits Over Traditional Bulking and Cutting?
In traditional bulking, you’re faced with two major issues. When you bulk, you accumulate fat along with muscle. When you cut, you decrease muscle mass along with your fat storage. Clean bulking can help prevent the accumulation of fat. But it can only do so much. You will always lose some muscle with traditional cutting. There’s no way around it.
Cyclical bulking has neither of these problems. That’s what makes it much better than a traditional bulk and cut. When you incorporate cyclical bulking, you shorten your bulk and cut phases to a few weeks each at most. This prevents the dreaded plateau you would hit with traditional bulking and cutting. You essentially stay one step ahead of your body’s adaption to your diet.
Basically you’re reaping all the beginning benefits of a bulk and cut and you switch it up just before your body adapts to the change. Your anabolic hormones and metabolism will always be primed to do what you want most – burn fat and build muscle! This is a BIG deal because you no longer have to worry about adding fat on a bulk and losing muscle while on a cut.
How Do I Do Cyclical Bulking?
Once you understand the concept of cyclical bulking, it becomes easy to implement. The most common duration of a cyclical bulk is a 6 week bulk followed by a 2 week cut. So for example, your first cycle would look like this:
Cycle 1
6 week bulk – 9 pounds gained
2 week cut – 4 pounds lost
Net gain – 5 pounds
Cycle 2
6 week bulk – 8 pounds gained
2 week cut – 3 pounds lost
Net gain – 5 pounds
Total Gain: 10 pounds
Keep in mind this 10 pounds has a much higher ratio of muscle to fat than a traditional bulk would.
Scientifically speaking, during the bulking phase of a cyclical bulk, you’re going to increase the activity of calorie-burning hormones insulin and leptin to control the accumulation of fat. When cutting, these hormones are still elevated. Unlike in a traditional cut, which decreases your body fat levels quicker.
I recommend when doing your bulk to keep your calories 500-1000 above your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and around 500 under BMR during a cut.
The Bottom Line
It’s no wonder why cyclical bulking is gaining popularity since the results speak for themselves.
In my personal experience, I first started out with the traditional bulking and cutting methods. I was a “skinny-fat” ectomorph (tall and lanky physique). I was around 170 pounds at 6’2″ when I started a bulk at around 20% body fat. I ended up at about 215 pounds at the end of my bulk and had the same body fat percentage. That means I accumulated ~9 pounds of fat during my bulk. During my cut, I slimmed down to about 190 and lost a few pounds of muscle despite an aggressive diet and strict workout plan. Like most people, I plateaued during my cut and had to increase the intensity and amount of times I worked out each week along with an even more strict diet.
I ended up getting in noticeably better shape, but it felt like it wasn’t the most efficient way to reach my goals. I knew I’d need to do the whole bulk/cut phases a few more times to see great results.
When trying my first cyclical bulking cycle, I followed a 6/2 week approach. At the end of the cycle, I noticed I lowered my body fat AND increased my muscle size. My pump was a lot more detailed while working out too. After trying both the traditional bulking/cutting and cyclical bulking, I will be doing cyclical bulking primarily. It just makes more sense and is proven to be more effective.
What are your thoughts on cyclical bulking?
About the Author Bobby Marandino Facebook Twitter Google+ The founder of Limitlessly Fit, Bobby started Limitlessly Fit to share his lifelong passion of fitness to help guys build lean and ripped physiques. Bobby is well educated in many fields, holding a Bachelors degree, two Masters degrees, and several certifications. He also has over 10 years of experience and university-based education in fitness and nutrition.
Enter Your Email and Stay Up to Date Get access to exclusive content, contests, and updates from Limitlessly Fit delivered right to your inbox + a FREE eBook! SUBSCRIBEFootball star Michael Sam and his college sweetheart may have called it quits just six months after getting engaged.
Sam and Vito Cammisano met as students at the University of Missouri and began dating in 2011, with Sam proposing to Cammisano atop St. Peters Basilica in Vatican City this past January.
The two have not been seen together in months however, and now Sam has deleted all photos of Cammisano from his Instagram account - including their engagement photo.
Scroll down for videos
Done: Michael Sam and boyfriend Vito Cammisano have reportedly ended their relationship just six months after getting engaged in Vatican City (above)
Sign: Cammisano filmed a YouTube video last week in which he is not wearing his engagement ring (above)
New job: Sam signed a two-year contract with the Alouettes in the Canadian Football League last month (above) after realizing no NFL teams would be inviting him to training camp
TMZ first pointed out that Sam, 25, had deleted his Instagram photos, while also noting the fact that he recently had to leave training with the Montreal Alouettes for a personal reason, but there were no signs on concern from Cammisano.
Furthermore, Cammisano, 24, just filmed a YouTube video in his quest to become a video blogger and is not wearing his wedding ring on camera.
Perhaps the biggest indication however is that the hugely public couple, who were happy to walk red carpets earlier in the year while publicly displaying their affection towards one another, were shockingly tight-lipped when last week's gay marriage ruling came down from the Supreme Court.
Reps for the two men did not respond to requests for comment.
PDA: The couple has always been very public about their relationship, but have been tight-lipped about the state of their engagement
There are also signs that the men may still be fine as well, as Sam still has all of his photos with Cammisano up on his Facebook page, and in Cammisano's YouTube video, Sam's Arthur Ashe Courage Award which he received at last year's ESPYs is seen sitting on a counter in the background.
Cammiosano is also still using a photo of himself with Sam as his Twitter avatar.
The last photo of the two together was taken in early May and posted on Cammisano's Instagram page.Thanks to a large export deal, China may become a new influential player in the coffee game. According to Bloomberg, Switzerland-based trading company Volcafe Ltd. has partnered with Simao Arabicasm Coffee Co. to promote arabica beans from Yunnan, China's largest coffee-growing area. Volcafe will "source and process" the beans so that they can be exported to clients around the globe. A spokesperson for Volcafe notes the "Chinese mild arabica is still relatively new to the world coffee scene."
While the Yunnan region produces nearly as much coffee as Costa Rica, the increased output is a recent development. In 1998, all of China produced 104,000 60 kilogram-bags. In 2013, China's production exceeded one million 60-kilogram bags.
Bloomberg notes that arabica is the preferred coffee bean of Starbucks so perhaps they will begin to use the Volcafe beans. This wouldn't be Starbucks' first foray into Chinese-sourced coffee: CNN writes that back in 2010 the chain announced that they had plans "to plant trees and grow coffee" in Yunnan.ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
The £75,000-a-year London train driver was announced today as Southern Rail offered massive pay rises to try to end the 14-month-old dispute.
GTR, Southern’s parent company, offered its 1,000 drivers a pay increase of 23.8 per cent over four years — taking basic salaries for the existing 35-hour, four-day week from £49,001 to £60,683. It is an extra £12,000 per driver to try to settle the dispute involving driver only operation (DOO) and changes to the role of the guard.
Most drivers work a regular fifth day as overtime for an additional 25 per cent pay, taking fourth-year salaries above £75,000. Southern relies on this to run its full timetable for more than 300,000 passengers a day.
Aslef, the train drivers’ union, has yet to accept the deal. Peace talks broke up in acrimony with the union ordering a resumption of its indefinite overtime ban from June 29.
This will cause daily late running and cancellation to hundreds of services.
Aslef is furious Southern combined pay deal negotiations with those concerning the dispute — it robustly denies a company accusation that it asked for pay to be included. Aslef chief Mick Whelan said he could “categorically state” the firm is lying.
A GTR spokesman said it had made a “very generous” pay offer and the threat of a new overtime ban is “both surprising and extremely disappointing”.
RAIL chiefs today warned soaring temperatures and the threat of rails buckling in the heat could cause speed restrictions and delays to journeys home tonight and over the weekend.Brendan Rodgers has described Daniel Sturridge’s recovery as “critical” for Liverpool but the manager warned the striker needs time to recapture last season’s devastating form following a spate of injuries.
Sturridge is back in training at Melwood after rehabilitation work in the United States although a first-team return is not imminent. Rodgers, who is reluctant to put a timescale on the striker’s comeback given his medical history, has recalled Jordon Ibe from a successful loan spell at Derby County to increase his attacking options as Sturridge approaches full fitness.
The England international scored 21 goals in Liverpool’s title challenge last season but, while enthused about his potential impact on the side when fit, Rodgers insisted it is unrealistic to expect the 25-year-old to flourish immediately. Sturridge has missed over four months with a calf and two thigh injuries. His last appearance for Liverpool came in the 3-0 win at Tottenham Hotspur on 31 August.
“People have to be more realistic, it will take him time,” cautioned Rodgers, who has recalled Ibe after the 19-year-old scored five goals in 24 appearances for Derby. “First he has to get fit generally, and fortunately he is a naturally fit player as he proved last season when he came back without much of a pre-season and did very well. But then there is match fitness, football fitness, and that will take a wee bit of time. Just having him on the field to begin with will be critical to the team because I think his threat is obvious. It’s the only way we will get him back up to speed.”
Liverpool face Chelsea in the Capital One Cup semi-final first leg next Tuesday, with the second leg against Sturridge’s former club on 27 January, but the striker is unlikely to be involved. Rodgers said: “You look at his history and it’s very hard to forecast [a return date]. We have seen that in the past. He’s out on the field, he’s working. He was due to come back here towards the final stages of that rehabilitation and that’s where he is at. Hopefully over the next few weeks he will improve on that.”
Adam Lallana and Glen Johnson, however, are close to returning following thigh and groin injuries respectively and could be involved at Aston Villa on Saturday. Lallana was expected to be sidelined until February but has recovered quickly, although Steven Gerrard is doubtful with a tight hamstring that forced his withdrawal at Sunderland last weekend.
Liverpool’s chief executive, Ian Ayre, has confirmed Gerrard could return on loan once he moves to LA Galaxy. The Liverpool captain will end his 26-year association with the club this summer when he departs to the MLS but Ayre has not ruled out the prospect of Gerrard playing for Rodgers’s team again.
“The fact that he’s leaving at the end of the season doesn’t mean it’s the last we’ll see of him at Liverpool,” said the chief executive. “What that means, the details aren’t known yet, but we will keep a regular dialogue with him and I hope we will see him here again in the long term.”
Asked if that could mean a return on loan next January, Ayre said: “It’s conceivable. It happens a lot in MLS and it’s something we talked to Steven and his representatives about. You can’t have someone who has so much of the club’s DNA in them and just expect that it will go away.”It has taken just one word, one word to burst Russell Brand’s revolutionary bubble of being some kind of modern day “Che Guevara.”
One word, and all his pompous verbosity and over-weening self-aggrandizing vanity is turned to great comic effect.
The word is “Parklife” as in the in the 1994 hit song by Blur.
You may recall that tasty toe-tapper—the one where actor Phil Daniels spouts a lot of self important nonsense about nothing much in particular—the kind of drivel that could so easily have splurged out of Russell Brand‘s own mouth:
Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as…
(There’s a game here—spotting which is Brand and which is Blur.)
It all began in response to a tweeted quote from Brand’s book Revolution about the “significance of consciousness.” Earthman Johann tweeted “Parklife” and suddenly Brand’s revolutionary zeal was undone.
Mr. Earthman Johann tweets that “Buzzfeed and the Independent is all very well, but I’ll not rest until Slate have dashed off some hurried analysis of the Parklife meme.”
This was followed on November 2nd by another tweet form Dan Barker:
Russell Brand's writing feels like someone is about to shout "PARKLIFE!" at the end of every sentence. pic.twitter.com/3uio7yrOfo — dan barker (@danbarker) November 2, 2014
From such small beginnings a viral revolution was unleashed. Next up, was a Vine by Alan White that merged song and revolutionary in near perfect harmony.
From then on, nearly everything Brand tweeted was ridiculed by “#Parklife.”
And lo, of course, the inevitable YouTube videos.AUNG SAN SUU KYI IS ONE of the most celebrated human rights icons of our age: Nobel Peace Laureate, winner of the Sakharov Prize, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an Amnesty International-recognized prisoner of conscience for 15 long years.
These days, however, she is also an apologist for genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass rape.
For the past year, Aung San Suu Kyi has been State Counselor, or de facto head of government, in Myanmar, where members of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the northern Rakhine state have been shot, stabbed, starved, robbed, raped and driven from their homes in the hundreds of thousands. In December, while the world focused on the fall of Aleppo, more than a dozen Nobel Laureates published an open letter warning of a tragedy in Rakhine “amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
In February, a report by the United Nations documented how the Burmese army’s attacks on the Rohingya were “widespread as well as systematic” thus “indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.” More than half of the 101 Rohingya women interviewed by UN investigators across the border in Bangladesh said they had suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence at the hands of security forces. “They beat and killed my husband with a knife,” one survivor recalled. “Five of them took off my clothes and raped me. My eight-month old son was crying of hunger when they were in my house because he wanted to breastfeed, so to silence him they killed him too with a knife.”
And the response of A |
clear that the Republic would not replace the People’s Republic of China and as the KMT entered the competitive fray of democratic elections, its rhetoric shifted. It is now a party that prefers to emphasize stability in cross-strait relations rather than call for reunification. Its transition from the establishment party of Mandarin-speaking mandarins from the mainland to a localized party has led to defection from both those who consider it too close to China and those who wish it were closer still. James Soong is one example of the danger to the KMT when its members break away: a former KMT government official, he is running for president as a candidate for the People First Party, and in doing so, he is taking votes that might otherwise have gone to the KMT candidate, Eric Chu. When Soong ran against a KMT candidate in the 2000 presidential elections, it resulted in the election of the country’s first DPP president, Chen Shui-bian.
The KMT’s current predicament stems from a mixture of challenges: the baggage of its history, including massive and controversial party assets; a wave of young people like Mickey Lin whose participation in social movements have caused them to regard the party critically; suspicion about the benefit to Taiwanese of recent cross-strait agreements; the splintering off of other blue-camp parties that take its votes; and public discontent with rising inequality and housing prices under President Ma Ying-jeou. (One middle-aged KMT voter told me that she was too disappointed with the economy under Ma, too unconvinced of Soong’s merit, and too distrustful of Tsai Ing-wen’s cross-strait policies to vote for any of them; she will probably stay away from the voting booth, and she is not alone.) Younger KMT workers also speak of a party that is too bureaucratic and conservative; it is slow, they complain, to send young people out–as the DPP and other parties have done—to speak for their party on television or to run for it in elections. But perhaps the KMT’s most existential challenge, which the election has thrown into sharp relief, is continuing disagreement within the party over relations with China.
Eric Chu’s candidacy is a product of this problem: just three months ago he replaced Hung Hsiu-chu, whose explicitly pro-reunification stance alienated too many mainstream voters to make her viable. Meanwhile, the younger generation of KMT members like Lin Yu-hsiang refer quite naturally to Taiwan as “an island nation”; their support for the KMT comes in part from the belief that its emphasis on cooperative relations will allow Taiwan space to preserve its own way of life. Chin Da-chun, a 26-year-old KMT city councilor’s assistant, tells me at first that reunification is in the constitution, but when I ask him whether he supports it, he smiles and shakes his head. “The older generation definitely does. But times have changed. It’s a family across the straits, sure—but it’s like the father has died, and there are two brothers, and each want to establish their own households.” Even Eric Huang, the young head of the KMT International Affairs Department and a spokesperson for Eric Chu’s presidential campaign, spoke of being of the generation known as ziran du—“naturally independent”—for their unselfconsciously Taiwan-centered identities. It is a view far removed from that of the party that claimed to be the legitimate government of all of China. The KMT and the DPP are local parties and both speak in terms of how to help the island maintain its current way of life: one in which it has a de facto say over its own affairs, if not the name of country. “Our policy with regards to cross-strait…relations is, we’re practical. We do what we have to do to survive,” Huang told me.
Ranged against these mainstream views are people like Wang Ping-chung, a 28-year-old legislator-at-large candidate with the New Party—another blue-camp party founded by former members of the KMT. Wang, a flamboyant character who likes to wear tangzhuang—a modern take on traditional Chinese clothing—has traveled to China with Taiwanese delegations and met Xi Jinping twice. “I never completely identified with the KMT,” he told me. “The reason was that the KMT never dared to speak out and say what their opinion was. For example, ‘I advocate eventual reunification’…they don’t dare to say it. The Chinese Nationalist Party ”—the full name of the KMT—“is Chinese, but if you ask them, ‘Are you Chinese?’ they don’t dare answer.” The most important thing in politics, Wang added forcefully, “is you’ve got to have a position. As I saw it, the KMT became too coward.” For emphasis, he puts the last word in English.
Dr. Hsiao-ting Lin, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, says:
A wild prediction is that the KMT will be split after the election. Those who strongly advocate a closer relationship with the mainland will be united under former presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu. Those who originally belonged to the pro-localization faction, led by [speaker of the Legislative Yuan] Wang Chin-ping, will probably leave the party and merge into other localized, Taiwan-centered political forces. There is also a prediction that within a decade from now, the so-called “pan-Blue” middle-ground force will gradually disappear, and Taiwan will be split into two extremes, pro-independence “pan-Green” and pro-mainland “pan-Red.”
Polling data cannot always predict outcomes, and the KMT might still surprise, especially in the legislative elections. The size and enthusiasm of its pre-election rallies does not suggest a party that is going to sink easily into oblivion. In a January 10 rally in the southern city of Tainan, considered a DPP stronghold, Eric Chu addressed an enthusiastic crowd of thousands, all waving Taiwan’s national flag—the flag of the Republic of China, which includes the white-sun-on-blue-sky of the KMT’s party emblem. Chu spoke in a mixture of Taiwanese and Mandarin about the KMT as the country’s best hope for stability and prosperity. Hung Hsiu-chu, who had introduced him and attacked the DPP—“they oppose, oppose, oppose; they oppose China…the Chinese tourists won’t come and they’ll ask, ‘Why don’t you come anymore?’”—gripped Chu’s hand and raised it skyward, to signal party unity and victory. KMT legislative candidates by their side beamed and bowed; the mood, at that moment, seemed not blue at all. A middle-aged woman in a pink wool coat and surgical mask suddenly detached herself from the crowd and gripped my elbow, leaning in to tell me her version of party history: “The KMT is a party of peace and stability that can be a link between the U.S. and China. Madame Chiang Kai-shek—do you know?—was very close with your America… It is the party that brought money, established the army—and democracy! It is a great party.”Rodney Carmichael's early high school years were awkward. Like many young men, he wasn't sure how to talk to girls.
This was less of a problem for his stepbrother. Although a grade younger, he was bigger and had already become something of a junior high lothario. In fact, he had so many girls' numbers, he didn't know what to do with them all. Some he'd pass to Carmichael, who did what he could to heat things up over the phone.
And that's what got Carmichael into a conversation so awkward, he still remembers it a quarter-century later. (Now 40, he's the staff culture writer at Atlanta's Creative Loafing newspaper.)
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He'd never met the girl in person but recalls that his stepbrother promised she was cute. Even better, she'd seen Carmichael from afar and thought the same thing about him. So their phone call slowly meandered from the getting-to-know-you phase to clumsy high school attempts at flirtation.
Then she asked the question that stopped him in his tracks.
"Do you eat cock?"
Carmichael was confused. To the young black man, everything to that point had suggested a typical teenage heterosexual courtship — but the question threw him for a loop. "I didn't know if she was talking about mine or hers," he remembers. "It was kind of nerve-racking."
His confusion was understandable. He didn't use the word "cock" much himself, but when he heard it used by white folks in the media (HBO movies, old issues of Playboy), it was slang for penis.
When it was used by some of his favorite rappers, however, it meant something else entirely. Take Miami rap act 2 Live Crew. The group — obsessed equally with bass and the female anatomy, and most famous for the hit "Me So Horny" — also had a song called "H.B.C.," in which they chanted:
Head, booty, and cock
What you like, fellas?
Head, booty, and cock
And 2 Live Crew were far from the only rap act talking that way in the 1980s and '90s. For a genre that was, until recently, quite homophobic, many male rappers — including plenty from the West Coast — spent a lot of time talking about their appreciation for cock. And by "cock," they meant vagina.
"When I bust my nut, I'm raisin' up off the cock," Snoop Dogg raps on his iconic 1993 hit "Gin and Juice." In Ice Cube's 1998 track "We Be Clubbin'," he brags about "hitting hairy cock all night long." Lil' Kim, New York's high priestess of hip-hop, once spoke of the wonders of her own, yes, cock.
Puberty is tough for anyone to navigate. When you're a teen, both the guys and the girls expect you to be conversant in sex, even if you have no idea what you're talking about. Since there was no Urban Dictionary back then, all Carmichael could do was bluff.
So perhaps it's no surprise that his fledgling courtship quickly wound down. Nobody's cock was ever eaten.
But Carmichael definitely wasn't alone in his confusion. There were surely many casualties in an era when hip-hop's sudden popularity forced this odd bit of slang into a head-on collision with the broader culture: For one group of people, "cock" referred to the male genitalia. For another, it referenced the female.
If you explain the etymological flexibility of the word "cock" to a group of Americans, their reactions generally fall into one of two distinct categories: utter disbelief or "yeah, duh" nonchalance.
Young people fall almost exclusively into the first category, while older Southerners and black people land in the second.
In pop culture and on the Internet, the Northern, white definition is almost universal. On the aforementioned Urban Dictionary, it's the most popular of three crowd-sourced meanings — the other two being "rooster" and "George W. Bush."
But if you listen to rap from previous decades, you'll hear it used the other way, and from quite unlikely sources. Like Mac Dre, the Vallejo gangsta rapper. He did five years in prison for robbery, and was murdered nine years ago by AK-47 gunfire on a Kansas City highway.
The case is unsolved, but there was no question about his sexual preference. There shouldn't have been, anyway, as his song "How I Got This Name" explains that since his school days he's been loving the women — he'd fuck a schoolgirl's whole clique, in fact.
Still, rapmusic.com commenters weren't convinced. In a 2009 thread called "Was Mac Dre Gay?" one cited lyrics from that same song, which chronicles his conversion to a gigolo:
I fucked a bitch who could fuck and suck good
And after that cock was nothin' to me
So I flipped the script and stopped fuckin' for free.
Mac Dre's former manager, Stretch, who is based in L.A., tells the Weekly that the rapper's preferences were strictly heterosexual. And the lyrics should be interpreted using the slang of the day: "Cock was nothing to me" meant simply that Mac Dre had more pussy than he could handle; "flipped the script" meant only that he became an unlikely male prostitute, charging women for his services.
Everyone, Stretch continues, used "cock" to mean vagina when he was coming up in Northern California; he first heard it at the dawn of the '90s as a middle schooler, and it didn't strike him as strange. "If you hear things in a certain context, it's normal. Anything a grown person said, you thought it was cool."
Adds a commenter on the rapmusic.com thread: "Only recently — like a couple years ago — did niggas start flippin' it to mean dick. It only means dick to you 'cause that's the only way YOU have ever heard it."A terrible tragedy befell the nation’s capital yesterday, when a shooter opened fire at government sites in Ottawa. A full investigation must begin to assemble the details, as the flames of hysteria are fanned in the public consciousness. The words “terror” and “terrorism” have been tossed around so casually, that nowadays any hardened criminal would classify as a terrorist according to the Harper Government and mainstream news sources. For that matter, political activists who take issue with the government’s policies at home and abroad are referenced in the same manner.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, social media is rife with suspicion that this horrendous event may represent a false flag operation, to assist the government’s dismantling of civil liberty and human rights in the name of war, profit, political posturing and public control.
That’s not to say this wasn’t an act of terrorism. Maybe it was, but surely it’s too early to reach a conclusion when the names of suspects hadn’t been released to hypothesize a motive. Or had they?
At 10:13am EDT, The Globe and Mail‘s Josh Wingrove reported that tactical officers were pointing guns at every parliamentary journalist on site. (Via Twitter)
At 12:11pm EDT, The CBC’s Kady O’Malley reported her group was ordered to leave a local rooftop by police, as they continued to search for a culprit and attempted to secure the area.
By 1:14pm EDT, Ms. O’Malley reported a continuing lockdown that blanketed Ottawa. She was unclear if the event was over, as no further information was available.
While Canadian news personalities were at police gunpoint, American outlets like CBS News and the Associated Press had a full story to sell, complete with the dead shooter’s name.
Before the scene was secure at 10:54am EDT, a joint release was published to identify the culprit. It stated,
“The gunmen has been identified by U.S. officials to CBS News as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian national born in 1982.”
By 4:58pm EDT, the story was edited to remove the shooter’s name, or any mention of the U.S. government’s knowledge.
The only problem is that no one could update the Google database quick enough with these changes, so the original information still appeared with search results.
This story was altered again in the evening, when the Canadian government allowed the name of a shooter to be released and American media added law enforcement to their list of official sources. They also added a middle name, Abdul, to emphasize the suspect’s Islamic ties with an accusation of terrorism.
As members of parliament begin to piece this tragedy together, they’re advised to inquire how American intelligence knew the name of a ‘possible terrorist’ as the mayhem was still unfolding. How did Americans know when Canadians didn’t, and how was the information so widespread that foreign media and Google had access to distribute, but domestic reporters on the scene did not.
Canadian parliamentary bureau chiefs didn’t posses the same information as their U.S. counterparts and they faced the barrel of police guns as a narrative was provided on their behalf by another country. If this is dubbed an act of terrorism that American sources had knowledge to pre-report, then why weren’t steps taken to prevent the violence?
Many have questioned how a gunman could enter parliament with a rifle unnoticed, despite the massive security and busy lineups. Some are calling for greater state police control and warmed to relinquishing their Charter rights, in an effort to fight the new war on domestic terrorism. Something has to justify police militarization since the War on Drugs has been transformed into a lucrative product of capitalism.
All Canadians who pay attention to the news are acutely aware of a creeping police state and the loss of privacy rights in the tradeoff. In fact, one Liberal MP, Joyce Murray, proposed Bill C-622 to gain oversight of CSIS and CSEC, so law enforcement can’t overstep its bounds to the degree that’s been revealed through Snowden leaks.
This shooting event also occurs at a time when the Mayor of Ottawa is seeking re-election, with a history of accommodating CSEC as a business partner.
The journalist who brought these Snowden leaks to light is in town to promote his new book about the overreaching powers of a surveillance state. Glenn Greenwald will be speaking just a few blocks from Parliament Hill, in the same neighbourhood that’s under lockdown. It’s purely coincidental that he wrote a scathing piece about the Canadian government and co-dependent media’s abuse of the word “terrorism” a day earlier.
Meanwhile, the NDP noticed a different terrorism anomaly regarding the violence in Quebec on the day before as well. The Prime Minister’s Office was accused of planting a foreboding comment in Question Period, that preempted police reports of a “possible terror attack against soldiers”.
Public Safety Minster Steve Blaney reported the Monday event was “clearly linked to terrorist ideology”, but the Toronto Star reported multiple witnesses saw the suspect with his hands in the air, when at least one police officer opened fire. They also say a knife was “lodged into the ground near where the incident occurred”.
Well, that’s what the original story by Allan Woods, Bruce Campion-Smith, Joanna Smith, Tonda MacCharles and Les Whittington stated. A syndicated copy had to be located at the Cambridge Times, because a newer, edited version at the Toronto Star appeared dramatically altered by Tuesday.
Forsaking journalism ethics, the Toronto Star surprised industry watchers by editing this story without providing a notice to reflect the consequential changes. Now the article claims the suspect was an Islamic radical, who emerged from the vehicle with a knife in his hands. There is no mention of any witnesses who saw his hands in the air and the knife was no longer lodged in the ground. All information from witnesses was removed without explanation, or apology for reporting incorrectly at the onset, if indeed the witnesses were mistaken. The French press at TVA still values the eye witness accounts, but no English speaking media reflects these reports from the scene.
This TorStar article was more than edited and qualifies as being replaced entirely, having lost its tone, facts and spirit from the original published version. It was radically changed to support the government’s narrative and censored independent sources that previously appeared, replacing them with quotes from the Harper administration that focus on the suspect’s motive for Islamic terrorism.
If it wasn’t for smaller newspapers syndicating the Toronto Star‘s original content, there would be no proof of the first comprehensive version. Professional journalists don’t normally condone editors changing the spirit of their work without a caveat, especially when five reporters collaborated to produce the same entry. The history created by print newspapers also couldn’t be erased with the click of a button, before the press migrated to internet-based reporting that appears to lack mechanisms of accountability.
These two examples oppose each other due to the disparity between facts and there is no footnote to reflect this glaring incongruency. The Toronto Star has been a leader in journalism ethics and wouldn’t alter published pieces to discredit their own reporting without a reason being provided. That is, until they and a bevy of established journalists who remained silent, had a taste of the politics of fear.
Any reasonable person should be afraid when gunshots are flying from hostile individuals, but will fear be allowed to dictate a terrorism narrative in place of the facts? The Opposition’s privacy and ethics critic, MP Charlie Angus, also describes gunshots around 10am EDT, while American media had solved the event by 10:54am EDT and members of parliament were being detained without access to the same information.
If the U.S government could assess a terrorist attack on Canadian soil before the Canadian government was aware, then why was it not prevented? On the same token, if the Canadian government was in the middle of mayhem, then how did Americans obtain information that wasn’t available to affected bureaucrats, from their own intelligence and law enforcement agencies? What powers does America have over Canada that Canada doesn’t have itself? If a shooting on government property can be solved before it’s even finished, then why wasn’t CSIS, CSEC, DHS and the NSA capable of early intervention? After all, the Wednesday shooter was already placed on the government’s watch-list.
The timing is incredible and may very well be motivated by the war against ISIS/ISIL. Canada shed its peacekeeping status for more aggressive combat that generates profits for the Canada Pension Plan, with the potential to invite ideological backlash. This is not disputed. An unbiased investigation is required, but the public should be patient for confirmed, judicial facts; bearing in mind political motives, various narratives and the race to sell fear.
On the very day terrorism was alleged in Quebec, the Harper Government passed Bill C-13 without much notice from the peanut gallery. Until Monday, Bill C-13 was one of the most controversial pieces of legislation that was presented under the guise of cyber-bullying, but even the mother of Amanda Todd spoke against the exploitation of her daughter’s death as a tool to create a warrantless surveillance state in this vein.
Due to terrorism accusations made by the Harper Government that took up most of the day, no mainstream news reported the bill’s passage later in the same day. CBC was the only major outlet to mention the bill on Monday, but they neglected to note the House of Commons vote or passage of this legislation at any point in the story. They presented the information as incremental progress while failing to report its successful, parliamentary completion.
This too presents a problem with ethical journalism, but CBC has seen its fair share of challenges since the Harper Government appointed ten Conservative donors to the board of directors, with influence over the public broadcaster’s direction.
Regardless, the only mention of Bill C-13 passing arises from a Saanich News editorial. The smaller publication urges everyone to be vigilant as this legislation completes the last step of approval (ascent) with senate, that is dominated by a Conservative majority.
Surprisingly, the senate passed a first reading of Bill C-13 the very next day. It accomplished that hurdle expediently on Tuesday, but this wasn’t reported by any source whatsoever. Senators then scheduled a second reading in two days’ time, on Thursday, October 23, 2014. The only lapse in this process was the Wednesday parliamentary shooting.
By today Bill C-13 may see the quickest passage through any bureaucracy in the democratic world, without the public or media noticing and while legislators are reeling from the ominous smell of gun smoke. Neither the parliamentary reporters who stared down the barrel of a police gun on Tuesday, nor the members of parliament who were barricaded, would be rested very well.
Plus there’s an RCMP press conference about the Wednesday shooting that will surely distract attention from the new law. In the days ahead, it’s likely they’ll tout Bill C-13 as a way to catch terrorists, also under the guise of cyberbulling and even though being watch-listed with preexisting surveillance powers didn’t prevent Michael Zehaf-Bibeau from taking action.
This brings us to what’s at stake. The taboo that nobody wants to evaluate. The decision senators will have to make while recovering from a psychologically traumatic breach of personal security.
We’re talking about public data surveillance, or what closely resembles stalking.
There are plenty of ambiguous words used to describe big data monitoring, but few understand what it means or how deeply it’s abused behind the sealed doors at CSEC. Warrantless internet surveillance has the potential to track a target’s GPS movements with updating by the minute. It can penetrate the entire chain of communication between an individual and their contacts, including strangers who make reference to the target by any degree of separation across the world wide web. The technology has predictive behaviour capabilities. Every citizen caught in this widespread dragnet is psychologically assessed through language semantics and assigned a persuasion, to determine if any of them presents a public relations issue, or if the original target has too much influence to garner support for their business, political and/or social beliefs.
Five Eyes governments have established media surveillance programs specifically. They surveil news topics and journalists, to monitor the reporter’s effect on public perception. When anyone posts a news link on any form of social media, all comments are collected and ranked for government and law enforcement dissemination. Canada spent $20 million and hired 3,300 staff to spy on journalists and political opponents since 2012. The European Commission and United States does the same, in this vacuum of nonexistent legislation to protect the public’s privacy in the modern age. Instead of updating constitutional rights to reflect modern technology, they’ve crafted legislation like Bill C-13 that revokes those rights entirely.
This goes beyond the confines of metadata and only the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario has taken up the cause, likely to the chagrin of political parties that have begun to use similar technology against their opponents during elections. Whatever good this intrusive spying could accomplish is outweighed by the bad. Michael Sona only possessed a list of phone numbers and intentions, let alone mapping of the entire public’s thoughts and updates on the location of political foes by the minute.
If anyone physically tailed a political candidate, volunteer or supporter every minute of the day and night, or attempted to record every one of their exchanges, it would be considered criminal harassment. If that person also tailed every contact who spoke about their target and psychologically assessed them to create charts, it would surpass Hollywood’s fascination with the complex plotting of serial offenders.
But this isn’t fiction and warrantless internet surveillance can be used to harm a civilian, based on their political beliefs. In the United States it’s already used to surveil judges, adding a difficult challenge to the essence and appearance of democracy. The dialogue is strictly controlled to conceal these uses and they’re couched in the terrorist argument, to discourage the public from searching deeper.
Residents have been told if they don’t break the law, there is nothing to fear. This subverts any purpose of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and replaces that document with a Trust Me clause from the government. It replaces the core legal relationship between citizens and law enforcement, with unrestrained power and no oversight to justify its use. It imperils evidentiary laws that are designed to protect the innocent.
Beyond the dry language of legislation, this is how the words of Bill C-13 can be utilized by an aggressive government and the Five Eyes intelligence community. Suggested reading provides the history and development of technology and related policies in Canada, the United States and Europe. It was becoming law in Canada when the airwaves were filled with terrorism accusations and the government expected no one would notice. It also relates to media surveillance that could explain a few altered stories, deleted posts and political misunderstanding.
Edit, November 22, 2014: Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette published a diary of events during the Ottawa shooting, while barricaded in an office with numerous colleagues. Her honest and forthright account also challenges the Harper government and American explanations. The timed entries conflict with media reports, as documented above. She further includes mention of a second shooter.[9:32 p.m. ET] At least four people have been killed in the tornadoes that struck western Massachusetts on Wednesday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said.
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[8:25 p.m. ET] Severe storms - including tornadoes - have left behind "many injuries" and extensive damage in western and central Massachusetts on Wednesday, Gov. Deval Patrick said.
Patrick also said he's received a report one person has died as as result of the storms. He said he has declared a state of emergency for Massachusetts and called up 1,000 National Guard members, who will be asked to help with cleanup and search-and-rescue operations.
"It's been particularly devastating in downtown Springfield," he said.
Patrick said he was asking school superintendents in affected communities to cancel Thursday classes so that rescue and recovery personnel could concentrate on cleanup.
The National Weather Service has said it received three reports of tornadoes in Massachusetts on Wednesday: at least one near Springfield; one near Palmer; and one near Sturbridge and Oxford.
Sandra Ahearn, a spokeswoman for the Western Massachusetts Electric Co., said 12,000 customers were without power in the utility's service area and that hard-hit areas might not have electricity until the end of the week.
[7:50 p.m. ET] Trained weather spotters reported a tornado near Sturbridge, Massachusetts, at 7:25 p.m. ET, bringing to at least three the number of tornadoes that have been reported in the state Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
By 7:35 p.m., the suspected tornado was located near Oxford, Massachusetts, moving east at 30 mph.
[6:53 p.m. ET] Local law enforcement reported a tornado caused widespread damage near Palmer, Massachusetts, about 14 miles northeast of Springfield. The tornado was moving east at 35 mph, the National Weather Service said.
[4:51 p.m. ET] Witnesses reported a tornado near downtown Springfield, Massachusetts, on Wednesday as heavy thunderstorms swept through western Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service.
Police and amateur radio operators said tornadoes were spotted in a Springfield neighborhood and within a half-mile of downtown, according to a warning put out by the Weather Service. No confirmation of damage or injuries was immediately known, however.
Springfield is about 90 miles west of Boston.Although Microsoft has now brought Skype for Business to Windows Phone, its own business customers—those who subscribe to Office 365—may be disappointed to learn that one key feature hasn’t yet been implemented: conversation syncing.
Skype for Business has already replaced Lync on desktop PCs and the Web, and Windows Phone 8.1 phones will automatically download the new Skype for Business app to replace Lync 2013. (Windows Phone 8.0 users can continue using Lync 2013 or Lync 2010; those phones won’t be able to update to the new app.)
Given the fact that a phone has limited space with which to work, one change that Microsoft has made to the app is to “wall off” extraneous conversations. If a new message arrives on your phone, you’ll have the option to answer it without other clients' grabbing the conversation, Microsoft said. Microsoft has also encrypted your conversation and voice mail history by default.
One of the complaints Skype users have had, however, is that conversations that roam between various platforms don’t sync appropriately, meaning that you might end up with notifications being sent to your PC some time before they arrive on your phone. Microsoft apparently solved that problem, provided you’re running the latest server software—just not for Office 365 users. That capability will be coming soon, the company said.
Otherwise, the new Skype for Business app for Windows Phone features the Skype UI and 100 new emoticons, to give it a bit of extra punch.
Last week the Skype for Business team previewed a “broadcast” feature that will allow meetings to be shown to up to 10,000 participants. The app now also works with traditional telephones, so that users can simply dial in to conference calls.
Why this matters: To its credit, Microsoft has launched Skype for Business on Windows Phone, ahead of iOS and Android—not always the case, to be sure. Still, I suspect that some IT admins wish that Microsoft would get its ducks in a row before releasing the Windows Phone app. Not knowing where you are in a business conversation can give the appearance that you’re unprofessional—and it’s also just plain annoying.Story highlights Sheikh Abdul Hasib led ISIS in Afghanistan
Troops carried out raid April 27 in Nagarhar Province
(CNN) The ISIS leader in Afghanistan, Sheikh Abdul Hasib, was killed in an April 27 raid conducted by Afghan special security forces and US troops, Afghan and US authorities said Sunday.
Fifty US Army rangers and 40 Afghan commandos were dropped by helicopter into Nangarhar Province, within a mile or so of the site where the United States dropped the MOAB, or "mother of all bombs, " on April 13.
JUST WATCHED US drops'mother of all bombs' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH US drops'mother of all bombs' 01:45
Within minutes, the rangers were surrounded by heavy fire, the Pentagon said, causing the soldiers to call in support from an AC-130 aircraft, F-16s, drones and Apache helicopters.
The Pentagon said Hasib was the target of the attack, but didn't confirm his death until Sunday.
The raid also resulted in the deaths of several other high ranking leaders of ISIS-K, the terror group's regional branch, and 35 ISIS fighters. Two American soldiers died in the attack, perhaps from friendly fire, the Pentagon said.
Read MoreDoug Ford's new book on the rise and fall of his late brother doesn't tell us much we didn't already know about the Ford years. Despite his thunderous pre-publication threats to call out their media foes and "rock the political world," this is, for the Fords, a mild tell-little memoir with none of the revelations readers might expect from someone who saw the Ford drama from the inside. Still, its release comes as a timely reminder of how potent populism can be and how badly it can go wrong.
It was only two weeks ago that Donald Trump shocked the world by winning election as 45th president of the United States. How could this have happened? How did all the journalists and pollsters and experts miss what was going on? As the results came in and Mr. Trump claimed victory, it was hard not to think back six years to the night when Rob Ford greeted cheering crowds after winning election as the 64th mayor of Toronto.
More from Marcus Gee
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Discontent that fuelled Trump's rise had been brewing for years
Trump has crashed the Republican Party, and it'll never be the same
Ford Nation's populism prevailed in the past – why couldn't it again?
No one expected that either. When Rob Ford decided to run for mayor in 2010, he was discounted as a long-odds bet. A cranky suburban councillor known for his rants about cyclists, streetcars, potholes and wasteful spending, he had none of the gravitas you might expect in a serious candidate for mayor. But people didn't want gravitas. They wanted change.
Toronto had recently come through a strike by city workers that seemed to underline the failure of the usual politicians to tackle Toronto's problems, from its chronic budget struggles to its underbuilt public transit. Mr. Ford stood out in early election debates, hammering home his message of respect for the taxpayer. He had a direct way about him that came as a gust of fresh air in a world grown tired of buttoned-down, scripted politicians.
Many voters didn't seem to mind that he had a history of dodgy behaviour, such as a drunk-driving episode or an abusive tirade aimed at some fellow fans at a hockey game. They didn't care that he was often outrageous. That's what they liked about him. It made them believe he would shake things up.
Many of his followers lived in Toronto's troubled inner suburbs. Like the rural and working-class white Americans who helped boost Mr. Trump to victory, they felt left behind and shut out. When Rob and Doug poured scorn on the pampered downtown elite, "Ford Nation" cheered. Trump followers cheered their champion for a similar message.
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The parallels between the rise of these two figures – boastful mavericks vowing to run government like a business – continue to astonish. Both rode to success on a wave of discontent at traditional politics. Both had punchy, simplistic slogans ("Stop the gravy train" and "Make America great again"). Both won over many voters with their direct, unguarded, sometimes crude way of speaking. Both lashed out at the media when under scrutiny. Both surprised just about everyone by bursting out of the backfield and vanquishing more established opponents. Mr. Ford's movement was in many ways a forerunner, on a much smaller scale, of the Trump phenomenon. Doug Ford tells the tale in Ford Nation: Two Brothers, One Vision – The True Story of the People's Mayor, published Tuesday.
Doug says that he and his brother started to work on the book last winter, but Rob's declining health forced him to opt out. He died of cancer in March. Doug wants to show readers that his brother was not "a drug-fuelled, out-of-control monster," but a good, if flawed, person devoted to helping others.
Whether he was a successful mayor is another question. Things went well for him at first. He recorded a series of wins, from cancelling an unpopular tax to getting public transit declared an essential service.
But his failure to observe simple rules of conduct and reach out to political rivals soon led to troubles, from conflict-of-interest and integrity complaints to a botched attempt to redraw Toronto's transit-building blueprints. This was not, as Doug would have it, the doing of the "vultures" in the media or an establishment that refused to give the Fords a break. His wounds were self-inflicted.
We all know how the story turned out. Doug says that he was as shocked as anyone when reports came out of a video showing Rob appearing to smoke crack cocaine. Rob called the whole thing "ridiculous." Doug says he was shocked anew when, months later, Rob finally admitted he had smoked crack, "probably in one of my drunken stupors."
What can we learn from the Ford saga that might apply to the Trump story? Despite all the parallels, they are different men in wildly different positions. Mr. Trump, for one thing, will have the nuclear codes.
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The saga is cautionary all the same. It teaches at least a couple of lessons. First, it is dangerous to underestimate the voters and their discontents. Give people the power to choose their leaders, and they are going to surprise you sometimes. Second, it is dangerous to hand power to a loose cannon on the hope that power will moderate him.
Long before Donald Trump came along, Rob Ford showed both the power and the perils of populism.Coimbatore/CHENNAI: Police arrested 30 Hindu Munnani members for conducting ghar wapsi (homecoming) event at Thudiyalur, near Coimbatore, on Friday evening. Four members of a Christian family were "reconverted" to Hinduism at the event. The incident comes |
what I thought would be pretty good money. But when I started calling card shops, I started to understand how the industry had plummeted. In fact, most of the shops I called were out of business. Then I went on Craigslist and eBay and saw what cards were fetching—nothing. The cards were basically worthless cardboard. That’s when I got interested in looking into the world of baseball cards and writing about it. The idea was to find out where the cards came from, and where they went. The industry is not what it was when I was a kid. Baseball cards are not a hallmark of childhood anymore.
What was the impetus for baseball card collecting becoming wildly popular in the first place?
Everything started happening in the early 1980s. At that point baseball cards had already been around a hundred years. But in the late seventies and early eighties a group of prescient collectors started traveling the country buying up collections and doing shows. This was at a time when most cards were still believed to be worthless, and mothers threw a lot of them in the garbage. These guys snatched them up and a market developed. The cards soon became valuable—not like the prices we’d see later—but you’d see a Mickey Mantle rookie card sell for a thousand dollars, which in the seventies was a huge amount of money. That’s when price guides like Beckett’s began to appear, and things started to steamroll. People started to see that the cards from the 1950s and ’60s had become valuable (because most of them had been thrown out and they were rare). But people began applying that mentality to new cards, and started stowing cards away as investments.
Then in the 1980s, the mainstream financial press—like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times—started hyping baseball cards, comparing them to stocks and bonds. There was a time where it looked like you couldn’t go wrong, but it was a bubble forming. Finally, in the early nineties everyone started to recognize that the cards were just collectibles—that they were not investments and not as scarce as we were led to believe. The card companies weren’t disclosing how many cards they were manufacturing, but they were making billions.
What role did Upper Deck play in changing the market?
Upper Deck harnessed the cards-as-investments concept. [In 1989] they began rolling out flashy, sleek-looking cards that were meant to be seen as investments. Before they even produced any cards they were calling what they had in the works “cardboard gold,” and they went gung-ho on selling a more expensive product and selling as much as possible. It went well for four years or so, but they soon suffered along with everybody else.
Why did the baseball card bubble burst?
I talked to an executive at Fleer who said that the downfall of the hobby was greed. It was greed on the part of card makers because they rolled out so much product that it diluted the power of the cards and killed the golden goose. It was greed on the part of the baseball union, because they sold a lot of rights—and made a lot of royalties on those rights—until they had too many card makers. Then you had greed on the part of dealers, surly guys who didn’t care to talk to the nine year olds who came into their shops, and were there just to sell cards. Finally, collectors were swallowing up everything thinking it was going to turn to gold. Everyone got their just dessert in the end when the whole industry crashed. The nail in the coffin was the [1994] baseball strike. Collectors soured on the sport and fan resentment was off the charts. A lot of people got out at that point.
Are all the big-name manufacturers of the boom era—Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, and Donruss—still producing baseball cards?
At this point it’s just Topps. Last year Major League Baseball (MLB) decided they were only going to renew their contract with Topps. Part of the reason the industry failed is because so many different companies rolled out so many different sets that the hobby became sprawling and hard to wrap your hands around. Part of what MLB wants to do is to streamline everything.
What else might be done to resurrect the industry?
They have to figure out how to get kids to collect baseball cards again, and it’s really hard now because you have incredible video games and the Internet. But Topps has made a little headway. They have simplified their card line and slashed prices. And they have added an online element to some of their sets. One that has sold pretty well has a fantasy baseball component where you can compete with your friends based on the cards you’ve got. But it’s a very difficult road ahead. There is so much competing for a kid’s attention that it’s hard to give them a stack of cardboard and expect them to spend a day on that stuff.
Dave Jamieson's Web site
See also: Why scoring baseball is becoming a lost artTOURISM bosses in York have been left disgusted by a brutal attack on two Spanish visitors to the city.
The couple were assaulted by a five-man gang while out in the New Street area in the early hours of Sunday.
The 24-year-old man suffered a broken jaw, chipped teeth and bruising.
The thugs repeatedly pushed his girlfriend, 29, to the ground while they punched and kicked him during a prolonged attack.
Police believe the couple - whose ordeal ended when a passing taxi driver came to their aid - were targeted because they were foreign.
A spokeswoman for Visit York said they were worried by the incident and said the organisation would do all it could to ensure the city was safe for foreign visitors.
Kay Hyde, head of communications at Visit York, said: “We’re appalled and very concerned to hear this news. Our thoughts are currently with the young couple who we hope will recover from this awful attack.
“It’s rare to hear of this in York, which makes this all the more shocking.
“We’re working with the Safer York Partnership in the city to offer our full support.”
Last month, York was voted the world’s safest city for a short break in a poll of 2,075 tourists.
Police and tourism chiefs stress violent assaults on tourists in the city are rare.
Officers are now reviewing CCTV from the city centre to help identify the suspects.
All were white, in their early twenties, and had close-shaved haircuts.
PC Sophie Wilson, of the York Safer Neighbourhood Team, said: “This is a very disturbing incident which will quite rightly shock the local community in York and those who regard the city as a friendly and safe place to visit.
“We are doing everything we can to investigate this case and bring those responsible to justice.
“We are also providing support to the young couple from Spain who have had their stay tarnished in the most sickening and vicious way.
“The victims are extremely grateful to the taxi driver for having the decency to stop and help when they were in a very frightening situation.”
Police have appealed to the taxi driver or anyone who has information which could help the investigation to contact them on 101.
They can also ring Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.Speaker series helmed by local NPR veterans comes to Sonoma
John McChesney’s daughter was up from Los Angeles in August, visiting her father in Bennett Valley, when she started talking about a recent storytelling event she’d attended put on by The Moth, a popular spoken-word program featured in podcasts and on radio.
That conversation planted the seed that became the Sonoma Speaker Series, co-founded by McChesney, a veteran former National Public Radio correspondent and Sonoma resident Alex Chadwick, a longtime former NPR host who helped create the “Morning Edition” program.
The series kicked off in October before a sold-out crowd of up to 400 people at Sonoma’s Hanna Boys Center. The pre-election conversation, moderated by McChesney and Chadwick, featured two longtime NPR political correspondents, Ken Rudin and Neal Conan.
“The genesis of it was that Sonoma doesn’t really have anything like this,” said McChesney, who helped develop NPR’s first national and foreign reporting desks. “But there are a lot of people there who are smart, retired and interested in having something like this in their backyard.”
Planning began just six weeks before the Oct. 17 event, and it couldn’t have happened without the help of Kathy Witkowicki, founder of Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance, and McChesney’s wife, Wendy von Wiederhold, interim executive director of A Home Within, a national nonprofit organization that provides psychological counseling to foster children.
“Alex and I were just thinking we’d get on stage and interview people and it’ll be great,” McChesney said. “Unfortunately it takes a lot more work than that.”
McChesney and Chadwick are sourcing speakers mainly through the extensive web of contacts they made in their journalism careers.
“We intend to exploit those,” McChesney said.
Next in the lineup is Randy Thom, director of sound design at Skywalker Sound, a division of Lucasfilm.
Thom is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. today at the Hanna Boy’s Center. His talk will revolve around his decades working in sound design, including his time spent on the sound for “The Right Stuff” and “The Incredibles,” for which he won Academy Awards, and “The Revenant,” for which he won a BAFTA award, handed out by Britain’s film and television academy.
Ideally, the series will feature about six speakers a year who cater to a general audience, McChesney said, and be modeled after San Francisco’s City Arts & Lectures or the MPSF Speaker Series in Marin, Oakland and the Peninsula.
The third speaker hasn’t been announced yet, but McChesney said the conversation will likely take place in February.
You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 707-521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @SeaWarren.New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices were on Monday slashed by Rs 2 per litre each as international oil prices slumped to a five-year low.
This is the eighth straight reduction in petrol prices since August, and the fourth straight in diesel since October. New rates will be effective from the midnight of December 15 and 16, Indian Oil Corp, the country's largest fuel retailer, announced here.
In Delhi, petrol will cost Rs 61.33 a litre - the lowest in 44 months - as compared to the current price of Rs 63.33. The price has been cut by Rs 2.09 a litre in Mumbai to Rs 68.86.
Rates differ from state to state because of varied rates of local sales tax or VAT.
Diesel will cost Rs 50.51 a litre in Delhi - the lowest since July 2013 - as against Rs 52.51 currently. In Mumbai, it will cost Rs 57.91 per litre as compared to Rs 60.11.
The prices of petrol and diesel were last revised downwards on December 1 by 91 paise per litre and 84 paise per litre, respectively, (including state levies at Delhi) on the back of declining international oil prices.
After Monday's reduction, petrol price has been cut by a cumulative Rs 12.27 per litre since August.
Diesel price was brought down for the first time in more than five years on October 19 by Rs 3.37 a litre when the government decided to deregulate the fuel. This was followed by a Rs 2.25 a litre reduction on November 1 and 84 paise per litre on December 1.
Cumulatively, diesel prices have been cut by Rs 8.46 a litre in four reductions.
There would have been another reduction on November 15 but the government mopped up, raising excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 1.50 a litre each.
In the two excise duty hikes, the government has raised its revenue by Rs 10,600 crore this fiscal year.
"The prices of petrol and diesel were last revised downwards with effect from December 1 by Rs 0.91 per litre and Rs 0.84 a litre respectively (including state levies at Delhi) on the back of declining international oil prices," Indian Oil said in a statement.
"Since the above price changes, the international prices of both petrol and diesel have continued to be on a downtrend. The Rupee-US Dollar exchange rate has however appreciated since the last price change. The combined impact of both these factors warrant a decrease in retail selling prices of both petrol and diesel."
The movement of prices in international oil market and rupee-dollar exchange rate shall continue to be closely monitored and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes, it added.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
Sure, it’s great that manufacturers are offering fuel-economy specials of existing compact and subcompact, non-hybridized models. Not only does such a concept improve mileage without compromising driving dynamics by adding heavy batteries and electric motors, but they’re cheap when compared to their gas-electric brethren, too. That’s why we’re intrigued by Elio Motors, a startup promising a brand-new fuel-miser for the cost of a decade-old Toyota Corolla.
Yes, for the low, low cost of $6800, you can have yourself an Elio 3-Wheeler: a two-seat three-wheeler powered by a 900-cc three-cylinder that’s estimated to deliver 84 mpg on the highway. Elio says that its eight-gallon fuel tank is enough to get one of its cars from Detroit to New York, some 650 miles away, without refueling.
Founder Paul Elio believes that at this price point, his brand could see annual sales of 250,000. To help meet this goal, Elio purchased a million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, formerly inhabited by General Motors.
So far, Elio has received more than 12000 orders. That’s nowhere near the brand’s theoretical production capacity, but it’s not an insignificant number for an automaker that’s yet to sell a single car. With production expected to begin this December, we’ll be eager to see how that number grows.A devil-worshiping group hell-bent on hosting a satanic black mass is planning to go ahead with its controversial ceremony this month, despite fervent protests by residents of Oklahoma City and a lawsuit from the Catholic Church.
The co-founder of Dakhma of Angra Mainyu told ABC News that the religious and educational organization decided to hold the black mass in public but it will be a “tamer” version than some traditional satanic ceremonies by, for example, substituting vinegar for acts involving urine to comply with state health laws.
The upcoming event has generated controversy because black masses mock Christianity and the rituals that make up their services but organizers see it as an integral part of their religion.
"One of the dictates of the church is not only to educate the members but to educate the public,” Dakhma of Angra Mainyu’s Adam Daniels said, “and to debunk the Hollywood-projected image of our beliefs.”
Daniels said all 88 tickets to the Sept. 21 event – held at the theater in the city’s civic center - have been sold. The parks and recreation department, which rented the space to the group for $420, cited First Amendment protections in allowing the group to meet in a public facility.
Satanists Use Hobby Lobby Decision to Play Devil's Advocate
PHOTO: New York-based Satanic Temple Plans to Erect This Statue of Satan
"Mr. Daniels must abide by our local ordinances, our fire codes and all of our state laws," Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Jennifer Lindsey-McClintock told ABC News. "No bloodletting of any kind will be allowed.”
A $17.50 ticket buys participants a front-row seat to the festivities, which include a performance from the band “God in a Machine” and readings that call for the renunciation of God. Male participants and audience members are encouraged to wear black, hooded, full-length robes, but evening wear is also appropriate for spectators.
Anthony Briggman, an assistant professor of theology at Emory University in Atlanta, explained that the general motivating principles behind satanic groups – including Dakhma of Angra Mainyu – is to “parody” Roman Catholic liturgy by “demonstrating their opposition to orthodox Christian beliefs and practices.”
“The line between parody and mockery is a fuzzy one and it is unclear to me on which side of the line they usually fall,” he said of satanic groups in general.
“The goal seems to be to acquire some of the spiritual power [and] magic that they associate with the Roman Catholic ritual of transubstantiation, the transformation of the Eucharistic bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ,” Briggman said.
Co-founder Daniels said the Sept. 21 ceremony will take place before an altar-like table where a woman in lingerie lies (another concession to reflect the state's nudity laws).
The culmination of the event comes when the Dakhma of Angra Mainyu deacons and priest stomp on the, in this case, unconsecrated host and spit on it. Daniels said organizers will wear profane costumes, use explicit language and desecrate the fake host, which Catholics believe is a form of the resurrected Christ.
Professor Briggman said that in other instances, he has “heard the reports of ritualistic practices of sex, bloodletting, and sacrifice... but it is unclear to me how much these reports are hyperbole designed to capture the attention of the press and public.”
Daniels said the Oklahoma City ceremony will wrap up with a Satanic exorcism intended to draw the Holy Spirit from the follower's body, which contrasts with traditional exorcisms that are designed to expel the devil from the individual.
"Our practices have gotten it to about 22 to 25 minutes," Daniels said of the ritual.
Additional controversy has surrounded this particular event because the Oklahoma City Archdiocese filed a lawsuit against Daniels' group after media reports that he was in possession of a consecrated host, a wafer that some Catholics believe is literally the body of Christ.
The host in question has since been handed over to the archdiocese and the legal action has been stopped, but that has not put all of the Archbishop’s concerns to rest.
"I remain concerned about the dark powers that this satanic worship invites into our community and the spiritual danger that this poses to all who are involved in it, directly or indirectly," Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a statement.Marshawn Lynch never gives interviews, but has several of the NFL's most famous quotes. He says over and over again he wants to avoid media attention, but gets called an attention-seeker. His job description includes getting tackled, but he inflicts more pain than the tacklers.
Marshawn Lynch makes so little sense in this world that wherever he goes, he leaves a trail of fascinating things in his wake. Sometimes they're weird words. Sometimes they're brutalized defenders. We can't hope to understand him, but we've tried to compile all the wonderful, strange, and good things about Marshawn Lynch in one post. This is the Marshawn Lynch Encyclopedia.
Bear Grylls
In 2016, Lynch went on an adventure with Bear Grylls for his NBC show Running Wild, which mostly consisted of Lynch reacting in disbelief to the things he and Grylls had to do Corsican Mountains -- like hunting a wild hog and making a fire from Lynch's dreads.
It made for a great buddy comedy, which sometimes became heartfelt. We know Lynch has been reluctant to talk to the media, but Grylls managed to get some insight on his social welfare work, and why he left football (until 2017, when he agreed to sign with the pre-Vegas Raiders.)
Beast Mode
The first recorded instance of Lynch's "Beast Mode" comes from this pre-draft interview. Lynch is asked about his attitude. He firmly responds with "BEAST MODE, on the field."
Although he coined the phrase earlier. As he explained in an interview with NFL Countdown his second season in the league:
It came about one of my coaches always called me a beast, from Pop Warner. And it kinda stuck with me. So when I got up to the league, that was my mindstate. That I was going to be a beast. I took it and ran with it.
By the end of his first NFL season, he already had a grill with the phrase.
The meaning of the phrase varies. Sometimes, it's a nickname for Lynch. Sometimes, it's the bruising, take-no-prisoners style with which he runs. Sometimes it's specific runs he's made.
Lynch's definition for the phrase fluctuates as well. From a 2014 profile by Kevin Fixler:
"Beast Mode, it's part of the lifestyle," he says later. "It's pretty much self-explanatory. It gets thrown around loosely, I mean, all over. It's not set to one specific thing like we're football players or basketball players. Just if you are in your everyday life and you feel like you just accomplished something big that you had going on, then that's Beast Mode. It's an accomplishment, that you put yourself through something to get something better out of it. I feel that that's Beast Mode."
However, the explanation that caught the most traction came in an interview with ex-teammate Michael Robinson released in December:.
The general idea is: Lynch wants to run through defenders, not around them. As Danny Kelly pointed out in his profile of Lynch Tuesday, his 101 broken tackles this season is the most since that category has been tracked. His 15 broken tackles in the NFC Championship game against the Packers was a playoff record, that broke... his own playoff record, from last year's game against the Saints. From that earlier NFL Countdown interview.
"When a defender comes up to tackle me, I want him to feel that ground. I would describe the point of impact as a wonderful feeling. It's what I thrive on: contact."
Marshawn now owns the trademark for "Beast Mode," and hats with the phrase sold out after he wore one at Media Day.
Beast Quake
With the Seahawks leading the massively favored Saints 34-30 late in a Wild Card playoff game, Lynch busted out one of the most impressive runs in NFL history:
He made contact with seven New Orleans defenders, but none brought him down, as he went 67 yards for the game-sealing score. The enormous sound from the Seahawks' fans in the stadium was such that area seismologists noticed the movement created by jumping, yelling Seahawks fans. Hence, Beast Quake. For any and all reading about this play, turn to Matt Ufford's story about it
What happened in the stadium next is the sort of thing that NFL Films molds into the league's mythology, a battle-sport fought by giants and replayed in slow-motion to Wagnerian string music. But I was there, and I'm telling you: the sky ripped open with noise. A roar beyond sound, a physical thing more industrial than human. The earth shook. It really happened.
Against the Cardinals this year, he had a similar run dubbed "Beast Mode 2" (although there was no groundshaking, because they were on the road, and Arizona's fans did not feel like creating an earthquake while watching their team get run through.)
As it turns out, the seismic activity caused by Lynch's run wasn't unique. Scientists in the Pacific Northwest have to be on alert for such things because of the threat of area earthquakes and volcanoes. Plus, for fun and research, they've started paying special attention to CenturyLink Field during games.
They published a full seismic report of this year's playoff win over the Saints on the Seahawks' website, and the quake from after the two-point conversion in the team's massive NFC Championship comeback against the Packers was actually larger than the Lynch run. But the power of that run -- and the idea that Lynch's punishing style caused the ground to move -- will give the original Beast Quake its moment in lore.
Buffalo
Although the majority of Lynch's fame has come on the west coast, his first NFL home was out East. Lynch was selected by the Bills 12th overall in the 2007 NFL Draft. Lynch knew that Buffalo was in New York... but didn't realize it wasn't New York, New York.
"I didn’t know what to expect, I just knew I was going to New York," Lynch told E:60. "I thought I was gonna be out there with Jay-Z, and then when I finally landed in Buffalo… [there was] slush on the ground. It had just finished snowing. I didn’t [know anything about snow]."
Lynch was the replacement for Willis McGahee, who was traded to the Ravens in the 2007 offseason. On his way out of town, McGahee gave a series of quotes about his distaste for Buffalo, a town he felt had unattractive women and little in the way of nightlife besides chain restaurants. Which led to this absolutely brilliant Kenny Mayne video about Lynch's passion for living it up at chain restaurants.
"As a matter of fact, he ate at Applebee's 12 times during the bye week." "I love the ambiance... I love the decor... I spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one I love more: the ambiance, or the decor."
Lynch managed a thousand yards in his first two years and was selected to the Pro Bowl in his second season, but was unable to gain his starting spot back from Fred Jackson after missing the first three games of the 2009 season with a suspension. He was traded during the 2010 season to the Seahawks for fourth and fifth round draft picks.
Dancing
There's dancing with cheerleaders:
Dancing with an extremely unwilling Seahawks kicker Steven Hauschka:
And dancing because, dammit, you just won the Super Bowl:
Football strategy
Microphones captured an instance where Pete Carroll tried to explain the intricacies of why a hole would open up for him. Lynch feigned interest, but eventually replied with "I just read it" until a bemused Carroll decided to walk away:
Marshawn's other important piece of football strategy is that scoring points is good:
Fuck
Marshawn wore a FUCK YOU hoodie before the Seahawks' divisional round game against the Saints in 2014:
Marshawn Lynch this morning at Top Pot Donuts. I guess you could say #PissedOffForGreatness? pic.twitter.com/l4mDK9hnNg — Marshall Cherrington (@MWCherrington) January 11, 2014
He also forgot he wasn't supposed to say it in his E:60 video:
He doesn't just use his words to cuss -- before this year's game in Kansas City
Coworkers buddy ran into beastmode last night. Seems friendly. #Chiefs pic.twitter.com/K8Jpr2d9yh — DRMiller (@DRscrilla8) November 15, 2014
Golf carts
Lynch ran for 150 yards and two touchdowns -- including the game-winner -- on a pair of sprained ankles against Washington. He didn't feel like using his legs anymore after the game, so he took a golf cart for a joy ride:
He would also commandeer a cart after his final college game, a 45-10 whooping of Texas A&M in the Holiday Bowl:
Grills
The original video of Lynch purchasing his Seahawks grill has been made private, but this Vice Sports video of Lynch purchasing a Seahawks grill appears to be the same video:
In it, Lynch tells the story of the time he threw out his first grill at a Jack-in-a-Box after putting it in a napkin while eating so he wouldn't get it dirty.
Lynch also owns a Beast Mode grill, apparently purchased during his first NFL season.
Lynch notes that although he's one of the few football players to wear a grill during games, he doesn't notice it at all, especially with a mouthguard in.
Just about that action, boss
The highlight of Marshawn Lynch's brief 2014 Super Bowl media day appearance was an interview with Deion Sanders. When asked why he didn't want to talk to reporters, Lynch was blunt, saying he was "just about that action, boss:"
Because "that action" -- you know, football -- is more important than interviews to Lynch. One of the least talkative players in the NFL had spawned yet another catchphrase: Soon there was a Just About That Action Boss remix and now it's on a soundboard.
Lynch has never liked speaking to the media. Let's turn the clock back to when Lynch was but a sophomore running back at Cal:
A player who has enough jukes in his arsenal to fake out an entire defense, Lynch tries to pull one more move from his bag of tricks before practice ends on this particular evening. As he approaches the crowd of journalists, Lynch slowly creeps behind wide receiver Robert Jordan, who is walking off the field. "Hide me, hide me," says Lynch playfully. "They ain't gonna see me." Nevermind the fact that Lynch is about 55 pounds heavier than Jordan. The sophomore tailback is using his cousin as... a lead blocker to guide himself away from the expectant reporters.
At the time, Lynch's distaste for giving interviews didn't ring a million alarms. The title for this piece is "Reluctant poster boy," as if Lynch was hesitant to take the spotlight, whereas now, amateur psychoanalysts seem to believe Lynch's failure to talk to the media is in and of itself a way of gaining attention. However, his stance has remained the same: He'd prefer to play football.
From that Cal student paper story:
"It ain't that, man," he says. "I just try to do my thing on the field to get ready for the game, instead of being in the way."
From a wide-ranging profile with NFL.com's Michael Silver:
"I've never seen anybody win the game in the media. But at the same time, I understand what it could do for you, if you wanted to be someone who talks a lot. But that's not me... "Football's just always been hella fun to me, not expressing myself in the media. I don't do it to get attention; I just do it 'cause I love that (expletive)."
And from a 2014 interview with former teammate Michael Robinson:
"I ain't got nothing to say. I just wanna play football."
However, Lynch's lack of interest in talking to the press didn't really turn heads until the 2013-14 season. That's when he got a whopping $50,000 fine for refusing to speak to media shortly before Super Bowl 48. Fans tried to raise money to pay his fine, although Lynch said he would in turn donate their money to charity. It was eventually rescinded under a deal where the fine would be forgotten if Lynch upheld further media obligations, but it would be doubled if he failed to do so. A few weeks later, he went to Super Bowl Media Day for six minutes -- one over the mandatory five.
This November, after the Seahawks' loss to the Chiefs, the NFL ruled Lynch had failed to uphold his media responsibilities, despite the fact that he talked by phone to NFL Network reporters. This triggered the earlier $50,000 fine and an additional $50,000 fine. Since, he's made all his mandatory appearances, but has made a point of giving nearly identical answers to every question. After playing the Cardinals in November, every answer was one word:
The next week, he told reporters he'd changed his word from "yup" to "nope:"
Against the Cardinals in December, he used three words -- but the same three words each time:
After beating the Panthers in the playoffs his response was "I'm Thankful:"
On Super Bowl Media Day, he responded to every question with "I'm here so I won't get fined."
The next day, he said "You know why I'm here."
Despite the fines, Lynch might end up making money off his resistance to interviews: For this year's Super Bowl, Skittles and Progressive both made ads starring Lynch where the primary joke is Lynch suddenly being moved to free-flowing, jovial conversation when presented with either Skittles or the opportunity to discuss Progressive insurance. And the hat Lynch wore during media day quickly sold out (although he might pick up an additional fine for wearing it.)
Marshawn Lynch's dick
On Marshawn Lynch's first famous Beast Mode run, after shedding the trillion Saints who tried to bring him, Lynch realized he had clear sailing to the end zone. He responded to this freedom by jumping backwards into the end zone while holding his dick, as a sign of utter, complete disrespect for all the Saints he just embarrassed.
This crowning achievement was immortalized by a Youtube video where a guy commentated Lynch's run, punctuated by a sudden "HOLD MY DIIIIIIICK" as he bounded backwards into the end zone.
On Lynch's similar run this year against the Cardinals, he once again went to his dick:
But this time, the NFL was watching, and gave Lynch an $11,000 fine for the gesture.
Lynch had another big run against the Packers, and knew that if the referees saw him grabbing his dick, they'd give him a 15-yard penalty. So he tried to be subtle, and instead of jumping backwards, merely turned and put his hands on his dick:
Photo credit: Steven Bisig, USA Today Sports
It didn't work, as Lynch received a $20,000 fine and a warning that he would be penalized for dickgrabbing in the Super Bowl. There was a bit of humor here, as the NFL was spotted selling pictures of the penis-touching mere hours after the fine came down. The league also fined Lynch's teammate for allegedly making an obscene gesture near Lynch, although there's no evidence anybody has seen that this ever actually happened.
Before the Super Bowl, Lynch appeared on Conan to teach Conan O'Brien and Rob Gronkowski how to do the dick grab:
Marshawn the Magnaninmous
From the time he was taking his offensive line to Sizzler even though he was broke, Lynch has gone out of his way to give things to people. Even things it doesn't really make sense to give to people. From a Monday Morning QB profile by Robert Klemko:
During his college years at Cal, if a teammate, friend or acquaintance complimented Lynch on the shirt he was wearing, he would hand it over. "He’s walking around on the street with his shirt off," says Ravens running back Justin Forsett, a former teammate of Lynch’s at Cal and in Seattle. "Just because somebody said, ‘That’s a nice shirt.’ "
He gives away touchdown balls:
"I don’t know why," (fellow Seahawks RB Robert) Turbin said. "But he told me, ‘I want you to have this ball. It’s for us. It’s for the running backs, the group, a representation of how we go about our business on a daily basis.’ For whatever reason, that one particular touchdown meant a lot to him, and he wanted me to have it."
He gives extravagant gifts to teammates, although aside from a set of fancy watches, none have been reported:
Every year he takes care of the offensive line. And you hear about running backs taking care of the offensive line, but he goes well above and beyond. He does ridiculous things for the offensive line. I won’t get too much into it because it’s his business.
He makes sure wallets he finds get returned to their owners (although the same name might've helped) Marshawn Lynch returns a wallet to a fellow Lynch.
@MoneyLynch thank you so much for going outta your way to return my wallet!A Lynch taking care of a Lynch#GOODKARMA pic.twitter.com/19tTI211bQ — Jason Lynch (@206Lynch) November 19, 2014
He handed $500 to a 19-year-old McDonald's employee who complimented his shoes, telling him to get some of his own.
"If you're serious about getting those shoes, here's some money to help you get 'em," Lynch said, according to Downs. "My job is to continue to see you grow."
Lynch thinks about people others wouldn't.
Little known: When Ken Norton Jr. returned to Seattle last yr. after father's death 1 player met him at airport to support - Marshawn Lynch. — Armando Salguero (@ArmandoSalguero) January 28, 2015
And per Klemko:.
Before Jauron’s daughter, Amy, married Falcons media relations assistant Brian Cearns in 2012, Lynch called his buddies who played for Atlanta, including former Pro Bowl safety Lawyer Milloy, to make sure Cearns was an upstanding guy. Apparently satisfied, he never told Jauron that he’d vetted the coach’s future son-in-law. "That’s priceless," Jauron said upon being told the news more than two years later. "That’s Marshawn."
This profile by Kevin Fixler details the work he does with the Fam 1st Family Foundation, which he started with his cousin, 49ers backup Josh Johnson.
Origin story
Marshawn Lynch's mom tells a story about his birth explaining his incredible power:
One of four children raised by a single mother, Lynch arrived on April 22, 1986, with an unexpected message from the midwife: he might have had a twin that didn't develop. "They just knew that Marshawn was living off two placentas," his mother, Delisa, said. "She told me that with that, he may be an amazingly strong child. And I was like, 'For real?'"
Plumbing
Lynch can fix an entire house's plumbing with his bare hands in a minute flat:
Quesadilla
"WE WAS RIGHT AT TACO BELL, AND I COULDN'T EVEN GET NO MUHF**KIN QUESADILLA."
Sizzler
After rumbling for 163 rushing yards, 75 receiving yards, and five touchdowns in Oakland Tech's city championship, a high school-aged, admittedly broke Lynch promised he'd take his linemen to Sizzler for their job blocking:
As previously noted, Lynch is, on occasion, incredibly passionate towards family chain dining establishments.
Skittles
The first televised instance of Marshawn's Skittles habit comes on Dec. 1, 2011, as the Seahawks play the Eagles. After the play, a sideline attendant is seen giving Lynch a handful of Skittles, which he happily eats:
Lynch would finish with 148 yards and two touchdowns, but the biggest story is the Skittles. Within 24 hours, he's reached a promotional deal with the company earning him two years' free supply of the candy and a custom dispenser. However, it was far from his first sideline Skittles experience. Lynch's mom Delisa says she started giving him the candy for games when he was just a kid:
` "When Marshawn was 12 or 13, we'd go to his games and I'd always have little candies in my purse," Lynch's mama explained. "Before |
During the wait for Go Set a Watchman’s release, you have been sharing what To Kill a Mockingbird means to you. From life-changing teaching experiences, to cake-baking and visits to Boo Radley’s Tavern, here is a selection of your stories, memories and anecdotes about Harper Lee’s timeless classic
What better time to revisit the lessons and impressions of To Kill a Mockingbird than while we wait for Harper Lee’s new novel, Go Set a Watchman – coming out this Tuesday, in case you missed it. Here is a selection of our readers’ memories and stories about the classic – you can see them all, and contribute your own, here.
The man on the train understood
“I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird on the train en route to a university open day. I got to the scene where Atticus walks out of the courtroom, and Scout is told to stand up along with the rest of the public gallery, and I broke down in tears. I must have looked an absolute sight, because the man in a business suit opposite me asked me if I was all right. I held up To Kill a Mockingbird. He smiled, gave me a tissue and said ‘I understand.’” By victoriaf1991
Growing up with very conservative parents, suddenly a whole new world opened up to me CornwallJo
The first time I felt grown up
“To Kill a Mockingbird was the first book I can remember reading and actually comprehending. The whole time I was reading it, I just felt so grown up. The emotions it envoked in me were not what I was used to in my everyday life as a child. I was sad, and outraged. I formed actual opinions on things in this world that mattered.” By LP Maxa
Boo Radley’s Tavern
“I had been to Boo Radley’s several times but never made the connection until I found the name in the second paragraph of To Kill a Mockingbird. Funny thing, none of the servers ever mentioned it. I guess, they thought everyone knew!” By PullandKick74
My favourite novel to teach in high school English
“I first read the novel when I was preparing to teach it twenty years ago. I have since then taught it and read it about that many times, and I confess that it’s my favourite novel of all time. It’s the ONLY novel I’ve read that can truly be described as “charming” and “groundbreaking” in the same sentence. Jean Louise’s descriptions of the town of Maycomb, her childhood desire to “make Boo Radley come out,” her innocent courage in front of the court house the night before the trial, and her love of her father are all elements of the novel that continue to engage the reader on every visit to the novel. It is a beautifully written story of courage. I never tire of meeting up with Scout, Jem, Dill, Cal, Boo Radley, and, of course, one of the greatest heroes in literature, Atticus Finch. I envy anyone who is opening its pages for the first time.” By walkerk
"It introduced me to American literature, with which I connected in a way I didn’t with British literature" MichaelRC
Suddenly I started to become the person I wanted to be
I read To Kill a Mockingbird at school. It changed my life – it taught me a fundamental lesson in life (that to understand someone, you have to walk around in their skin) and it introduced me to my literary hero in Atticus Finch. Growing up with very conservative parents, suddenly a whole new world opened up to me and I started to become the person I wanted to be. The book has guided me throughout my life, teaching me compassion and kindness to all. By CornwallJo
Facebook Twitter Pinterest “One copy is not enough – school copy and anniversary edition,” shared by LM Chapman. Photograph: GuardianWitness
I bawled my eyes out in class (and I was the teacher)
“I used to teach English in secondary schools, and taught To Kill a Mockingbird whenever I could. In particular, I adored Atticus – and still do – for his upholding of justice whatever the cost, but also because he is the perfect father.
The final pages of the book, where Atticus sits vigil through the night with Jem (‘He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning’), I had never been able to get through without crying. When I taught it, I made sure a pupil summarised the chapter for the class so I wouldn’t have to introduce that bit.
Then, one day when I was due to cover the final chapter with a class, the pupil who’d prepared it was ill. I did it myself, but when I reached that last paragraph I could feel myself starting to wobble. I stalled. I gritted my teeth. But in the end I just started crying.
It was mortifying – I still remember the gobsmacked faces of the students - but it was also testament to the power of literature, and the power of that book in particular – a novel you never get jaded about, a novel that never fails to move.” By grafter
I honor the book with the names of my babies (four-legged ones): two dogs named Scout and Gem and Boo, a kitten Sherry Myers
The book that taught me to read
“I had always struggled in school and reading was a chore. I read the words but never understood what they meant. The freshman year of high school I was assigned To Kill a Mockingbird. Something changed as I started to be drawn into this book. The characters became friends and neighbors. I was given a certain number of pages to read and exceeded the assignment. I was for the first time in my life reading for the love of the story. To this day, reading is a part of my life I am forever grateful to have discovered through this book. I honor the book with the names of my babies, four-legged ones, and live with two dogs named Scout and Gem (change of spelling for a change in sex, she is a girl) and the newest addition of Boo, a kitten.” By Sherry Myers
My way in to grown-up literature
“Along with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Of Mice and Men, the books of Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and others, To Kill a Mockingbird introduced me to American literature, which I connected with in a way I didn’t with very much British literature. These authors (and many others that followed on from them) speak about what is universally human through ordinary lives.” By MichaelRC
Perfect prose – and my first full-on literary crush
“I first read this when I was 15, as a set text at school. As with many things at that age it consumed me, and I can still feel those pages between my fingers, the press of the wooden school chair on my legs, as our English teacher read to us. I fell in love, with Atticus of course, my first full-on literary crush, but also with the lush, evocative language which transported me so clearly to a time and place I never knew. 22 years since I first opened those pages, I still love to turn this description over in my mouth, it is just the most perfect prose:
Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”
By VitaM
Miss Maudie’s Lane Cake
“To Kill a Mockingbird was my favourite book as a teenager. I used to read it every summer in the roasting Australian sun, feeling an affinity with Jem, Scout and Dill – sweating through the summer with them. But despite the heat (and unlike my sister and I, who survived each January on a diet of raspberry ice-blocks), Maycomb residents are still baking cakes.
The classic Southern Lane Cake appears a couple of times in the book, generally as a welcome, and almost certainly to allow the baker to show off their baking finesse. Miss Maudie tells Scout that Miss Stephanie, who has been after her recipe for thirty years, will never learn her secrets. Sadly, this holds true for us too, so I’ve developed my own.” By Kate Young
I used to read it every summer in the roasting Australian sun, sweating through the summer with Jem, Scout and Dill Kate Young
Teaching in Egypt
“This was a set book for a class of 13-year-old Egyptian children. They had trouble with the vocabulary at times, great fun with ‘cootie’ – one girl asked me the meaning of ‘flighty’. When I explained, she said, ‘You mean like me, Miss?’ But they definitely got the story. They empathised with most of the characters. We did the play that year too and it was a great hit. So much enthusiasm.” By chicamisr
Raised in the South, I wholeheartedly related
“Raised by parents from the South, I wholeheartedly related to the humor and idioms of this book when reading it for my English class in 8th grade. It was one of the first books that I can remember that sparked my interest in literature and that helped shape my writing style. Now, as an adult and English teacher myself, I seem to better understand its themes of perseverance, empathy, and compassion. The gritty realism of the book demonstrates the prevalent cultural norms of the time, and the steadfast fortitude of Atticus and Mrs. Maudie shows the existence of those who opposed such attitudes. There is also a great balance in Atticus’s character, and it is what makes him one of the greatest American literary heroes.” By Blake DownsOne day a sad post was put on the clan forum of one of the groups that makes up the Alliance of Dads of Destiny UK PS4 Clans I run, by a fellow clan mate Elofan1963....
Oct 20th 2015 "I'm wondering if you guys can assist me in helping a young man who unfortunately has terminal cancer. Let me explain.
Up until recently I was Head of Year. In 2012 a young man called Luke was found to have a tumour in his arm. This was treated with radio and chemo therapy and all was well for a while. However in 2014 it was discovered that the tumour had spread into his lungs which was again treated with radio and chemo therapy. Luke missed all of his two GCSE years but by the summer of 2015 it appeared all was going as well as expected with the treatments.
However yesterday I received a call from a community nurse telling me that things had taken a turn for the worse. His tumour is back in his arm and also spread to his legs. She also said that this time it was terminal.
Luke is a massive Destiny fan and plays all the time (sound familiar?). I discovered this fact in May when I went to visit him. At that time he was struggling to find a group to Raid with and asked me if I would become a PS4 friend and help him out."
Luke was desperate to complete the Kings Fall Raid, and so once we had the permissions we needed as Luke was still school aged and Elofan is a teacher we organised a number of raids to help me. We never did get to complete The Kings Fall Raid, but I am pleased to say he found a group of people more his own age and got the raid completed, you can see the Kings Fall Emblem in one of the pictures (for those that know what that looks like)
Sadly on Thursday 20th November 2015, Luke passed away. We are raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support as they helped Luke and his family through what must have been an awful time.
On Friday 4th December at 21:00 GMT a group from our clan, who raided with Luke are going to attempt to complete the Kings Fall Raid in his memory. Links to this fund raising page will be made available on Twitter, Bungie.net and Twitch where you will be able to watch us attempt the completion. We are hoping to continue the Stream with help from other DoD Clans for a full 24 hours.
Luke from everyone at Dads of Destiny, it was a pleasure to know you, you are a credit to your parents, and you will be missed by many...
UPDATE - The funeral went as expected - no mother should have to bury her 16 year old son. It was packed and lots of Luke's friends were there. The readings about Luke's life were very touching. The music was mainly thrash metal but we did walk in and out to 'The Last Stand' which is the Taken King Theme. On top of his coffin was his red ps4 controller and a copy of Destiny.Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group sez,
I've just come back from Parliament Square in London, where about 30 of us have spent the morning building a giant picture of Prime Minister Gordon Brown out of photos of CCTV cameras and other surveillance state ephemera. Take a look at some of the photos of the day (http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=FnFBigPicture&m=tags) - it looks fantastic (and the great weather helped!)
Last week, Boing Boing helped us put out a call for people to capture the database state on their cameras.
Today, to celebrate an international day of action for democracy, privacy and free speech, we put those images together into a huge 4m x 6m collage, depicting a very Big-Brother-esque Gordon Brown against a background of barbed wire, handcuffs and double helices. Our message was that although as individuals we only see incremental invasions of our privacy, put together, these creeping changes constitute a wholesale shift towards a society predicated not on freedom, but on fear.
As you can see from the photos of the event, despite the seriousness of our message, we had a lot of fun delivering it to Parliament. Thanks to Christopher Scally for artwork and Tom Ackers for coordinating the collage, and to everyone who contributed photos of surveillance state ephemera, or turned up the day to help us build the "Big Picture".It is the 20th anniversary season of the Florida Panthers this season. So lets celebrate by naming the top 20 players in Florida Panthers history1. Pavel Bure - He only played two full seasons in Florida, but what an amazing two seasons it was. Back-to-back campaigns of nearly 60 goals each! And that was in the dead puck era to boot. 152 goals and 251 points in 223 games in a Panthers uniform when all is said and done. No Florida player comes close in terms of the dynamic greatness that Pavel Bure had - even if it was only for two season.2. Roberto Luongo - Between 2000 and 2006 Roberto Luongo saw more rubber than a tire factory. Those five seasons were hardly great ones by any franchise's definition, but Luongo was the team's saving grace - almost literally. A franchise record 108 wins and 26 shutouts in five seasons.3. John Vanbiesbrouck - Beezer brought star quality to Florida from 1993 through 1998 and led the team on it's single greatest adventure - the unexpected 1996 appearance in the Stanley Cup final! 4. Scott Mellanby - While Beezer brought the star quality, Scott Mellanby set the tone with hard work and leadership. His grit and determination between 1993 and 2001 set the franchise standard to this day. He's pretty good at killing rats, too.5. Stephen Weiss - Stephen Weiss is the longest tenured player in Florida Panthers history at 654 games. An electrifying skater and a rare strong offensive player in Florida, Weiss was a long time fan favorite in Miami.6. Robert Svehla - One of the most underrated defensemen of his time, Robert Svehla excelled at both ends of the ice for the Florida Panthers from 1994-2002. He scored 61 goals and 290 points in 573 games with the Panthers. He only missed 6 games in 7 seasons.7. Olli Jokinen - Olli Jokinen played seven complete seasons with the Panthers, missing a total of seven games. He is their all-time leader in goals with 188, assists with 231 and points with 419. He played 567 games with Florida, amassed a rating of minus-58 and added 597 penalty minutes.8. Jay Bouwmeester - Another underrated defenseman, Jay Bouwmeester was a quiet blue-line stud. He played in 471 games in Florida, most while enduring high minutes in all situations. He scored 53 goals and 150 assists for 203 points.9. Paul Laus - Paul Laus was a real tough guy who got a chance to show he could also play the game while in Florida. And he surprised many people when he played it well. He helped define the Panthers' image between 1993 and 2002 with his hard work and tough play. He is the Florida Panthers all-time leader in penalty minutes with 1,702.10. Ray Whitney - It was in Florida that this NHL star was born. In 273 games and scoring 97 goals and 130 assists for 227 points. He moved on in 2001 after four seasons, but he still hasn't stopped scoring.11. Ed Jovanovski - If there was one player who exuded star quality besides Pavel Bure, it was Jovocop. The 1st overall pick in 1994 came in like gangbusters, both offensively and physically. His battles with Eric Lindros were legendary. He was then traded for Bure. He came back to the team many years later, but by then injuries riddled this once promising star.12. Nathan Horton - The third overall draft pick in 2003, Nathan Horton played 422 games with Florida, scoring 142 goals and 153 assists for 295 points. He really blossomed when he left for Boston.13. Radek Dvorak - Radek Dvorak had two productive stints with the Florida Panthers. In total he has scored 113 goals and 155 assists for 268 points with the Panthers. Like so many Panthers players (especially in the 1990s era), Dvorak was very much underrated. Gord Murphy - One of the original Florida Panthers, Gord Murphy scored 42 goals and 100 assists in 410 career games. The defenseman14. Rob Niedermayer - The original Florida Panthers draft pick, Rob Niedermayer was selected 5th overall in 1993. He jumped straight to the NHL and helped the Panthers to Stanley Cup final three years later. He never blossomed offensively but became a quality two way NHL center who was overshadowed by his brother, Scott.15. Dave Lowry - A long time NHL journeyman, Dave Lowry enjoyed the best years of his carer in Florida (1993-1998). He was known as "Mr. Playoff" after scoring 10 goals during the Panther's playoff run of 1996.16. Viktor Kozlov - This giant centre was a bit of an enigma at times, but he click nicely with Pavel Bure on his wing. Kozlov scored 101 goals, 190 assists and 291 points between 1997 and 2004.17. Ray Sheppard - One of the NHL's top marksmen in the 1990s, Ray Sheppard was brought to Florida at the 1996 trade deadline to bolster the team's offensive. It worked, as Sheppard's 8 goals was the second highest on the team in the magical 1996 run to the Stanley Cup final.18. Bryan Allen - The forgotten throw-in in the Roberto Luongo trade, Bryan Allen proved to be a prototypical Panthers defenseman - big, physical, dependable and logged big minutes.19. David Booth - Between 2006 and 2011 David Booth was emerging as a top offensive threat. He scored two 20+ goal seasons and a career high 31 in 2008-09. One of the fastest skaters in the league, Booth's career has been sidelined by injury, most notably a scary concussion injury suffered in Florida.20. Bret Hedican - This defenseman joined Pavel Bure in Florida from Vancouver. He only played three seasons in Florida but provided much needed speed and agility on the blue line.Dakota Access Pipeline protesters gather in front of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington before a hearing to halt construction of the oil pipeline in North Dakota, August 24. The pipe crosses the Missouri River, which sole source of water for nearby Native American tribes. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call | via AP Images
When will President Obama stand up to big oil? So far on this issue, he is beginning to have the look of a servile figurehead. Energy Transfer partners, the corporate owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) defiantly announced November 8 that in two weeks it would begin drilling under the Missouri River.
Who is in charge? Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) or Obama? So far the corporation has “called the shots.” It has regarded Obama with obvious contempt as it has refused to heed his requests to halt construction while federal agencies reassess permits and consider rerouting of the pipeline. Obama needs to show some intestinal fortitude and immediately suspend the construction permits for this heinous enterprise.
In effect, ETP has issued an ultimatum to Obama that the pipeline will move across the river in two weeks with or without an easement. It seems that ETP has decided to drop all pretense that Obama runs the country and to let it be bare-knuckled clear that corporate America is in charge.
If Obama does not act to assert the authority of the federal government, the Constitution, and the law of the land, this raises some interesting legal questions in regard to the role of the forces involved. If ETP breaks the law and begins drilling to cross the Missouri River, will the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, the National Guard and the various law enforcement agencies from adjacent states continue act as the private army of DAPL? Does the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its allies have a legal right to use force to oppose this illegal enterprise at this point?
If Obama does nothing, this sets a very dangerous precedent for the complete and obvious illegal takeover of the entire country. This sets a precedent for a much wider civil conflict, the likes of which have not been seen since the Civil War. This would set the stage for a fascist takeover as has so far progressed in North Dakota. Federal troops should have been sent in long ago to meet this threat and to safeguard the rights and lives of Native American citizens.
If Obama does nothing—or worse, supports the approval of the easement—it will be proof positive that he is in the hip pocket of Big Oil. His legacy, everything he has done that has been seen as positive, will pale into insignificance as he will be seen as the puppet of big business. At last the real Obama will be standing up—not in opposition to the corporate destruction of this land and its people, but as a dissembling accomplice.Ominous tales of ghost ships like the Flying Dutchman and the Mary Celeste have been passed down from one generation of seafarer to the next for centuries, but as eerie as these haunted vessels are alleged to be there is another even more disturbing maritime phenomena that deals not with ships that have been abandoned, but those whose crew have mysteriously perished. Arguably the most disturbing of all these legends is the shocking case of the SS Ourang Medan.
According to widely circulated reports, in June of 1947 — or, according to alternate accounts, February of 1948 — multiple ships traversing the trade routes of the straits of Malacca, which is located between the sun drenched shores of Sumatra and Malaysia, claimed to have picked up a series of SOS distress signals. The unknown ship’s message was as simple as it was disturbing:
“All officers including captain are dead, lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” This communication was followed by a burst of indecipherable Morse code, then a final, grim message: “I die.” This cryptic proclamation was followed by tomb-like silence.
THE SILVER STAR COMES TO THE RESCUE:
The chilling distress call was picked up by two American ships as well as British and Dutch listening posts. The men manning these posts managed to triangulate the source of these broadcasts and deduced that they were likely emanating from a Dutch freighter known as the SS Ourang Medan, which was navigating the straits of Malacca.
A conscripted American merchant ship called the Silver Star was closest to the presumed location of the Ourang Medan. Originally christened “Santa Cecilia” by the Grace Line (W. R. Grace & Co.), the vessel had been renamed the Silver Star when the United States Maritime Commission “drafted” it in 1946.
Noting the terrified urgency in the message that came over the airwaves, the Captain and crew of the Silver Star wasted no time in changing their course in an effort to assist the apparently incapacitated ship. Within hours, the Silver Star caught sight of the Ourang Medan rising and falling in the choppy waters of the Malacca Strait.
As the merchant craft neared the ill-omened vessel, the crew noticed that there was no sign of life on the deck. The Americans attempted to hail the Dutch crew to no avail. That’s when the Captain of the Silver Star decided to assemble a boarding party. As they left the safe haven of the Silver Star, these unfortunate souls had no idea that they were about to walk into a living nightmare.
As soon as they boarded the Ourang Medan, the men swiftly realized that the distress calls were not an exaggeration. The decks of the vessel were littered with the corpses of the Dutch crew; their eyes wide, their arms grasping at unseen assailants, their faces twisted into revolting visages of agony and horror. Even the ship’s dog was dead; it’s once intimidating snarl frozen into a ghastly grimace.
The boarding party found the Captain’s remains on the bridge, while his officers’ cadavers were strewn about the wheelhouse and chartroom. The communications officer was still at his post, as dead as the rest, his fingertips resting on the telegraph. All of the corpses, according to reports, bore the same terrified, wide-eyed expressions as the crew on deck.
Below deck, search party members found cadres of corpses in the boiler room, but almost as disturbing as this grim find was the fact that the American crew members claimed to have felt an extreme chill in the nadir of the hold, even though the temperature outside was a scorching 110°F. While the search team could see clear evidence that the crew of the Ourang Medan suffered profoundly at the moment of their deaths, they could find no overt evidence of injury or foul play on the swiftly decaying corpses. Nor could they spy any damage to the ship itself.
The Captain of the Silver Star decided that they would tether themselves to the Ourang Medan and tow it back to port, but as soon as the crew attached the tow line to the Dutch ship they noticed ominous billows of smoke pouring up from the lower decks, in specific the Number 4 hold.
The boarding party scarcely had a chance to cut the towline and make it back to the Silver Star before the Ourang Medan exploded with such tremendous force that it “lifted herself from the water and swiftly sank.”
The crew watched the Dutch vessel disappear beneath the briny depths, no doubt breathing deep sighs of relief that the towline had not dragged them into the sea as well.
The watery grave that claimed the Ourang Medan effectively removed the freighter from the face of the Earth and forced it directly into the realm of myths and legends. This, of course, has made it one of the most enduring and intriguing maritime mysterious of the modern age, leaving us to ask the most basic question…
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OURANG MEDAN?
While rumors about the Silver Star’s grisly discovery circulated wildly along the trade routes of the East Indies, the first official account of the event would not be printed until May of 1952, in the form of the “Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council,” which was published by the United States Coast Guard. The testimony therein described the alarming state of the Dutch crewmen, even going so far as to state:
“Their frozen faces were upturned to the sun… staring, as if in fear… the mouths were gaping open and the eyes staring.”
THE SHIP THAT NEVER WAS
The first problem with trying to ascertain what happened to this now infamous Dutch freighter is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any official records that it ever existed in the first place. We know that the Silver Star was real — although, by 1947, it had been reacquired by the Grace Line shipping company who dubbed the vessel “Santa Juana” — but there’s no paper trail leading to the Ourang Medan.
Some researchers have speculated that if the Ourang Medan was a genuine ship that it likely hailed from Sumatra, which at the time was a colony of the Netherlands in what was referred to as a the Dutch East Indies. “Ourang” is Indonesian for “man” and “Medan” is the biggest city on the island of Sumatra, which would designate this enigmatic freighter the “Man from Medan.” But, while the etymology of the name might give some clue as to its origin, there are no bureaucratic records of the Ourang Medan.
Author and historian Roy Bainton, who’s done some of the most exhaustive and revealing investigation on the subject of the SS Ourang Medan, met dead end after dead end in his pursuit of the true story of the “death ship.” First he went to the usual sources, but was unable to find any mention of the ship in Lloyd’s Shipping registers or the Dictionary of Disasters at Sea, 1824-1962.
Then he contacted the United Kingdom Admiralty, the Registrar of Shipping and Seamen and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich all of whom told him that the only place to check Dutch Shipping records was in Amsterdam. Bainton searched the Dutch records as well as the Maritime Authority in Singapore to no avail.
Just as he was about to give up his investigation and write the whole thing off as just an old sailors’ yarn, Bainton was contacted by Professor Theodor Siersdorfer of Essen, Germany who had been pursuing the case for the better part of 50 years and was the first to reveal the names of the two American ships that had heard the Ourang Medan’s SOS calls.
Siersdorfer also led Bainton to a 32 page German booklet written in 1954 by Otto Mielke, entitled“Das Totenschiffin der Südsee” or “Death Ship in the South Sea.” Mielke seemed to know a lot about the Ourang Medan’s route, cargo, tonnage and engine power and even, allegedly, the Captain’s name. One is forced to wonder whether or not Mielke had contact with one of the Silver Stars’ notoriously difficult to find crewmen.
Mielke’s pamphlet was also the source of the June, 1947 date and added yet another compelling piece to the puzzle, which helped to reignited Bainton’s interest in the project. This intriguing new bit of possible evidence was that the Number 4 hold of the Ourang Medan may have been filled with a pair of exceedingly lethal and highly illegal substances. According to Bainton:
“…there is a tantalizing, possible explanation as to her crew’s demise and her disappearance from the records. Mielke mentions a mixed, lethal cargo on the Dutchman ‘Zyankali’ (potassium cyanide) and nitroglycerine.”
Needless to say this would be a dangerous enough concoction in a laboratory with the highest safety protocols, but in a cargo hold on the rough seas it was a potential nightmare; one which might explain not only the inexplicable demise of the Dutch crew, but the subsequent explosion that claimed the freighter herself.
Even more terrifyingly, according to Bainton, is the conjecture that the Ourang Medan may have been smuggling nerve gas or even more insidious biological weapons manufactured by a sinister assembly of Japanese scientists whose experiments were so heinous that many of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi’s in the name of science pale by comparison. This diabolical faction was unassumingly referred to as…
UNIT 731:
Known to nearby inhabitants as a “den of cannibals,” Unit 731 was founded in 1932 by a brilliant, yet misguided, Japanese bacteriologist named Shirō Ishii.
The unit was designed to be a clandestine research and development department whose sole agenda was to create the most deadly forms of to chemical and biological weapons known to man and thus insure the victory of the Japan over any potential enemy.
Ishii established Unit 731 (code named “Tongo Unit”) during the Second Sino-Japanese War, but didn’t really make his terrible mark until he oversaw the construction of new research facilities in the Imperial Japanese Army occupied Pingfang district of Harbin, China. It was there that the scientists of his division conducted some of the most deplorable biological experiments known to mankind during World War II.
Even more inexcusable was the fact that this grotesque cabal used human beings — including women and infants — in their appalling experiments, which included everything from exposure to sub-zero temperatures to the vivisection of human guinea pigs to study the effects of toxic materials on living organs.
Nevertheless, General Douglas MacArthur, presumably in the interest of national defense, covertly granted immunity to Ishii and his staff in exchange for providing the U.S. with their biological warfare research, regardless of the unspeakable acts they had committed — the magnitude of which was reported by Bainton:
“Unit 731’s brief was to find a chemical, gas or biological weapon to win the war. Hideous, inhumane experiments were carried out on helpless Australian, American, Russian, Chinese and British prisoners — some of the worst war crimes ever committed.”
As to why these hazardous materials were packed onto the Ourang Medan when they could have just flown it directly to a secretive laboratory, Bainton speculated that perhaps the U.S. government — or another world power — decided to use as slow and inconspicuous vessel as the Dutch freighter to transport such treacherous cargo for reasons of both safety and concealment:
“So how was this deadly cargo moved around the South China Sea and through the Straits of Malacca during this troubled period? Not by air; the prospect of a cargo plane crashing with several tons of deadly gas on board was too horrendous to consider. No, you hired an insignificant old tramp steamer, preferably with a low paid foreign crew, stowed the cargo in disguised oil drums and, like all serious smugglers, hoped for the best, and a blind eye from authority.”
Bainton surmised that sea water could have entered the ship’s hold, reacting with the perilous cargo to release poisonous gases, which then caused the crew to suffocate. At this point the onrushing salt water might have reacted with the nitroglycerin, creating the explosive effect that was said to cause the ship’s ultimate demise. Bainton even went on to speculate as to why the United States would go to such extreme lengths to expunge from all records the very existence of the freighter:
“If we accept, due to the nature of her crew’s deaths, that she was carrying deadly gas or chemicals and if indeed she was a Dutch vessel had this news broken it would have been a major embarrassment for any government involved, especially in the light of the Geneva Convention. Hence the dead ends faced by any researcher. The story exists because, like the gases, it escaped.”
So are we to believe that this was the ultimate fate of the Ourang Medan and her crew? Was this merely a tragic accident that was the result of a combining dangerous chemicals with nitroglycerine on rough seas? If this is a genuine account of what transpired, then it seems like it’s as valid a possibility as any, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only option that researchers have come up with. Perhaps the strangest I’ve encountered is that the unfortunate crew was the victim of…
THE PARANORMAL:
In 1953, Frank Edwards and Robert V. Hulse retold the basics of the legend for Fate Magazine and in his 1955 book “The case For the UFO,” astronomer, author and noted “Philadelphia Experiment” researcher, Morris K. Jessup, hypothesized that the crew of the Ourang Medan may have been attacked by extraterrestrials for reasons unknown.
Other Fortean enthusiasts have theorized that the unlucky Dutch crew may have had a Scooby Doo-like run-in with vengeful wraiths of the sea or a ghost ship full of surly, undead pirates. The dubious proof, which supporters of the paranormal option use to confirm their theory, is the evident lack of a natural cause for the deaths as well as the purportedly petrified expressions etched onto the faces of the doomed sailors. Add to this the unnatural chill in the cargo hold and the assertion that some of the deceased sailors were reaching up towards what was assumed to be an unknown adversary and you have all the ingredients for a hoary seafarers’ tale.
This is scant evidence indeed for a supposed interaction with either evil aliens or malevolent phantoms, but one can hardly blame yarn spinning mariners for trying to add a little spice to a story told around campfires on stony shorelines to wide-eyed children… or even novice deckhands. So, if we pressume for the moment that the paranormal is out then we must be dealing with…
NATURAL CAUSES:
Okay, assuming that the deaths aboard the Ourang Medan were caused by neither supernatural forces or atrocious weapons of war then could it be a chilling natural phenomenon or even a simple accident that claimed the lives of these Dutch sailors’? Mayhap an incident involving…
METHAN BUBBLES
Perhaps the most fear-provoking theory proffered by those who believe that the demise of the Dutch freighter was explicable by natural means is that the crew of the Ourang Medan was asphyxiated by clouds of noxious methane that gurgled up from a fissure on the sea floor and poisoned the sailors before eventually engulfing the ship.
As terrifying as the thought of random bursts of methane destroying vessels after killing the crew may be, this explanation seems farfetched as it does not account for the thunderous blast described by the crew of the Silver Star. So if it wasn’t methane bubbles that were responsible for the tragedy, then perhaps it was a…
BOILER FIRE
Author Vincent Gaddis, in his 1965 book “Invisible Horizons,” put forward the premise that an unobserved fire or failure in the ship’s boiler system might have been responsible for the demise of the vessel.
He claimed that carbon monoxide could have leaked up causing the deaths of all aboard while the fire slowly |
Ratio: 2:40 : 1
Audio
English (DTS-HD High Res), English Descriptive Audio, French (DD 5.1), Spanish (DD 5.1)
Subtitles
English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Judgment
The “dunnah” (DNA) of these Lasseter-led Disney productions share many trademarks. Tangled, Frozen, and Zootopia are meant to represent a modernized and revamped Disney. While Zootopia pays homage to 1973’s Robin Hood, it doesn’t try too hard to mimic it. However, Lasseter’s CGI animators have created a film that stylistically bears more resemblance to the recent work of Dreamworks Animation than Disney’s classic pencil and paper masterpieces. Lasseter may have put his Pixar experience to bear when he brought Disney Animation back from the dead, but he didn’t want to simply copy and paste the formula he created at Pixar. Dreamworks made a better target for inspiration. Hybridizing the stylistic CGI of Dreamworks with a modernized interpretation of classic Disney has worked fantastically for Disney Animation. If you can’t beat them, then you best put a shit-eating grin on all of your characters. That having been said, it’s hard to fault Disney Animation too heavily for being a bit derivative when they’re putting out high quality CGI-animated films like Zootopia.
Zootopia is a must buy if you enjoy world building and animation, and if you’re buying this movie for your kids, they’ll find a lot more reasons to watch it over and over again. Pixar legend John Lasseter has done it again, adding another successful film to Disney’s catalog of Animated Classics.
4/5
[paypal_donation_button]Manchester United have now won all three of Europe's major competitions
Manchester United claimed their second major trophy of the season and secured Champions League football as they overcame Ajax to win the Europa League final in Stockholm.
On an emotional night following the attack which killed 22 people at Ariana Grande's concert at the Manchester Arena on Monday, United's fans were allowed a measure of celebration as Jose Mourinho's side won in comfort.
Paul Pogba's deflected shot put them ahead in the 18th minute and Henrikh Mkhitaryan's sixth Europa League goal of the campaign, flicked in from Chris Smalling's header at a corner, confirmed they would add to the EFL Cup won against Southampton earlier this season.
Wayne Rooney made a brief appearance as a substitute with a minute left and the game won, being handed the captain's armband by Antonio Valencia on what could well be his farewell appearance for United.
And as the final whistle sounded and United's celebrations began, chants of "Manchester" rang around the Friends Arena in tribute to those who died and were injured in the attack which cast a shadow over this showpiece occasion.
Media playback is not supported on this device Man Utd & Ajax pay tribute to Manchester victims
Mourinho - who has so often looked so unhappy this season - ran on to the field to celebrate with his players and was thrown in the air by his coaching staff and hugged by his son.
It means United are now the fifth team to claim the full quota of European trophies, joining an illustrious list with Ajax, Chelsea, Juventus and Bayern Munich.
Mourinho back in the old routine
Jose Mourinho has now won four major European trophies
Mourinho has had his moments of frustration this season - especially with 15 Premier League draws that led to an unsatisfactory sixth-place finish.
It left United's Champions League hopes resting on this game but the win and subsequent qualification for the group stages of Europe's elite tournament means that Mourinho can regard this season as a real success.
Some may question the quality of United's performances and this undoubtedly remains a work in progress but two trophies and that place back in the Champions League is an impressive outcome, irrespective of the style in which it was achieved.
It was also a European final won without key defender Eric Bailly, who was suspended, and 28-goal leading scorer Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who sustained a serious knee injury in the quarter-final win against Anderlecht at Old Trafford.
Media playback is not supported on this device 'This is for Manchester' - Man Utd fans on emotional triumph
Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino and Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp have received much praise for their work this season and getting into next season's Champions League - Mourinho has done that and added the actual tangible reward of two pieces of silverware on top.
Mourinho's mood has often been dark this season but he still has that habit of dealing in his favourite currency, namely trophies.
And the result means United can, finally, regard their season as a successful one as a night which started with a mixture of silence then applause for those who died in Monday's attack and ended with Wayne Rooney lifting the Europa League trophy on what is very likely to be his final appearance for the club.
Pogba shows his class
Paul Pogba scored his ninth goal of the season
Pogba has struggled to justify the world-record transfer fee of £89m paid to Juventus last summer but this was a stage on which he showed flashes of the qualities that persuaded Mourinho to make him such a high-priority signing.
Like this United side, there is still much to do before he can be regarded as the finished article but the manner in which he made sure early midfield dominance was secured was impressive and he added a goal for good measure.
It may end up being classed as an own goal but Pogba will happily accept it, trying his luck from 20 yards after being afforded just a little too much space by Ajax captain Davy Klaassen and helped by a huge deflection off Davinson Sanchez. And perhaps he was due that touch of good fortune after being thwarted by the woodwork so often this season.
And it was another profitable night for another big-money Mourinho buy, Mkhitaryan. The Armenian struggled in the first half but showed what a priceless poacher's instinct he has, swooping from close range for another Europa League goal.
Ajax youngsters suffer stage fright
Ajax were appearing in their first European final since 1996
Ajax coach Peter Bosz said it would be understandable for his young side to feel nervous - and his fears were confirmed as they were never able to show off the full extent of their glittering promise.
Six of the starting line-up were 21 or under in the youngest 11 to start a major European final, with an average age of 22 years and 280 days. In defender Matthijs de Ligt, they had the youngest player to feature in one at 17 years and 285 days.
"It was a boring game. There were no chances from both sides," Bosz said after the final whistle.
"I'm disappointed because you play finals to win them. We didn't. I haven't seen the Ajax that I'm used to."
This was a night of disappointment for this great, historic old club but they are staying true to their finest traditions by producing outstanding young talent and showing a commitment to attacking football.
Ajax have established the foundations for more success.
"For all the players, this is the first final," he added.
"They will learn a lot from it and we will become stronger, and if we can keep this squad together we will be stronger next season, for sure."
Man of the match - Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
Paul Pogba rejoined Manchester United last summer for a world record fee of £89m
Mourinho maintains European final record - The stats you need to know
Paul Pogba scored in back-to-back games for United after a run of 19 games without one. It was the first time he had done so at club level since April 2016 for Juventus.
Five of Henrikh Mkhitaryan's last six United goals have come in the Europa League.
Jose Mourinho has won all four of his European finals as a manager, winning the 2003 Uefa Cup and 2004 Champions League with Porto, as well as the 2010 Champions League with Inter Milan.
Mourinho has maintained his 100% win record against Ajax, winning all seven matches against the Dutch side.
Late substitute Wayne Rooney made his fourth appearance in a major European final for Manchester United (also the 2008, 2009 and 2011 Champions League finals), equalling the record held by Ryan Giggs.
United did not lose a single game this season in which they scored first (W37 D8).
Marcus Rashford became the youngest Englishman - aged 19 years and 205 days - to start a major European final since Gary Mills in May 1980 for Nottingham Forest, who was aged 18 years and 198 days when he played against Hamburg.
The Manchester United players pose with a banner for those who lost their lives in the Manchester attackUnderstanding Italian football part II - Furbizia
By Andrea Tallarita Tuesday 20 January 2009 Perhaps nothing has been more influential in determining the popular perception of the Italian game than furbizia, the art of guile. For it is no overstatement to say that Italians enjoy a reputation as the dirtiest players in the game and, dryly put, as cheaters. While it is certain that their guile has had to do with the establishment of this repute, furbizia actually has nothing to do with cheating. The two things can be distinguished by a very easy demarcation - ‘cheating’ means doing something which your adversary cannot do, or exploiting resources they have no access to. The corruption of referees, ‘fixing’ results, the use of drugs or illegal substances to boost performance are all examples of cheating. These have occurred in Serie A (as they have almost everywhere), though they have fortunately been kept well clear of the national side. The Azzurri shirt remains untarnished.
Furbizia is something very different. Firstly, it is something which takes place only and exclusively on the football pitch. The word ‘furbizia’ itself means guile, cunning or astuteness. It refers to a method which is often (and admittedly) rather sly, a not particularly by-the-book approach to the performative, tactical and psychological part of the game. Core to furbizia is that it is executed by means of stratagems which are available to all players on the pitch, not only to one team. What are these stratagems? Here are a few: tactical fouls, taking free kicks before the goalkeeper has finished positioning himself, time-wasting, physical or verbal provocation and all related psychological games, arguably even diving. These are all pretty common strategies in football, and they extend well beyond Italy. Thierry Henry was a master of shooting free-kicks while the goalkeeper was busy positioning the wall, and the last Ballon D’Or winner, Cristiano Ronaldo, has an overbearing history as a diver. Yet no-one has such a pervasive and defining reputation for such actions as Italy. Consider, for instance, the ESPN Euro 2008 ad for Italy.
The reason why Italy has garnered such a reputation is that these allegations are, at least to some extent, legitimate. In fact, in its own ingenuity, the ESPN ad does more justice to Italian football than it probably meant to. Consider the closing slogan: ‘If winning is an art, Italians are the masters.’ The statement is not untrue - it is only insufficient. It is not winning, but football itself that is an art, in Italy - an art in the old sense of the word. It is not just a physical competition where there is a winner and a loser but a collective performance, a superior and cultivated trade where the final result must acknowledge and respect the dual identity of stage and backstage. In other football cultures, the incapacity or unwillingness to divorce the performative side of football from its raw emotional effects results in deplorable acts of violence or breakdown - see Wayne Rooney’s stomping on an adversary in 2006 World Cup and the subsequent red card, or, in the same tournament, the post-match brawl that broke out between the German and Argentinean teams. Italians, by contrast, are very much aware of what they do on-stage, as unwittingly captured by the narrative of the ESPN ad - see how the Italians manifest discontent and frustration individually, but relinquish it all to celebrate together as a team towards the end, as though musicians in the after-party following a concert. The stage and the backstage remain different concepts, in Italian football. If football is understood by means of its ambiguity and tribalism, as a conflict that unfolds on levels which transcend the purely physical and technical, then the reason behind Italy’s power in the sport lies in the conscious obliquity of their own performance. If football is understood as an art, then Italians are indeed the ‘masters.’
From such a dual vision of the sport evolved furbizia, that is to say, the quality of exploiting the ambivalent and nervous nature of the athletic conflict to one’s advantage. It differs from virtually all other techniques in a football match in that it is the only one which does not involve the ball. To most people watching a match, the game stops when the ball stops (by rolling out of play, beyond the keeper line or caught by an offside player). To Italians, those very pauses inbetween the taking of a corner or a foul are active fields of play, where specific moves and strategies are to be put in action. These strategies are read, recognized and evaluated by Italian commentators almost as seriously as the ones executed with the ball. Azzurri teams will use that time to argue heatedly with the referee, provoke their opponents - or, in the finest examples of furbizia, by destabilising the notions and understanding of in-play time itself. Consider the sly and brilliantly out-of-the-box corner kick taken by Roma against Milan two years ago (most recently re-proposed by Manchester United against Chelsea).
One of the players nudges the ball into play, then pretends to let someone else take the corner, so that his team-mate is allowed to just take the sphere and storm into the box on his own. This is classic furbizia, a case of using rather than submitting to the limitations of playing time.
Furbizia does not break any rule in football - rather, it learns how to exploit them. Tactical fouls are standard practice for an Italian defender, a fact which is not irregular because the rules of football are not that you can’t foul - they are that you can’t foul and then keep on playing. An Italian defender will gladly trade a harmless free kick for a potentially dangerous run, so smart fouling is part of any Italian’s repertoire. They have the furbizia - here expressed as tactical vision - to use these to their advantage. Granted, it can be unpopular with supporters of the other teams, but it makes Italian defences incredibly effective (and, when combined with defensive duos as vertiginously talented as Maldini-Baresi or Cannavaro-Nesta, almost impenetrable). One may argue that this is ‘unfair’ towards the forwards. But forwards in Serie A have developed their own responses through furbizia - they have learned how to dive with such grace and realism that it counters tactical fouls and turns them into yellow cards or worse. When most people see a confrontation between a forward and a defender, it is normally seen as a contest decided by technique. To Italians, the confrontation has further depth. It is not only a measurement of skill, it is a duel of strategic cleverness, a tactical clash where the mental factor comes into play as much as the physical. In other words, it has a backstage.
As with all matters in sports, there are variations to how well all this can be performed. Anyone can provoke an adversary, but it takes real guile (real furbizia) to find the weakest links in the other team’s psychology, then wear them out and bite them until something or someone gives in - all without ever breaking a single rule in the book of football. Foreign spectators normally witness this peripheral offensive with a sense of outrage. Those who really understand Italian football, on the other hand, will see the finesse of the performance and the quality of its execution. A masterpiece was produced when midfielder Gennaro Gattuso was fouled by Germany’s Michael Ballack in the 2006 World Cup semi-final. Gattuso stood up immediately and squared up to the German, who - not to be intimidated by the shorter man - squared up to the Italian in return. Once Ballack’s aggressiveness had been pumped to boiling point, and without doing a single thing against the rules, Gattuso opened his arms and gave him an unexpected brotherly hug – for the benefit of the referee, among other things. Ballack, baffled, could do nothing but return the gesture. Finally, the Italian disengaged and left - with a firm and nonchalant tug to Ballack’s hair, who turned around with visible and barely withheld fury.
This exchange, which passed unperceived under the eyes of most viewers, is an incredibly well-executed example of starting up and escalating psychological tension, then relenting immediately before it explodes. Ballack, full of German endurance, withstood the pressure. Other, less impervious players cracked. The most famous case occurred in that same tournament.
Compare this to a similar incident which took place in the Euro 2004 Italy-Denmark match, where the perpetrator was the Italian Francesco Totti.
The incidents are similar in nature, yet - interestingly - they radically differ in their aftermaths. The French (and most of the international) public stood behind Zidane ubiquitously, seeing him as a victim of ‘dirty’ play and clamouring for the head of Italian defender Marco Materazzi (or, as Zidane’s mother would later express herself, for the man’s testicles). In Italy, on the other hand, Totti was crucified for falling to the provocations and has since held a dubious (and deserved) reputation with regards to his maturity. The difference is exemplary. The French thought that Zidane had been cheated into defeat, so they stood behind him to the point that the deliverer of the head-butt was made its victim. The Italians instead saw nothing illegitimate in the behaviour of the Danish, but they violently chastised their own champion for lacking the furbizia to face up to the situation (and falling prey to the furbizia of the Danish). Lack of furbizia, in Italy, is as serious as the lack of talent - because both are aspects of the same game.
In the general hysteria following the French defeat, defender William Gallas claimed that he wanted to ‘bash Materazzi’s face in,’ a statement which he followed with a pretty passionate rant against the Italians. It is ironic that Gallas should condemn Materazzi’s harsh expressions by giving in himself to some very harsh expressions, but a qualitative difference does subsist between the two. With Gallas, the words against Materazzi mark real hostility and venom. In Materazzi’s case, the insults to Zidane are uttered almost with nonchalance, not as an intra-game outburst of resentment but as a cynical part of the game itself.
All of this is not intended to ‘exculpate’ Materazzi. Those who resent his gesture and wish to see Zidane as the victim will keep doing so, and that is fine. But it is important to understand that his gesture was not a sign of frustration but a tactical, measured - almost military - attack on the weakest links in the French team. Whether Zidane deserves to ‘hold his head high’ after his head-butt or not, the fact remains that he has been outsmarted. Because he should have known that when Italians argue, they are not actually looking for a fight. Their own contest is going on backstage, and it remains invisible. Zidane played with his feet and lost with his brains. To the question of how do you stop Zidane, the Italians know the answer. For it is patent that Italians do not play football with their feet alone - they play football with their brains, with their hearts, with their hands, with their eyes. Playing football against an Italian means facing a guy who is bringing against you everything that he has got. The term used in Italian to indicate sport of a professional level is ‘agonistico’ - belonging to agony. Facing the Italians means agony - it means descending into the deepest bear-pit, walking onto the fiercest battle-ground, and facing the most ruthless opponents. Only the best of the best can walk out of this triumphant.
One may not like the Italian style of football, and that is of course perfectly legitimate. The Spanish, for example, cultivate the most academic football in Europe and are deeply resentful of all forms of football stepping out of bounds. The French claim to be resentful as well, though their own refinement of furbizia is second only to that of the Italians and the Portuguese. Ultimately, these differences come from two irreconcilable visions of the game. The Spanish style understands football as something like a fencing match, a rapid and meticulous art of noble origins where honour is the brand of valour. To the Italians, football is more like an ancient battle, a primal and inclement bronze-age scenario where survival rules over honour. Their hero is not stiff Sir Gawain but Ulysses, the conqueror by guile. This is how Italians see football - as a struggle made of sweat and dirt. The Germans understand this perhaps better than anyone else, and they alone tend to approach matches against Italy with a sense of undisguised exhilaration. They see their Southern competitors as the best test of their abilities - for, while the Italian philosophy consists in using absolutely everything that can be used against you, the German approach is that of resisting absolutely everything that can be thrown against them. This may be the reason why World Cup confrontations between these two forces have a history of being so epic - and why Ballack, unlike Zidane, perfectly resisted the furbizia of Gattuso.
The irony is that even nations who truly depreciate furbizia find that in a victory against Italy often lies their finest hour. In fact, when France and Spain defeated Italy in 1998, 2000 and 2008 respectively, it made for some of their most memorable victories in the tournament. Of course, this in no way helped the cause of furbizia among their publics - because furbizia operates at the margins rather than at the centre of the stage, in the nooks where the understanding of the game is blurred, it will always remain an elusive goddess, one seen too late and too briefly. Besides, even when furbizia yields her favours, she normally makes the rest of the world despise them. How could we build statues to a deity like that? At most, we may invoke her the way that Trojan warrior Aeneas calls his mother Venus - an equally intangible goddess - in Italy’s foundational epic, the Aeneid : ‘Why, you too, cruel as the rest? So often / you ridicule your son with your disguises! / Why can’t we clasp hands, / speak out, and tell the truth?’ We can not. Because furbizia means accepting the dual, ambivalent nature of football, not the monological law of the ‘truth.’ In their respect for such a melancholy, unstable reality, Italians will always represent an incredible adversary to any team. One may love them or one may hate them, but the Italians are so combative that they will give you a chance for the most valuable thing in the sport - a truly meaningful victory.
Related Articles » 5 players who should never have left Serie A » Milan derby misery leaves Gattuso looking out of his depth » Gennaro Gattuso faces his biggest test with AC Milan » The Fall and Rise of Serie A » How High Can Atalanta Finish this Season?It’s time to upgrade your criminal empire.
GTA Online: Finance and Felony – how to be a CEO and make big money
Crime in GTA Online just went big time. The new CEO privileges introduced with the Further Adventures in Finance and Felony update have taken the concepts first introduced for VIPs and expanded them so that players can build a city-wide contraband distribution service.
You’re no longer a petty crook, a professional thief or gun for hire. With the Finance and Felony update you have the opportunity to become the CEO of your own business, employ staff, and crush your rivals across Los Santos and Blaine County.
Before you can become a CEO you’re going to need to buy an office, then buy at least one warehouse to store contraband. Once that’s sorted, you can start running Buy and Sell missions.
The important thing to remember is although there’s only one CEO role, these missions are designed to be played as a team, much like Heists. You can’t really make money as a solo player shifting one crate at a time. The risks are too high and you need to rely on a coordinated team to secure the loot, store it, and drop it off for delivery and payment. A lot can go wrong with attacks from other players, the homicidal Los Santos police, and local gangs.
You need to reduce those threats as much as possible with teamwork and firepower. Here’s how to do it:
How to become a CEO in GTA Online
Firstly, you’re going to need an office. There are four to choose from and you’ll find them for sale on the Dynasty 8 Executive website on your phone. Hope you’ve got plenty of money saved up, you’re going to need it. Here are the prices:
Maze Bank Tower: $4 million
Lombank West: $3.1 million
Arcadius Business Center: $2.25 million
Maze Bank West: $1 million
At this stage you can also customise the office with a gun locker, safe, living quarters and decor. You can name your Organisation and hire an Executive Assistant to take care of pesky chores like calling Pegasus vehicles, getting you a lift back to the office for free, ordering free snacks etc.
As a CEO you also now have the ability to recruit Associates. This works in much the same was as a VIP hires bodyguards.
I know what you’re thinking. Why should I become a CEO or put myself up for hire as an Associate of the CEO? Money, obviously. In fact, if you want to earn money, we’d recommend playing as an Associate first before shelling out the cash on an office. Plus, there’s all these benefits.
CEO Benefits
All existing VIP/Bodyguard benefits will carry over to CEOs and Associates.
Buying property (office, warehouses) unlocks new special vehicles.
CEOs with an office received extended benefits in addition to all existing VIP benefits, including: permanent uptime as CEO, no cooldown period, no bank balance requirement, and more.
Associate Benefits
Loyalty bonus to wages for consecutively completed Special Cargo missions.
Increased Health Regen cap.
CEO proximity RP bonus increased.
Associates earn wages as Bodyguards did in Executives and Other Criminals, however the wage they are paid by SecuroServ can increase for every consecutive Buy or Sell mission the CEO completes (up to a max of $10,000).
The office also comes with a SecuroServ computer. It’s here you’ll be able to start Buy missions and manage your warehouses. Once you’re happy with your office, it’s time to get a warehouse.
In the office you’ll see a 3D map on the boardroom table with all available warehouses to buy. They come in three sizes – small, medium and large. If you don’t have a lot of cash or prefer the cautious approach, buy a small warehouse now as they can be sold on at a later time, much like normal properties.
Here’s everything you need to know about warehouses:
You can own up to five warehouses at a time.
Sell missions are launched from the warehouse.
A warehouse is where you store your Special Cargo purchased from Buy missions.
A small warehouse holds 16 Special Cargo crates.
A medium warehouse holds 42 Special Cargo crates.
A large warehouse holds 111 Special Cargo crates.
You can upgrade vehicles in the warehouse at the workbench with armour, higher speed etc.
How to buy Special Cargo
To buy Special Cargo, you’re going to need to start a Buy mission from the SecuroServ computer in your office. Make sure you have Associates with you, as they are multi-part missions. Each buy mission scales in difficulty depending on how many Special Cargo crates you want to buy; one (easiest), two or three (hardest).
Buy Special Cargo mission tips
There are 20 buy missions in total, with each ranging in difficulty.
You are only paid for the number of crates you deliver to your warehouse. If a crate is destroyed, you get nothing.
Once you’ve completed a number of Special Cargo deliveries you get the option to go for a Special Item crate. There is only ever one Special Item, but it’s as difficult as securing three Special Cargo crates.
Special Items cost more, but obviously sell for more. You can only have one Special Item in each warehouse at a time. They include a large diamond, rare hides, a pocket watch, a decorative egg, etc.
Only one player can hold one Special Cargo crate at a time. You may need to split the team, or group up and deliver one item after another. Don’t get cocky.
Once you collect Special Cargo, all other players in the map will be alerted. Make sure you have adequate defenses.
You have special CEO and Associate privileges so make sure you use them: Ghost Organisation will hide you for three minutes, Remove Authorities makes the law look the other way.
Your Executive Assistant isn’t just a secretary. They will inform you when Special Items are available and get in touch if things are going wrong on a mission.
There’s a five minute cooldown following a Buy Special Cargo mission.
How to sell Special Cargo
Okay, so you’ve got a warehouse full of goods you’ll want to cash it all in. Go to the laptop in your warehouse where you’ll see three different offers on the table.
Once you’re agreed on a buyer, you have three ways to deliver your goods via Land, Sea or Air missions. Again, these scale in difficulty depending on the amount of stock you’re selling. You can choose to sell 20%, 50% or 100% of Special Cargo in a warehouse.
Sell Special Cargo mission tips
If you fail to deliver the cargo at the drop off point the crate is destroyed for good. There goes your money.
If you have the time, it’s more cost efficient to buy single crates to fill your warehouse, then sell them off in bulk. The initial outlay is smaller than buying three times as many.
The more active players in your session, the larger the delivery bonus.
If you are only selling smaller amounts of your crates (20% of warehouse stock) you have a longer lead time before rival organisations are alerted to your position.
There’s a 30 minute cooldown on a Sell Cargo mission per warehouse.
Delivery vehicles can be upgraded with speed and armour at the warehouse workbench. Use it.
You have special CEO and Associate privileges so make sure you use them: Ghost Organisation will hide you for three minutes, Remove Authorities makes the law look the other way.
Once delivered, the CEO receives payment.
How to defend your warehouse
Fortunately your warehouse cannot be attacked by other players. However, it can be attacked by the local gangs of Los Santos. The more Special Cargo you have stored in a warehouse, the more likely it is to attract attention, so never stockpile goods for too long.
When you’re warned that gangs are attacking your warehouse, drop everything to defend it. If you fail to stop the gangs in time you will lose a portion of your goods and all that hard work will have gone to waste.Biomorphs are virtual entities that were devised by Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker as a way to visualize the power of evolution.
In this implementation there are 9 biomorphs: 1 parent in the center and its 8 children surrounding it. The children's genes are identical to its parent's genes except for a single mutation which changes its appearance slightly. You can select which child you want to become the parent in the next generation by clicking on it. By repeating this process, you can see how the biomorphs evolve over time.
If you'd like to guide your biomorphs towards some goal, pick a simple animal in your head ("I want to evolve a lobster") and keep choosing the child that most closely resembles that objective.
The appearance of each biomorph is determined by 9 genes: 3 that influence its width, 5 that influence its height, and 1 that influences its branching depth. You can directly modify the parent biomorph's genes by clicking on its DNA icon and tinkering with the 9 sliders. These 9 genes can be used to generate more than 118 billion different biomorphs. Humans, for comparison, have about 20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding genes.
The gradual change in the biomorphs' appearance in each generation serves as a simple model of biological evolution. Each biomorph is nearly identical to its parent, but after many generations the appearance of the biomorph can diverge wildly from the original. Biological evolution works in a similar way, though on a much longer time scale. For example, you closely resemble your parents, your parents closely resemble their parents, and so on, but if you go back tens of thousands of generations your distant ancestors would only bear a slight resemblance to you.
Because you select which child you want to survive, biomorphs are an example of artificial selection (similar to how humans have guided dog evolution over the past 15,000 – 30,000 years). In nature, however, evolution is based on natural selection: organisms that are best suited for their environment are the ones most likely to survive and pass on their genes. In future Emergent Mind projects, I plan to work on more projects that demonstrate natural selection (so stay tuned!).
If you come across any interesting biomorphs while playing around with this project, take a screenshot of its genes and send it to matthew.h.mazur@gmail.com and I'll add it to the examples.
For other JavaScript-based biomorph implementations, check out:
As always, if you'd like to chat more about this project or any others, please don't hesitate to reach out.Bethlehem man sentenced for beating over urine
Kyle D. Tarboro's claim that he is a good man is "just ridiculous," Judge Paula Roscioli told him. "You have a long history of violent behavior and the facts of this case are really disturbing."
A Bethlehem man who was on probation when he beat another man over a bizarre wager on drug-free urine will spend up to five years in state prison, a Northampton County judge decided Friday.
In April 2010, Brian Hamedl was playing poker in an all-night game at a Bethlehem Township home when he told Tarboro he had urine stored in his vehicle that Tarboro could use to cheat on a drug test.
They bet $300 on whether Hamedl actually had the urine, and Tarboro eventually demanded the money or the specimen. When Hamedl told him the bet wasn't serious, Tarboro delivered a beating that sent him to a hospital for four days, police said.
At trial this month, a jury delivered a mixed verdict, finding Tarboro guilty of simple assault, false imprisonment and false reports to police, but acquitting him of more serious charges of robbery and aggravated assault.
When the attack occurred, Tarboro was under supervision for a 2008 illegal firearms charge. Roscioli's total sentence on the probation violation and the jury's verdict calls for the 37-year-old to serve at least 30 months before he is eligible for parole.
The prison term was heftier than was sought by defense attorney Alexander Karam, who noted his client has already served nearly 15 months in the county jail.
"He's been incarcerated a long time on these charges," Karam said. "He'd like to move on with his life."
Tarboro continued to insist Friday that he did not assault Hamedl, saying he was "in the wrong place at the wrong time," and made a "poor choice" of friends. Tarboro's mother, Karen, told Roscioli she believes her son and needs him at home, where she is raising his three children.
It is "unfortunate" that Karen Tarboro has accepted her son's account, Roscioli said, noting prior assault convictions that stretch back to the 1990s.
"There is no question that you are a threat to the community," Roscioli told the defendant, who will owe nearly $54,000 for Hamedl's medical bills.
— Riley YatesLegend has it, Alfred Hitchcock had to shoot and re-shoot the shower scene in his 1960 horror-thriller'Psycho'over seven days to get the right impact. 'Ragini MMS 2' will have a similar scene featuring Sunny Leone and Karan Mehra. And it apparently took director Bhushan Patel over six hours to shoot.The scene required the actress to go topless, but she refused. A source from the set reveals, “Sunny wasn’t comfortable shooting bare-breasted and conveyed her reservations to the key production team and to Bhushan. After some discussion, it was decided to use skin-coloured pasties with matching silicone for a nude effect and these allude to Sunny shooting the scene without a bra. She was okay with this as opposed to actually shooting topless.”Interestingly, despite the arrangement, only key crew members were present on the set, which was closed for everyone else. Over 17 camera angles were used to capture the essence of erotica of the scene. “This scene comes at a very critical juncture in the movie... an important revelation is made, which provides the turning point in the storyline. The scene begins with Sunny in the shower, and after a while Karan enters the picture,” says our informer.The similarity between Janet Leigh in Psycho and Sunny in Ragini MMS 2 is that both scenes took a long time to shoot. While Sunny took six hours, Leigh took seven daysWill there be more images of Red Sox celebration in the weeks to come? (Charlie Riedel/AP)
The old man was sitting at the table in the young man's kitchen. He was sliding the salt shaker from one hand to the other.
"They're gonna win the World Series," the old man said.
The young man looked at him. "You make it sound as if that's a bad thing," he said.
"I don't recognize them," said the old man.
"What do you mean? There's Pedroia, Ortiz, Uehara. Same guys who've been carrying 'em all season."
"That's not what I mean," the old man said. "What they used to do, no matter who carried 'em, they used to fall over. Sometimes they'd get you thinking they wouldn't, but they would."
"And that was better?"
"It was something that was dependable, is what it was," said the old man. "It was something that was ours. Nobody else lost the way they did. They were artists at it, is what they were."
"I'll take what they've become," said the young |
] carried out in the exercise hall of the crusaders’ forces in the middle of Bagram’s base.”
Al Qaeda claims the US “tried to target brother Faruq several times and Allah saved him, but this time they were intent on killing him and his wife and his sons and his supporters…to add to that a new crime in the series of their ugly crimes” in various Muslim countries. The statement’s authors then go on to blast America’s war in several countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
Al Qaeda portrays the Afghan conflict as a “war on the Muslims” that hasn’t “stopped for two decades.” The war in Iraq is not focused on Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s Islamic State, according to al Qaeda, but instead “America is locked in a war of extermination against the people of the Sunnah in its allying with the Rawafidh [Shiites] in calling for fighting” Baghdadi’s organization. While al Qaeda and its loyalists are opposed to Baghdadi’s Islamic State, they have consistently argued that the US war in Iraq is really intended to slaughter all Sunnis.
In Syria, al Qaeda’s general command writes, “America strikes the leadership and soldiers of the jihadists’ groups while the Syrian regime is allowed complete freedom in striking the Syrian people with cooperation with Russia and its allies in calling for fighting terrorism.” This is also a common motif employed by al Qaeda, which seeks to portray the US as being on the side of Bashar al Assad’s regime, Iran and Russia in their war against Syria’s Sunnis.
Al Qaeda goes on to blame the US for actions taken against the “Muslim people” in Burma, Gaza, Libya, Mali, Somalia, and Yemen. In some of these countries, the US “strikes continue against the Muslims via their war planes.”
The US also targeted another al Qaeda leader, Bilal al-Utabi, in the Oct. 23 airstrike. There is no word in al Qaeda’s statement about him. It is possible that he was one of the “mujahidin heroes” killed, but his death has not been confirmed by either the Pentagon or the jihadis.
For more on Qatani (also known as Faruq al Qatari), see FDD’s Long War Journal reports:
Osama Bin Laden’s Files: ‘Very strong military activity in Afghanistan’
Treasury designates head of al Qaeda’s eastern zone in Afghanistan
US targeted 2 senior al Qaeda leaders in eastern Afghanistan
Pentagon confirms death of senior al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan
Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.Here's your guide to what's open, what's closed over this holiday week, and when you can expect your garbage and recycling to be picked up. If you encounter any city-service emergencies (downed trees, roads, water mains, etc.) you can call 905-546-2489.
Garbage and recycling pick-up
Garbage, recycling and green bin collection is pushed back one day to reflect the holidays on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, both Thursdays. Community recycling centres will be closed on those days.
That means if your normal garbage pickup is Thursday, your pickups will be Friday, Dec. 26 and Friday, Jan. 2. If your normal garbage pickup day is Friday, your pickups will be Saturday, Dec. 27 and Saturday, Jan. 4
The city reminds you to place your waste at the curb before 7 a.m. on your collection day.
Christmas tree collection: You can leave your Christmas trees on the curb the weeks of Jan. 5 and Jan. 12. Remove plastic bags and decorations.
Transit
Limited HSR bus service on Christmas Day. Call HSR information at 905-527-4441 for more details. The HSR Information Line will only be open from 9 am to 5 pm on December 25. Here's a brochure with some of the HSR holiday information.
Otherwise, expect regular HSR schedules except for:
Friday, Dec. 26: buses will operate on Saturday schedule
Wednesday, Dec. 31: buses will operate on Weekday schedule and service is free after 6 pm
Thursday, Jan. 1: buses will operate on Sunday/Holiday schedule
The HSR Customer Service Centre will be closed Dec. 25-28 and Jan. 1, and open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Dec. 24 and Dec. 31.
DARTS: If you want to travel by DARTS on Dec. 25, 26 and Jan. 1, you need to first make a reservation by calling 905.529.1717. All other subscription trips are cancelled, except dialysis.
ATS customer service will be closed Dec. 25, 26 and Jan. 1. On Dec. 31, DARTS will operate on weekday schedule and service will be free after 6 pm.
Rec centres, museums, library
All recreation centres, aquatic centres and arenas will be closed for public programming on December 25 and January 1. More information about the week of Dec. 25 here.
Museums will be closed Dec. 25, 26, 29 and January 1.
The Tourism Hamilton Visitor Information Centre on James St. North will be closed Dec. 25, 26 and January 1.
All Hamilton Public Library branches closed Dec. 25, 26, 28 and Jan. 1. Bookmobile service closed Dec. 24 through Jan. 1, resuming Jan. 2.
Other closures
Ontario Works offices closed Dec. 25 to Jan. 1, reopening Jan. 2. For emergencies during closure times Ontario Works participants may call and leave a message at 905-546-3914.
Animal Services Shelter closed Dec. 25, 26, 31 and Jan. 1.
For more emergency numbers and information about paying property taxes and parking tickets, visit the city website.
ShoppingTHE quayside roads that wind along the Seine used to throb with hurtling traffic. Today, potted palm trees have been ranged along the tarmac. Joggers and cyclists enjoy the waterside calm. On a stretch of the right bank opposite the Eiffel Tower formerly used as a convenient express route, cars have been squeezed into a single lane, leaving the other to bicycles. Over the centuries, the French capital has been the backdrop to many warring tribes. Today’s conflict pits contemporary urban combatants: enraged car owners, and everybody else.
A sense of siege is keenly felt by the capital’s motorists. Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor, is waging “a war against cars”, said Le Monde earlier this year. Parisians, says Pierre Chasseray of “40m Motorists”, a lobby group, are “living in daily hell”.
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As part of the town hall’s plan to increase the share of trips taken by bicycle from 5% to 15% by 2020, protected cycling routes are being extended along some of the city’s main arteries. An entire lane on the busy Rue de Rivoli is being converted into a two-way bike route. The left bank’s quayside road was closed to cars in 2013, six years after the city installed a bike-sharing scheme. Inevitably, until habits change (assuming that they ever do), traffic on those roads still open to vehicles is now more clogged than ever.
Paris is “not anti-car, but anti-pollution”, retorts Jean-Louis Missika, the head of planning at city hall and a deputy to the mayor. Small-particle pollution levels in the city are particularly high. With its narrow medieval streets and its 19th-century boulevards, the transport reformers seek above all to discourage cars that do not carry passengers. Fully 80% of vehicles circulating in central Paris carry only one person, and 79% of those on its roads are privately owned, according to the town hall. On September 14th BlaBlaCar, a French ride-sharing startup, launched BlaBlaLines, a new app designed to help commuters in the Greater Paris region organise carpooling with a couple of clicks. With 1.2m commuting trips of over 10km (six miles) made each day in outer Paris, there is “massive potential” to curb the number of empty cars, says Frédéric Mazzella, the firm’s boss.
Ms Hidalgo’s crusade against motorists is partly political. She governs Paris in a coalition with the Greens, who hold the transport portfolio. Her detractors say she is in thrall to “hipsters on bicycles”. But it is also part of a broader rethink of how the city should adapt to an age that will be shaped by electric vehicles and driverless transport. “It’s a revolution that will be as great as the transition from horse-drawn carriages to the motor car,” says Mr Missika. He expects to authorise the first experimental driverless six-person taxis in Paris next year, and claims that city hall will ban privately owned cars (as opposed to ones that are leased) in the centre by 2025-30. On current plans, diesel cars will be banned altogether from Paris by 2020. (London, by contrast, has nothing nearly as ambitious in place, though surcharges for older diesel models will come into effect in the centre of the city from next month. The mayor, Sadiq Khan, is reportedly planning to extend this to the whole city.)
The spread of electric, and in time driverless, vehicles means that Paris is not heading towards a post-car future. When it comes to making cycling the norm, the city still lags far behind others in Europe, such as Copenhagen or Amsterdam. A far bigger effort to invest in public transport may ultimately have a greater impact on car use, as well as help to spread jobs and businesses outside the city centre. The Grand Paris Express, Europe’s biggest infrastructure project at a cost of some €30bn ($36bn), is a new fast train under construction that will link outer Paris with its airports, stadiums and universities in a figure-of-eight around the city. With four new lines and 68 stations, it is due to be in full service in 2030. A big stretch of each of the four lines should be open by 2024, in time for the city’s hosting of the Olympic games.The balcony announcement set for Tuesday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said would be the "October surprise" that derails the Clinton candidacy has been cancelled due to security concerns at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
The whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks promised to provide a damaging document leak this Tuesday that founder Julian Assange asserts will finally derail Hillary Clinton’s path to the presidency, but that promise will at least be delayed for some time while the organization attempts to control for security concerns during a balcony press conference at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) September 30, 2016
Assange appeared on Fox News last month saying that he has documents that could compromise Hillary’s path to the presidency and suggested that "teasers" would be released, but to date no documents have been dumped by the organization.
The flood of damaging information being released by WikiLeaks, most prominently the DNC emails that exposed Hillary Clinton’s campaign engaging in a nebulous scheme to override the popular will of voters by teaming up with the Democratic Party and major media outlets to spin false narratives about her primary opponent Bernie Sanders led Hillary’s campaign to exploit a strategy of blaming it all on Russia.
Security analysts say that there is a strong likelihood that Russia did breach the DNC email system – as dozens of countries have done in previous election cycles – but the narrative was quickly conflated with linking Moscow with providing the documents to WikiLeaks to skew the outcome of the US election – an allegation that remains wholly without proof and is based solely on conjecture.
Speaking with Fox News, Julian Assange suggested that the documents that would spell Clinton’s undoing related to self-dealing during her tenure as Secretary of State in connection with the Clinton Foundation, a charitable organization that has come under increased scrutiny in recent months given the many conflicts of interest between State Department work and business dealings of top donors.
Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) October 2, 2016
Donald Trump ally Roger Stone tweeted on Sunday morning that Hillary Clinton would be “done” on Wednesday as a result of the WikiLeaks file dump suggesting that he may have received an advance copy or have some idea of the potential contents of the leak. It remains uncertain whether Stone was aware that WikiLeaks would be cancelling the leak event.
The concern for Assange’s safety appear to be well-founded after Hillary surrogate Bob Beckel called for, in an almost deranged fashion, for the United States government to “illegally shoot the son of a b----“ following the leak of the DNC emails earlier in the election cycle.
Coming to terms with coming out by Elena Demetriou
Lesbo, lezzie, queer, fanny basher and muff muncher. These are some of the names people call me. It doesn’t happen every day, but these names stay with me, making me feel vulnerable, an outcast. They don’t know what I go through, what obstacles I have to jump every day due to my sexuality.
How did I know I was a lesbian? I tried going out with boys but I felt uncomfortable with them. When I was with girls I felt at ease. You hear stories about young people going through phases, especially in their teenage years, and that’s what I thought might be happening to me. I was so confused, it was getting me down, and I needed to talk to someone.
I went to see my school counsellor. She told me to think it through, gave me details about a community centre nearby holding meetings for girls questioning their sexuality. I went along to discover people just as confused as me and began to realise I must accept who I was.
When I first came out, everyone asked me: ‘was it difficult…?’ Definitely. I was scared people would judge me and act differently. The biggest hurdle was telling my mum and dad because I’d read about parents kicking their kids out for being homosexual.
They’d call me names like ‘he/she’ or ‘man beast’
However, I told them and they were okay. They both said it didn’t come as a surprise as they guessed some time ago: I never wore skirts, always trousers. I enjoyed football, basketball, rugby and tag rugby; I played with Action Man rather than Barbie. I haven’t told the rest of my dad’s side of the family, I’m waiting for the right time, they are a bit old fashioned and I’m unsure how they will react.
When I did come out to my friends they were cool with it. They would question me with ‘are you sure?’ I would tell them time and time again that I was, it’s just my sexuality that’s changed not my whole personality.
I couldn’t let the bullies know I was defeated. I had to hold my head high and show them I’m stronger than I look. The consequences of the bulling haven’t all been bad. I am now stronger, happier, more confident and determined not to get pulled down! I don’t need to hide my sexuality any more. I feel free.
If you are questioning your sexuality like I was then talk to someone you can trust or go to some support meetings that help young confused people. Or, if you know for sure, visit websites that help you find out more about being gay, lesbian or bisexual.It sounds silly to spend thousands on studio monitors…
Only to waste their potential by not taking the time to position them right.
Doesn’t it?
Yet many folks do exactly that. Because what they don’t realize is…
A seemingly small detail like monitor placement can have an even greater impact on your sound…
Than the monitors themselves!
Poorly-positioned…they can create HUGE peaks and valleys in the frequency response of your room…
Destroying any chance you had of crafting a well-balanced mix.
To help you avoid that misfortune, for today’s post I’ve created this in-depth guide on studio monitor placement.
First up…
The Standard Mixing Position
While the “correct mixing position” is always subject to debate…
The majority of today’s engineers are in agreement as to what is generally considered “ideal.”
And that “ideal position” can be summed up with 2 simple rules:
1. Your head should form an equilateral triangle with your monitors
The following diagram shows how it should look:
The logic here is: Without a standard in place, stereo image widths may vary drastically from one studio to another.
To solve this problem…
The equilateral triangle method was likely devised as an easy-to-remember rule that offers a good compromise between too-wide and too-narrow.
The next rule is…
2. Point the monitors directly toward your head
The following diagram shows the proper setup:
The logic here is: Because high frequencies are more “directional” than low frequencies….
They sound noticeably stronger when the tweeters are pointed directly at you…compared to when they’re NOT.
Just like with Rule #1…
Rule #2 was likely developed as a way to maintain a consistent listening perspective from one studio to another.
So that covers the basics of monitor placement. Now let’s move on to the more-advanced stuff.
Starting with…
Room Modes Explained
While the goal of monitor placement is to create an environment where:
A natural balance of sounds can exist, un-colored by room acoustics…
The BIGGEST obstacle to achieving that goal is a condition known as room modes…
Which form whenever a room’s dimensions are EITHER:
the same length as the sound wave, or…
a multiple of the half-wavelength (1.5, 2, 2.5, etc.).
At those frequencies, the sound waves get trapped between opposing walls, creating what’s known as a standing wave…
Which affects both the volume, and rate-of-decay of that frequency…and distorts the overall acoustics of the room.
When 2 room dimensions are equal, like in a standard 10×10 bedroom, the problem is amplified because you have twice as many standing waves at the same group of frequencies.
That is also the reason you hear people say that cubed-rooms are the worst.
Up next…
Frequency vs. Wavelength
In a typical-sized home studio, you only see problems with standing waves below frequencies of 300 Hz.
And here’s why:
At higher frequencies, sound waves are shorter…
While at lower frequencies, they’re longer.
For example:
20,000 Hz = 0.05 ft
= 10,000 Hz = 0.1 ft
= 1,000 Hz = 1.1 ft
= 500 Hz = 2.3 ft
= 200 Hz = 5.7 ft
= 100 Hz = 11.3 ft
= 20 Hz = 56.5 ft
As lower frequencies approach the size of a room’s dimensions…they become increasingly affected by the room itself.
That’s one reason why larger rooms are better, since they only have problems with standing waves at the lowest bass frequencies.
In smaller rooms, the problems are usually much greater.
The good news is: there are solutions. So let’s learn them now…
Solution #1: Better Positioning
To tame the effects of standing waves in your room, the standard strategy is:
to create singular waves at multiple frequencies
waves at frequencies as opposed to multiple waves at fewer frequencies.
This is done by varying the distances between your monitors and each wall.
That way, the impact of each wave at each frequency is minimized, and the frequency response of the room remains as flat as possible.
To employ this strategy, all you need to do is follow these steps when setting up your monitors:
1. Position monitors against the longest wall.
When it comes to the width of your room, you really can’t vary the distances from the side-walls, because you still need to maintain a symmetrical stereo image.
In this case, the next best solution is to set up your monitors against the longest wall to minimize problems from side reflections.
Up next…
2. Vary those distances.
At this point, pull out a measuring tape and a notepad, because it’s time to compare some distances.
First off, ensure that the height of your monitors is either slightly above, or slightly below the mid-way point between the floor and ceiling.
Next, measure the distance between the monitors and the side-walls, to ensure that they’re neither the same (nor an exact multiple of) the previous two distances.
If they are, simply make adjustments and re-measure until everything looks good.
Up next…
3. Create space between the monitors and the rear wall.
Because bass frequencies project outward in all directions…much of that sound travels backwards and reflects off the rear wall of your room.
The problem is, when it recombines with the direct sound from the monitors…
The “in-phase“ frequencies get amplified, and the “out-of-phase“ frequencies cancel out. This principle is known as the boundary effect.
To solve the problem, pro studios often build their monitors directly into the wall, thus eliminating all rear reflections. (Here’s an example).
However, since this solution is far too expensive for home studios…
The next best option is to create the maximum separation between the wall and the monitors that the room-size will allow. For most rooms, that’s between 1-2 feet.
This won’t SOLVE the problem, but it will lessen it somewhat, by reducing the strength of the reflections.
Another useful trick is to use monitors with FRONT bass ports, such as the Adam Audio A7X, because unlike rear-facing bass ports, they direct a larger portion of the energy forward, AWAY from the walls.
In really small rooms, these monitors save space by allowing you to position them closer to the wall.
Up next…
4. Find a good head position
In the same way that monitor positioning has a big impact on your sound…so too does head positioning.
And so, following the same basic principles…here’s how to find the ideal position for YOURSELF:
Center your chair between the side walls to maintain symmetrical stereo image. Set the chair height so your head is NOT halfway between the ceiling and floor. Set the chair/desk position so that it is NOT halfway between the front and back walls. Measure and compare the distances on all 3 dimensions to ensure they’re neither the same, nor exact multiples of each other.
Once that’s done, you’re ready for the next step…
Solution #2: Acoustic Treatment
Now that you’ve positioned both your monitors and chair…
Next it’s time to arrange some acoustic treatment around those two positions.
Here’s how it’s done:
1. Add bass traps behind monitors
Earlier I mentioned how reflected bass frequencies from your rear wall can cause problems.
Well the absolute BEST way to minimize those problems is to add bass traps directly behind each monitor.
If you only follow one tip from this article…FOLLOW THIS ONE. Because it makes a huge difference.
If you don’t have spare bass traps, acoustic panels or ANY other type of absorption works FAR better than nothing.
Up next…
2. Add absorption at initial reflection points
If you’re familiar with initial reflection points, then you know there are 4 KEY locations that cause the majority of problems with reflected sound from your monitors:
Two are above your head
One is on the left wall
One is on the right wall
If you AREN’T familiar with them yet, here’s how to find them:
Imagine that the walls and ceiling of your room are mirrors. From your seated mixing position, the initial reflection points are the spots on the wall where you would see the reflections of your monitors.
Simply cover up those 4 spots with acoustic panels, and you’re all set.
Up next…
3. Add diffusion to the rear wall
Even though the sound waves from your monitors spread out in ALL directions…
The MAJORITY of that energy is focused directly at you…and the wall behind your head.
If that wall is flat, it’s a liability…because it has the potential to create more standing waves than any surface in the room.
However…
If that wall is covered in diffusers, it becomes an asset, because it scatters all that energy before it ever has the chance to cause problems.
Combine this tip with the 2 previous ones, and you’ve got a great recipe for success.
Up next…
Suggested Tools
Now that you’ve got a plan, here are a few links to some tools that might help you:
First, if you need acoustic treatment, check out this article:
The next item I recommend is a pair of isolation pads for your monitors. In addition to acoustically isolating your them from the desk…
They also offer a way to easily adjust tilt. For monitor placement, this has 2 advantages:
Tilting the monitors up or down creates less potential for standing waves between the front and rear walls. Tilting allows you to readjust the angle towards your head as you raise or lower the height.
These are the top models I recommend:
Next, for those with a decent-sized room, I recommend adding a pair of monitor stands.
Compared to desk-shelves, these stands offer maximum flexibility with positioning, making your job a lot easier.
These are the ones I recommend:
And finally, to conclude this article:
Testing the Results of Your Work
Once you’ve completed all the steps, everything should sound good, in-theory. But just to verify it sounds good in-reality…
Some people use a test known as a bass sweep to pin-point possible problems in the low-end frequency response of a room.
Here’s an example. Check it out:
What you hear in this recording is a series of descending bass tones, played at a constant level.
To test your room, play this recording (or any equivalent) through your monitors and listen for significant changes in volume from one note to the next.
If they sound consistent, then all is well.
If NOT, chances are there’s a problem with your current setup. And unfortunately, the only way to fix it is to start over from the beginning, try again, and retest.
While it may take a few attempts to get it right, trust me when I say…
All your efforts will be well-worth-it once you hear the end-result.What is the sound of one molecule clapping? Researchers have demonstrated a device that can pick up single quanta of mechanical vibration similar to those that shake molecules during chemical reactions and have shown that the device itself, which is the width of a hair, acts as if it exists in two places at once. This type of “quantum weirdness” feat so far had only been observed at the scale of molecules.
“This is a milestone,” says Wojciech Zurek, a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “It confirms what many of us believe, but some continue to resist—that our universe is quantum to the core.”
Aaron O’Connell, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, used computer-chip manufacturing techniques to create a mechanical resonator—akin to a small tuning fork. It was one micron thick and 40 microns long, just big enough to be visible with the naked eye. He and his collaborators then attached the resonator to a superconducting circuit and cooled everything to within 0.025 of a degree above absolute zero. At those temperatures, the resonator would either be completely still or possess a quantum of vibrational energy, called a phonon. Vibrations could be detected using the superconducting circuit—in which case the device acted as a “quantum microphone.” Alternatively, running currents in the circuit would force the resonator to vibrate in sync. Thus, when the team put the circuit into a superposition of two states, one with a current and the other without, the resonator was in a superposition of vibrating and not vibrating.
In a vibrating state each atom in the resonator moved only by an extremely small distance—less than the size of the atom itself. Thus, in the superposition of states the resonator was never really in two totally distinct places. But still, the experiment showed that a large object (made of about 10 trillion atoms) can display just as much quantum weirdness as single atoms do. O’Connell presented the results in March at a meeting of the American Physical Society, and the findings appeared in the April 1 Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)Housing never quite made a comeback. Select any data point, excepting home prices, and no recovery is evident. Both single family housing starts and new one family houses sold are barely touching their previous lows. Home prices have risen, but this is due in part to constrained housing supply toward the later part of the current economic recovery. Housing simply did not bounce back with the vigor expected, and it shows no signs of doing so soon.
Every recovery is missing something. There was ample commentary about the “jobless” recoveries that began to appear in the 90’s, when blame landed on job polarization —the trend towards jobs at the high end of the spectrum and low end of the spectrum with fewer in the middle—and increasing productivity—or “output per worker”. The phenomenon could be due to structural shifts that antiquate certain jobs. In a 2003 speech, (during a jobless recovery), soon to be Federal Reserve Chair Bernanke stated he favored the increase in productivity view.
The current “houseless” recovery is somewhat different. While jobs have made it to their previous highs, single family home sales or construction are unlikely to make it back to their long term averages in the near future, forget surpassing the previous highs. This lack of resurgence has an effect on the broader economy. While housing itself does not constitute a significant portion of the US economy, its derivatives do. These include the non-contestable (or very low contestability) construction jobs, the boost to consumption which does make a significant portion of the economy, and the effects on other financial decisions of home ownership.
What is causing the Great Malaise to be a houseless recovery? For one, the homeownership rate in the US is in secular decline. This has been happening for a decade —long before the housing crisis accelerated the trend. Lower homeownership rates are especially evident in lower age groups. With less equity in their homes before the crisis, their wealth was the most susceptible to declines in home prices. Student debt may also be holding back first time buyers. This will take time to pay down. Much like the jobless recovery of the early 2000’s, the houseless recovery’s defining trend is not going to reverse quickly.
Granted, there are bright spots in the housing recovery. Multifamily housing starts have recovered to historical levels, and are even slightly higher than the trend prior to the recession. As the home ownership rate continues to fall, sustained demand is likely to continue. This may well be a more permanent trend than many are anticipating.
Understanding the houseless recovery enlightens some of the Federal Reserve decision making. The jobless recovery of the early 2000’s was at least partly responsible for the prolonged accommodativeness of the Fed before the Great Recession. There is, after all, a dual mandate that calls for the Fed to maintain stable prices and maximum employment—arguably impossible. In the Bernanke speech referenced earlier, he stated that due to subdued inflation the Federal Reserve could remain accommodative to support this recovery without being worried about potential negative consequences.
Does the same apply to the houseless recovery? The US has spent the last 5 years attempting to reach escape velocity and part of the reason for the struggle has been housing. In her testimony before Congress Fed Chair Yellen admitted that lower than expected housing activity could be “protracted”, but few are willing to admit that housing may not be coming back in the near term. Such an admission would have a considerable effect on the administration of monetary policy. It is time for the US to come to grips with the houseless recovery.
Image: Wikicommons.Report: Iranian Protesters Are Marching Towards Supreme Leader Khamenei’s Residence
Protests against the brutal and corrupt Khamenei regime in Iran continued on Sunday.
On Sunday several media outlets reported that the democracy protesters were marching toward the Supreme Leader’s home on Pasteur Street in Tehran.
Saleh Hamid posted this on Facebook Sunday night:
“At 19:50, the people of Tehran have invaded the Pasteur; the military commanders are terrified / severe emphasis on military commanders to prevent the invasion of the people”
More from Al Arabiya:
According to Shahrvand-Yar, a non-profit institution that advocates for democracy and change in Iran, said on its channel on Telgram app that the crowds of protesters began marching toward’s the house at exactly 19:50 Tehran time.
Tonight in #ShahinShahr, #Isfahan, video purportedly shows Basiji vans set on fire by protesters after Basij forces attacked a large group #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/19IcHVKW4o — Lisa Daftari (@LisaDaftari) December 31, 2017
Iranian activist Banafsheh Zand posted on the developments.Are you a Klingon traveling across the country to settle an honor dispute? The TSA would really like you to keep your traditional weapon out of your carry-on bag.
The agency discovered “a weapon resembling a Klingon bat’leth” — think a dual-edged, crescent shaped scimitar — in a carry-on bag at San Juan Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, according to a blog post going over some of its most interesting finds from the last year.
Admittedly, the version in the TSA catch seems like it was smaller than the weapon features in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Bladed items are generally allowed in checked bags, but not carry-ons. However, the 2015 mini-bat’leth is actually not the first time the agency has caught someone trying to pack something like this in a carry-on: It discovered a similar weapon at LaGuardia in 2012.
And this isn’t the only nerdy battlegear the TSA uncovered over the past year. A surprisingly number of people tried to bring batarangs — weapons like Batman’s bladed boomerangs — onto planes, according to the agency’s blog post.European Rugby Champions Cup
We want to compete with 'the best of the best'
ESPN Staff
© Getty Images Enlarge
The great and the good from the Premiership give their reaction to the European Rugby Champions Cup draw
The draw Pool 1: Saracens, Munster, Clermont Auvergne, Sale Sharks
Pool 2: Leinster, Castres, Harlequins, London Wasps
Pool 3: Toulon, Leicester Tigers, Ulster, Scarlets
Pool 4: Glasgow Warriors, Montpellier, Bath, Toulouse
Leicester Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill: "Leicester always want to compete against the best of the best and that is what the new European Rugby Champions Cup is all about. We're looking forward to taking part in its first season and maintaining the club's proud tradition in European competition. I'm sure the Tigers supporters are already looking forward to some big European occasions at Welford Road and some exciting trips away with the team too. It is a very competitive group with Ulster, the Scarlets and Toulon who won the European Cup and French title this season. We've been to all three venues in recent seasons and know the strength of the challenge from each of them - and I'm sure they'll all be looking at Leicester and thinking the same thing."
Northampton Saints director of rugby Jim Mallinder: "We haven't played Racing Metro before, and going to Paris will be an exciting challenge. Racing is an ambitious club and showed in their recent play-offs win away at Toulouse just how dangerous they can be. They have a squad packed with quality players and are strengthening even further over the summer. While Racing is a new opponent for us we know what to expect from the Ospreys. We had to work extremely hard for our results against them last season and it will be no different in 2014/15. Dan Biggar is a top goal kicker and Alun Wyn Jones is an outstanding captain and any side that has that number of internationals deserves to be respected. We haven't played Treviso for a few years, and it will be good to go back to Italy. But while that will be a good trip for the supporters we will have to make sure we keep our focus on the job in hand, which is to get a win over a team that beat Munster and ran Leinster and Ulster close on home turf in the Pro 12 last season."
London Wasps director of rugby, Dai Young: "We always knew it would be a tough pool after qualifying as bottom seed, but my initial reaction is one of excitement. We know it will be a massive challenge for us as a squad and rugby department, but it's the kind of challenge we are all really looking forward to. This is where we, the Club and our supporters want to be, playing in the top competition against the best teams in Europe. "Leinster speak for themselves in terms of quality. They have been one of the best teams in Europe over the last five or six years, while Castres are the second best team in France, with a big budget. We also know that our near neighbours, Harlequins, are a quality outfit. so it will be a challenge, but if you want to improve and get better, you have to challenge yourself against the best. I am excited for the players, the coaches and Wasps supporters."
Harlequins head coach John Kingston: "Playing a side like Leinster with their wonderful European pedigree of late is a really mouth-watering prospect and equally Castres, having reached the French Top 14 final this year and being French Champions the previous season, offers another great challenge for us. Our record against French sides recently has been very good and clearly the players will be very much looking forward to another massive Anglo-French match-up. The new structure of the competition will mean even more that every point is going to be vital and that each match is going to be massively competitive. All in all it's a really exciting draw and we're looking forward to it kicking off in earnest in October."
© ESPN Sports Media LtdImage copyright AP Image caption Mers causes symptoms including fever, pneumonia and kidney failure
Health officials have reported the first case of Mers coronavirus in the US after a man fell ill following travel to Saudi Arabia.
The unidentified patient has been hospitalised in Indiana with the Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers).
Saudi Arabia says more than 100 people infected with Mers have died since an outbreak began in 2012.
Mers, unusually lethal and found in camels, causes symptoms including fever, pneumonia and kidney failure.
Local Indiana |
accelerate away to let wind resistance slow Mueller down.
BikeRadar will update this story if and when Mueller improves her record.Historical evaluations and approval rates of his presidency have been mixed. Detractors highlight a series of failed policies and a strained public presence while supporters note increased economic competitiveness and loosening of gridlock. He began his term with an approval rate of 50%, hovered around 35% during his inter-years and finally bottomed out at 12% in January 2017. [2] Peña Nieto is seen as one of the most controversial and least popular presidents in the history of Mexico. [3] [4]
Enrique Peña Nieto ( Spanish pronunciation: [enˈrike ˈpeɲa ˈnjeto] (); born 20 July 1966), commonly referred to by his initials EPN, is a Mexican politician who served as the 57th President of Mexico, from 2012 to 2018. He previously served in the State of Mexico as Secretary of Administration (2000–2002), Representative (2003–2004), and State Governor (2005–2011).
This name uses Spanish naming customs : the first or paternal family name isand the second or maternal family name is
In 1975, his father would often take him to the campaign rallies of the State of Mexico's governor, Jorge Jiménez Cantú, a close friend of Peña del Mazo The successor of the governor was Alfredo del Mazo González, a cousin of Peña Nieto's father. During Del Mazo González's campaign in 1981, the fifteen-year-old Peña Nieto had his first direct contact with Mexican politics : he began delivering campaign literature in favor of his relative, a memory Peña Nieto recalls as the turning point and start of his deep interest in politics.
Peña Nieto was elected to a local deputy position in his hometown of Atlacomulco, State of Mexico, in 2003. [21] [22] Two years later, the governorship of the State of Mexico was sought by Atlacomulco-natives Carlos Hank Rhon, Isidro Pastor, Héctor Luna de la Vega, Guillermo González Martínez, Óscar Gustavo Cárdenas Monroy, Eduardo Bernal Martínez, Cuauhtémoc García Ortega and Fernando Alberto García Cuevas. [22] Peña Nieto was among the crowd, but was not poised as one of the favorites. [22] Nonetheless, in 2005, Peña Nieto was the last man standing, succeeding Montiel Rojas as governor of the State of Mexico. [23] On 12 February 2005, with 15,000 supporters in attendance, he was sworn-in as candidate for the PRI. [24]
After 1999, Peña Nieto went from having low-level secretary positions to higher and more qualified offices. [18] He served from 1999 to 2000 as the Sub-secretary of Government, [19] and as financial sub-coordinator of the political campaign of Montiel Rojas. [17] In 2001, Montiel Rojas named Peña Nieto Sub-secretary of Interior in the State of Mexico, a position that granted him the opportunity to meet and forge relationships with top PRI politicians and wealthy businessmen. After his term concluded, he served as the administrative secretary, as president of the Directive Council of Social Security, as president of the Internal Council of Health, and as vice president of the National System for Integral Family Development – all in the State of Mexico. [18] Under the wing of Montiel Rojas, Peña Nieto formed a group known as the "Golden Boys of Atlacomulco" with other members of the PRI. [20]
Peña Nieto formally started his political career under the mentorship of Montiel Rojas, becoming the Secretary of the Citizen Movement of Zone I of the State Directive Committee of the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP), one of the three sectors of the PRI. For three consecutive years, Peña Nieto participated as a delegate to the Organization and Citizen Front in different municipalities of the State of Mexico. Then, between 1993 and 1998, during Emilio Chuayfett's term as governor, Peña Nieto was chief of staff and personal secretary to Montiel Rojas, the Secretary of Economic Development of the State of Mexico. [17]
Peña Nieto joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1984, and with a law degree nearly completed, he began earning his own money. [17] During his final years in college, Peña Nieto worked for a public notary in Mexico City, around the same time when his relative, Alfredo del Mazo González, was mentioned as a firm candidate for the 1988 presidential elections. [17] In his twenties, he worked at the San Luis Industrial Corporation, an auto parts manufacturer, and at the law firm Laffan, Muse and Kaye. While still a student at the Universidad Panamericana, he roomed with Eustaquio de Nicolás, the current president of Homex, a leading Mexican construction and real estate company. He also befriended and roomed with Luis Miranda, who occupied several offices during the 1999–2000 administration in the State of Mexico. [17]
The Yo Soy 132 student movement criticized Peña Nieto for his stance on the San Salvador Atenco unrest, which occurred during his term as governor. [31] Peña Nieto stated in an interview that he does not justify the actions of the state and municipal forces, but also mentioned that they were not gladly received by the citizens of San Salvador Atenco upon their arrival. [32] [31]
Peña Nieto also claimed that he halved the murder rate in the State of Mexico during his time as governor, [29] but retracted this claim after The Economist showed that the murder rate did not diminish and was being measured in a different way. [30]
By 2006, his administration carried out 141 of the promised projects, making that year the most active in the governor's term. The 608 projects Peña Nieto proposed consisted of creating highways, building hospitals, and creating adequate water systems to provide fresh water throughout the state. The most important of these was highway infrastructure, which tripled under Peña's government. By mid-2011, the official page of the State of Mexico noted that only two projects were left. [27] The major projects in public transportation were the Suburban Railway of the Valley of Mexico Metropolitan Area and the "Mexibús", both of which served commuters between Mexico City and the State of Mexico, providing service to more than 300,000 people every day and 100 million a year. Regarding public health services, 196 hospitals and medical centers were built throughout the state and the number of mobile units to attend remote and vulnerable areas doubled. [28] Deaths caused by respiratory diseases were reduced by 55%, while deaths caused by dysentery and cervical cancer were reduced by 68% and 25% respectively. In addition, between 2005 and 2011, the State of Mexico was able to fulfill the requirement of the World Health Organization of having one doctor for every 1,000 inhabitants. The funds for these and all the other commitments were obtained through restructuring the state's public debt, a strategy designed by his first Secretary of Finance, Luis Videgaray Caso. The restructuring also managed to keep the debt from increasing during Peña Nieto's term because the tax base was broadened to the point that it doubled in six years. [28]
On 15 September 2005, Peña Nieto was sworn as governor of the State of Mexico at the Morelos theater in Toluca. Among the hundreds of attendees were the outgoing governor, Arturo Montiel ; the president of the Superior Court of Justice, José Castillo Ambriz; former governors, members of Peña Nieto's cabinet and party, mayors, businessmen, and church figures. [25] The centerpiece of Peña Nieto's governorship was his claim that he was to deliver his compromisos – 608 promises he signed in front of a notary to convince voters that he would deliver results and be an effective leader. [26] According to El Universal, during Peña Nieto's first year as governor, his administration delivered 10 of the structural promises he had advocated in his campaign – marking the lowest figure in his six-year term. [27]
On 1 July 2012, Mexico's presidential election took place. In an initial, partial count issued that night, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) announced that based on a fast vote counting, Peña Nieto was leading the election with 38% of the votes. [39] His nearest competitor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was just 6 points behind him. The figures were meant to be a representative sample of the votes nationwide; but shortly after this announcement, Peña Nieto appeared on national television claiming victory. "This Sunday, Mexico won," he said. He then thanked his voters and promised to run a government "responsible and open to criticism." At the PRI headquarters in Mexico City, the victory party began. [39] With more than 97% of the votes counted on election day, the PRI had won with about 38% of the votes, just 6.4 points above the leftist candidate López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who refused to concede to the results and had threatened to challenge the outcome. [40] [41]
On 27 November 2011, a few days after the book fair, Peña Nieto was the PRI's last standing nominee for the 2012 Mexican presidential elections. The former State of Mexico governor completed his nomination at an event that gathered sympathizers and politicians. [35] Six days earlier, the senator and preliminary candidate of the PRI, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, withdrew from the race and gave Peña Nieto a clear path towards the presidency. [36] During a book fair a month later, Peña Nieto's public image came into question after he struggled to answer a question that asked which three books had marked his life. [37] Later, Peña Nieto was interviewed by El País and admitted that he did not know the price of tortillas. When he was criticized as being out of touch, Peña Nieto insisted that he was not "the woman of the household" and thus would not know the price. [38]
On 23 November 2011, Peña Nieto went to a book fair in Casa del Lago, Mexico City. There he presented his book México, la gran esperanza (Mexico, the great hope). He was accompanied by writer Héctor Aguilar Camín, the former governor of Mexico's Central Bank, Guillermo Ortiz Martínez, and the journalist Jaime Sánchez Susarrey. In the book, Peña Nieto argued that Mexico needed to expand its economy to create more jobs, insisting that in the past the country has only created jobs in the informal sector. [33] Additionally, he argued that promoting Pemex (Mexico's state-owned oil company) to compete in the private sector would create more jobs, elevate productivity, and balance wealth distribution across Mexico. Nonetheless, Peña Nieto dedicated the book to his wife Angélica Rivera and to governor Eruviel Ávila Villegas and his family. [33] Peña Nieto said that the return of the PRI marks a new era in Mexico, and that his book served as a starting point to take Mexico "to better horizons." [34]
Peña Nieto was sworn-in as President of Mexico on 1 December 2012 at the federal congress and later flew to a military parade to formally take control of the armed forces. During his inauguration speech at the National Palace, Peña Nieto proposed his agendas and reforms for the new administration. Before and after the inauguration, in an event that has been labeled by the media as the 1DMX,[42][43][44][45] protesters rioted outside of the National Palace and clashed with Federal Police forces, vandalizing hotel structures and setting fires in downtown Mexico City. More than 90 protesters were arrested and several were injured. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard blamed anarchist groups for the violence.[46][47] However, there is evidence that agents of provocation worked with the police, paid 300 Mexican pesos (about US$20) for their acts of vandalism, according to media reports.[48] Photos show the vandals waiting in groups behind police lines prior to the violence.[49] Previous protests had been entirely peaceful, but on this occasion, in apparent response to violence, the police fired rubber bullets.[50] The day after his inauguration, Peña Nieto announced the Pact for Mexico, an agreement that he had struck with the leaders of the two other major parties at the time, Jesús Zambrano Grijalva of the Party of the Democratic Revolution and Gustavo Madero Muñoz of the National Action Party, about the government's goals for the next few years.[51] On December 1, 2018, Enrique Peña Nieto left office and was succeeded by Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Economic policy Edit
Peña Nieto and Takanobu Ito at the inauguration of the Honda plant in Celaya, Guanajuato on 21 February 2014.
The auto manufacturing industry expanded rapidly under Nieto's presidency. In 2014, more than US$10 billion was committed in investment in the sector. In conjunction with Kia Motors in August 2014, the president announced plans for Kia to build a US$1 billion factory in Nuevo León. At the time, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan were already building a US$1.4 billion plant near Puebla, while BMW was planning a US$1 billion assembly plant in San Luis Potosí. Audi began building a US$1.3 billion factory near Puebla in 2013.[52] As of December 2014, two years into Peña Nieto's term, total investment in the auto sector in Mexico had reached US$19 billion.[53] The Bajío Region has received the majority of this investment, and with its rapidly expanding aerospace industry has become the fastest-growing region in the country.[54] In February 2014, Time was met with controversy for the release of a cover featuring Enrique Peña Nieto and the legend Saving Mexico (written by Michael Crowley),[55] as the cover article's title inside the magazine.[56] The controversial article praised the president and his cabinet for reforms like opening oil fields for foreign investment for the first time in 75 years (a reform towards which Mexican citizens have shown mixed feelings), ending the Mexican drug wars (which was not completely accurate), and even going as far as saying "the opposition party blocked major reforms that were necessary", that "American leaders could learn a thing or two from their resurgent southern neighbor" and saying Mexicans citizens' "alarms were replaced with applause".[57]
According to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), between December 2012 and June 2016, more than two million jobs were created in Mexico. Of those jobs, 41% were taken by women and 36% were taken by individuals between 20 and 34 years of age. IMSS also revealed that 86% were long-term jobs and 14% were temporary. These jobs have led to a 26% increase in revenue accumulation for IMSS, an additional MXN$50 billion. More than half a million jobs had salaries worth five minimum wages (about MXN$10,000 per month) and there was a 22% increase in jobs with salaries greater than 20 minimum wages.[58]
Special economic zones Edit
Peña Nieto with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, 8 July 2017
At the end of May 2016, Peña Nieto signed a law that will create special economic zones in economically underdeveloped southern states. The first three are: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán; Port Chiapas, Chiapas; and in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to better join the ports of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca. Another zone in the petroleum region of Tabasco and Campeche, hit by the downturn in the oil industry, is planned for 2017.[59]
The special economic zones are meant to alleviate the lack of industry in the South. During the signing, Peña Nieto highlighted the difference between the South and the industrial North and Center of Mexico: two of every three people in extreme poverty in Mexico live in the southern states. While the three poorest states (Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero) have about 10% of the population, they only receive $1 of every $36 in foreign direct investment in the country. He went on to say that there are two Mexicos: one "that competes and wins in the global economy, with growing levels of income, development and well-being", while the other Mexico "has been left behind [and] hasn't been able to take advantage of its potential."[59]
The special economic zones will offer tax incentives (exemption from the 16% VAT),[60] trade and customs benefits and the streamlining of regulatory processes.[59] There will also be an increase in infrastructure spending in these regions. Private administrators will run the zones on 40-year contracts (managing infrastructure and attracting tenants).[60] According to Peña Nieto, at the latest, each of these zones will have an anchor tenant that will attract suppliers and other industries in the supply chain by 2018. The World Bank advised Mexico during the formulation of the special economic zones plan.[59]
Domestic policy Edit
Enrique Pena Nieto in 2017
Peña Nieto enacted a massive public education reform that would tame the powerful teachers' union, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), improve standards, centralize the process for hiring, evaluating, promoting and retaining teachers, and crack down on rampant corruption – such as wages for non-existent “ghost teachers”.[61][62] Five years after its signing, the plan has barely affected standards: Mexico still ranks last in education among the 35 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and the Secretariat of Public Education spent more money on communications (2,700% more on communications in 2017 than was budgeted) than on teacher training.[62]
Security policy Edit
While campaigning, Peña Nieto appointed a former general of the National Police of Colombia as his external advisor for public security, and promised to reduce the murder rate in Mexico by 50% by the end of his six-year term.[63][64] Critics of Peña Nieto's security strategy, however, said that he offered "little sense" in exactly how he will reduce the violence.[65][63] During the three-month campaign, Peña Nieto was not explicit on his anti-crime strategy, and many analysts wondered whether he was holding back politically sensitive details or simply did not know how he would attempt to squelch the violence and carry out the next stage in Mexico's drug war.[63] United States officials were worried that the election of Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party may mean a return to the old PRI tactics of "corruption [and] backroom deals" with the cartels in exchange for bribes and relative peace.[66][67]
In 2012, the president-elect emphasized that he did not support the involvement or presence of armed United States agents in Mexico, but considered allowing the United States to instruct Mexico's military training in counterinsurgency tactics. Beyond that, Peña Nieto promised that no other measures will be taken by the States in Mexico.[68]
The security policy of Peña Nieto has prioritized the reduction of violence rather than attacking Mexico's drug-trafficking organizations head-on, marking a departure from the strategy of the previous six years during Felipe Calderón's administration. One of the biggest contrasts is the focus on lowering murder rates, kidnappings, and extortions, as opposed to arresting or killing the country's most-wanted drug lords and intercepting their drug shipments.[65]
On 13 December 2012, a law was approved that included far-reaching security reforms. Mexico's Interior Ministry, greatly strengthened by the bill, was made solely responsible for public security. Part of Peña Nieto's strategy consists of the creation of a national police of 40,000 members, known as a "gendarmerie". The Economist reported that the gendarmerie would have an initial strength of 10,000, but the Washington Office on Latin America reported that it was reduced to 5,000 members and would not be operational until July 2014.[69] The Interior Ministry announced that 15 specialized police units were being formed to exclusively focus on major crimes that include kidnapping and extortion, along with a new task force dedicated to tracking missing persons.[70] Peña Nieto also proposed centralizing the sub-federal police forces under one command.[65]
In December 2017, the Law of Internal Security [es] was passed by legislation but was met with criticism, especially from the National Human Rights Commission, accusing it gave the President a blank check.[71][72][73]
Energy policy Edit
During the presidential campaign, Peña Nieto promised to open Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company, to the private sector. He also indicated interest in an economic agreement with Petrobras, Brazil's oil company.[74] By giving more economic freedom to Pemex, investors say Peña Nieto's proposal could allow joint ventures and private investment in the oil company.[75]
According to the Financial Times in 2012, Peña Nieto's PRI government, which held just over 38% of the votes in Congress, might have difficulty gaining a majority to pass such reforms, or the two-thirds majority needed to change the Mexican constitution.[75] Pemex was founded through the nationalization of foreign oil interests, and the Mexican constitution bans major outside investments.[76] Changing Pemex could transform the psychology of Mexico's business sector and involve cultural and political changes that cannot be rushed.[75][76] President Lázaro Cárdenas seized foreign oil company assets in 1938 to form Pemex, which has served as a symbol of national identity.[77]
Eric Martin of Bloomberg News stated that if Peña Nieto wants to invite investment, he will have to face the challenges of union leaders and local officials who have benefited from the oil company's bonanza.[76] Productivity in Pemex has been declining since 2004.[77] Peña Nieto declared while campaigning that overhauling Pemex will be the PRI's and his "signature issue", and that he will encourage private companies to invest in exploration and development activities.[76] Following Peña Nieto's hike in the price of gasoline as a result of his privatization of the Mexican oil industry, protests erupted nation-wide. Protestors blockaded major highways, forced border crossings to be closed and shut down gas stations.[78]
Foreign policy Edit
2016 visit by Donald Trump Edit
Peña Nieto invited U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to visit on 31 August 2016, and appeared with him in a press conference. Peña Nieto was criticized for extending the invitation to Trump,[79] and following the conference, journalist Jorge Ramos criticized Peña Nieto for not using the opportunity to publicly contradict Trump's campaign promise to make Mexico pay for his proposed Mexico–United States border wall, as well as Ramos called Trump's "attacks on Latin American immigrants, his rejection of free trade agreements and his scorn for global organizations."[80] Despite this, Peña Nieto stated on his Twitter that he made it clear to Trump that Mexico would not pay for the wall,[81] only to shortly after get a reply from Donald Trump saying: "Mexico will pay for the wall!"[82][83]
Trump's presidency and border wall Edit
Peña Nieto and Trump were to meet on 26 January 2017, until Trump wrote on his Twitter account: "If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting". This directly led Peña Nieto to cancel his visit to the U.S. President.[84][85] In an interview with Aristegui Noticias, Washington periodist Dolia Estévez said she obtained access to part of a one-hour phone conversation between the two presidents the day of the scheduled meeting. She stated, "Trump humiliated Peña Nieto," and said that the conversation only lasted 20 minutes; she also explained that the speech was prolonged to an hour due to translation efforts because Peña Nieto doesn't understand English.[86][87][88] While many media outlets praised Peña Nieto for cancelling the visit with Trump, Forbes Mexico stated that despite showing support towards Peña Nieto for cancelling such event, "that shouldn't translate in forgiveness to what happens within our country [Mexico]" adding that "a state incapable of bringing credibility and stability could not grow", and that more than Trump, the thing keeping Mexico from prosperity was the corruption within the Mexican government.[89]
Controversies Edit
Publicity and public image Edit
As of July 2017, Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project claimed Mexico's social media manipulation (Peñabots) to come directly from the Mexican Government itself.[90][91]
A December 2017 article of The New York Times, reported Enrique Peña Nieto spending about 2 billion dollars on publicity, during his first 5 years as president, the largest publicity budget ever spent by a Mexican President.[92]
Ayotzinapa Edit
In September 2014, 43 male college students were forcibly taken then disappeared in Guerrero. The forced mass disappearance of the students arguably became the biggest political and public security scandal Peña Nieto had faced during his administration. It led to nationwide protests, particularly in the state of Guerrero and Mexico City, and international condemnation.
Carmen Aristegui Edit
In November 2014, an article was published by journalist Carmen Aristegui, indicating that a $7 million "White House" owned by Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife Angelica Rivera, in Lomas de Chapultepec was registered under the name of a company affiliated with a business group that had received government contracts to build a bullet train.[93] The revelation about the potential conflict of interest in the acquisition of the house aggravated discontent about the government. Rivera released a video in which she detailed her income as a former soap opera actress, stating that she was selling the house and that the property was not under her name because she had not made the full payment yet.[94]
Shortly after revealing the Mexican White House incident, Carmen Aristegui was controversially fired from her radio show at MVS Communications. As noted by The New York Times, Aristegui being fired was a perceived as a censorship towards news journalism and the liberty given by the freedom of speech.[95] Aristegui took it to trial and by June 2018, three years after MVS fired her, the jury determined that it was indeed unconstitutional and against the law, to fire her and indeed was an act of censorship towards the freedom of speech.[96][97] Peña Nieto's successor in the presidency of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, promised Aristegui would be free to return to radio if she wanted and that there would be no more unfair censorship towards the freedom of speech.[98]
In 2016, Aristegui revealed in a special report arguing that Enrique Peña Nieto could have committed plagiarism on his law thesis, at least a third of it, with 197 out of 682 paragraphs being unsourced or wrongly sourced works.[99][100]
Allegations of espionage on journalists Edit
During his tenure as president, Peña Nieto has been accused of failing to protect news journalists, whose deaths are speculated to be politically triggered by politicians attempting to prevent coverage of political scandals. On 29 April 2017, The New York Times published a news report titled "In Mexico, 'It's Easy to Kill a Journalist'", which covered the high rate of deaths and disappearances of journalists in Mexico and declared Mexico had become "one of the worst countries in the world to be a journalist today."[101]
On 19 June 2017, The New York Times in conjunction with news reporter Carmen Aristegui, and even backed by a Televisa news reporter Carlos Loret de Mola, reported that the Mexican Government uses a spyware software known as Pegasus, to spy on targets such as Mexican News reporters (and their families) and Civil Rights Leaders (and their families) using text messages as lures. Since 2011, the Mexican Government invested $80 million worth of spyware. Pegasus spyware infiltrates a persons cellphone and reports every detail of their messages, e-mails, contacts and calendars.[102][103]
Allegations of corruption Edit
The New York Times published an article of December 2017, describing accusations towards Peña Nieto's government blocking its own investigations against corruption in the Mexican government, with a commissioner saying the Mexican government preventing the establishment of an impartial leader in the FEPADE in charge of investigating political corruption.[104] Previously mentioned 22 ex-governors all members of the PRI political party are investigated for corruption with only five jailed.
By March 2018 in the dawn of the next presidential election, the PGR made official an investigation regarding PAN's candidate Ricardo Anaya laundering money. Ex-chief of FEPADE (the Mexican government's branch focused on political crimes), Santiago Nieto, whom the previous October had been controversially removed from his job as chief of FEPADE, coincidentally right after starting an investigation regarding illicit campaign money from the 2012 presidential campaign, received by Peña Nieto and would be president of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya from the Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht. The ex-chief of FEPADE, said that the accusations towards Anaya were minor in comparison to Odebretch and Peña Nieto scandal, adding also the same opinion about the money lost by SEDESOL, to corrupt governors from the PRI such as Javier Duarte and Cesar Duarte, all while PRI's presidential candidate Jose Antonio Meade was the man in charge of SEDESOL (the scandal is known as "La Estafa Maestra (The Master Robbery)" and about $435 million pesos were lost).[105] The same week the PRI legislators were criticized for voting towards stopping the investigation of Odebretch against the wishes of Mexican people and organizations against corruption such as "Mexicanos contra la corrupcion (Mexicans against Corruption)".[106] The investigation about Odebretch against Pemex leader at the time Lozoya, was legally stopped after, a judge controversially ordered it days after.[107] Santiago Nieto said that the PGR was being used as tool by Peña Nieto's government to tamper elections and benefit Meade by removing Anaya from the race, complaining that it was not neutral the manner in whom the law enforcing organizations had made more effort to investigate Anaya in a month than towards investigating Peña Nieto's Odebretch money and Meade's SEDESOL lost money in the last six years. Going as far as saying the PGR and FEPADE were only attacking the rivals of the PRI, and saying the organizations were not being neutral.[108]
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Santiago Nieto would later reveal that Peña Nieto's government tried to bribe him to keep him silent, which he refused saying “Sorry, but I can’t receive any money from Peña Nieto.”, he received menaces through phone messages with the words "Death follows you" and "Words of advice: stay out of Trouble", as a consequence he revealed to fear for the life of himself and his family.[109]
Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht, accused of corruption and bribes throughout Latin America,[110] is currently under investigation for allegedly overriding the Peña Nieto's presidential campaign with illegal campaign funds. In exchange oe the campaign money supposedly Peña Nieto gave Odebrecht contracts through state-owned Pemex.[111] An Odebrecht employee told a Brazilian court that he had been asked to pay a bribe to Emilio Lozoya Austin, then head of Pemex.[112]
During United States of America v. Joaquín Guzmán Loera, Guzmán's lawyer alleged that the Sinaloa drug cartel had paid "hundreds of millions of dollars" in bribes to Peña Nieto and his predecessor, Felipe Calderón; both presidents denied the claims, with Peña Nieto's spokesman calling the claims "completely false and defamatory".[113] Alex Cifuentes, who described himself as Guzmán's "right-hand man", later testified that Peña Nieto originally asked for $250 million before settling on $100 million.[114]
"Amparo" and "Fuero" requests against a possible political trial Edit
An "amparo" is a Mexican right, it can be used by anyone accused of a crime or multiple crimes, this gives them the right to know which crimes they are being accused of. It is mostly used by people expecting to go to trial, and is used to allow the prosecuted person to build a defense with the help of a lawyer. Peña Nieto is the first president in the history of Mexico to use this right, not only for himself but also for all of his collaborators during his presidency of Mexico. He took the right about an investigation regarding actions concerning the state of Chihuahua, it is feared he may have tampered the evidence.[115]
Another right for prosecuted people is the "fuero", which Peña Nieto is also the first president in the history of Mexico to request. This right is exclusive to political figures, and is the right to be protected against legal trials and acusations of corruption committed during their time in office. Through this, he legally delayed any progress in the investigations against him, until the end of his presidency in December 2018, when the investigation will be allowed to continue.[116]
Allegations of crimes against humanity Edit
In 2016, a report by the Open Justice Society Initiative claimed that there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that both the Mexican army and drug cartels had committed crimes against humanity during the Mexican Drug War. The report accused both Peña Nieto and his predecessor Felipe Calderón of "almost completely failing" to ensure accountability for the actions of the Mexican army, and of denying or minimizing the scale of the atrocities. [117] In June 2018, human rights organizations presented documents alleging slayings, tortures, rapes and forced disappearances to the International Criminal Court, and called on them to investigate.[118]
On December 8, 2018, the ICC moved to review a lawsuit against Peña Nieto that accused him of being responsible for systematic corruption. If accepted, Peña Nieto could become the first former president of Mexico to be tried in the Hague.[citation needed]Reload, Retool, or Rebuild?
This is certainly Rangerstown’s most depressing time of year, with this writer’s hubris being no exception. The long, dull months of 2015’s summer trickling into the hundreds of fast-and-furious hours of hockey during the winter, culminating with an all-too-brief stint in the springtime postseason tournament. Another year invested, another year lost.
Heartbreaking, as always.
But it’s a particularly different strain of sadness this time around.
In 2012 and 2015, it was the sting of our beloved Rangers boasting the title of being the best regular-season Eastern Conference team... only to succumb to a lower-seeded adversary in the Conference Finals. In 2013, it was an all-around disappointing campaign, plagued with a lack of depth and unsuccessful mid-season acquisitions, that left us scratching our heads. And of course, 2014’s loss to Los Angeles in the Stanley Cup Final was a long, majestic run cut three victories too short by the towering Los Angles dynasty.
But in the dreary aftermath of each one of those years, somehow, we all knew "well, next season's another chance." Each one of those times, I sat at my computer and was able to take shelter in some comforting certainties, despite the fresh agony of defeat laid upon all of us. Things like "this team is a relatively good, and can improve" and "Henrik Lundqvist is still young, and has plenty of time left" and "well, at least it was pretty cool that the team got past the first round, which 75% of the league wishes they could say."
Now?
Now is a different feeling, and not one of those maxims holds water this time around.
I mean the Rangers *could* make some big, bold moves this off-season... but realistically I'm resigned to think this pic.twitter.com/K4dFSiXP6N — HockeyStatMiner (@HockeyStatMiner) April 23, 2016
The reality is the Rangers' current window of Cup contention is most likely over. There were five postseason attempts (with this 2016 run admittedly being a very generous inclusion), where Glen Sather’s final assortment of players came close but, ironically, no cigar. The fact of the matter is the overvalued assets and the warped view of what helps and what hurts (both from the front office all the way down to the coaching staff), has caught up to the team and surpassed any remedy a generational goaltender like Lundqvist could possibly counter.
And now, the poisonous fruits will begin to manifest.
The trading of top draft picks and premium prospects, like Anthony Duclair in 2015, will come back as New York will have to retool, if not wholly rebuild, with a currently bare cupboard of prospects to reinvent another window of opportunity some seasons down the road. Winter is coming, and this franchise has sold its harvest, extremely if not understandably, for shot after shot at championship glory, but which never materialized nonetheless.
But that’s all in the past now.
The larger issue at hand, going forward, is this:
Reload, retool, or rebuild?
Reloading
What "reload" means is essentially what the team has done in the summers of 2013, 2014 and 2015. That is, believing (correctly) that the overall roster is realistically closer to being competitive than an all-out reclamation project. Such entails making moves in line with salary cap restrictions and pure ambition, to fine-tune personnel for a deep playoff run the following spring. In each of the last three off-seasons, the team only lost players due to the salary cap, or forgone their assets to pursue other free agents deemed as upgrades. Simply put, to reload is to be at peace with the current formula, not deeming any area of the roster as especially problematic nor concerning.
There were no blockbuster |
I pay the bills. So when – and, hand on heart, I promise this is true – she walked in on me furtively asking Alexa to reduce the temperature of our living room in an elaborate stage whisper a fortnight ago, I think she felt slightly ganged up on.
We may be the first generation to have fights based on our voice-recognition devices. We will soon control most of our major appliances vocally, and all manner of our established conventions and domestic behaviours will be up for grabs as a result. These devices will become so advanced that my children won’t even require any active parenting from me. I’ll be cast out of the family unit, useless and alone and able to wear clean clothes whenever I want and sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time and, actually, wait, that sounds brilliant. Alexa, give me everything you’ve got. You’re the only thing left that can save my sanity.When Kurumin Aroma was approached on Tokyo street four years ago and asked if she was interested in “glamour modelling”, she spied an opportunity to realise her dream of becoming a TV celebrity.
“The talent scout had a proper business card and spoke very respectfully, so I thought he was someone I could trust,” Aroma, who uses an assumed name in public, told the Guardian.
But months later, the 26-year-old became one of an alarming number of Japanese women who say they have been forced into appearing in pornographic films by unscrupulous, and unregulated, production companies.
Then in her final year at university, Aroma agreed to attend a follow-up interview, where the president of an entertainment production company presented her with a contract that indicated she would be required to remove her clothes for a photo shoot.
“That was the first I’d heard about nudity,” she said. “I cried, but felt under a lot pressure to say yes, so I agreed.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kurumin Aroma talks at a public event about her experience of being forced to appear in pornographic films. Photograph: Kurumin Aroma
Over the following months, the agency raised the possibility of making a pornographic video, summoning her several times to the firm’s office for meetings. Faced with repeated demands from as many as eight male staff, she eventually capitulated.
“They told me I could stop at any time if I felt uncomfortable or if it hurt. But that wasn’t true,” she said.
A slew of reports about women being offered modelling contracts, only to be tricked or coerced into appearing in X-rated films, has finally prompted authorities in Japan to confront the darker side of its multibillion dollar porn industry.
Last year, the government launched its first survey of the industry’s recruitment of vulnerable young women and found that 200 among the 20,000 surveyed had signed “modelling” contracts, with more than 50 later asked to pose nude or have sex on camera.
In 2016, 100 women sought help from Lighthouse, which supports victims of human trafficking, and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence – a dramatic rise from the 62 cases recorded for the whole of 2015 and just 36 the year before.
In one high-profile case that resulted in the arrests of three talent scouts, one woman was forced to appear in more than 100 films after being told her family would be informed if she refused. Some victims say they were forced to have sex without protection, or were gang-raped.
In response, the Intellectual Property Promotion Association, which represents Japan’s adult film industry, promised to “encourage producers to take action to quickly improve the situation and restore the soundness of the entire industry”.
It added: “The association deeply regrets that we had failed to take initiative (to deal with problem before). We are very sorry.”
Kazuko Ito, a lawyer and general secretary of Human Rights Now, welcomed a recent police crackdown on street touts working for the porn and commercial sex industry, but said the industry had to be forced to change its ways.
“The incredible thing is that production firms can act with impunity,” Ito said. “There is no law against coercing women into appearing in porn films, and no government supervision of the industry. But this isn’t just a legal issue, it’s a violation of human rights.”
The Japanese porn industry is worth an estimated 500 billion yen (US$4.4 bn) in annual sales, with as many as 20,000 titles released every year. About a quarter of all films are aimed at older viewers - a reflection of Japan’s rapidly ageing society.
Typically, women in their late teens and early 20s, are approached on the street, told they have the looks and charisma to succeed in the mainstream entertainment industry, and are rushed into signing contracts that make oblique references to erotic material, or none at all.
Pornography or erotic art? Japanese museum aims to confront shunga taboo Read more
When the women object, producers threaten them with fines, sometimes running into millions of yen, or say they will tell their parents, friends or former colleagues abut their new “career”.
In some instances, women who attempt to flee the set of a film are caught, confined to hotel rooms or taken to remote locations where escape is impossible. “There is rarely any actual violence,” Ito said. “But there are lots of other forms of pressure.
Now a YouTube personality with more than 15,000 subscribers, Aroma says she has never discussed her porn appearances with her parents and has been shunned by “furious” relatives.
“For the whole time I was involved in the porn film industry, my male handlers told me I belonged to them,” she said. “I had no freedom and nowhere to turn for help. I was trapped.”
Aroma succeeded in blocking DVDs sales of her two films, but several clips found their way online. It was only when she sought Ito’s help and met other victims that she felt able to speak out about her ordeal.
“I was scared about going public, but by then I knew I wasn’t alone,” she said. “I was finally in control, and that was a great source of strength. At the time I felt responsible for what happened to me, so speaking out has helped me to realise that I am not the guilty one.”I think Kinect is OK, but it's the best $150 I spent on a console
There’s almost nothing I’ve seen before I picked upthat really interested me. Many of the games looked OK, and the ones I played with before the launch didn’t really make me want to jump out and buy the thing. But, seeing as we’re a website that reviews games, I didn’t want to saddle Chuck with all thegames to review. So, I sauntered off to my local Target store along with my son and picked up a unit.Getting it home, I went through the setup and as with anything new or unique, my son gets pretty inquisitive. Even though it looked like a simple black bar, he was all over the way it moved and tracked the user. He was excited about tryingas the box looked like it had some fun and interesting games on it.Now, let me say a few years ago, my son was diagnosed with Autism. Thankfully, he’s pretty high functional so we’ve been fortunate in that he’s very responsive to my wife and I. When you’re a parent of a special needs child though, you really pay special attention to any small signs of progress. For me, it’s hard to not be amazed at some of the things he’s learned given the hand he’s dealt with.So, when my son really wanted to try out, I was more than happy to oblige. He’s taken up to watching me play a lot of video games and tries to play some himself. Controllers for the PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 do frustrate him and he has a lot of trouble controlling the characters on the screen using the peripherals, but he’s always willing to try and keep on practicing in getting better. As he tells me sometimes, “I want to play with you, Daddy.” so he’s pretty persistent in trying to get proficient with them.What proceeded to happen was pretty amazing to me. Firing up, we tried out Rally Ball as our first game to play together. He jumped around and flailed his arms and legs in trying to punch the balls back to the blocks. It was pretty cool to see but the thing that really threw me for a loop was when the game ended. The game made my son the primary controller and seeing as I didn’t explain anything to him on how it works, I was ready to tell him to step out so I can go in and navigate through the menus.But, I decided to see if he could follow my directions and interact with the menus. I said hold out your hand and place it on the button. Without any hesitation, he put his hand up and moved it over the button on the screen and held it there until the circle animation finished, indicating the button has been pressed. After that initial coaching, he proceeded to move around in the menus without much vocal cues from me. I just stood there and was flabbergasted by what I just saw. Microsoft’s design team did such a good job at creating a user interface withthat my son was able to go through each menu to initiate the next round in Rally Ball. It’s intuitive enough that I spent barely any time teaching my four year old special needs son how to go about the menu system.Throughout my hour session with my son by my side, I was constantly impressed by how easy he could figure out each game and play them without getting fed up. He knew how to flap, glide, and move around in Space Pop just by me saying, “Flap your arms to fly.” once. A few moves around the living room let him figure out that the Avatar in the game mimicked his movements as well in moving in and out. With 20,000 Leaks, he had no trouble figuring out that you place your hand or foot over the leaks to close them. It was quite an exhilarating feeling to see him play all these little mini-games on his own with very minor coaching from me.For the first time, I was able to play something with my son and not spend any time with him being frustrated on not being to do anything or have a character get stuck on the screen. He had fun with all the games and actually did well with them. The joy in his eyes as he was able to complete the tasks and move around in the menus is something I’ll never forget.isn’t targeted to me, but it’s brought my son into the gaming fold with its intuitive controls and simple games in. Even though I haven’t found a launch game that I’m interested in spending a lot of time with alone, I know that I’m able to spend some great time playing along side my son and see him thoroughly enjoying his time on a console.While he still struggles in communicating, I know there’s one thing he can do without having to deal with any of the frustrations Autism has brought upon in his life. And for me, that’s worth much more than the $150 I spent in picking up the peripheral.-Update- Thanks everyone for the kind words and for reading. You don't know much that means to my family and I. I never expected the responses to this piece but I'm glad it's touched some people as well as give some people ideas on seeing if a technology like this can help out those with special needs as well.SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, last year said they would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charitable causes. Now they are putting a large chunk of that money to work.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the limited liability company into which Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan put their Facebook shares, on Wednesday said it would invest at least $3 billion over the next decade toward preventing, curing or managing all diseases by the end of the century.
While the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has already made investments in charter schools and education start-ups, the money toward curing diseases represents the group’s first major initiative in science. The announcement was also a coming out of sorts for Dr. Chan, who has a big interest in health and was trained in pediatrics.
In a speech to introduce the health initiative at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, Dr. Chan said the work to cure disease was in keeping with her organization’s mission to advance human potential and promote equality. She gave an emotional preamble, describing how a high-quality education helped her succeed as the daughter of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants.Larry Nance Jr. suffered a knee injury Tuesday night, putting a damper on Wyoming's 72-66 victory over Fresno State.
Nance, son of the former All-Star forward for the Phoenix Suns and Cleveland Cavaliers, had 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting before he crashed to the floor with 14:51 to play.
The Cowboys' leader in scoring, rebounds, blocks and steals laid on the court for several minutes holding his right knee before being helped off, unable to put any weight on the leg.
Nathan Sobey scored a career-high 26 points as Wyoming (17-9, 8-5 Mountain West) won its third straight. The Cowboys grabbed the lead for good when Josh Adams, who had 10 points, hit a fadeaway jumper to break a 40-all tie with 11:21 remaining.
Tyler Johnson scored 24 points, while Marvelle Harris added 18 and Cezar Guerrero 13 for Fresno State (13-14, 6-8).
The Associated Press contributed to this report.During my time working at the Seoul Rape Crisis Center, one of the more well-established response service in Korea, I saw how yellow bodies silently absorbed this cost: sexual assault of Korean women by white men, mostly American, constituted at least a third of the Center’s cases. This is, of course, invisible to those in the West because of the concealed workings of globalization, racism and colonialism, and the failures of carceral feminist approaches to sexual violence.
Later on in her piece, she repeats this claim, following up with alarming speculations:
The normalization and prevalence of sexual violence against Korean women by white men demonstrate the material consequence of the unequal distribution of mobility. The Rape Crisis Center’s record quantifies this kind of assault as a third of its annual cases, but I wonder what the recorded incidents amount to and how many go unrecorded.
Let’s be clear: what Sim’s attempting to suggest here is twofold:
That the one-third statistic somehow scales more broadly to Korea as a nation. (Otherwise it would make no sense to say that white males’ violence against Korean women is “normalized” and “prevalent” in South Korea.) That white men may in fact be responsible for more than a third of sexual violence in South Korea.
I couldn’t find information about this Seoul Rape Crisis Center she mentions. However, even if the numbers she cites are true for that center—which seems unlikely even if it is located in Itaewon—there is absolutely no way it could scale more generally.
To understand why, you need to know something—even just a little—about population demographics in South Korea. So let’s get into that.
Basic Demographics:
So, in 2011 it was big news when, for the first time, more than 3% of the South Korean population was foreign nationals. However, only a tiny fraction of those all foreigners in Korea are male, white, and Western. In fact, it’s impossible to know how much of that population is white: the Korean government doesn’t provide numbers by ethnicity, only by country of origin and sex. However, it does keep close records of foreigners residing in Korea by nationality: here are the most recent numbers, for September 2016.
If we add up all the male resident foreign nationals from North America, Europe, South Africa, and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand, mainly) we get a total of approximately 121,200 men.
Of course, some percentage of those individuals isn’t white—there’s a sizeable number who are overseas Koreans, and people of other ethnicities or mixed-race status—but even if for simplicity’s sake we assume they were all white, Sim’s claim is utterly untenable. Why?
50,500,000: the South Korean population (2016)
120,000: “Western” male residents in Korea
In other words, Sim is implying that 0.24% of the population is responsible for 33% of the sexual violence.
Even if every white man were on a 24/7 rape spree for the past year, they’d never manage to perpetrate 33% of the sexual violence in the country, let alone the more than 33%, which, remember, Sim implied they might be responsible for:
The Rape Crisis Center’s record quantifies this kind of assault as a third of its annual cases, but I wonder what the recorded incidents amount to and how many go unrecorded.
Before switching her Twitter feed to protected mode, Sim was called on this. She defended her claim, stating that she was “talking about tourists” anyway.
Tourist Demographics
Does the claim that tourists are perpetrating sexual crimes in Korea help make Sim’s argument less ridiculous?
Not really: it just shows how poorly she understands the demographics of tourism in Korea. In fact, the South Korean government tracks tourists by sex and country of origin, too: here’s the official government statistics for tourists for 2016.
Examining the numbers we see a few interesting things:
The vast majority of tourists visiting South Korea (80%-85%) are Asians, not Westerners. (Who, presumably, are immune to accusations of “Yellow Fever.”) In that group, females outnumber males 3:2. That number is changing but in general the stereotypical tourist to Korea is still a Chinese woman, not a white man.
(Who, presumably, are immune to accusations of “Yellow Fever.”) That number is changing but in general the stereotypical tourist to Korea is still a Chinese woman, not a white man. In 2016, South Korea had about 1.2 million male tourists from Europe, the Americas, and Oceania.
We don’t (and can’t) know the ages or racial demographics of those male tourists: many are likely white, but many are also likely ethnic Koreans, or members of other ethnic groups. Also, some proportion of them are certainly infants and young children.
many are likely white, but many are also likely ethnic Koreans, or members of other ethnic groups. Also, some proportion of them are certainly infants and young children. Presumably all those female tourists are subject to the same danger of sexual violence that Korean women face. Therefore, we must also factor them into the overall population calculation, if we’re going to factor tourists into the Western male population.
Once again, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals a lot:
67.5 million: Overall Population (including all tourists)
1.2 million: Foreign “Western” Male Population (including all “Western” male tourists) (1.77% of total)
Now we’re talking about approximately 1.8% of the population being responsible for 33% of the sexual violence here.
That’s slightly less ridiculous than 0.24%, but we’re still in D.W. Griffiths territory if we’re supposed to take seriously that those white men are on a secret rape spree.
And of course, that’s assuming all tourists are here all at once. In reality, they’d be distributed over the full year. I don’t have the time to graph it all out, but even assuming half those Western male tourists were in-country at one time (say, at the peak of the tourist season), you only have a total of about 720,000 Western men in Korea: I imagine it’s rare for even that many Western men to actually be physically present in Korea at the same time.
If we generously recalculate, assuming half the tourists who visit the country come at the peak of the tourist season, we get:
600,000 tourists + 120,000 resident = 720,000 “Western men”
8.6 million tourists + 50.5 million residents = 59,100,000 overall national population
Percentage of aggregate “population” that is “Western men”: 1.22%
Crime Statistics
All of this made even more clearly ridiculous by the crime statistics in Korea: for reported crimes, non-Koreans in Korea perpetrate disproportionately lower rates of reported sexual violence than the general Korean population.
From the above link:
As for rape (including crimes similar to rape) crime rates, [the rate for] Pakistan’s [foreign residents in Korea] was 5.85 times higher than Korea’s, Bangladesh was 3.2 times higher, Kyrgyzstan was 2.83 times higher, Sri Lanka was 2.43 times higher, and Mongolia was 1.86 times higher.
There’s no mention of “white bodies” (or lurid musings about “Yellow Fever”) among those numbers, for good reason: the rate of reported sexual violence (and violent crime overall) perpetrated by white men in Korea is lower, per capita, than the overall national rate. Those white guys in Korea actually have the effect, statistically, of reducing the apparent rate of sexual crime… unless, of course, we take the word of those who simply categorize any interracial sex as a sex crime.
Now, before I go on, one more thing deserves a moment of scrutiny. While describing how counselors at the Seoul Rape Crisis Center handle cases where foreign perpetrators are reported, she writes:
Survivors rarely know their assailants, and do not recall enough identifiable details to file a report. Those who are able to make a report find themselves in a dead end when they find out that their assailants have left the country. White men come and go–untraceable and unaccountable.
A couple of questions come to mind:
If the victims don’t know their assailants, how do they know that they’re tourists?
If the victims don’t recall enough identifiable details to file a report, how can the counselors (and police) be sure that the assailants were actually tourists, and/or have left the country?
Sim is handwaving here, offering an absence of evidence as proof, because an otherwise unprovable (and untenable) argument doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny. Her narrative of Yellow Fever and white male tourists flocking to Korea to rape locals fits with the nonsensical postcolonial narrative she wants to spin. She’s either clueless about this, or just hoping you’ll miss the fact that there’s no evidence of rampant white criminality here, and no population of white men large enough to perpetrate the number of crimes she’s talking about. And that’s to say nothing of her (questionable) suggestion that crimes by white tourists are less likely to be reported than those perpetrated by fellow Koreans—especially men from within the domestic educational, family, religious, or work social networks of the victims. (All I can say is that I expect exactly the opposite.1
None of this is to say that no sexual violence is perpetrated by white men in Korea: statistics show it does happen, just that it’s a marginal number of cases in absolute terms, and at a lower rate than the national average in per-capita terms.. The fact is that white men in Korea are responsible for very little of the unfortunately prevalent sexual violence here. (Which incidentally, as one physician told me from experience in several emergency rooms in Seoul, happens at a noticeably higher rate in the vicinity of red-light districts like Cheongryangni… which are both larger than the “Hooker Hill” Sim mentions, and of course serve Korean men exclusively.)
Also, it’s worth noting that in a Korean social context, foreign women—white and otherwise—are also exoticized and hypersexualized: if “yellow fever” is caused by this type of depiction of Asian women in the West, shouldn’t a similar dynamic exist in Korea? Anecdotally, I know personally of at least three Asian female students (one overseas-Korean and two foreign) whose classmates attempted to rape them (and in fact modified a typical rape strategy to take advantage of the fact the women were foreigners); meanwhile, I’ve heard multiple reports by Western women who were victims of sexual violence (or attempted sexual violence) by Korean perpetrators.2 And that’s to say nothing of incidents where sexual (and other) violence is endured by mail-order brides at the hands of Korean husbands here—again, a much larger population than the white male population in Korea.
This stuff ought to interest a supposed feminist with an concern for sexual violence… shouldn’t it? Sim ought to know all this—she lived here, and she’s an academic who claims to be interested in sexual violence. One supposes she’s actually more interested in spinning a clever-sounding narrative about “carceral feminism” and Yellow Fever and postcolonial racial politics, and facts and numbers and evidence be damned. There’s really only two possible explanations: Sim’s either been blinded by racism (in a way that’s sadly common in South Korea, in fact), or she’s utterly incompetent to discuss the demographics of sexual violence in South Korea, or she was just too lazy to look up the statistics and facts.
None of those options is particularly flattering—especially for someone researching “rape prevention technology”—nor does it reflect well on the institutions at which she studied: Harvard should have equipped her with at least a little understanding of statistics, and nobody this innumerate should be a candidate for a D. Phil.
Ms. Sim is welcome to address my assessment in the comments: if she can explain how in the world it sounds reasonable for less than 1.7% of a population to be responsible for more than approximately 33% of the sexual violence occuring within it (or any part of it), and how this is a secret that neither law enforcement not the media know about (especially when it would be front page news and a huge media scandal), I’m all ears.
In the meantime, for those of you who actually do care about South Korea’s problems with sexual violence, here’s something a little more sensible you might prefer to read on the subject: how it’s a systemic problem, and what Koreans and foreigners are doing to address that.Industrial Design consulting work is a great way to maintain personal flexibility and build a wide variety of skills, but it can be hard to know how to get started. Of the many things to learn along the way, figuring out how much to charge for your work is a good place to start.
Here’s a simple way to help you get a sense of what your consulting rate should be.
Start with your expected annual salary
Before calculating your hourly consulting rate, it’s helpful to first get a sense of what your equivalent employee salary would be.
Important variables here include experience, education, specialization, job market, and location; sites like Payscale can help you estimate your annual salary based on those factors:
Multiply your expected salary by 2.5 - 3x
The rule of thumb for calculating your base hourly consulting rate is to multiply your expected employee salary by 2.5 - 3x. Why so much higher? Here’s a few reasons:
Availability - As a consultant you provide businesses an on-demand service and as such you should be compensated. Health insurance - You’re responsible for paying for your own health insurance and other benefits an employer would normally provide. Business expenses - You need to take into account expenses such as travel time, workspace needs, creative tools and supplies, and business management software.
So using this multiplication rule, here’s what average Industrial Design salaries would convert to as consulting rates:
This math is done simply by multiplying expected salaries by 2.5 - 3, then dividing by 52 weeks in a year and 40 hours in a week (i.e. for Entry Level/Low: $36,000 x 2.5 = $91,500 / 52 / 40 = $44)
Note that many consultants prefer to bill a day rate or project rate rather than by the hour. It’s generally a good idea to start off billing hourly and then once you have a good sense of how long a given task or project takes, you can give a more accurate project-based quote.
Additionally you can check out freelancer sites such as Upwork, Elance, orPeopleperhour to get a sense for what other consultants in your field, location, and with your experience are charging.One of the more jarring moments in Wednesday night’s debate came during a discussion of terrorism and the legacy of Jeb Bush’s brother, George W. “You know what? As it relates to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure. He kept us safe,” Jeb said.
As many people pointed out at the time, that isn’t quite true: The biggest terror attack on American soil happened on his watch, on September 11, 2001. But none of the candidates on stage, nor the moderators, pointed this out, and today Jeb reiterated the point in a tweet. But this one is even weirder: The image he posted features the former president atop the rubble at Ground Zero.
He kept us safe. pic.twitter.com/Plq9Hm7caE — Jeb Bush (@JebBush) September 17, 2015
That was a powerful moment and one of George W.’s most celebrated, but it’s awfully dissonant to put a picture of it right next to the claim that “he kept us safe,” which the picture debunks.IRVING, Texas -- For so many years, Tony Romo has been the face of failure in the NFL.
Any time the Dallas Cowboys lose, folks head to their laptops and create Internet memes that poke fun of the quarterback for America's team.
They don't mean any harm, per se, but it's clear folks still can't get over the botched snap in Seattle in 2006. Or the ill-fated trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in 2007 during the playoff bye week that preceded a loss to the New York Giants.
Or the games the Cowboys lost to the Giants in 2011, and the Washington Redskins in 2012 that kept the Cowboys out of the playoffs.
Tony Romo has had plenty of missteps in big games over the years, but he has a chance to erase many of those memories with a road win over Green Bay. Tom Pennington/Getty Images
Well, they should.
Experience and losing have changed Romo. Stats and ego has long since stopped motivating him. Winning is all that matters to Romo these days.
Most young players get seduced by their numbers as they try to establish their place in the NFL hierarchy. Romo, whether he chooses to admit it, was no different.
But he has evolved over the past few seasons, becoming a better, smarter player. Defenses rarely fool him anymore. The game has slowed down. He sees everything.
Romo has been among the NFL's top 10-12 quarterbacks for years. He made the Pro Bowl after the 2006 season, when he started only 10 games. This season, though, he has become a truly elite quarterback.
Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers and Romo are the league's top quarterbacks this season.
And if Romo can lead the Cowboys to a win over Green Bay and Rodgers, any and all questions about him should be shelved. After all, Green Bay is undefeated at home and Rodgers is the favorite to be named league MVP after throwing 38 touchdowns with only five interceptions.
Romo has never been more equipped to do it. See, for the first time in his 12-year career, Romo actually trusts all of his teammates on offense.
No longer does Romo feel as if he has to make every play. He can let DeMarco Murray do the heavy lifting on offense, which is why Romo has only one 300-yard passing game this season and has thrown more than 30 passes in a game only five times.
Coach Jason Garrett says of Tony Romo: "He's been a damn good quarterback for a long time." Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Murray, of course, leads the NFL with 1,845 rushing yards.
Romo can throw the ball up to Dez Bryant and ask him to make one of the incredible catches he regularly makes, or he can throw it to Jason Witten and Cole Beasley on third down.
Then again, he can go deep to Terrance Williams when teams pay too much attention to Witten or Bryant.
With that many options, Romo doesn't have to force the ball into coverage. He can simply take the best matchup -- and if it's not there he can throw the ball away, a tactic he used often against Detroit.
"I threw balls away and I threw a lot of balls at guys' feet because I wasn't for sure I could make the play or I was under duress and I couldn't get enough on [the throw]," Romo said. "I felt like if we didn't give them the ball, they couldn't get enough points to put it away.
"I could've squeezed a couple in, but at the same time one of those would've gone the other way. You want to move the chains, you want to score but you have to be smart."
We all know Romo used to be good for one or two passes a game that left you shaking your head because it made no sense. In the one season under Bill Parcells, the coach used to describe them as indiscriminate throws.Even with no evidence and damage to the company, the US won’t distract spying allegations against Kaspersky Lab due to anti-Russian hysteria in the US media and left-wing circles, said Greg Copley, editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs.
Two months ago, the US Department of Homeland Security ordered agencies under its umbrella to identify Kaspersky Lab software on their computers and remove it from their networks on the grounds of the alleged espionage threat. The Moscow-based company was accused of leaking classified information to the Russian secret services.
However, Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Jeanette Manfra told Congress on Tuesday that there is no “conclusive evidence” to support claims the antivirus developer has been involved in cyber-spying. Kaspersky Lab denies the allegations, stressing that it has never assisted any government with cyber-espionage efforts.
“Basically we’re seeing the situations throughout the West today, where media reports generate hysteria, and cases whether they are of alleged sexual harassment, or alleged spying or whatever, are tried in the media. Governments are forced to respond before there has been a full investigation, or whether there are any merits or not to the allegations. We’re seeing a move toward governments trying to respond rapidly to public expressions of outrage about something, including the use of the Kaspersky antivirus software. They are making these judgments and take these actions based on more or less hysteria, rather than on detailed evidence,” says Gregory Copley, editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs, and president of the International Strategic Studies Association.
However, even though there’s no evidence any networks had been breached because they use Kaspersky software, it’s unlikely the US government will retract its accusations against the company, Copley told RT.
“We saw this in many instances in recent history – whether that was the Western governments particularly going into the former Yugoslavia... Once they made that commitment, there was no retraction, simply because retraction implies a mistake has been made and mistakes like this cost lives. So no government is going to admit to that kind of embarrassment,” he said.
“So no, I don’t expect the US government to retract its accusations against Kaspersky Lab. And that has done immense damage to the company in the global marketplace,” he added.
Last week, WikiLeaks released the so-called Vault-8 files, indicating the CIA was impersonating Kaspersky Lab as a cover for its malware operations.
Commenting on why would they choose Kaspersky and whether the WikiLeaks revelation undermines the accusations against the firm, Copley noted:
“There is no question the allegations against the Kaspersky company were prompted by an anti-Russian hysteria in the US media and in the left-wing circles of the US political machinery. There is almost a rabid pathological view within media and the leftist circles in the US that Russia must be to blame for something. So they will keep making these allegations. It plays well to their base audience, which is basically the urban electorates. So they will keep making this because it does distract from other issues, which they should perhaps be paying more attention to in the US political scene.”
Tim Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney agrees that this is all just a part of “anti-Russian hysteria” in the US.
“Now we’ve got the spying accusation through the antivirus industry. Let’s remember Kaspersky was up in the top handful of antivirus companies, so it is very well established in the world – has about 400 million players. Let’s also remember that the US is increasingly having integrated relationships between its State Department and its security apparatus with US IT companies. Google, for example, now has close relationships with the State Department. Facebook has also been working with the State Department against what it calls ‘fake news.’ So there is a new climate where the US state itself as being engaged with IT companies,” Anderson said.
In his view, the US government chose Kaspersky Lab as a scapegoat because it’s “in a sensitive sector” of the economy. But there are several other strategic sectors including energy where the US “is acting rather aggressively,” Anderson said.
“The US is generally moving into a more protective role, which has to do with its sense of losing it hegemonic capacity and also its economic decline. I think we should see the anti-Russian hysteria linked up to what is a more broad economic war that is coming from the US. A series of unilateral measures that amount to a type of economic war,” he told RT.JERUSALEM (Ma’an) -- A Palestinian family in the occupied East Jerusalem village of Sur Bahir on Friday demolished their own home following an order from an Israeli court.
Khalil Dabash, owner of the home, told Ma’an that a Jerusalem municipal court ordered the demolition on the grounds that it was built without proper permits.
The court said the Dabash family would be charged for the demolition of their home if it was not demolished before Sunday.
Dabash is among many Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem who are forced to demolish their own homes in order to avoid paying the municipality high fees to carry out the demolitions.
Dabash said that his mother Jamila had built the house around 20 years ago and that the family had paid fines to the Jerusalem municipality several times before. The self-demolition left Dabash’s sister homeless.
Thirty-three percent of all Palestinian homes in the occupied city lack Israeli-issued building permits, potentially placing at least 93,100 residents at risk of displacement, the United Nations reported in 2012.
According to rights group Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Israeli government issues building permits in line with discriminatory state policy enacted to increase the Jewish population, while neglecting local Palestinians.
Only 14 percent of East Jerusalem land is zoned for Palestinian residential construction, while one-third of Palestinian land has been confiscated since 1967 to build illegal Jewish-only settlements, ACRI says.
At least 20 Palestinian-owned structures in the occupied Palestinian territory have been demolished in the first few weeks of this year alone |
unclear if and how Trenberth’s “missing heat” has sunk to the deep ocean. The depiction of a dramatic rise in deep ocean heat is highly questionable, even though alarmists have flaunted it as proof of Co2’s power. As Dr. Wunsch had warned earlier, “Convenient assumptions should not be turned prematurely into ‘facts,’ nor uncertainties and ambiguities suppressed.” … “Anyone can write a model: the challenge is to demonstrate its accuracy and precision… Otherwise, the scientific debate is controlled by the most articulate, colorful, or adamant players.” 1
To reiterate, “the uncertainties remain too large to rationalize e.g., the apparent “pause” in warming.”
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3. Wunsch, C., and P. Heimbach, (2014) Bidecadal Thermal Changes in the Abyssal Ocean, J. Phys. Oceanogr., http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-13-096.1
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5. Lyman, J. et al, (2010) Robust warming of the global upper ocean. Nature, vol. 465,334-
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7. Rigor, I.G., J.M. Wallace, and R.L. Colony (2002), Response of Sea Ice to the Arctic Oscillation, J. Climate, v. 15, no. 18, pp. 2648 – 2668.
8. Zhang, R. et al. (2007) Decadal change in the relationship between the oceanic entrainment temperature and thermocline depth in the far western tropical Pacific. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34.
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from Argo data?, Ocean Sci., 7, 783-791, doi:10.5194/os-7-783-2011.
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13. Balmaseda, M. A., K. E. Trenberth, and E. Kallen, 2013: Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content. Geophysical Research Letters, 40, 1754-1759.
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RedditThink of it as the Where’s Waldo? for the local TV news audience.
Except, instead of a skinny fella decked out in red and white, viewers are looking for meteorologists sporting a women’s stretch tunic pencil sheath dress by brand Homeyee.
It all started when a television meteorologist shared a link on a Facebook page for women meteorologists (yes, that’s a thing) to suggest an affordable dress she thought would be perfect for television. Clearly she was right—soon after, other meteorologists across the country began purchasing and wearing the $20 dress during their own respective weather segments.
That’s when Jennifer Myers, a forecaster for a Dallas station, began collecting photos of colleagues as that very dress began popping up during broadcasts. Over the weekend, she posted a collage of those dress pictures in Reddit’s Funny community.
Myers, who goes by the username WXGirl83, also fielded questions from Reddit users in the thread, including one about why so many on-air personalities would wear a similar outfit.
She also revealed some tricks of the TV weather forecasting trade when it comes to their attire.
Since Myers’ posting, other redditors have been putting their own dress spottings on the site.
Some of the meteorologists have even been turning to social media to see if their viewers can find them in Meyer’s collage, using the hashtag, #sisterhoodoftravelingdress.Chopper 5 hovers over a Dallas home, where a 67-year-old woman climbed into a tree to prevent electric company crews from cutting it down. (Published Monday, March 13, 2017)
Woman, 67, Climbs Tree to Keep Crews From Cutting it Down
A 67-year-old woman climbed into a tree outside her Dallas home Monday morning to prevent electric company crews from cutting it down.
The woman's son told NBC 5 his mother — later identified as Jeri Huber — climbed tree in the 7100 block of Westlake Avenue just after 11 a.m.
Huber said she climbed down from the tree after being told crews would return with a restraining order.
Huber said she initially went into the tree as part of an ongoing dispute with Oncor about a pole that is leaning on her property.
According to Oncor, this isn't the first time Huber climbed a tree.
Oncor says six years ago, Huber climbed her tree with a BB gun to prevent crews from cutting it, forcing Oncor to get a restraining order against her at that time.
Oncor released the following statement Monday afternoon:Corey Gallagher is a world champion runner. His specialty isn’t watched by the likes of thousands on the Diamond League circuit in the stadiums of Rome or Qatar. Not yet, anyway. It’s not an Olympic competition. But it’s about guts. And pushing through pain. It requires discipline, attention to the details, and the ability to house a beer faster than a frat-boy at a tailgate. That’s right. Corey Gallagher is the Beer Mile World Champion. You can see his latest, greatest exploits in the video below.
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No Coast Bias had a chance to catch up with the newly minted Beer Mile World champ and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his training, his first ever attempt at beer-miling, and the controversy surrounding the current world record holder.
First off, thanks for taking the time to respond back to my questions. I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of things going on after you guys pulled a Kardashian and broke the internet the other night, so I really appreciate it.
Corey Gallagher, World Champion. Has a nice ring to it, right? How’s it feel having that title attached to your name?
Feels surreal, always wanted to be a world champion just didn’t think it would come via Beer mile.
What’s changed for you, personally, since you won the title? Anything? I would assume the selfies-with-strangers count has blown up recently?
Lots of selfies with people but I enjoy that stuff. What changed most is that I have a bunch more Under Armour! And that’s good because I love it.
I would assume that you have to be a pretty serious runner, in your own right, to be able to flat out haul like you do regardless of the drinking part of running a beer mile. Have you always been a track or cross country guy?
Was never very good on the track, was more of a road guy and somewhat cross, really. (I find doing circles very….boring)
What was your first beer mile like? Was it something you were naturally good at? I feel like beer miling would be something that takes a while to not be super difficult.
Haha. It didn’t come natural at all! My first Beer Mile I ran, like, 13 minutes and threw up all over myself. It’s been almost 10 years since then and I’ve slowly worked out the kinks.
What does your training look like for an event like this? What’s the running portion look like? The drinking? Do you get to sit down, practice chugging beer, and then tell people you’re “training?” Because that’s an excuse I’m going to start trying with my wife. Like, immediately.
In the summer I was building my base. Hitting 90-100 miles a week. Then, as the event got closer, I got injured so it was rest time. I probably do one drinking workout a week, but mainly use water. The only time I “train” my chugging is if I go out with the buddies. Rather than sit down and have a beer and enjoy it…I chug it.
Let’s talk a little bit about the actual Beer Mile World Championships. What was that experience like for you? I wasn’t able to watch it live, but when I watched the playback later it seemed like the event was totally surreal.
It was so much bigger then I ever imagined. That venue was amazing and it doesn’t get any better than that.
What other Beer Miling events are there? Do you have one that’s your favorite?
Well Flotrack Beer Mile has to be my favorite. But, aside from the US, here in Manitoba (we) put on a pretty good event. I would like to say (it’s) one of the best and most legit events there is, getting around 60 runners and 100 spectators.
Forget a shoe contract, please tell me you’ve been approached by beer companies for some kind of sponsorship deal? Alright, a shoe deal would be pretty sweet, too.
I’m sad to say, not one beer company has come forth to talk to me. But I did get hooked up by Under Armour.
I loved the one-glove look at the Beer Mile World Championships. Shoot me straight: is that for grip, to keep your hand from getting torn up when you’re popping your beer, or just a dope style choice? Quick follow-up: have you ever run a beer mile in Jorts? I saw the guy doing that and I feel like there’s not enough Vaseline in the world to prevent that from chafing you to death.
Hahaha. Well the glove was for grip. I ripped open my hand a week before, practicing, and every now and then you get one stubborn cap that won’t come off. I couldn’t take that chance. And, jorts? Oh, I’ve worn them for a beer mile before, but I for sure wasn’t running anything that fast at all.
I’ve gathered that there’s a bit of controversy surrounding the world record time for the beer mile. Now I, for one, believe that counting a non-electronic, non-sanctioned time as the world record is archaic. I’m with the guys who think that your 5:00.23 should be the new beer miling gold standard. Any thoughts on that?
I think everyone knows my thoughts on this, hahaha. If you watch James Neilson’s video: he does it alone with just his wife. He chugs beer 2 in 3.9 seconds — and that’s physically impossible to do (try it, it can’t happen) — then beer 3 and 4 he crushes. (The Official) Rules state, no impeding the flow: i.e. crushing the can.
It was completely fascinating watching you compete against a guy like (Olympian) Nick Symmonds and crush him in the Beer Mile. What was that like? He’s a pretty cool dude, and a good sport, but that must’ve been pretty fun, right?
He was, and is a pretty awesome dude, and much, much faster then me on the track. But beer miling is just something totally different and how the body reacts. (But, yes, it still feels good.)
I’ve tried drinking and running, although it was usually from the cops when I was in college, but it was pretty different from what you do. Are you ever able to feel the effects of the alcohol start to kick in while running, or are you too zoned in to notice? If so, has there ever been a race where the booze kicked in more than you thought?
I don’t notice it during the race. Usually about 10-15 minutes after, it all starts to kick in. I don’t notice it a whole lot. Only time I’ve ever noticed the booze when running is when I was running the vodka 3k steeple chase…..7 shots and 7 laps.
(*Author’s note: I desperately want to hear more about this type of death-defying event. I’ve seen all kinds of cringe-inducing wipeouts from fully sober steeplechasers and can only imagine the mayhem and utter pandemonium that would come from adding alcohol to an event with heavy hurdles and water jumps.)
You’re a Canadian and I’ve got to be honest with you: it seems like Canadians pretty much kick dominate at beer-miling. Fellow Canadian, Jim Finlayson (Who placed third at this year’s BMWC) is a 42-year-old dude and he absolutely crushed it out there. Are Canadians inherently better at the beer mile? I don’t want to start a border war, but I have to ask: are Canadians better drinkers than Americans period? What’s your take?
I think we are better beer drinkers….It could be that there’s just less to do to pass the time, so we practice drinking a little more.
Where do you go from here? Do you have more events planned, appearances, or are you going to be taking a little bit of time off to bask in the glory of your championship?
Little time off first. Its’ been one heck of a long season, then gear up towards doing a few 10ks, a few other events — Beer Miles around here — then gear up towards next year’s worlds.
One final question: have you had to buy a beer since you won? Because I feel like you should never have to purchase another drink in a bar again. Ever.
I wish it worked like that. I’m a thirsty man and it gets pricey.
Anything else you’d like to share with us, please feel free to do so now. Again, thank you so much for your time. And we’ll be combing the internet to see how you do in your pursuit of run-drinking glory.
Nothing other than (that) I had a stress fracture from the middle of September to middle of October (that) I had to take time off for. It’s still not fully healed, but now I can afford to take the rest. And I look forward to coming back next year, faster than ever. Thanks for having me
FIN
(*Author’s note: you can follow Corey Gallagher and his boozing, running, and life exploits at @coreygallagher4 on Twitter.)It was terrifying—as always—when Diamondbacks rookie starter Archie Bradley was hit in the face by a line drive off the bat of Carlos Gonzalez in last night’s 12-5 Arizona win. But all things considered, it could have been so much worse.
Bradley will go on the 15-day DL with some slight damage to his sinus cavity, but that’s about it. He was immediately taken to the hospital for tests, which showed no concussion and no broken bones. While at the hospital, he Facetimed with his mother to let her know he was OK, and tweeted out this pic of his grotesquely swollen jaw:
Bradley actually returned to the ballpark to speak with reporters, telling them he didn’t remember the comebacker that got him.
“I tried to throw a curveball in there for a strike,” Bradley said. “I saw the pitch going toward the plate and then I woke up, and I was laying down, and I was like, ‘Oh, crap, what just happened?’
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Emotionally, then, it might actually have been tougher on Carlos Gonzalez:Go on, try not to read that figure in his voice
The UK arm of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has revealed that over £100m has been raised for projects since the site first launched in 2012.
The money is the cumulative total of more than 1.8m pledges made by over 1.2m backers in the last four years. The average pledge was £53.80, while the most common amount pledged was £10.
An impressive 20,651 campaigns have been started through Kickstarter UK, of which 8,181 have met or exceeded their targets.
Unsurprisingly, games has been the most popular category, generating more than £26m in funds from 609,724 pledges. In fact, it’s believed that the recent Dark Souls: The Board Game project was a major driver in pushing the platform over the £100m mark.
Most pledges for Kickstarter UK projects come from within the British Isles, accounting for 742,317 backers. The US is second with 494,737 backers, and Germany is third with 77,546 backers.
“From our very first project that launched in the UK, British creators and backers have been a huge part of our global community; backing projects all over the world, championing creativity and helping to build a more diverse culture,” said Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
July 19, 2013, 10:25 PM GMT By Ted Warren
ROY, Wash. — John Bartheld has been breeding miniature cows on his farm for seven years, hoping to recreate black and white markings in the pattern of a panda to make a "panda cow."
He succeeded on June 28 when Peanut was born. From most angles, Peanut looks like the endangered Chinese bear with a big belt of white fur, a white face and black hair around the eyes.
Peanut never strays far from his mom, Midget, who was artificially inseminated. Another panda cow born July 3, a half-sister named Star, has similar markings, but not as well-defined.
Peanut is different and he knows it, Bartheld said.
"He's got that cocky attitude. From the minute I laid eyes on him I knew he was something special," he said Friday.
"Peanut knew he was a superstar. It's just the weirdest thing. I've never raised anything with this attitude — like he was born Tom Selleck," Bartheld said. "He struts around the field like he's in charge of the other calves and they follow him around. And he's not the oldest calf."
Bartheld runs nine cattle and five are registered miniatures. Two, Peanut and Star, are registered with The International Miniature Cattle Breeders Society, which is a division of Happy Mountain Farm in Covington.
John Bartheld holds Ted S. Warren / AP
The four other cattle are full-size cows sold as beef. The miniatures are a pet or novelty — "too expensive to butcher," unless they grow too big.
"They butcher them all the time if they breed a miniature and it runs out 40-45 inches tall; it's considered a mid-sized beef."
Bartheld grew up around his grandparents' dairy and the farm, now 11 acres, has been in the family four generations. He has a full-time job with a concrete company in Tacoma, but "I always knew I was going to have cows."
A miniature cow has to be under 42 inches tall at 3 years old. A panda cow has to have the bear-like markings, mostly the white belt around the midsection.
"A lot of cows have black eyes and white faces; the white belt really sets it," he said.
Peanut has been getting a lot of attention since a few stories hit the Internet.
"It's gone bananas," Bartheld said. He's hearing from people he hasn't talked to in 10 years.
"People drive by. They stop and back up and look. They love it," he said.
Bartheld plans to sell Peanut, but he can't guess what he's worth. He said there are 30 to 40 panda cows in the world.
"Somebody's got to want a cow like that. I'd like him to be a mascot for someone," Bartheld said. "I think that would be kind of neat."
Peanut also could be a sire when he grows to breeding age.
"He won't fit into my breeding program because they're all related to him," Bartheld said.
Peanut's parents are a mini-Hereford and a mini-American Beltie.
He's got Midget the mom on the farm. The bull, Rebel, is at Happy Mountain Farm in Covington.
Bartheld says his farm is a solo operation.
"I have no kids. These things are kind of like my children," he said. "I feed them the best hay I can. They're well taken care of."
Doug Esser in Seattle contributed to this report.Militants from the Islamic State have taken control of half Iraq’s largest oil refinery and have cut supply lines to the 150 or so government troops who are holding out inside the facility, witnesses reported Saturday.
The surprise Islamic State advance came despite U.S.-led aerial bombardment of Islamic State positions in the central Iraqi city of Baiji, where the refinery is located, and is a reminder of the precarious security situation in central Iraq where elite government troops are stretched thin battling Islamic State forces.
Speaking from inside the facility, an Iraqi officer who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter said government troops were running low on food, water and ammunition. He said the situation was chaotic after 11 months of nearly unbroken siege.
He said Islamic State fighters control “all the major buildings,” 80 percent of the watchtowers around the facility, and had flanked government positions with “snipers and suicide bombers driving heavily armored car bombs.”
He appealed for the government in Baghdad to send supplies, ammunition and air cover. “We have been under siege for four days without any major coalition air strike assistance inside the facility,” he said.
The Baiji refinery remains one of the most important economic assets in Iraq, even though it has been shut down since last summer, when Islamic State fighters first began trying to capture it. Before last June, it produced about half Iraq’s production of refined products, such as gasoline. In addition to lost revenue, the government’s inability to operate it has forced it to import hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel.
The loss of the facility, either if captured or seriously damaged, would be a crippling blow to the government and a huge strategic success for the Islamic State. The facility would require billions of dollars and years to replace.
The Iraqi Defense ministry refused to comment on the situation at the refinery, but a member of the governing council for Salahuddin province, where Baiji is located, admitted Islamic State forces had breached the perimeter, but denied that much of the facility was under their control.
“There are conflicting reports about Daash’s control,” the council member, Adnan Ibrahim, said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. He said earlier reports had indicated that only 10 to 30 percent of the refinery had fallen to the Islamic State. “Then last night there was the news that Daash had expanded its control and is progressing slowly into the refinery to between 30 and 40 percent of the area,” he said.
He said the key production control sections of the plant remained in government hands. “The security forces control more than 60 percent of the refinery,” he said.
On Friday, the United States Central Command said airstrikes had destroyed what it called two Islamic State fighting positions in the previous 24 hours near Baiji but provided no update Saturday of its efforts.
U.S. officials have been cautious in their assessments of Iraqi government efforts to roll back the Islamic State in central Iraq, despite the victory a month ago in Tikrit, where a combination of heavy U.S. aerial bombardment and elite Iraqi special operations forces succeeded in taking the city, which had been occupied by the Islamic State last year.
But the Islamic State responded to its defeat at Tikrit by opening new offensives at Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and Baiji, where Islamic State fighters two weeks ago also were closing in on the refinery. Both offensives were blunted by heavy air strikes and the deployment of Iraqi special forces.
But military specialists predicted then that there were too few elite Iraqi troops to withstand offensives in such widely separated areas – Ramadi and Baiji lie 120 miles from one another. In Washington, a U.S. official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, said last month that Iraqi forces still had years of training ahead of them before they could be expected to defeat the Islamic State.
“ISIL remains a very adaptive enemy,” the official said then, using the administration’s preferred acronym for the Islamic State. “They’re going to do things that surprise everybody. We expect that.”Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 29, 2017, 12:31 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 29, 2017, 7:19 PM GMT By Adam Edelman
The Justice Department is demanding that Facebook turn over information from three accounts that could provide access to the personal details of thousands of activists who expressed interest in anti-Trump rallies.
The department obtained search warrants targeting three Facebook accounts that were used to organize Inauguration Day protests against Donald Trump, the ACLU said late Thursday. But accessing those accounts would provide information on thousands of other users who "liked" an anti-Trump Facebook page, the group explained.
The ACLU’s Washington, D.C., office said in a statement it would fight the enforcement of the search warrants.
"Opening up the entire contents of a personal Facebook page for review by the government is a gross invasion of privacy," said Scott Michelman, a senior staff attorney at ACLU. "When law enforcement officers can comb through records concerning political organizing in opposition to the very administration for which those officers work, the result is the chilling of First Amendment-protected political activity."
The warrants were issued as part of an ongoing case by the Justice Department against people who allegedly broke laws while protesting Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington. Prosecutors have said the website, DisruptJ20.org, was used to organize "a violent riot."
A person holds up a sign in protest before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump at Freedom Plaza in Washington on Jan. 20, 2017. Joshua Lott / AFP - Getty Images file
One search warrant was issued for the DisruptJ20 Facebook page, which has since been renamed Resist This, requiring the group’s moderator, Emmelia Talarico, to hand over "nonpublic lists of people who planned to attend political organizing events and even the names of people who simply liked, followed, reacted to, commented o or otherwise engaged with the content on the Facebook page," the ACLU said in a motion filed Thursday in U.S. Superior Court in Washington.
That could include nearly 6,000 Facebook users who "liked" the page from Nov. 1, 2016, to Feb. 9, 2017.
Two other warrants obtained by the Justice Department would require Facebook to hand over "all information from the personal Facebook profiles of local DisruptJ20 activists' Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour from Nov. 1, 2016, through Feb. 9, 2017.
The warrants demand "all private messages, friend lists, status updates, comments, photos, video and other private information solely intended for the users’ Facebook friends and family, even if they have nothing to do with Inauguration Day," the ACLU said.
A Facebook spokesperson wouldn't comment on whether the company would comply with the warrants but said the company had "successfully fought in court to be able to notify the three people whose broad account information was requested by the government."Inspired by novels such as 'Spice and Wolf' and 'Maoyuu Maou Yuusha', A More Beautiful World follows their tradition of placing emphasis on relationships, money and politics.
As you join Violetta, expect to see many familiar elements in her journey; history buffs will also pick out real world events reflected in the story from China, Europe and the Americas.That's the question that remains to be answered.
Fans of classical literature can expect to find allusions to their favourite works in the visual novel too! Will you join Violetta on her journey?
Curious for a taste of the visual novel?
Please follow this link to download our demo! It spans about 60% of the length of Act I, an estimated 60-80 minutes in playtime. There are four Acts in total, with Act II being similar to Act I in length while Act III and IV combined are three times longer than Acts I and II.
The demo is also hosted on Mediafire and IndieDB.
In Act I, Violetta meets the Merchant; in the later acts, she will meet many other characters while bidding farewell to her previous companions.
We have been Greenlit! Please support us here! You can continue following our project there as well! :3
Afterthought Studios' aim is to create stories that resound with our readers and inspire them to apply lessons to their daily lives. We are experienced creators and visual novel enthusiasts from around the world who came together to create a story worth being retold for the ages.
Our author, Darren Kwok, is based in Singapore. He has assisted in the marketing and greenlighting for several visual novels and games.
On our music team, we have Steven Melin, a video game, film, & television music composer based in Atlanta, GA. He has previously assisted industry veterans Garry Schyman (Shadow of Mordor, Bioshock series) and Penka Kouneva (Gears of War 3, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands). Melin is also a writer for Vision1 Music and AudioJungle music libraries.
‘harmonicblend’ is a music circle founded by Trass. They have worked on several indie games and other projects, including some personal projects. They are currently most known for their works featured in the indie horror game Dreaming Mary soundtrack, as well as Sol=Akata, the album which they prepared for Comiket and was sold out in just two hours - More recently, COSMOCRYSTAL, another one of their productions sold out at M3-Fall in Japan. Check out the the song you heard from our trailer right here!
As for our art, we are working with the talented Yuuki, who will be responsible for all the sprites and CGs in A More Beautiful World. Sillyselly will be creating our background art. ameliori and artsvan, from Fervent are the folks behind the successful visual novels Who Is Mike and CUPID are also assisting in the artistic process. With the funds from the Kickstarter, we would also undergo an art revamp and upgrade.
Our programmer, MysteryCorgi, has several visual novels under her belt, including Culina: The Spirit of Cooking and Hands in the Kitchen. She also did work for That Cheap and Sacred Thing as well as logos and GUIs for various indie projects. Special thanks is also accorded to Krystian Alabrudzinski, our partner.
The logo for A More Beautiful World was made by Luna Li and the GUI designed by Camille Arana, and part of the main menu was designed from the resource created by TsukinoHikari20.
As A More Beautiful World will be fully voiced in English, we are working with other professionals in the voice acting field.
We require the extra funding to bring our game to its maximum potential and to complete the remainder of the game. Some changes include an art upgrade. Our wallpaper rewards! :3 We've absorbed most of the costs by ourselves to minimize the amount of funds raised, in order to reduce the risk for our backers. Our physical reward for A More Beautiful World comes in a 2 Disc swing tray, which will contain a beautiful 8 page booklet, the game and our OST! The cover art of the DVD cases is being illustrated by Aria - The Final Decision - Familiar with the popular Umineko no Naku Koro ni? There will be one final decision in this Kinetic Novel that would allow you to drastically change the ending, adding more than one hour of gameplay. ($7000) (WE DID IT!) All digital rewards will be distributed via mediums such as Steam; we will send out keys to all of you amazing backers the moment they become available! Once again, everyone in Afterthought Studios thanks you for taking a look at our project.- Familiar with the popular? There will be one final decision in this Kinetic Novel that would allow you to drastically change the ending, adding more than one hour of gameplay. ($7000)
More CGs - CGs reflect a special moment in visual novels, and with more funds, you can help create even more of these moments! ($8000) - CGs reflect a special moment in visual novels, and with more funds, you can help create even more of these moments! ($8000)
Full Visual Novel Conversion ($10,000) They have an extensive portfolio which includes Dead Island: Epidemic as well as Dread Out.
Sound Cadence Studios is a freelance indie Casting & Production Studio, founded by Amber Lee Connors, professional voice actress, director and writer and it is also partnered with Team Four Star, who supplies some of the in-house talent.NEW YORK -- Fab Melo returned just in time to help Jim
Boeheim reach another milestone.
Melo scored a career-high 14 points in his first action after a
three-game absence and Boeheim tied Dean Smith for third place on
the victory list with win No. 879 as No. 2 Syracuse dominated St.
John's 95-70 on Saturday.
Syracuse (23-1, 10-1 Big East) rallied behind the return of the
7-foot Melo, taking a 41-27 halftime lead and blowing it open by
starting the second half on a 16-3 run in front of a sellout crowd
of 19,979 at Madison Square Garden, most of whom were wearing
orange.
Melo missed the last three games as he resolved an academic
issue. He had been allowed to practice with the team and he looked
ready from the start of his first game back, once again a force in
the middle on the back line of the 2-3 zone.
"I had fun. It felt good to be back on the court with my
teammates," Melo said. "I felt a little rusty and I wanted to do
everything at once but Coach told me to slow down and I did."
Melo was asked if he was nervous that the academic issue
wouldn't be resolved.
"I was never nervous," he said. "I wasn't."
Dion Waiters and C.J. Fair both had 14 points for the Orange,
whose only loss this season was at Notre Dame in the first game of
the three Melo missed. Kris Joseph and Michael Carter-Williams had
13 points each for Syracuse, which shot 55.7 percent (39 for 70)
from the field.
After tying Smith, the longtime coach at North Carolina, Boeheim
trails only fellow Hall of Famers Mike Krzyzewski (919) and Bob
Knight (902) on the career wins list.
"I can't even see him," Boeheim joked when asked if had heard
from Krzyzewski lately about moving up the list. "Dean Smith was
an unbelievable coach, one of, I think, the four best ever in
college basketball. But we have a long way to go this season."
Boeheim and Syracuse have continued to win despite a tumultuous
stretch for the program. Bernie Fine, his assistant for more than
35 years, was fired three games into the season after two former
ball boys accused him of sexually molesting them when they were
young.Get your Mother's Day-flavored sci-fi fix in this thrilling short.
Aliens have invaded our planet, and they're out to destroy our race. We've all seen this movie before. But in this gritty, surprisingly good sci-fi short, things are actually a little different from what we're used to. In Hybrids, the aliens are the result of a failed government experiment, botched bio-hybrid soldiers who have now turned against their creators.
In this 8-minute short by Patrick Kalyn, who's worked on the special effects of blockbusters like Avatar, King Kong and the indie sci-fi masterpiece District 9, these hybrids are hunting for children, whom they believe hold a mysterious "key." Among their victims there's the daughter of a former special forces soldier, played by Daniella Evangelista. Now, she's out for revenge.
SEE ALSO: 22-Year-Old's Sci-Fi Digital Short Gets Hollywood's Attention
Image courtesy of Vimeo, wspAn economist who studied Manitoba's experiment with minimum income in the 1970s says social scientists the world over will be interested to see how Ontario's rebirth of the program will play out.
On Monday, Ontario's Liberals announced a three-year pilot project in Hamilton, Lindsay and Thunder Bay to see if providing residents with a basic income will improve social indicators like health outcomes and education.
"I think it's really exciting," said Evelyn Forget, a health economist with the University of Manitoba who in 2010 began looking at how Dauphin residents fared while receiving mincome or a guaranteed income.
"The world has changed since the 1970s," she said. "Employment itself has changed a lot."
She said a fresh look at mincome in 2017 will give economists a clue into how this type of safety net might help workers of today — people navigating a much less predicable job market.
"In the 1970s people still expected to graduate from high school and to get a full-time job and to work for the same firm or industry for their entire career |
Before a recent visit by Justice Scalia to Wesleyan University, I (a lowly research fellow) gained an invitation to a banquet in his honor by employing a typical Quaker mix of idealism, stubbornness and low cunning. Once there, I thanked the eminent jurist for his liberal ruling in Crawford v. Washington, concerning the right to confront witnesses in criminal proceedings. This remark drew from him the quip that he ought to be a pinup in every public defender’s office in the nation, because sometimes he was forced by clearly established constitutional principles to rule in favor of people he couldn’t stand.
With this in mind, I’m celebrating him for yet another socio-political gift to progressives and suggesting that he doesn’t need to wear a thong — a modest bathing costume of 1910 vintage will do — in the poster religious pacifists like myself will want now that he and his brethren have ruled for Hobby Lobby et al., to the effect that private persons/corporations do not have to fund activities that violate their faith — such as the use of an IUD by an employee who may not even share that faith.
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The upshot of the ruling is that Hobby Lobby and other businesses with conservative religious owners do not need to pay for what the Affordable Care Act mandates as full coverage for family planning. The public interest in affordable and accessible healthcare is not compelling enough to override the private belief that contraceptive methods including (but apparently not limited to) the IUD and the morning-after pill are murder. Well, I’m a pacifist, and I say that warfare is murder, and I don’t want to pay for it; and in recent decades the public interest in my paying for it hardly looks compelling.
Let’s go back to 2012, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for the purchase of insurance was constitutional as a tax, to fund the public good of healthcare. The issue necessarily now shifts to whether an individual or a privately held company has to pay a tax for anything religiously abhorrent that is less essential, or only as essential, to the common good as women’s ability to avoid unwanted pregnancies, including from rape.
My husband, Tom, and I have been dancing gleefully with our Corgi Bessie in our modest home every evening since the Hobby Lobby ruling, because it’s clear that the conservative majority of justices has written itself into a corner in which it cannot refuse religious exemptions from selected tax obligations. The same preponderance of Supremes will have no way out of ruling, for example, that I and fellow Quakers (plus the Amish, Mennonites and others) do not have to pay the roughly 20 percent of our taxes that goes toward supporting the U.S. military. I’m firing up little Bessie with talk of her own backyard goat herd, and my husband (not a Quaker) with the promise of a 1992 Jaguar and a weekend at the Saratoga racetrack once my tax savings come through.
Why wouldn’t they? The conscientious objection of religious pacifists to supporting the military goes back for centuries. Just to instance my own sect, the Quaker Peace Testimony (citing the New Testament) dates from 1660, and over the years many Quakers were persecuted for their antiwar witness. George Washington had a passel of them confined in punishing conditions as draft refusers during the French and Indian War, and he admired their fortitude.
Today, some Quakers send the government only the non-military portion of their taxes owed. They attach letters explaining why, and suffer crippling monetary penalties, confiscations from their savings accounts, and sometimes the loss of their homes.
There’s nothing remotely like this basis in conservative Christians’ pleas that they have a religious objection to voluntary abortion (or birth control somehow resembling it) — an issue never even mentioned in the Bible, and manifesting during recent years mainly (it could be argued) as a political wedge and the cat-o’-nine-tails of anti-feminist backlash.
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I look forward with mirth to the Supreme Court’s deliberations on whether the portion of military spending funded by the taxes of religious pacifists represents a compelling public interest. Historians of our era — Justice Scalia is especially keen to consult history when backing up his rulings — must already be revving up to declare that it would have benefited our nation hugely had there not been as many military resources available for our government to splash out with. Even more to Scalia’s taste as evidence, a delegate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention declared that a standing army was like an erect penis, “a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.” Crude analogy, but it’s turned out to be no joke.
I foretell many blessings for our beloved homeland from the coming new dispensation. The arrangements for going to war will be more like a female Hobby Lobby employee’s having to shift for herself if her circumstances, her doctor and her conscience argue for an IUD. (The court has now backed up Wheaton College’s refusal even to certify in a letter its objection to paying for contraceptive coverage, though Wheaton refuses for the very reason that the federal government intended such certification to allow straightforward alternative access to birth control. The court seems to be establishing the right of a religious employer to pursue an employee outside the place of employment and make it as hard as possible for her to obtain standard healthcare he doesn’t want her to have.)
As things work in Washington these days, certain individuals, weighing the options and deciding for what they personally believe is right, may set out to invade and occupy a foreign land, regardless of whether it poses any threat to our country or our allies — and they make us all pay through the nose for this choice, even those of us who believe that war is murder.
They already can’t force individuals to be directly involved, pulling triggers and lobbing grenades; there’s no longer a draft, and even when there was a draft, conscientious objection was allowed. Suppose funding a military deployment entailed a bureaucratic labyrinth so nasty (I’m thinking six or eight different phone trees to go through just to identify the person authorized to unlock the House door for a vote) that proponents would conclude that, since they can’t pay for the undertaking out of their own pockets, they will have to drop the idea.
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I think this would be great. I bet the other Quakers in Middletown, Connecticut, Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends would think so too. Bessie is wagging her butt (she doesn’t have a tail) in anticipation of a better world, with her own miniature water-slide in it. And Tom (again, not a Quaker) is already on the Brooks Brothers website, shopping away.cheyenne-bowling-3jpg-6f7172cec67a377f.jpg
Cheyenne Bowling was killed Sunday, June 11 in a shooting that injured another man. (Courtesy)
BARRY COUNTY, MI -- Police say 26-year-old Cheyenne Bowling was killed by her husband in a shooting that injured another man Sunday morning.
Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf told WOOD TV-8 that Ralph Bowling turned himself in after the alleged shooting. A release from the sheriff's office states Cheyene and 31-year-old Nathan Farrell were shot in a domestic violence incident at 1:48 a.m. in the 6900 block of Bird Road in Baltimore Township early Sunday morning.
Farrell, a Lake Odessa resident, was shot in the neck but survived. Police said Cheyene was found at a nearby residence.
Spurned lover kills woman, injures man in shooting near Hastings It happened in 6900 block of Bird Road Sunday morning.
During the investigation, police and fire were dispatched to a structure fire at 9731 Coats Grove Rd. around 4:41 a.m. The fire is believed to be related to the initial investigation.
Leaf did not respond to requests for comment from MLive-Kalamazoo Gazette after news of the arrest broke. Earlier today he said the Michigan State Police mobile crime lab was also on scene assisting in the investigation.
According to Facebook, Cheyenne has been married since 2014 and lives in Woodland Michigan. The Baltimore Township home is owned by her mother Melissa Wymer.
Bowling appears to be the mother of two young children, a boy and girl.Image caption Ms Suu Kyi left Burma for the first time in 24 years for a trip to Thailand in May
Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi is to receive the freedom of the city of Oxford.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner will receive the honour almost 15 years after she was originally awarded it while under house arrest in Burma.
Her son accepted it on her behalf in 1997.
The pro-democracy leader will be presented with a scroll at a ceremony at St Hugh's College by Lord Mayor of Oxford Alan Armitage.
During her two-day visit to the city, where she lived for a number of years, she will also speak to students at the Oxford Union.
The former lord mayor of Oxford, Bill Baker, who presented the freedom of the city to her son, said: "It was a great honour to give this status to such a remarkable woman.
"I am delighted that she is now able to accept this honour in person."
She will also receive an honorary doctorate in civil law.
The visit is part of a two-week European trip - her first in almost a quarter of a century.
There is only a small number of people who have been given freedom of Oxford, including Sir Roger Bannister, Nelson Mandela and authors Colin Dexter and Philip Pullman.On tonight's Hannity, Fox News contributor and "Word Doctor" Frank Luntz appeared to make a very revealing error during his health care reform focus group segment.
As shown in the clip below, Luntz asked the focus group participants if Democrats "should try to get any health care through and accept 51 votes as being enough," noting that, "it's called reconciliation." At that point, close to half of the group raised their hands, apparently in agreement with this idea. After a brief pause, Luntz altered his question, asking who wanted Democrats to use the "so-called nuclear option." At that point, several people in the focus group lowered their hands. Check out the video:
As Media Matters has repeatedly documented, "nuclear option" has been the preferred term for reconciliation on Fox News (and this is after they redefined what the "nuclear option" meant). And based on the negative reaction that is invoked by using "nuclear option" displayed in that clip, it's clear why.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sgt Mark Andrews dragged Pamela Somerville across the floor of the police station. CCTV provided by Wiltshire Police
A police officer is facing the sack after he was caught on CCTV throwing a woman into a cell, badly injuring her.
The footage also shows Sgt Mark Andrews dragging Pamela Somerville through Melksham police station in Wiltshire.
Ms Somerville, 59, was arrested in July 2008 after being found asleep in her car. Her treatment left her with facial injuries and needing hospital care.
Andrews has been convicted of causing the woman actual bodily harm and is expected to be dismissed from his job.
Ms Somerville had been detained for failing to provide a sample for a breath test.
'Completely disgraceful'
She denies refusing to provide a sample and said the charges against her were later dropped.
She said: "I thought I was going to die, by people that you trust.
"You can't imagine it. They're the people that you trust, so who do you trust after that?
"You don't treat somebody - even if you've found them guilty of the worst possible thing you can possibly imagine - you don't put them in a situation where they have to be in hospital twice in one day, do you?"
The case was brought after one of Andrews' colleagues reported the matter to senior officers, who have apologised to Ms Somerville.
Wiltshire Police's Assistant Chief Constable Patrick Geenty said it was a "completely disgraceful incident".
"We are very concerned when anyone is injured in our custody and the court has decided that this injury was as a result of a criminal assault by Sgt Mark Andrews, a member of Wiltshire Police who was performing duty as a custody sergeant at the time," he said.
"We respect the decision of the court and the force has formally apologised to the injured lady for the assault she suffered while in our care.
"People have a right to expect that the police will always act by placing the safety and welfare of the public as their first priority.
"This is particularly so when in police custody when irrespective of the reason for their detention, people should feel and be safe."
Andrews, who has been suspended on full pay since his conviction, is due to be sentenced for the assault at Oxford Magistrates' Court on Tuesday. He is also to face a police misconduct hearing.
BBC home affairs correspondent Steve Brodie said he understood that the officer would be sacked.Too fat for murder: TLC's Half-Ton Killer tells shocking tale of 1,100lb woman who confessed to killing her nephew - until her weight proved testimony was a LIE
A new documentary is set to reveal the astonishing true life story of a woman who testified falsely to murder but was found innocent on the grounds that her burgeoning obesity could never have allowed her to commit the crime.
TLC's Half-Ton Killer? tells of how, in March 2008, Texan Mayra Rosales, 31, told police officers that she had killed her two-year-old nephew, Eliseo Jr, by accidentally rolling on top of him while babysitting.
Such was her 1,100lb frame, Mayra imagined her story to be believable, but after doctors revealed that the boy could only have died from a blow to the head, the reality that she was so big she couldn't move her arm, became her attorney's main argument for her defence.
Innocent: TLC have made a documentary about Mayra Rosales, the 1,100lb woman who confessed to a crime she didn't commit to protect her sister and was found innocent thanks to her weight
'I should be punished, I did wrong,' Mayra sobbed at the time as law enforcement officials took her tears to be those of guilt and a media storm was ignited.
'Why isn't this woman in jail?' Demanded Nancy Grace at the time.
'Could they even give her enough poison to execute her,' asked another pundit.
But there was more to the story than met the eye, her attorney Sergio Valdez realised, after doctors announced the cause of Eliseo's death.
Not going anywhere: Mayra (pictured with her husband Bernie) told police that she killed her nephew by accident by rolling on top of him while babysitting
Medical evidence: Mayra with attorney Sergio Valdez (right) who said she could not have committed the murder because she was too heavy
The story behind Half-Ton Killer? is at once a crime thriller about sibling loyalty and a medical drama about Mayra's journey from condemnation to freedom in January this year.
After lying to the authorities, Mayra eventually confessed the truth: that she had invented the story to protect her sister Jaime, whom she claimed had struck the boy various times over his body with a hairbrush earlier the same day.
In 2008, shortly before tragedy struck, Mayra and her husband Bernie had moved in to live with sister Jaime in Sullivan City.
Jaime had undertaken a full-time role caring for her when Mayra became so large she struggled to walk.
Despite the fact that Mayra was almost entirely bed-ridden, Jaime would often go out, leaving Mayra in charge of her four children.
Murdered: An autopsy revealed Eliseo Jr, left, was killed by a blow to the head
'I was more of a mother than Jaime,' Mara said in an interview with the UK's Reveal magazine. 'Whenever she wanted to go out or go shopping, she didn’t take the kids. She would always leave them at home with me.'
But events took a horrific turn in March 2008, when Mayra witnessed her sister hit Eliseo Jr. ‘Jaime was giving my nephew breakfast and he didn’t want to eat,’ says Mayra. ‘I told her if he was crying he wasn’t going to eat, but she got mad, got a brush and hit him on his arms, legs and head which left a bump. Afterwards, she got his Winnie the Pooh blanket, covered him up and put him to bed. Then she went out, leaving me with the children.'
Later that day, Eliseo Jr began suffering from breathing problems and Mayra phoned for an ambulance. Jaime phoned her sister from the hospital, sobbing that the police would not let her see her son unless she told them who had hurt him. Jaime begged Mayra to tell the authorities she was responsible for the injuries.
In a move she would come to bitterly regret, Mayra accepted.
‘People may not understand this but I wanted to help my sister and I didn’t want the authorities to take the other children’ says Mayra.
‘I told the investigators that I rolled over to the edge of my bed to where Junior was and my hand slipped and I fell on him with my hand. I fell. I was the one to blame. But only by accident.'
Mayra was subsequently arrested and charged with capital murder.
The story quickly incited a media frenzy with speculation to her guilt flying freely.
But as the trial progressed, the court heard that the fatal injuries sustained by the boy were consistent with a blow to the head and could not have been caused by someone falling on him.
Front door: Authorities had to cut a whole in the side of the house to remove Mayra Rosales after she was charged with capital murder
Manpower: It took ten men to remove Mayra in a removal truck from her sister's home in 2008
'It would have required her to have to swing her arm to strike the child on the head but she could never move her arm in that manner,’ says Mayra’s lawyer Sergio Valdez.
‘We knew that her size was her best defence because she couldn’t move her arm.'
Despite the physical impossibility of Mayra committing such a crime, the authorities had to conduct a full trial, with Mayra as the chief suspect.
Months went by before a courtroom was found that was large enough to accommodate Mayra, and doors and walls had to be removed to fit her in.
Finally, Mayra could testify. But as a result of her testimony, Jaime went on the run, leaving Mayra facing the possibility of a death sentence.
'I wasn’t surprised,' says Mayra. 'Jaime is into a lot of bad things and I understood why she did it.'
As the trial date approached, prosecutors became suspicious at Mayra's account that she fell on Eliseo Jr. Mayra decided at that point to come clean with a confession that would incriminate her sister.
Emergency: A team of doctors help move Mayra who was able to attend the court proceedings only because they took down walls to accommodate her
Loyal: When ambulances rushed Eliseo Jr to hospital after he was found not breathing, Mayra's sister Jaime called her begging her to cover for her which she willingly did so that the other children were not taken away
Partners: Mayra's attorney urged her to stop lying or she would face death in prison alone
Testifying from her bed at home under oath, she admitted that Jaime was behind the abuse.
‘We were all trying to cover for my sister,’ she says. ‘There was abuse from her towards her son. She yelled at him. She kicked him. On that night Junior didn’t want to eat and she got frustrated and she hit him on the head with a hairbrush. I thought I was dying anyway so I decided to admit that I’d done it to protect my sister because I love her.’
A few months later, Jaime was persuaded to return to Texas where she stood trial for her son’s murder.
Pleading guilty to the lesser charge of causing injury to a child, she was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
The stress of the case caused Mayra's health to deteriorate to the point that she had to be admitted to a hospital for the super-obese, where she remains today, confined to a hospital bed. When a regular ambulance was too small to transport her, a removal truck had to be used.
‘I began retaining more water in my legs and they got so hard,’ she says. ‘The skin is so stretched out that it hurts. It feels like my legs are going to pop like a balloon. Sometimes the sores open up and water oozes out. I wondered if we should amputate
Abusive: Jaime Rosales was found guilty of causing injury to a child and sentenced to 15 years in jail. Her remaining three children, fathered by boyfriend Eliseo Sr, right, are now being cared for by their grandmother.
'Sometimes I got mad. I tried not to show it that much because I didn’t want anyone feeling bad for me. It was like I was in prison, with chains holding me there so I couldn’t move.’
Mayra has suffered chronic skin infections around her body caused by the folds of fat in her skin, and doctors attempting to treat her have removed several litres of fat and fluid from around her body.
In the first 12 weeks of hospital treatment she shed 20 stone.
Doctors have told Mayra she still has years of treatment ahead of her. Against all odds, Mayra manages to look to the future with optimism.
‘I’m really sad that my sister is in jail but I think my sister understands now that her actions were wrong. I believe she can change and learn from what happened. Today it’s like I’m getting a new chance. I never gave up on hope and faith that some day my life will change.'
TLC's special Half-Ton Killer? will air Wednesday, October 10th at 9/8c
Watch teaser hereThe party of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg admitted Monday that five of the 14 people featured in a re-election campaign video showing him working as a taxi driver were in fact paid participants.
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Some passengers were paid to take part in a buzz-generating video which showed Norway’s prime minister undercover as a taxi driver probing voters’ concerns, his party admitted Monday.
Just one month before Norway’s legislative elections that Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s centre-left coalition appears likely to lose, a video was on Sunday released showing him wearing a taxi driver’s uniform and sunglasses, sitting at the wheel as he drives passengers around Oslo.
The video quickly generated a lot of buzz on social networks and in the media.
In power since 2005, Stoltenberg explains at the beginning that he wants to get close to voters to hear their concerns.
But on Monday, tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) revealed that five of the 14 passengers filmed with hidden cameras fitted in the cab were in fact chosen during a casting call.
“They’re five ordinary people who were asked if they wanted to take part in a video for the Labour Party and who knew nothing else, except that they were going to be picked up in a taxi,” party spokeswoman Pia Gulbrandsen said.
“Their spontaneity was real when they realised that the driver was the prime minister,” she said.
Each of the five received 500 kroner (65 euros, $85) “as a thank you”, the Labour Party said.
None of the passengers had to pay their fares either, since Stoltenberg does not have a permit to drive a taxi.
The owner of the public relations firm that made the video, Kjetil Try a friend of the prime minister’s told VG the casting call was necessary to ensure that passengers were available at the right time and that they represented a broad diversity.
The video was on the whole well-received for its humorous aspects, though several commentators remarked that it focused more on the passengers’ surprise than on the voter issues Stoltenberg said he wanted to explore.
Recent opinion polls show Stoltenberg lagging far behind the right wing ahead of the September 9 election, and the success of the video was not expected to be enough to turn things around.
(AFP)HOUSTON, September 17, 2015 – Sentai Filmworks is proud to announce its latest acquisition, HaNaYaMaTa. This bittersweet coming-of-age story is adapted from the manga by Sou Hamayumiba and introduces us to Naru Sekiya, a normal girl living an ordinary life. A chance encounter with an American girl dancing in traditional Japanese dress under a starlit night, however, changes her life forever. Naru is entranced with this ethereal, fairy-like figure. She had been waiting for that special someone who would one day take her from her everyday life, and now -- led by this girl from another country -- she takes her first steps into the extraordinary world that is yosakoi, a form of Japanese dance.
Atsuko Ishuzuka directed the series and Reiko Yoshida provided series composition and scripts. Music was composed by MONACA, and character designs were drafted by Atsuko Watanabe. Animation production was provided by MADHOUSE, known for their work on Cardcaptor Sakura, NANA and the classic film Vampire Hunter D.
HaNaYaMaTa is now available through select digital outlets, with a home video release to follow.
For Sentai Filmworks’ latest announcements regarding this title and other great programming, be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
About Sentai Filmworks, LLC
Sentai Filmworks curates one of largest and most beloved anime and genre programming libraries, containing thousands of hours of content released across traditional and digital media platforms. With hit series that include Parasyte –the maxim–, Log Horizon, High School of the Dead, Persona 4: The Animation, and Akame ga Kill!, Sentai’s catalogue continues to grow with new favorites like Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and iconic anime series such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Visit www.sentaifilmworks.com for more information.Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate Bay, is out of jail and back with a new project whose entire goal is to screw the music industry. It's called the Kopimashin, and it lives to make copies of the Gnarls Barkely song "Crazy."
All it took was a Raspberry Pi and some Python code, and now the Kopimashin is making 100 copies of "Crazy" every second. Sunde posted about the device on Konsthack, a site devoted to art and hacking. He writes, "The Kopimashins lcd display consists of three rows of information, the serial number of the mashin, amount of copies created and the dollar value it represents in losses for the record labels (Downtown Records / Warner Music), currently represented by USD 1,25 per copied piece." Each copy is "stored" in /dev/null, which is to say, it is not stored at all ( /dev/null is a nonexistent "null device"). The point, Sunde says, is "to make the audio track the most copied in the world and while doing so bankrupting the record industry."
Sunde hasn't made the source code available yet. As he told Ars via -mail: "It’s really simple, it’s ugly code and I have no energy to clean it up for the 'helpful' community to make the code 1% faster — and it’s about making a point, not the code itself. If you want to build your own, just start a terminal, find a song to copy and do: while true; do cat file.mp3 >/dev/null; done."
Are there any other songs he'd like to see people copying? "I think it would be highly interesting to copy a lot of folk music, since no one seems to be interested in that," Sunde said. "Maybe it would make it up to the charts then. We could troll the industry to think that it’s interesting for people, then pay to create more and then no one listens anyhow. But then again, they don’t care who listens, only who pays."
Last week, Sunde told TorrentFreak that he'd already made 120 million copies and "cost" the music industry $150 million in losses, at least by the music industry's preferred accounting practices counting the dollar value of any copied song as lost revenue. His goal is to make 13 Kopimashins and display them in art galleries so that more copies can be churned out every second.Even though it ultimately failed at the ballot box, the recent campaign for Scottish independence should cheer supporters of the numerous secession movements springing up around the globe.In the weeks leading up to the referendum, it appeared that the people of Scotland were poised to vote to secede from the United Kingdom. Defeating the referendum required British political elites to co-opt secession forces by promising greater self-rule for Scotland, as well as launching a massive campaign to convince the Scots that secession would plunge them into economic depression.The people of Scotland were even warned that secession would damage the international market for one of Scotland’s main exports, whiskey. Considering the lengths to which opponents went to discredit secession, it is amazing that almost 45 percent of the Scottish people still voted in favor of it.The Scottish referendum result has done little to discourage other secessionist movements spreading across Europe, in countries ranging from Norway to Italy. Just days after the Scottish referendum, the people of Catalonia voted to hold their own referendum measuring popular support for secession from Spain.Support for secession is also growing in America. According to a recent poll, one in four Americans would support their state seceding from the federal government. Movements and organizations advocating that state governments secede from the federal government, that local governments secede from state governments, or that local governments secede from both the federal and state governments, are springing up around the country. This year, over one million Californians signed a ballot access petition in support of splitting California into six states. While the proposal did not meet the requirements necessary to appear on the ballot, the effort to split California continues to gain support.Americans who embrace secession are acting in a grand American tradition. The Declaration of Independence was written to justify secession from Britain. Supporters of liberty should cheer the growth in support for secession, as it is the ultimate rejection of centralized government and the ideologies of Keynesianism, welfarism, and militarism.Widespread acceptance of the principle of peaceful secession and self-determination could resolve many ongoing conflicts. For instance, allowing the people of eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine to decide for themselves whether to spilt into two separate nations may be the only way to resolve their differences.The possibility that people will break away from an oppressive government is one of the most effective checks on the growth of government. It is no coincidence that the transformation of America from a limited republic to a monolithic welfare-warfare state coincided with the discrediting of secession as an appropriate response to excessive government.Devolving government into smaller units promotes economic growth. The smaller the size of government, the less power it has to hobble free enterprise with taxes and regulations.Just because people do not wish to live under the same government does not mean they are unwilling or unable to engage in mutually beneficial trade. By eliminating political conflicts, secession could actually make people more interested in trading with each other. Decentralizing government power would thus promote true free trade as opposed to "managed trade” controlled by bureaucrats, politicians, and special interests.Devolution of power to smaller levels of government should also make it easier for individuals to use a currency of their choice, instead of a currency favored by central bankers and politicians.The growth of support for secession should cheer all supporters of freedom, as devolving power to smaller units of government is one of the best ways to guarantee peace, property, liberty
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and even cheap whiskey!We're nearly midway through Ramadan now and I've been overwhelmed by the positive responses to the Interfaith Ramadan project. I can't thank you enough for your encouragement, support, and for taking the time to read the articles, write comments and share your own experiences whether here or on social media. The latter has inspired me so much this Ramadan.
Just this morning, I found myself inspired by a comment that had been left by a new friend of mine Sister Judith (who previously wrote
On Holy Ground: A Reflection for Lent
). Her reflections on prayer in the monastic tradition and distraction were words of encouragement that came at just the right time for me, as someone who has hit the "Ramadan wall" - the middle period where you can often lose motivation and, in my case, give in to lethargy. And so I decided Sr. Judith's words of encouragement deserved a spot of their own and I'm sure you'll find them as inspiring and thought-provoking as I did.
You can find the wonderful Sister Judith on twitter at @ srjudithl
I'd never thought particularly about prayer being an intimate activity until I entered the monastery and discovered that I felt a real tension about taking part in this intimate activity in a very public setting. I'm not sure that gender segregation makes any difference to that experience in my case. On a good day I can see this as a sign of how we need to come before God, vulnerable & naked...It's an act of trust & humility. On a bad day it feels like I have no skin!
Like you, we pray 5 times a day... it's the framework of our life... I can feel that as a real support, and miss it when I'm not here...And I struggle with it. It can feel like all my activities are constantly being interrupted by the call to prayer... and they are... and that is the point. Monastic prayer is designed to interrupt us, to be a reminder that none of our activities are as important as the call to praise God in community. Sometimes I can hear that graciously, and sometimes I can. The most helpful thing for me is that we do it together, my sisters waiting for me to join them in prayer is a real help, & knowing that often they carry me through these 5 times of prayer...the power of community I guess.
Monastic prayer is also very physical (I think this is even more true in Orthodox communities). It is marked by standing, sitting, bowing. Like you, I find that these gestures help to make prayer a holistic experience that uses body, mind & spirit, and that God wants us to bring our whole selves to prayer... not just the bits we think are acceptable. As a Christian I would also see this as a sign of the incarnation. It can also be an act of humility, when, for example, we're not able to make the physical gestures for some reason.
I also recognise your experience of distraction in prayer...I'm constantly amazed at my capacity to be distracted in prayer... The most helpful & consoling thought I have about this comes from a priest I know. He said something like if you prayer for 30 mins & are distracted 100 times, & each time you turn back to God & ask forgiveness for it...it means that you've turned to God 100 times in 30 mins! I find that a really helpful thought.
★ ★ ★
Check out my guest post for Multicultural Kids Blog which was published today:
Ramadan Crafts & Activities for Kids: Itikaf Tents & Papier Mache Mosques
and previous post:
What is it like to be a Muslim in Britain Today | The Guardian
Next:
Should We Label Children Based on the Beliefs of Their Parents?My Adventure Story
Traversing Tasmania from Penguin on the north-west coast to Cockle Creek in the States far south-east is a 450km hike that I first considered about 4 years ago after completing the Port Davey and South-Coast tracks over easter 2008. It has taken 4 years of mulling, planning, preparing, exercising, and convincing to get to the point where I will finally be starting the traverse on October 1st this year.
The hike begins on the Penguin-Cradle Trail and connects to the iconic Overland Track from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair. From there I will be walking off track along the King William and Denison Ranges and the upper reaches of the Gordon River to reach Lake Rhona and the track that leads to it from Gordan River Road. Scotts Peak Dam Road will lead me from there to the southern shores of lake pedder and the begining of the Port Davey Track to Melaleuca. Finally from Melaleuca seven days walking along the beaches of the South Coast Track will return me to some semblance of civilisation at Cockle Creek literally at the end of Australias southern most road.
While I will have companions for some sections I am the only one completing the entire travers and will be hiking the Penguin-Cradle Trail and the Port Davey/South Coast Tracks solo.
Not Content with just getting from A to B, I plan to make a number of side trips along the way to the summits of several notable tasmanian mountains, including Tassies highest, Mount Ossa, and arguably its most famous, Cradle Mountain.
This Walk will take me through the three largest national parks in Tasmania: Cradle Mountain-Lake St Claire, Wild Rivers, and the South West Wilderness world heritage area.
The track shown on the map is just the main route the side trips are no shown and there are also a couple of alternative routes includeing an entirely different finish to the walk. But for the most part this track is a fairly accurate description of the walk.11 December 2014—This morning the education of thousands of Palestinian children in Hebron was again compromised. While hundreds of children tried to walk to the seven schools near both the Qitoun/209 and Salimeh/29 checkpoints, Israeli border policemen fired teargas and rubber-coated steel bullets in response to a few children throwing stones towards the checkpoints. Even after classes began, the Israeli military continued to fire teargas. Two schools near the Salimeh/29 checkpoint closed within a half hour of the start of the school day. Two other schools reported additional problems caused by the actions of the Israeli military.
Al Khalil School, an elementary boys school with 270 students, had to close before 8:30 AM after four teargas canisters landed in the school courtyard. While CPTers were checking on the school, an ambulance came to take fourteen year-old Nasha’at Gaith, who’d been hit on the thigh by a teargas canister, to the hospital. Three teachers, Hani Hudoosh, Yaser Abu Zaanouneh, and Is’haq Badar also required medical attention for teargas exposure.
Khadeageh School, an elementary boys school with 400 students, had to close at 8:30 AM due to fumes from three teargas canisters that landed near the school’s entrance. Thankfully, no injuries were reported. Teachers shepherded the young boys out of the school, only for many students to run back in as the Israeli military continued to fire teargas into the street.
Tarek Ben Zyad School, a secondary boys school with |
Fast and Paul Robeson, Communists. (Reference to this panel discussion is made in the article, "Your Child Is Their Target," by Irene Corbally Kuhn, American Legion Magazine, April, 1952. A photostat of the discussion is in my possession).
In the beginning-that is, in the early thirties-it was not only Dr. Counts who lauded Soviet Russia, although he did it most extensively, but also John Dewey himself. In his The Red Decade, Eugene Lyons could write: "Professor Counts of Columbia produced a eulogy of his largely subjective Russia and the foremost living American philosopher, John Dewey, hailed the mirage, adding, of Russia: 'In some respects, it is already a searching spiritual challenge as it is an economic challenge to coordinate and plan.' The spiritual challenge, presumably, was in the current arrests and liquidations of philosophers, historians, and professors accused of 'rotten liberalism' in their thinking." (Lyons, The Red Decade, 1941, p. 107).
Both Dewey and Counts were to modify their pro-Soviet views later, Dewey to head the committee which exposed the gross character of the Soviet trials of 1937 and 1938, and
Counts to criticize sharply Soviet practices. But their initial infatuation with Soviet Russia, shared by a number of their colleagues, was not lost upon the Communists; they rushed in, under such favorable circumstances, to place themselves in education from which they have not yet been successfully dislodged.
Other assistance came to the Reds. In 1933, the very year in which the Open Letter to the Party counseled such infiltration, a special committee of the Progressive Education Association issued A Call to the Teachers of the Nation. While some of the criticisms of the then current social conditions, contained in this document, were worthy of consideration, its open call for "collectivization," and its insistence that the teachers promote collectivist ideas, gave the Communists those opportunities which they sought. The key thought of the report was contained in the statement: "Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion that, in the United States as in other countries, the age of individualism and laissez faire in economy and government is closing and a new age of collectivism is emerging." This vague over-simplification, with its stress on 'collectivism," encouraged the Reds to use such statements for their own purposes and their friends to give them aid. (A Call to the Teachers of the Nation, issued in 1933 by the Committee of the Progressive Education Association on Social and Economic Problems. Members of this committee included Dr. Sidney Hook of New York University, Dr. Jesse Newlon of Teachers College, and Dr. Goodwin Watson of the same institution. This "call" is reviewed in the pamphlet, Is There a "Subversive" Movement in the Public Schools? being the speech of Hon. Paul W. Shafer of Michigan in the House of Representatives, March 21, 1952).
The "call" was the signal for a flood of discussions and articles in leading educational circles on the possibility and desirability of "socialism." This discussion favoring "socialism" is found, in effect, in the official records of the National Education Association for 1933 and 1934. It was expressed by Granville Hicks, then a Communist and prominent educator, in Progressive Education, issue of January-February, 1934. It was encouraged by Dr. Harold Rugg, professor of education at Teachers College, and was channelized into admiration for Soviet Russia by Dr. Goodwin Watson in Social Frontier, publication of the Dewey school of educators, for February 1937. Reporting on an educators' tour of the Land of Socialism, Dr. Watson declared that the tourists "had been aware of a society directed toward the sustenance of major human values." He continued: "One question lingered in our minds. Anna Louise Strong had stated it to us. 'I wish I knew,' she said, 'whether it will take longer for the Russians to develop efficiency or for America to develop socialism. Then I'll know where I want to live.'
Miss Strong, one of the most notorious of pro-Soviet propagandists, did not get to decide the question eventually; the Soviet dictatorship threw her out of her "paradise" with the accusation that she was a "spy." Dr. Watson remained in the United States, to continue his pro-Communist work on a number of Communist fronts and in various areas. (Reference to all these events and discussions is contained in the speech of Hon. Paul W. Shafer of Michigan, House of Representatives, March 21, 1952.)
The Case of Dr. Brameld This interlacing of Red penetration and pro-Communism with pragmatic thought in education has marched down the years. There is the case of Dr. Theodore Brameld, professor of education at New York University and right-hand man of Dean Ernest 0. Melby. Dean Melby is perhaps the most conspicuous champion of progressive education, and also most vocal in his criticism of any investigation of subversion in education. His pamphlet, American Education Under Fire, which will be analyzed later, was written with the cooperation of Dr. Brameld, who has been a consistent member of Communist fronts for the past twenty years.
Brameld was an outstanding supporter and sponsor of the Communist created American League Against War and Fascism, denounced by the Attorney General of that time as set up to advance the interests of Soviet Russia. Its program, adopted in the fall of 1933, to which Dr. Brameld necessarily subscribed, said in part: "The black cloud of imperialist war hangs over the world... only in the Soviet Union has this basic cause of war been removed... therefore, the Soviet Union pursues a positive and vigorous peace policy and alone among the governments proposes total disarmament... The government of the United States, in spite of peaceful professions, is more aggressively than ever following policies whose only logical result is war."
Dr. Brameld joined in that program, supporting a statement which the House Committee on Un-American Activities has denounced as "demands for outright treasonable activity." This was the pledge: "To work toward the stopping of the manufacture and transport of munitions and all other materials essential to the conduct of war, through mass demonstrations, picketing, and strikes... to support the peace policies of the Soviet Union... to win the armed forces to the support of this program."
When the American Politburo decided to change the name of the Workers School o the Jefferson School of Social Science, it became necessary to give the "new" institution an apparently non-Communist sponsorship. This would be one of the effective ways to disguise in part its completely Marxist-Leninist character, that is, its dedication to teachings and plans for the overthrow of the government of the United States by violence. Among the prominent sponsors who took on themselves the responsibility for launching the so-called Jefferson School was Dr. Theodore Brameld. In 1949, when the eleven Communist leaders were on trial, Brameld was one of those who came publicly to their defense. In that same year, he was one of the prominent sponsors of the Waldorf-Astoria Peace Conferencethe so-called Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace. At this notorious conference, the United States was denounced and Soviet Russia hailed as a citadel of peace, civil disobedience against the United States was recommended to the point where it was said by Richard Boyer, writer for the New Yorker Magazine, who spoke openly for the Communist Party: "It is the duty of Americans to defy an American government intent on imperialist war." Brameld made no objection to any such seditious statements, although opportunity was given to him to do so. By 1949, Dr. George Counts and Dr. Sidney Hook had a different view of Soviet Russia, although they seemed to weaken their new attitude by anti-anti-Communism. They were among those, however, who signed an open letter to the conference, pointing out the plight of culture under the Soviet system which Brameld and his associates were praising so highly. "Over the last three decades," the letter stated, "the Soviet dictatorship has mercilessly imprisoned, exiled, or executed distinguished men of letters in that country." The letter asked "when the delegates from the Soviet Union appear at your conference, to make inquiry of them as to what happened to the purged artists, writers, and critics of the Soviet Union." Neither Dr. Harlow Shapley of Harvard, to whom the open letter was addressed, nor Dr. Brameld, who was one of those to whom its inquiries were directed, could or would answer it. Both of them stood for Soviet purging of scientists; both of them had clearly only one view of "academic freedom," that it should cover the Communists alone in their penetration of American education. There is no other explanation for their silent championship of the barbarities of the Kremlin.
Brameld is one of those who have woven in and out, sometimes contributing to the Deweyite organ, Social Frontiers, and sometimes writing for the Stalinist Science and Society. In the fall issue of 1936 of the latter publication, Brameld expressed the belief that Marxism "would applaud" the statement of Professor Jesse Newlon that "teachers must prepare to join in an organized army with the liberal forces seeking to build a better society-in the struggle of the people against special privileges." Brameld, in the name of Marxism, in the pages of a Stalinist publication, is stating here the formula by which the Communists and pro-Communists took advantage of the vague plans and declarations of the Dewey school to overturn the social order.
In November, 1935, writing in the organ of the Dewey school, Social Frontiers, Brameld went farther along this line in his article on "Karl Marx and the American Teacher." He defended the necessity for the violent overthrow of the present social order on the same grounds that Lenin and Stalin declared to be necessary. That reason, heard from the defense in all the trials of the Communist conspirators, is that those in control will resort to violence inevitably, and therefore violence and illegality are essential to overthrow "capitalist society."
Following up this thought of illegality which he defended, Brameld proceeded to declare that, consistent with Marxist strategy, teachers who wish to conduct their activity "within the school and without in behalf of the collectivist ideal must influence their students, subtly if necessary, frankly if possible, toward accepting the same position." That is so clear an explanation of Communist methods in the classroom, and so definite an exhortation to follow those methods, that it deserves careful re-reading. If a lighter note were permissible in such a serious background, this distinguished professor of education at New York University should historically become known as "subtly if necessary, frankly if possible" Brameld. Such a title would serve to high-light his case history as one of the most illuminating in regard to the interlacing of pro-Communist ideas, seditious activities, and Marxist-Leninist tactics with the pragmatic school in education. (Dr. Brameld's record is contained in part in two important documents: Review of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, prepared and released by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Washington, D.C., April, 1949, and in Is There a "Subversive" Movement in the Public Schools? printed speech of Representative Paul W. Shafer of Michigan, March 21, 1952).
This interlocking of the progressive education movement with the penetration by the Communists and their allies could be extended to a far degree and will be increasingly apparent as the reader examines the history of Communist fronts and the many uses to which educators have been put by the Communist conspiracy. To cite another instance, Professor John J. DeBoer of the University of Illinois was one of the outstanding panel speakers at the seditious Waldorf-Astoria "peace" conference. He has been a member or sponsor of from five to ten other Communist front organizations. In the movement which arose from Dr. John Dewey's views, Professor DeBoer was also most active, being one of the well- known presidents of the Progressive Education Association. This association of the two tendencies was not surprising on the campus at Champaign, where the Soviet fifth column has made marked inroads into the adherence and thinking of a considerable section of the faculty. There has been a flourishing and effective cell of at least thirty Communist professors there, with the usual much more extensive influence than even that number indicates.
In order to keep a sense of proportion, a two-fold consideration must be borne in mind. As I stated in my article in the American Legion Magazine for November, 1951, "We must first recognize, in order not to get into a panic, that the overwhelming majority of our educators are patriotic and desirous of serving America. Sometimes in their educational organizations, they are too easily buffaloed by the Communists with the cry of 'academic freedom,' not realizing fully that all Reds are under direct instructions and serve as soldiers of an invading army. But when we consider the comparatively modest remuneration they receive for the important services they perform, we can pay a tribute to their devotion to the United States. "But the second reality is this: That there is a strong, aggressive and growing minority among our educators who are committed to the Communist cause and who serve repeatedly on Communist front organizations. What is more to the point' they are well organized, function secretly, and have influence far beyond their numbers." ("Do Colleges Have to Hire Red Professors?" Louis F. Budenz, American Legion Magazine, Nov. 1951).
It is unfortunate that up to the present, this strong and aggressive minority has intimidated the overwhelming majority of educators with new cries of "fascism" and "McCarthyism," so that a considerable part of the vocal expression from educational circles has tended to favor the seditionists.
Culture Under One Roof The Communists have another advantage, which must be understood if their invasion of education is to be properly estimated and combated. It is expressed by a phrase which I used in Communist discussions, and which still holds true, that they place "culture under one roof." By this we mean that every "cultural activity" is designed to support all others. Anyone who examines carefully the report of the Cultural Commission of the Communist Party, Let Us Grasp the Weapon of Culture, will be made aware of this fact. Everything of a "cultural character" is there blended together. It can be readily seen from its pages how the Communists use lectures, entertainers, the placing of books in the libraries, the penetration of parent-teachers associations, women's clubs, local men's groups, and community organizations in their work of influencing the educational process. (This report, made under the name V. J. Jerome, was presented to the Fifteenth National Convention of the Communist Party in December, 1950, and first printed in Political Affairs for February, 1951. In 1953, it was reprinted as a pamphlet by the Communist Party and distributed in thousands of copies, in the drive to strengthen Communist infiltration of "the cultural field").
A variety of methods is thus used to reach into education and affect it, and so to help in throwing the American mind into confusion or pro-Communism. Most desirable of all, necessarily, is the placing of Communist teachers in the schools and colleges. In this, the conspiracy has been very adroit. Dr. Bella Dodd has testified, before the Senate Committee on Internal Security, of 1500 Communist teachers in the elementary or high schools whom she knew to be in the Communist camp. At first blush, this would seem a small number. We must constantly remind ourselves, as Dr. Dodd and I agree, that two or three Communists on any faculty are normally enough to dominate the school or campus. They do not act alone, but have aid from the outside. They work under the directives of Communist functionaries who seek out ways to influence trustees of the college involved or members of the board of education. It is not unusual that certain men of wealth on the board of trustees give protection to the subversives on the faculty, to the detriment of those who are genuinely patriotic; these trustees being influenced by the cries of academic freedom, by a gross ignorance of the Communist methods, by personal considerations, or by partisan interests.
Beyond all this, the Communists on the faculty have the loud support of specific organizations in the community which other concealed Communists infiltrate and control. Nor do the Reds hesitate to resort to whispering campaigns against the character of an opponent, which frequently terrorize non-Communist teachers or professors. This goes far beyond the outspoken cry of "McCarthyite"; it extends into sly and organized gossip, reflecting on the work, the morals, and the integrity of the person under attack because of his patriotic position. Here, again, the gangster character of the Communist philosophy, carried on by non-gangsters, serves as a potent weapon. When to all of this we add the ease with which the subversives can persuade the champions of progressive education to come to their aid, the formidable character of even a small number of Communists can be properly measured. It is in this manner that the Reds, working through the Teachers Union (which received high praise in the report of the Party's Cultural Commission), were able to wield great influence in the elementary and high schools.
In the colleges, we can start with the 3500 professors who are members of Communist fronts or in allied activities. The overwhelming number of these, probably, are direct adherents of the conspiracy. They are well scattered through the colleges of the country. Although there were concentrations in the larger universities, such as Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, New York University, there was also a considerable representation on smaller faculties. In addition to the Communists who are members of fronts, there are substantial cells of less well-known teachers and professors, not only at such places as the University of Illinois, but also at Smith, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Cornell, Brooklyn Polytechnic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, and Haverford.
LibrariesRed Target The school and college libraries are other targets of the Reds. For a number of years, cells have existed among librarians, and the Communist influence has not been small in the American Library Association. At the local level, the big effort is to get the works of concealed Communists into the libraries, and if at all possible to have them placed on the required or recommended reading lists. There are several objectives in this maneuver other than the effect the books themselves (apparently non-Communist in character but many slanted in a Communist direction) will have on the students. The Soviet fifth column is keenly aware of the value of prestige, of getting its concealed members recognized as "authorities." So bitter an anti-American and disciple of Stalin as Howard Fast does not do damage solely through his books. When he is recommended to students as an authority on American history, as has been done in a great number of school libraries throughout America, the Communists can count on a certain sympathy for his views when he defiantly tells Congress in effect that he will not fight the Chinese Communists even if drafted. His works in themselves are carefully prepared to lead the immature mind to a pro-Stalinite position, or at least to the point where he will be an easy victim of the Communist line. And yet, on June 20, 1953, Otto E. Dobrenwend, chairman of the Scarsdale Citizens Committee, which has been opposing Red penetration of the schools in that community, could report: "Howard Fast's books, earlier this year, were banned from the libraries of information centers of the State Department throughout the world... But, believe it or not, a book by this Communist is still recommended reading in the tenth grade of the Scarsdale High School."
Langston Hughes, the Negro poet who had been a member of eighty-five Communist fronts, finally agreed before the Senate Permanent Investigations Committee headed by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy that none of his works written in his "pro-Communist period" should be read or studied. And yet, those works have been widely promoted by concealed Communists and have been kept on the shelves of school libraries in many cities. The whole school of "Far Eastern experts," who betrayed the United States into a Chinese policy that has led to bloody Korea, are still popular as school references. The works of Owen Lattimore; Annalee Jacoby; Theodore White; Edgar Snow; Richard Lauterbach; Albert Rhys Williams; Kate Mitchell, Amerasia editor; Guenther Stein, the Soviet espionage agent; Israel Epstein, the Soviet espionage agent; and Agnes Smedley, the Soviet espionage agent-all these have been shown to be the result of planned propaganda to deceive American opinion on the Far East. That has been established beyond doubt by the hearings and findings of the McCarran Sub-Committee on Internal Security. Other pro-Soviet writers who have been especially favored are Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Otto Kleinberg, Harrison Forman, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, Carey McWilliams, Corliss Lamont, and George Seldes. Even such well-known Marxist-Leninists as James S. Allen and Herbert Aptheker are listed on high school and college libraries reading lists.
Other transmission belts used by the conspiracy include PTA speakers, assembly programs for children, career conferences for students, in-service workshop courses for teachers, and adult school lecturers.
The Scarsdale story illustrates what has happened in a great number of other communities. Scarsdale is one of the wealthiest suburbs in the United States; when we understand the materialistic philosophy of Communism, we can comprehend that this would be one of the fruitful centers of Red infiltration. The Communists laid plans as early as 1944 to invade Scarsdale and the other conservative precincts of Westchester County, New York. Lecturers and program directors brought into the school system there included Dr. Bernard F. Riess of Hunter College, whose pro-Communist record filled pages of Congressional hearings, and Dr. Bert Loewenberg of Sarah Lawrence College, sponsor and panel speaker at the notorious Waldorf-Astoria "peace" conference. Among the entertainers and speakers brought into Scarsdale, either to perform before the school children or to speak at PTA meetings and other community organization affairs, were: Paul Draper, the dancer, member of fifteen Communist fronts; Lisa Sergio, also with a Communist front record; Pearl Primus, who was built up as a dancer by the Communists; and Louis Dolivet, notorious Stalinist agent. Even to this day, the school board defends the exposure of the children's minds to these pro-Communist influences. The Town Club education committee, composed of business executives, whitewashed the scandalous conditions in the Scarsdale schools in a report published in the spring of 1953. At the very time when the Town Club education committee was preparing its report, Professor Irving Goldman of Sarah Lawrence College was appearing before the Senate Internal Sub-Committee, where it was brought out that he has been a member of the Communist Party and of Red cells at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. He knew individuals who have been exposed as espionage agents for Soviet Russia. But the Town Club report ignores Goldman's record, although he was one of the lecturers at the off-campus courses for Scarsdale teachers. (Address of Otto E. Dohrenwend, chairman of the Scarsdale Citizens Committee, before the Larchmont Knights of Columbus; printed in the Brooklyn Tablet, June 20, 1953).
In the colleges, much of the same picture appears in too many instances. At Princeton University, Professor H. Hubert Wilson is conspicuous in defending subversives in education and in supporting fronts. When the Communists organized the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, Professor Wilson became associated with it. More than that, when an anti-Communist organization, the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, called his attention to the character of this front, he replied with a sneer. Professor Wilson became one of the speakers at the conference held at Carnegie Hall on January 30, 1953, which took up the cudgels in defense of the subversives. This is not surprising, since Professor Wilson was one of the prominent contributors to the smear-America issue of The Nationin 1952. (Counterattack, vol. VII, no. 4, Jan. 23, 1953).
In 1949, Professor Wilson was the author, along with Richard Carlton Snyder, of a "textbook" which enjoyed unusual popularity in the government and political science departments of many universities. This book, Roots of Political Behavior, has been described by an eminent lawyer and professor as "poison." The reviewer is Ben W. Palmer, member of the Minneapolis bar, lecturer at the University of Minnesota, and member of the advisory editorial board of the American Bar Association Journal. The poisonous character of the work is the impression it conveys "that man is an irrational animal, that morals are relative, religion outmoded." It also conveys the idea that the Constitution of the United States is "a bar to progress, respect for it mere 'fetish-worship,' American government a means for the exploitation of the masses by the rich, and on its record a colossal failure." Logically, it includes an apologia for violence as a means of overthrowing the American government. Mr. Palmer's judgment is supported by the five columns of quotations from the book's pages, which show it to be a ground breaker for Communism. At least fifty leading colleges and universities use this text, including Columbia, Haverford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Rutgers University, Swarthmore College, and Williams College. (The Educational Reviewer, 112 E. 36th St., New York 16, N.Y., Oct.15, 1950).
Corliss Lamont, most consistent of pro-Soviet propagandists, teaches philosophy at Columbia University, and his works on that subject are used in other colleges. Lamont has been named as a Communist before Congressional committees, and was for years head of the leading Communist front first known as the Friends of Soviet Russia and then as the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship. He has been on more Communist fronts than any other member of the academic profession. Frederick L. Schuman of Williams College is lauded as an expert in international affairs, although his record (which has been given) shows that his works have been written in collaboration with the Soviet foreign office, and that one of them was published by the Communist Party itself, designed to show that the United States is "mad" in defending itself. The much-touted work by Sydney and Beatrice Webb on Soviet "civilization" has received an almost reverential attention in many colleges and universities, although it is now known that vital sections of it were prepared by the Soviet secret police.
On the faculties of some of our larger universities, the following are conspicuous for their presence on Communist fronts through the years and by their aid to other Communist causes:
From Yale: Thomas I. Emerson, Fowler V. Harper, Halford E. Luccock, Dr. John Peters. University of Chicago: James Luther Adams, Rudolf Carnap, Dr. John B. Thompson, Kermit Eby, Edith Abbot, Dr. Anton J. Carlson, Wayne McMillen.
Columbia University: Corliss Lamont, Robert Lynd, Dorothy Brewster, Bernhard J. Stern, Walter Rautenstrauch (now deceased), Clark H. Foreman.
Harvard: Harlow Shapley, Kirtley Mather, Ralph Barton Perry, Dr. Alben Butler.
Smith College: Dorothy Douglas (retired after many years as full professor), S. Ralph Harlow, Mervin Jules, Oliver Larkin.
At Princeton, N.J., we find Dr. John A. Mackay and Paul H. Lehmann at the Theological Seminary, and Dr. Irwin Panofsky and Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study.
We could also include many others, adding Montague Francis Ashley Montague, chairman of the department of anthropology at Rutgers University; Maurice Halperin, head of the Latin-American department of Boston University, who confesses in effect that he has been a Soviet espionage agent for years; Louise Pettibone Smith of Wellesley College; Eda Lou Walton of New York University; Ephraim Cross and Abraham Edel of the City College of New York; and Derk Bodde of the University of Pennsylvania. (The names of these educators appear in a number of reports of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, including The Communist "Peace" Offensive a Plot to Disarm and Defeat America; The March of Treason; The National Lawyers Guild, Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party; and Civil Rights Congress as a Communist Front Organization. They are all mentioned in "Communism in the Colleges," J. B. Matthews, American Mercury, May, 1953).
If we would go into the less conspicuous cooperators with the conspiracy in each of these institutions, the list would grow to formidable proportions. The smaller colleges are not immune from the pro-Communist poison. On June 1, 1953, as an indication of this, Dr. Charles J. Turck, lawyer and president of Macalester College at St. Paul, made an impassioned attack on all Congressional inquiries. Dr. Turck was doing a piece of special pleading. He was a prominent member of the Communist-created Mid-Century Conference for Peace, and has been a familiar name on other Communist front lists. The faculties of Oberlin, the University of Miami, Kentucky, Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, West Virginia, Reed College in Oregon, Bible College in Missouri-to mention only a few-furnished sponsors or members to front organizations and to cooperators with Communist causes. Other women's colleges than those mentioned hitherto, namely Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr also were represented, and of course, Hunter College in New York.
Methods of Using Educators In addition to serving the Kremlin in the classroom and the academic world, educators are valuable to the Soviet fifth column in the following ways: by raising finances for the Communist Party and Communist causes; by influencing governmental circles; by invading the field of science, where Moscow knows America is strong, to undermine that strength by subversion; by entry into the church and church organizations; and by encouragement of and participation in undercover work, specifically in espionage assignments to obtain American defense secrets.
Dr. Dorothy Douglas, until 1952 full professor at Smith College with great influence upon the students, furnishes a case illustrating the relationship of certain educators to Party finances. Dr. Douglas is a woman of some wealth. Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, she refused to state on the grounds it would tend to incriminate her whether she had given $600.00 per month for three years to Robert William Weiner, head of the "secret fund" of the conspiracy. This fund is used for many purposes, including the trips of secret Soviet agents to Latin America, European countries, and Moscow. It has also been used to bring secret agents into this country. The case of Dr. Douglas could be multiplied a number of times. Red educators are also often in a good position to raise funds from wealthy persons for Communist conspiratorial purposes.
Professors have a facility for getting into government posts, often in an advisory capacity. Those who bear allegiance to Stalin and to Stalinite fronts have not neglected this golden opportunity. Colston E. Warne of Amherst College, one of the Communist front veterans, was an adviser for several years to the Economic Advisory Council to the President of the United States. Marshall Dimock of Northwestern University was consultant to the Department of Defense since 1948, although he was praised by Howard Fast in Political Affairs in 1949 for his work at the seditious Waldorf-Astoria "peace" conference. (The pro-Communist records of Warne and Dimock are given in various reports of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, including The Communist "Peace" Offensive, 1951; The Review of Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, 1949. See also The Cry Is Peace, Budenz, pp. 145, 149, 162.) Maurice Halperin, now at Boston University, was advisor to the United Nations at the first conference at San Francisco, held many important posts with the United States and the United Nations in Europe and Latin America, finally becoming advisor to Secretary of State Acheson. Of Halperin, the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security said: "In the course of its investigation into Communists in government, the Sub-Committee had in its record Elizabeth Bentley's testimony that a member of a Soviet espionage ring in Washington during the war was Maurice Halperin, who had been head of the Latin American division of the Office of Strategic Services and of Latin American Research Analysis in the State Department. It also had the information that Nathaniel Weyl, an ex-Communist who later testified fully before the Sub-Committee, had known that Halperin was a member of the Communist Party of Texas and Oklahoma who had been sent to Mexico for the Communists to attend meetings of the Communist Party there. In addition, a top secret memorandum circulated among security authorities, dated November, 1945, was made known by the then Congressman Richard M. Nixon in 1950, and this listed Maurice Halperin as a member of a Soviet espionage ring." And yet, when Halperin appeared under oath before the Sub-Committee, he refused to answer on any of these points, on the grounds that it would tend to incriminate him. Since fear of disgrace or embarrassment or a desire to protect one's associates is no ground for the plea of self-incrimination, as will be noted below, Halperin's refusal to answer at this moment of peril to the United States can be interpreted only in one light That is, that if he were to answer truthfully, his answer would have to be "Yes"both to the inquiries about Communist Party membership and espionage. But in the face of this defiance of Congress by Halperin, Boston University merely censured him and then retained him as head of the Latin American Department.
Owen Lattimore of Johns Hopkins University and T. A. Bisson, now of the University of California, were conspicuous in working for those policies which would lead to the victory of a Red China. Although Mr. Bisson was shown clearly by the McCarran Sub-Committee on Internal Security to have joined with men like Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Israel Epstein, Guenther Stein, and Harriet Lucy Moor -- veteran Communistsin bringing on the catastrophe that led to the killing of thousands of Americans in Korea, he had no difficulty in becoming a member of the faculty of the University of California. (For Bisson's and Lattimore's records, consult hearings of Senate Sub-Committee on Institute of Pacific Relations and that committee's Report, entitled Institute of Pacific Relations, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session.) Thomas I. Emerson, at present professor of law at Yale University, and a consistent supporter of pro-Communist causes, worked with Nathan Witt, a Communist, in the legal department of the first National Labor Relations Board, and moved from there to many other spots in the government. Virginius Frank Coe, until recently secretary of the International Monetary Fund, got his start on the staff of Johns Hopkins Law Institute and was also at the University of Toronto, before he moved into the United States Treasury Department. Despite Coe's being in six successive important government posts, the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security can state: "Coe refused to answer, on the grounds that the answers might incriminate him, all questions as to whether he was a Communist, whether he was engaged in subversive activities, or whether he was presently a member of a Soviet espionage ring. He refused for the same reason to answer whether he was a member of an espionage ring while Technical Secretary of the Bretton Woods Conference, whether he ever had had access to confidential Government information or security information, whether he had been associated with the Institute of Pacific Relations, or with individuals named on a long list of people associated with that organization." He took this stand in the face of sworn testimony by Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers that he had been in the Communist conspiracy and had served as a Soviet espionage agent. (Activities of United States Citizens Employed by the United Nations, report of Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security, Jan. 2, 1953, p.7; also see hearings and report of this Sub-Committee on the Institute of Pacific Relations).
These references give only a superficial glimpse of professors of a Communist or pro-Communist persuasion who found their way into government and would naturally have influence in those circles.
Pleading the Fifth Amendment Since one of these men mentioned, Virginius Frank Coe, has been conspicuous in refusing to answer questions concerning his Communist affiliations or activities, some consideration must be given to the claim of privilege under the fifth amendment of the United States Constitution. The overwhelming majority of professors, teachers and government officials who were charged with pro-Communism have resorted to this plea before Congressional inquiries, particularly in 1952 and 1953. One of the first persons to make this plea was the notorious J. Peters, head of the Soviet espionage apparatus in this country for the Communist International and the man who directed the activities of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. Under the assumed name of Alexander Stevens, one of his many aliases, Peters refused to answer all questions which touched on Soviet espionage in this country or on his association with the Communist conspiracy, although a letter of his was introduced into evidence which showed that he was acting representative of the Communist International here during the absence of Gerhart Eisler. (Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States, House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1948, pp. 1267-71.) Under the super-military organization and discipline of the Red conspiracy, what a Communist leader of Peter's stature does is a signal for others to follow. The pattern which has been established since, and which has been loudly supported by the Communist Party, is therefore significant.
The portion of the fifth amendment upon which those charged with Communist affiliation or espionage must rely is that provision which states that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security which is a subdivision of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary has stated definitely that "fear of disgrace, embarrassment, or exposure ofone's past associates is not proper grounds for the invocation of the privilege." The Sub-Committee states: "The legal effect of such a claim of privilege on the part of a witness was that it constituted an affirmation that if he answered the particular question truthfully, he would be providing at least a link in a chain of circumstances that could lead to his conviction for a crime against which the statute of limitations has not run." To which the Committee adds: "Moreover, the Sub-Committee |
smoked it, and kind of liked it at one point, other people shouldn’t be able to because they won’t be able to modulate their use like he was able to. And they won’t pursue higher moral pleasures, like being David Brooks.
3. Maine GOP senate candidate: The system is terribly unfair to domestic abusers, like me.
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Integrity. That’s something we can all agree Washington is sorely in need of. We might however have different ideas about what constitutes integrity. For Erick Bennett, who is running in the primary against Senator Susan Collins, serving time in jail for assaulting his now ex-wife proves he has integrity.
"The fact that I have been jailed repeatedly for not agreeing to admit to something I didn’t do should speak to the fact of how much guts and integrity I have," he explained to the Bangor Daily News. “If I go to D.C., I’m going to have that same integrity in doing what I say, and saying what I do, when it comes to protecting people’s rights, as well as their pocketbooks.”
Bennett is a fighter, all right. He battled his conviction all the way until the Maine Supreme Judicial Court shut him down in 2004, denying his claim that the court treated him unfairly. He’s going as far as he can with this line of argument, saying his opponent supports the system that railroads innocent men facing domestic abuse charges.
Salon’s Katie McDonough reported that to show he isn’t a single-issue misogynist, Bennett has also called Maine Rep. Michael Michaud a “ closet homo.”
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That’s integrity, all right.
4. Donald Trump and Stu Varney: Global cooling has been proven by the recent chilly weather.
As we all know, Donald Trump and Fox Business anchor Stu Varney are PhD climate scientists and have dedicated themselves for years to the close observation of snowfall in Central Park. Both habitual climate change deniers were considerably cheered this week by weather news they claim proves approximately 100 percent of the scientific community is wrong. Trump, whose preferred method of communicating his philosophy is Twitter, spewed: “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”
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Previously, a snowy winter inspired Trump to demand that Al Gore’s Nobel prize be rescinded.
Stu Varney similarly crowed this week that his theory of “global cooling” had been once and for all proven correct. Unable to suppress his trademark smirk, Varney said. “The ship, sent to the Antarctic to study climate change, has been stranded in the ice for 10 days. Attempts to rescue the passengers using ice breaker ships failed. Rescuers finally got through using a whopping, great big helicopter that was landing on the supposedly, very thin ice.... So, it looks to me like we are looking at global cooling. Forget this global warming. That’s just my opinion.”
We can only assume they both enjoyed the snowstorm on the East Coast this week, very, very much.
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5. WSJ’s retired David Wessel: I was wrong about, well, basically, everything. Oops!
One of the Wall Street Journal’s best-known economic columnists, David Wessel, wrote his swan song column this week, in which he admitted making at least two big mistakes in his 25 years at the paper during which he was a staunch defender of unfettered American capitalism. Oops, the middle class is not actually better off; and oops, Wall Street is capable of causing a global financial crisis.
Wow! Those would seem to be pretty big mistakes for an economic columnist. Kind of important, too. Wonder how long he was keeping those under his hat.
“Looking back over that quarter-century, four surprises stand out,” his New Year’s Day columnsaid, starting with “the middle-class hasn’t done better,” a claim he had painstakingly made in books and columns. He wrote:
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Where did the money go? Disproportionately to the best off, the best educated, the two-professional couples, the winners on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. Technology and globalization favored the best-educated. The rise of finance paid some handsomely. Earnings of those at the top of almost every field rose faster than at the middle.
Two of his other big “surprises” were China’s economic explosion and the fact that the 9/11 attacks in 2001 didn’t have a “longer-lasting harmful economic effect.”
But his other big mea culpa concerned the financial market’s supposed inability to cause great economic dislocations after indulging in greed-driven bubbles. Amazingly, Wessel said he and other economists thought that would never happen.
One of few things on which most economists and policy makers agreed in 1987 was that the U.S. would never be threatened by anything resembling the Great Depression....
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That was wrong. The 2007-'09 financial crisis shattered the illusion that the U.S. had a well-regulated or well-managed financial system or that it could absorb a financial hit
I wonder if Wessel’s new bosses, at the Brookings Institution where he’ll be the new director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, know he’s sounding practically like a socialist.
6. Anti-LGBT hater/crusaders: 'Trans-people are circus freaks.'
LGBT haters had a tough week, what with Robin Roberts’ coming out and being shown all that love by everybody. Then there’s the apparently unstoppable-even-in-Utah march toward marriage equality. It’s all just a little too much for Peter LaBarbera, director of Americans for the Truth (ha!) About Homosexuality. In a radio interview, he spewed all the bigoted venom he could muster, disparaging Roberts, calling transgendered people “satanic” and saying the “homosexual so-called marriage movement” is a force of “evil” designed to “corrupt children.”
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His host, Vic Eliason of Voice of Christian Youth (VCY) America’s radio show on Thursday joined right in, upping the ante by calling transgender people “circus freaks” and agreeing with LaBarbera that “Satan” is working through them.
“Every coming out is a tragedy,” LaBarbera said regarding Roberts. Even Michelle Obama, he sighed, is in on the pro-homosexual agenda, which he likened to “evil empire.”
These are not nice people, and perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked. But we can’t help it — we still are.
7. William Gheen: I’m not a racist. I just think white rule is best.
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Gheen is head of a rabid anti-immigrant group called Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC). And he’s extremely worried that immigration reform might be on the agenda in the new year. But it hurts his feelings when people call him a racist because of his anti-immigrationist views. He is not a racist, he explained to a radio host in Idaho this week — he’s just against the people who are trying to change America’s history of being “predominently governed by people of European descendancy.” And by that, he doesn’t mean whities, although those are the people of European descent.
And it isn’t racist.
How could you even think that?
8. Another anti-immigrationist: Hispanics lack strong family values.
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The Center for Immigration Studies is sometimes portrayed as a more sober think-tanky anti-immigration group, if such a thing exists. But it showed its true racist colors this week whensenior policy analyst Stephen Steinlight, according to Right-Wing Watch, told a Washington Times communities blogger that immigration reform would cause “the unmaking of America” because it “would subvert our political life by destroying the Republican Party” and turn the United States into a one-party state similar to Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Sounds like he’s a teensy bit nervous.
Hispanics, he went on to claim, “don’t exemplify ‘strong family values’” due to “illegitimacy” rates and “anti-social behavior such as teenage child-bearing....”
Just remember, up is down, black is white. That will help you understand what these people are saying.
Read more here.
9. Franklin Graham: It’s your Christian duty to defend Phil Robertson.
Some Christians fell down on the job recently, when they failed to berate critics of Phil Robertson, the “Duck Dynasty” star who has expressed his charming views on homosexuality, black people, and as it turns out, the rightful (married sex-and-kitchen-slave to older men) place of 15-year-old girls. Christians who didn’t defend Robertson, said the son of Billy Graham, who is head of his own evangelical empire, are, well, wimps.
“I appreciate the Robertson family’s strong commitment to biblical principles and their refusal to back down under intense media pressure over Phil Robertson’s comments in a recent interview,” Graham wrote in a statement this week. “As the Robertson controversy winds down—at least for now—I have been amazed at how many churches have apparently ‘ducked’ out on the issue (sin).”
He chastised those churches for having “fallen into the trap of being politically correct, under the disguise of tolerance,” adding ominously, “God is not ‘politically correct,' and He is certainly not tolerant of sin.”
Hear that, all ye sinners? And non-defenders of Saint Phil Robertson?
Read more here.
10. N.C. Rep. councilman resigns in Klingon.
There have been a lot of strange doings in North Carolina’s legislatures lately, most of them bad. But when David Waddell, a conservative councilman of a town in suburban Charlotte, tendered his resignation to the town’s mayor in Klingon, absurdity reached a new kind of height (or depth).
For those unfamiliar with Klingons, they were the alien race from Star Trek who eventually made peace with the Federation (that’s the good guys). Fortunately, for non-trekkies CNET has verified that the resignation note contained "beautiful, pointy-looking written Klingon language of Kronos."
The mayor was not amused. "It’s an embarrassment for Indian Trail, and it’s an embarrassment for North Carolina," Mayor Michael Alvarez said.
Sadly, for residents of North Carolina, including blacks, women, teachers and children, this is far from the worst or most embarrassing thing that has happened in North Carolina politics of late.SUNRISE, Fla. — After a 20-minute period of hockey, the sheet of ice looks like the face of a 100-year-old man. The playing surface is an intricate pattern of grooved cuts with deep indentations.
If the edge of a skate blade, propelled by the weight and force of prime-conditioned athletes, can slice through hard ice with ease, imagine how fast it can move through human skin and muscle tissue. Hockey players know all too well, living with the knowledge they play a sport a razor’s edge away from a potentially horrific accident.
There never has been a fatality in the NHL because of a cut by a skate — somehow Clint Malarchuk survived having his jugular vein severed 20 years ago when he was a goalie for Buffalo — but gruesome injuries are an almost annual occurrence.
“To be honest, I’m amazed there haven’t been more incidents like mine,” Malarchuk said by phone from his home in Nevada. “I still cringe whenever I see a skate come up. They’re going to cut whatever’s in their way.”
On Feb. 10, 2008, Florida Panthers forward Richard Zednik had an external carotid artery sliced by a skate from teammate Olli Jokinen, who had been upended. Zednik’s artery was not severed, but he lost five units of blood and needed emergency surgery. He eventually made a full recovery.
Avalanche goalie Craig Anderson was in net for the Panthers when it happened, and he’ll never forget it.
“You saw the blood coming down on the ice from the neck and you knew it was bad. We finished the game, but it was tough. It was kind of a slow-motion game after that,” said Anderson, who will start tonight against his former team at Bank Atlantic Center.
In a playoff game last spring against Detroit, Chicago forward Adam Burish had his throat cut by the skate of teammate Ben Eager. Cuts to other body parts from skates — often to calves and thighs — happen routinely. Carolina goalie Cam Ward has been sidelined since Nov. 8 after a skate from Columbus’ Rick Nash sliced his leg. Former Avs goalie Jose Theodore sliced through the thigh of Anaheim’s Corey Perry in 2008, causing surgery and a six-week absence. Hall of Famer Dave Andreychuk — on the ice when Malarchuk suffered his injury — once suffered a gash in his back from a skate.
“I really didn’t even know I was cut or hurt until I got into the dressing room, and my pants were full of blood,” Andreychuk recalled. “It was such a fine cut that I really didn’t even feel it at first.”
Quick thinking by staff
Malarchuk certainly felt his wound, and wondered how he would survive getting off the ice when on March 22, 1989, he had the jugular vein along the left side of his neck severed by the skate blade of St. Louis Blues forward Steve Tuttle. As blood gushed onto the ice, Malarchuk was convinced he would soon die. And he would have if not for the heroic actions of the Sabres’ trainer, Jim Pizzutelli, a former U.S. Army medic.
Tuttle was knocked into the net by Sabres defender and former Avs player Uwe Krupp, and the Blues forward’s left skate diagonally passed through Malarchuk’s exposed jugular. Pizzutelli immediately raced to the ice and applied pressure with his fingers to the wound.
“I remember thinking, ‘God, you’re choking me, let go!’ ” Malarchuk said. “But he saved my life doing that. I was lucky because the play happened down by our player entrance, so it wasn’t far to the dressing room. The only thing I remember after that was another doctor coming in and leaning right over me on a table, with his chest right in my face, and applying a lot harder pressure to the cut area.”
Said Andreychuk: “I was only five feet away when it happened, and I remember we both looked at each other in the eyes right after it happened. Then you saw the blood. I remember seeing people throw up (in the stands). It was traumatic for all of us. We ended up playing the game out and we lost, and nobody cared. The game should have been stopped.”
Trauma runs deep
Malarchuk eventually recovered, and he played seven more years of pro hockey. But the emotional wounds took far longer to heal. Malarchuk grew up with an abusive father, and the throat injury created an added emotional trauma he tried masking with alcohol and prescription pills.
Last year, at home in Nevada, Malarchuk — then the goalie coach with Columbus — grabbed a gun after a day of “drinking and self-medicating.” He doesn’t call it a suicide attempt because he wasn’t in a clear state of mind, but he put a bullet through his face. He survived and maintains he’s now clean of drugs and alcohol with the help of a therapist. He’s no longer coaching hockey.
“I was like a lot of guys. I thought I could just get back out there (on the ice) and everything was fine. I dealt with the physical part, but didn’t deal with the emotional stuff at all,” Malarchuk said.
His therapist helped turned his life around, he said.
“Things started to click, and I really started to reflect back on my life. Now, I feel like I’m ready to help others.”
As for the issue of skate danger, Malarchuk said, “They haven’t gotten any less sharp, and I just hope nothing as serious ever happens as what happened to me.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com
Razor sharp
Notable skate-blade injuries in the NHL:
1989 Buffalo goalie Clint Malarchuk suffers severed jugular vein in neck from errant skate blade of St. Louis Blues forward Steve Tuttle.
1997 Avalanche captain Joe Sakic suffers lacerated calf tendons after cut from skate of Philadelphia’s Dale Hawerchuk.
2008 Anaheim’s Corey Perry has right quadriceps tendon severed from skate of Avalanche goalie Jose Theodore.
2008 Florida’s Richard Zednik suffers laceration to carotid artery after errant skate blade from teammate Olli Jokinen.
2009 Carolina goalie Cam Ward suffers lacerated leg muscles from skate of Columbus’ Rick Nash.C++17: Yes! You should use a structured binding declaration. The syntax is supported in gcc-7 and clang-4.0 (clang live example). This allows us to unpack a tuple like so:
for (auto [i, f, s] = std::tuple{1, 1.0, std::string{"abc"}}; i < N; ++i) { //... }
The above will give you:
int i set to 1
set to double f set to 1.0
set to std::string s set to "abc"
Make sure to #include <tuple> for this kind of declaration.
You can specify the exact types inside the tuple by typing them all out has I have with the string, if you want something that wouldn't be the default, or you need to construct something. For example:
auto [vec, i32] = std::tuple{std::vector<int>{3, 4, 5}, std::int32_t{12}}
C++14: You can do the same as C++11 (below) with the addition of type-based std::get. So instead of std::get<0>(t) in the below example, you can have std::get<int>(t).
C++11: std::make_pair allows you to do this, as well as std::make_tuple for more than two objects.
for (auto p = std::make_pair(5, std::string("Hello World")); p.first < 10; ++p.first) { std::cout << p.second << std::endl; }
std::make_pair will return the two arguments in a std::pair. The elements can be accessed with.first and.second.
For more than two objects, you'll need to use a std::tuple
for (auto t = std::make_tuple(0, std::string("Hello world"), std::vector<int>{}); std::get<0>(t) < 10; ++std::get<0>(t)) { std::cout << std::get<1>(t) << std::endl; // cout Hello world std::get<2>(t).push_back(std::get<0>(t)); // add counter value to the vector }
std::make_tuple is a variadic template that will construct a tuple of any number of arguments (with some technical limitations of course). The elements can be accessed by index with std::get<INDEX>(tuple_object)
Within the for loop bodies you can easily alias the objects, though you still need to use.first or std::get for the for loop condition and update expression
for (auto t = std::make_tuple(0, std::string("Hello world"), std::vector<int>{}); std::get<0>(t) < 10; ++std::get<0>(t)) { auto& i = std::get<0>(t); auto& s = std::get<1>(t); auto& v = std::get<2>(t); std::cout << s << std::endl; // cout Hello world v.push_back(i); // add counter value to the vector }
C++98 and C++03 You can explicitly name the types of a std::pair. There is no standard way to generalize this to more than two types though:Trim bitches. Grow hos. Potstitutes. If you know what those terms mean, you know that our county's most prominent industry has what politicians call "a woman problem." But it's probably not the problem you think.
There's something that raises our collective hackles about a woman gaining the favor of a rich man by dint of her beauty and youth. Gold diggers, we call them: scorned bearers of an unearned status, threats to the basic building block of social harmony that is marriage, debasers of true affection. Matrimony, after all, is a calling. Prostitution is a profession. The gold digger is one of our cherished societal tropes, and it's little wonder Humboldt County is awash with lurid stories of women in leather boots and tight jeans who prowl the hills during the fall, searching for weed-rich sugar daddies.
When we talk about weed and women we don't talk about the single mothers who trim during the fall so they can buy school clothes for their kids. We don't talk about the pioneers — grandmothers now — who moved here in the '70s and scratched a living out of the hillside, praying that the sun would shine and CAMP helicopters wouldn't darken the skies above their homesteads. We don't talk about the fact that grow culture — for all of its inherent problems — celebrates egalitarian domestic partnerships where couples share the responsibilities of maintaining both a home and a family business. We don't mention that growing weed is one of the few careers that offer parents the economic choice of staying home to raise their children. We don't talk about the women who are proficient in permaculture, homeopathy and botany, or the women who work their asses off to run scenes of their own so they can send their kids to college. No, we talk about potstitutes, grow hos and trim bitches.
Bitches. Really, bitches? Bitches are not humans: They're holes. Bitches are interchangeable. Bitches do not deserve consideration. Bitches can be bought and sold.
And that is the crux of our actual woman problem. The majority of women in this underground industry are the mothers, grandmothers, farmers and college students mentioned above. And a smaller but not inconsiderable number are being pimped, exploited, enslaved and raped. Reducing the role of women in weed to a slur — trim bitches — is really an elaborate system of victim blaming that benefits no one except predators and pathetic stand-up comedians who can't write a set without one hand in their pants.
Because these issues often go unreported and unaddressed, it is impossible to get accurate numbers, but the exploitation of women in weed is so endemic that District Attorney Maggie Fleming made it a cornerstone of her election campaign. Resources appear to be in even shorter supply than sympathy. That, combined with the insular nature of grow culture and the remoteness of many scenes, makes helping victims a challenge.
"We're not going to be able to go out and pick somebody up," says Maryann Hayes Mariani, client services coordinator for the Humboldt Rape Crisis Center. "It wouldn't be safe for them or for us. So when they call we often problem solve with them, and coach them on what to do if they can get to a more populated area."
Seasonal workers are also uniquely vulnerable to financial exploitation. It's not uncommon to hear stories of a summer's worth of work gone unpaid, with no legal recourse for the victim. If our instinct upon hearing these stories is to scoff and say that it was a risk they knew they were taking, do we hold the same standards for victims of sexual exploitation? Mariani says many of her clients feel as though they have nowhere to turn — and no social support. While some victims are seasonal workers who ended up in a bad scene, others are children of grow culture, who were indoctrinated into its code of silence from a young age. It's all well and good to say that a victim of rape, incest or assault should turn his or her assailant in to law enforcement, but what about when the assailant is a family or community member upon whom the victim might be financially reliant, in a culture that functions due to the unspoken agreement that nobody narcs, ever? What then?
"Even after they get them to safety, the terror stays with them for quite a while," Mariani says, adding that victims often live in anticipation of being found and brought back to the scene they escaped. "They might go back because they can't deal with the waiting and the fear. We don't judge. We have to respect their choice."
Human nature dictates that we devote our attention to the visible and convenient, the small handful of anecdotes that reinforce what we already believe about the world. Young men in big trucks, young women in tight jeans. It's a story as old as commerce itself. Victims are often invisible and definitely inconvenient. More often than not, we mistake their silence for consent.
But the hour is growing too late to do that. Legalization is just around the corner. What that really means for our economy and for our culture is a matter of great debate, but one thing is for certain: When the money and the silence and the fear are finally drained from grow culture, a lot of ugly things are going to get dragged out into the sunshine. In time they'll be sanitized and repackaged and sold as quaint reminders of a wilder time. And make no mistake: This wild time, this time of bootstrap entrepreneurs, modern-day homesteaders, young women in big trucks, young men staying home to raise their children, this time of heady economic optimism, is an extraordinary time to experience. We should be grateful we get to live through it. But none of that matters if we're allowing the mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters and workers that comprise our beloved community to be reduced to a slur. None of that matters if we're complicit in the exploitation of the powerless. We say trim bitches, history will say women. We say trimmigrants, history will say migrant workers. We say nothing, and history will say we picked the wrong side.
Linda Stansberry is a freelance journalist from Honeydew.The Egyptian government announced on Wednesday that it was blocking a list of 21 websites for “having content that supports terrorism and extremism as well publishing lies.”
Among the sites blocked was the main website of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, which has also been blocked by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Saudi and UAE blocks were imposed as a result of impolitic remarks by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, which the state Qatar News Agency claims were false propaganda planted by hackers.
Egypt went further, blocking a number of websites that security sources told Reuters were “affiliated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood or funded by Qatar.” The Egyptian government also said it was preparing legal action against the banned websites.
However, it soon became clear that a number of sites that did not meet either of those criteria were blocked, including a “progressive” Egyptian news site called Mada Masr and the Arabic-language site of the Huffington Post. Mada Masr issued a statement that said it initially thought it had been attacked by hackers but then learned of the government ban on numerous websites.
“There are ways of accessing our website for now through proxies and cached copies. It’s not ideal, but let’s be agile. We are the children of margins; from there we emerge and re-emerge,” said the Mada Masr statement.
Reuters’ sources only named five blocked websites but acknowledged a total of 21 sites have been banned.
Egypt’s state news agency MENA made the announcement that the banned websites were blocked for “having content that supports terrorism and extremism, as well as publishing lies.”
When Reuters got in touch with Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority for comment, an official said the agency could neither confirm nor deny the ban but added: “So what if it is true? It should not be a problem.”
Engadget notes that Egypt’s website bans are usually fairly easy to circumvent for dedicated fans of blacklisted sites, although it was a bit tougher to work around the ban Cairo briefly imposed against the entire Internet in 2011.South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has decided, on 23 May, to not reinstate nearly 800 corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma, dropped in 2009. The ruling came a few weeks after the High Court in Pretoria said dropping the 783 charges was "irrational" and did not follow correct procedure.
Chief prosecutor Shaun Abrahams said, on 23 May, he will appeal against the decision of the High Court, arguing corruption charges against Zuma should be reinstated.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which had brought the motion to reinstate the charges, criticised the move as a tactic to delay Zuma's prosecution.
"The NPA waited until the 11th hour to announce its appeal – and in doing so effectively told the people of South Africa that more public money will fund the process to delay President Zuma from finally having his day in court," the DA said in a statement.
Abrahams, however, said his decision to appeal was impartial.
The charges against Zuma were withdrawn in 2009 by then Director of Public Prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe on grounds of alleged political interference in the case, related to a 1999 multi-billion-dollar arms deal.
Totalling 30bn rand (£2.5bn; $5bn), the deal enabled the ruling party African National Congress (ANC) to purchase weapons to modernise the country's defence force. Announced in 1999, it was the largest arms deal since the end of apartheid in 1994, and involved several European companies.
Zuma was dismissed as deputy-president in 2005 after his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik was convicted of corruption over the deal.
Mpshe made the decision after the emergence of recorded phone conversations, submitted as evidence in the case – the so-called'spy tapes'. The controversial decision came a few months before the 2009 general election which saw Zuma emerging as president.
Zuma facing mounting pressure
The ruling came as Zuma is facing mounting pressure and has been urged to step down following growing discontent and allegations of corruption. The president is accused, among other things, of having close ties with the controversial Gupta family who are accused of wielding excessive political influence in the country. The Gupta family denies the allegations.
Earlier in April, a commission set up by Zuma cleared those involved in the deal of any wrongdoing.
Zuma was also at risk of being impeached in April after the country's Constitutional Court ruled that the leader, and the National Assembly, breached the constitution for failing to repay state funds used to renovate Zuma's Nkandla private residence, in KwaZulu-Natal province.I remember when I first met Matt Lerner (then CTO of Walk Score - now Vice President of Product and Design at Redfin). Of course, it was at a painfully hip coffee shop in Seattle (where their offices are located). I admit, I was a bit starstruck. Here was this guy who had managed to put walkability on the map (literally!) after countless academic papers showing the health, environmental and even economic benefits of walkable neighborhoods had failed to really move the needle (which of course, I totally get, given that this blog, as you will see, is an attempt to “humanize” a peer-reviewed journal article barely anyone has yet to read because it’s in academic-ese and behind a $36 pay for access firewall). But we soon started geeking out about data and methods and my nerves eased. He eagerly showed me what was on deck for Walk Score - which at the time was a cool heat map showing how many places you could walk to within different time ranges and an early version of bike score and transit score. I told him about my then project with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (our first official State of Place customer).
Of course, we also discussed Walk Score’s limitations - something that to their credit, they’ve always been very upfront about. I mean, to hear Matt tell it, this was originally about using tech to do something cool with maps. They certainly fulfilled and surpassed that goal - walkability is now a major shoe company’s tagline! But while Matt and the Walk Score guys have clearly laid out their methodology and its limits are clear, as a preeminent and easily accessible walkability proxy, it’s tempting to try to use what is essentially a measure of the density of destinations as a proxy for walkability, livability, quality of place, and more. And it has been (see here, here, and here for some examples). But should Walk Score be used to apportion government spending and/or approve development proposals or plans? My colleagues, Julia Koschinsky, Emily Talen, Sungduck Lee, and I recently conducted a study to truly understand when it was and was not appropriate to use Walk Score as a proxy for walkability tied to policy, funding, and/or project approvals.
Here’s how we did it:
We used data from 115 neighborhoods in the Washington, DC Metro region to compare Walk Score to the State of Place Index. Now, this wasn’t meant to be self-serving. It so happens that my colleagues had Walk Score data for the DC Metro region they had obtained for a related HUD-funded study. And I had State of Place data for the same region based on previous work. Also, State of Place is indeed based on “microscale aspects of walkability” - in other words, the nitty-gritty aspects of the built environment, like trees, benches, crosswalks, windows, lighting, etc. (we collected 162 of these features at the time, and there are now over 290, so I’ll spare you and won’t list them all, but you can see them here) that have been empirically tied to whether or not people walk. So by comparing Walk Score to a measure like State of Place, you are essentially looking at whether or not the former is an effective proxy of the urban design features that the latter measures.
We ran this comparison in a variety of contexts to better understand under what circumstances it would and would not be appropriate to use Walk Score as a proxy for walkability. We compared Walk Score to State of Place for the following:
Overall, for all neighborhoods
Within high “access” neighborhoods (Walk Score over 70) vs. lower “access” neighborhoods (Walk Score less than 70)
Within low vs. high-income neighborhoods overall
Within low vs. high-income neighborhoods with high “access” (Walk Score over 70)
Here’s (the CliffsNotes, lay-friendly version of) what we found:
Overall, Walk Score and State of Place are correlated except with respect to:
Personal Safety - As a proxy, Walk Score does not pick up urban design features like graffiti, litter, lighting, etc. (known as “physical incivilities”) that influence people’s perception of safety.
Recreational Facilities - including outdoor and indoor recreational destinations, known to impact physical activity levels overall. Walk Score was not related to recreational facilities in any of the situations tested above.
Walk Score serves as a good proxy for urban design features related to walkability for neighborhoods with Walk Scores above 70 and in high-income areas
BUT
Walk Score does NOT serve as an accurate, reliable measure of walkability for neighborhoods with Walk Scores under 70 and in lower-income areas.
Walk Score tends to overestimate the walkability of high access, low-income communities
Walk Score does not pick up on the poorer quality of the walking experience in these neighborhoods, including lower connectivity, aesthetics, and personal safety.
Features such as personal safety, aesthetics, and street connectivity are more likely to be jeopardized in low-income areas with good walkable access.
Ok, so why does this matter?
Well, it turns out that the vast majority of cities in Walk Score’s database score less than 70...In fact, as of 2014, the average Walk Score for the 141 cities with more than 200,000 people that it ranks is 47 (it was 48 in 2015), ranging from 18 to 87.6; only 9.2% of these cities score above a 70. That means that Walk Score serves as an ineffective proxy for walkability for the vast majority of cities it ranks. For example, nearly 90% of the neighborhoods in Madison, WI (whose overall Walk Score is close to the national average) score below a 70. And even in New York City, which has the highest Walk Score in the U.S., 26.2% of neighborhoods ranked had a Walk Score of less than 70.
This is why you sometimes shake your head at Walk Score’s yearly rankings. Miami? Really? This is one that makes me want to call up Matt (Lerner) every year...Miami is not the 5th most walkable city in the U.S. That’s a ridiculous notion. There’s a reason I start all of my talks bemoaning the walkability of my hometown, explaining how navigating its streets as a car-less teenager was akin to playing a sad, dangerous game of frogger. Seriously, the fact that Overtown, a very low-income neighborhood in Miami, is ranked as Miami’s 4th most walkable neighborhood, with a Walk Score of 80, exemplifies the issues we highlight in this study. Not only does its built environment lack walkability - with respect to personal safety, aesthetics, and traffic safety, among others features - as of 2014, this neighborhood had a crime index of 10,685, 55% higher than the Miami average and nearly 2.3 times higher than the US average. But it’s not just Miami that’s being undeservedly flattered. Our paper highlighted three examples, comparing Walk Score to State of Place, that illustrate why Walk Score is a poor proxy of walkability for lower access (density of destinations) and low-income neighborhoods:Her team is once again in the thick of test driving a pilot application, as they assist in cultivating the speed, flexibility and efficiency of the cloud architecture to create the ability to query and analyze very large data sets – typically involving activity in heavily traded securities with literally millions of transaction records returning in a single query. In the past, a data analysis of this magnitude required intervention from the technology team, but that’s another story…
Bohlin and a team of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) testers were heavily involved in developing FastOLA through the Agile methodology. Business users participated in biweekly sprints, refining the tool to meet the market regulation analysts’ needs. “We took our years of experience and lessons learned using the previous query tool and applied them to the new technology and cloud architecture to allow the speed to happen and work in today’s environment,” Bohlin said.
Analysts time is no longer spent waiting for queries and wading through enormous excel spreadsheets. “Analysts are able to quickly obtain a full picture of what happens to an order over time, helping to inform decision making as to whether a rule violation has occurred,” Bohlin said.
Another game changer is the lifecycle summary FastOLA provides at |
for training.
"The simulations are important for the flight tests, because this is the place to put it all together," said astronaut Eric Boe. "Think of the part-task trainer as our training wheels. As we get more familiar with the systems, the training wheels will come off and we will start advancing to the next systems. Eventually, we will work with another crew member, then with the whole flight control team."Q: New York’s Museum of Modern Art is screening 32 of your films this month and touting your accomplishments as one of the great film directors of our time. I imagine you are less celebrated back home in Tehran. No one criticizes me; no one encourages me. Nobody has anything to do with me. Those who need to know who I am know who I am.
As an independent filmmaker living in a repressive Islamic theocracy, are you harassed by the government? They are very civil, but they don’t allow me to screen my movies.
If your films are not shown in theaters in Iran, do Iranians know of them? They can buy the DVDs on the black market.
It’s odd that your films would be viewed as subversive, when they’re more philosophical than political and abound with picturesque views of the countryside. My favorite is “Where Is the Friend’s House?” in which a young boy walks all night to return his friend’s notebook, which he took by mistake. I don’t have a favorite. When I see my old favorites, I can’t even stand 10 minutes of them. Either I have changed or the movies have become old.
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Why are so many of your films set in cars, including “The Taste of Cherry,” in which a man drives around the country for the entire film, unsuccessfully asking strangers to help him commit suicide? A car is a private, personal room in motion. It’s the only room when you are sitting in it; you don’t have to entertain guests. I spend a lot of time in the car. I love driving. If I were not a filmmaker, I would have become a truck driver.Google Maps and mobile apps are a perfect match. The Google Maps API is an awesome piece of tech by itself, but when you couple it with a device that is meant to be mobile, as in not stationary, it opens up a wide range of possibilities. There’s a ton of cool apps out there today that utilise Google Maps to do all kinds of things.
Even if maps aren’t the core feature of your application, they are often quite useful as supplementary features as well (displaying the location of your business on a map for example).
In this tutorial I am going to walk you through how to integrate the Google Maps JavaScript SDK into an Ionic application.
Generate a New Ionic Application
First things first, let’s generate a new Ionic application.
Run the following command to generate a new Ionic application
ionic start ionic-maps blank
As always, it’s a good idea to set up SASS right away as well.
Run the following command inside of your new project to set up SASS
ionic setup sass
Although the functionality we are adding will work through the browser, we will be using a native plugin for geolocation when it is available, so let’s also add the iOS and Android platforms.
Run the following commands to add the iOS and Android platforms
ionic platform add ios
ionic platform add android
Add the Geolocation Plugin
As I just mentioned, we will be included the Geolocation plugin for grabbing the users current location. This will enable us, if we wish, to use the devices GPS to grab a more accurate representation of their location.
We will be using the ngCordova version of this plugin, so let’s set ngCordova up before we add the plugin.
NOTE: It’s completely possible to use this plugin without ngCordova, but ngCordova makes the plugin easier to use.
Run the following command to include the ngCordova library
bower install ngCordova
Add the ngCordova library to your index.html file
< script src = " lib/ngCordova/dist/ng-cordova.js " > </ script > < script src = " cordova.js " > </ script >
Require ngCordova in the angular module in app.js
angular. module ('starter', [ 'ionic', 'ngCordova' ] )
ngCordova should now be installed and ready to use in our application. Next, let’s install the Geolocation plugin.
Run the following command to add the Geolocation plugin
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-geolocation
NOTE: If you are using PhoneGap Build go here for instructions on adding the plugin to your project.
Include the Google Maps JavaScript SDK
Now we need to include the Google Maps JavaScript SDK in our app. This service must always be inlcuded remotely, and you will need to set up an API key through the Google Developers Console if you don’t want limits set on the amount of calls you can make to the API. You can find instructions on how to do that here.
It does cost to use the Google Maps API, but the free tier is extremely generous:
“If your site or application generates 25 000 map loads or more each day, for more than 90 consecutive days, we’ll get in touch with you to talk about payment. Don’t worry, if you go over the limits, we won’t immediately shut off your API access or display error messages on your site.”
so unless you’ve got a serious amount of users on your app you won’t hit the limit. Let’s get the SDK set up now.
Add the following script to your index.html file
< script src = " js/app.js " > </ script > < script src = " http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_API_KEY_GOES_HERE&sensor=true " > </ script >
Make sure you put your API Key in the URL above, or just drop the key parameter altogether.
Create a Map in Your Application
Now we’re going to look at how to actually display a map in our Ionic application. To do that we will be creating a new view with it’s own template.
Create a new templates folder at www/templates Create a new file called map.html in the templates folder and add the following code
< ion-view > < ion-content > < div id = " map " data-tap-disabled = " true " > </ div > </ ion-content > </ ion-view >
To use <ion-view> we are going to need to modify our index.html to include the <ion-nav-view> directive. This acts as a placeholder where we can switch between different templates we create.
Modify the <body> section in your index.html file to reflect the following:
< body ng-app = " starter " > < ion-pane > < ion-header-bar class = " bar-stable " > < h1 class = " title " > Ionic Maps </ h1 > </ ion-header-bar > < ion-nav-view > </ ion-nav-view > </ ion-pane > </ body >
The other piece of the puzzle for switching between views is to set up routing.
Add the following config to your module in app.js
. config ( function ( $stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider ) { $stateProvider. state ('map', { url : '/', templateUrl : 'templates/map.html', controller : 'MapCtrl' } ) ; $urlRouterProvider. otherwise ( "/" ) ; } )
Since we only have one template, we’ve set it up as the default and have also assigned it a controller of MapCtrl which we will create now. This controller will be responsible for initialising a new Google Map.
Add the following controller to your app.js file:
. controller ( 'MapCtrl', function ( $scope, $state, $cordovaGeolocation ) { } ) ;
Notice that I have injected the $cordovaGelocation service into this controller – this is a service for the Geolocation plugin we added that is supplied by ngCordova. We will be making use of that now to grab the users current position, and then initialise a new map which will be centered on the users current position.
Add the following code to your new MapCtrl controller in app.js
. controller ( 'MapCtrl', function ( $scope, $state, $cordovaGeolocation ) { var options = { timeout : 10000, enableHighAccuracy : true } ; $cordovaGeolocation. getCurrentPosition ( options ). then ( function ( position ) { var latLng = new google. maps. LatLng ( position. coords. latitude, position. coords. longitude ) ; var mapOptions = { center : latLng, zoom : 15, mapTypeId : google. maps. MapTypeId. ROADMAP } ; $scope. map = new google. maps. Map ( document. getElementById ( "map" ), mapOptions ) ; }, function ( error ) { console. log ( "Could not get location" ) ; } ) ; } ) ;
If you run your code using ionic serve now you will notice that we can’t actually see the map yet. That’s because there’s a couple of CSS changes required for it to display properly.
Add the following rules to your scss/ionic.app.scss file
.scroll { height : 100% ; } #map { width : 100% ; height : 100% ; }
Now you should see a map centered on your current location (depending on your privacy settings of course):
Add a Marker and Info Window to Your Map
Just a map by itself isn’t exactly very exciting, so let’s look at how to add a marker to the map.
Add the following code to your MapCtrl controller, just after you initialise the map
google. maps. event. addListenerOnce ( $scope. map, 'idle', function ( ) { var marker = new google. maps. Marker ( { map : $scope. map, animation : google. maps. Animation. DROP, position : latLng } ) ; } ) ;
After the map loads, we’re creating a marker with the same position that we used to center the map, so you should see a marker drop right where you are now.
Finally, we might also want to add a pop up window when a user taps the marker to give them a little more information.
Modify the code in MapCtrl to reflect the following
google. maps. event. addListenerOnce ( $scope. map, 'idle', function ( ) { var marker = new google. maps. Marker ( { map : $scope. map, animation : google. maps. Animation. DROP, position : latLng } ) ; var infoWindow = new google. maps. InfoWindow ( { content : "Here I am!" } ) ; google. maps. event. addListener ( marker, 'click', function ( ) { infoWindow. open ( $scope. map, marker ) ; } ) ; } ) ;
Now if you tap the marker you should get a little pop up saying “Here I am!“.
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As you can see it’s reasonably easy to get a simple Google Maps integration set up in Ionic, and if you just want to manually load a few markers onto a map this will work well for you. There’s a few problems that arise when you start getting a little more in depth though, like:
Loading markers dynamically from a database
Loading lots of markers (you don’t want to render thousands of markers onto a map at the same time)
of markers (you don’t want to render thousands of markers onto a map at the same time) Dealing with users without Internet connectivity – we’re loading the Google Maps SDK remotely so our apps going to throw some errors if it can’t be loaded
I’ll be releasing tutorials in the not too distant future on how to deal with all of these issues so stay tuned and leave any questions or comments you have below.
UPDATE: I’ve added a new tutorial about dynamically loading markers with Ionic and Google Maps which you can check out here.If you met Lisa James, chances are you'd never guess she injects herself with heroin twice a day.
She's a devoted mom to her daughter Tia, 24, who has a rare neurological disorder that causes tumours to grow on her spine and brain.
She comforts Tia when she's overcome with nausea. She's by her side when she visits doctors.
"My relationship with my daughter is better than it's ever been," says James, 48.
But James says it wasn't so long ago, her days were spent doing absolutely anything to score heroin.
She used to steal hundreds of dollars' worth of meat from grocery stores and sell it on the streets.
She even stole from Tia.
Lisa James describes how she supported her habit by pawning her belongings and stealing meat 1:04 "I took $500 out of her account and because of the lovely girl that she is, she never wanted to make me feel bad," James says. "If someone had told me I would do something so despicable — I never would have believed it."
She says that all changed when she was accepted to the Providence Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, where she's buzzed in every morning at 9 a.m.
She sits down in a sterile room and injects a syringe full of free heroin into her arm.
Lisa James shoots heroin at Providence Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver. (Leonardo Palleja/CBC) "Nobody knows I am an addict," James says. "I share with some people and they are always shocked. 'You're an addict? Really? A heroin addict?' They would just never know. And that's a nice feeling."
Crosstown has been operating for seven years and is the only harm-reduction treatment centre in North America where addicts get actual heroin.
The program is for longtime addicts who've been unable to get off opioids using other treatments, including methadone.
Each participant goes through a titration process, supervised by a physician, to determine their tolerance level. The idea is to give addicts just enough heroin to take away their desire to acquire street drugs.
Research co-ordinator Kurt Lock says Crosstown's goal is to stabilize the lives of addicts rather than push them to quit. (Leonardo Palleja/CBC) The clinic is at capacity and serves 130 addicts. Research co-ordinator Kurt Lock estimates there are at least 500 opioid addicts in the Downtown Eastside alone who could benefit from the program.
He says addicts approach him every day to see if they can get into the clinic.
"I see desperation," Lock says. "When they come and see me, this is their last straw."
Decades of addiction
James got high for the first time when she was 12.
"My grandma, who was actually an opiate addict and probably wasn't aware of that, gave me some Tylenol with codeine in it just to help because I had a terrible headache," James says.
"I just remember the warmth coming over me. I loved it and I wanted more."
After that, James started stealing pills from pharmacies and friends' houses.
"I crushed them up and snorted them, trying to get that feeling again."
In her 20s, she tried heroin.
"I was in heaven, absolute heaven."
Then one night, heaven turned to hell.
She and two friends overdosed.
"I couldn't see for about 20 minutes or so," she says.
Her friend Otis died in the middle of the night.
"It was horrific. I still think about him."
The reality is death is never very far away if you're an opioid addict.
Statistics from B.C.'s coroner service reveal there were 433 overdose deaths across the province in the first seven months of 2016.
Fentanyl, an extremely powerful opioid, was detected in 238 of those cases.
Controversial harm reduction
Conservative Health Minister Rona Ambrose tried to shut down Crosstown in 2013. Her government argued the clinic enables addicts and that the goal should be to get heroin out of the hands of drug users.
It took an order from B.C.'s Supreme Court to keep the clinic open.
Lock agrees that Crosstown enables addicts.
These days, Lisa James and her daughter Tia, 24, spend as much time together as they can. (Leonardo Palleja/CBC) "We are enabling them," he says, "but we are not enabling them to continue doing evil in that simplistic sense. We are enabling them to have a meaningful life again."
Lock says the clinic's goal is to stabilize the lives of addicts rather than push them to quit.
He says the negative health effects of heroin addiction have nothing to do with the drug itself, but rather what it takes for a user to feed the habit.
He says most addicts forego food, sleep and medical attention in their search for drugs.
"A lot of people, they think that there's something intrinsic within the heroin that's harming people and that's just not the case," Lock says.
Kurt Lock explains how the clinic's heroin is sourced and safely brought into the country 0:19 "We've been brought up to think of heroin as the killer drug, but heroin itself, if you take it in proper conditions, and you are eating food, and you are getting sleep, there's no reason you couldn't get to live to 100 years old on the drug."
These days, James and Tia spend as much time together as they can. They make dinner and go to movies.
"We appreciate the little things together," James says.
Usually when people talk about the "little things," it's because they're trying to savour life. And that's exactly what mother and daughter are doing.
Tia has had several surgeries, but her prognosis is still uncertain.
"She has an army of doctors," James says, "and basically I try to be there for her."
James gets her second shot of heroin in the mid-afternoon.
She insists the treatment has brought stability to her life and without it she wouldn't be able to look for a job. "I did my shot an hour ago," James says. "Do I look high? I am just normal."
It costs British Columbia taxpayers $27,000 for the clinic to supply a year's worth of heroin to a single addict.
The societal benefits are harder to calculate, but James insists, for her, they are crystal clear.Local Pakistani TV shows video image of Bhutto assassins
Although rumors circulated about the exact cause of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's death, local television reporters may have cleared up the details.
Dawn Network, a local Pakistani media outlet, just released still frame pictures of who they believe is the bomber and shooter that assassinated Bhutto.
According to Fox News, who aired the footage, the shooter is a male, aged 22-27, and wearing dark sunglasses. In the grainy, but visible pictures, one can see him holding a gun up to the officials head.
"We saw so many people at the rally holding their phones up and taking pictures of the event," said a Fox News correspondent, "that it was bound to happen that somehow they would go and check those photos and see that they have, in fact, captured the moment she was shot."
The photos might give clear evidence to Bhutto supporters, who claimed the government of President Pervez Musharraf mislead the public about cause of death as a way to divert attention away from the attack.
"Now that they have a photograph of the actual killer," says Fox News, "it's going to be a lot easier for them to trace who... is behind the attack."
This video is from Fox's Fox News Live, broadcast on December 29, 2007.Japan, China, S. Korea unite in condemning N. Korea missile
TOKYO (AP) — The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea made a rare display of unity Wednesday to sharply criticize North Korea's latest submarine missile test.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, who chaired the meeting with China's Wang Yi and South Korea's Yun Byung-se, said the missile launch is a "provocation that simply cannot be tolerated."
Kishida said the ministers reaffirmed their effort in prompting North Korea to use restraint. "I hope to coordinate closely in order for Japan, China and South Korea to lead the efforts of the international community," he said.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, center, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se pose for the photographers before their trilateral meeting in Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea have criticized North Korea's fresh missile launch just hours earlier in the day. (Katsumi Kasahara/Pool Photo via AP)
The three countries have quarreled on a number of issues — notably territorial disputes and wartime history — and their foreign ministers' meetings resumed only last year after a two-year hiatus because of strained Chinese-Japanese relations.
Yun said that North Korea's repeated missile tests this year "demonstrated a rapid advancement of capability" and that he shared the concern over the "urgent situation" with his counterparts.
Wang said the three neighbors, despite problems and difficulties among them, should work together to deal with regional threats like North Korea's missile and nuclear ambitions.
"China opposes North Korea's nuclear and missile process, actions that cause tension on the Korean Peninsula," Wang said in a joint news conference.
Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing remain high over disputed East China Sea islands and undersea gas development, while ties between China and South Korea became frayed after Seoul approved the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system against North Korea's threats that Beijing says will harm its security.
During Wednesday's talks, the ministers apparently focused on disaster prevention, the environment and other less-thorny issues. Japanese officials said the U.S. missile deployment in South Korea and their ongoing joint military exercises were not mentioned at the trilateral talks.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the ministers agreed to focus on "building up political trust, carrying out pragmatic cooperation, expanding people-to-people exchanges and pushing ahead with sustainable development," while supporting responsible roles in economic growth, cooperation as well as peace and stability in the region.
Nevertheless, Kishida protested to Wang over China's escalating maritime activity around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku island, which Beijing also claims, demanding China "fully calm the situation" and avoid tension. An improved East China Sea situation would allow for more dialogue between the two sides, including a bilateral summit during the G-20 meeting next month.
Wang said China also hopes to prevent tension in the East China Sea and improve relations with Japan.
While expectations for concrete achievements at the talks were low, Japan offered details about the 1 billion yen ($1 million) fund that Tokyo promised as a way to atone for its wartime sexual abuse of South Korean "comfort women." Seoul has certified 245 of them — 64 survivors and the relatives of the 199 who died — as eligible recipients.
The fund is part of the landmark agreement reached by the two sides last December in a bid to resolve their dispute over Japan's wartime actions. Japan's Cabinet approved details of the provision, to be provided to the women through a South Korean organization launched last month, ahead of Japan-South Korea talks.
The survivors are entitled to receive about 10 million yen ($100,000) each for medical and nursing care, and 2 million yen ($20,000) each will cover cost including funeral for those who died and scholarships of their relatives.
___
Associated Press writer Louise Watt in Beijing contributed to this report.
___
Follow Mari Yamaguchi at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi
Find her work also at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/mari-yamaguchi
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida makes opening remarks during the trilateral meeting in Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea have criticized North Korea's fresh missile launch just hours earlier in the day. (Katsumi Kasahara/Pool Photo via AP)
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, center in the background, makes opening remark during a trilateral meeting in Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea have criticized North Korea's fresh missile launch just hours earlier in the day. (Katsumi Kasahara/Pool Photo via AP)
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi makes an opening speech during the trilateral foreign minister's meeting in Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. (Katsumi Kasahara/ Pool Photo via AP))
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se makes a speech during the trilateral meeting in Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea have criticized North Korea's fresh missile launch just hours earlier in the day. (Katsumi Kasahara/Pool Photo via AP)
Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, center, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, South Korea's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, right, pose for the photographers before their trilateral foreign minister's meeting in Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. (Katsumi Kasahara/Pool Photo via AP)Brewforia Bown, an austerely decorated, sunlit cafe stocked with enough hooch to survive the apocalypse, was one of Boise's best new culinary respites.
But change can be turbulent. And when this hops hamlet announced it would split with Brewforia in Meridian so co-owner Chris Oates could go it alone as Bier:Thirty, the panic set in.
But so far, it appears to be a change for the better, in as much as things have changed at all. The clean interior design remains the same, as does the massive beer selection. The only real evolution is on the food menu. The weekend waffle sandwiches didn't make the cut, but the half-heavenly Carolina pulled pork sandwich, basted in a mustard sauce and topped with bleu cheese slaw, did.
The biggest change was the addition of several Wurstchen plates, which pair fancy sausages with sides like pan-fried red potatoes and house frijoles. Bier:Thirty also added a roast veggie sandwich and salad for the non-meat set, as well as an impressive-sounding creole beef stew ($10.99).
On a recent trip, I opted for the Northwest bangers and mash ($10.99), a sage-and-brown-sugar sausage served on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes and dressed up in a chipotle sauce.
It was a good sausage--sweet and moist but still firm--and the mashers it sat on were also tasty. The lumps and stringy texture so common in mashed sweet potatoes were worked out, and they were lightly spiced with pepper.
But the standout was the chipotle honey drizzle. The sauce more than complemented the rest of the dish--it dominated it. And the dominance was all in the heat of the peppers.
The rich smoked flavor of chipotle peppers has worked its way into everyday cuisine through the magic of dilution, pleasing even heat-sensitive palates. This is not the case with the chipotle drizzle at Bier:Thirty. While it's not on the level of the ghost pepper sauce at Superb Sushi, for a dish billed as Northwest, it brought a level of heat straight out of Texas. And while heat ain't a bad thing, casual chipotle and banger enthusiasts should be aware of what they're getting themselves into.
However, nothing sooths an inflamed gullet like beer. And Bier:Thirty has approximately all of them ever made to choose from. So order away. Whether you choose solid or liquid bread, your tongue will be well cared for.It’s been a while since I updated this blog. In fact, I’ve been feeling so well lately, I’ve been busy working on three projects at once, however, stay tuned for a lot more articles in the future.
Here’s a major breakthrough: I had a brief flare of ulcerative colitis a few months ago but was able to halt it with homemade retention enemas. They each contain only 4 ounces of water with a blend of probiotics (bifido infantis) and sodiium butyrate. I’d read studies that showed butyrate to be effective for UC and was surprised to find you can purchase it easily here.
The recipe is easy: I mix 4 capsules sodium butyrate with distilled water, in an emptied and rinsed Fleet Enema bottle. The probiotics are optional, but bifido infantis has been proven to reduce inflammation in quite a few studies. During the active flare I did the enemas morning and night, and as I healed I reduced them to once per day. For me, it took about a week, and soon I was no longer bleeding. That’s faster than steroid enemas, or even oral or IV steroids.
Butyrate also has no side effects, such as bone loss from prednisone, or lymphoma from Imuran and 6-mp, and depending on your nutrient needs, a few other types of butyrate are sold, such as potassium butyrate or cal/mag butyrate. I’ve experimented and they are all very effective.
How does SB work? It appears to help the body generate protective mucus, and is an energy source for the cells of the gut wall. Not surprisingly, sodium butyrate as been found to have potent antifungal properties. This means it can help kill candida in the colon. Before trying it for any condition, I’d say it’s best to talk to your doctor. My GI was familiar with the treatment and supportive.
In other news, as far as food intolerances go, I’m able to eat about 75% of my former full diet these days, and it’s possible some of the problem foods could be reintroduced right now, but I feel good enough as-is I don’t want to rock the boat. I now weigh 162 lbs, which is right where I was during college years, for the bulk of my healthy life.
Recently I’ve been eating full-fat, organic yogurt, every other day. The brand I’m trying is Nancy’s, because it’s got lots of L. rhamnosus in it, which has been proven in several studies to help with depression/anxiety. My only suggestion would be to not go overboard with it, since yogurt has enough lactose to feed candida in the gut.
Everything I’m doing now is improving constipation, which in turn is boosting my energy levels quite a bit. At work, I’m flying up and down long hallways, feeling lots of strength in my legs. I’m still have some fatigue, as standing for long periods is tiring, but things are definitely moving in the right direction.
Has anyone else tried sodium butyrate enemas? If you’ve got feedback for me, or if you want to learn more about how to use this simple therapy, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.
If you enjoy this blog, you can support my work by buying things you need via this amazon portal HERE, or by purchasing any product linked in articles. It costs you nothing extra, and helps me continue writing. Thanks!
AdvertisementsVIDEO PREMIERE: ZACHARIAH -“Tears” Posted by LADYGUNN on Friday, March 3, 2017 · Leave a Comment
Photos & video / Angelo Kritikos
Grooming / Jackie Zavala
“Tears” is a new anthem to add to the soundtracks of love, self-perseverance, and soul-baring honesty. Los Angeles-based ZACHARIAH wrote the song as an ode to his life as a closeted teenager growing up where he felt coming out would rupture his world. He lived with shame and undeniable fear of being found out before falling in love for the first time.
“‘Tears’ reflects the balance between guilt and the beauty of falling in love for the first time.” he says about his latest single, “I’ve come to a point in my life where I feel completely myself. I’m happy I can sing about love without being ashamed. I think it is a perfect time to be producing art that is unapologetic and authentic. I’m more transparent than ever, but I’m also super terrified.”
“Tears” is a song that will resonate with all the love you have for R&B, Pop and heart wrenching exposes on the life of boy butterflying into a man.
FOLLOW ZACHARIAH:
www.instagram.com/zachariahsounds
www.twitter.com/zachariahsounds
www.soundcloud.com/zachariahh: Seventeen molestation victims of Father Rico Dominic Escudero pleads no contest to numerous felony charges of kidnapping, child molestation, and criminal sexual conduct with minors under 13 years old. Italy : Seventeen molestation victims of Father
This Week's Winner
Over the last seven days... Virginia : Pastor Tommy Shelton charged with seven felony counts of child molestation. Texas : PastorLelio Cantini demand his bishops resign for shielding him from prosecution. Arkansas : Christian school administrator Tim Ballard arrested for sexual assault of a student. New York : Pastor Phillip Jouber indicted for rape of a 13 year-old relative. Virginia : Deacon Hurley Jones arrested for assaulting parishioners. Illinois : Father John Regan charged with embezzling $300K from parishioners to feed his gambling addiction. New Brunswick : Pastor Frederick Hanson found guilty on two counts of child molestation. Minnesota : Pastor Arthur Ree pleads guilty to two counts of molesting an 11 year-old girl. Ree is 83. Quebec : Father Raymond-Marie Lavoie arrested for molesting eleven boys. His lawyer indicates Lavoie may plead guilty. South Carolina : Pastor Christopher Daniels has escaped from prison after serving ten months of a fifteen year sentence for burning down his own church. Uganda : Father Santos Constatino Wapokura charged with "defilement" of two 14 year-old girls. He is HIV-positive and faces hanging. Israel : Unnamed rabbi arrested for shooting a student in a masked drive-by attack. North Carolina : Charlotte archdiocese pays $1M to former altar boy molested by Father Robert Yurgel who is serving an eight year prison sentence. Illinois : Father Daniel McCormack faces charges of molesting four more boys. McCormack has been in prison since 2007 after pleading guilty to molesting five other boys. Germany : Bishop Walter Mixa resigns over accusations of beating children and "misusing" money meant for orphans. The pope has accepted his resignation. Georgia : Two executives of the Christian Integrity Bank have been charged with selling fraudulent loans in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. One local developer who received an $80M loan kept $20M in a private checking account and used the money to buy a private island in the Bahamas. Integrity Bank, which was founded on "Biblical principles," held daily employee prayer meetings and gave customers free Bibles. They were shut down by federal regulators in 2008. Integrity!
Labels: religion, This Week In Holy CrimesNet Applications
Windows 8 appears to be picking up the pace in the desktop OS market.
The latest data from Net Applications, which tracks usage share of desktop and mobile operating systems and browsers, shows Window 8 with 7.4 percent of all desktop OS Web traffic in August. That's a big step up from the 5.4 percent share Windows 8 had in July.
While Windows 8 usage jumped, usage of Windows XP fell just as sharply. Windows XP's share of desktop OS Web traffic dropped from 37.2 percent to 33.7 percent in August, according to Net Applications.
Windows 7 retained its position on top with 45.6 percent of Web traffic in August, a slight increase from 44.5 percent in July. The preview edition of Windows 8.1, which first popped up with a 0.02 percent share in July, saw a slight increase to 0.24 percent in August.
Overall, Windows continued to dominate the desktop OS market in August with 91.2 percent. The Mac OS came in second with 7.3 percent, followed by Linux with 1.5 percent.
The next iteration of Microsoft's OS, Windows 8.1, is set to arrive October 18, a year after the debut of Windows 8.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has hired a lawyer known for defending government officials in high-profile investigations to help him with probes into whether there were ties between the election campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia, his office said on Thursday.
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow interfered in last year’s presidential campaign to try to tilt the vote in Trump’s favor.
Trump, who hired his own lawyer last month for probes by a special counsel and congressional committees, lashed out on Thursday after a report that he was under investigation for possible obstruction of justice.
He dismissed as “phony” the idea that his campaign colluded with any Russian effort to sway the 2016 election. Moscow denies meddling in the campaign.
Pence hired Richard Cullen, chairman of law firm McGuireWoods, to help him respond to inquiries from special counsel Robert Mueller, a spokesman said.
Cullen is a former federal prosecutor who has long ties to former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired on May 9. He represents former FIFA President Sepp Blatter in the corruption probe into world soccer’s governing body. U.S. prosecutors have not accused Blatter of wrongdoing.
Cullen, who supported Trump’s rival Jeb Bush during the race for the Republican presidential nomination, also represented Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican and former majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, during the investigation into corrupt Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. DeLay was not charged.
Pence had been looking at hiring his own counsel for several weeks, and made his decision earlier this week after interviewing several candidates, his office said.
“The vice president is focused entirely on his duties and promoting the president’s agenda and looks forward to a swift conclusion of this matter,” Pence spokesman, Jarrod Agen, said in a statement.
Pence has seldom addressed the Russia issue, which has overshadowed Trump’s efforts to overhaul the healthcare system, cut taxes and boost jobs - priorities that Pence has worked on intensively with Republican lawmakers.
The Washington Post first reported the Cullen hire. Just before the story broke, Trump wrote a pair of angry tweets, suggesting that Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the election, should be under investigation instead of him.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump called the probe a “witch hunt” on Twitter. “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice,” Trump wrote.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence watches as U.S. President Donald Trump departs the White House to embark on his trip to the Middle East and Europe, in Washington, U.S., |
“Frank calls us ‘Uncle Toms’ and pretends that Log Cabin hasn’t been on the front lines of the fight for equality,” said LCR Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper in a press release. “The truth is, by speaking conservative to conservative about gay rights, Log Cabin Republicans are doing some of the hardest work in the movement, work that liberals like Barney are unwilling to do and couldn’t do if they tried.”
Recalling the December 2010 vote to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy — which had been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge earlier that year as a result of a lawsuit filed by LCR — Cooper said, “Barney Frank and President Obama didn’t ask for Senator Susan Collins’s leadership, and they never asked for Republican votes. Log Cabin did.”
The bill that repealed the ban on gay people in the military was sponsored by Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman. Seven other Republican senators voted for repeal, providing the necessary 60 Senate votes. The repeal push had not been included on a list of three legislative priorities for the Obama administration during the 2010-2011 lame duck session of Congress.
The gay Republican group likewise faulted Frank for failing to aggressively push ENDA, which would bar workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
“Log Cabin fights every day for equal opportunity and nondiscrimination in the workplace — a victory that Democrats delayed by refusing to bring ENDA to a vote when they had the chance and by dismissing the support of conservatives like Congressman Paul Ryan,” Cooper said. “We had the needed Republican votes to pass ENDA. Barney Frank and his liberal allies chose not to, out of political calculation and cowardice.”
The group also said Frank ignored LCR’s efforts to woo Republican state legislators in New York for the successful vote to legalize same-sex marriage — made possible by GOP legislators in the state senate — and ignored the group’s work with Republicans opposed to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. (WATCH: Barney Frank: More stimulus would decrease food stamp rolls)
“Gay liberals like Barney… are trying to silence us, calling us names and ganging up like schoolyard bullies,” Cooper charged. “While Barney bashes his fellow LGBT Americans, we’ll continue our work building a stronger, more inclusive GOP — and someday soon, we’ll win, because inclusion always wins.”
Follow Steven on TwitterAn overload of calories throws critical portions of the brain out of whack, reveals a study in the October 3rd issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication. That response in the brain's hypothalamus - the "headquarters" for maintaining energy balance - can happen even in the absence of any weight gain, according to the new studies in mice.
The brain response involves a molecular player, called IKKß/NF-B, which is known to drive metabolic inflammation in other body tissues. The discovery suggests that treatments designed to block this pathway in the brain might fight the ever-increasing spread of obesity and related diseases, including diabetes and heart disease.
"This pathway is usually present but inactive in the brain," said Dongsheng Cai of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cai said he isn't sure exactly why IKKß/NF-kB is there and ready to spring into action in the brain. He speculates it may have been an important element for innate immunity, the body's first line of defense against pathogenic invaders, at some time in the distant past.
" In today's society, this pathway is mobilized by a different environmental challenge - overnutrition," he said. Once activated, "the pathway leads to a number of dysfunctions, including resistance to insulin and leptin," both important metabolic hormones.
Earlier studies showed that overnutrition can spark inflammatory responses in the peripheral metabolic tissues, including the muscles and liver, and therefore cause various metabolic defects in those tissues that underlie type 2 diabetes. As a result, scientists identified IKKß as a target for an anti-inflammatory therapy that was effective against obesity-associated diabetes.
Yet whether metabolic inflammation and its mediators played a role in the central nervous system remained uncertain. Now, the researchers show that a chronic high-fat diet doubles the activity of this inflammatory pathway in the brains of mice. Its activity is also much higher in the brains of mice who are genetically predisposed to obesity, they found.
The researchers report that that increased activity of the IKKß/NF-kB pathway can be divorced from obesity itself - infusions of either glucose or fat into the brains of mice alone led to this inflammatory brain reaction.
Further studies revealed that this activity in the brain leads to insulin and leptin resistance. Insulin lowers blood sugar by causing cells of the body to take it up from the bloodstream. Leptin is a fat hormone important for appetite control.
Moreover, the researchers found that treatments preventing the activity of IKKß/NF-kB in the animals' brains protected them from obesity.
While chronic inflammation is generally considered a consequence of obesity, the new results suggest the inflammatory reaction might also be a cause of the imbalance that leads to obesity and associated diseases, including diabetes. As Cai says, it appears that inflammation and obesity are "quite intertwined." An abundance of calories itself promotes inflammation, while obesity also feeds back to the neurons to further promote inflammation in a kind of vicious cycle.
The findings could lead to treatments that might stop this cycle before it gets started.
"Our work marks an initial attempt to study whether inhibiting an innate immune pathway in the hypothalamus could help to calibrate the set point of nutritional balance and therefore aid in counteracting energy imbalance and diseases induced by overnutrition," the researchers said. "We recognize that the significance of this strategy has yet to be realized in clinical practice; currently, most anti-inflammatory therapies have limited direct effects on IKKß/NF-B and limited capacity to be concentrated in the central nervous system. Nonetheless, our discoveries offer potential for treating these serious diseases."
If realized, such a strategy would likely offer a safe approach given that the critical pathway appears to be unnecessary in the hypothalamus under normal circumstances, they noted.
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The researchers include Xiaoqing Zhang, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; Guo Zhang, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; Hai Zhang, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; Michael Karin, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA; Hua Bai, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, and Dongsheng Cai, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI.
Source: Cathleen Genova
Cell PressWhat do Dick Costolo, Sir Richard Branson, and Dr. Dre have in common? No, they're not banning together for some sort of social media-savvy spacecraft with awesome audio — though that would be super cool. They're among the list of people in tech who will "define the next 12 months," according to a new report from PCMag's sister site AskMen.
The online men's magazine on Tuesday released its 2014 Pulse Report, a new yearly guide geared towards "men who pride themselves on knowing what to be talking about six months before everyone else." The report covers a gamut of categories — from fashion and food to tech and cars, and everything in between.
"Powered with hand-selected information from each of AskMen's most respected experts, the 2014 Pulse Report breaks down the 500 People, Products & Trends that deserve the attention of forward-looking men," AskMen Publisher James Bassil wrote in the report.
Now that Twitter has gone public, you'll want to keep an eye on CEO Costolo, who is responsible for the continued growth of the social network, according to the report. Branson, meanwhile, made the list for his groundbreaking efforts to make commercial space travel a reality with Virgin Galactic while all eyes are on Apple's newest employee, Dr. Dre, following Cupertino's $3.2 billion acquisition of Beats.
The report also calls out some lesser-known techies poised to make waves over next six months, including: Lucas Duplan, founder of mobile wallet app Clinkle; DataWind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli; and Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel.
So what else should tech-savvy men pay attention to right now? For one, the Oculus Rift.
"We've seen the future, and it's virtual reality," tech guru Marc Saltzman wrote in the report. "Don this VR headset, and you're fully immersed in a 360-degree world, be it a video game, virtual vacation or perhaps sitting across a coffee-sipping friend in another country."
Other featured products include the Nest learning thermostat; Google's Android Wear smartwatch OS; the Kwikset Kevo, a Bluetooth-enabled deadbolt; GoPro's Hero3+ action camera, and Yahoo's intelligent homescreen app Aviate. Meanwhile other hot tech-topics to watch include robotics, smart homes, wearables, and 2-in-1s.St. Catherine University has cut ties with an event organizer, Heartland Inc., after protesters accused both the school and the company’s owners of being insensitive to rape survivors.
On Monday, student demonstrators denounced what they called a “toxic rape culture” at the St. Paul campus, where 97 percent of the undergraduates are women.
About two dozen protesters marched on the main gate with signs saying “Rape culture is here” and “We will not be silenced.” They demanded, among other things, that the school distance itself from Heartland and its founders, Craig and Patricia Neal, whose son is in prison for rape.
Initially, the university released a brief statement expressing compassion for all sides in the Neal case. But after an outcry from students, Sister Andrea Lee, the president of the Catholic university, issued another statement vowing “unwavering support for victims of sexual violence,” and announcing that “we have discontinued our association with Heartland.”
The Neals, who have held annual workshops at the college since 2012, say they “are saddened by the decision from St. Catherine.” In a written statement, they said: “As longtime nonviolence advocates, we abhor and condemn all criminal violence, including that perpetrated by our son.”
The furor began on June 10, when Heartland held a seminar on women in leadership at St. Catherine.
That morning, a woman named Sarah Super led a small group of protesters on the edge of campus, drawing attention to the rape case involving the Neals’ son, Alec. Super, 27, has publicly identified herself as the woman raped at knife point by Neal, who pleaded guilty last year and is serving a 12-year-prison term.
Super said the protest was inspired in part by the recent public uproar over the Brock Turner sexual assault case at Stanford University. The case drew headlines after Turner’s victim released an impassioned statement opposing his family’s attempts to win him leniency.
“Turner’s family rallied around Brock in ways that are pretty similar to my perpetrator’s family,” said Super. She criticized, in particular, a letter-writing campaign attesting to Alec Neal’s character before his sentencing. Her goal, she said, was to show how that affects victims. “Brock Turner’s case lit the flame for the conversation.”
The Neals, though, say they never attempted to minimize their son’s crime. “We are heartbroken over the suffering Sarah has experienced,” they wrote. “There wasn’t a single letter that suggested Alec shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions or that expressed anything but compassion and concern for Sarah.”
Two protests, two statements
In response to Super’s June 10 protest, at least one other organization, called Pollen, has announced it is cutting ties with Heartland. On its website, the nonprofit posted a “public apology” for co-sponsoring the St. Catherine event, adding: “We stand with Sarah Super.”
The university, meanwhile, posted a statement on its website June 10 saying: “Our St. Catherine values of compassion and mercy must extend first, of course, to the victim and her family, but also to the family of the offender and even to the offender himself.”
That statement “sparked the second protest,” said Halimat Alawode, a 20-year-old St. Catherine student who helped organize Monday’s demonstration. “It felt like they were giving more compassion to the rapist, in all honesty,” she said, calling the response “tone deaf.”
Students promptly organized the protest for Monday afternoon and created a Facebook page, “End Rape Culture at St. Catherine University,” to promote it.
After the protest, Lee apologized for the initial statement. “Standing in solidarity with victims of sexual assault always has been and always will be an unequivocal commitment of our University,” she wrote June 13. “In light of recent events, we have discontinued our association with Heartland.”
University officials declined to be interviewed for this story. But Lee issued a statement saying, “St. Catherine University does not support rape culture. Through programming and dialogue, the St. Kate’s community continually works to promote and sustain a safe and inclusive environment.”
In defense of Heartland
Heartland’s supporters, meanwhile, have leapt to the Neals’ defense. Jina Penn-Tracy, a Minneapolis investment adviser who has attended their workshops, wrote on Facebook: “I am very sorry for what Sarah suffered, but as a multiple rape survivor, I object to the families of offenders being targeted for attack and boycott … This is not justice, but vendetta.”
In an interview, Penn-Tracy, 48, said she understands Super’s anger, “but attacking their business, trying to drive them out of business, is an aggression, and I don’t think it’s going to bring healing.”
Patricia Weaver Francisco, a Hamline University professor who has written a memoir of her own rape and recovery, said it’s unfair to compare the Neals to the Stanford case, where the perpetrator’s family seemed dismissive of the crime. In his most controversial remark, Turner’s father stated that jail time would be a “steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.”
The Neals, by contrast, are “deeply thoughtful and caring people” who were “devastated for Sarah,” said Francisco. “I’ve literally never heard them say a thing about Sarah that is anything other than concern.”
At St. Catherine, students say the protest has had an impact. In addition to cutting off ties with Heartland, Lee agreed to create a task force to address larger concerns, according to Alawode.
Super said she, too, was pleased with Lee’s response. “She made a really wonderful initiative to meet with me and express her support,” she said. “I thought that was a wonderful step in the right direction.”
Super says she has no plans to continue to protest Heartland. “Absolutely not, no no no,” she said. “I don’t want anything to be done out of anger or vengeance.”US, Britain gear up for war on Iran
By Bill Van Auken
28 February 2012
The military commands in both the US and Britain have sought increased funding and stepped up deployments of arms and personnel to the Persian Gulf in preparation for an anticipated war against Iran.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon, acting on the request of the Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the region, has requested the re-allocation of some $100 million in military spending to ratchet up war preparations.
The Journal cast these preparations as defensive measures aimed at countering an Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which some 20 percent of the world’s exported oil flows. Iran’s threat came in response to trade sanctions and embargoes imposed by the US and Western Europe that amount to a blockade, an act of war, as well as open Israeli threats to bomb the country.
“The US military has notified Congress of plans to preposition new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to defense officials briefed on the requests,” the Journal reports. “The military also wants to quickly modify weapons systems on ships so they could be used against Iranian fast-attack boats, as well as shore-launched cruise missiles, the defense officials said.”
Under the Pentagon’s plans, US warships would be equipped with anti-tank weapons, rapid-fire machine guns and light weapons for use against the Iranian navy’s small speedboats. They would be backed by increased numbers of unmanned drones.
The Journal adds that “US special-operations teams stationed in the United Arab Emirates would take part in any military action in the strait should Iran attempt to close it.”
The US has already doubled the number of aircraft carrier battle groups it has stationed in the Persian Gulf area, deploying both the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Carl Vinson. It also has substantial numbers of warplanes operating out of the Arabian Peninsula and tens of thousands of troops near Iran’s borders in Afghanistan and Kuwait.
The new war preparations, the Journal states, show “the extent to which war planners are taking tangible steps to prepare for a possible conflict with Iran, even as top White House and defense leaders try to tamp down talk of war and emphasize other options.”
The report in the Journal indicates that the Pentagon wants the military buildup in the Gulf in place by autumn, when Pentagon planners anticipate that Israel will launch an unprovoked military strike on Iran.
High-level discussions on Iran between Washington and the Israeli state are scheduled over the next several days, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak having left Israel Monday for two days of talks with US officials, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to hold talks with Obama on March 5.
The newspaper noted that the latest move to fund an anticipated war with Iran follows the Pentagon’s request in January for $82 million “to improve its largest conventional bunker-buster bomb, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The bomb, officials said, was designed to take out bunkers like those used by Iran to protect its most sensitive nuclear development work.”
There are indications that a heated debate continues over whether to supply Israel with these 30,000-pound weapons, which are substantially more powerful than the 5,000-pound Guided Bomb Unit 28 (GBU-28) bunker busters that the Obama administration transferred to the Zionist state last year.
David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, summed up the growing drumbeat within sections of the US ruling establishment Sunday as follows: “Arm the Syrian rebels! And, while we’re at it, give the Israelis the tools they need — bunker-busters, refueling aircraft — so that if they decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, they’ll get it right the first time.”
Acknowledging that Washington’s aims in Syria have everything to do with weakening Iran in preparation for “regime change” there as well, Sanger continued: “The argument commonly heard inside and outside the White House these days is that if the Assad government cracks, Iran’s ability to funnel weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas will be badly damaged — and its influence will wither accordingly. Similarly, if Iran’s effort to walk up to the edge of a nuclear weapons capability can be set back with a few well-placed GBU-31 bunker-busters, the country’s hopes of challenging Israel and Saudi Arabia to be the region’s biggest power will be deferred.”
In other words, behind all of the hyped warnings about Iran’s imminent acquiring of nuclear weapons, the reality is that US imperialism and its allies are engaged in a campaign of economic, political and military aggression against Iran, whose aim is to prevent the country from emerging as a regional power capable of challenging Washington’s hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
The nuclear issue has been used as the pretext for preparing a new war in the region, just as the claims about “weapons of mass destruction” were employed in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Just as in Iraq a decade ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear inspection regime serves as a cat’s paw in preparing imperialist aggression. As in Iraq, the IAEA, manipulated by US, Israeli and Western European intelligence agencies, is demanding that Iran do the impossible: prove a negative, that it is not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons. And, similar to its operations against Baghdad, the IAEA is provoking Tehran by demanding that it submit to diktats that are in no way required of signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Thus, the IAEA issued a report last Friday, stressing that a small amount of uranium metal was missing from a nuclear research site—far less than would be needed for building a bomb—and that Iran has increased its enrichment of uranium, not to the grade necessary for weapons, but rather for nuclear power plant fuel, perfectly legal under the treaty.
It also charged that a team it sent to Iran was denied permission to visit the Parchin military complex, located about 18 miles southeast of Tehran. The US has repeatedly incited the IAEA to demand inspections of the site, which is a non-nuclear facility and not subject to the agency’s oversight. Between 2004 and 2006 Iran allowed inspectors into the sensitive facility after Washington charged that a bunker there was being used to test explosive triggers for nuclear bombs. The inspections found nothing of the kind.
Iranian officials, who have insisted that the country’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, said that the IAEA team sent to Tehran was there to negotiate a “framework” for continued collaboration between the agency and Tehran and that it was not composed of nuclear inspectors and had no right to request entry to the Parchin facility.
Both Israel and the US seized upon the report as the pretext for escalating pressure against Iran. Netanyahu issued a statement saying that it “provides more proof that Israel’s estimations are accurate, Iran is continuing with its nuclear program unchecked.” Israel itself has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or accept any IAEA oversight of its nuclear facilities, which have produced an estimated 400 nuclear weapons.
“Iran’s actions demonstrate why Iran has failed to convince the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. Unless Iran submitted to US and Western European pressure, “its isolation from the international community will only continue to grow,” he added.
Meanwhile, under the jingoistic headline “Britain’s battle plan for war with Iran”, Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Sun cited unnamed British “defense chiefs” as saying “it is a matter of WHEN not IF war breaks out—with 18 to 24 months the likely timescale.”
In preparation for an attack on Iran, the paper reported, Britain will “fly an infantry battalion to the United Arab Emirates, our strong ally in the region.”
The Sun added. “Under the war plan, a second sub armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles would be deployed. The RAF would send Typhoon and Tornado Jets to reinforce helicopter and transport plane crews already stationed in Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the UAE.”
The paper quoted a senior Whitehall official as saying: “MoD [Ministry of Defense] planners went into overdrive at the start of the year. Conflict is seen as inevitable as long as the regime pursue their nuclear ambitions.”Doctors are warning parents and young people to be aware of the dangers of what is known as "the choking game".
The warning comes as a teenage boy remains seriously ill in a Dublin hospital after such an incident.
The boy who is in his early teens was unconscious and in a critical condition when he was admitted to a paediatric hospital in Dublin.
It later emerged that he had been involved in what is known as a choking or fainting game.
Minister of State at the Department of Health Kathleen Lynch said the incident is very worrying.
She said it was clearly something that had to be dealt with and that it was necessary to ensure schools were fully informed in relation to the issue.
She said it was important that schools had the right message for children, that that type of risk behaviour can result in very serious consequences.
The activity usually involves boys and girls putting pressure either on their own or their friend's throat until they nearly pass out.
Doctors are warning young people not to engage in the activity as they say it can lead to irreversible brain damage or in some cases death.
Over 80 people have already died in the US as a result of the practice.TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs had a day off on Sunday and head coach Mike Babcock hopes his players were watching the Super Bowl closely.
"Did anybody see the people compete?" the coach asked reporters rhetorically after Monday's practice. "I love the way that people compete that win. It's unbelievable. If you're watching at all and you're watching how hard (the Denver Broncos worked) and how important team is and how speed on defence leads to winning, I mean, there was lots of good things you could learn yesterday."
The offensively-challenged Broncos won an ugly game over the favoured Carolina Panthers. The Leafs are hoping to replicate that recipe during a Western road trip over the next week, which will include stops in Calgary (Tuesday), Edmonton (Thursday), Vancouver (Saturday) and Chicago (Monday).
Toronto has scored just 10 goals over the last seven games and will be without Tyler Bozak when they take on the Flames. According to Babcock, Bozak wasn't feeling well after getting hit in the head by Mika Zibanejad during Saturday's blowout loss in Ottawa.
But Bozak was only one of three Leafs to go down with an injury during the game against the Senators. Joffrey Lupul is dealing with what Babcock calls a "middle-body injury" and has been placed on injured reserve. Shawn Matthias, injured in a collision with Leo Komarov, has whiplash and also won't make the flight to Calgary although Babcock left open the possibility that he may join the team later in the trip. The loss of Bozak and James van Riemsdyk (out since Jan. 9 with a non-displaced fracture in his left foot) leaves the Leafs without two of their top three scorers.
Mark Arcobello, Josh Leivo and Rich Clune were called up from the AHL on Monday.
"There's an opportunity here," Babcock said. "Every time you get an opportunity it's up to you. I'm dying for someone to score a goal."
Babcock has previously noted his players experienced a dip in confidence after van Riemsdyk got hurt. He's expecting they will handle the latest rash of injuries a lot better.
"Obviously, we're more offensively challenged, but that doesn't mean you can't find ways to win: play well without the puck, check real hard, compete real hard, score on your power play, stay out of the penalty box so there's lots of good ways to go about it," Babcock said. "It's a real challenge for us and we're excited about doing it."
Arcobello may be the top candidate to step up. He has been lighting up the AHL this season posting 44 points in 34 games with the Toronto Marlies.
"Well, he shoots it in the net," said Babcock. "He flat out shoots it in the net. I haven't seen that at this level here so we've talked about that."
Before being recalled, Arcobello was riding an eight-game point streak in the AHL (eight goals and eight assists in that stretch). On Monday, he practiced as the centre on a line with Peter Holland and P.A. Parenteau while also taking reps on the power play.
"It's just bringing the confidence with me," the 27-year-old said. "I established a lot of confidence down there in myself and it's just a matter of bringing it here and using that on the ice."
Arcobello has failed to pick up a point in 11 games with the Leafs this season with his last chance coming on Jan. 7 in Los Angeles.
Babcock was asked what is the biggest difference between being able to produce in the AHL versus the NHL. "Well, size and speed," the coach said. "You're not playing against trees in the back end in the American Hockey League, you're playing against regular-sized people."
The Leafs hope the injection of hungry call-ups may offer a spark in the wake of one of the team's more lopsided losses this season. Saturday's setback in Ottawa marked the sixth time Toronto has lost by four or more goals.
"I don't think you do anything for your sweater or your pride when you play like that," Babcock said.
The lesson from the embarrassing loss was obvious, according to the coach. "It's real clear how we have to play with our lineup. We went through that this morning, kind of did a system review on video, before we went on the ice."
The message was received loud and clear.
"There's a lot of guys who have a lot to prove in this locker room," Parenteau said, "so I'm expecting a hard-working game from our team (in Calgary)."
There's no secret, according to the players, why Toronto stumbled in the nation's capital.
"That was a lack of competing. We have to avoid that at any cost," Parenteau said following a skating-heavy workout. "It's competing and it starts in practice and when you have a good practice week you usually have good starts and play good so we tried to implement that in our game this morning."Think Progress
September 30th, 2008
JUSTICE — WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS IGNORES REPORT ON U.S. ATTORNEY SCANDAL:
After an 18-month investigation, the Office of Public Responsibility and the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) released a report yesterday finding that the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys was “fundamentally flawed” and in some cases, governed by politics. The report said former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and other DOJ officials made “inconsistent, misleading, and inaccurate” statements about their reasons for firing the attorneys. But despite the IG’s finding of White House efforts to stonewall the investigation, the White House press corps did not ask one question about the investigation in yesterday’s press briefing. Reacting to the report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said the abuses documented in the report “are corrosive to the very foundations of our system of justice.” He also warned President Bush that “any misuse of the pardon power” to the benefit of administration officials involved will be seen “as an admission of wrongdoing and misuse of power.”
(Source)With flavors that resemble pumpkin cheesecake, this smoothie also contains an ‘ancient delight’ superfood mix, which can be easily purchased online or at most health-food stores. The superfood mix is simply a blend of various spices and seeds such as cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, chia seeds and flax seeds, all of which have been nutritionally regarded for promoting health. This superfood smoothie is full of nutrient dense foods, and is just what you need to give you that boost you need to get your morning started.
Serves 2
Here’s What You Need:
1 cup vanilla almond milk
1 frozen banana
2 tablespoons ‘ancient delight’ superfood mix (see substitutions below)
¼ teaspoon organic pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon organic pure almond extract
2 tablespoons canned pumpkin
⅛ cup raw cashews
1 heaping tablespoon cannabis-infused coconut oil
2 tablespoons cream-cheese
Optional garnish: crushed graham crackers, dash of cinnamon, cinnamon stick, etc.
How to Make Pumpkin Cheesecake Smoothie
To begin, throw the cashews, frozen banana, almond milk, vanilla extract, almond extract, canned pumpkin, cream cheese and cannabis-infused coconut oil into a blender.
Turn the blender on and blend the ingredients on high until all of them come together and become smooth.
Next, add the ancient delight superfood, and blend on high until thoroughly incorporated.
If the ancient delight superfood mix is not available to you, you can easily substitute the flavors (but not all of the nutrition) with the following spices: ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon ground ginger, and 1 tablespoon chia seeds. Blend until all the spices are mixed into the smoothie.
Depending on desired consistency, you may or may not need to add a few tablespoons of water or more almond milk. I like my smoothies on the thicker side, so I usually bypass this step, but if you have any issues with blending, this step may help.
Pour the pumpkin cheesecake smoothies into mason jars or glasses and serve with your choice of garnish! Some recommendations are a sprinkle of crushed graham crackers, a dash of ground cinnamon, or even an entire cinnamon stick – the choice is yours!
Serve immediately and enjoy.Frozen, the Oscar-winning Disney cartoon adapted from Hans Christian Andersen, is a vehicle for pro-gay propaganda as well a promoting bestiality, according to a Christian radio show in Colorado.
Pastor Kevin Swanson of the Reformation Church, who hosts Generations Radio, denounced the film as "very evil", and that Disney was "one of the most pro-homosexual organisations in the country".
Swanson said: "You wonder sometimes if maybe there's something very evil happening here... I wonder if people are thinking: 'You know I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way.'"
He also characterised Disney as a satanic company, saying: "If I was the Devil, what would I do to really foul up an entire social system and do something really, really, really evil to 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds in Christian families around America?... If I was the Devil, I would buy Disney in 1984."
Swanson's broadside was inspired by a blog on the National Catholic Register entitled So, How Gay IS Disney's Frozen? in which the NCR's film critic Steven D Greydanus had argued the film is full of "gay-culture themes". These include the solitary nature of the protagonist Elsa, her lack of interest in her male suitors, and the Oscar-winning song Let It Go. which shows Elsa "celebrating her acceptance of her true identity". Greydanus also points to a brief glimpse of a "gay family", that belonging to trading post owner Oaken.
Bestiality was identified by Greydanus in the relationship between hunter Kristoff and his reindeer Sven, as contained in a line from The Fixer-Upper Song: "His thing with the reindeer/That's a little outside of nature's laws!"
This latest controversy follows suggestions that Frozen might be Disney's most pro-Christian movie of recent times. Swanson has a long record of decrying what he sees as pro-gay and lesbian culture, including claiming that Christians will be burned at the stake as a result of same sex marriage.
• Frozen in time: when will Disney's heroines reflect real body shapes?Planning your next backpacking trip? Don’t forget to get some canned-beers. Reason being, next time you can trade it for food and accomodation. Nope! We are not making it up, a backpacker did it and it sure works.
On a backpacking-venture, traveller Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Marshall hitchhiked, all the way from Edinburgh to Delhi, trading craft beer cans for couch-surfing, travelling and of course, for food. He had 120 cans of Innis & Gunn that was his currency for eight weeks.
In his blog Manny, before he set out on his adventure, wrote, “Right now I’m setting out from Edinburgh and the big mission is starting. I’m heading off to hitchhike my way across Europe to the east, all the way to India, the spiritual home of IPA.”
Here’s his beautiful journey.
1. In Paris.
2. In Athens.
3. With a married couple at the Charles Bridge.
4. He traded craft beer for free rides.
5. And made some friends along the way.
6. Delhi belly.
7. Beer-bonding.
8. He ‘can’ do it. Overcoming language barriers through beer-cans.
9. Lift, please.
10. Touchdown, Goa! He’s in the right place, isn’t he?
Now that’s how you beer-bond, mate.
News source: Daily MailThe poll at the end of this post asks the following question: If you were the GM or owner of an MLS club would you pay $2.6M for 1 MLS win? In baseball, the sabermetrics community debates the salary value of a win. The latest thinking is that a win in baseball costs $7M in player salary. But how about for a win in MLS? There are 80% less games, thereby increasing the value of a single win. But MLS teams pay over 96% less than MLB teams pay for players. Give that some thought as we explore soccer statistics around shot location and shooting accuracy.
Before we look at shot location data for the Union last season, a huge shout out needs to go to the analysts at American Soccer Analysis. They provided this data gratis and they offer outstanding forward thinking analysis on soccer, focusing on the American game. Let's dig into the data that they painstakingly put together.
Below is half of a soccer field broken into 5 zones.
Here is the distribution of shots taken in those 5 zones.
Just to be clear the zone 3 data is not broken out by left and right side, so I've made the shot distribution even in the chart. Nearly 1/3 of all shots are taken in front of the goal but outside the 6 yard box. And almost half of the shots are taken from outside the 18 yard box.
Now here is the shooting percentage (goals over shots attempted) from shots taken in the 5 zones.
Remember the zones outside box where 47% of the shots in MLS are fired from? They have a 3.6% success rate. That's one in every 27 shots. Next time the fans groan when a player shoots from 25 yards away, they should feel justified.
While we're here, sitting with this data in our minds, let's talk about how justified they should feel. Let's pretend that a coach put out a mandate that no player on the club should shoot outside the box. Let's pretend the team obeyed this absolutely. It's safe to say they would squeeze off less shots as they would lose the ball trying to pass or dribble the ball inside the box. But at the same time the team would get off better quality shots. Let's be conservative and say that none of the new shots taken inside the 18 yard box are taken inside the 6 yard box. But the shots are distributed as they normally are between zone 2 and zone 3.
The average team took 435 shots last year. And 206 of them were outside the 18 yard box. They scored 7.4 goals on average from that area over the course of a season. If all of those shots were moved into shots from zone 2 or 3 they would have scored 28.8 goals. That means that teams could give up 153 of those 206 shots from outside the box to get 53 more shots inside the box and they would score the same number of goals. The question then is, if a team was going to shoot from outside the box, how many times would they turn it over before getting a shot inside the box? If the answer is less than |
media campaigns).
Miha Vidmar, CTO
With his extensive knowledge of complex systems and more than 15 years of experience creating software solutions for the financial industry, Miha Vidmar is now the Chief Technology Officer at ICONOMI. Miha is a highly experienced software product manager and architect who has held the highest positions in fintech and traditional financial software companies and will help keep ICONOMI at the forefront of financial and blockchain technology. He started his professional career as a software developer at one of the biggest companies in the Adriatic region. Later, as a program manager with in-depth knowledge and a comprehensive understanding of IT systems, he was responsible for managing large financial institutions and telecommunications companies. He has gained rich international team management experience as a product manager at Skrill and a director of development at Halcom, a banking software development company.
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or log in to our platform to explore new Digital Asset Arrays."History of Ignorant Travel" is a diary that was kept by a person, who had once decided to fight for the "Islamic State" (IS was recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia) and who was personally convinced of falsity and perversity of many of IS' followers. The diary, telling about the author's unfortunate experience of taking part in the erection of Caliphate in Syria (until May 2015), about his custody in jail awaiting execution, about torture, and about a completely unexpected escape, is written in poor Russian; and its publication in the unedited form is impossible. Excerpts from the diary are presented in the below text of the interview. The interview was recorded in a number of phased and took a long time. The "Caucasian Knot" emphasizes that this publication is not aimed at any propaganda or counter-propaganda; its main idea is to present some little-known information about the organization banned in Russia and the evidence of the person, whose vision was undergoing significant changes.
We agreed to have a meting with the 21-year-old Furkat in the subway of one of European capitals. I did not know his phone number or his surname, only the fact that he had been in the "Islamic State" (IS), and that he writes in Russian with a lot of mistakes.
I assumed that he came from some Caucasian republic, and I imagined an adult male with a huge beard.
The guy proved to be a native of Central Asia, with a barely noticeable facial hair. None of his external parameters did not fit my idea of an IS militant.
Furkat got to Syria from Moscow. He left his education, when being in the second year of a higher school, got converted to Islam, began practicing namaz (prayer) and searching for answers to the questions about his role, place and mission, and found a way out only in taking up arms and "going to fight against the tyrant and dictator Bashar al-Assad."
His way to Syria was not fast, as for a few months Furkat tried to find an opportunity to go to the front; he even spoke openly addressing Imams at mosques and parishioners asking to help him to achieve his aim.
It is quite easy to imagine the reaction of the people, whom Furkat had addressed. They did not even try to dissuade him. They believed that he was a professional provocateur, therefore, they just pushed him away.
Furkat reached IS representatives through one of the groups in social networks; then he went alone to Turkey, where he was met right at the airport and shown the route to the Syrian border. He travelled alone, did not stop at transfer points, and crossed the border just in a field delineated with barbed wire; in doing so, he faced no particular obstacles.
Furkat left at home a note for his relatives, in which he asked not to look for him, and wrote that everything would be OK with him, and that it was his choice. His parents are still sure that he was killed. Furkat is in no hurry to inform them that he has got out. He fears that repressions and pressure on them may follow.
Furkat was keeping something like a diary of his stay in Syria, which tells in detail about the IS and its methods. This diary clearly shows the progress of an ordinary IS member from fascination to complete disappointment in the Caliphate. Multiple facts described by the author indicate double standards, the use of ordinary members of the IS as cannon fodder. Especially for the "Caucasian Knot", Arslan Koch and Grigory Kozlov questioned Furkat about the facts he mentioned in his diary. The check of some of them took about three months.Outgoing President Obama is launching a scorched earth policy to destroy international relations before President-elect Trump takes office.
As Obama withdraws from the presidency, he’s inflicting damage on anything that could help the transition of incoming President Trump, such as friendly relations with world leaders.
Right now, Obama is fueling so many international fires that President Trump will likely spend his first 100 days in office simply putting them out.
It’s about the only thing a lame duck president can do to undermine his successor, and Obama’s destructive behavior is the same tactic Civil War General Sherman used in his March to the Sea in which he systematically destroyed everything in his path to psychologically destroy the South.
The strategy explains why the Obama administration is announcing economic sanctions against Russia for unproven “election hacking” despite the fact that moving trucks are figuratively lining up outside the White House.
“While Obama and Democrats continue their crusade to delegitimize the Trump administration, we would point out once again that, despite all the rhetoric, not a single person has gone on the record and/or presented a single shred of tangible evidence to confirm Russian involvement in the DNC and/or John Podesta email hacks,” Zero Hedge pointed out.
And the strategy also explains Obama’s recent move against Israel, which is not only unprecedented for a president but also offers a greater chance of triggering a war than the random encounters that actually sparked World War I.
In particular, the Obama administration refused to veto a UN proposal demanding that Israel stop building settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, and the refusal broke a long-standing tradition of the US serving as a diplomatic shield for Israel.
While there’s strong arguments that Israel was in the wrong and shouldn’t infringe on Palestinian land, the Obama administration wasn’t motivated by Palestinian plight but rather the desire to create another mess in the Middle East the globalists could ultimately pin on Trump.Image caption The foundation was created by former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lawson in 2009
The climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation is to relaunch in September, after a complaint about its charitable status.
The Charity Commission has forced it to divide into a charitable educational arm and a separately funded political arm.
The change follows a charge that the main purpose of the foundation is political, not charitable.
The foundation said its new structure would make it even more effective.
It aimed to continue to promote debate about the costs of tackling climate change, it added.
But the complainant had argued that its information was often misleading.
'Inundated'
The Charity Commission will issue a formal statement on the changes in the coming weeks, but a spokesman told BBC News: "Some of the the Global Warming Policy Foundation's activities breached what is expected of an educational charity, namely that the material lacked balance and promoted a particular line of opinion.
"An organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political."
The Global Warming Policy Foundation's director Benny Peiser denied that the body had been politically campaigning.
But he told BBC News: "We accepted the advice by the Charity Commission. They had been inundated by green campaigners.
"We will relaunch in September. There will be an educational charity which will publish our reports and there will be a campaigning organisation that will be able to do our work more efficiently and effectively, and therefore we think we will be doing even better."
The new format of the Global Warming Policy Foundation will mirror that of Greenpeace, which refers to itself as a campaign group with a charitable arm (the Greenpeace Trust funds scientific research).
The Charity Commission investigated the Global Warming Policy Foundation following a complaint by Bob Ward, a science communicator who works with Lord Stern's climate change team at the LSE.
He also complained that the foundation breaches charity rules by "continually disseminating inaccurate and misleading information".
'Lots of uncertainties'
The Charity Commission told BBC News it raised these concerns with the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Dr Peiser denied that and insisted that the organisation did not mislead.
The group has succeeded in challenging the previous cross-party consensus on climate change in Westminster, thanks to a combination of high-profile lectures and a regular newsletter.
It was launched as a charity in September 2009 by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson with the objectives: "To advance the public understanding of global warming and of its possible consequences, and also of the measures taken or proposed to be taken in response to it."
The Global Warming Policy Foundation made an immediate impact. Between November 2009 and February 2010, Lord Lawson and Dr Peiser were quoted more than 80 times in newspapers, according to James Painter at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
"They do essentially have quite a simple message," he told BBC News. "We don't know enough about climate science; there's lots of uncertainties - so we shouldn't take action to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."
Some mainstream climate scientists do acknowledge that the Global Warming Policy Foundation has usefully provoked them to address poorly understood issues such as the unexpected pause in global warming and the sensitivity of the climate to extra CO2.
Prof Piers Forster from Leeds University told BBC News: "Climate sceptics such as the the Global Warming Policy Foundation have really focused our attention to understand part of the climate problem we had poor understanding of. This is a good thing and it will make our science more robust."
The foundation has also won praise for some of its policy analysis. It led the way in highlighting the hidden costs of backing up renewable energy systems.
But mainstream scientists complain that its messages are often politicised and misleading.
"What I don't like about the Global Warming Policy Foundation," Prof Forster said, "is that they try to use uncertainty in science to destabilise the policy debate. They also criticise our scientific integrity and myself and my scientific colleagues do not really like their approach."
Follow Roger on Twitter @rharrabin© Provided by The Hill Debate commission admits 'issues' with Trump's audio
The Commission on Presidential Debates issued a one-sentence statement Friday admitting "issues" with Donald Trump's audio in this cycle's first debate Monday.
"Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump's audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall," the statement read.
Trump argued after the debate that his microphone was defective, which rival Hillary Clinton dismissed as an excuse of someone who did poorly.
Trump Trump told reporters immediately following the debate that event organizers "gave me a defective mic" that he said affected the audio inside the Hofstra University venue.
"Did you notice that?" he asked a reporter immediately after the debate. "My mic was defective within the room."
"Was that on purpose?" Trump asked.
The issue didn't appear to affect the broadcast of the debate, the first of three scheduled between Trump and Clinton that reached more than 80 million viewers.
Clinton, who put Trump on the defensive during the high-profile showdown, Clinton, who put Trump on the defensive during the high-profile showdown, mocked Trump on Tuesday for complaining about his microphone.
"Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night," Clinton quipped while speaking to reporters on her plane.0 Equipment stolen days before special election; Sec. of State: 'Unacceptable'
COBB COUNTY, Ga. - Channel 2 Action News has learned that critical voting machines were stolen just days before polls will open for a special election.
State officials are investigating after equipment was taken from a Cobb County precinct manager’s vehicle. According to Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the equipment was stolen on Saturday evening while the vehicle was parked at the Kroger on Canton Road.
CLICK HERE for LIVE real-time Georgia election results.
Kemp’s office says Cobb County Elections waited two days to tell his office about the theft of the machines.
The four so-called ExpressPoll machines were the computers poll workers used to check-in voters, and check those off who cast ballots.
TRENDING STORIES:
“It’s very shocking, especially with the climate we have of voter fraud out there,” one Georgia voter told Channel 2’s Ross Cavitt.
Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler said the stolen machines cannot be used to fraudulently vote in Tuesday’s election. Eveler said the machines have voter information on them, but that information is “hard to access.”
Eveler said they will completely replace the machines at the Piedmont Road precinct.
“It should be as secure as the banks, or anywhere else with our information,” another voter said.
Kemp released the following statement Monday afternoon: “It is unacceptable that the Cobb County Elections Office waited two days to notify my office of this theft. We have opened an investigation, and we are taking steps to ensure that it has no effect on the election tomorrow. I am confident that the results will not be compromised.”
You can count on Channel 2 Action News for complete election coverage Tuesday night. We'll have up-to-the-minute results and live reports from the campaigns in Georgia's Congressional race. Plus, instant results on WSBTV.com!
© 2019 Cox Media Group.ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA - JUNE 09: Tom Lynch of the Crows celebrates a goal as Billy Longer of the Saints looks on during the 2017 AFL round 12 match between the Adelaide Crows and the St Kilda Saints at the Adelaide Oval on June 09, 2017 in Adelaide, Australia. (Photo by AFL Media)
Forward Tom Lynch has been ruled out of Adelaide’s clash with Carlton through illness.
Lynch, 26, was unable to train on Wednesday because of a viral infection.
Coach Don Pyke said the hard-working goalkicker would continue to be monitored.
“Unfortunately, ‘Lynchy’ has picked up a viral infection. We’re running some tests to work out what that is, but the indication from the doctor is that he’s not going to be available this week,” Pyke said.
“We’ll see how the results come up and take it from there.”
Livewire Charlie Cameron is also in doubt for Saturday’s game at the MCG.
Cameron strained his wrist in Adelaide’s loss to Hawthorn last Thursday.
The line-breaking forward has been cleared of serious damage, but is still experiencing wrist soreness.
“Charlie was unable to train this morning with that wrist injury,” Pyke said.
“We’ll assess how that looks … and if he’s not right he won’t play.”
Defender Luke Brown is hoping to overcome a minor ankle injury in time to take on the Blues.
Brown jarred his ankle against the Hawks and will need to prove his fitness on Thursday.
“Luke did some running today. He’ll do a bit more training tomorrow, but there were some really positive signs,” Pyke said.
“He’s pretty confident, so we’ll give him a chance tomorrow to have a run and make the decision from there.”
Wayne Milera Junior (knee) trained on Wednesday and is available to play.
Lynch’s absence could create an opportunity for fellow forwards Mitch McGovern and/or Riley Knight.
McGovern has played two SANFL games in his return from a serious hamstring injury, while Knight responded to his omission from Adelaide’s senior team by being in the best players at State League level last weekend.
Experienced players Kyle Cheney, Scott Thompson and Paul Seedsman have also impressed in the SANFL.
“The SANFL side had a great win on the weekend and (displayed) some really good form,” Pyke said.
“There are a number of guys there who have come into contention.”GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli gunboats and an Egyptian clampdown on fuel smuggling into the Gaza Strip are strangling the Palestinian enclave’s little fishing fleet, slowly turning a generation of fishermen into fishmongers.
A Palestinian fisherman smokes as he waits for boats at the Gaza seaport May 19, 2012. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
Since 2009, they have been unable to sail out beyond three miles because of Israel’s strictly enforced blockade. This year they can hardly afford to go out at all because diesel has nearly tripled in price.
There are about 3,700 full-time fishermen in the Gaza Strip ready to serve a market of 1.7 million Palestinians. They used to export to Israel. Now Gaza imports about 80 percent of its needs from the Egyptians and the Israelis.
“Once we made enough to let us give away fish to the poor and needy people. These days we are begging for aid,” said Mahmoud Al-Assi, 66, a fisherman most of his life and currently the chairman of Gaza’s non-profit Fishermens’ Society, which supports boat owners with tools, ice and fuel.
“Just like the fish, we will die if we’re out of the water for too long,” said Al-Assi.
Fresh fish from the Mediterranean, grilled or fried, is Gaza’s favorite dish. Grouper, bream, bass and snapper are prized. But this year the fleet even missed the usually plentiful season of cheap sardines.
Driving along the coast road by Gaza City you cannot miss the fish market - a covered corridor hosting twelve shops, decorated with images of various kinds of fish. The smell of the fresh catch of shrimp and crab blows ashore on the sea breeze.
Two boys with their father are fascinated by the brightly glistening lizard and blue fish.
“Is this grouper?” asks the man, in surprise. Gazans call grouper the “Royal Meal” but these days it is rare.
“As you see, the waters gave us only two grouper today,” says fishmonger Abu Hasseera, displaying a 10-kg fish whose price has rocketed to 80 shekels ($21) a kilo from 50 shekels ($13) a few months ago.
“The sardines are so near yet so far,” he says. “We see the spot but we cannot reach it because of the fishing limit.’
Ranged in boxes on a donkey cart, Egyptian-imported sardine sells for $1.2 a kilo. On the few occasions when locally caught sardines were available this season, the price was $6.5 a kilo, unaffordable to most families.
“It has affected our income. I am losing 60 percent of the profits I used to make in past seasons,” Abu Hasseera says.
FARMERS TOO
Gaza has been under Israeli blockade since Islamist Hamas forces seized control in 2007, ousting those of the rival Fatah forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel says it must maintain the blockade to prevent arms and military materiel reaching Hamas.
An interim Palestinian-Israeli peace accord allows fishermen to sail out for up to 12 miles out from the coast. But since Hamas, sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, took over Gaza, Israeli naval boats have gradually limited the distance to three miles.
No boats at all dared put to sea when Israel invaded Gaza in December 2008 in a three-week blitz against Hamas and other Islamic militant groups firing rockets into Israeli territory.
The fuel crisis began this February, when Gaza’s neighbor Egypt cracked down on industrial-scale fuel smuggling via an under-the-border warren of tunnels that supplies Gazans with everything from cars to cattle.
The smuggling was diverting government-subsidized fuel from Egyptians in Sinai. Hamas rubbed salt in the wound by taxing it.
The price of diesel on the Gaza black market is now about triple what it was a few months ago. Some gasoline and diesel, as well as cooking gas, is being imported from Israel for the private sector, but Israeli diesel and petrol prices are considered prohibitive for commercial users.
Fishing is not the only Gaza industry hurt by the fuel price crisis and Israeli restrictions.
The steep rise in prices jacked up the cost of running irrigation pumps in the growing season, slicing Palestinian farm income in what could have been a good season.
Carnation farmers relying on truck transport had to leave many flowers in refrigerators, with no electricity to keep them fresh. About 2.5 million wilted flowers were sold off cheap.
Gaza exported two million blooms fewer than the 11 million sold in 2011, the international charity Oxfam says, compared with an average of 50 million carnations every year before the blockade was imposed in 2007.
Bumper crops of sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes, by contrast, escaped the worst of the fuel crisis, and exports permitted by Israel soared from 6 and 7 tonnes respectively last year to 44 and 75 tonnes this year, proving Gaza has a viable agricultural industry.
GUNBOATS
Fishermen say the Hamas administration provides them with fuel once a week, forcing them to search for the rest of their requirements on the black market at a rate many cannot afford.
So some days they sit tight on the sand, drinking tea and blowing the smoke of their cigarettes into the wind.
Assi estimated annual losses of fishermen at $11 million.
The industry’s daily wage has dropped from 300 shekels ($78) to just 20 shekels ($5), he says.
“I have been a fishermen since I was 17 years old. This is the worst ever fishing season,” said Mohammed Abu Al-Sadeq, 66, as he tied up his boat after a night of fishing that brought only a meagre catch.
“When there is no cheap fuel we do not go to sea,” said Sadeq’s brother, Khamees. “It is a tragic season.”
Jihad Salah at the Fish Resource department of the Hamas-run agriculture ministry acknowledged conditions were grave, but blamed Israel.
He admitted that the fuel ration was not enough for a fisherman’s working day but said it was all they could afford “to at least help some fishermen earn a living”.
“Fishing as a profession is in danger. The (Israeli) occupation is pushing hard to turn fishermen into merchants who leave the job and instead buy fish from Egypt and from them.”
Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005. But critics say its blockade has turned the enclave into an open prison, its economy strangled by import and export restrictions and many of its people depending for staples on U.N. food aid.
This month, Sadeq and other fishermen were intercepted by an Israeli navy gunboat within the permitted zone and warned by a sailor with a megaphone to stay within the limits.
Israeli naval forces took action against Gaza boats seven times in the past three months, including firing warning shots and confiscating boats, said Salah.
“Only yesterday we got back eight small fishing boats that had been confiscated over the past two years. They came back with no gear or engines,” Salah said.
Fishermen can lose their boats if the Israeli navy finds them with motors whose capacity exceeds 25 horsepower.
So Gaza depends mostly on fish smuggled from Egypt through the network of border tunnels. The fish sometimes decay if Egyptian security is restricting movements. Al-Assi reckons the local fleet now supplies no more than a fifth of the market.
“We used to send eight truckloads to Israel a day. Nowadays Israel closes our sea and exports its fish to us,” he said.
Ali Al-Habeel, a 52-year-old fisherman, said the fuel crisis has also stopped Gazans sailing towards Egyptian waters to buy the fish at sea off Egyptian boats.
Slideshow (5 Images)
The Hamas Gaza government does not try to stop the smuggling of fish via tunnels. Representatives of its agriculture ministry vet the merchandise to ensure it is fit for consumption.
But customers prefer it fresh, said Abu Hasseera, whose family owns a restaurant at Gaza’s beach-front.
“We try hard to make our own catch from the Gaza sea to satisfy our customers, and we tell them when it is not our catch,” he said. “Egyptian fish is good and varied, but you have to make sure it is fresh.”A new global analysis of the distribution of forests and woodlands has “found” 467 million hectares of previously unreported forest – an area equivalent to 60% of the size of Australia.
The discovery increases the known amount of global forest cover by around 9%, and will significantly boost estimates of how much carbon is stored in plants worldwide.
The new forests were found by surveying “drylands” – so called because they receive much less water in precipitation than they lose through evaporation and plant transpiration. As we and our colleagues report today in the journal Science, these drylands contain 45% more forest than has been found in previous surveys.
We found new dryland forest on all inhabited continents, but mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, around the Mediterranean, central India, coastal Australia, western South America, northeastern Brazil, northern Colombia and Venezuela, and northern parts of the boreal forests in Canada and Russia. In Africa, our study has doubled the amount of known dryland forest.
With current satellite imagery and mapping techniques, it might seem amazing that these forests have stayed hidden in plain sight for so long. But this type of forest was previously difficult to measure globally, because of the relatively low density of trees.
What’s more, previous surveys were based on older, low-resolution satellite images that did not include ground validation. In contrast, our study used higher-resolution satellite imagery available through Google Earth Engine – including images of more than 210,000 dryland sites – and used a simple visual interpretation of tree number and density. A sample of these sites were compared with field information to assess accuracy.
Unique opportunity
Given that drylands – which make up about 40% of Earth’s land surface – have more capacity to support trees and forest than we previously realised, we have a unique chance to combat climate change by conserving these previously unappreciated forests.
Drylands contain some of the most threatened, yet disregarded, ecosystems, many of which face pressure from climate change and human activity. Climate change will cause many of these regions to become hotter and even drier, while human expansion could degrade these landscapes yet further. Climate models suggest that dryland biomes could expand by 11-23% by the end of the this century, meaning they could cover more than half of Earth’s land surface.
Considering the potential of dryland forests to stave off desertification and to fight climate change by storing carbon, it will be crucial to keep monitoring the health of these forests, now that we know they are there.
TERN AusPlots, Author provided
Climate policy boost
The discovery will dramatically improve the accuracy of models used to calculate how much carbon is stored in Earth’s landscapes. This in turn will help calculate the carbon budgets by which countries can measure their progress towards the targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol and its successor, the Paris Agreement.
Our study increases the estimates of total global forest carbon stocks by anywhere between 15 gigatonnes and 158 gigatonnes of carbon – an increase of between 2% and 20%.
This study provides more accurate baseline information on the current status of carbon sinks, on which future carbon and climate modelling can be based. This will reduce errors for modelling of dryland regions worldwide. Our discovery also highlights the importance of conservation and forest growth in these areas.
The authors acknowledge the input of Jean-François Bastin and Mark Grant in the writing of this article. The research was carried out by researchers from 14 organisations around the world, as part of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Forest Survey.Who invented POP ROCKS®?
“Carbonated Candy” was originally invented in 1956 by William A. Mitchell, a chemist at the General Foods company looking for a way to make instant carbonated soda (think Coke) by somehow trapping carbon dioxide into candy tablets. But when the instant soda experiment didn’t turn out, the formula was forgotten and put away. Twenty years later, another chemist came across the formula, reworked it a little, and turned it into POP ROCKS®.
Though POP ROCKS® had been thoroughly tested and found innocuous, the exploding candy still startled residents when it was first released. The FDA arranged a telephone hotline to assure anxious parents that the popping candy would not cause children to choke. Mixing the candy with carbonated drinks would cause the stomach to explode, was the popular buzz.
General Foods was battling “exploded kid” rumors as early as 1979, a mere four years after the product went to market. They took out full-page ads in 45 majors publications, wrote some 50,000 letters to school principals around the country, and sent the confection’s inventor on the road to explain to all that POP ROCKS® generate less gas than half a can of soda and ingesting them could induce nothing worse in the human body than a hearty, non-life-threatening belch. Despite all these measures, the rumors of the urban legend abound even to this day.
But rumors die hard. POP ROCKS® were briefly discontinued in the mid-1980’s.
Rising from the rumor-fanned flames just a few years later, today POP ROCKS® continues to be a national brand full of energy.If you google "sandwich art," tons of images of expertly-designed sandwiches appear -- everything from a Spongebob Squarehead sandwich to Hello Kitty in bread form. Artist Brittany Powell interpreted "sandwich art" literally; she replicated famous artists' styles by using a slice of bread and some common sandwich ingredients. Powell and former classmate Tae Kitakata started Low-Commitment Projects at the beginning of 2012 -- each Monday they publish a new post on their blog. Here's how they describe their low-commitment venture:
Low-Commitment Projects provides us a chance to share concepts and schemes without a huge outlay of time, energy, or money. These ventures are like the materialization of mental sketches; there's minimal risk because they're quick.
"Sandwich Artist" is one of these projects. It's edible art, literally.
All photos used with permission from Brittany Powell.
PHOTO GALLERY Sandwich Art
[Via Laughing Squid]The Prince of Objects: Katamari and Ontology
Here’s the latest in a series of articles chronicling my unhealthy obsession with videogames and ontology. Just in case you thought I was back to blogging about normal stuff.
Most videogames have dynamic objects that you can interact with and static objects that you cannot interactive with. After a few minutes of experimentation, experienced players intuitively understand what is static in a game and what is not. If we imagine a typical first-person shooter, “the environment” is static: trees and ground and sky, but also buildings, rubble, street signs, and so on. This environment provides ambiance and strategic cover, and perhaps motivation for progress, but little of concrete utility to the player. Interactive, ‘real’ objects are usually things with obvious utility or drawbacks: guns, ammunition, vehicles, and people usually top the list. But abstract games have a similar ontological divide: in Tetris, the tetrominoes are real, interactive objects. But the score board and playing field lie inert and mostly uninteresting.
It’s easy to see that the ontology of most games relies on a division between types of objects: static and dynamic, borrowing the lingo that many game engines use. Things the player can directly affect, and things she cannot. No matter how many rockets you fire at that stop sign, it’s not going anywhere, sorry. (Furthermore there are objects that are not modeled in the game world itself. For example, a spawning system or a menu system could be represented as an object. I’m bracketing that discussion for this essay and will get back to it at some point.)
What would a game with a flat ontology look like? Jason Rohrer’s Inside a Star-filled Sky comes close, as I posited the other day in a roundabout way. The game with the flattest ontology I can think of is none other than 2004’s sleeper hit for PlayStation 2, Katamari Damacy.
The Prince of Objects
If you’re unfamiliar with Katamari Damacy, and since I’m too lazy to write one myself, I’ll quote Wikipedia’s current description of the game:
The game’s plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations, and Moon, which were accidentally destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to people to mountains, until the ball has grown great enough to become a star. Katamari Damacy’s story, characters, and settings are bizarre and heavily stylized, rarely attempting any resemblance of realism, though the brands and items used are based on those current in Japan during the game’s production.
Katamari Damacy eschews the static/dynamic divide seen in most videogames–at least, to a point. Everything is an object to be picked up. Domino, snail, seat cushion, pencil sharpener, lipstick; police car, picnic table, graffito, telephone pole, shoe store sign; hot air balloon, butcher shop, iceberg, storm cloud, and Jumboman alike. All are objects to wadded up into your magic ball.
For myself, Katamari’s primary delight came from the slow realization that things which appeared to be static when the Prince’s ball is small turn out to be dynamic when the scale changes. You might spend the first five minutes of a level rolling around a house. The house is immovable and noninteractive, comprising of a maze for you to traverse and collect the smaller items that it make their home within its walls. But five minutes later you’re 50 meters in diameter and can pick up the entire house as easily as if it were a ballpoint pen!
And yet the way this scaling works is extremely interesting. I’ll look at another example: a park. At the small scale, you find yourself inside the park, working your way up from popsicles to picnic baskets to punk rockers. But at a certain scale, those objects become abstracted into the notion of a “park” as an object on its own. You can no longer pick up a single popsicle–you’re too big. This is related to a concept in game engines called “level of detail” or “LOD” (basic explanation here) In a game like Skyrim, when you’re far away from a mountain range the game does not render every single goat and tree on that mountain. It shows you the mountain in the abstract in order to save on resources. What’s interesting is that LOD normally applies to things that are far away from the player or from the camera. In the case of Katamari, LOD applies to a case where an object is no longer on a scale you care about anymore. What we’re seeing here is a case of a Latourian black box appearing in a game. Yes, we can and do appreciate the individual elements of a park, but at some level we close that box and begin to refer to the park as an object in and of itself. What was inside the park no longer exists, and is subsumed by the “park” object.
Contrast this to a game like Minecraft, where huge objects are constructed from raw materials, either by human hands or the hands of the world generation algorithm. While Minecraft features objects at many scales, it never abstracts those objects. Every object in Minecraft is either a building block or an aggregate composed of building blocks. It’s a strictly atomist ontology: there’s the stuff the world is made of (wood, stone, coal, iron, etc), and everything else can be reduced to those atoms, literally with the blow of a hammer. (Perhaps it’s more Empedoclean, since there’s not a single substance at the root of things but rather a set of primal elements.)
While large objects in Katamari are indeed composed of smaller objects, they are not mere aggregates. They are qualitatively different from the sum of their parts. Here’s Graham Harman on Latourian black boxes:
“Finally, we have seen that Latour’s relationism allows him to replace the usual twofold rift of philosophy with a plurality of levels. [...]There is no final stratum of brute material from which flimsier, more ostentatious entities would then be molded. [...] There is no substance, only black boxes, and like Pandora’s box they can be opened at will to examine the delicate internal negotiations that made them possible. Traditional realism’s hobgoblin of the ‘mere aggregate’ or ‘mere thing of reason’ is no longer a worry, since in the end everything is an aggregate, assembled carefully or carelessly from numerous components. Gaps multiply to infinity and are constantly crossed by the work of translation, not by the impossible perilous leap so deservedly ridiculed by James. In short, there is no final layer of reality from which all relations will have been cleansed. The stunning metaphysical implication here, which Latour never discusses openly, is an infinite regress of actors. If there are only black boxes and never a final substance, then we will never come to a final stage in any analysis.” (Harman, Prince of Networks, 106) [emphasis mine]
This “plurality of levels” is immediately clear in Katamari Damacy. While at one level the house is a container for smaller objects you can pick up, at another level it becomes an object you can pick up in its own right. When I read that gaps “multiply to infinity and are constantly crossed by the work of translation,” I think of the moment in Katamari when you hear a chorus of harps and get a sort of magic transition to a new size category. Moving from small to large is not a smooth, continuous process. This is for technical reasons related to LOD and memory management: the PlayStation 2 simply can’t model every object in the world as dynamic, so when we jump the gap between scales, the engine places small objects in various black boxes and closes them up for good. This is the work of translation between the multiple levels of reality, represented in Katamari Damacy by your magical katamari ball, or perhaps the King, who appears with a pithy comment whenever translation between scales occurs.
On another level, at the end of a stage the King of All Cosmos shoots your balls of stuff into the sky and they are transformed into stars. It’s an occasionalist world, but instead of Allah, the King is waiting there to provide the magic needed for objects to truly touch one another and become aggregates, for the black boxes to close. The prince brings objects together, but the king allows them to translate.
The ontology of Katamari Damacy implies the “infinite regress of actors” that Harman identifies in his take on Latour’s metaphysics (which Harman finds unacceptable and dedicates a significant portion of Prince of Networks to offering an alternative). Unlike Rohrer’s Inside a Star-filled Sky, where the player opens up black boxes and can travel ever downwards or upwards into a literal infinite regress of objects, Katamari stops at a certain point. In the credits you roll up the nations of the Earth itself. In its sequel, We <3 Katamari, you can roll up the solar system |
be withdrawn from the decentralized exchange. It is a representation of how much bitcoin a user is entitled to upon withdrawal. While credit stays the same, the amount of bitcoin that credit is worth fluctuates with the market.Example: As a buyer (committer,) you must reserve some of your own bitcoin as collateral before accepting BTC in a buy position.1) Say I want to buy 1 BTC worth $500 in the market.2) I have 1 BTC of my own, and choose to use that much as collateral3) Waiting for the appropriate market rate, I finally accept the best lender's offer, committing myself to pay back $500 worth of Bitcoin in the market before I'm able to withdraw. At the exact same time, the lender receives $500 worth of credit to spend on BTC at a time of their choosing.4) Now I effectively own 2 BTC, but I MUST set a stop loss order that will prevent me from owing more than 2 BTC to the market. At the most, I could set my stop to sell 2 BTC at $250, but this would result in a total loss, something I see as undesirable. I move to put a stop loss at $400, meaning if my bitcoin loses value to become worth only $400 USD/BTC, I've decided to take a loss at that point and sell back 1.2 BTC into the system, keeping my 0.8 BTC for myself5) If my bitcoin gains value, I can sell it back to the market at any time. Suppose that the market is so competitive that it drives up the price to $600 BTC/USD, I can choose to withdraw my bitcoin back out of the system. Doing so requires me to pay back $500 worth of bitcoin, which is 0.83333333 BTC. Now I have 1.16666667 BTC (worth $700) outside of the exchange for myself.More details to come. Just gauging interest for now. Bitrated user: Rees.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 404Merit: 250 Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 17, 2014, 07:20:19 PM
Last edit: February 17, 2014, 11:01:14 PM by toffoo #2 Hi, this is a very interesting idea and I highly encourage you (or anybody else) to attempt to code it up.
If I am understanding your idea correctly, this would be quite similar to ICBIT.se, the existing bitcoin futures exchange, which has been trading for some time. Originally you could deposit and withdraw both bitcoin and dollars there but they have since removed the option to transact in fiat directly. So now it's just bitcoin in and bitcoins out, trading on virtual dollars, much like your idea.
Of course the difference would be that yours would be decentralized, with no fees for the centralized owner to charge, and no third-party credit risk. Also, yours would be more like a "spot future" which would be continually settled, unlike the futures on ICBIT.se which settle every month.
I can think of no technical or commercial reason why this idea couldn't catch on and perhaps eventually become the de facto spot market for bitcoin/fiat... with the following catch: other centralized exchanges dealing in btc/fiat that actually transact in fiat will still be necessary somewhere.
If someone has btc and needs dollars, or to buy something in dollars, your exchange can't help.
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MemberActivity: 89Merit: 10 Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 17, 2014, 08:28:16 PM
Last edit: February 17, 2014, 08:38:20 PM by 1QaZxSw2 #3 I've been working on a decentralized futures+derivative exchange for a while and this is certainly interesting to me.
EDIT: The real issue is how to create a fair and coherent distributed orderbook. Will it be on a separate website or set of websites? That would still act like a bunch of exchanges. A truly decentralized model would work at the level of individual users.
A second issue is the credit/anti-credit. Where will it be stored? On the blockchain? As dust? On separate websites?
What prevents someone from simply accepting coins for credit and then no longer participating in the system?
Lots of issues here.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 367Merit: 250Find me at Bitrated Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 17, 2014, 09:03:07 PM #4 Quote I can think of no technical or commercial reason why this idea couldn't catch on and perhaps eventually become the de facto spot market for bitcoin/fiat... with the following catch: other centralized exchanges dealing in btc/fiat that actually transact in fiat will still be necessary somewhere.
Thanks for the feedback! I've been wondering about this too. Suppose I've already "sold" my bitcoin for $700 worth of purchasing power in this system. If that credit is limited and can't be double spent, what should stop me from being able to just transfer that credit to someone else?
In theory, I could turn around and sell that token of information that entitles me to buy $X worth of bitcoin. I might arrange a face-to-face meeting and exchange it for real world dollars. I would be giving this person not just bitcoin, but the authority to redeem something for a given amount of bitcoin depending on the market price.
The equivalent anti-credit would ensure that the system has $700 worth of bitcoin (at some price) waiting to be sold. Thanks for the feedback! I've been wondering about this too. Suppose I've already "sold" my bitcoin for $700 worth of purchasing power in this system. If that credit is limited and can't be double spent, what should stop me from being able to just transfer that credit to someone else?In theory, I could turn around and sell that token of information that entitles me to buy $X worth of bitcoin. I might arrange a face-to-face meeting and exchange it for real world dollars. I would be giving this person not just bitcoin, but the authority to redeem something for a given amount of bitcoin depending on the market price.The equivalent anti-credit would ensure that the system has $700 worth of bitcoin (at some price) waiting to be sold. Bitrated user: Rees.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 367Merit: 250Find me at Bitrated Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 17, 2014, 09:24:20 PM #5 Quote from: 1QaZxSw2 on February 17, 2014, 08:28:16 PM I've been working on a decentralized futures+derivative exchange for a while and this is certainly interesting to me.
EDIT: The real issue is how to create a fair and coherent distributed orderbook. Will it be on a separate website or set of websites? That would still act like a bunch of exchanges. A truly decentralized model would work at the level of individual users.
A second issue is the credit/anti-credit. Where will it be stored? On the blockchain? As dust? On separate websites?
What prevents someone from simply accepting coins for credit and then no longer participating in the system?
Lots of issues here.
More power to you. I completely agree that the level at which the exchange operates needs to be addressed (but for now I also want to make sure the market forces operating here are sound)
As far as decentralization goes, this system would ideally not have to connect to a specific website or internet browser at all. It may ultimately be managed through a special type of personal bitcoin wallet that can store this bitcoin, and keep account of it's credit/anti-credit pairs.
"Credit" itself may operate like a redemption token that is inversely proportional in price to bitcoin. It entitles a user to more bitcoin as the price drops, and less bitcoin as the price rises. Where it is "stored" is trickier to answer, because it doesn't necessarily have to exist at all. When a "seller" posts an offer to lend bitcoin in exchange for credit, any person who already has credit (from previous sales) is entitled to take that bitcoin in exchange. Credit is single-use however, and cannot be double spent.
"Anti-credit" binds the bitcoins within a specific order to an address, and does not give the owner permission to withdraw them unconditionally. The process of taking possession of those BTC may ultimately look like some sort of multi-sig transaction which mandates that the BTC cannot be moved until the anti-credit is neutralized. The higher the price goes, the less bitcoin a user has to'sacrifice' in order to withdraw the rest.
Lots of technical details would be have to ironed out to make this provably work, but the result is an exchange system where trust is not an issue.
By accepting BTC, you are committed to selling some portion of the BTC back before it can leave and the rest is yours.
By loaning BTC, you are given a proportional power to redeem this credit for BTC later More power to you. I completely agree that the level at which the exchange operates needs to be addressed (but for now I also want to make sure the market forces operating here are sound)As far as decentralization goes, this system would ideally not have to connect to a specific website or internet browser at all. It may ultimately be managed through a special type of personal bitcoin wallet that can store this bitcoin, and keep account of it's credit/anti-credit pairs."Credit" itself may operate like a redemption token that is inversely proportional in price to bitcoin. It entitles a user to more bitcoin as the price drops, and less bitcoin as the price rises. Where it is "stored" is trickier to answer, because it doesn't necessarily have to exist at all. When a "seller" posts an offer to lend bitcoin in exchange for credit, any person who already has credit (from previous sales) is entitled to take that bitcoin in exchange. Credit is single-use however, and cannot be double spent."Anti-credit" binds the bitcoins within a specific order to an address, and does not give the owner permission to withdraw them unconditionally. The process of taking possession of those BTC may ultimately look like some sort of multi-sig transaction which mandates that the BTC cannot be moved until the anti-credit is neutralized. The higher the price goes, the less bitcoin a user has to'sacrifice' in order to withdraw the rest.Lots of technical details would be have to ironed out to make this provably work, but the result is an exchange system where trust is not an issue.By accepting BTC, you are committed to selling some portion of the BTC back before it can leave and the rest is yours.By loaning BTC, you are given a proportional power to redeem this credit for BTC later Bitrated user: Rees.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 367Merit: 250Find me at Bitrated Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 17, 2014, 10:05:16 PM #7 Quote This is already codified as trading of IOUs in ripple.
However, I like the way you have explained it, and can't see any technical difficulty in creating this as a distinct module / layer.
The big difference between this and ripple, is that it doesn't require the pre-creation of any currency units, or even an independent currency. Credit is created on par with a lender giving away bitcoin, and "anti-credit" (essentially debt) is created in the same action for the party that takes that bitcoin. Annihilation capitalizes on the fact that two parties may agree on the current fair value of a bitcoin but disagree as to whether it is over or undervalued.
Also unlike ripple, it would not be run by any company or foundation. Fortunately, there is no "Annihilation Exchange Inc." The big difference between this and ripple, is that it doesn't require the pre-creation of any currency units, or even an independent currency. Credit is created on par with a lender giving away bitcoin, and "anti-credit" (essentially debt) is created in the same action for the party that takes that bitcoin. Annihilation capitalizes on the fact that two parties may agree on the current fair value of a bitcoin but disagree as to whether it is over or undervalued.Also unlike ripple, it would not be run by any company or foundation. Fortunately, there is no "Annihilation Exchange Inc." Bitrated user: Rees.
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MemberActivity: 89Merit: 10 Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 18, 2014, 12:13:35 AM #9 Quote "Credit" itself may operate like a redemption token that is inversely proportional in price to bitcoin. It entitles a user to more bitcoin as the price drops, and less bitcoin as the price rises. Where it is "stored" is trickier to answer, because it doesn't necessarily have to exist at all. When a "seller" posts an offer to lend bitcoin in exchange for credit, any person who already has credit (from previous sales) is entitled to take that bitcoin in exchange. Credit is single-use however, and cannot be double spent.
So far, this is a vision statement (a good one) but is not clear if it could even be implemented.
I need clarifications for example, how can one distinguish between credit of various types? USD/EUR/Gold. How is credit spending tracked on the blockchain? How is double spending prevented?
Quote "Anti-credit" binds the bitcoins within a specific order to an address, and does not give the owner permission to withdraw them unconditionally. The process of taking possession of those BTC may ultimately look like some sort of multi-sig transaction which mandates that the BTC cannot be moved until the anti-credit is neutralized. The higher the price goes, the less bitcoin a user has to'sacrifice' in order to withdraw the rest.
This locks the user out and may retard adoption. What is the point in getting bitcoin if you cant use it for whatever you need it for? Note that in the fiat world, you can exchange USD for EUR and you are free to do whatever you want with the currency you currently possess.
It may be better to re-brand the "credit and anti-credit" as "long and short" contract positions, since when you are in a long futures contract, the only thing you can do is to hold it or close it out for profit or loss. So far, this is a vision statement (a good one) but is not clear if it could even be implemented.I need clarifications for example, how can one distinguish between credit of various types? USD/EUR/Gold. How is credit spending tracked on the blockchain? How is double spending prevented?This locks the user out and may retard adoption. What is the point in getting bitcoin if you cant use it for whatever you need it for? Note that in the fiat world, you can exchange USD for EUR and you are free to do whatever you want with the currency you currently possess.It may be better to re-brand the "credit and anti-credit" as "long and short" contract positions, since when you are in a long futures contract, the only thing you can do is to hold it or close it out for profit or loss.
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MemberActivity: 88Merit: 10 Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. February 19, 2014, 08:59:40 AM #15 What happens if you hold 400$ worth of anti-credit and the price falls to 1$? You would owe 400 bitcoins to close that anti-credit.
And on the flipside, I'm owed 400$ worth of bitcoins and I want to use my credit to purchase 400 bitcoins. Where do they come from?
And the problem exponentially increases as the price nears 0$.
BTW this feels like an options market, where obligations are paid with the equivalent USD amount in BTC.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 367Merit: 250Find me at Bitrated Re: Annihilation Market: Trustless, P2P, distributed, Zero Sum, No deposit, No fees. March 06, 2014, 12:43:48 AM #17 Quote from: Sarchar on February 19, 2014, 08:59:40 AM What happens if you hold 400$ worth of anti-credit and the price falls to 1$? You would owe 400 bitcoins to close that anti-credit.
And on the flipside, I'm owed 400$ worth of bitcoins and I want to use my credit to purchase 400 bitcoins. Where do they come from?
And the problem exponentially increases as the price nears 0$.
BTW this feels like an options market, where obligations are paid with the equivalent USD amount in BTC.
Also an excellent question. If you hold an anti-credit position, there is a "floor" of how low the price can go before the system forces it to close. This would depending on how much of your own bitcoin reserves are backing the position. The person who has this option open would be able to adjust this limit depending on how much risk they're willing to tolerate.
Remember that no one can just take a bitcoin loan for free, they're also guaranteeing that they'll pay back an appropriate amount of credit into the system (and hoping that the price goes up so it takes less bitcoin)
If I have 1 bitcoin of my own, and I accept 1 of yours for $400 worth of anti-credit, the price can only fall to $200 at the lowest before my margin is up, and I am automatically forced to sell back both 2 BTC for $200 each. Any lower than this, and the bitcoin I hold in my option won't be enough to cover the credit I've promised. Also an excellent question. If you hold an anti-credit position, there is a "floor" of how low the price can go before the system forces it to close. This would depending on how much of your own bitcoin reserves are backing the position. The person who has this option open would be able to adjust this limit depending on how much risk they're willing to tolerate.Remember that no one can just take a bitcoin loan for free, they're also guaranteeing that they'll pay back an appropriate amount of credit into the system (and hoping that the price goes up so it takes less bitcoin)If I have 1 bitcoin of my own, and I accept 1 of yours for $400 worth of anti-credit, the price can only fall to $200 at the lowest before my margin is up, and I am automatically forced to sell back both 2 BTC for $200 each. Any lower than this, and the bitcoin I hold in my option won't be enough to cover the credit I've promised. Bitrated user: Rees.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
GRINNING fans did Nazi salutes outside an SPL ground to mark the launch of a book glorifying football hooligans.
The notorious Motherwell Saturday Service - who call themselves the “SS” - organised the stunt on the steps at Fir Park.
Last night, club bosses were examining the sick images and discussing whether to launch an investigation.
The SS initially hired a room at Fir Park for the launch of the book Dressers.
But club bosses got wind of it and cancelled the bash.
The ragtag bunch still managed to hold the event at the independent Fir Park Social Club, opposite Motherwell FC’s ground.
Around 140 of the group posed for photos on the steps outside the Phil O’Donnell stand, with some doing “sieg heil” salutes.
Motherwell FC stressed that the event took part in the social club, which has no links to the football club.
A spokesman said: “We are trying to be Scotland’s premier family andcommunity club and we are trying to portray a message that this the club is all welcoming to everybody – families and children.
“We condemn football violence in the highest possible way.”
The club do not know if the people at the event were regular fans.
The spokesman added: “We don’t know any of these people. Because it’s outside the ground, it makes itdifficult for us to do anything.
“People can walk up and do anything.”
The spokesman added that the event was booked simply as a “book launch”.
He said: “The club found out what the book involved was and cancelled the booking and told them to seek alternative premises.
“That was in the middleof the week leading up to the event.”
The Motherwell SS were named in tribute to Hitler’s ruthless Schutzstaffel squad, who carried out some of the worst atrocities of World War II.
SS is also the initials of the name given for the book’s author, Stanley Smith.
Promotional blurb for the book brazenly tells how it “chronicles the rise of one of Scotland’s original football casual groups, pioneering the fashion that was to become central to the Saturday afternoon fracas in town centres and at football grounds all over Scotland”.
Fir Park Social Club did not respond to repeated requests to comment.Donna Jean Godchaux MacKay, best known for her seven-year tenure as a member of the Grateful Dead, will be inducted into the Alabama Music Hall Of Fame next year as per Times Daily. One-time Allman Brothers Band keyboardist Chuck Leavell is also among the inductees.
Producer Johnny Sandlin, rockers Wet Willie and the Muscle Shoals Horns round out the list of 2016 Alabama Music Hall Of Fame inductees. Next year’s induction ceremony is scheduled for February 26 at the Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa in Florence.
Donna not only spent time touring the world with the Dead, she also contributed vocals to sessions in Muscle Shoals including on Elvis Presley’s “comeback” hit “Suspicious Minds.” Chuck has gone on to become a member of and musical director for The Rolling Stones, while Johnny Sandlin produced records from the likes of Widespread Panic and The Allman Brothers Band.
Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay Add to My Bands We don’t currently have any upcoming shows for Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay. Pro Tip: Click “Add to My Bands” above and we’ll notify you when Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay announces shows in your area.A new study in the November issue of the journal Appetite finds that obese women display significantly weaker impulse control than normal-weight women, but between obese and normal-weight men, the impulsivity levels are nearly the same. The study was conducted by researchers in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Psychology.
UAB researchers conducted the study to see how obese and normal-weight men and women differed in their decision-making skills, specifically in delay discounting, the measure of how much an individual is driven by immediate gratification versus the willingness to wait for delayed but greater rewards.
In the study of 95 men and women, UAB researchers gave the participants the choice of receiving varying hypothetical amounts of money immediately or fixed hypothetical amounts of money to be received after delays of two weeks, one month, six months or one, three, five or 10 years. The hypothetical rewards ranged from $1,000 to $50,000. The researchers found that obese women discounted the value of future rewards at a rate three-to-four times greater than that of normal-weight women, suggesting greater impulsivity.
Obese men, however, and the male and female control subjects all showed similar levels of delay discounting. The results were the same even when the researchers controlled for differences in IQ and income, both of which have been found to be related to measures of impulsivity.
One explanation for the differences between men and women may be found in a personality trait known as eating-related disinhibition, which is the tendency to overeat in response to certain situations or cues such as a big display of dessert, said UAB researcher Rosalyn Weller, Ph.D., the study's principle investigator. Previous studies have shown that those who score higher in disinhibition have higher body mass indexes and gain weight more easily, she said. However, men score lower in disinhibition than women.
"Our study found that obese men have more impulse control than obese women. So, obese men may be protected from more impulsive behavior on the delay-discounting task by having lower disinhibition in general. Obese women may have the double whammy of being female and having higher body mass index," Weller said. T
he UAB researchers are now conducting delay-discounting studies using functional brain imaging (fMRI). The researchers are using the UAB Civitan International Research Center's 3 Tesla head-only magnet to investigate what happens in the brains of obese individuals who vary in impulsivity as they make decisions.
UAB researchers James Cox, Ph.D., and Edwin Cook III, Ph.D., and UAB psychology graduate student Kathy Avsar are the co-authors of the study.IMAGE - FORBES
by DAVE MARTINEZ
Tuesday’s NASL board meetings overloaded the internet with rumors, innuendo and an endless stream of drama.
Here is what we know:
ON CARLOS SLIM
Hours prior to the leak of Carlos Slim’s possible involvement and rumored purchase of the New York Cosmos, multiple sources were already informing us that the Mexican billionaire was somehow tied to the Cosmos in a potential ownership stake. Unfortunately, without a solid source on the ground to confirm, we declined to share Slim’s role until we managed to investigate the matter a bit further.
Today, several sources continue to insist on Slim’s role as a possible investor or new owner of the Cosmos.
EoS reached out to the New York Cosmos for comment. They would neither confirm nor deny Slim’s possible involvement.
Does that indicate some truth to the reports? Perhaps. But without final confirmation, it is difficult to say. What we do know is that the Cosmos were represented at the Atlanta meetings by team Vice Chairman, Jeremy Wilkins. Seamus O’Brien remained in New York and is rumored to be speaking with potential investors for the club.
Could there be a connection?
For what it’s worth, this isn’t the first time we have heard Carlos Slim’s name connected with the Cosmos. Earlier this year, he was rumored to be interested in an investment role with the club as well. However, without a clear confirmation to the chatter, EoS decided to forgo the report.
THE COSMOS FUTURE
Much like the ESPN report released late Tuesday night, EoS has also heard the Cosmos ownership has no interest in a potential USL move. However, their future participation in the NASL is contingent on this week’s meetings, meaning even that stance could change.
What we have learned is that most, if not all, New York Cosmos players are up to date on pay as of late Tuesday afternoon. Players are now waiting on bonuses and wages for December to be paid.
Front office staff, however, remain unpaid, with some enduring two billing cycles (four weeks) or more without a check heading into December and the holiday season.
OTHER NEWS …
Sources tipped off Sunil Gulati’s presence in Atlanta, along with heads of the USL. What their involvement or participation may be is anyone’s guess.
One of the juicier rumors of the day came from the presence of four potential ownership groups that may be interested in joining the league. None would be ready for a possible 2017 season. However, a key, unnamed NASL backer is said to be pulling strings with several potential investors in order to entice them to join the league and participate in its revival phase.
UPDATE: Sunil Gulati tweeted about his role in Atlanta this week, which apparently involves more work between the USL and NASL:With “Game of Thrones,” HBO wove dragons, swordfights, and blood magic into a demographic-crossing television hit. Now it hopes to do the same with robot cowboys and mad scientists.
Based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 film about a theme park filled with thinking, human-like machines gone haywire, “Westworld” premieres Oct. 2 on the premium cabler. Humongous in scope, the show is an ambitious gambit at a critical time for HBO, which could use a big drama to carry its flag past the looming end of “Game of Thrones.” To give “Westworld” a chance at becoming that show, HBO’s marketing team is using technology that mirrors the world of the series to rally hardcore fans.
“We knew that there would be two distinct strategies,” says Sabrina Caluori, senior vice president of digital media and marketing for HBO. The first of those is the theatrical-style campaign of on-air, online, and outdoor advertising that is a must for a big-series launch.
“The second,” Caluori says, “given the pedigree of the producers, as well as the content and the rich story world, is a primarily interactive campaign that was targeted at sci-fi fans, tech enthusiasts, and the fans of our producers.”
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Those producers are the husband/wife team of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy — he of “The Dark Knight” and other collaborations with his brother, Christopher Nolan; she of “Burn Notice.” They serve as principal writers and showrunners on “Westworld,” and executive produce alongside J.J. Abrams. They also worked closely with HBO on the series’ marketing, from the poster tagline — “Every hero has a code” — to a virtual-reality experience and a microsite that will serve as a hub for fans looking to dive deeper.
“With ‘Westworld,’ there were really good opportunities to bring the park out into the real world and break that fourth wall,” Nolan says. “So we talked about all of the ways that we could actualize the park in the real world.”
One of those was VR. Last year, HBO invited Nolan and Joy to demo the HTC Vive — the first time either had tried the technology. Joy described feeling “reality shock” after removing the headset. “It’s such an interesting, immersive way to tell a story, and it dovetails so nicely with what we’re doing with ‘Westworld,’” she says.
Fast-forward to September, and the premiere of a VR “Westworld” experience created by series staffers at TechCrunch Disrupt.
The price of a headset such as the Vive starts at $799. That makes VR among the least accessible platforms on which to market a television show. HBO understood and embraced that; after all, a trip to Westworld does not come cheap.
“We built something that was highly immersive and interactive,” Caluori says. “The fact that we didn’t get scale out of it from a consumer perspective matched with the overall strategy of both reaching that tech influencer but also continuing to drive home the exclusivity of Westworld as a park destination.”
Matching that strategy is the microsite, DiscoverWestworld.com, which resembles the website for any luxury resort. But it has darker substrata for the frequent user to dig into. As the series progresses, it will be a portal through which fans can unlock additional content, all of which will have input from Nolan, Joy, and their team.
Such promotional tools are not new; Caluori says it was “a no-brainer” to build a realistic theme-park site. The site for ABC’s “Lost” was a leap forward in the science of sucking time from super-fans. But tech advances have ripped the ceiling off how innovative such sites can be. If “Westworld” delivers creatively, the site could be one way to not just lure a fan base, but to keep it fed.
“Your most engaged and passionate fans, particularly when we’re dealing with a genre show, can be your greatest advocate,” Caluori says. “So that’s for us the reason to build out this very rich experience. If we can create something cool, they’ll help to drive the overall word of mouth and success of the show.”Activists protesting against Japan’s indigenous dolphin hunting held a rally in Tokyo Friday, calling on officials to stop sales of the marine mammals to aquariums and as meat.
Some two dozen campaigners, mostly Japanese, congregated in front of the Fisheries Agency with banners and pictures, urging the government to ban dolphin catching.
“Most Japanese people do not know about dolphin hunting,” said Noriko Ikeda, who organised the rally and a member of Action for Marine Mammals.
“The government has argued the practise is part of the Japanese tradition and food culture.
“But reality is that it is extremely rare to find Japanese people who wish to eat dolphins. The real problem is that hunt is driven by demand for live dolphins among aquariums to put on dolphin shows,” she said.
The US ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy recently tweeted her concern at the “inhumaneness” of a Japanese village’s traditional dolphin hunt.
“Deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing. USG (US Government) opposes drive hunt fisheries,” she said in an online post.
Every year the fishermen of Taiji in western Japan corral hundreds of dolphins in a secluded bay, select a few dozen for sale to aquariums and marine parks and kill the rest for meat.
Activists from the international militant environmental group Sea Shepherd have streamed live footage of the dolphin capture in Taiji, which drew worldwide attention in 2010 when it became the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary “The Cove”.
Defenders of the hunt say it is a tradition and point out that the animals it targets are not endangered, a position echoed by the Japanese government.
They say Western objections are hypocritical and ignore the vastly larger number of cows, pigs and sheep butchered to satisfy demand elsewhere.
The Japanese activists who gathered Friday said dolphin hunting was tarnishing Japan’s reputation as Tokyo prepares to host the 2020 summer Olympic Games.A couple in their early 20s, living in Nashville, subscribed to Comcast home internet service. In their area, that came with a 300 GB data cap. All well and good for these two, since they don’t use much data… except Comcast claimed they did, and billed them for $1500 in overage in less than three months.
The young man’s father wrote to Ars Technica about the bill, and that’s where the saga begins.
Over the course of several months, Ars spoke repeatedly with the customers and Comcast to try to find out what was going on. And while media attention got Comcast to reverse the charges and halt collection on the absurdly high bill, every stone Ars turned over just resulted in more questions about Comcast’s usage meter.
That’s the usage meter that said that two young adults “working long hours” and not home much to use their Comcast connection were using 1,750 GB of data in one month and 2,850 the next — about 5 TB total that the customers insist they never used.
The young couple say they watch a few hours of Netflix a day, but they don’t work at home, don’t run any servers, and don’t really do online gaming.
Netflix HD video can use about 3 GB per hour of data, Ars notes, but you’d have to run it for 33 hours a day in order to hit the usage Comcast claims these customers hit. And as Ars dryly reminds us, days on this planet generally come in the 24-hour variety.
Even while everyone troubleshooted for “leaks,” making sure no-one else was leaching off their WiFi or that no devices had gone rogue, the impossible usage mounted up, like a cartoon dial spinning itself into a frenzy:
One time, Brad was on the phone with Comcast about a notification that he’d reached 90 percent of the data allotment only five days into the month. Minutes later, while talking to a Comcast employee, “I got a message saying I reached 115 percent of my usage,” he said.
Ars reporters sat down to write the story in April, they say — but then it got weird. Because instead of admitting their meter might be faulty, a Comcast spokesperson told Ars that the company was not admitting any fault, and that it stood by its meter readings as completely accurate.
Naturally, Ars asked Comcast to prove it. That kicked off a months-long process of scientific experimentation in the customers’ home, testing one device at a time.
In the end, Comcast said it was their Apple TV that was sucking up all the data. So they sent it back to Apple, who checked it out and found — you guessed it! No issues.
The testing process, though, did indicate that Comcast’s meter was not occupying the same reality as the subscribers’ home. It racked up high usage during a time when nobody was at home to use the internet, and showed low usage during a four-hour stretch when they were actively streaming video.
In the end, nothing got solved. The ludicrous bill went away, thanks to media attention, but neither Comcast nor the customers never did figure out what caused their meter to go nuts… and Comcast never admitted that it did.
This tale of woe is similar to another story from last year, where Comcast told another customer in Tennessee that he’d used 120 GB of data at home — despite being out of the country on vacation. That customer flat-out unplugged his cable modem from the wall for a week, and yet Comcast still told him he used 66 GB of data during that time.
Other customers have complained of the same.
With Comcast’s still-spreading “trial” data cap now going up to 1 TB, from its previous 300 GB limit, |
products that build up while we are awake,” explained Maiken Nedergaard from the University of Rochester in New York, who was involved with the study.
The scientists used "dynamic contrast" magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses a special chemical to improve visability of internal structures, to image what’s called the brain’s “glymphatic pathway.” This is the system whereby cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the clear liquid found in the brain, filters through the brain and exchanges with interstitial fluid (ISF), the liquid found around all other cells in the body. This allows chemicals and waste that build up in the brain to be removed, such as amyloid beta and tau proteins, which are associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
It’s been known that this process happens more when we’re sleeping, with clinical studies showing that sleep drives the removal of amyloid beta from the brain, but this study shows that apparently the position in which we sleep might also influence this clearance. The team anesthetized rats, and then tracked the efficiency of the glymphatic pathway when the rodents were sleeping in one of three positions, either lateral (on their side), prone (on their bellies), or supine (on their backs).
“The analysis showed us consistently that glymphatic transport was most efficient in the lateral position when compared to the supine or prone positions,” explained Dr. Helene Benveniste, who coauthored the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. “Because of this finding, we propose that the body posture and sleep quality should be considered when standardizing future diagnostic imaging procedures to assess CSF-ISF transport in humans.”
It’s interesting in that many mammals naturally tend to sleep on their sides, from dogs to cats and even elephants, although the authors do note that a wild animal's sleeping behavior is also probably influenced by survival, and thus might be different when compared to humans. As this study was done on rats, it’s not yet known whether the same conclusions can be drawn for humans, but considering it’s been shown that both the rodents and people tend to favor sleeping on their side, it’s not such a wild idea.
“Many types of dementia are linked to sleep disturbances, including difficulties in falling asleep,” concludes Nedergaard. “It is increasingly acknowledged that these sleep disturbances may accelerate memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease. Our finding brings new insight into this topic by showing it is also important what position you sleep in.”CTVNews.ca Staff
A ban on touching during recess at a B.C. elementary school has shocked parents, who call the new no-touch policy "ridiculous."
For most kids, recess is a chance to run around and goof-off with their friends, but a new ban on touching at a school in Aldergrove could put a damper on playtime.
School administrators at Coghlan Fundamental Elementary School in B.C. have banned kindergarten students from touching each other during recess.
Students were sent home with a letter on Friday, advising parents of the new hands-off rule which prohibits games such as tag, holding hands and imaginary Star Wars light saber duels.
Julie Chen, a mother from the school, says she does not understand the motive behind such a strict ban.
"I can’t imagine little kids not being able to hug each other or help each other on the playground," Chen told CTV news. "Not tag, no hugging, no touching at all."
The letter states that the ban was put in place as a result of several playground injuries over the past few weeks due to games and other hands-on play during recess.
The school says it will have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the no-touching policy and children who break the rule will miss playtime or be sent to the office.
School district spokesmen Ken Hoff says the ban is simply a measure to ensure student safety and not meant to severely punish students for touching.
"It wasn’t meant to be an instantaneous situation where the hammer is just going to drop if a child touches another child," Hoff said. "I think what it was meant to convey is we are taking the issue seriously," he added.
The letter asks parents to talk to their children about the new rules and encourage them to come up imaginary games that don’t involve "fighting".
Buzz Bishop, writer of popular parenting blog DadCAMP, says the new ban sounds absurd.
"School bans touching? Touching. How can they be serious?" Bishop wrote in a recent post.
"Are we that terrible at monitoring our kids that we can’t handle the few running amok on the playground, and we must put the entire student population on lockdown? Apparently we are," he added.
Chen feels the new rule is simply taking things too far.
"I get that kids have to have rules but at some point, where do we draw the line?" Chen said.
"I am not going to tell my daughter she can’t touch her friends at school. I am going to teach her boundaries."The little things
I spent two years working at an Innocence Project in Pittsburgh. The job involved scouring thousands of letters from prisoners who claim they’re wrongfully convicted of the crimes that landed them behind bars and then writing journalism about the very few innocence claims that seem legitimate.
Reading these letters — and pursuing leads on promising cases — it’s clear that prisoners do not have access to the web or any other form of digital communication. This is for security reasons, we’re told by prison administrators. So every page of every trial transcript needs to be copied and mailed. There are literally thousands of pages of certain criminal trial transcripts and other assorted court documents. And all correspondence with prisoners happens via post, in actual physical letters. Mere conversations with prisoners can fill cubic feet of boxes with paper.
Prisoners are not the only group of people who use paper every day
Of course, prisoners are an aberration; there are 1.9 million people in lockup nationwide (PDF), which only amounts to about 0.6 percent of the overall U.S. population.
But, at least regarding paper use, maybe they’re not an aberration. Prisoners are not the only population lacking access to reliable computers with secure Internet connections. Prisoners are not the only population befuddled by the process of transforming a piece of paper into an image on a screen. Prisoners are not the only group of people who use paper every day.
The Myth of the Paperless Office is the quintessential book about paper in the digital world. Its authors — a cognitive psychologist, Abigail J. Sellen; and a digital researcher, Richard H. R. Harper, who now conduct research for Microsoft — point out that paper is just easier to use in some cases. For obvious reasons, they offer the collaborative process involved in writing a book as an example:
“[W]hen one of us finishes some work on a chapter, we print it out and hand it to the other. We read it, mark it up, and then discuss it by flipping through the marked-up pages together. There is the proofreading process: we print out the final version of each chapter to catch the surface-level errors (typos, spelling, and grammar) and, more important, to get a sense of the text and the way it flows. Finally, there is the importance of the paper as a tangible object. Ultimately, we want a bound volume in hand — a physical product that testifies to our efforts and that we can hand to family, friends, and colleagues.”
In a 2002 review of the book, Malcolm Gladwell romanticizes similar processes. In Gladwell’s view, an office devoid of paper is often unproductive. “In the tasks that face modern knowledge workers, paper is most useful out in the open, where it can be shuffled and sorted and annotated and spread out,” he writes. “The mark of the contemporary office is not the file. It's the pile.”
It’s a luxury, of course (and some might say it’s a waste), to print entire book chapters or make productivity piles in the office just so you can collaborate and edit with a pen rather than a cursor. And both The Myth of the Paperless Office and Gladwell’s review of it were both published a decade ago. So perhaps things have changed?
Apparently not.
Despite whatever we may think about digital advances and their influence on paper usage, the amount of paper used globally since 1980 has increased by about half. And books certainly aren’t going the way of the dodo; while ebooks have grown immensely in recent years, some paperback and hardcover book markets are still growing.
Maybe the cost benefit of going paperless simply doesn’t match the inconvenience of fundamentally altering everything we do with paper. What would it cost to eliminate whatever security concerns paper instills among prison administrators? What would it cost to recondition authors not to print chapters during the editing process? What would it cost to inspire office workers to collaborate in a different way?
While I’ve not read any comprehensive estimates about what it would cost to make a city such as Chicago “completely paperless,” Paul N. Courant and Matthew “Buzzy” Nielsen wrote an essay called, “On the Cost of Keeping a Book.” It’s on page 81 of this PDF. And it’s worth thinking about.
And going completely paperless may be more difficult than simply declaring a war on the tyranny of paper waste
Courant and Nielsen put the cost of storing a book in a high density library stack at $28.77 annually. It costs less than half that — around $13.10 — to store a book electronically in a redundant, backed up format that won’t be lost forever if a server unexpectedly catches fire or floods or otherwise loses data. There’s a cost savings in going digital, yes. But it’s an eventual cost savings. And it assumes libraries — or archives or government agencies — can acquire the funding and expertise necessary to introduce and then carry out a digital conversion. Easier said than done. As the authors point out: “Storing and providing access to electronic material is indeed expensive and poses many problems, both technical and economic.”
The Myth of the Paperless Office addresses the cost issue, too: In 2002, the authors cite “best estimates” showing that paper forms are the major paper expenditure in U.S. offices. At the time, an estimated $1 billion was spent on designing and printing those forms but between $25 and $35 billion was spent “maintaining, updating, and distributing” them. “[T]he cost of dealing with paper forms after they are produced vastly outweighs the cost of producing them,” the authors write. That means administrative costs, not material costs, are the main expense. So eliminating paper only solves a small piece of the money problem.
Which is to say Reinhardt’s funding shortage and his hesitancy about going paperless at the Illinois state archives is not unique. And going completely paperless — in prisons, in book publishing, and especially in a massive city government such as Chicago’s by 2015 — may be more difficult than simply declaring a war on the tyranny of paper waste.
In October, the Emanuel administration released its 2013 budget overview. It is 187 pages (PDF) of single-spaced text about how the City of Chicago plans to spend nearly $3 billion next year. It contains exactly one paragraph about paper, with no specific amount given for paperless expenditures and technology investments related to going paperless. It says, by 2013, “approximately 48,000 taxpayers are expected to file tax returns and real property tax declarations online.” The City will also “distribute employees’ statements of earnings and W2s electronically” by 2013, and employees will be able to scan “invoices and vouchers for electronic storage and retrieval.”
In all, that sounds good. Paperless payroll, online tax returns, electronic storage.
But speaking of aberrations: Consider that Chicago has 2.7 million residents. If 48,000 are filing online tax forms, that equals only 1.7 percent of the overall population. And the two major changes this year involve digital W2s and scanning invoices that have already been printed on paper.
I guess it’s the little things that matter.
A Chicago nonprofit group called the Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network or UCAN attempted to go paperless a few years back. Walter Grauer, Vice President of Information Technology at UCAN, says the group initially pursued a paperless office because UCAN wanted to “go green.” But they quickly realized they could actually save some money if they were more efficient.
“‘Going green’ is one thing, but it needs to have an added benefit for costs,” he says. “You need to be saving money as well as paper.”
What they found is that the biggest general wastes in their office were paper timesheets and people clicking “print” at their desktops and then forgetting to pick up what they’d printed from the printer. The answer: Electronic timesheets. And now employees are required to physically stand up and push a button on the printer if they want to print something; they need to click print twice — once at their desktop, once at the printer itself.
With small changes, Grauer says they reduced their printing output by about 300,000 sheets of paper every month. They print a lot of paper — 300,000 is about seven percent of their monthly output — but still, he says: “It saved some cash, definitely.”Five Nights At Freddy's Freddy Heads Print Guys Pajama Pants is rated 4.3 out of 5 by 4.
Rated 2 out of 5 by rach1922 from great detail but... These pajama bottoms have great detail and are your typical cotton pajama bottoms, but they run a little small. While you'd think an XL would be a more loose or baggier fit, only in the legs and length is where this counts. The waistband is held up by string that doesn't provide much support. Wish I could return them if I hadn't gotten them on sale!
Rated 5 out of 5 by Cresantm from Excellent fit I bought these for my 14 yr old and he absolutely loves them. The pants appear to be well made and he loves that the material is light but still keeps him warm.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Tammy k from Awesome fit My son loves his pajama pants,will be getting more in the futureThe Latest on a gunman who opened fire in Reno, Nevada (all times local):
10 p.m.
The Las Vegas gunman who killed 58 people in October had previously owned a unit at the Reno high-rise condominium which was the site of an active shooter Tuesday.
Stephen Paddock owned a unit at the Montage but records show he sold the property in December 2016.
Police in Reno say Tuesday's gunman, who is now dead, fired shots from the eighth-floor onto the street below. Police say there were no reports of injuries.
On Oct. 1, Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino onto an outdoor concert below.
___
9:30 p.m.
Police in Reno, Nevada, say a gunman who fired shots from high-rise condos to the street below is dead.
Deputy Chief Tom Robinson told reporters Tuesday night that the man had died after a SWAT team went to the 8th floor of the Montage and engaged him. It wasn't immediately clear whether he was killed by police gunfire or his own.
Robinson says the man had a hostage and was firing from a condo in the building down to the street below, but neither the hostage nor anyone else was hurt.
The luxury high-rise is surrounded by some of downtown Reno's most popular casinos, but the streets were mostly empty when the man was firing.
Authorities say gunshots were going off for at least 20 minutes.
___
8:30 p.m.
Authorities say someone opened fire at a high-rise building of luxury condominiums in Reno, Nevada, but there are no reports of any injuries.
Reno police tweeted Tuesday night that the suspect has been detained.
Trooper Chris Kelley of the Nevada Highway Patrol tells the Reno Gazette-Journal that shots were heard from the building for at least 20 minutes.
The shots were coming from the Montage, a building in downtown Reno where SWAT teams and news vans have gathered. TV news reporters say they heard several shots fired since arriving.
The building is surrounded by some of the city's better known casinos and was once a casino itself before it was converted into luxury condos, according to its website.Phoenix Suns welcome their draft picks Tyler Ulis, left, Dragan Bender, Marquese Chriss during a press conference at Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix on June 24, 2016. (Photo: Cheryl Evans/azcentral sports)
The Suns will pay their three rookies about $7 million combined this season after signing each of the June draft picks to four-year contracts Thursday.
First-round draft picks Dragan Bender, selected fourth overall by the Suns, and Marquese Chriss, acquired by the Suns via trade at No. 8, have their contracts' salaries slotted by the collective bargaining agreement based on where they were picked.
The Suns gave Bender and Chriss the maximum 120 percent of the salary scale. Each first-round pick gets two guaranteed contract years and then the team can exercise third- and fourth-year options a year in advance of those seasons.
MORE SUNS: Leandro Barbosa 'thrilled' to return to Phoenix
Bender will make $3.56 million this season and his four-year contract is potentially worth $16.1 million in total.
Chriss will make $2.45 million this season and his four-year contract is potentially worth $11.1 million in total.
RELATED: Ulis keeps drive despite guaranteed Suns contract
Ulis was selected 34th overall by Phoenix in the second round, where NBA contracts are not guaranteed. Second-round picks could be signed for as low as the league minimum of $543,471 but the Suns agreed to give Ulis the equivalent of a late first-round contract, giving the team four years of relatively low salary control and giving Ulis almost twice as much rookie money.
Ulis will make about $1 million this season and his four-year deal, which also has two guaranteed years and two team option years, is potentially worth about $5 million in total.
Once free agents Jared Dudley and Leandro Barbosa sign, the Suns will have 15 players under contract, including John Jenkins' and Alan Williams' non-guaranteed deals.
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HEAT INDEX: Suns' Top 5 free agent signings of all time
Jenkins' 2016-17 salary of $1.05 million becomes guaranteed Monday if he remains on the roster while Williams, who is playing on the Suns' NBA Summer League team this month, has a 2016-17 salary of $875,000 that would become guaranteed on Sept. 1 if he remains on the roster.
Reach Paul Coro at paul.coro@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-2470. Follow him at www.twitter.com/paulcoro.Tonight the semi-finals in the women’s rugby World Cup are played at Kingspan in Belfast, including a USA-New Zealand contest.
To reach that stage, the US women’s team was the highest runner-up in the cup.
England's Vicky Fleetwood and Amy Wilson-Hardy tackle USA's Kris Thomas during the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup in Dublin on August 17. William Chang is chair of US Rugby Football Union. Photo: Donall Farmer/PA Wire
The tournament caused one of America’s top rugby officials, William HC Chang, to fly into Ireland, where he met rugby leaders, and to pay a 24-hour visit to Belfast.
Mr Chang has been described in the US business media as one of the most successful Asian investors in sport in north America.
He is a part owner of the San Francisco Giants, one of the leading baseball teams in the United States.
Mr Chang is also a rugby fan, having first played it aged 14 at Millfield public school, England, and has risen to be chair of USA rugby.
The Titanic Quarter, including the old drawing offices, as seen from the air. Photo: Paul Faith/PA Wire
At Millfield that Mr Chang met Martin Craigs from Northern Ireland (now a businessman), who invited him to come to the Province back in the early 1970s.
The Troubles were at their height, and Mr Chang did not make it until last week’s visit, during which he called into the News Letter Belfast office.
“Martin taught me rugby 47 years ago, because I had no idea how to play it,” recalls Mr Chang. “I didn’t know how to tackle but I was a black belt in judo so my takedown was a judo takedown, and Martin said ‘no, no, no, you don’t tackle that way’.”
As a boy, Mr Chang, who is Chinese-Japanese-American (his father was Chinese, his mother from Japan, where he grew up), faced boarding school in America or in England. “My parents concluded that the American boarding schools are too liberal and that I would run into trouble. The British boarding schools were more strict and that’s how I ended up in Millfield.”
A cargo boat leaves San Francisco Bay, passing the Golden Gate Bridge. The city, which is in the background,has a port which is increasingly a tourist attraction. Photo by Ian Nicholson/PA
He went to one of the world’s best universities, Harvard on America’s east coast, after which he joined his family on the west coast, where they then were. Mr Chang now lives there, in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, and has business interests from property to technology.
“My father only went to school for three years. He wasn’t really smart enough to pick the winners and the losers in the technology business, because you have to have an intuition as to what kind of technology companies are going to do well.
“But he knew technology was going to be a growing industry and that they’re all going to be in Silicon Valley, so the second best thing to investing in a company like Facebook and Google and Apple, is to own real estate where they’re going to be.”
Mr Chang’s father, who recently died aged 97, believed he should start in the family property business at the bottom, so he became a janitor.
The Titanic Visitor Centre, foreground, which is a key part of the regenration of the Titanic Quarter. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
In 1976, Mr Chang senior had also expanded into business in his home nation of China, which he saw was the “next sleeping giant”.
“My father had three mega trends that he got right: First, going to Japan in 1949 [where he met William Chang’s mother]. He saw Japan as the growth factor, but China was nowhere because Mao had just got in, The Cultural Revolution happened.
“So instead of going back to China he went to Japan, then to Silicon Valley [via Taiwan], he saw the technology revolution coming.
“And then from there he went to China.”
When his father fell and fractured his spine in 2001, William Chang sold their Chinese interests. It was a good time to do so, with the country growing fast.
“My question was: what am I going to invest in?”
He thought venture capital, in which investors finance emerging firms, would boom. He also foresaw growth in sport and that power would go from TV networks (“ABC, CBS, NBC”) to controllers of content.
“So I went to the media and entertainment business where I said, I’m going to own the content... I started to buy sports teams, baseball teams and a couple of football teams, because it was a content factory.”
Mr Chang explains: “In baseball, we play 190-200 games a year, almost every night and it’s three hours of programming, one hour of shoulder programming before and an hour afterwards. Five hours of compelling content that people, at least fans, want to buy. That has exponentially increased the value of sports franchises.” He thinks it will keep rising.
Asked how much of the San Francisco Giants he owns, Mr Chang replies: “It’s a minority non-controlling interest and that’s all I’m allowed to say. The reason why is because we’re private and I have partners and we have a partnership confidentially agreement were we can’t disclose what our investment is, what our percentage is, and what the value of the franchise is.
“We know, but we can’t tell. Forbes magazine speculate how much our Giants is and we think it’s grossly wrong, so let’s just leave it at that, but it’s minority, non-controlling.”
Mr Chang does not get paid as head of US rugby, a voluntary post, but he has a financial stake in the sport.
“As chairman of US Rugby Football Union what I did, that no other rugby unions in the world have done, was to commercialise the assets owned by the Union.
“Some people in the US say it’s almost like heresy, how can you take a public asset like the US logo and commercialise it for profit?
“But in order for you to be able to efficiently monetise assets, you need capital to monetise. A good example would be, you could own the best piece of land in downtown Belfast, it could be worth a lot of money, but unless you invest capital in it and build a building and start collecting rent, it’s worthless...
“We had assets at USA Rugby that we could not monetise because we didn’t have the capital to monetise it. So we spun that off and we raised outside for-profit venture capital and now we have a marketing company, Rugby International Marketing.”
Rugby is the fastest growing sport in America, with two million players.
“This is for a lot of reasons. There are anxieties about people playing American football, because of the danger and the concussion.
“Second, is the growth of women’s rugby. In US we have a law called ‘Title Nine,’ which is equal representation in the universities. So if you have 100 American football players in an athletic programme that the university supports you’ve got to have 100 women’s athletic programme and rugby is a good balance.
“In most universities, women’s rugby is a varsity university-supported sport. The men’s is a club sport that the universities cannot support because of Title Nine and so there is the growth of women’s rugby, of youth rugby because it’s perceived as a physical game, but safer.
“Safer because we teach kids how to tackle properly.”
He says there is a “very close relationship” between the Irish Rugby Football Union and the United States Rugby Football Union.
Mr Chang says it is “a wonderful surprise to see such a vibrant, beautiful city” in Belfast. “When Martin and I were boys in the 70s, all you heard on the news is the turmoil you had.”
He likens Titanic Quarter to San Francisco 25 years ago.
“I used to run the port of San Francisco. We made the painful decision at that time to transform the waterfront from a working port to a tourist attraction. Now, we’re the number two tourist attraction after Disneyworld in Orlando.”
He adds: “I can see that whole port of Belfast transforming into what San Francisco is today.”
• Morning View: California tycoon’s ringing endorsement of the potential of NICLOSE A University of Virginia student has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea for trying to steal a propaganda banner from a hotel. Twenty-one-year-old Otto Warmbier was given the sentence by North Korea's highest court. AP
American student Otto Warmbier speaks during a press conference on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Photo11: Kim Kwang Hyon, AP)
The Obama administration demanded North Korea release an American college student sentenced Wednesday to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly pilfering a propaganda banner as a souvenir.
Officials arrested University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, for allegedly "perpetrating a hostile act" in Pyongyang while traveling with a tour group in January. The nation's supreme court in a one-hour trial convicted Warmbier of subversion and meted out the punishment.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest accused North Korea of using “U.S. citizens as pawns to pursue a political agenda.”
Tensions between the U.S. and North Korea have reached a fever pitch after the communist nation tested international patience by launching missiles. The U.S. has sought tougher sanctions against the country.
The allegations against Warmbier "would not give rise to arrest or imprisonment in the United States or in just about any other country in the world," Earnest said.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged North Korea to grant Warmbier a special pardon and release him.
Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Associated Press he met with North Korean diplomats in New York on Tuesday to request Warmbier’s release. Richardson said based on past experience, North Korea could release Warmbier after sentencing.
“My concern now is that the U.S.-North Korean relationship is in very low, negative ebb, and I hope that does not affect a humanitarian negotiation for the release of Otto,” Richardson told AP.
The tour company, Young Pioneer Tours, which specializes in tours to North Korea, said it was working with "relevant authorities" to obtain Wambier's freedom, but North Korea said Warmbier's traveled as a tourist to disguise his real aim of destroying the unity of the nation with "the tacit connivance of the U.S. government."
At the University of Virginia, classmates reacted with disbelief to his sentencing.
“It doesn’t feel real, this just doesn’t happen to people. I can’t comprehend it," said student Alaina Patrick, who lived in the same dorm as Warmbier, and recalled that some hallmates had “crushes” on him.
Teachers and coaches at Wyoming High School where Warmbier, 21, graduated as salutatorian in 2013, describe him as a "great kid," a "leader" and an outstanding student. He studies economics and global sustainability at the University of Virginia, which said it was in touch with his family.
Two weeks ago, North Korean officials presented Warmbier to the media in Pyongyang, where he apologized for trying to steal the banner from a staff-only area of the hotel where he was staying. He said he wanted it as a trophy for a church member in Wyoming. He called it the worst mistake of his life.
"On the early morning of Jan. 1, 2016, I committed my crime, of taking out the important political slogan from the staff-only area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel, which aimed at harming the work ethic and the motivation of the Korean people,” a weeping, trembling Warmbier told reporters. "I beg you, the people and government of the DPRK, for your forgiveness," he said, referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
Contributing: Gregory Korte, Hannah Hall
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1pt4zEqFIRE is excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for our 2017 Summer Internship!
Our internship program invites students from across the country to spend the summer working directly with FIRE’s staff defending civil liberties on America’s college campuses.
FIRE is looking for intelligent, energetic undergraduates (rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors) interested in FIRE’s mission and work. Candidates must have excellent research, writing, and communication skills. The ability to work under deadlines and a sense of humor are also important.
Interns will work closely with our Campus Outreach, Defense, Policy Reform, Development, Litigation, and Media teams and will gain key insights into the mission, work, and administration of the premier campus civil liberties defense organization in the nation.
In addition to attending weekly educational seminars with experts in the field to discuss the moral, philosophical, and legal foundations of civil liberties, interns write about FIRE cases and issues for our website, assist with planning and running the annual student summer conference, and develop strategies for defending free speech when they return to campus.
The eight-week program runs from Monday, June 5, through Friday, July 28, and interns receive a $2,800 stipend. The internship program is based in our office in historic Philadelphia, just steps from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
Please direct any questions or inquiries to internships@thefire.org. Decisions are rolling. Apply today!Surprise, The Sims 3 will soon shed its PC exclusivity by gracing not one, not two, but all three of the major consoles and a handheld to boot. Publisher Electronic Arts just revealed that The Sims 3 (PCW Score: 4.5 out of 5) is in the mixer for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and Nintendo DS. It's been secretly churning for some time too, apparently, since EA says it'll be available for those four already this fall.
Worried it won't transition comfortably from keyboard-mouse to couch-and-gamepad? Stay skeptical, but EA claims it "tailored each platform [version] of The Sims 3 with exclusive features to allow for even more control, creativity, and connectivity." (I know, a little silly with the alliterative sunshine...and we're not even to the part where they trot out shelf-syntax like "rich," "immersive," and "seamlessly integrated.")
New to the console versions, "Karma Powers" let you fiddle more directly with your Sims' well-being, and EA says you can employ them to help your Sim "get lucky," offer them an "instant beauty" makeover, or slap them down with an "epic fail." It sounds like the powers have flip-sides, too, and EA says using them "may have unexpected results and karma may come back to bite."
Of the lot, it looks like the Wii and DS versions are the ones to beat. The PS3 and Xbox 360 ports will share the PC version's option to share custom content with others. They'll also include an option to automatically annoy--I mean "notify" Facebook friends of your in-game achievements.
But it's the Wii and DS that have with the coolest-sounding new content.
For instance, the Wii gets a brand new beach town, with "unique residents, traits, careers and lifetime wishes." You'll be able to square off with friends in a new "Life Moments" mode (no explanation how it works) to earn rewards. And it sounds like EA's added exclusive "adventure quests" designed to flesh out each area and break up stretches of needs-juggling monotony.
The DS version, by comparison, gets a "never before seen" feature where players can use the device's stylus to "build their Sims' homes with tools, draw walls and floors, and customize virtually everything from décor objects, textures, and more." The Create-a-Sim aspect's also reportedly been finessed to play to the DS's strengths, allowing you to literally sculpt your Sims' attributes and wardrobe. And while I'm not sure what this next bit means exactly, you can "for the first time ever on the Nintendo DS...enjoy a complete life simulation." I'll just read that as "notably less emasculated" overall gameplay than previous handheld ports.
Conspicuously absent from the lineup of supported devices? Sony's PlayStation Portable, whose monthly unit sales are in the toilet. That's a shame, considering how well the PSP version of The Sims 2 sold (tepid critical reaction notwithstanding) when it shipped back in December 2005.
Follow me on Twitter (@game_on)Bankers Trump Greek Democracy In Europe
Negotiations With Trioka Show Greeks What They Face, Now a Debate Must Begin in Greece: Democracy or the EU?
The political groundswell in Greece that elected a coalition of the radical left, Syriza, has had its popular mandate destroyed in its negotiations with the troika, European bankers and the IMF. The bankers made an example of Greece by refusing to budge on the requirements of the debt repayments and are holding Greece in a banker’s vice — no matter what the people of Greece want. This is a warning to Spain, Italy, Ireland and other debtor nations warning them that democratic votes to not change the bankers notes.
Syrzia should not take this defeat as the end of the process, but rather as a new understanding of their predicament and the need to find new strategies and tactics in order to regain their freedom, liberty and democracy. The bankers will be watching Greek politics very closely, so this is no easy task, but it is a task they must pursue unless they want to accept living under the bankers thumb with all of their democracy squashed out of their nation — a nation where democracy was first born may not be an example of the death of democracy.
Stathis Kouvelakis teaches political theory at King’s College London and serves on the central committee of Syriza writes in Jacobin “The strategy of Syriza’s leadership has failed miserably. But it’s not too late to avert total defeat.” He writes that “given that the target of the outrageous budgetary surpluses has been retained, along with the totality of the troika machinery of supervision and assessment, any notion of relaxation of austerity appears out of touch with reality... the course of the ‘negotiations,’ with the revolver of the ECB up against its head and resultant panic in the banks, the Greek positions underwent near-total collapse.” He notes that Greece had no support from any other country in Europe.
What is the strategy that can work? First, Syriza must face reality and tell the Greek people the truth, they must stop “passing off meat as fish” (quoting a Greek saying). Kouvelakis concludes:
we must look reality in the face and speak the language of honesty. The debate on strategy must finally recommence, without taboos and on the basis of the congress resolutions of Syriza, which for some time now have been turned into innocuous icons.
If Syriza still has a reason for existing as a political subject, a force for the elaboration of emancipatory politics, and for contribution to the struggles of the subordinated classes, it must be a part of this effort to initiate an in-depth analysis of the present situation and the means of overcoming it.
“The truth is revolutionary,” to cite the words of a famous leader who knew what he was talking about. And only the truth is revolutionary, we may now add, with the historical experience we have since acquired.
Richard Seymour of the London School of Economics writes “Syrzia’s Mauling at the EU Negotiations” summarizes the situation writing:
After a period of enjoyable defiance, during which they won the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people – 80% according to a poll taken before the latest deal, published in today’s Avgi – they have come back with small change. Pushed to the point where they were at risk of a collapse of the banking system, and unprepared |
consider ourselves professional beer connoisseurs and our beer reviews can easily be influenced by how many were consumed that day.
The beer-tastic series continues with its 8th edition, serving up ten more unforgettable moments from around the world.
Cheers!
Victoria Bitter – Newcastle, Australia
Anyone that’s traveled to Australia has likely consumed a bottle of its popular VB beer. When we were in Peru hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu we became friends with an Australian couple from Newcastle who gave us an open invitation to stay with them if we were ever in the land downunder. Of course we had to take them up on their offer when we passed through Newcastle on our campervan road trip from Cairns to Sydney. These cold beverages were enjoyed while reminiscing about our adventures in Peru a few months earlier.
The beer verdict – Light lager, slightly bitter but not very flavourful, nothing to get excited about but the bottles are cool. We give it 7 out of 10
~~~~~~~~~~
Heineken – Vienna, Austria
How delicious does this photo look?! After a full afternoon exploring the cobblestone streets and incredible architecture of downtown Vienna, we found this quiet patio in the heart of the city. We sat outside in the autumn sun, curiously watching people go about their daily activities. I know, I know… there are so many better beer options we could have chosen, but the daily happy hour special was 2-for-1 Heinekens. Sometimes decisions just make themselves!
The beer verdict – It’s Heineken, you know the drill. We give it the standard 7.5 out of 10
~~~~~~~~~
Bia Saigon Lager – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
It’s no secret that we love Southeast Asia. We love the culture, we love the amazing variety of foods and we particularly love an inexpensive bottle of beer served in a frozen glass that sweats in the tropical heat. This photo was taken on our first evening spent in the backpacker district of Ho Chi Minh City. The bamboo table in the photo was later filled with Vietnamese spring rolls and deep fried frog legs, the perfect complement to another round of cold Bia Saigon.
The beer verdict – Very cold, smooth and sweet with decent body. We give it 7 out of 10
~~~~~~~~~
Cusquena Cerveza – Cusco, Peru
Similar to Angkor Beer in Siem Reap, Cusquena is the popular beer of choice when in Cusco, Peru. Although we enjoyed several Cusquena Cervezas during our time backpacking in Peru, this moment stands out because we had just returned from our sand boarding and dune-buggy tour of the giant sand dunes in Huacachina. The high speed dune buggy tour was one of the highlights from our travels in South America, capped by an unforgettable evening spent relaxing by the calm desert oasis.
The beer verdict – Light tasting yet malty and sweet, flavourful with decent body. It’s one of the best local beers you’ll find in South America (which is not known for its quality beer). We give it 7.5 out of 10
~~~~~~~~~
Everest Lager Beer – Kathmandu, Nepal Sitting on our hotel balcony, we sampled a couple tall bottles of Nepal’s popular lager while playing a few rounds of cribbage. We had just spent the day exploring the remarkable temples of Kathmandu, connecting with the frantic city and its rich culture. Many travelers choose to skip Kathmandu, using it as a hub to find cheap holiday deals to the Himalayas. We were glad we went against the trend and dedicated a few days to Nepal’s spiritual capital city. The beer verdict – It was served warm, somewhat flat and bitter. Not very good. We give it 5 out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~ DB Draught – Rotorua, New Zealand
In our opinion, the best way to experience the natural beauty of New Zealand is to hire a campervan and take a road trip. We picked up the campervan in Auckland and set our sights on Rotorua, the first stop on a 17-day road trip from Auckland to Queenstown. This case of DB Draught, strategically positioned in our “kitchen”, was consumed in the presence of the unforgettable sulphuric smells that Rotorua has become famous for. The beer verdict – Flavourful, slightly malty and smooth with clean bitterness. We give it 7 out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~ Dorado Cerveza – Los Andes, Chile
After narrowly missing our bus from Valparaiso Chile to Mendoza Argentina, we changed our plans and caught the next bus to Los Andes instead. It was a last minute decision but we were feeling adventurous that day. We had never heard of the city and knew nothing about it, except that it offered a morning bus to Mendoza. We spent hours wandering the city streets looking for a place to sleep, with no luck. Finally, after feeling thoroughly defeated, we found a poorly visible guest house that had accommodations in our budget price range – we definitely got what we paid for! This 6-pack was enjoyed in the guest house courtyard, the only feature about the guest house worth mentioning. The beer verdict – Tangy with skunky aftertaste. Not good, but still beer. We give it 5 out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~ San Miguel Light – Boracay, Philippines
This cold bottle of San Miguel was consumed from our lazy hammock, perfectly situated on the patio of our private bungalow on Borocay’s famous White Beach. The moments spent relaxing in the hammock, reading a book while sipping on a cold beer, are some of the most memorable we’ve had from our time in the Philippines. It’s hard to top the beach bumming lifestyle that Southeast Asia has become renowned for – and we dig it! The beer verdict – Clean and smooth, light on flavour but very easy to drink. We give it 6.5 out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~ Kirin Beer – Yokohama, Japan
We will never forget this moment in Yokohama, Japan. Not because of the Kirin Beer or Japanese food purchased from a vending machine, but because the hotel room was without question the smallest room we have ever stayed in. The closet sized room was equipped with a kitchen and tiny television but very little else, so we ate and drank while sitting cross-legged on the bamboo covered floor. Needless to say, it was a very cozy atmosphere. The beer verdict – Sweet and slightly bitter, great compliment to Japanese food. We give it 7 out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~ Bombardier Honey Lager – London, England
This delicious bottle of honey lager was consumed on the last night of our year long adventure around the world. We were staying in London with friends we had met while cruising the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. The United Kingdom was in the midst of receiving one of its biggest snowstorms on record, forcing us to seek shelter indoors. It was the perfect end to an unforgettable, life changing experience. The beer verdict – Full-bodied, flavourful and delicious. We give it 8 out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~ Do you have a memorable beer moment that you’d like to share?
Share your experience in the comments section below! Check out the other beers in this collection – Memorable Moments Drinking Beer around the World
[ad name=”Google Adsense – Belize”]crime
After he was arrested for allegedly masturbating at an American woman in broad daylight, the 25-year-old says he was only answering nature’s call and the woman had misunderstood his intentions
After an American woman tweeted about a youth who allegedly masturbated at her in broad daylight near Colaba causeway, the accused has come forward with his own version of events “I was urinating there. When I finished, the foreign woman came from behind and saw me zip up my shorts. Our eyes met and suddenly she started screaming,” said the 25-year-old, who was arrested in the wee hours of Wednesday, after which he was granted bail. (Read Story: Man held for masturbating at US woman in Mumbai gets bail)
The woman posted this picture of the accused on Twitter, sparking an outrage and catching the attention of the CM, who pushed the cops to find and arrest him in two days
He added that the whole incident was a misunderstanding and he had been defamed and falsely implicated. mid-day had highlighted the episode that took place on Monday morning, after which the woman tweeted a picture of the youth along with the allegation. She tweeted, “Please RT-this man just masturbated at me on the street in broad daylight.
Ran away after a confrontation.” The post sent Twitter into overdrive and even caught the attention of the Chief Minister, who intervened and ensured that the very next day, the Colaba police registered an FIR in the matter under section 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the IPC.
With intense pressure to perform, the cops circulated the image of the youth on WhatsApp until they discovered his identity Gopal Valmiki, a resident of Colaba. Two days later, the police arrested Valmiki and presented him in court, when he was granted bail.
Valmiki’s family maintains that he is innocent. “We are a family of seven, and half are females. Our brother could not have done this. He is an educated man and works in the share market. He even got married a few months ago,” his siblings told mid-day.
Also Read: US woman takes to Twitter to nab man who masturbated at her in South Mumbai
As Valmiki tells the tale, he had gone on a morning walk and needed to attend to nature’s call. There was no public toilet there, so he was forced to relieve himself between two parked cars. It was as he was zipping up that the woman spotted him and began to scream.
His brother added, “Two passers-by caught my brother as the woman began screaming. They decided to take my brother to the police station. On the way there, my brother explained to the woman that it was a clear case of misunderstanding. My brother never tried to escape. The woman let him off near Electric House in Colaba.”
His sister, in turn, said it was unfair of the woman to publicly malign Valmiki, instead of filing a police complaint against him. Claiming the family was unaware of the incident until much later, she added, “The woman let off my brother and later posted a picture of him on Twitter.
She should have gone to the police station and filed a complaint instead of defaming my brother publicly. Then because of the pressure, she filed the complaint later. If we had known about the incident earlier, we would have gone to the police station ourselves.”
“We have been staying in Colaba since childhood, and foreigners regularly visit this area, but my brother has never been involved in any such act in the past. People are calling it perverted and shameful. I want to tell everyone that my brother is innocent,” she added.
Finding Valmiki
After the public outrage and the CM’s intervention in the matter, there was huge pressure on cops to arrest the accused. A police source said, “As we had no clue about the accused, we made a special WhatsApp group, connecting informers from residential associations and committees. We kept adding more and more people to the ‘Eyes and Ears’ group and sent everyone the accused’s photo until someone identified him.”0 Jacksonville woman shoots, kills abusive ex-boyfriend during break in
A Jacksonville woman shot and killed her abusive ex-boyfriend after he broke into her apartment on Wednesday.
Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said the woman shot and killed 33-year-old Michael Turner after he broke a window and got inside her apartment just before 6 a.m.
Officers found Turner dead inside her apartment at 3737 St. John’s Bluff Road, JSO said.
LOCAL NEWS: Man killed while standing on I-95 in Jacksonville
He had several gunshot wounds.
Officers said the woman knew Turner and had been a victim of domestic violence in the past.
Action News Jax Danielle Avitable learned it was the woman's ex-boyfriend. She bought the gun after he strangled and nearly beat her to death a year ago.
A police report said he strangled and hit her until she passed out.
When she regained consciousness, she walked to a neighbor's to call police, the report said. Turner followed her and hit her several times in the face when he found out she was calling the police, the report said.
The woman was interviewed by detectives Wednesday and released.
The investigating is ongoing, JSO said.
TOP STORY: Woman accused of urging boyfriend to kill himself; Text messages released
Police @JSOPIO say a black male was shot inside this apartment complex. @ActionNewsJax pic.twitter.com/TNFzJ3ZUKq — Larry Spruill Jr (@LarryANjax) June 14, 2017
A #Jacksonville woman shot and killed a man who broke into her apartment at The Club at Town Center, police say https://t.co/iwZq59fJmh pic.twitter.com/HbdoYJKCGw — Brittney Donovan (@brittneydonovan) June 15, 2017
© 2019 Cox Media Group.THIS morning I read of the altercation in Montana that led a homeowner to shoot and kill a jealous husband. Brice Harper had a relationship with Dan Fredenberg's wife. The wife insisted it was only an "emotional" affair, but no mind: an angry, intoxicated and unarmed Fredenberg charged into Mr Harper's Montana garage, where Mr Harper shot him dead.
The Kalispell, Montana police are not charging Mr Harper with any crime. The reason is the "castle doctrine", newly added to Montana law. If someone has merely "reasonable belief" that he will be assaulted, even by an unarmed assailant, in his home, he may use deadly force in response. The traditional arguments quickly flow from both sides: from the police and gun-control advocates, that this is a "license to kill", from the pro-gun lobby, that it deters crime.
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What struck me was not the usual arguments, but the word "castle" attached to the legal doctrine in question. As it happens, last night I was reading Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature". As those who have heard of the book know, Mr Pinker argues that violence (both war and homicide, and assault to boot) have declined precipitously in almost all corners of the world. He sets out to explain why.
Critics of the book have completely failed, in my view, to rebut Mr Pinker's masses of evidence that violence has, in fact, declined. But his "why" is interesting, and controversial. In "The Pacification Process" (Chapter 2), Mr Pinker argues that the growth of modern states—Hobbes's "Leviathan"—allowed people to put violence in the hands of the sovereign and escape the "security trap" that made them feel that they had to fight on a hair-trigger to protect themselves from potential threats. (When everyone is on a hair-trigger, the whole society is violent.) As those sovereigns grew in reach, homicide declined dramatically. In "The Civilizing Process" (Chapter 3), he argues that this gradually led to an ethic of self-restraint in the societies lucky enough to have an effective sovereign. All manner of urges—to have sex, fight, spit, urinate, you name it—became things that "civilised" people (first in the upper classes, then gradually the middle and lower classes) were expected to control. As late as the mid-1800s, an English gentleman was expected to beat a boorish cabman or bargee for an affront we would now consider trivial.
The path is from non-state societies (homicide rates around 100 per 100,000) to medieval proto-state societies (tens per 100,000) to early modern society (high-single digits per 100,000) to peaceful modern Europe (around 1 per 100,000), roughly an order-of-magnitude drop each time. So what word do we reach for when we want to name a doctrine allowing a man to kill another man for crossing his property line with a certain look in his eye? No modern metaphor will do; a literally medieval one must be retrieved. A man's home is his castle.
Murder rates are about four times higher in America than in western Europe. And guns are not the only reason; murder by stabbing and clubbing is higher, too. The murder rate is higher among blacks, but American whites are more violent than European whites. The South is America's most violent region; both blacks and whites in the South are more violent than those in the northeast. In other words, the murder rate is highest in those states that most disdain the sovereign ("government") and champion self-reliance.
Another useful nugget from Mr Pinker's book is a short section on the real occupation of medieval knights. Centuries of myopic re-imagining has them as championing women's honour and fighting in symbolic tournaments. But based on what they actually did, today we would call them warlords. Heavily armoured and armed and on horseback, they led peasant armies against one another, often wreaking their worst violence on the other side's unarmoured peasants. The word "chivalry" has its roots in the knight's battle mount (cheval), not his behaviour towards ladies.
All this is of course not to say America is literally medieval. In a thousand years, it will surely still be considered one of history's most culturally and intellectually fruitful civilisations. But it is also unusually compartmentalised; the country with the world's greatest scientific production also hosts the rich world's biggest share of evolution-denying biblical literalists. And so, similarly, from a European, Canadian or other rich-world-country perspective, American attitudes towards righteous violence are a strange outlier from its civilisation, seemingly belonging to another age, castles and all.
(Photo credit: AFP)
Update: Prof Pinker, by coincidence, weighed in on these topics yesterday in the New York Times, a day after this post went live.US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has broken rank with President Donald Trump, commenting that he believes the US should not pull out of the historic 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
Mr Trump’s administration has twice delayed a decision on whether to scrap the pinnacle of former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, acknowledging that Iran is complying with the terms.
A new decision on Iran’s compliance must be sent to Congress by 15 October, when the tri-monthly certification period expires.
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.
If the White House does not agree that Iran is in compliance, Congress will have 60 days to decide whether to slap Tehran with fresh sanctions - and the Republican-led house would be likely to vote to kill the deal.
Amid tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile development, the deal's supporters worry its collapse could trigger a regional arms race, worsen Middle East tensions and discourage rogue states like North Korea from trusting Washington to keep its word.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, among other international leaders, has repeatedly said the deal cannot be renegotiated or annulled.
Shape Created with Sketch. Iran's 'Trumpism' contest Show all 10 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Iran's 'Trumpism' contest 1/10 AFP/Getty Images 2/10 AFP/Getty Images 3/10 AFP/Getty Images 4/10 AFP/Getty Images 5/10 AFP/Getty Images 6/10 AFP/Getty Images 7/10 AFP/Getty Images 8/10 AFP/Getty Images 9/10 AFP/Getty Images 10/10 AFP/Getty Images 1/10 AFP/Getty Images 2/10 AFP/Getty Images 3/10 AFP/Getty Images 4/10 AFP/Getty Images 5/10 AFP/Getty Images 6/10 AFP/Getty Images 7/10 AFP/Getty Images 8/10 AFP/Getty Images 9/10 AFP/Getty Images 10/10 AFP/Getty Images
While Secretary Mattis has previously said he supports Mr Trump’s proposed review of whether Iran is “breaching the spirit” of the deal with non-nuclear warhead testing, he told a Senate hearing on Tuesday he believed it is the US’s security interests to maintain it.
“If we can confirm that Iran is living by the agreement, if we can determine that this is in our best interest, then clearly we should stay with it,” he said.
”I believe… absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with,” he added.
The president’s campaign trail proposal to dismantle the nuclear deal - which lifted the international sanctions which have crippled Iran’s economy - was widely criticised for endangering an agreement which former Secretary of State John Kerry said “made the world a safer place.”
Since taking office in January he has repeatedly hinted he still intends to scrap it, although the administration has not yet laid out a broader Iran policy.
In his first address at the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Trump again called the deal between Iran and six world powers an “embarrassment”.
The White House has not commented on Secretary Mattis’ remarks.
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 nowWhat's illegal at Disneyland? Dogs, drugs, alcohol, pamphlets, flags and large coolers. Not listed? Secretly shooting a feature-length movie.
But Disneyland couldn't have imagined director Randy Moore would have the courage to film Escape From Tomorrow on location -- and that it would be so horny. In the black-and-white theme park noir, a father of two (Roy Abramsohn) lusts after two underage French teenagers, cheats on his wife (Elena Schuber) and discovers that the Disney princesses are high-priced prostitutes. And that's before he suffers a psychotic breakdown triggered when Walt's animatronics start shooting him dirty looks.
To shoot Escape From Tomorrow, which opens this Friday, Moore bought his cast and crew season passes to Disneyland and Disney World and even charted the sun in advance to figure out how to get away without lighting equipment. The actors stored their scripts on their iPhones, the cameramen dressed like tourists, and Moore prayed that security wouldn't notice that the same group of people in the same clothes had ridden It's a Small World 12 times. Not only did Moore get away with it, he got the movie into Sundance. (And so far, he hasn't even gotten sued -- it appears the Mouse has decided against giving him the free publicity.)
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Even if Moore and the gang weren't technically tourists, they still had to look, eat and sleep like them for the nearly three-week shoot, plus soak up the atmosphere for creative inspiration. Which makes Moore something of a renegade expert in all things Mickey.
"In California, the crowd is totally different than the Florida crowd," says Moore. "If you go to Disneyland, there's more hipsters, regular Californian people. There's more strangeness in Orlando."
Oddly, instead of getting weary of the lines and cheerful music (none of which he could use in the film), Moore found himself loving the park every day. "Making this film actually brought me closer to Disneyland," he adds. "Every single night, we had to shoot the fireworks to get all of our shots, and there were moments during that where I sort of got caught up in the whole magic again."
Of course, he may not sound so blissful about the park if Disney cannily waits to unleash their lawyers until Escape From Tomorrow is out of theaters. So before the afterglow wears off, here are Moore's 10 tips for what to eat, ride, see and do in the Magic Kingdom -- without getting sued.
EAT: "The best place to eat in Disneyland is by far in the French Quarter. I wish I knew the name of it [the Royal Street Veranda], but they have bread bowls with either clam chowder or gumbo. It's the best place to have lunch, it's fantastic. We went there as often as we could."
SNACK: "The emu leg! I was told that by a Disney employee, and I wrote the script really believing it. Afterward, I thought I should have done a little more research because there is debate on the internet as to whether or not it's true. I'm still not 100 percent sure if it's emu or turkey."
RIDE: "I think Soarin' is a fantastic ride. It's pretty magical. But there's a long line. And that's really not Disneyland -- it's California Adventure."
GET ROMANTIC: "The Blue Bayou at Pirates of the Caribbean is a nice place. It's dark in there, they've got pretty good food, and you get to look at the boats lazing down."
Up next: Occupy the kids, and flaunt Disney trivia
OCCUPY THE KIDS: "You have to take them to the Princess Fair, unfortunately, and get the autographs of all the princesses. Small World is always a crowd-pleaser for kids, and Alice in Wonderland. Or you're basically going to be stuck in Toontown, which is my least favorite part of the park. I can't wait till they raze that whole section and build something new. Toontown is just awful -- awful! -- I hate it."
SLEEP: "We slept at the Sheraton, which has shuttles to the park every day. I think it's one of the original hotels besides the Disneyland hotels that got there early and set up shop. And they have big rooms. I'd recommend the Sheraton."
BUY: "I like those giant, chemical lollipops that they sell because when I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to have them. So I just dreamed about them. And then when I went back with my kid for the first time, I was like, 'I'm going to give you what I never had.' I felt like the circle had been completed."
PEOPLE WATCH: "I like the goth kids who get all Nightmare Before Christmas dressed up wearing giant platform Doc Martens. Just seeing them walking around always cracks me up."
FLAUNT DISNEY TRIVIA: "The People Mover in Orlando used to be in Disneyland, too, and you can see remnants of it in Tomorrowland -- you can see where people used to board. I feel like there was an accident or something that made them shut it down. It hasn't been working since I was in high school at Disneyland, but it was great because you could take a tour of the whole park like you were on the train. It was supposed to be the transportation of the future -- that's how we were going to go from work to home. And there was never, ever a line for it. That's probably another reason why it was shut down."
BREAK THE LAW: "I'd never do anything illegal there! I always follow the rules."We still have 66 days until Dec. 25 but it's starting to feel a lot like Christmas in Minden.
Lights are already going up in the Christmas City. Soon downtown Minden will transform into a full holiday display.
All week long, city crews have been stringing thousands of Christmas lights across downtown Minden.
It's one more sign that the holidays are almost here, and people in town are feeling the excitement.
But this is no ordinary display - it's part of a 102-year-old celebration that's earned Minden it's Christmas City nickname. People in town say they can't wait for the for the square to be all lit up.
"I've got three kids and they go bonkers when they see the lights," said Matt Cederburg, city administrator. "It's fun looking up at the courthouse. One, the magnitude of the work being done and two when it gets all lit up, it's quite a sight to see."
Once work is complete, crews will do a few tests and then the city will flip the switch the day after Thanksgiving.Californian legislators have recently introduced a bill to ban the sale and possession of shark's fin. This is similar to a measure passed last year in Hawaii where restaurants have until June 30 to finish up their shark's fin inventories or be fined US$5,000 to $15,000 for a first offense.
Hong Kong is at the center of the billion dollar shark's fin industry, handling up to 80 percent of the world trade. Fins come in mainly from Europe, with Spain being the largest supplier by far.
An estimated 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins, a prized culinary item for Chinese communities around the world. The trend of killing threatens the very existence of the species, potentially creating a domino effect in the ecosystem.
Despite the global nature of the shark's fin trade, some of California's Chinese community see the proposed ban on shark's fin as a direct attack on their culture, or as the New York Times calls it, "a sort of Chinese Exclusion Act in a bowl."
"Right now, Costco sells shark steak. What are you going to do with the fin from that shark?" said State Senator Leland Yee to the San Francisco Chronicle. Yee is running for mayor of San Francisco.
"This is another example in a long line of examples of insensitivity to the culture and traditions of the Asian American community."
Ironically, the bill was co-sponsored by an Asian-American Assemblyman: Paul Fong, a Silicon Valley Democrat. Fong speaks Cantonese and grew up eating shark's fin. But after he found out about the environmental damage that the finning industry has caused, he quit the dish, and now he wants everyone to follow.
In Fong's corner is science. Conservationists say sharks are amongst the most vulnerable species in the ocean today. As many as 90 percent of sharks in the world have disappeared due to overfishing. The population does not recover fast and farming is nearly impossible as sharks take a decade to mature.
Yet still, Chinese restaurateurs and diners cannot see why sharks have been put on a pedestal when the situation is comparable with the consumption of other fish -- fish that are not culturally specific to them.
"While we're at it, I'd also ban Caspian caviar and bluefin tuna until their fisheries recover. No doubt, that would raise an uproar in certain other cultural communities," Chinese-American chef Jonathan Wu said to the Times.
The vehement reaction from the Chinese community might be an instinctual detection of something more base than foul race-relations. Maybe they just caught a funky whiff of political BS. As Francis Lam articulates on Salon.com:
Anti-shark finning poster for Green Sense, more at www.greensense.org.hk."It's not that this ban is 'racist' as some have put it, it's that it's the kind of thing that smells a bit of cynical political posturing, scoring cheap environmental points because no politician is going to lose any votes that matter.
"Get rid of a grody-sounding food that only the Chinese are stupid enough to save up their money for? Easy! Try to take away the endangered tuna from voters' Friday night sushi date, though, and there'll be hell to pay.
"And don't even think about doing anything about factory farming, the cheap-meat industry that is unequivocally ruining huge swaths of our ecology and our health. It's not a good state of affairs when we can easily get up a head of steam behind laws that take away others' pleasures, but refuse to even take a hard look at our own."
Do you think that shark's fin should be banned? What other food issues need to be addressed internationally?Forum Forums Share Share
New concept art was posted inside Disney's Hollywood Studios yesterday which appears to show a number of changes from the original artwork announced last year.
Most notable are the changes to the Slinky Dog coaster. In the original art, the track was passing through trenches and rock work. The new version of the art does not show this, and instead shows a regular coaster track on support pylons.
The track layout has been simplified, with the removal of the lift hill and much of the detailing and props around the track.
Interestingly, the new art also appears to show a new land to the far left. At first glance, it appears to be that of Star Wars Land, which would seem to locate at least part of Star Wars on the current Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show area. However, this goes against the current prevailing theory that Star Wars Land will be built on the area around Indiana Jones. Or is the rock work perhaps part of something else?
Some visual changes have also been made to the Alien saucers attraction, and new concept art shows more of the ride system.
Discuss on the Forums
Article Posted:Though Season 3 of UnREAL, the american drama about a dating show Everalasting has been pushed to next year, the expectations among fans to see the first-ever female suitor in the fictional reality show, has not taken a hit. Constance Zimmer, who got a Emmy Nomination and has won the Critic’s Choice Award for playing the show’s lead character, the formidable executive producer Quinn King, in a freewheeling chat opens up about what’s in store for the third season and much more...
Q How is Quinn King evolving in the third season and what will be the major change in her character in the upcoming episodes?
I would say Quinn will be unravelling a little more than she has in the last seasons, which to me was a scary thing to do. Yes! I was excited to do it because I don’t believe somebody can pull off such schemes without having them affect her. And because of what happened in the second season and the death at the end, I was excited that we would be able to show how it affects her, how she deals with it and struggles to still be on top and in control.
Q In House of Cards, you played a journalist, in UnReal you are an executive producer; what kind of research goes on behind your characters?
I don’t do a lot of research; I have a very selfish reason for that. I don’t want anyone to claim that my character was inspired from them! I am also one of those weird actors for whom, many a time, the characters come in when he/she is in the wardrobe. Sometimes, it happens when I get my hair done, or during make-up, and when Constance disappears. So, a lot of my research lies in me and how I develop with what I am given. Mind you, if I end up doing a role in history, I will take back my words and do more research (laughs).
Q How does Constance Zimmer look at Quinn King?
Oh! She terrifies me. More often than not, I look at the script and wonder how am I going to make it believable. Those are always the challenges for me, which makes playing Quinn fun. I am constantly in shock at what I am given to do. I have even fought for the things that were on the pages saying, ‘I am not going to do that, I don’t know how to make that work’.
But, at the moment, when they say action, something takes over and I don’t question Quinn or the things that come out of my mouth. I have to remove the Constance part of me, the part which questions a lot about the things that we are allowed to say. Quinn doesn’t!
Q You once said the soft part of Quinn comes from constance, so where does the tough and scheming part of her come from?
I wonder myself. Does it come from feeling alone, struggling about who you are or what you are going to do with your life? I really don’t know. That’s the frightening thing about her. I have never raised my voice to anyone in my life ever, so I think Quinn is the best therapy I’ve had in life (laughs).
Q Did you think at the outset that this character was going to get the critical acclaim that it has got now?
No, I had no idea. I was just hoping that people would watch this show. I never ever thought that I would be nominated for an Emmy, let alone win the Critic’s Choice. That was beyond anything I had hoped for the character and the show.
Q You have directed an episode in season 3, how was it to be on the other side of the camera?
It was amazing. I had so much fun! I was also unbelievably exhausted. It was hard to turn off Quinn, and be Constance, the director. There were few times when I had to yell across the room, and I was dressed as Quinn and in her mode. Everybody started laughing that Quinn is actually directing in real now. It was very very weird for many.
(Watch the Seasons 1&2 of UnReal on Star World from July 17 at 9 pm)Resident Evil, the game that defined the survival horror genre on the Sony PlayStation, is seeking to expand its legacy back to the 16-bit era. The website PSCD.ru has released a demo of Resident Evil 16-bit for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis. No storyline details are given, but based on screenshots and the demo, it appears that Claire Redfield will play a significant role in the game.
The demo is very short but it does show several key concepts of gameplay such as a 16-bit rendering of the iconic RE inventory screen and a third-person isometric view. The level shown seems to take place in a zombie infested hotel based on the long corridors, a grand staircase leading from a large lobby, and a bloody scrawling of “RedRum” on a bathroom wall in an apparent reference to The Shining.
The game is obviously still in the very early stages of development but the team at PSCD are committed to its completion. Let’s hope they see it through. In the meantime, check out Resident Evil Gaiden on the Game Boy Color for some pixelated zombie killing action.
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RelatedWashington (CNN) For the first time in months, Ben Carson on Tuesday was on top in a newly-released national poll.
Carson has been steadily gaining on frontrunner Donald Trump in the polls, chipping away at months of the billionaire's dominance. And after several Iowa surveys showed him overtaking Trump in the early caucus state, the neurosurgeon on Tuesday came out on top i n a national poll
Here's a look at some of the at-times controversial candidate's most memorable quotes from this year.
"Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay |
ens homosexuality to cannibalism.
Trump and his team have long leaned heavily on conspiracy theorists and online bullshit artists for many of their most memorable moments. Trump suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was part of the plot to kill JFK. (Wrong.) He claimed that large numbers of American Muslims openly cheered fall of the Twin Towers, when no evidence for such celebrations exist. And then there’s the whole birther thing.
But suggesting that the father of a fallen U.S. soldier is secretly an enemy of America—that’s new. Thank Walid and Ted Shoebat for that.
Walid Shoebat’s biography reads like a cautionary tale. Born in Bethlehem to an American mother and Palestinian father, he claims to have been a radical Muslim, a member of PLO, and a prisoner in Jerusalem. Then, Shoebat says, he was recruited for radical jihad. It’s a story that even the most ardent Muslim-haters say is untrue.
Shoebat says he accepted Christ as his Lord and savior in 1994. Today, he peddles this biography to rally concern about Islam and paranoia about jihadists hiding in every mosque—and every college.
“The U.S. university campuses are a major recruiting ground for terrorists,” he claimed.
It’s all the more telling, then, that he attacked Khizr Khan, the father of an Iraq War hero, as an “agent” of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he believes to be “the cartel and mother umbrella of all terror organizations.”
The deeply incriminating information about Khizr Khan apparently stems from an academic article he wrote about Islamic Law. Because Khan cited a Muslim Brotherhood leader as an important source for his article, the Shoebats accused him of being the organization’s acolyte in a blog post published on Sunday.
“Khan wrote [the paper] in the eighties while he was in Saudi Arabia, the motherland of Wahhabism. This would never be possible unless Khan clearly had the support of the Saudi Wahhabist religious institution,” the Shoebats concluded.
In Egypt, the Brotherhood’s birthplace, however, it often competes with Wahhabist parties in elections.
Khan runs a law office that provides immigration services. Thus, “Most likely Khan was working to bring Muslims into the county,” the Shoebats conclude.
They fail to mention that Khan, the proud father of a servicemember who died a hero, boasts proudly about providing pro bono legal services for U.S. military families, right there on his homepage.
But the Shoebats don’t follow Trump’s lead of only casting doubt on the deceased hero’s parents. They impugn the character of the fallen soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, himself. They compare him to the likes of Nidal Malik Hassan, the Muslim-American soldier who carried out the massacre at Fort Hood.
“Is it likely that Khan’s son was killed before his Islamist mission was accomplished? Only another type of investigation will determine that,” they wrote. “Do they ever mention how many soldiers have died because of Muslim traitors? Do they ever bring up how many Christians in the US military were killed? Yet the modernists and homosexuals continue to attack Christians.”
But not even calling an American hero a terrorist stopped Trump’s advisers from pushing the unsavory story. Shoebat’s willful lies about Khan’s beliefs and history were picked up and tweeted as gospel by Trump’s veterans affairs adviser, Al Baldasaro. Baldasaro pushed out the article comparing Humayun Khan to a terrorist to his Twitter followers.
“Read the truth about your hero, Mr Khan who used his son as Political Pawn,” he wrote.
Trump confidant Roger Stone, who no longer serves the campaign in an official advisory role but is nonetheless close to the nominee, also tweeted the inflammatory article.
“Mr. Khan more than an aggrieved father of a Muslim son—he’s Muslim Brotherhood agent helping Hillary,” Stone tweeted with a link to the fabulist narrative.
Perhaps the Trumpkins approving tweets should come as no surprise. After all, the Shoebats and Team Trump have a common enemy: Hillary Clinton.
Shoebat’s son Ted, best known for his homophobic screeds, is also behind such masterpieces as “Read About the Horrific Ways Hillary Clinton Will Have Children Murdered if She Becomes President.”
“Hillary (or should I say, ‘Hitlery’),” the post begins.
“This woman is absolutely evil, a modern day Jezebel,” Ted rages, before copying and pasting from The Christian Post. “The American people cannot vote in this female Hitler!”
(And he also claims that gays are an inherently violent group that thirsts to kill Christians. In one tweet, he even identified himself as a “proud fascist.”)
A whole section of Shoebat.com is dedicated to slandering top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin. She also has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Shoebats.
And, just like Donald Trump, Shoebat suggested that the Khizr Khan’s speech was carefully crafted by a Clinton operative. In fact, Khan spoke extemporaneously about his son and his frustration with Trump’s proposed policies.
In May, the elder Shoebat announced that he quit air travel two years ago for fear of his planes being taken down by Muslim pilots.
And he believes the Zika virus, which has been linked to encephalopathy in newborns, is God’s punishment for sin, likening its spread to HIV. Both, he suggests, are punishments for a sinful sexual nature.
“God says throughout the Bible that He can only put up with so much. When God gets angry at times He sends His private armies,” Shoebat wrote. “In Joel 1-2 it was locusts and in Isaiah 18:1-6 it was mosquitos. Read the verses.”
And while he’s less focused on the gay agenda than his son, Walid told radio host Joe Miller in March 2015 that Islamic tyranny is just the start of a slippery slope to cannibalism and homosexuality. After Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS and slaughtered 50 Americans at a gay club in Orlando, Walid Shoebat said that the “only ones moaning over fifty gays slaughtered are liberals, idiots and gay lovers.”
A CNN expose on the elder Shoebat in 2011 found that he rakes in a hefty salary from lecturing and book sales, but that details to back up his self-reported biography are few and far between.
(A 2014 tax return obtained by The Daily Beast for the Forum for Middle East Understanding, Shoebat’s nonprofit, said it brought in a gross income of more than $1.7 million. Shoebat was paid $87,995, it said.)
“CNN reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian territories found no evidence that would support that biography,” the report read.
(Even Debbie Schlussel—another far-right critic of Islam, who targets many of the same groups as Shoebat—called him a “fake terrorist” and dismissed him as unhinged.)
The CNN reporters found no relatives to confirm his story, and no evidence of a firebombing he had allegedly participated in, nor records from a Jerusalem prison verifying his incarceration. They found inaccuracies in the information he presented at a conference, and sometimes whole organizations have denied publishing research Shoebat attributed to them.
Shoebat responded to the CNN profile on his website, accusing the network of collaborating with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group Shoebat is critical of, “in carrying out this political assassination of Mr. Shoebat.” But he’s never publicly produced proof of any of the improbable claims in his life story.
Shoebat did not respond to a Daily Beast request for comment.Google's already making sure you don't download malware, and now it's expanding its Safe Browsing initiative. In addition to preventative warnings prior to downloading, the Chrome browser will now throw a red flag (pictured after the break) before visiting a site that may encourage you to install any malicious software. Search listings are getting marks for sites that might contain nefarious programs as well, and Mountain View says that it's actively disabling Google Ads that "lead to sites with unwanted software." The search giant is urging site owners to install its Webmaster Tools to help keep on top of any possible issues with a site pushing bad software to visitors, and says this'll aid with the resolution process should that happen. Again, it's Google working to keep its "don't be evil" reputation in line and making the internet a safer place for everyone. After all, even the most web savvy among us have probably downloaded malware before at some point.
[Image credit: Associated Press]Life Extension Benefits of Methionine Restriction
by Ben Best
HEART MUSCLE METHIONINE
Methionine is the only essential amino acid containing sulfur. Methionine is the precursor of the other sulfur-containing amino acids: cysteine, taurine, homocysteine, and cystathione. Methionine is essential for the synthesis of proteins and many other biomoleules required for survival. Rats fed a diet without methionine develop fatty liver disease which can be corrected by methionine supplements [DIGESTIVE DISEASES AND SCIENCES; Oz,HS; 53(3):767-776 (2008)]. Dietary methionine is essential for DNA methylation. Reduced DNA methylation results in genetic instability, aberrant gene expression, and increased cancer.
The above paragraph is the first paragraph from the section on methionine in my article dealing with the Methionine Cycle. Material in that article is useful background for the information below. Note that there is an inverse correlation between lifespan and the methionine content of protein in the heart muscle of eight mammalian species [MECHANISMS OF AGEING AND DEVELOPMENT; Ruiz,MC; 126(10):1106-1114 (2005)]. The methionine content of the milk of cows is higher than that of primates, and the methionine content of the milk of humans and great apes is lower than that of other primates [JOURNAL OF NUTRITION; Davis,TA; 124:1126 (1994)]. Methionine restriction has been shown to increase the replicative lifespan (reduce the replicative senescence) of human fibroblasts [AGING CELL; Koziel,R; 13(6):1038-1048 (2014)].
The sulfur-containing amino acids methionine and cysteine are the most readily oxidized of any of the amino acids — both as free amino acids or in proteins. Methionine is oxidized to methionine sulfoxide, but methionine sulfoxide reductases enzymatically regenerate methionine [BIOPHYSICA ET BIOCHEMICA ACTA; Lee,BC; 1790 (11): 1471-1477 (2009)].
(return to contents)
Substantial evidence indicates that as much as half of the life-extension benefits of CRAN (Calorie Restriction with Adequate Nutrition) are due to restriction of the single amino acid methionine. In a study of rats given 20% the dietary methionine of control rats, mean lifespan increased 42% and maximum lifespan increased 44% [THE FASEB JOURNAL;Richie,JP; 8(15):1302-1307 (1994)]. Blood glutathione levels were 81% higher in the methionine-restricted rats at maturity, and 164% higher in old age. Long-lived Ames dwarf mice have an enhanced methionine metabolism that increases tissue glutathione (GSH) [MECHANISMS OF AGING AND DISEASE; Uthus,EO; 127(5):444-450 (2006)]. Neither the long-lived growth hormone receptor knock-out mouse nor the Ames dwarf mouse show additonal lifespan extension with methionine restriction, suggesting that stimulation of protein synthesis by either methionine or growth hormone shortens lifespan [AGING CELL; Brown-Borg,HM; 13(6):1019-1027 (2014)].
In other studies, methionine-restricted rats showed greater insulin sensitivity and reduced fat deposition [AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY; Hasek,BE; 299:R728-R739 (2010), EXPERIMENTAL GERONTOLOGY; Sanchez-Roman,I; 48(10):1030-1042 (2013), and AGING CELL; Malloy,VL; 5(4):305-314 (2006)]. Methionine-restricted rats lost weight, despite greater food consumption, because of heat loss associated with metabolically inefficient conversion of glucose to fat [Hasek, Ibid.]
An experiment on mice given 35% the methionine of controls showed only a 7% increase in median life span [JOURNALS OF GERONTOLOGY; Sun,L; 64(7):711-722 (2009)]. Another mouse study showed lowered serum insulin, IGF−1, glucose, and thyroid hormone for methionine at one-third the normal intake. There was significant mouse mortality for methionine less than one-third normal intake, but with one-third intake of methionine maximum lifespan was significantly increased [AGING CELL; Miller,RA; 4(3):119-125 (2005)].
Rats generally show greater longevity benefits from CRAN than mice. Piglets showed comparable benefits to rats in a two-week study, including decreased reactive oxygen species in mitochondrial complex I and reduced apoptosis-inducing factor [EXPERIMENTAL GERONTOLOGY; Ying,Y; 65:35-41 (2015)]. Methionine-restricted rats had increased FGF21, showing many of the same benefits as FGF21-treated rats, including improved insulin sensitivity, reduced adiposity, more mitochondria, and AMPK activation [JOURNAL OF NUTRIGENETICS AND NUTRIGENOMICS; Perrone,CE; 5:132-157 (2012)].
Mitochondrial free radical generation is believed by many biogerontologists to be a significant contributor to aging damage. Rats given 20% the dietary methionine of control rats show significantly decreased free radical generation from complex I and complex III of liver mitochondria as well as from complex I of heart mitochondria — associated with reduced oxidative damage to mitochondrial DNA and protein [THE FASEB JOURNAL;Sanz,A; 20(8):1064-1073 (2006)]. These results are comparable to the reduced mitochondrial free radical generation seen in CRAN rats [ENDOCRINOLOGY; Gredilla,R; 146(9):3713-3717 (2005)]. Rats given 60% rather than 20% of the methionine of control rats showed nearly the same amount of reduced mitochondrial free radical generation and damage [BIOCHEMICA ET BIOPHYSICA ACTA; Lopez-Torres,M; 1780(11):1337-1347 (2008)]. Body weight was not reduced with 60% dietary methionine, leading to the conclusion that such reduction would not result in reduced growth in children [REJUVENATION RESEARCH; Caro,P; 12(6):421-434 (2009)]. It was concluded that methionine restriction is the sole reason for reduced mitochondrial free radical generation and damage associated with CRAN [Ibid.] and protein restriction [BIOGERONTOLOGY; Caro,P; 9(3):183-196 (2008)]. Rats methionine-restricted by 40% rather than by 80% showed similar benefits, but without the negative impact on growth, puberty, or body size seen with 80% methionine restriction [JOURNAL OF BIOENERGETICS AND BIOMEMBRANES; Sanchez-Roman,I; 63(6):699-708 (2011)].
A human clinical trial on cancer patients given the methionine-reduced supplement powder Hominex-2 showed a 75% decrease in plasma methionine [NUTRITION AND CANCER; Epner,DE; 42(2):158-166 (2002)], whereas a clinical trial using Hominex-2 on metabolic syndrome patients resulted on only a 14% decrease [JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ENDOCRINOLOGY AND METABOLISM; Plaisance,EP; 96(5):E836=E840 (2011)], probably due to poor palatability and low compliance. Nonetheless, the metabolic syndrome patients showed an average 27% increase in plasma adiponectin. Cancer cells are more sensitive to methionine restriction than are normal cells [NUTRITION AND CANCER; Epner,DE; 42(2):158-166 (2002)]. Hominex-2 contains corn syrup solids as the primary ingredient. Cysteine content in Hominex-2 may reverse the effects of methionine restriction [JOURNAL OF NUTRIGENETICS AND NUTRIGENOMICS; Perrone,CE; 5:132-157 (2012)].
Further evidence for the suggestion that methionine oxidation plays a significant role in lifespan can be found in the considerable lifespan extension benefits seen in transgenic fruit flies that overexpress a gene for repairing oxidized methionine in protein [PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (USA); Ruan,H; 99(5):2748 (2002)]. The sulfur-containing amino acids methionine and cyteine are more easily oxidized in proteins than other amino acids [JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY; Hoshi,T; 531:1 (2001)], which is apparently related to the reduced free radical generation in mitochondria seen in methionine restriction. Both the fruit fly experiment and the methionine restriction experiments indicate a significant impact on lifespan from methionine oxidation.
It has been suggested that glycine supplementation has the same effect as methionine restriction. An experiment with glycine supplementation in rats showed a 30% extension in maximum lifespan [FASEB JOURNAL; Brind,J; 25:528.2 (2011)]. Additionally, three grams of glycine daily has been shown to improve sleep quality in young (average age 31) female Japanese adults [SLEEP AND BIOLOGICAL RHYTHM; Inagawa,K; 4:75-77 (2006)]
(return to contents)
TABLE 1 Lysine, Threonine and Methionine in Food
(milligrams amino acid per gram protein) Food Sulfur-containing amino acid Lysine Threonine Nuts,Seeds 46 ± 17 45 ± 14 36 ± 3 Animal foods 38 85 ± 12 44 Cereals 37 ± 5 31 ± 10 32 ± 4 Fruits 27 ± 6 25 ± 12 29 ± 7 Legumes 25 ± 3 64 ± 10 38 ± 3
The adjoining table (my Table 1) from [AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION; Young,VR; 59(suppl):1203s-1212s (1994)] indicates the essential amino acids most likely to be limited in plant protein foods. Cereal protein contains comparable sulfur-containing amino acids (including methionine) per gram as animal foods, whereas fruit and legume protein contain about 65% as much methionine. Nuts and seeds are particularly high in methionine, on average 20% higher in methionine than animal protein, although the absolute amount of protein in animal foods tends to be higher, which makes total methionine intake generally higher in animal foods. Vegetables are not shown in Table 1, but as described in Table 4 in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION paper from which Table 1 is taken, vegetables are on average in the 1-2% range for percent protein and fruits are in the 0.5-1% protein range — so neither fruits nor vegetables should be considered serious sources of protein (green peas are an exceptional vegetable with 5.4% protein, and avacado is an exceptional fruit with 2% protein). Cereals are typically 7-13% protein and legumes are typically 20-30% protein (soybeans are exceptionally high in protein even for legumes, being in the range of 35-45% protein).
The dry weight of beef, broccoli, peanuts, and peas is about one-third protein, whereas cereals and fruits are less than 10% dry weight protein. Unlike many other plant proteins, legumes are not particularly low in lysine, and they are close to animal protein in threonine content. Vegetarians attempting to achieve complete protein often combine cereals (which are relatively high in methionine for plant protein) with legumes (which are relatively high in lysine for plant protein).
PHYTIC ACID
Lentils and other beans contain high amounts of phytic acid (phosphate-rich inositol), which can chelate positively-charged multivalent mineral ions (especially iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium), preventing absorption. Soaking lentils and beans in warm water overnight not only makes them easier to cook, it allows some of the phytates to be soaked-out (and thrown-away with the water). Acidic solution (such as vinegar) better removes the phytates. Cooking also helps destroy phytates.
Although it would be very difficult to determine a diet providing optimum methionine for maximum human lifespan — even on the basis of rat experiments — evidence is convincing that reducing dietary methionine can help extend lifespan. The Table 2, listing milligrams of methionine per 100 grams of food (rather than per gram of protein, as in Table 1), could be helpful. Table values are based on [FOOD VALUES OF PORTIONS COMMONLY USED by Jean Pennington (1989)].
TABLE 2 Methionine in Foods
(milligrams/100 grams of food) Food Methionine Cheese, parmesan (dry) 971 Skim milk (dry) 907 Tuna (light) 862 Cheese, Swiss (processed) 792 Corned beef 711 Cheese, Cheddar 661 Salmon 631 Cheese, American (processed) 579 Extra lean beef 572 Walnuts, black 479 Egg white 394 Whole boiled egg 392 Pistashio nuts 386 Peanuts 289 Walnuts, Persian (English) 286 Cashew nuts 279 Cheerios 254 Oatmeal 250 Broad (Fava) beans 239 Soybeans 224 Barley 208 Tofu (firm) 202 Grape nuts (cereal) 200 Shredded wheat (cereal) 193 Wheaties (cereal) 168 Rice 167 Almonds 161 Yogurt 155 White beans 146 Black turtle beans 141 Navy beans 131 Kidney (red) beans 130 Chickpeas (garbanzos) 116 Blackeyed peas (cowpeas) 110 Lima beans 100 Macadamia nuts 93 Millet 85 Peas (raw) 82 Adzuki beans 79 Lentils 77 Corn 70 Spaghetti 51 Sweet potato (baked) 42 Mushrooms 40 Avacado 39 Mung beans 35 Broccoli 34 Potato 33 Pinto beans 33 Amaranth 30 Cauliflower 28 Oranges 22 Tomato paste 19 Kale 18 Banana 17 Blueberries 11 Onion 10 Tomato 8 Apple 2 Grapefruit 2 Strawberries 1
The absolute methionine content of a food is better evaluated knowing what the water, fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and protein content of that food is. A higher protein content and a lower methionine content is better than having a low methionine content because the food is low in protein and high in water, fat, or carbohydrate. Lima beans and rice are relatively high in both carbohydrate and methionine. Onions and strawberries are low in methionine, but are high in water and low in protein.
The data for Table 3 is taken from [NUTRITIVE VALUE OF FOODS; USDA Bulletin 72 (1981)], but is adjusted to give percent protein by dry weight. Percent water in the food is not related to the other columns. Fiber content is not given, and I suspect that fiber is equated with carbohydrate. I may have made a few errors, and I suspect that the data contains a few errors (garbage-in, garbage-out). But for the most part I think the data is good, my transcription is accurate, and my calculations are correct.
TABLE 3 Percent Macronutrients (dry weight)
and Percent Water (whole food) Food Protein Carbohydrate Fat Water Egg, white 100 0 0 88 Tuna solid,white, water 97 0 3 63 Salmon (baked) 81 0 19 67 Tuna chunk,light,oil 77 0 23 61 Corned beef 69 0 31 59 Ground beef,lean 57 0 43 56 Cheese, Parmesan (grated) 55 5 40 18 Ham 54 0 46 53 Ground beef,regular 53 0 47 54 Cheese, Swiss 47 7 47 42 Egg, whole 46 8 46 75 Yogurt, nonfat 43 57 0 80 Soybeans 41 20 39 71 Cheese, American processed 40 0 60 39 Milk, nonfat 39 59 2 91 Sesame seeds 29 14 57 5 Lentils, cooked 29 69 2 72 Sausage 29 0 71 45 Peas, split 27 71 2 70 Walnut, black 26 13 61 4 Frankfurter 26 5 68 54 Chickpeas (garbanzos) 23 75 6 60 Pinto beans, cooked 23 75 2 65 Pistachio nuts 22 26 52 4 Mushroom, cooked 25 67 8 91 Lima beans, cooked 24 74 2 64 Cashew nuts 16 35 49 2 Macaroni (enriched) 15 83 2 64 Tomato paste 16 80 3 74 Bread, whole wheat 16 76 7 38 Bread,1/3 wht (Pmnk) 16 78 6 37 Spaghetti (enriched), ckd 15 83 2 64 Egg noodles 15 80 4 70 Walnut, Persian (English) 15 19 65 4 Bread,2/3 wht (rye) 14 79 7 37 Onions 14 85 0 91 Corn 13 87 0 76 Potato (baked+skin) 9 91 0 71 Rice, brown 9 89 2 70 Avacado flesh (Florida) 8 46 46 80 Strawberries (raw) 8 83 8 92 Rice, white 7 93 0 73
Brown rice would be more nutritious than white rice, except that the fats in germ that is removed to make white rice can go rancid. Ingestion of Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGES) is detrimental to health.
Table 4gives the percent fat obtained for selected items in the above table, and breaks down the fat into percent saturated, monosaturated, and polyunsaturated fat. Numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number, which is why the total percentages don't always add to 100. Monosaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are preferred to unsaturated fats except where there is rancidity. Again, ingestion of Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGES) is detrimental to health. I had no data for non-fat cheese, the only kind of cheese that I eat.
TABLE 4 Percent Fat Types
(rounded) Food Saturated Monosaturated Polyunsaturated % Fat Cheese, American processed 67 30 4 52 Ground beef,lean 45 50 4 56 Egg, whole 44 52 4 48 Corned beef 44 52 4 29 Frankfurter 39 51 10 63 Ham 39 49 12 45 Sausage 37 50 11 69 Salmon (baked) 24 48 28 18 Tuna chunk,light,oil 22 30 48 18 Avacado flesh (Florida) 22 60 18 80 Cashew nuts 21 62 18 63 Soybeans 15 22 62 33 Pistachio nuts 13 71 16 52 Walnut, Persian (English) 9 24 66 64 Walnut, black 7 24 70 59
Table 5 gives relative proportions of all of the essential amino acids (plus tyrosine) for some representative high-protein animal foods as well as for some low-methionine plant foods.
Lysine is given after methionine because lysine is most often the limiting amino acid (the essential amino acid found in the smallest quantity relative to requirement) in cereals, nuts, and seeds — but lysine in abundant in legumes, for which methionine is typically the limiting amino acid [AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION; Young,VR; 59(suppl):1203s-1212s (1994)]. Lysine is therefore listed second in the table. Leucine is listed third because of its paradoxical ability to reduce fat in high doses [DIABETES; Zhang,Y; 56(6):1647-1654 (2007)] and low doses [DIABETES; Cheng,Y; 59(1):17-25 (2010)]. Leucine and threonine are the limiting amino acid in vegetables and fruits, although vegetables and fruits are too low in protein to be considered significant proteins sources. Trytophan restriction has been shown to have a modest (compared to methionine restriction) ability to extend lifespan in rats [ MECHANISMS OF AGEING AND DEVELOPMENT; Ooka,H; 43(1):79-98 (1988)], reputedly by opposing an age-related increase in brain serotonin.
Tyramine was evaluated because of claims that high dietary tyramine could have adverse reactions with monoamine oxidase inhibitors (I take deprenyl). But none of the foods listed have seriously high levels of tyramine, so tyramine is not really a concern.
Again, this data is taken from [FOOD VALUES OF PORTIONS COMMONLY USED by Jean Pennington (1989)]. I have adjusted the Pennington data to be standardized for 100 grams of food, rather than reproducing the variable quantities of food given, which makes comparison difficult. I may have made transcription errors, but probably not many (if any).
TABLE 5 Low Methionine Beans/Grains
Essential amino acids (+tyramine)
(milligrams/100 grams food)
Met = Methionine
Lys = Lysine
Leu = Leucine
Thr = Threonine
Try = Typtophan
Iso = Isoleucine
Phe = Phenylalanine
Val = Valine
His = Histidine
Tyr = Tyrosine Food Met Lys Leu Thr Try Iso Phe Val His Tyr Skim milk,dry 907 2867 3543 1633 510 2187 1746 2420 980 1747 American cheese 579 2225 1982 729 329 1036 1139 1343 914 1229 Walnuts, black 479 732 1729 739 325 993 1086 1304 489 761 Egg white 394 642 882 451 155 618 636 761 230 406 Walnuts, Persian (English) 286 293 1007 454 193 575 636 732 364 446 Cashew nuts 279 829 1304 600 239 743 804 1054 404 496 Soybeans, cooked 224 1108 1355 723 242 807 869 831 449 630 Whey, dry 200 967 1067 567 233 567 567 300 233 367 Rice, cooked 167 292 542 333 83 292 375 458 208 375 Yogurt, nonfat 169 514 578 235 32 312 312 474 142 289 Kidney (red) beans 130 595 693 365 103 383 469 454 241 244 Chickpeas (garbanzos) 116 593 631 329 85 380 475 372 244 220 Blackeyed peas (cowpeas) 110 523 592 294 95 314 451 368 240 250 Lima beans, cooked 100 523 673 337 92 411 470 469 238 276 Peas (raw) 82 317 323 203 37 195 200 235 106 113 Adzuki beans 79 567 632 255 72 300 398 387 198 224 Lentils, cooked 77 779 809 400 100 482 551 554 314 298 Corn, cooked 70 141 359 133 23 133 155 191 91 126 Broadbeans (Fava) 62 468 572 270 72 306 97 338 193 241 Spaghetti, cooked 51 109 220 133 41 170 177 _ 80 113 Mushrooms 40 211 129 94 46 82 80 97 57 46 Potato, baked 33 126 124 75 32 84 92 117 45 77 Pinto beans, cooked 33 564 656 346 97 363 444 430 229 231 Amaranth 30 109 167 85 27 102 114 118 44 68 Avacado flesh (Florida) 29 75 99 53 17 57 54 78 23 39 Mung beans, cooked 25 123 131 58 27 39 98 85 97 52 Tomato paste 19 108 105 86 26 73 80 77 60 51 Onion 10 56 41 28 18 42 30 28 19 29
Confusion can be caused by the variable amounts of proteins in the foods. Some foods have high water content (such as onion), or high carbohydrate content (such as rice), or high fat content (such as nuts). To compare relative amounts of methionine in the proteins in the foods, I have created Table 6 in which I have adjusted the values to reflect milligrams of amino acid per gram of protein, rather than the per 100 grams of food used in the previous table. To do this, I first calculate dry weight [(100 − % water) / 100] and then divide by % protein. (Note that Persian/English walnuts contain 60% the protein of black walnuts, mostly because of higher fat content. This creates a misimpression that Persian/English walnuts are much lower in methionine than black walnuts.)
I make no guarantee that I have made no transcription errors in manually copying data from either table to my calculator.
TABLE 6 Low Methionine Beans/Grains
Essential amino acids
(milligrams/gram protein)
Met = Methionine
Lys = Lysine
Leu = Leucine
Thr = Threonine
Try = Typtophan
Iso = Isoleucine
Phe = Phenylalanine
Val = Valine
His = Histidine
% P = % Protein (dry weight)
% W = % Water Food Met Lys Leu Thr Try Iso Phe Val His % P % W Rice (dry) 24 42 77 48 12 42 54 65 30 7 70 Milk,nonfat 24 75 92 43 13 57 45 63 26 40 91 Cheese, American 24 91 81 30 13 42 47 55 37 40 39 Corn, cooked 22 45 115 43 7.4 43 50 61 29 13 76 Sesame seeds 21 20 47 25 13 26 33 34 18 29 5 Walnuts, Persian (English) 20 20 70 32 13 40 44 51 25 15 4 Walnuts, black 19 29 69 30 13 40 44 52 20 26 4 > Yogurt, skim 19 60 67 27 3.7 36 36 55 17 43 80 Soybeans, cooked 19 93 114 61 20 68 73 70 38 41 71 Cashew nuts 18 53 83 38 15 47 51 67 26 16 2 Avacado flesh (Florida) 18 47 62 33 11 36 34 49 14 8 80 Mushroom, cooked 18 94 57 42 20 36 36 45 25 25 91 Chickpeas (garbanzos) 13 64 69 36 9.2 41 52 40 27 23 60 Potato 13 48 48 29 12 32 35 45 17 9 71 Lentils, cooked 9.5 96 100 49 12 59 68 68 39 29 72 Spaghetti, cooked 9.4 20 41 25 7.6 31 33 _ 15 15 64 Onion 8 45 33 22 14 34 24 22 15 14 91 Tomato paste 4.5 26 25 21 6 18 19 19 14 16 74 Pinto beans, cooked 4 70 81 43 12 45 55 53 28 23 65
I am searching for foods that are high in protein, but low in methionine, as a source of protein. |
filmmaker told CBC The House host Chris Hall.
But Lewis, whose father Stephen led the Ontario New Democratic Party in the 1970s, said the Leap Manifesto is inching towards political party territory, with talks of publishing a national platform.
"We're talking about some crazy stuff like a national convention a year from now and a platform that actually brings a deeper analysis than those 1,400 words in the Leap Manifesto…. We're considering all kinds of things and this is not the last you will hear," he said.
Lewis compared the Leap movement to Indignados, Spain's anti-austerity movement that became a political party, and Bernie Sanders supporters in the United States who are still trying to figure out what to do after his concession.
"It's a critical question... I think the social forces in Canada need to be more than movements but less than parties," Lewis said. "We have to careful to not denigrate the power of grassroots action."
One year on
The Leap Manifesto, slagged by critics as "madness"and "naive," calls for Canada to be "powered entirely by just renewable energy" within 20 years, to end trade deals that don't benefit local economies and pitches the idea of a national childcare program and universal basic annual income.
"It's actually about giving power to those who have been disempowered and it's about taking some power away from people who have too much," said Lewis.
Director Avi Lewis, right, and author Naomi Klein of the film 'This Changes Everything,' stand for a photo on the red carpet during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)
The Leap Manifesto went public a year ago, during the 2015 fall election campaign, and was met both praise and criticism. It ended up playing a prominent — even divisive — role at the NDP convention last spring, which ended with members telling leader Tom Mulcair they wanted him replaced. But since then, no one has officially put their hat in the ring to replace him.
Lewis says the manifesto, which hasn't received much mainstream light since the NDP's Edmonton convention, is still "going strong."
"It's been a wild ride of a year," he said.
Non-partisan paper
While the document was panned by some high-ranking New Democrats — Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called it "tone deaf" — Lewis says there's been pickup amongst grassroots groups.
It's "a once-in-a-generation constellation of social movements, from labour unions and environmental groups, indigenous rights groups, migrant and refugee advocates and others who came together around these 15 demands to get Canada off fossil fuels," he said.
I think the great master skill of the Liberal Party of Canada is to try and thread the needle and keep everyone happy. - Avi Lewis
The Leap Manifesto organization is also working on a proposal with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to convert Canada Post's fleet into electric vehicles and push for postal banking as a way to fund green investments.
Lewis called the manifesto a non-partisan project, not necessarily beholden to the NDP (although he believes the NDP could regain momentum by reconnecting with "social movement energy"). He said he was "charmed" to hear Tzeporah Berman, co-chair Alberta's oilsands advisory working group, arguing on CBC's The Current that Canada can't afford to build a pipeline and abide by its Paris agreement commitment.
Voters ready to take the leap?
"That's an Alberta government appointment who is now saying the very same things we were excoriated for last spring," Lewis said. "The Leap has expanded the sense of what's politically possible and it's provoked a debate about a much more urgent and transformative approach to dealing with climate and other social crises in Canada."
In April, Lewis told The House he wanted the Liberal government to read the manifesto ahead of its big environmental decisions. A ruling on the TransMountain expansion project is due before Dec. 19.
These days, the activist predicts a battle of political capital between appeasing voters who support pipelines and voters who ditched orange for red in the last election.
"I think the great master skill of the Liberal Party of Canada is to try and thread the needle and keep everyone happy and I think this particular iteration of the Liberals is maybe better at it than any previous one. But I think that there's a fundamental conflict in the things that they've promised and the way they're trying to thread that needle — it's just not going to wash," he said.
"They are going to do things that are really going to set off the progressive voters that they captured from the NDP. I think there will be a reckoning."
Listen to CBC Radio's The House at 9 a.m. (9:30 NT) on Saturdays.
Follow on Twitter @CBCTheHouseBy Online Desk
Amazon is asking its customer base in India to upload copies of their Adhaar on its website in order to track down lost packages. As per a report by Buzzfeed News, Amazon customer representatives told their customers on several occasions that not uploading a copy of Aadhaar "might result in a delay in the resolution of the problem."
When asked, Amazon said that Aadhaar is needed to validate the authenticity of the customers who have lost their packages. An Amazon India spokesperson said that in case a customer doesn't have an Aadhaar card, he or she can submit other government certified identity, which are likely to come with some restrictions. On the other hand, Amazon customers faced a tough time in convincing Amazon to take up their complaints without submitting their Aadhaar numbers fist.
After struggling for months to link their Aadhaar card, this move has caught Amazon India customers off guard.
Aadhaar, the 12 digit unique-identity number, is currently required for services ranging from getting subsidised cooking gas to opening a bank account and obtaining a new phone number. Currently, the last date to link Aadhaar with bank accounts is December 31 this year while for mobile numbers, it is February 6, 2018.
Critics have slammed the program for capturing of biometrics and its use for verification. Not only that, Aadhaar is also compulsory to receive welfare scheme benefits which makes it more of a coercion on the part of the government.
Amazon is not the only company to use Aadhaar in their products. According to a previous report by Buzzfeed News, Airbnb and Uber, and its Softbank-backed Indian rival Ola are looking for different ways to use Aadhaar in their products in India.The fourth official Conservative leadership debate in Edmonton saw the candidates broadly agree on defence spending, carbon taxes and illegal border crossings, while engaging in spirited exchanges on taxation and plans for growing the economy.
Steven Blaney and Pierre Lemieux both used their opening statements to make an argument for getting Alberta oil to international markets by expanding pipelines into the United States and across Canada.
Kellie Leitch used her introduction to hammer home her immigration plan — to screen all would-be newcomers for Canadian values and ensure all immigrants get a face-to-face interview before being admitted to Canada.
Maxime Bernier, Rick Peterson and Michael Chong promised to lower various forms of taxation, while Erin O'Toole, Andrew Saxton and Lisa Raitt all said they had the economic chops to lead the country in uncertain times.
The candidates were asked to respond to a number of policy areas, and one of the areas where the candidates broadly agreed with one another was on how to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that NATO members start living up to their commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence.
All candidates said they would meet the two per cent target.
Saxton reminded the audience that NATO was created to respond to the aggression of the Soviet Union and that Canada needed that alliance to defend allies such as Ukraine and to defend our Arctic.
Thirteen of the 14 Conservative leadership contenders debate in Edmonton, Alta. Tuesday. 1:15
Illegal border crossings
The candidates were also in agreement on the issue of refugees crossing into Canada illegally, mostly through fields, forests and farmland in Manitoba and Quebec.
Leitch said refugees and migrants coming across the border should be detained, questioned and "sent back to the United States." It was a sentiment that garnered applause from a small group of enthusiastic supporters in the crowd.
Peterson, a Vancouver-based businessman, said Leitch's immigration and border policies had so far allowed the public and the media to paint the Conservatives as an anti-immigrant party.
Raitt said illegal border crossings had to be stopped, because they were putting an extra burden on the refugee system and forcing legal migrants to wait longer to be processed.
Victims at centre of crime policy
Blaney, Andrew Scheer and Chris Alexander rolled out their tough-on-crime policies by promising to put victims back at the centre of the criminal justice system. They also pledged to prevent dangerous and repeat offenders from being released from prison.
During the question about crime, the debate quickly switched to the need for a strong economy to ensure the government has the tools it needs to effectively fight crime.
Maxime Bernier speaks during the Conservative leadership debate at the Maclab Theatre in Edmonton, Alta., on Tuesday. (Codie McLachlan/Canadian Press)
Peterson, who replied to every question of the night with plug for his economic platform, did not disappoint on crime either, promising to cut corporate income tax to zero and reduce personal income tax to a 15 per cent flat rate.
Leitch said people will only feel safe in their communities when they have jobs and can provide for their families, and she pledged to make it legal for women to use pepper spray on attackers without fear of being prosecuted.
Walking the carbon tax plank
The search for answers on crime quickly jumped into the realm of broader tax policy, and on that front Michael Chong, the only candidate advocating any form of carbon tax, came under attacks from the rest of the field.
Scheer joked by asking, "If Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and a'revenue neutral carbon tax' see $1 on the sidewalk, which one picks it up?" Other candidates all promised to scrap Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's national carbon pricing strategy, insisting it would cost businesses and families money.
Brad Trost said he would not only scrap a national carbon tax but also all "hidden carbon taxes" in the form of green regulations and subsidies.
Chong stood up and made a passionate plea, despite some muted heckling from the crowd, as he tried the convince the audience that a revenue neutral carbon tax was the most conservative way to address climate change.
Likening it to the free trade debate that faced former prime minister Brian Mulroney, Chong said that like the former prime minister, he too, was championing an unpopular policy that was right for the country, and he was going to demonstrate the courage required to argue for it.
Peterson accuses former Speaker of the House, Scheer, of not showing up for work when it comes to casting votes in the House of Commons 1:34
Missing in action
During the previous debate at the Manning Centre Conference in Ottawa last week, the field of 14 candidates was divided into groups of three or four to allow for some cut and thrust between the contenders.
The Edmonton debate returned to the en masse format, with all the candidates on the stage at the same time, an approach that prompted candidate Kevin O'Leary to drop out of the debate.
Instead, O'Leary held an "intimate fireside discussion" at a nearby hotel with supporters, starting at the same time as the official debate.
A person in a chicken costume pokes fun at candidate Kevin O'Leary's decision not to attend the leadership debate in Edmonton Tuesday. (Susan Lunn/CBC)
Because the Edmonton event is organized by the Conservative Party, the rules state that it is mandatory for all candidates to attend, which means O'Leary's campaign will have to pay a $10,000 fine against his campaign's security deposit.
O'Leary's press secretary Ari Laskin told CBC News that any fine would come out of the $25,000 O'Leary personally donated to his campaign, rather than from donations from supporters.
Watch the full debate in the player below:GATUMBA, Burundi - Two people were killed when a bus carrying 30 passengers was ambushed by armed men believed to be ex-rebels near Burundi&39;s capital Bujumbura, officials said on Sunday.
The bus was attacked on Saturday near Gatumba on the outskirts of Bujumbura and close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, a local government official, Jean-Marie Mutabazi, told journalists.
"The bandits fired on the vehicle. One person was killed immediately and another died later in hospital," he said, adding that at least a further 10 people sustained serious injuries.
A survivor interviewed on the radio said the attackers were members of the National Liberation Forces (FNL), a former rebel group.
"We were attacked by about 15 FNL, wearing military uniforms and heavily armed," he said, adding that the attackers sang FNL songs and tore up a ruling party flag during the attack.
That account was confirmed to reporters by a senior police officer who asked not to be named.
"It&39;s a group of residual FNL that crossed over from the Democratic Republic of Congo to launch the attack and then crossed back again," he said, adding that it was the first attack of its kind since 2011.
Burundi has seen a resurgence of violence since the disputed 2010 elections, but the authorities have dismissed rebels who have taken up arms again as "armed bandits".What's going on behind the scenes at Fantastic Four? Why did Fox legal send a letter to Slashfilm claiming infringement on plot details that Fantastic Four director Josh Trank previously debunked?
Josh Trank has no idea. I just got off the phone with him and he strongly, without caveat, denied the story details that led to Slashfilm getting legal attention from Fox. "The only truth in that plot description is that there are four characters named Reed, Ben, Sue and Johnny," Trank told me.
And he was pretty adamant. "You'll see in June of 2015," that the plot description is absolutely untrue.
So what the heck happened? The initial plot came from a casting service, who seem to have not actually gotten it from Fox. Why Fox legal got involved is unclear. As for previous denials (including Miles Teller), Trank expressed frustration with the way that amorphous wish lists get reported as fact. I've made this point before - a list of actors being looked at for a role tells you nothing except who are the hot actors in a film's particular price range. Tom Cruise was on a wish list for every big budget male lead from the 1980s on, because he was the biggest star, not always because he was the best (or most likely) fit. It's why I hesitate to run such early casting stories - as all the incorrect Lex Luthor reports show, they're often bunk.
I gave Trank one piece of advice: get his Twitter verified. That really is him at @josh_trank, so any updates coming from the account are legitimate.
Now my take: I think Fox needs to get their messaging straight. The legal thing is absolutely bizarre, and I think it's a corporate problem, not a creative one. I don't think wer'e going to get anything official from this production until Comic Con, and I think Trank is more interested in making his movie than promoting it while it's still in pre-production. Of course there will still be rumors and lies - we live in an era when blogs happily make up superhero casting stories to get hits and then nobody takes them to task for being wrong, so it's not stopping anytime soon - but I believe Trank when he tells me that's not the synopsis of the movie.
As for the casting stuff? Remember, it's all fluid. What was true a week ago - someone was in talks, the production was close to having a deal - isn't true today. And an actor they weren't interested in a year ago may have suddenly gotten their attention recently. Official casting has to happen in the near future, so we'll know soon enough.
I hope Josh Trank speaks out more. He's clearly passionate about making this movie right; when I told him I was rooting for his team to pull it off, he simply said, "We will."Team name Team members Abstract
Hikvision Qiaoyong Zhong*, Chao Li, Yingying Zhang(#), Haiming Sun*, Shicai Yang*, Di Xie, Shiliang Pu (* indicates equal contribution)
Hikvision Research Institute
(#)ShanghaiTech University, work is done at HRI [DET]
Our work on object detection is based on Faster R-CNN. We design and validate the following improvements:
* Better network. We find that the identity-mapping variant of ResNet-101 is superior for object detection over the original version.
* Better RPN proposals. A novel cascade RPN is proposed to refine proposals' scores and location. A constrained neg/pos anchor ratio further increases proposal recall dramatically.
* Pretraining matters. We find that a pretrained global context branch increases mAP by over 3 points. Pretraining on the 1000-class LOC dataset further increases mAP by ~0.5 point.
* Training strategies. To attack the imbalance problem, we design a balanced sampling strategy over different classes. With balanced sampling, the provided negative training data can be safely added for training. Other training strategies, like multi-scale training and online hard example mining are also applied.
* Testing strategies. During inference, multi-scale testing, horizontal flipping and weighted box voting are applied.
The final mAP is 65.1 (single model) and 67 (ensemble of 6 models) on val2.
[CLS-LOC]
A combination of 3 Inception networks and 3 residual networks is used to make the class prediction. For localization, the same Faster R-CNN configuration described above for DET is applied. The top5 classification error rate is 3.46%, and localization error is 8.8% on the validation set.
[Scene]
For the scene classification task, by drawing support from our newly-built M40-equipped GPU clusters, we have trained more than 20 models with various architectures, such as VGG, Inception, ResNet and different variants of them in the past two months. Fine-tuning very deep residual networks from pre-trained ImageNet models, like ResNet 101/152/200, seemed not to be as good enough as what we expected. Inception-style networks could get better performance in considerably less training time according to our experiments. Based on this observation, deep Inception-style networks, and not-so-deep residuals networks have been used. Besides, we have made several improvements for training and testing. First, a new data augmentation technique is proposed to better utilize the information of original images. Second, a new learning rate setting is adopted. Third, label shuffling and label smoothing is used to tackle the class imbalance problem. Fourth, some small tricks are used to improve the performance in test phase. Finally we achieved a very good top 5 error rate, which is below 9% on the validation set.
[Scene Parsing]
We utilize a fully convolutional network transferred from VGG-16 net, with a module, called mixed context network, and a refinement module appended to the end of the net. The mixed context network is constructed by a stack of dilated convolutions and skip connections. The refinement module generates predictions by making use of output of the mixed context network and feature maps from early layers of FCN. The predictions are then fed into a sub-network, which is designed to simulate message-passing process. Compared with baseline, our first major improvement is that, we construct the mixed context network, and find that it provides better features for dealing with stuff, big objects and small objects all at once. The second improvement is that, we propose a memory-efficient sub-network to simulate message-passing process. The proposed system can be trained end-to-end. On validation set, the mean iou of our system is 0.4099 (single model) and 0.4156 (ensemble of 3 models), and the pixel accuracy is 79.80% (single model) and 80.01% (ensemble of 3 models).
References
[1] Ren, Shaoqing, et al. "Faster R-CNN: Towards real-time object detection with region proposal networks." Advances in neural information processing systems. 2015.
[2] Shrivastava, Abhinav, Abhinav Gupta, and Ross Girshick. "Training region-based object detectors with online hard example mining." arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.03540 (2016).
[3] He, Kaiming, et al. "Deep residual learning for image recognition." arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.03385 (2015).
[4] He, Kaiming, et al. "Identity mappings in deep residual networks." arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.05027 (2016).
[5] Ioffe, Sergey, and Christian Szegedy. "Batch normalization: Accelerating deep network training by reducing internal covariate shift." arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.03167 (2015).
[6] Szegedy, Christian, et al. "Rethinking the inception architecture for computer vision." arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.00567 (2015).
[7] Szegedy, Christian, Sergey Ioffe, and Vincent Vanhoucke. "Inception-v4, inception-resnet and the impact of residual connections on learning." arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.07261 (2016).
[8] F. Yu and V. Koltun, "Multi-scale context aggregation by dilated convolutions," in ICLR, 2016.
[9] J. Long, E. Shelhamer, and T. Darrell, "Fully convolutional networks for semantic segmentation," in CVPR, 2015.
[10] S. Zheng, S. Jayasumana, B. Romera-Paredes, V. Vineet, Z. Su, D. Du, C. Huang, and P. Torr, "Conditional random fields as recurrent neural networks," in ICCV, 2015.
[11] L.-C. Chen, G. Papandreou, I. Kokkinos, K. Murphy, A. Yuille, "DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs", arXiv:1606.00915, 2016.
[12] P. O. Pinheiro, T. Lin, R. Collobert, P. Dollar, "Learning to Refine Object Segments", arXiv:1603.08695, 2016.
MW Gang Sun (Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Jie Hu (Peking University) We leverage the theory named CNA [1] (capacity and necessity analysis) to guide the design of CNNs. We add more layers on the larger feature map (e.g., 56x56) to increase the capacity, and remove some layers on the smaller feature map (e.g., 14x14) to avoid ineffective architectures. We have verified the effectiveness on the models in [2], ResNet-like models [3], and Inception-ResNet-like models [4]. In addition, we also apply cropped patches from original images as training samples by selecting random area and aspect ratio. To increase the ability of generalization, we prune the model weights periodically. Moreover, we utilize balanced sampling strategy [2] and label smooth regularization [5] during training, to alleviate the bias from the non-uniform sample distribution among categories and partial incorrect training labels. We use the provided data (Places365) for training models, do not use any additional data, and train all models from scratch. The algorithm and architecture details will be described in our arXiv paper (available online shortly).
[1] Xudong Cao. A practical theory for designing very deep convolutional neural networks, 2014. (unpublished)
[2] Li Shen, Zhouchen Lin, Qingming Huang. Relay Backpropagation for Effective Learning of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. In ECCV 2016.
[3] Kaiming He, Xiangyu Zhang, Shaoqing Ren, Jian Sun. Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition. In CVPR 2016.
[4] Christian Szegedy, Sergey Ioffe, Vincent Vanhoucke, Alex Alemi. Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning. ArXiv:1602.07261,2016.
[5] Christian Szegedy, Vincent Vanhoucke, Sergey Ioffe, Jonathon Shlens, Zbigniew Wojna. Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision. ArXiv:1512.00567,2016.
Trimps-Soushen Jie Shao, Xiaoteng Zhang, Zhengyan Ding, Yixin Zhao, Yanjun Chen, Jianying Zhou, Wenfei Wang, Lin Mei, Chuanping Hu
The Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, P.R. China. Object detection (DET)
We use several pre-trained models, including ResNet, Inception, Inception-Resnet etc. By taking the predict boxes from our best model as region proposals, we average the softmax scores and the box regression outputs across all models. Other improvements include annotations refine, boxes voting and features maxout.
Object classification/localization (CLS-LOC)
Based on image classification models like Inception, Inception-Resnet, ResNet and Wide Residual Network (WRN), we predict the class labels of the image. Then we refer to the framework of "Faster R-CNN" to predict bounding boxes based on the labels. Results from multiple models are fused in different ways, using the model accuracy as weights.
Scene classification (Scene)
We adopt different kinds of CNN models such as ResNet, Inception and WRN. To improve the performance of features from multiple scales and models, we implement a cascade softmax classifier after the extraction stage.
Object detection from video (VID)
Same methods as DET task were applied to each frame. Optical flow guided motion prediction helped to reduce the false negative detections.
[1] Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks, Shaoqing Ren, Kaiming He, Ross Girshick, Jian Sun. NIPS 2015
[2] Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning, Christian Szegedy, Sergey Ioffe, Vincent Vanhoucke, Alex Alem.
[3] Zagoruyko S, Komodakis N. Wide Residual Networks[J]. arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.07146, 2016.
SIAT_MMLAB Sheng Guo, Linjie Xing,
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, CAS.
Limin Wang,
Computer Vision Lab, ETH Zurich.
Yuanjun Xiong,
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Jiaming Liu and Yu Qiao,
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, CAS. We propose a modular framework for large-scale scene recognition, called as multi-resolution CNN (MR-CNN) [1]. This framework addresses the characterization difficulty of scene concepts, which may be based on multi-level visual information, including local objects, spatial layout, and global context. Specifically, in this challenge submission, we utilizes four resolutions (224, 299, 336, 448) as the input sizes of MR-CNN architectures. For coarse resolution (224, 299), we exploit the existing powerful Inception architectures (Inception v2 [2], Inception v4 [3], and Inception-ResNet [3]), while for fine resolution (336, 448), we propose our new inception architectures by making original inception network deeper and wider. Our final submission is the prediction result of MR-CNNs by fusing the outputs of CNNs of different resolutions.
In addition, we propose several principled techniques to reduce the over-fitting risk of MR-CNNs, including class balancing and hard sample mining. These simple yet effective training techniques enable us to further improve the generalization performance of MR-CNNs on the validation dataset. Meanwhile, we use an efficient parallel version of Caffe toolbox [4] to allow for the fast training of our proposed deeper and wider Inception networks.
[1] L. Wang, S. Guo, W. Huang, Y. Xiong, and Y. Qiao, Knowledge guided disambiguation for large-scale scene classification with Multi-Resolution CNNs, in arXiv, 2016.
[2] S. Ioffe and C. Szegedy, Batch normalization: Accelerating deep network training by reducing internal covariate shift, in ICML, 2015.
[3] C. Szegedy, S. Ioffe, and V. Vanhouche, Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the impact of residual connections on learning, in arXiv, 2016.
[4] L. Wang, Y. Xiong, Z. Wang, Y. Qiao, D. Lin, X. Tang, and L. Van Gool, Temporal segment networks: towards good practices for deep action recognition, in ECCV, 2016.
NTU-SC Jason Kuen, Xingxing Wang, Bing Shuai, Xiangfei Kong, Jianxiong Yin, Gang Wang*, Alex C Kot
Rapid-Rich Object Search Lab, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. All of our scene classification models are built upon pre-activation ResNets [1]. For scene classification using the provided RGB images, we train from scratch a ResNet-200, as well as a relatively shallow Wide-ResNet [2]. In addition to RGB images, we make use of class activation maps [3] and (scene) semantic segmentation masks [4] as complementary cues, obtained from models pre-trained for ILSVRC image classification [5] and scene parsing [6] tasks respectively. Our final submissions consist of ensembles of multiple models.
References
[1] He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S., & Sun, J. “Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks”. ECCV 2016.
[2] Zagoruyko, S., & Komodakis, N. “Wide Residual Networks”. BMVC 2016.
[3] Zhou, B., Khosla, A., Lapedriza, A., Oliva, A., & Torralba, A. “Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization”. CVPR 2016.
[4] Shuai, B., Zuo, Z., Wang, G., & Wang, B. "Dag-Recurrent Neural Networks for Scene Labeling". CVPR 2016.
[5] Russakovsky, O., Deng, J., Su, H., Krause, J., Satheesh, S., Ma, S.,... & Berg, A. C. “Imagenet large scale visual recognition challenge”. International Journal of Computer Vision, 115(3), 211-252.
[6] Zhou, B., Zhao, H., Puig, X., Fidler, S., Barriuso, A., & Torralba, A. “Semantic Understanding of Scenes through the ADE20K Dataset”. arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.05442.
NQSCENE Chen Yunpeng ( NUS )
Jin Xiaojie ( NUS )
Zhang Rui ( CAS )
Li Yu ( CAS )
Yan Shuicheng ( Qihoo/NUS ) Technique Details for the Scene Classification:
For the scene classification task, we propose the following methods to address the data imbalance issues (aka the long tail distribution issue) which benefit and boost the final performance:
1) Category-wise Data Augmentation:
We implied a category wise data augmentation strategy, which associates each category with adaptive augmentation level. The augmentation level is updated iteratively during the training.
2) Multi-task Learning:
We proposed a multipath learning architecture to jointly learn feature representations from the Imagnet-1000 dataset and Places-365 dataset.
Vanilla ResNet-200 [1] is adopted with following elementary tricks: scale and aspect ratio augmentation, over-sampling, multi-scale (x224,x256,x288,x320) dense testing. In total, we have trained four models and fused them by averaging their scores. It costs about three days for training each model using MXNet [2] on a cluster with forty NVIDIA M40 (12GB).
------------------------------
[1] He, Kaiming, et al. "Identity mappings in deep residual networks." arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.05027 (2016).
[2] Chen, Tianqi, et al. "Mxnet: A flexible and efficient machine learning library for heterogeneous distributed systems." arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.01274(2015).
Samsung Research America: General Purpose Acceleration Group Dr. S. Eliuk (Samsung), C. Upright (Samsung), Dr. H. Vardhan (Samsung),
T. Gale (Intern, North Eastern),
S. Walsh (Intern University of Alberta). The General Purpose Acceleration Group is focused on accelerating training via HPC & distributed computing. We present Distributed Training Done Right (DTDR) where standard open-source models are trained in an effective manner via a multitude of techniques involving strong / weak scaling and strict distributed training modes. Several different models are used from standard Inception v3, to Inception v4 res2, and ensembles of such techniques. The training environment is unique as we can explore extremely deep models given the model-parallel nature of our partitioning of data.
fusionf Nina Narodytska (Samsung Research America)
Shiva Kasiviswanathan (Samsung Research America)
Hamid Maei (Samsung Research America) We used several modifications of modern CNNs, including VGG[1], GoogleNet[2,4], and ResNet[3]. We used several fusion strategies,
including a standard averaging and scoring scheme. We also used different subsets of models in different submissions. Training was
performed on low-resolution dataset. We used balanced loading to take into account different numbers of images in each class.
[1] K. Simonyan and A. Zisserman. Very deep convolutional networks for
large-scale image recognition.
[2] C. Szegedy, W. Liu, Y. Jia, P. Sermanet, S. Reed, D. Anguelov, D.
Erhan, V. Vanhoucke, A. Rabinovich. Going Deeper with Convolutions.
[3] Kaiming He, Xiangyu Zhang, Shaoqing Ren, Jian Sun
Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition
[4]Christian Szegedy, Sergey Ioffe, Vincent Vanhoucke, Alex Alemi
Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections
on Learning
YoutuLab Xiaowei Guo, YoutuLab
Ruixin Zhang, YoutuLab
Yushi Yao, YoutuLab
Pai Peng, YoutuLab
Ke Li, YoutuLab We build a scene recognition system using deep CNN models. These CNN models are inspired by original resnet[1] and inception[2] network architectures. We train these models on challenge dataset and apply balanced sampling strategy[3] to adapt unbalanced challenge dataset. Moreover, DSD[4] process is applied to further improve model performance.
In this competition, we submit five entries. The first and second are combinations of single scale results using weighted arithmetic average which weights is searched by greedy strategy. The third is a combination of single model results using same strategy with the first entry. The fourth and fifth are combinations using simple average strategy of single model results.
[1] K. He, X. Zhang, S. Ren, J. Sun. Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks. In ECCV 2016. abs/1603.05027
[2] C. Szegedy, S. Ioffe, V. Vanhoucke, A. Alemi. Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning. In ICLR 2016. abs/1602.07261
[3] L. Shen, Z. Lin, Q. Huang. Relay Backpropagation for Effective Learning of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. abs/1512.05830
[4] S. Han, J. Pool, S. Narang, H. Mao, S. Tang, E. Elsen, B. Catanzaro, J. Tran, W. J. Dally. DSD: Regularizing Deep Neural Networks with Dense-Sparse-Dense Training Flow. abs/1607.04381
SamExynos Qian Zhang(Beijing Samsung Telecom R&D Center)
Peng Liu(Beijing Samsung Telecom R&D Center)
Jinbin Lin(Beijing Samsung Telecom R&D Center)
Junjun Xiong(Beijing Samsung Telecom R&D Center) Object localization:
The submission is based on [1] and [2], but we modified the model, and the newtwork is 205 layers. Due to the limit of time and GPUs, we have just trained three CNN model for classification. The top-5 accuracy on the validation set with dense crops(scale:224,256,288,320,352,384,448,480) is 96.44% for the best single model. And the top-5 accuracy on the validation set with dense crops is 96.88% for three model ensemble.
places365 classification:
The submission is based on [3] and [4], we add 5 layers to resnet 50, and modified the network. Due to the limit of time and GPUs, we have just trained three CNN model for the scene classification task. The top-5 accuracy on the validation set with 72 crops is 87.79% for the best single model. And the top-5 accuracy on the validation set with multiple crops is 88.70% for three model ensemble.
[1]Kaiming He, Xiangyu Zhang, Shaoqing Ren, Jian Sun,Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks. ECCV 2016.
[2]Christian Szegedy, Sergey Ioffe, Vincent Vanhoucke, Alex Alemi. "Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning". arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.07261 (2016)
[3]Christian Szegedy, Vincent Vanhoucke, Sergey Ioffe, Jonathon Shlens, Zbigniew Wojna. "Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision". arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.00567 (2015)
Rangers Y |
en la cabeza.
Sus dolores de cabeza son distintos de otros dolores de cabeza que haya sufrido, especialmente si tiene más de 50 años de edad.
Sus dolores de cabeza suceden después de una actividad física.
Sufre de dolores de cabeza con otros síntomas graves, como una pérdida del control, un ataque epiléptico o un arranque de cólera, o un cambio en lenguaje o agudeza mental.
La mayoría de los quistes ováricos son de bajo riesgo y pueden ignorarse.
El ultrasonido es seguro, pero el seguimiento puede tener riesgos.
Los exámenes pueden ser un desperdicio de dinero.
¿Así que cuándo se debería realizar un examen de ultrasonido de seguimiento?
Por lo regular, una radiografía del tórax no ayuda.
Una radiografía del tórax puede tener riesgos.
Una radiografía del tórax cuesta dinero.
¿Cuándo debería usted tomarse una radiografía del tórax?
Tiene señales o síntomas de una condición cardíaca o pulmonar. Entre estos se incluyen: dolor en el pecho, tos, falta de aliento, tobillos hinchados, calentura, un ataque cardíaco reciente o una gripe o infección pulmonar que no se va.
Padece de una enfermedad cardíaca o pulmonar, sin importar si tiene síntomas o no.
Es mayor de 70 años de edad y no se le ha tomado una radiografía del tórax en los últimos seis meses.
Está sometiéndose a cirugía del corazón, de los pulmones o de alguna otra parte del tórax.
Most ovarian cysts are low-risk and can be ignored.
Ultrasound is safe, but follow-up can have risks.
The tests can be a waste of money.
So when should you have a follow-up ultrasound test?
You have signs or symptoms of a heart or lung condition. These include chest pain, coughing, shortness of breath, swelling in the ankles, fever, a recent heart attack, or a cold or other lung infection that does not go away.
You have a heart or lung disease, whether or not you have symptoms.
You are older than 70 and you have not had a chest X-ray within the last six months.
You are having surgery on the heart, lungs, or any other part of the chest.
American College of Radiology
Normalmente no necesita pruebas para mostrar que sufre de Lyme.
Por lo general, no necesita pruebas si tiene vagas molestias y dolores.
Los análisis de sangre pueden dar resultados positivos falsos.
Los análisis de sangre pueden ser un desperdicio de dinero.
Así que, ¿cuándo necesita un análisis de sangre para la enfermedad de Lyme?
Estuvo en un área con garrapatas y Lyme.
También tiene fiebre o enrojecimiento, calor e hinchazón en una o varias articulaciones a la vez—por lo general en las rodillas, hombros o muñecas.
¿Cómo se trata la RA?
Los medicamentos no biológicos pueden ser eficaces y cuestan mucho menos.
Considere estos medicamentos.
Metotrexato (Rheumatrex, Trexall y genérico)
Leflunomida (Arava y genérico)
Hidroxicloroquina (Plaquenil y genérico)
Sulfasalazina (Azul dine y genérico)
Esté alerta a los efectos secundarios de los medicamentos biológicos.
Infecciones graves de la piel o los pulmones
Cáncer de la piel
Graves reacciones alérgicas
Cuándo se debe tomar un medicamento biológico.
How is RA treated?
Non-biologics can be effective, and they cost much less.
Consider these non-biologics.
Methotrexate (Rheumatrex, Trexall, and generic)
Leflunomide (Arava and generic)
Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil and generic)
Sulfasalazine (Azulfidine and generic)
Be aware of the side effects with biologics.
Serious skin or lung infections
Skin cancers
Serious allergic reactions
When to take a biologic drug.
You do not usually need tests to show that you have Lyme disease.
You do not usually need tests if you have vague aches and pains.
The blood tests can have false positives.
The blood tests can be a waste of money.
So when do you need blood tests for Lyme disease?
You were in an area with ticks and Lyme disease.
You also have fever or redness, warmth, and swelling in one or a few joints at a time— usually the knees, shoulders, or wrists.
American College of Rheumatology
¿Qué es una colonoscopía?
Las personas que no corren un alto riesgo necesitan el examen cada 10 años.
Si su examen no detecta adenomas ni cáncer, y usted no corre un alto riesgo de cáncer de colon, probablemente no necesitará otro examen en 10 años.
Si se le extirpan uno o dos adenomas de bajo riesgo, probablemente no necesitará otro examen en cinco años.
Si tiene adenomas más graves, es posible que necesite otro examen antes de 5 años. Los pacientes que corren un alto riesgo posiblemente necesiten la prueba en 1 a 3 años.
La colonoscopía es segura, pero puede conllevar riesgos.
Sangrado de donde se extirpa un pólipo.
Reacciones al sedante.
Dolor abdominal.
Pequeños orificios en el colon, llamados perforaciones.
La preparación para el examen justifica el esfuerzo.
El examen puede aumentar los costos.
¿Cuándo se debe realizar una colonoscopía?
Enfermedad de intestinos inflamados.
Colitis ulcerativa y enfermedad de Crohn.
Un historial de adenomas grandes múltiples o de adenomas de alto riesgo.
Un familiar cercano que haya tenido cáncer colorrectal o adenomas.
Otras pruebas de detección de cáncer colorrectal.
Es posible que usted no necesite un PPI.
Los PPI tienen riesgos.
Un riesgo más alto de ciertas fracturas.
Un riesgo más alto de enfermedad renal, o enfermedad renal que empeora.
Un riesgo más alto de ataque cardíaco.
En personas mayores de 75 años, un riesgo más alto de demencia.
Problemas para absorber el calcio y la vitamina B12.
Bajos niveles de magnesio en la sangre.
Pulmonía.
Una infección intestinal conocida como Clostridio difícil.
Los PPI pueden cambiar la manera en que otros medicamentos funcionan.
Los PPI cuestan más.
¿Cuándo debería usted considerar un PPI?
Tiene agruras por lo menos dos veces a la semana durante varias semanas.
La comida o el ácido le sube hasta la garganta.
Toma antiácidos o bloqueadores H2, y hace cambios como los descritos en esta página, pero sus agruras no desaparacen.
Pida comenzar con una dosis baja de lanzoprazol u omeprazol genérico con receta. Usted también puede conseguir estos medicamentos.
Si las agruras mejoran después de unas cuantas semanas, hable con su doctor acerca de reducir su dosis gradualmente.
What is a colonoscopy?
People who are not at high risk need the exam every 10 years.
If your exam doesn’t find adenomas or cancer and you don’t have a high risk for colon cancer, you probably won’t need another exam for 10 years.
If you have one or two low-risk adenomas removed, you probably won’t need another exam for five years.
If you have more serious adenomas, you may need another exam sooner than five years. Very high-risk patients may need the test in just one to three years.
Colonoscopy is safe, but risks can occur.
Bleeding where a polyp was removed.
Reactions to the sedative.
Abdominal pain.
Small holes in the colon, called perforations.
The exam preparation is worth the effort.
The exam can increase your costs.
When should people get a colonoscopy?
Inflammatory bowel disease.
Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
A history of multiple, large, or high-risk adenomas.
A parent, sibling, or child who had colorectal cancer or adenomas.
Other screening tests for colorectal cancer.
Flexible sigmoidoscopy.
Stool tests such as Fecal Immunochemical test, FOBT, and Cologuard.
You may not need a PPI?
PPIs have risks.
Higher risk of certain fractures.
Higher risk of kidney disease, or kidney disease that gets worse.
A higher risk of heart attack.
In people age 75 and older, a higher risk of dementia.
Trouble absorbing calcium and vitamin B12.
Low levels of magnesium in your blood.
Pneumonia.
An infection in the intestines called Clostridium difficile.
PPIs can change the way other drugs work.
PPIs cost more.
When should you consider a PPI?
You have heartburn at least twice a week for several weeks.
Food or acid often come back up into your throat.
You take antacid or H2 blockers, and you make changes like the ones described on this page, but your heartburn does not go away.
Ask to start with a low dose of generic prescription lansoprazole or omeprazole. You can also get these medicines over the counter.
If the heartburn gets better after a few weeks, talk to your doctor about gradually lowering your dose.
American Gastroenterological Association
Por lo general, las sondas de alimentación no son útiles para la enfermedad de Alzheimer grave.
Las sondas de alimentación pueden tener riesgos.
Puede causar sangrado, infección, irritación de la piel o goteo alrededor de la sonda.
Puede causar náuseas, vómito y diarrea.
La sonda puede obstruirse o caerse, y tiene que reemplazarse en un hospital.
A muchas personas con Alzheimer les molesta la sonda y tratan de quitársela. Para evitar eso, a menudo los amarran o les dan medicinas.
Las personas a las que se les alimenta por sonda están más propensas a sufrir de llagas de presión.
Las personas a las que se les alimenta por sonda están más propensas a regurgitar la comida, lo que podría causar pulmonía.
Al final de la vida, los líquidos pueden llenar los pulmones de la persona y causar problemas de respiración.
Las sondas de alimentación pueden costar mucho.
Así que ¿cuándo son buena idea las sondas de alimentación?
Es posible que las píldoras para dormir no ayuden mucho.
Las píldoras para dormir pueden tener efectos secundarios graves.
Aumentan el riesgo de sufrir caídas y fracturas de cadera que es causa común de hospitalización y muerte en personas mayores.
Aumentan el riesgo de accidentes de auto.
Pruebe primero tratamientos sin medicinas.
Clases de píldoras para dormir
Secobarbital (Seconal y genérico)
Fenobarbital (Luminal y genérico)
Alprazolam (Xanax y genérico)
Diazepam (Valium y genérico)
Lorazepam (Ativan y genérico)
Estazolam (únicamente genérico)
Flurazepam (Dalmane y genérico)
Quazepam (Doral)
Temazepam (Restoril y genérico)
Triazolam (Halcion y genérico)
Zolpidem (Ambien y genérico)
Eszopiclona (Lunesta y genérico)
Zaleplón (Sonata y genérico)
Es posible que las medicinas de venta libre no sean una buena opción.
Difenhidramina (Benadryl Allergy, Nytol, Sominex y genérico)
Doxilamina (Unisom y genérico)
Advil PM (combinación de ibuprofeno y difenhidramina)
Tylenol PM (combinación de acetaminofén y difenhidramina)
Cuándo probar píldoras para dormir.
Una sensación de ardor al orinar
Muchas ganas de orinar frecuentemente
Por lo general, las pruebas de orina no ayudan si usted no tiene síntomas de una UTI.
Los antibióticos pueden causar graves problemas.
Evite los antibióticos cuando pueda.
Las pruebas y tratamientos innecesarios pueden ser un desperdicio de dinero.
¿Cuándo debe usted realizarse una prueba de orina?
Dolor al orinar
Sangre en la orina
Muchas ganas de orinar frecuentemente
Someterse a una cirugía de próstata.
La extracción de cálculos renales.
La extracción de tumores en la vejiga.
Aripiprazol (Abilify y genérico)
Olanzapina (Zyprexa y genérico)
Quetiapina (Seroquel y genérico)
Risperidona (Risperdal y genérico)
Las medicinas antipsicóticas no ayudan mucho.
Estas pueden causar graves efectos secundarios.
Somnolencia y confusión—que puede reducir el contacto social y las capacidades mentales, así como aumentar las caídas
Aumento de peso
Diabetes
Agitación o temblores (que pueden ser permanentes)
Pulmonía
Accidente cerebrovascular
Muerte repentina
A menudo, otras opciones funcionan mejor.
Asegúrese de que el paciente tenga un examen y revisión de sus medicinas completos.
Es posible que la causa del comportamiento sea una condición común, como estreñimiento, infección, problemas de la vista o el oído, problemas de sueño o dolor.
Muchas medicinas y combinaciones de medicinas pueden causar confusión y agitación en las personas mayores.
Hable con un especialista del comportamiento.
Considere primero otras medicinas.
Medicinas que retardan el deterioro mental en la demencia.
Antidepresivos para las personas que tienen un historial de depresión o que están deprimidas y ansiosas.
Considere medicinas antipsicóticas si:
Otras medidas han fallado.
La persona está sumamente angustiada.
La persona podría lastimarse a sí misma o a otras personas.
Una sensación de ardor cuando orina.
Una fuerte urgencia de orinar frecuentemente.
No previene las UTI.
No ayuda para el control de la vejiga.
No ayuda para los problemas de memoria o equilibrio.
Los síntomas más comunes de una UTI son una sensación dolorosa de ardor al orinar y una fuerte urgencia de “ir al baño” frecuentemente.
Otros síntomas de una UTI en las personas mayores podrían incluir fiebre, escalofríos o confusión. Junto con estos síntomas, por lo general hay dolor a un costado de la espalda por debajo de las costillas o un malestar en la parte inferior del abdomen. Es posible que haya un cambio en la forma en que la orina se ve o huele.
American Geriatrics Society
Por lo general, las tomografías del cerebro no son útiles para una conmoción cerebral.
¿Cómo sabes si sufres de una conmoción cerebral?
Te preguntará sobre tu accidente.
Examinará tu memoria, habla, equilibrio y coordinación.
Te examinará la cabeza, ojos, oídos y el cuello.
Buscará síntomas de una conmoción cerebral: Dolor de cabeza, vómito, náuseas Mareo, problemas de equilibrio Vista borrosa Zumbido en los oídos Confusión, pérdida de la memoria, falta de concentración Sensibilidad a la luz o al ruido Breve pérdida del sentido
Las tomografías tienen riesgos.
Las tomografías del cerebro cuestan mucho.
¿Cuándo se necesita una CT scan o una MRI?
Debilidad en un lado de la cara o del cuerpo
Dificultad para hablar, oír o tragar
Visión reducida
Ataques epilépticos
Vómito repetido
Dolor de cabeza muy fuerte
Una pupila más grande que la otra
Líquido o sangre de la nariz o un oído
Dolor o sensibilidad en el cráneo
Perdiste el sentido.
Estuviste en un accidente automovilístico.
Te caíste de más de tres pies de altura.
Ask about your accident.
Check your memory, speech, balance, and coordination.
Check your head, eyes, ears, and neck.
Look for symptoms of a concussion: Headache, vomiting, nausea Dizziness, balance problems Blurred vision Ringing in the ears Confusion, memory loss, poor concentration Sensitivity to light or noise Brief loss of consciousness
Weakness on one side of your face or body
Trouble speaking, hearing, or swallowing
Reduced vision
Seizures
Repeated vomiting
Severe headache
One pupil larger than the other
Fluid or blood from an ear or nose
Tenderness over the skull
You lost consciousness.
You were in a car accident.
You fell more than three feet.
American Medical Society for Sports Medicine
Avoid treatments that aren’t helpful
Do my occupational therapy activities support what I want to do?
Do the occupational therapy activities that challenge my mind have a purpose?
What’s the goal of heat, ice, and electrotherapy?
Are these the right sensory interventions?
Are overhead pulleys the best treatment for me?
How do I choose an occupational therapist?
Make sure your OT or OTA is licensed.
Check your insurance coverage.
Your OT works for you.
American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc.
Plantar fasciitis is usually easy to diagnose.
Non-surgical treatments often work best.
First try simple stretches and exercises to strengthen the foot.
Wear sturdy, lace-up shoes with good arch support and heel cushioning.
Anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen or naproxen.
, such as ibuprofen or naproxen. Wearing a splint to bed. This keeps your plantar fascia from getting tighter at night.
. This keeps your plantar fascia from getting tighter at night. Over-the-counter arch supports with a heel cushion.
with a heel cushion. Custom arch supports. These can cost as much as $300 each. But they may be worth it if other treatments don’t help.
. These can cost as much as $300 each. But they may be worth it if other treatments don’t help. Shock wave therapy. This treatment uses sound waves. It has proven effective, but your insurance might not pay for it.
. This treatment uses sound waves. It has proven effective, but your insurance might not pay for it. A cortisone injection is the last thing to try before surgery. Only try this once. Extra injections don’t help, and they have risks.
Surgery for plantar fasciitis has risks.
Nerve damage.
Permanent changes in foot shape.
Flat feet. (You may need to wear arch supports for the rest of your life.)
More pain than before the surgery. (You may need more surgery to relieve the pain, and you may have permanent numbness in the heel.)
Surgery and follow-up can cost a lot.
Before you consider surgery:
You should try other treatments for at least six months. Your doctor may suggest you wait 12 months.
Before you consider surgery, see a specialist. For example, an orthopedic surgeon can look for other foot problems that cause your pain.
Talk to the specialist about the risks and benefits of surgery.
American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society
Artritis
Dolor de espalda o de hombros
Parálisis cerebral
Osteoporosis (huesos débiles)
Lesión de la médula espinal
Accidente cerebrovascular
Fortalecer los músculos que están débiles por falta de uso.
Ayudar a que las articulaciones rígidas se muevan de nuevo.
Ayudarle a usar los músculos correctamente, para que pueda moverse con menos dolor y evitar lesiones.
Evite tratamientos que no ayudarán
Tratamientos a base de calor
Cuándo considerar el calor:
Los tratamientos caseros a base de calor pueden ayudar a aliviar temporalmente las molestias y el dolor.
La tendinitis calcificante es una condición dolorosa del hombro. El calor profundo que usa ultrasonido puede ayudar.
La clase errónea de entrenamiento de fuerza para adultos mayores
Cuándo ser cuidadoso con los músculos:
Comience con pesas más ligeras para que aprenda la forma correcta de hacerlo.
No haga entrenamiento de fuerza si tiene una articulación adolorida o inflamada, como un codo o rodilla hinchados.
Reposo en cama para coágulos de sangre
Cuándo considerar el reposo en cama para una DVT:
No puede tomar medicamentos que prevengan los coágulos.
Tiene otra razón médica para reposar en cama, como sangrado en el cerebro por un accidente cerebrovascular o graves problemas respiratorios.
Máquinas para hacer ejercicio (CPM) después de un reemplazo total de rodilla
Cuándo considerar una máquina de CPM:
Tuvo una grave complicación de la cirugía, como un accidente cerebrovascular o una insuficiencia respiratoria. En este caso, usted podría necesitar más reposo en cama.
Se está recuperando de una segunda operación de reemplazo de rodilla porque la primera fracasó.
Tinas de hidromasaje (Whirlpools) para el cuidado de las heridas
Enjuagar la herida con una solución de agua salada.
Rociar líquido en las áreas de la herida con un aparato estéril de un solo uso.
Los daños:
Si la tina de hidromasaje no está limpia, las bacterias pueden propagarse de una persona a otra.
Las bacterias pueden propagarse de otras partes de su propio cuerpo a la herida.
Una herida infectada sana más lentamente y es posible que usted necesite antibióticos.
Si su sistema inmunológico está débil, la infección puede propagarse a la sangre y causar una condición grave llamada sepsis.
Los químicos usados para limpiar la tina de hidromasaje y desinfectar el agua pueden dañar las hidromasaje y desinfectar el agua pueden dañar las nuevas células de la piel en la herida.
Los chorros de agua de las tinas de hidromasaje pueden dañar el tejido frágil que está creciendo en la herida.
Sumergirse por mucho tiempo puede agrietar la piel alrededor de la herida.
La posición de la pierna puede causar hinchazón. Las personas que tienen problemas con las venas podrían tener complicaciones graves.
Cuándo considerar la terapia en una tina de hidromasaje:
Arthritis
Back or shoulder pain
Cerebral palsy
Osteoporosis (weak bones)
Spinal cord injury
Stroke
Strengthening muscles that are weak from lack of use.
Helping stiff joints move again.
Helping you use your muscles correctly, so you can move with less pain and avoid injury.
Avoid treatments that don’t help.
Heat treatments
When to consider heat:
Home heat treatments, such as a hot bath or shower or a heating pad, can help give temporary relief of aches and pains.
Calcific tendonitis is a painful shoulder condition. Deep heat using ultrasound can help.
The wrong kind of strength training for older adults
Start out with lighter weights so you can learn the correct way to use them.
Don’t do strength training if you have a painful, inflamed joint, such as a swollen elbow or knee.
Bed rest for blood clots
You can’t take clot-preventing drugs
You have another medical reason for bed rest, such as bleeding in the brain from a stroke, or severe breathing problems.
Exercise machines (CPM) after total knee replacement
You had a serious complication from the surgery, such as a stroke or respiratory failure. In this case you may need more bed rest.
You are recovering from a second knee replacement operation because the first one failed.
Whirlpools for wound care
Rinse the wound with a saltwater wash.
Spray liquid on areas of the wound with a single-use sterile device.
If the tub is not clean, bacteria can spread from person to person.
Bacteria can spread from other parts of your own body to the wound.
An infected wound heals more slowly and you may need antibiotics.
If your immune system is weak, the infection can spread to the blood and cause a serious
condition called sepsis.
Chemicals used to clean the tub and disinfect the water can damage the new skin cells on the wound.
Whirlpool jets can harm fragile new tissue growing in the wound.
Long soaking can break down skin around the wound.
The placement of the leg can cause swelling. People who have vein problems may have serious complications.
American Physical Therapy Association
Los antipsicóticos no ayudan mucho.
Los antipsicóticos pueden tener graves riesgos.
Vértigo, somnolencia, confusión y un riesgo más alto de caídas y lesiones.
Aumento de peso.
Diabetes.
Colesterol alto.
Contracciones musculares, temblores y espasmos, que posiblemente no desaparezcan, incluso si el medicamento se interrumpe.
Coágulos de sangre, que pueden causar graves problemas y la muerte si no se tratan.
A menudo, otros planes funcionan mejor.
Apnea del sueño—ronquidos graves. Síndrome de piernas inquietas—un fuerte impulso para mover las piernas. Orinar frecuentemente por la noche—esto podría ser un indicio de diabetes, próstata agrandada o una infección de las vías urinarias. Enfermedad por reflujo gastroesofágico (GERD), que causa agruras frecuentes.
¿Cuándo deberías considerar tomar antipsicóticos para el insomnio?
Sufres de una grave enfermedad mental, como trastorno bipolar con una manía, que no te deja dormir. Otras medidas, entre las que se incluyen medicamentos para dormir con receta, han fracasado. Te sientes muy afligido debido a que no duermes.
Antipsychotics don’t help much.
Antipsychotics can have serious risks.
Dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and a higher risk of falls and injuries.
Weight gain.
Diabetes.
High cholesterol.
Muscle twitches, tremors, and spasms. These may not go away even when the drug is stopped.
Blood clots. These can lead to serious problems and death if not treated.
Other approaches often work better.
Sleep apnea—severe snoring.
Restless legs syndrome—a strong urge to move your legs.
Urinating often at night—this may be a sign of diabetes, enlarged prostate, or a urinary tract infection.
Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) — frequent heartburn.
When should you consider antipsychotics for insomnia?
You have a serious mental illness, such as bipolar disorder with mania, which is keeping you from sleeping.
Other steps, including prescription sleep drugs, have failed.
You are very distressed due to lack of sleep.
American Psychiatric Association
Por lo general, las pruebas no ayudan para una cirugía de bajo riesgo.
Las pruebas de laboratorio pueden conducir a otros exámenes.
Los costos pueden acumularse.
Los costos pueden acumularse.
¿Cuándo es buena idea hacerse análisis?
Si tiene un problema de salud que afecta el sangrado, tal vez necesite un análisis de sangre para averiguar si su sangre se coagula normalmente. Es posible que necesite este análisis de sangre si le salen moretones con facilidad, toma una medicina anticoagulante, tuvo problemas de sangrado en una cirugía o procedimiento dental en el pasado o si tiene un historial de hemorragias en su familia.
Si tiene una enfermedad como la diabetes, probablemente necesitará hacerse análisis para asegurarse de que esté controlada.
Es posible que las mujeres en edad de procrear necesiten una prueba de embarazo.
Por lo general, una prueba no mejora el tratamiento.
Las pruebas adicionales conducen a tratamientos y costos adicionales.
¿Cuándo debería usted hacerse una prueba de vitamina D?
Si usted sufre de osteoporosis: Esta enfermedad le debilita los huesos, así que están más propensos a fracturarse.
Si usted padece de una enfermedad que daña la capacidad del organismo para usar la vitamina D: Por lo general, estas son enfermedades graves y crónicas del sistema digestivo, como enfermedad inflamatoria intestinal, enfermedad celíaca, del riñón, del hígado, pancreatitis y otras.
A test usually does not improve treatment.
Extra tests lead to extra treatments and costs.
When should you have a vitamin D test?
Osteoporosis: This disease makes your bones weak, so they are more likely to break.
If you have a disease that damages your body’s ability to use vitamin D. These are usually serious and ongoing diseases of the digestive system, such as inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, kidney disease, liver disease, pancreatitis and others.
The tests usually aren’t helpful for low-risk surgery.
The lab tests can lead to more tests.
The costs can add up.
When are the lab tests a good idea?
If you have a health problem that affects bleeding, you may need a blood test to find out if your blood clots normally. You may need this blood test if you bruise easily, use a blood-thinning medicine, had bleeding problems in an earlier surgery or dental procedure, or have a family history of bleeding problems.
If you have a disease such as diabetes, you will probably need to have a test to make sure it is under control.
Women of childbearing age may need a pregnancy test.
American Society for Clinical Pathology
No siempre se necesita tratamiento.
El cáncer de próstata a menudo es de bajo riesgo.
El tumor es pequeño.
Está contenido dentro de la próstata.
Es probable que esté creciendo tan lentamente que no pondrá en peligro su vida.
La vigilancia activa puede mejorar su calidad de vida.
El tratamiento puede tener efectos secundarios graves.
Impotencia, esto es, no tener erecciones que sean lo suficientemente firmes para realizar el acto sexual.
Goteo de orina. Es posible que pierda el control de la vejiga por completo, aunque esto es menos común.
Evacuaciones intestinales frecuentes, urgentes, con sangre o dolorosas.
El tratamiento puede ser caro.
¿Cuándo debería recibir tratamiento de inmediato para el cáncer de próstata?
Un valor de PSA alto o que sube rápidamente.
Los resultados de las pruebas muestran que el tumor está fuera de la glándula prostática. O el tumor está creciendo rápidamente y es probable que se extienda fuera de la glándula.
La puntuación de Gleason es de alto riesgo.
Hable con su equipo de atención del cáncer (oncología).
Treatment isn’t always needed.
Often, prostate cancer is low-risk.
The tumor is small.
It is contained within the prostate.
It is probably growing so slowly that it will not become life-threatening.
Active surveillance may help your quality of life.
Treatment can have serious side effects.
Impotence—not getting erections that are firm enough for intercourse.
Leaking urine. There may be complete loss of bladder control, but this is less common.
Frequent, urgent, bloody, or painful bowel movements.
Treatment can be expensive.
When should you get immediate treatment for prostate cancer?
PSA value that is high or rapidly rising.
Test results show that the tumor is outside the prostate gland. Or the tumor is growing rapidly and is likely to spread outside the gland.
Gleason score is high-risk.
Talk to your cancer (oncology) care team.
American Society for Radiation Oncology
Pruebas que las mujeres necesitan a menudo:
Prueba de sangre para examinar el número y la calidad de óvulos en los ovarios. Las mujeres mayores de 35 años de edad en especial van a necesitar esta prueba.
Una radiografía llamada histerosalpingografía (HSG). Esta prueba muestra si las trompas de Falopio están dañadas o bloqueadas.
Un ultrasonido. Esta prueba usa ondas sonoras para examinar el útero y los ovarios para detectar problemas que podrían prevenir el embarazo.
Una prueba que los hombres necesitan a menudo:
Las pruebas que no se necesitan por lo general.
Laparoscopia
Prueba después del coito
Dos pruebas que no necesita por lo general.
Laparoscopia
La laparoscopia tiene riesgos.
Se necesita anestesia general.
Es posible que haya complicaciones como infección, tejido cicatrizado y hematomas.
Con menos frecuencia, se daña un órgano o vaso sanguíneo y se necesita cirugía adicional.
Una HSG, ultrasonido o examen pélvico anormal.
Ha tenido dolor pélvico, apendicitis o una cirugía previa en la pelvis, o tiene antecedentes de infecciones pélvicas, como gonorrea o clamidia.
Prueba después del coito (PCT)
La PCT tiene riesgos.
Por lo general, no proporciona información útil y resulta en pruebas adicionales. Los estudios muestran que los resultados obtenidos con una PCT no ayudan a las mujeres a embarazarse.
Para algunas parejas, tener relaciones sexuales en un horario determinado contribuye al estrés.
Blood test to check the number and quality of eggs in the ovaries. Women who are over age 35 may especially need this test.
An X-ray called hysterosalpingogram (HSG). This test shows if your fallopian tubes are damaged or blocked.
An ultrasound. This test uses sound waves to check the uterus and ovaries for problems that could prevent pregnancy.
Laparoscopy
Post-coital test
Two tests you usually don't need
You need general anesthesia.
There may be complications such as infection, scar tissue, and bruising.
Less often, an organ or blood vessel is damaged, and further surgery is needed.
An abnormal HSG, ultrasound, or pelvic exam.
You’ve had pelvic pain, appendicitis, or previous surgery in the pelvis. Or you have a history of pelvic infections, such as gonorrhea or chlamydia.
Post-coital test (PCT)
It usually does not provide helpful information and it leads to further testing. Studies show that the results found with PCT do not help women get pregnant.
For some couples, having sex on a schedule adds to their stress.
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
Opioides
Los opiáceos tienen graves efectos secundarios y riesgos.
Problemas respiratorios y ritmo cardíaco lento, que puede ser mortal
Confusión y trastornos mentales, como mal humor o arrebatos de mal genio
Estreñimiento
Los opioides pueden ser muy adictivos.
Otros tratamientos para el dolor pueden funcionar mejor y tienen menos riesgos que los opiáceos.
Medicamentos de venta libre: Acetaminofeno (Tylenol y genérico) Ibuprofeno (Advil, Motrin IB y genérico) Naproxeno (Aleve y genérico)
Tratamientos sin medicamentos Ejercicio, terapia física y/o masajes Consejería Acupuntura Terapia “fría”, conocida como crioterapia
Terapias intervencionistas: Inyecciones de esteroides Ablación por radiofrecuencia (uso de calor para atacar ciertos nervios) Neuromodulación (estimulación nerviosa)
Otros medicamentos recetados (pregunte sobre los riesgos y los efectos secundarios): Medicamentos anticonvulsivos
¿Qué debe hacer si su médico le receta opioides?
Tome sus opioides exactamente como se los recetó su médico y nunca los comparta con nadie más.
Almacene sus medicamentos en un lugar donde los niños u otras personas no puedan acceder a ellos.
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key movies from their childhood, and as a child of the 80’s I count The Goonies on that list. It was, and still is a great movie all kids should have the chance to watch, and now it looks set to get a sequel for a whole new generation to enjoy.
Director Richard Donner shot The Goonies in the early 80’s using a screenplay written by Chris Columbus (Gremlins, Harry Potter, Home Alone) and having Steven Spielberg as executive producer. The actors have had varying levels of success since the movie’s release in 1985. Josh Brolin and Sean Astin being the most successful on screen.
Donner is now 83-years-old and counts 16 Blocks as the last movie he made back in 2006. But he apparently isn’t done yet. During an autograph signing recently he was asked if he had another comic-book film in him (his company produces the X-Men movies), to which he responded, “If you call The Goonies a comic book – we’re doing a sequel.” He also went on to confirm he wants the original cast to feature.
It seems likely that The Goonies 2 would focus on a new set of kids searching out a different treasure, but with the original cast featuring in adult roles throughout the story. Doing a movie about the original Goonies grown up would probably be a much tougher sell to producers, and what exactly would that story be?
Donner’s comment makes it seem like The Goonies sequel is a definite project, but you can never believe that until a studio confirms filming is happening. If it does, let’s hope it at least comes close to the quality of the original.
[Image courtesy of Craig Duffy on Flickr]In response to Republican attempts run fake Dems in Democratic primaries, yesterday the Wisconsin Democratic Party announced it was considering backing fake candidates in Republican primaries:
Wisconsin Dems are open to, and are actively considering, a plan to retaliate against GOP shenanigans by running their own candidates in GOP primaries before the recall elections, the spokesman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party confirms. Republicans have embraced a scheme in which they are likely to run candidates against Dems in Democratic primaries in order to delay the recall general elections, in hopes of making it easier for the targeted GOP state senators to survive. Now Dems, for all the reasons I laid out below, are seriously considering doing the same in Republican primaries, though no decision has been made.
Today, the Wisconsin Dems announced that they will not be pursuing this course. Instead, in addition to all of the real Democratic candidates, they are going to also run Democratic placeholder candidates in their own primaries. The idea is to create uniformity in the recall process by guaranteeing that all of the primaries take place one day, and all of the general elections take place on a different day. The worry had been that some days would feature both primary and general elections, thus creating real confusion among voters and potentially allowing Republicans to maintain control of the state Senate. An additional worry had been that Republicans might bait and switch on this tactic, and pull out some or all of their fake candidates at the last minute, creating further confusion.
By guaranteeing there will be primaries in all of the recalls, Democrats will prevent Republicans from further messing with the recall calendar. From the Wisconsin Dems statement, which I received over email:
The following is a statement from DPW Chairman Mike Tate on the GOP recall election dirty tricks. "The unprecedented Republican manipulation of these recall elections has compelled a number of people to urge a level playing field by running fake candidates in GOP primaries. "We cannot and will not stoop to the Republicans' level by encouraging candidates to lie about their party affiliation, or recommending that people try to deceive voters. We never have done that, and won’t start now. This is something that every single one of our six challengers has said they adamantly oppose. Fred Clark, Jess King, Shelly Moore, Nancy Nusbaum, Jen Shilling and Sandy Pasch -- along with Senator Miller -- all contacted the party over the last 24 hours to make it crystal clear this was absolutely the wrong tactic. "At the same time, these phony GOP primary candidacies have in essence allowed the Republicans to seize the ability to call these elections at a date of their choosing. They can pick and choose which sham primaries to force. That's wrong. Selecting an election day is a responsibility that should fall to an independent, nonpartisan agency looking out for the people of Wisconsin -- not to a political party gaming the system for partisan gain. This transparent GOP conspiracy has cheated the people of protections against such dirty tricks. "That is why we must guarantee these primary and general election dates move forward. The only way to do that in the face of these deplorable Republican tactics is by ensuring Democratic primaries with placeholders.
This means the recall calendar is as follows:
June 14: Filing deadline for recalls against Republicans
June 21: Filing deadline for recalls against Democrats
July 12: Primaries in all of the Republican recalls
July 19: Primaries in all of the Democratic recalls
Aug. 9: General election in all of the Republican recalls
Aug. 16: General election in all of the Democratic recalls
All in all, this is a smart move by the Wisconsin Dems that may very well have averted a disaster. If, on July 12, some of the elections taking place had been general elections while others had been primary elections, the confusion could have resulted in all Republican incumbents hanging on to their seats. Now, the process will be much more straightforward.As we all know, we got into homebrewing to save money… (waits for laughter to die)
Okay, homebrewing rarely saves us money in the long run, but that does not mean that we do not try to stretch our pennies wherever we can. One of the best ways of cutting costs and having the best and freshest ingredients is buying ingredients in bulk. However, buying in bulk creates its own set of problems: you are now on the hook to safely store and maintain the freshness of the ingredients.
The Problem
Malt and malt extract are easy to store, they have long shelf-lives and can be easily stored in airtight containers. Hops and yeast, on the other hand, are not so easy: oxygen and temperature can rapidly degrade their quality so special care must be taken to properly maintain them. Care and handling of yeast is a story for another day, so for now let us take a look a few facts about hops to see why proper care is needed:
Fact: New hop crops are only released once a year (September/October for the Northern Hemisphere and March/April for the Southern Hemisphere).
Fact: The best hops sell out rapidly so it is necessary to order as many hops as you can as soon as you can.
Fact: Opened hops maintain their quality and freshness for two weeks at 50F and five weeks at 26F.
Fact: Vacuum-sealed hops can retain their character for up to five years when frozen.
So what can we conclude from this? We can save big bucks and secure our favorite varieties by buying hops in bulk and freezing them in a vacuum-sealed container. Unfortunately, this poses a challenge for homebrewers who have not yet invested in the proper vacuum-sealing equipment, which can cost upwards of $100 or more. Besides, we would rather spend our money on new brew equipment and ingredients. The Solution Being a tightwad I have spent a lot of time thinking on how to come up with a cheap option for hop storage. The solution came to me on a random idle evening as I went down the path of following just about any link I could get my hands on to perpetuate my idleness. As we all know, sometimes that means you stumble into a community dedicated to preserving salad in jars; sometimes that means you become enraptured by one-upmanship of the salad-in-a-jar enthusiasts as they try to preserve their salads in the cheapest way possible. And sometimes that means you crib come up with an idea for storing hops in such a cheap and easy way that you feel like you should start a life in the informercial biz… Here’s everything you need to get started: Ziploc Vacuum Starter Kit ($4.23)
FoodSaver Regular-Mouth Jar Sealer ($9.99 – don’t worry, won’t need a FoodSaver)
A set of Pint Ball Jars ($10.99 – if you’re like me, you already have a bunch laying around) Maximum total cost: $25.21 (+shipping/taxes) Maximum total cost: $25.21 (+shipping/taxes) The Process Step 0: If you are using brand-new Ball jars the lids still contain a food-safe sealing compound embedded into the lid. You will have trouble getting the lid to seal if you do not remove the compound, a short boil in water will accomplish this. Step 1: Dump your hops into the Ball jar. I find a pint jar holds roughly 8 oz of hop pellets and 1 oz of whole leaf hops. Needless to say, this method works best for pellet hops. Step 2: Place the lid (minus the screw band) on top of the Ball jar and slide the Jar Sealer on top of it. : Place the lid (minus the screw band) on top of the Ball jar and slide the Jar Sealer on top of it. Step 3: Place the business end of the Ziploc Vacuum centered over the Jar Sealer hole. The Ziploc Vacuum should approximately fill the entire Jar Sealer top. Step 4: Hold the Ziploc Vacuum in place with your non-dominant hand while you pump the plunger like a bicycle pump. You should hear the “click” of the lid and smell the aroma of hops as you suck the air out of the jar. Keep pumping until the lid stops clicking or you get tired (a minute or so). Step 5: Remove the Jar Sealer, you should see that the pop-up thingy is sucked in. If the lid comes off it means you did not make a tight seal. Reposition the lid on the jar and repeat steps 2-4. Step 5b: If you are feeling gutsy you can now turn the jar over and be amazed at how the lid stays sealed! I recommend doing this over a bowl in case the seal is not tight. Step 6: Label the lid with the hop variety and alpha acid %, I just use blue painter’s tape. You can now screw down the screw band until it’s tight. Step 7: Stash the jar in the freezer. Pull it out when you need more hops and repeat the process as needed. Congratulations, you now have vacuum-sealed hops that should keep fresh and vibrant until the next year’s crop comes out (and beyond). This process also works for any dry good you would like to keep fresh, try it with your spices! Happy brewing! ***
Derek Springer is a homebrewer and blogger from San Diego, CA who can be found at Five Blades Brewing. Besides homebrewing Derek contributes to open-source projects like the BeerXML Shortcode plugin for WordPress and frequently speaks at blogging conferences including the European and American Beer Bloggers Conference. Catch him this June at NHC 2015 as he gives a seminar titled Berliner and Beyond: Sour Mashing and its Applications. In the mean time, check out his latest series on Neomexicanus hops!
“The 2015 American hop crop – yes, the one that won’t be harvested until next August and September – is basically sold out… And it means that brewers, particularly homebrewers, who know they are going to want particular varieties during the course of the year should buy them when a chance arises.”
To further drive home the point, in a recent update about the state of hops in 2015, Stan Hieronymus mentions:"Joe Stack" redirects here. For the American basketball player, see Joe Stack (basketball)
The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on February 18, 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single-engine Piper Dakota light aircraft into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, United States,[5] killing himself and Internal Revenue Service manager Vernon Hunter.[6] Thirteen others were injured, two seriously. The four-story[7][8] office building housed an IRS field office occupying the top three floors, along with a couple of private businesses on the first floor. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note referring to "greed", "insanity", and the IRS, dated February 18, 2010, to his business website. Stack is also suspected of having set fire that morning to his two-story North Austin house, which was mostly destroyed.
In the aftermath, there was increased debate over the policies of the IRS, and different forms of protest. In response to the attack, the IRS spent more than $38.6 million,[9] with $6.4 million spent to recover and resume work at the building, and over $32 million spent to increase security at other IRS sites in the U.S. However, the spending on security changes was questioned as being ineffective. The building was repaired by December 2011.
Joseph Stack [ edit ]
Joseph Stack playing bass guitar in The Billy Eli Band (2006).
Andrew Joseph Stack III (August 31, 1956 – February 18, 2010) lived in the Scofield Farms neighborhood in North Austin, and worked as an embedded software consultant.[10][11][12] He grew up in Pennsylvania and had two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned at age four, and spent some time at a Catholic orphanage.[13] He graduated from the Milton Hershey School in 1974 and studied engineering at Harrisburg Area Community College from 1975 to 1977 but did not graduate.[14][15] His first marriage to Ginger Stack, which ended in divorce, produced a daughter, Samantha Bell.[13][16] In 2007, Stack had remarried with Sheryl Housh, who had a daughter from a previous marriage.[13]
In 1985, Stack, along with his first wife, incorporated Prowess Engineering. In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return. In 1998, the Stacks divorced and a year later his wife filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, citing IRS liabilities totaling nearly $126,000. In 1995, Stack started Software Systems Service Corp, which was suspended in 2004 for non-payment of state taxes.[13]
Stack obtained a pilot's certificate in 1994 and owned a Velocity Elite XL-RG plane, in addition to the Piper Dakota (aircraft registration N2889D) he flew into the Echelon building.[13] He had been using the Georgetown Municipal Airport for four and a half years and paid $236.25 a month to rent a hangar.[1] There has been speculation that Stack replaced seats on his aircraft with extra drums of fuel prior to the collision.[17]
Stack's accountant confirmed that at the time of the incident he was being audited by the IRS for failure to report income.[18]
Crime [ edit ]
Approximately an hour before the crash, Stack allegedly set fire to his $230,000[17] house located on Dapplegrey Lane in North Austin.[10][19] He then drove to a hangar he rented at Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 miles to the north.[20] He boarded his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane and took off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time.[21][22][23][24] He indicated to the control tower his flight would be "going southbound, sir."[13] After taking off, his final words were "thanks for your help, have a great day."[25]
About ten minutes later, his plane descended and collided at full speed with Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion.[21][26][27] The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).
Suicide note [ edit ]
On the morning of the crash, Stack posted a suicide note on his website, embeddedart.com.[12][28][29][30][31] The HTML source code of the web page shows the letter was composed using Microsoft Word starting two days prior, February 16, at 19:24Z (1:24 p.m. CST).[32] The document also shows that it was saved 27 times with the last being February 18 at 06:42Z (12:42 a.m. CST).[32]
In the note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions, politicians, the conglomerate companies of General Motors, Enron and Arthur Andersen, unions, drug and health care insurance companies, and the Catholic Church.[31] He then describes his life as an engineer, including his meeting with a poor widow who never got the pension benefits she was promised, the effect of the Section 1706 of Tax Reform Act of 1986 on independent contractor engineers, the September 11 attacks, airline bailouts that benefited only the airlines but not the suffering engineers and how a CPA he hired seemed to side with the government to take extra tax money from him.
The note also mentions Stack's having issues with taxes, debt, and the IRS and his having a long-running feud with the organization.[33] While the IRS also has a larger regional office in Austin, the field office located in Echelon I performed tax audits, seizures, investigations and collections.[33]
The note ended with:
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well. The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed. Joe Stack (1956-2010), 02/18/2010[31]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Revenue Officer Group Manager for the IRS, was killed in the incident along with Joseph Stack.[6][34] Thirteen people were reported as injured, two of them critically. Debris from the crash reportedly struck a car being driven on the southbound access road of Route 183 in front of the building, shattering the windshield.[3] Another driver on the southbound access road of Route 183 had his windows and sunroof shattered during the impact, and had debris fall inside his car, yet escaped uninjured.[6][35] Robin DeHaven, a glass worker and former combat engineer for the United States Army, saw the collision while commuting to a customer's house for his job, and used the extension ladder on his truck to rescue six people from the 2nd floor of the building.[36] By coincidence, the Travis County Hazardous Materials Team — an inter-agency group of firefighters from outside the City of Austin — had just assembled for training across the freeway from the targeted building, observed the low and fast flight of Stack's plane, and heard the blast impact.[37] They immediately responded, attacking the fire and initiating search-and-rescue.[37] Several City of Austin fire engines for the area of the Echelon building were already deployed at the fire at Stack's home at the time of the impact.[37]
Stack's North Austin home was mostly destroyed by fire.[6][38]
Georgetown Municipal Airport was temporarily evacuated while a bomb disposal team searched Stack's abandoned vehicle.[39]
An inspection into the Echelon building's structural integrity was concluded six days after the incident and a preliminary decision was made to repair the building rather than demolish it.[40] Those repairs were substantially complete by December 2011.
Economic costs to IRS [ edit ]
The IRS spent more than $38.6 million because of the suicide attack.[9][41]
For the immediate response, document recovery, and to resume operations at the center, the IRS spent USD $6,421,942.[9] Of this amount, USD $3,258,213 was spent on document recovery.[9]
Also, the IRS spent a total of USD $32.3 million to improve IRS building security across the United States, with USD $30.5 million for more security guards.[9] The IRS said, because of the 2010 Austin terrorist attack and the emergency plans in place, there was no direct budgetary impact on the IRS's ability to provide taxpayer services or enforce tax laws.[9]
An additional $1,236,634 was spent on a security risk assessment to be performed by the private Georgia based logistical and engineering services firm Unified Consultants Group, Inc. A July 25, 2012 audit, released shortly after the incident cost analysis, performed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, determined that the contract was mismanaged by the IRS.[42][43] The security-review process was determined to have had multiple problems, and many of the sites were not inspected by the contractor. The audit placed the blame on the IRS agency's individuals responsible for defining, negotiating, and administering the contract, with potentially 100% of funds being used inefficiently and the security improvements of IRS sites may have been ineffective.[43]
Reaction [ edit ]
The United States Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying that the incident did not appear to be linked to organized international terrorist groups.[21] White House spokesman Robert Gibbs reaffirmed what Homeland Security said, and that President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident.[44] The President expressed his concern and commended the courageous actions of the first responders.[44] The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched two F-16 fighter aircraft from Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, to conduct an air patrol in response to the crash. That action was reported as standard operating procedure in this situation.[28]
The company hosting embeddedart.com, T35 Hosting, took Stack's website offline "due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI."[45][46] Several groups supporting Stack on the social networking website Facebook appeared following the incident and the news of the accompanying manifesto. These were immediately shut down by Facebook staff.[47][48][49]
Austin police chief Art Acevedo stated that the incident was not the action of a major terrorist organization. He also cited "some heroic actions on the part of federal employees" that "will be told at the appropriate time."[50]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that it was investigating the incident "as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer" and that it was not being considered terrorism at this time.[51]
However, two members of the United States House of Representatives, both of whose districts include the Austin area, made statements to the contrary. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) stated, "Like the larger-scale tragedy in Oklahoma City, this was a cowardly act of domestic terrorism." Mike McCaul (R-Texas), told a reporter that, "it sounds like it [was a terrorist attack] to me." Georgetown University Professor Bruce Hoffman stated that for this to be considered an act of terrorism, "there has to be some political motive and it has to send a broader message that seeks some policy change. From what I've heard, that doesn't appear to be the case. It appears he was very mad at the [IRS] and this was a cathartic outburst of violence. His motivation was the key."[52] A USA Today headline used the term "a chilling echo of terrorism."[27]
Citing the copy of Joseph Stack's note posted online,[31] blogger Joan McCarter observed on the Daily Kos website that, "Obviously Stack was not a mentally healthy person, and he was embittered at capitalism, including crony capitalism, and health insurance companies and the government." She also stated that Stack could not be connected with the popular Tea Party movement, but argued that the incident "should inject a bit of caution into the anti-government flame-throwers on the right."[53] The website Ace of Spades HQ disputed any connection to the movement and additionally stated Stack was not "right wing", citing Stack's criticism of politicians for not doing anything about health care reform.[54]
In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, who now lives in Norway, stated initially that she considered her father to be a hero, because she felt that now people might listen. While she does not agree with his specific actions involving the plane crash, she does agree with his actions about speaking out against "injustice" and "the government."[16] Bell subsequently retracted aspects of her statement, saying her father was "not a hero" and adding, "We are mourning for Vernon Hunter."[55]
Five days after her husband Vernon Hunter's death, Valerie Hunter filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Sheryl Mann Stack, Andrew Joseph Stack's widow in federal District Court. The lawsuit alleges that Sheryl had a duty to "avoid a foreseeable risk of injury to others," including her late husband and failed to do so by not warning others about her late husband. The lawsuit also mentions that Stack was required by law to fly his plane at an altitude 1,000 feet (305 m) above the highest obstacle.[56][needs update] At a March 8, 2010, benefit event, Stack's widow, Sheryl, publicly offered condolences for the victims of the attack.[57]
Iowa congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) has made several statements regarding Stack including,
I think if we'd abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn't have a target for his airplane. And I'm still for abolishing the IRS, I've been for it for thirty years and I'm for a national sales tax (in its place).[58][59]
Noted libertarian socialist American intellectual Noam Chomsky cited Joe Stack's letter as indicative of some of the public sentiment in the U.S., stated that several of Stack's assertions are accurate or based on real grievances, and urged people to "help" the Joseph Stacks of the world get involved in constructive popular movements instead of letting the Joseph Stacks "destroy themselves, and maybe the world," in order to prevent a process similar to how legitimate and valid popular grievances of the German people in the 1920s and 1930s were manipulated by the Nazis towards violence and away from constructive ends.[60][61]
The Internal Revenue Service formally designates certain individuals as potentially dangerous taxpayers (PDTs). In response to an inquiry after the attack, an IRS spokesperson declined to state whether Stack had been designated as a PDT.[62]
See also [ edit ]A man in an Afghan uniform turned his weapon on American trainers working with him in the eastern province of Paktika, killing three of them, while an attacker with a grenade killed an Italian soldier in the west, officials have said.
An argument between the Afghan soldier and his trainers appeared to have led to Saturday's shooting on an Afghan National Army base in Paktika's Kher Qot district, according to a statement from the provincial governor's office.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but NATO officials have said that most insider attacks stem from personal grudges and cultural misunderstandings rather than Taliban plots.
The international military coalition in Afghanistan said two American service members and one US civilian died. It had initially identified them as three US military personnel.
The foreigners returned fire and killed the Afghan soldier, who had no known connection to the insurgency, according to the local governor's statement.
The deaths of the International Security Assistance Force on Saturday in the district of Khair Kot came on the same day that one Italian soldier was killed and three others were wounded when a grenade was thrown into their armoured vehicle.
An Italian soldier was killed and three were wounded in Farah city on Saturday morning when an 11-year old child threw a grenade at a NATO convoy in the western province of Farah, a Taliban spokesman said.
'Guardian angel' troops
The Italian defence ministry and military said the attack happened as the convoy was returning to base.
The four deaths on Saturday bring to 16 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this month, and come two days after seven Georgian soldiers were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack in the southern province of Helmand.
Scores of foreign soldiers have been killed in insider attacks, breeding fierce mistrust and threatening to derail the process of training Afghan forces to take over security duties ahead of NATO's withdrawal next year.
The threat has become so serious that foreign soldiers working with Afghan forces are regularly watched over by so-called "guardian angel" troops to provide protection from their supposed allies.
The Taliban launched their annual spring offensive at the end of April, marking a crucial period for Afghanistan as local security forces take the lead in offensives against the insurgents.
The militants said multiple suicide bombings and insider attacks by Afghan soldiers on NATO-led troops would be used to inflict maximum casualties.
There are now about 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including 66,000 from the United States. Most of them are due to leave this winter.
The remaining smaller force is expected to be mostly American advisers.
However, Guido Westerwelle, the German Foreign Minister said on Saturday during a surprise visit to Kabul that the German government was thinking about leaving behind 600-800 troops after 2014.
"The departure of our troops from Afghanistan will happen as planned but at the same time we will not forget about Afghanistan in the years after 2014,'' Westerwelle said.
"We will engage with them in a different way.''He urged people to vote in the June runoff, and spoke kindly about several of his competitors, including Hamdeen Sabahi, the founder of a Nasserist party whose populist campaign drew millions of voters, giving him a surprising third-place finish in the unofficial vote tallies.
Saying he was willing to collaborate with other Egyptian political forces, Mr. Shafik also sought to quiet fears that he represented the government of his friend Mr. Mubarak, saying, “There is no turning back.”
Photo
The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, tried to ease a different strain of voter anxiety: fears that the Islamist group, which holds roughly half the seats in Parliament, will dominate Egyptian politics if Mr. Morsi is elected. Brotherhood officials were trying to meet with several of the disqualified candidates on Saturday to discuss a possible coalition to challenge Mr. Shafik.
But that effort seemed to run aground, as two former candidates, Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, released statements saying they were not endorsing Mr. Morsi or any candidate, though they did not say whether that would change.
And Mr. Sabahi, whose supporters are coveted by both remaining candidates, seemed to be trying to keep his own campaign alive on Saturday. A lawyer representing him told Reuters that the campaign had appealed to the presidential election commission to halt the runoff for reasons that include allegations of “irregularities” during the first round of voting.
At a rally at his campaign headquarters on Saturday night, Mr. Sabahi told throngs of cheering supporters that he would not endorse another candidate, or accept an offer to serve as vice president. “Sabahi is our president!” the crowd roared. “We will never abandon him.” Also on Saturday, former President Jimmy Carter, who led a delegation that monitored the first round of the elections, said there were “many violations” but added that they did not “violate the integrity of the elections as a whole.”
Speaking in Cairo, Mr. Carter said restrictions placed on his organization by the Egyptian authorities were the strictest the group had faced in 25 years, and as a result it was not able to certify the process as “proper.”
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He added, “The Egyptian people have accepted the process we have seen over the last few days as quite successful.”
Even so, many Egyptians threw up their hands at the results. Some argued that the outcome was inevitable: that an electorate battered by a chaotic transition and under temporary military rule would easily reach for candidates who appealed to fear rather than hope.
Photo
“They made the people reach the level where all they can think about is security and food on the table,” Mr. Abdel Fattah said.
Nadia Ibrahim, 34, a housewife, articulated a common concern, that the election was threatening to pull Egypt backward.
“I can’t bring myself to vote” in the runoff, she said. “If the Muslim Brotherhood wins, they will be another N.D.P.,” she added, referring to the National Democratic Party, the former governing party, whose burned-out headquarters is a testament to the revolution’s anger.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
“If Shafik wins, the N.D.P. will be back,” she said. “This is a decision I can’t bring myself to morally make.”
Hussein Gohar, 45, a gynecologist who is a leading member of the liberal Egyptian Social Democratic Party, argued for a different approach, saying that voters whose candidates lost needed to think strategically about Egypt’s future, and pick their battles.
“I’d rather fight against Shafik,” he said.
“If I fight the Muslim Brotherhood, I’m the minority. If I fight against Shafik, I have more revolutionary forces with me,” he said, arguing that the opposition needed to unite.
For many other people, though, the election worked exactly as it was supposed to.
Mohammed Abdel Moneim, 35, a taxi driver, said that though he was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, he and his family had been impressed by its appeals during the campaign.
“They’re organized, they have a project and they’re not thieves,” he said, adding that if the Brotherhood performed poorly, Egyptians would surely make their displeasure felt. “We’re no longer afraid.”Donald Trump. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
President Donald Trump on Sunday issued his second tacit endorsement of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
"The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY," Trump tweeted on Sunday morning. "Jones would be a disaster!"
The president followed up in a second tweet 40 minutes later: "I endorsed Luther Strange in the Alabama Primary. He shot way up in the polls but it wasn't enough. Can't let Schumer/Pelosi win this race. Liberal Jones would be BAD!"
He was referring to Democrat Doug Jones, who is running against Moore to fill the Senate seat left open when Trump named Jeff Sessions attorney general.
Moore's campaign has been crippled in recent weeks by a string of sexual misconduct allegations brought by women who say Moore either groped them, molested them, or pursued relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
At least nine women have so far accused Moore of sexually inappropriate behavior. One accuser, Leigh Corfman, alleged that Moore molested her when she was 14 years old. Another, Beverly Young Nelson, said during a press conference that Moore attempted to sexually assault her when she was a 16-year-old waitress.
Moore earned his first de facto endorsement from Trump last Tuesday.
"We don't need a liberal person... a Democrat" in that seat, Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a Thanksgiving trip to Palm Beach, Florida, adding that Moore "totally denies" the allegations against him.
Donald J. Trump/Twitter
Donald J. Trump/Twitter
Fracturing the Republican party
The president also reportedly expressed frustration when his daughter, Ivanka, spoke out against the former judge.
As the allegations against Moore stacked up, Ivanka Trump said there was a "special place in hell for people who prey on children," and that she saw no reason to doubt the victims' accounts.
"Do you believe this?" he asked aides in the Oval Office after his daughter spoke out about Moore, according to The New York Times. Trump also apparently "vented" his annoyance at Ivanka to several advisers.
Roy Moore. Mark Wilson/Getty Images Jones used Ivanka's remarks for a campaign ad. He also released another ad on Wednesday, which opened by listing the names of seven Moore accusers, along with photos of them at the age when they accused Moore of abusing or inappropriately pursuing them.
"The list is growing," the narrator in the ad said. "They were girls when Roy Moore immorally pursued them. Now, they are women, witnesses to us all of his disturbing conduct."
The ad continued: "Will we make their abuser a US senator?" It closed by naming two more of his accusers.
Last week, several of Alabama's most influential newspapers wrote a scathing editorial against him splashed across their front page, titled, "Stand for decency, reject Roy Moore." But he still has the endorsement of much of Alabama's Republican establishment.
Moore denies all the allegations brought against him and denounced them as being part of a liberal smear campaign by the "Obama-Clinton Machine," though his story has shown some inconsistencies.
Trump's defense of Moore, and his continued de facto endorsements, reportedly "blindsided" Republicans in Congress, who have denounced their party's nominee, and said Moore could be expelled from the Senate if the people of Alabama elect him.Theory. It’s a word that has forced so many people to stop studying music — or retreat to our bedrooms where we could make digital sounds that were never wrong. But theory is awesome if you give it a chance. It gives you a set of tools that can widen your palate and increase your appreciation for the beauty and complexity of the music you make and listen to.
The goal of this course is to give you some basic theory knowledge by learning some amazing songs that illustrate each concept. For each idea, we’ll feature a song that brings that idea to life — and challenge you to use the concept in your own work.
This course was created in partnership with NYU's MusEDLab. Visit their site to learn more about their terrific work!Shortly after ten-thirty in the morning on Wednesday, March 19th, a real-estate agent named Paul Alarab began hiking across the Golden Gate Bridge. Midway along the walkway, which carries pedestrians and cyclists between San Francisco and Marin County, he stopped and climbed the four-foot safety railing. Then he lowered himself carefully onto the bridge’s outermost reach, a thirty-two-inch-wide beam known as “the chord.” It is on the chord, two hundred and twenty feet above San Francisco Bay, that people intending to kill themselves often pause. On a sunny day, as this day was, the view is glorious: Angel Island to |
that Bergman advocates would add about $700 million a year to the ministry's costs. The provincial government's total revenues are over $42 billion a year, or about 60 times the amount Bergman is talking about.
"What needs to change is people's attitudes," said Bergman. "I want people to understand we are people, we still have problems like everyone else. The government should give us dignity and respect."
Bergman said she has had to rely on the food bank to eat and that she knows many people with disabilities who are either broke or who have had to choose to live with their parents. For adults, it's a life with little dignity, she said.
"I want all B.C. to know this is what we get and we can't live this way," she said. "Maybe with the public's help something could be done."A bill being floated by Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Mark Meadows would centralize the campaign finance system, increase transparency of donations, and effectively put an end to super PACs.
The bill, titled the SuperPAC Elimination Act of 2017, would remove caps on individual contributions, which are limited to $2,700, and require disclosure within 24 hours, creating, what Cruz believes would be, a more "simple" and direct system that makes campaigns more accountable and transparent.
"It follows principles of free speech and transparency. It is all about empowering citizens to speak and ensuring transparency," Cruz told the Washington Examiner. "Candidates should be defining their own messages rather than having their messages effectively subject to the whims of the campaign finance system and the super PACs that it has created."
The timing of the announcement is curious from Cruz, who finished second in the GOP primary and had his own issues concerning super PACs. Specifically, Cruz had issues due to his super PACs' messaging as he had a cadre of groups backing his campaign. One was bankrolled by Tony Neugebauer, a top Cruz donor who poured $10 million into Keep The Promise II, only to take back $9 million of those funds at the end of the campaign, leaving them unspent.
It comes in the wake of the presidential campaign and less than two months before President-elect Trump is set to assume the presidency after speaking out against super PACs throughout his campaign. Cruz, however, disputes the impact of the timing, noting that he introduced a similar measure in 2014.
The bill is not without its critics, including those who believe this would drown out the influence of small-dollar donors and give even more power to big donors now that they can contribute whatever they please directly to candidates. Cruz pushed back on this idea, arguing that while big-dollar donors are important — noting that they played a big role in his campaign — small-dollar donors will not be silenced no matter the system in place.
"You will find no greater champion of small dollar donations than I am," Cruz said, noting that his campaign raised $92 million, coming from 1.8 million contributions averaging $51 apiece. "The power of the grassroots speaking and acting and contributing is substantial, but nobody is going to silence the voices that are speaking in politics.
"Wealthy donors primarily contribute through super PACs where the messages are disconnected from what a given candidate believes or doesn't believe, and that's nonsensical," Cruz said, adding that it's "nonsensical" for both political parties. "It would be far better for the candidates themselves to be expressing their message. So if Hillary Clinton wants to convey why she wants to be president, it should be her campaign conveying that. Donald Trump wants to convey why he should be president, it should be his campaign conveying that rather than these third party groups that are unaccountable and disconnected from the candidates, and by requiring immediate disclosure, it ensures that there is transparency and accountability."
While Cruz's bill in 2014 didn't go far, this bill is buoyed by Republicans controlling the White House and Senate and could be open to discussion on the topic. The Texas senator said he remains "hopeful" that his proposal could bring Republicans, as well as Democrats, on board, adding that he has had "ongoing conversations" with the incoming administration about potential reform to the system.
"I am optimistic and hopeful," Cruz said about the bill's chances of passage. "President-elect Trump has vocally expressed his concerns about the proliferation of super PACs, and I am hopeful that at least some Democrats will recognize that the current system isn't working."With Ron Paul’s infiltrators, clout of state GOP party further erodes
Marilyn Newton / AP Photo
Sun coverage More Sun political news
Right about the time Ron Paul’s passionate supporters took over the Nevada Republican Party at a raucous state convention 10 days ago, the phone at the Las Vegas office of Americans for Prosperity began to ring.
The callers were potential donors and volunteers — typically the critical foot soldiers for a party apparatus geared toward electing Republicans.
But instead, these willing workers were calling Americans for Prosperity, a political nonprofit organization created outside the regular Republican Party confines to further conservative causes.
“People want to donate their money to organizations that can deliver on their promises,” AFP’s Nevada director, Adam Stryker, said of the calls that were peaking at around noon on that convention Sunday.
The standard bearer for Republicans this cycle may not be the state party, which is the traditional and seemingly logical organization backing GOP candidates up and down the ticket.
Instead, it will be groups like Americans for Prosperity, American Crossroads, the Mitt Romney campaign and Republican National Committee that play a more prominent role in Nevada this cycle.
It’s in no small part because the establishment and donors have little confidence in the state party’s ability to operate, GOP activists said.
“We’re a battleground state. There will still be a significant amount of money spent here,” said Robert Uithoven, a GOP consultant. “(But) the money will be spent around the state party and not through it. And that’s never a good thing.”
One Republican elected official said, “If Republicans win this election, it will be in spite of the state party, not because of it.”
Paul’s supporters slowly began infiltrating the party organization four years ago, electing members to positions on the county and state boards and backing a new state chairman. The effort culminated at the May 5 state convention, when Paul’s supporters succeeded in electing a majority of Nevada’s national delegates and installing Paul loyalists as national committeeman and committeewoman.
That takeover has donors and party officials nervous that the new party organization will be more concerned with nominating Paul, or pushing his libertarian philosophy, than being the backbone of the GOP election effort.
The stakes in Nevada are high. The state is one of a few toss-ups in the presidential race. The U.S. Senate race, between Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, is expected to be close. There’s at least one competitive congressional seat, where Rep. Joe Heck, R-Las Vegas, faces Assembly Speaker John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas. And Democrats and Republicans are fighting over control in the state Senate.
Unlike Republicans, Democrats, under the strong hand of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have spent years building up the state party, registering voters and building an impressive voter file. Democrats raised $9.7 million in 2010 and $11 million in 2008, according to a Democrat strategist.
Republican elected leaders, meanwhile, skipped the state convention in Sparks earlier this month and have shown little willingness to get into the muck of rebuilding the state party.
Instead, Republicans such as Gov. Brian Sandoval have helped raise money for other groups, such as the Washoe County Republicans and state Senate Republicans.
The state parties have traditionally played three roles in the political campaigns: registering voters, identifying supporters and turning them out to vote.
This year, Americans for Prosperity has already started to take over that effort.
The organization has had a full-time operation in Nevada since a special congressional election in 2010, identifying voters and building a voter list, Stryker said.
But Paul’s supporters come in with little track record. The new party chairman, Michael McDonald, was dogged by old ethics scandals and a controversial land deal recently with Las Vegas City Hall. (He did not return calls for comment.) And they’ve spearheaded efforts to replace its executive director, Dave Gallagher, who is well regarded by campaign operatives, with a Paul supporter.
All of those factors have caused traditional Republican supporters to back away from the party.
“It has become evident after the convention that the new leadership for the party is not interested in getting Republicans elected as much as moving an ideology forward,” said Mendy Elliott, a longtime Republican and fundraiser for the Washoe County Republican Party. “The purpose of the party is to get Republicans elected and register Republicans. Until that focus is shifted back, it’s hard for mainstream Republicans to understand the purpose of the party.”
Romney and the Republican National Committee opened a Las Vegas office on Saturday under the Team Nevada name. It was on the other side of the Las Vegas Valley from state party headquarters.
But a good sign: The new chairman of the state party, McDonald, spoke at the opening.
Darren Littell, spokesman for Team Nevada, said, “We’re willing to work with anyone and everyone who wants to make Barack Obama a one-term president.”
But does the new leadership of the party want to elect Republicans? It’s a legitimate question, even if it’s somewhat stunning that it has to be asked.
Carl Bunce, chairman of Paul’s Nevada campaign who was elected as a delegate to the national convention, said yes.
“The state party will do what it has always tried to do — get Republicans elected,” he said. “There might be new characters in the fold, and there might be a learning curve.”
But, he said, he expects the Republicans in place to execute their responsibilities.
At the same time, however, Bunce said the Paul campaign is not ceding the Republican nomination to Mitt Romney, despite a message from Paul that he would not campaign in any primary states going forward.
Bunce said he still sees a path to victory for Paul to get the nomination.
“By the time we get to September, November, it will be ironed out at that point,” he said.
Of course, that’s four months away. During that time, Democrats and President Barack Obama’s campaign will be pounding on Republicans and Romney.
Sig Rogich, a Republican consultant, said he expects Romney’s campaign team to take the reins.
“The party will be successful if the nominee for president comes in and takes hold of the party apparatus,” he said.
As for the role of a state party controlled by Paul supporters, he said: “I think they’ll offer them the opportunity to participate within guidelines. If not, they’ll fund it on their own.”
Bob List, a former Nevada governor and a national committeeman who was replaced at the convention, said the system has worked best when governors have played a strong role with the party.
“Sometimes, the governor or senior public official will go to the mat on it,” he said. “Here, that simply didn’t happen. This is not the preferable way to run it, in my judgment. In an ideal world, the governor would be consulted on the selection of party officials.”
(Mike Slanker, political consultant for Sandoval and Heller, did not return requests for comment.)
List said one of his primary jobs was to raise money — $1.24 million in the past three years.
“It takes a lot of effort, a lot of time and energy,” List said. “And we’ll have to see how this plays out under the new regime. I don’t know how they’re going to go about it or who’s going to take the laboring oar.”
CORRECTION: This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Mendy Elliott's name. |by
Harriet Freed, in the Tikkun Daily, wrote: “The original Women’s Liberation Movement was a movement of both race and class integration, a vision of justice for all. It saw female liberation as the basis for social revolution.”
She claims that the movement was co-opted by Gloria Steinem. She would find agreement from socialist white women, black, Asian American and Latina feminists.
Black women have been criticizing the white women’s movement for over one hundred years. They were barred from participating in the Seneca Falls Convention, 1848, and today, black, Latina and Asian American women complain about their exclusion from the feminist movement, whose trends are set by white women.
Nevertheless, those white women and token minority women who’ve been given access to a media have done a good job in promoting issues that affect women. It is because of their agitation that women have made gains.
While black men are more likely to be in prison than in college, and the enrollment of white males has declined so much that some colleges have inaugurated Affirmative Action for them, women are doing very well in higher education. “Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education.” This is seven percent over the 50% that former chief Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that women had to reach in order to achieve equity.
Women have talk shows like the one hosted by Melissa Harris Perry. It’s feisty and has intellectual heft. She ended her show on Saturday by promising a Sunday show about women’s health. The next day, the first hour included a panel of women who discussed breast cancer. It was informative. I was envious. Why no comparable show for men?
The suicide rate among white men has soared more than that of any other ethnic group; instead of this report drawing urgent media attention, it came and went with little comment. Though those who label me a “racist” after having come to my work with their minds made up before reading it, I expressed alarm about the rising rate of suicide by white males in 1988. I blamed it on the popular media requiring white males to not only be Alpha males but James Bond and Superman combined. The problem has gotten worse.
Black male health statistics are even more dismal. “Black men live 7.1 years less than other racial groups They have higher death rates than women for all leading causes of death They experience disproportionately higher death rates in all the leading causes of death 40% of black men die prematurely from cardiovascular disease as compared to 21% of white men. They have a higher incidence and a higher rate of death from oral cancer Black men are 5 times more likely to die of HIV/AIDS.” If it weren’t for an excellent health plan and devoted physicians, this black man would have been dead.
MSNBC has women’s shows and two shows whose hosts are gay and whose central issue is gay marriage, but no show dealing with the issues of American men. I was surprised to learn from Nichole Bowen of The Lady Warrior Project that most of those who are victims of sexual assault in the armed forces are men. Maybe I’ve been watching too much MSNBC, where the impression is created that all of the victims are women. They’re not the only network where the issues of gays and women take priority over those affecting men. During the same Saturday I watched CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield discuss the literacy rate among women living in Nepal.
Women have been very successful in using the media to promote their health and other issues. But men get sick too.
Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. In the May issue, Amiri Baraka challenges W.W.Norton company’s feud with the Black Arts movement.
Reprinted with permission of the author.Scientific evidence refuting the theory of modern humanity's African genesis is common knowledge among those familiar with the most recent scientific papers on the human Genome, Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes. Regrettably, within mainstream press and academia circles, there seems to be a conspicuous - and dare we say it - deliberate vacuum when it comes to reporting news of these recent studies and their obvious implications.Australian historian Greg Jefferys explains that, "The whole 'Out of Africa' myth has its roots in the mainstream academic campaign in the 1990′s to remove the concept of Race. When I did my degree they all spent a lot of time on the 'Out of Africa' thing but it's been completely disproved by genetics. Mainstream still hold on to it."It did begin the early 90's. And the academics most responsible for cementing both the Out-of Africa theory and the complementary common ancestral African mother - given the name of "Eve" - in the public arena and nearly every curriculum, were Professors Alan C. Wilson and Rebecca L. Cann.In their defense, the authors of this paper were fully aware that genealogy is not in any way linked to geography, and that their placement of Eve in Africa was an assumption, never an assertion.A very recent paper on Y-chromosomes published in 2012, ( Re-Examing the "Out of Africa" Theory and the Origin of Europeoids (Caucasians) in the Light of DNA Genealogy written by Anatole A. Klyosov and Igor L. Rozhanski) only confirms the denial of any African ancestry in non-Africans, and strongly supports the existence of a "common ancestor" who "would not necessarily be in Africa. In fact, it was never proven that he lived in Africa."Central to results of this extensive examination of haplogroups (7,556) was the absence of any African genes. So lacking was the sampling of African genetic involvement, the researchers stated in their introduction that, "the finding that the Europeoid haplogroups did not descend from "African" haplogroups A or B is supported by the fact that bearers of the Europeoid, as well as all non-African groups do not carry either SNI's M91, P97, M31, P82, M23, M114, P262".With the haplogroups not present in any African genes and an absence of dozens of African genetic markers, it is very difficult nigh on impossible to sustain any link to Africa. The researchers are adamant that their extensive study "offers evidence to re-examine the validity of the Out-of-Africa concept".They see no genetic proof substantiating an African precedence in the Homo sapien tree, and maintain that "a more plausible interpretation might have been that both current Africans and non-Africans descended separately from a more ancient common ancestor, thus forming a proverbial fork".We regard the claim of "a more plausible explanation" as a gross understatement, since there is absolutely nothing plausibly African turning up in any test tubes. In fact, the researchers made note of their repeated absence stating "not one non-African participant out of more than 400 individuals in the Project tested positive to any of thirteen 'African' sub-clades of haplogroup A". The only remaining uncertainty relates to the identity of this "more ancient common ancestor". All that can be stated with confidence is that humanity's ancestor did not reside in Africa.Unfounded accusations of racism have become common as the prevailing Afrocentric hypothesis is constantly being challenged by the growing mountain of conflicting scientific evidence, especially in the evolving field of genetics It is now scientifically irrefutable fact that the "human species" has been found to contain a substantial quantity of DNA ( at least 20% ) from other hominid populations not classified as Homo sapien; such as Neanderthal, Denisovan, African archaic, Homo erectus, and now possibly even "Hobbit" (Homo floresiensis).If not given drugs to prevent infant death, the pregnant body of a rhesus negative mother will attack, try to reject, and even kill her own offspring if it is by a rhesus positive man.The Domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a sub-species of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), and they produce hybrids.There are numerous other examples of where two separate species (for example with different numbers of chromosomes) can also produce viable offspring, yet are considered separate species. That said, humanity has been shown to be, genetically speaking, a hybrid species that did not all share the same hunter-gatherer ancestry in Africa.Recent sequencing of ancient genomes suggests that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet unknown human ancestor. "there were many hominid populations," says Mark Thomas, evolutionary geneticist at University College London.Recent genetic studies are touting shocking headlines about how ancient humans 'rampantly interbred' and indulged in inter-species interracial sex with multiple mystery sub-races in a "Lord Of The Rings"-style world of different creatures, including mystery DNA - neither human nor Neanderthal, not yet identifiedUp on the roof of Professor Fritz Vollrath's lab in the zoology department at Oxford University, there is a makeshift greenhouse in which he nurtures his favourite golden orb web spiders. Walking into the greenhouse is a little like finding yourself inside one of those Damien Hirst vitrines that dramatise fast-forward life and death. The air is frenzied with the buzz of flies and thick with the smell of rotting fruit; look up and dozens of the mature African spiders, three inches across, are sitting pretty on elaborate webs among the foliage, clearly living the arachnid life of Riley. Vollrath points out their offspring, thousands of tiny spiderlings, scurrying about on leaves beneath.
It seems a good place to ask him exactly how he first got interested in spiders and their webs. He laughs and turns the question around. "The strange thing to me," he says, "was always the question of why scientists were not more interested in them. I mean, here is a creature which, according to its size, can build from its own body a structure on the scale of a football pitch overnight, every night, and can catch the equivalent of an aeroplane in it. Why would you not want to study how it did that?"
Web of intrigue: zoologist Fritz Vollrath. Photograph: Andy Hall
There were more practical reasons, too. Vollrath was a graduate student of neurophysiology when he started looking at webs and spider silks in earnest. "To do any small thing in neurophysiology, you had to read an awful lot of scientific literature. With spiders, I realised there was hardly any literature at all. You could just do a lot of looking."
His fascination with spider silk began when he was at university in Munich in 1972 and the lightweight, high-tensile Olympic park, designed by Frei Otto to mimic spider-web construction, created a new imaginative framework for architecture. Vollrath, who speculated that spider silk might generate a similar revolutionary shift in the emergent field of biomaterials, was snared.
In the years since, he has probably spent more time studying how spiders spin their everyday miracles than any man alive. He has fed spiders drugs, tiny droplets of amphetamines and caffeine, and measured the dramatic disruptive effect it has on their web building. He has tested ways of training spiders with a tuning fork and discovered how to make them to "write" in their webs – the Vollrath Christmas card of 1988 featured a picture of a web in which he had "taught" a spider to write the number "88" by manipulating the orientation of the web as the spider worked. Mostly, though, Vollrath has defined a pioneering area of study into the properties of spider silks that not only promises to revolutionise various polymer industries, but also could have huge potential medical benefits for humans in everything from knee replacements to nerve repair to heart transplants.
"No one was much interested in spiders when I started," he says. "Now an awful lot of people are." Vollrath's silk group at Oxford has been going for about 15 years. Quite early on, it perfected a technique to reel silk directly from the spider. He shows me a video clip of how this process works. In the film, an orb spider is tethered and encouraged to produce silk that is wound on a reel by a small mechanism. The spider can sometimes keep this up for eight hours. Vollrath's group can reel at different temperatures and under carefully controlled conditions. In this way, they can look at the molecular properties and x-ray diffraction patterns of the silk as it is produced. "What you find is that there is a huge correlation between the reeling conditions and the material properties," Vollrath says, "and that gets very interesting because that is what polymer people know about."
Spider silks are just about the toughest material on the planet. Stronger by mass than steel and more durable and flexible than Kevlar, they are also alive to ambient conditions and made to adapt and retain their tensility as humidity and temperature change. This is one of the reasons they have always made the best crosshairs in optical instruments and why webs are preserved intact in the tombs of the pharaohs. As it works, the spider adjusts the concentration of the structural components, by running fast or slow for example, so it can produce, by turns, almost crystalline, very stable silk or quite diffuse, very flexible silk, for different parts of the web.
It was when Vollrath started examining the nanostructure of the material, however, that things got really interesting. "What we found by studying the silk as it is made," he says, "was that at a molecular level it has something in it, a little peptide, a recurrent little motif like a melody in a tune. It is this which helps to give the silk its entirely orderly structure. We don't know why that motif is in them, but what we do know is that same motif is also in the filaments that hold our own cells together. Three amino acids which give them what you might call a particular signature tune. And when the cells of our body come into contact with this pattern in the spider silks, it appears that they can recognise it. They understand it and they will react by attaching to it and growing along it."
This little harmonic discovery has possible profound implications. As a spin-off from its lab work, Vollrath's team partners a more commercial operation, Oxford Biomaterials, which looks at different ways to employ the silk-based technologies (using patented molecular platforms that incorporate or mimic spider and silkworm formulae). Most of these applications are medical. "Silk from silkworms is probably the most ancient suture material," Vollrath says. "It is thin and strong and biodegradable in the body. In all cultures, there is evidence of people using spider webs to heal wounds. Farmers out in the fields across the world have known when they get a cut to grab some spider webs and slap them on. The fibres help blood coagulate and a lot of webs have microbiocidal properties that kill bacteria. This is all homespun wisdom. The question is, can we make better use of it?"
To this end, Oxford Biomaterials has a range of projects under Vollrath's co-direction. "We have, for example, a project looking at using silk to make heart muscle," he says. "We discovered if you use a type of silk in this way and put heart cells on it, they feel at home and grow and start beating. The silk is soft. So we made a little heart muscle that can beat. And the silk is biodegradable, so you could implant something that you want to disappear once the cells have grown on it.
"The whole field of regenerative medicine could be huge. Say you have a problem with your knee. The solution now is to put a new titanium knee joint in place. That's it. The cells will not repair anything. But to help the body repair itself, you need to put something in that will give the cells the right environment to grow. That is where silks come in. We can dissolve and reconstitute them, tune them to have mechanical properties that will match the original tissue that is there, whether it be bone or cartilage or whatever. And in that environment the human tissue will be encouraged to repair itself."
Under the Oxford Biomaterials wing, Vollrath's team has another project that makes meniscal implants by which they dissolve the silk in lithium bromide ("a really nasty chemical, the only thing that will touch it") and then firm it up. The result is incredibly strong and integrates much better potentially with the human body than any plastic. These meniscal products are currently in animal trials, Vollrath says, and, given favourable outcomes, could be in humans in a year or two. In the same way, they are working on hernia meshes and bone-like structures and investigating ways in which silks can be used as a targeted carrier for drugs in the body, "tuned to slow release over weeks or months or years".
The holy grail of this effort, also pursued by other groups around the world, is in using silks for nerve repair and renewal. "You can make very long fibres and potentially nerve cells will grow along these filaments," Vollrath says. "We can already bridge small gaps, but not long ones. The ultimate aim is to repair spinal cord in this way."
That goal is some way off, though Vollrath is confident it is feasible. And there are still large challenges working with spider silk. One is the impossibility of farming it on any significant scale. Unlike silkworms, whose cocoons can be nurtured and collected intensively, spiders are territorial and cannibalistic so "cannot be kept like cows in a field".
Spider silk for this reason has never had the commercial potential of the mulberry silkworm product, though when spun it has glorious lustre and colour as last summer's display of the golden spider silk cape at the V&A showed (to make that garment, its creators Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley collected silk from more than a million orb spiders in Madagascar over a period of eight years).
One solution to this problem, Vollrath suggests, may lie in the silk of a particular Indian worm, the silk of which is near-identical in many respects to spider silk and which carries the crucial tripartite signature of amino acids also found in human cells. "These wild silks are particularly difficult to unravel," Vollrath says – a single cocoon strand will stretch for more than a kilometre. "But I think we have found a way of doing so."
The effort is almost always worth it, not least because of the energy saved in the silk-making process. "Most comparable polymers require a great deal of heat before they will flow," Vollrath says. "Silk flows at ambient temperature and with very little force. We have proved that it is about a thousand times more energy efficient to produce a silk fibre than a plastic one."
The more you talk to Vollrath, the more you have the sense of what many cultures over the years have believed – that silks of spiders and silkworms are fundamental, life-bearing materials. Is that how he sees it?
"Exactly that," he says. "It is the building block of life in the sense that it is protein folding in action. What happens when a spider makes its web is, in effect, that a live molecule, very unstable, becomes stabilised in death. It is a denaturation process effectively. When it is alive, the molecule swims about, but once a little bit of stress is applied, a tiny chemical change made, it becomes stable and we can begin to observe that flip happen."
In this respect, a spider's silk behaves in a very similar way to the formation of amyloid structures in the brain – a possible cause of many neurodegenerative diseases from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's, an idea that brings Vollrath full circle to his original academic discipline. "If we can work out how spiders and silkworms control how this process happens," he says, "then we may be well on the way to understanding why it happens in humans and potential ways of stopping it."
I'm struck talking to him how often he uses musical terminology in describing some of this science and reminded of the recent development by a Japanese researcher of concert pitch violin strings made of spider silk. It turns out that one of Vollrath's own researchers is also studying the tonal qualities of the material, the good vibrations "which the spider can understand down in the nano-range". It is this music that allows the spider to understand what is happening on its web in minute detail "and that is why the fibre is so pure, both structurally and molecularly," Vollrath suggests. He pauses. "We are learning more and more all the time," he says, with characteristic vigour, about a substance that has developed over many millions of years. In that time, spiders have been confronted with versions of all the structural and molecular issues that trouble the best polymer scientists (and architects and neurobiologists) in the world, he suggests. "And what they have come up with are perfectly evolved solutions."Oakland - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will argue on Friday before a federal court that the National Security Agency (NSA) is violating the Fourth Amendment by copying and searching data that it collects by tapping into the Internet backbone. The hearing on a motion for partial summary judgment in Jewel v. NSA will be at 9 am on Dec. 19 before Judge Jeffrey White at the federal courthouse in Oakland.
Jewel was filed in 2008 on behalf of San Francisco Bay Area resident Carolyn Jewel and other AT&T customers. EFF has amassed a mountain of evidence to support the case, including documents provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein, which show that the company has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. Other whistleblowers—including Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Edward Snowden—have revealed more detail about how this technique feeds data into the NSA's massive databases of communications. Since June 2013, the government has confirmed that it searches much of the content it collects as part of its "upstream" collection without a warrant. The government claims the content searches are justified under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and do not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Under the government's legal theory, it can copy virtually all Internet communications and then search them from top to bottom for specific "identifiers"—all without a warrant or individualized suspicion—as long as it does so quickly using only automated processes.
EFF Special Counsel Richard Wiebe will argue before the court that the Fourth Amendment definitively bars this type of dragnet. As EFF presented in its motion, enough information now exists on the record for the court to rule that the government's technique represents an unconstitutional search and seizure.
What: Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
Who: Richard Wiebe, EFF Special Counsel
Date: Friday, Dec. 19, 2014
Time: 9:00 am
Where: Oakland Federal Courthouse
Courtroom 5, 2nd Floor
1301 Clay St.
Oakland, CA
Wiebe and EFF staff attorneys will be available for comment immediately following the hearing.
For more on Jewel v. NSA: https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel
Contact:
Dave Maass
Media Relations Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
press@eff.orgImage by Styled Stock Society
We might be past all the hype and hoopla of holiday makeup collections and their to-die-for packaging, but the seasonal lull doesn’t mean nothing interesting is going on. I’ve seen a few things lately that’ve piqued my interest – and therefore you need to know about them. Some of the upcoming, new or just new-to-me things that I’ve had my eye on lately.
Clarisonic
The Clarisonic Smart Profile Uplift is a new facial massage device that touts all sorts of benefits, from increasing the absorption of your skincare products right down to improving wrinkles and sagging skin. The technology is based on research conducted by L’Oreal which I tracked down here (free full text). I’m always pretty fascinated by anti-aging devices that work by actually improving your skin instead of just masking the visible signs of aging, so I’m really curious about how well this one works. Alas, the firming massage head ($54) is only compatible with their Smart Profile devices, which I don’t have. The full kit with the Smart Profile device, massage head, and cleansing brush heads runs $349, so I’ll probably sleep on that for a good while.
They’ve also released a new Sonic Foundation Brush ($35) that is compatible with the non-Smart-Profile devices. I for one am thrilled about this. I’ve seen a few motorized blending brushes here and there, but my curiosity didn’t overcome the price tag. This one, on the other hand, is pretty affordable in comparison, and I can pop it right onto the Mia FIT (reviewed here) that I already have. The way I see it, this gives you twice as much use out of your fancy cleansing device. And yes, I’ve already ordered one so a review will be happening ASAP.
Rae Morris
Holy cow am I ever excited about the new Rae Morris brush line! The Jishaku by Rae Morris brushes will still have the magnetic base that her current lineup has, but they’re switching to a manufacturer in Japan – aka the best brush makers in the world. They haven’t said who the OEM is, just that it’s one of the true masters of the craft, but I think the foundation brush looks suspiciously similar to the Koyudo fu-pa02. Just sayin’. The #4 Square Kabuki is still a staple in my everyday routine, so I’m itching to get my hands on some of these. No release date yet as far as I know.
The Ordinary
I don’t have too much information about this other than the teaser from their website, but it appears The Ordinary will be releasing a new foundation range aptly named Colours. I actually haven’t tried a single, solitary product from them yet, but I’ve read rave reviews. Even better, they all look to be extremely well-formulated with great packaging design at drugstore prices. You can never have too many choices for foundation, so I’m really eager to see what these are like.
Fenty Beauty
Recently I was browsing the Kendo website for some reason that I don’t even vaguely remember at this point. While I was there I noticed they had a ‘coming soon’ section, which points you to this blurb about Rihanna releasing a makeup line this fall. Kendo is the beauty incubator behind Bite Beauty, Kat Von D makeup and Marc Jacobs beauty. They all make some fantastic products (despite my initially poor first impression of the Marc Jacobs launch) so I have really high hopes for this brand. No information about the launch date other than ‘Fall 2017’ but this article says it will be available at Sephora. Unsurprising, considering Kendo is under the LVMH umbrella and their other brands all started as Sephora exclusives.
Have you heard any juicy rumors or seen something you’re excited to try out? Leave a comment below!
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SaveTactical CCG Duelyst's fourth expansion is only four days away—a 94 card set arriving on Tuesday, July 11—and I couldn't be more excited |
cheaper services going forward. So I think it’s a win for everybody.
Bluey: This is an issue that has sparked tremendous interest among both the left and the right. Tech giants and other supporters of the existing rule say that they’re necessary to ensuring that the internet stay on a level playing field. How do you respond?
Pai: I would say that innovation drives the most when you have light-touch frameworks, such as the one that we had for 20 years. For example, Facebook and Amazon and Netflix and Google, those are now globally known names and brands. But they didn’t exist 20 years ago. And they developed precisely because we had a free-market approach.
We let all kinds of business models thrive and then took the action as necessary against any competitive behavior. But we didn’t pre-emptively regulate everything like a slow-moving utility. Had we done that, I daresay that a lot of these companies wouldn’t have gotten off the ground, or certainly wouldn’t have grown so quickly.
Bluey: With the regulations put in place in the Obama era a couple years ago, what has that meant? Have you seen a pullback in terms of investment and in some of the advancements in technology?
Pai: We have. We take a very careful look at the facts and do economic analysis. And we find that investment in networks decreased below what it would have been had these rules not been imposed.
Additionally, the FCC started all kinds of investigations into things like free data offerings where wireless plans that want to exempt certain streaming services from your data limits. And so that ended up reducing consumer value because a lot of companies thought, “Well we’re afraid to innovate because the FCC might take action against us.”
[T]hese heavy-handed rules, based on the 1934 rules that were developed for Ma Bell, have had a negative impact on consumers.
Both with respect to investment and innovation, we find that these heavy-handed rules, based on the 1934 rules that were developed for Ma Bell, have had a negative impact on consumers.
Bluey: How would your plan address communications giants who wish to corner the market?
Pai: It will not happen for a couple different reasons. First, the FCC, as under my proposal, would require these companies to be completely transparent about their business practices. They have to reveal, for example, whether they’re engaging in broad blocking and the like. Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission would be empowered to take action just as they did prior to 2015.
Secondly, if you’re talking about cornering the market on service, that is not a question about Title II regulations of the FCC. That’s a question about competition, and that’s exactly why over the last 10 months we’ve been focused on getting much more competition into the marketplace as possible, using whatever technology, satellite or wireless or fixed wires or the like.
Heavy regulation always benefits the entrenched incumbents much more than the upstarts.
I want all of these technologies to compete, but you won’t have a fair chance of getting those smaller competitive entrants in if you heavily regulate this marketplace to begin with. Heavy regulation always benefits the entrenched incumbents much more than the upstarts.
Bluey: How do those free-market principles play into your role as chairman of the FCC?
Pai: It infuses everything I do and I would like to think the agency does because, to me at least, if a marketplace is competitive, then the case for pre-emptive regulation is a lot weaker. The FCC should be imposing rules on an entire industry only when there’s a concrete case of market failure—the marketplace is so broken that there’s no hope but for the FCC to step in and heavily regulate it.
Well, if anything, it wasn’t broken in 2015. Three unelected bureaucrats decided to save the internet from these hypothetical harms. And so, to me at least, the free market has produced much more value than pre-emptive regulation ever has.
Bluey: You’ve had people like Sen. Ted Cruz call net neutrality regulations “Obamacare for the internet.” How would you describe the regulations for people who are trying to comprehend the complexity of this?
Pai: Do you think of the internet as being as fast moving and as innovative as your water company? As your electric company? As your subway system? I mean, if so, that’s exactly what these Title II common carrier regulations were designed to address: the slow-moving Ma Bell, AT&T telephone monopoly of the 1930s. But that’s not the internet that we have.
Bluey: This plan includes a transparency requirement. Will this encourage more competition in the market?
Pai: Absolutely, and that’s one of the reasons why it was important to us to include that component. Because if the internet service provider that you’re subscribing to is disclosing their business practices and you don’t like those practices, you have a chance to switch to somebody else.
[T]he free market has produced much more value than pre-emptive regulation ever has.
For example, if you have a wireless carrier that says, we’re going to throttle certain kinds of content, you can switch to another provider that better meets your needs. And so that’s part of the reason why transparency backed up by Federal Trade Commission enforcement is really important.
Bluey: Some argue that the reversal of net neutrality rules will only benefit business and not consumers. How do you respond?
Pai: I could not disagree more. The fundamental issue with internet access that people have in America today is not that their internet service provider is blocking access to lawful content. It’s that they don’t have the fast, cheap internet service that they want. And so that’s why repealing these heavy-handed regulations on internet service providers will give them a much stronger business case for spending scarce capital building out these networks.
I’ve been to parts of America, especially rural America and low-income urban America, where folks are on the wrong side of the digital divide. My argument is that imposing these regulations and squelching a lot of the competition and investment from these providers ultimately leaves consumers either with slower internet service or no access at all.
Bluey: A couple of years ago, there were complaints about the openness of the FCC. Some of these decisions were made behind closed doors and the public didn’t even see what you were voting on until after the vote took place. Where does the proposal go from here?
Pai: It’s going to be a big change from 2015. In 2015, as you pointed out, the FCC voted on these regulations, and only two weeks after the vote, formally released them so the American people could see. This time, we’re putting the cart after the horse, where it belongs.
We are publicly releasing this information Wednesday so that all of the American people, not just the commissioners, can see it. And then on Dec. 14, we’ll be voting at the FCC, on whether to adopt my proposal to repeal these regulations.
Bluey: You recently gave a speech at the Reagan Library in which you talked about the changes that took place during the Reagan era. How much have those been an influence in your leadership of the FCC?
[W]e are going to see a digital revolution unleashed for consumers in 2017.
Pai: To me at least, the Reagan administration was at the vanguard of defending free markets and innovation. And if you look at some of the debates in the 1980s, they weren’t all that dissimilar from some of the things we’re talking about today. Especially having had the chance to talk to both of President [Ronald] Reagan’s FCC chairmen, I can tell you they struggled with these issues, too.
We need to be able to convey the power of free markets. They are ultimately much better for consumers because it gets government out of the way of innovation, allows business models to thrive, and ultimately, unleashes value for consumers. And I think just as in the 1980s, we are going to see a digital revolution unleashed for consumers in 2017.
The free markets have ultimately delivered much greater consumer welfare than pre-emptive regulation ever has.
This article was updated to fix a transcription error.If you worked for a creative firm and a tax company hired you to create a playful installation that represents what it means to pay taxes, what would you make? Paying taxes is not fun, and the goal was to create something to make people smile instead of groan when paying taxes. The creative firm called Acrylicize was up to the task, and this LEGO wall was a brilliant idea.
There are 1,200 LEGO minifigs on this massive LEGO wall, and when you look carefully, you can see that each one is perfectly spaced and attached to the wall meticulously. Each LEGO minifig represents some sort of job, which by default, represents a tax payer.
The team at Acrylicize spent an entire weekend putting this together. According to their website, they turned up the tunes and got to work. None of the professions represented on this LEGO wall have anything in common other than the fact that they all pay taxes. Of course, they said this project was nothing but fun. If you click over to their website, you can see more pictures.
I’m sure a lot of planning and preparation went into this geeky LEGO wall. After all, you can’t just walk into any store and buy 1,200 different LEGO minifigs that each represent a different job. I can’t even imagine how massive this must be IRL, and I think this type of inspiring installation would go well in just about any geeky office anywhere. It would encourage people to tap into their own creativity. I wonder if the tax payers who come into this office to pay money smile when they see this. I wonder if it lessens the blow of paying taxes. I imagine it does.
LEGO Wall Adorned With 1,200 Minifigs Creates Geeky Office Decor
(Click Images To Enlarge)TouchArcade Rating:
A bit over a year ago, we got the PC classic Rollecoaster Tycoon 3 on mobile, and personally I had loads of fun with it. Now, fans of the classic franchise have another reason to celebrate because a new game called Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic ($5.99) has just hit the App Store, and it looks very promising. This new game combines the best of RCT and RCT 2, and it sounds like great fun. The game lets you build roller coasters either from scratch or using pre-made ones and also lets you design a whole park, including the food and drink stalls, transport, even the toilets and the scenery.
When everything is up and running, you’ll have to keep an eye on your park’s finances and make tricky decisions that can make or break your park. If you like management games, this one is definitely one to check out. The game comes with a variety of environments, over 95 classic park scenarios from RCT and RCT 2, and additional expansion packs and features as IAPs. That’s a lot of content for only $5.99.Why should you take the time to make homemade cleaners? Well, first of all, plenty of studies show that toxic, conventional cleaning supplies are bad for your health, your child’s health, and the planet’s health. See the following posts for more information…
The above health issues are reason enough to make green cleaners, but just in case you need more reasons: homemade cleaners smell better, work just as well, cut down on packaging, and save you money. Lastly, this is a very simple green step you can take at home, yet the rewards are huge – cleaner indoor air quality and a healthy, happy family.
WHAT SUPPLIES YOU’LL NEED:
You need very few supplies to make homemade cleaning products. Most of the items you’ll need, you likely have around the house already…
A few plain old spray bottles. You can purchase some, or clean out your old ones (the ones that had icky cleaners in them) and reuse them. Box of baking soda. Table salt. Bottle of white distilled vinegar. Good old plain tap H2O. Olive oil. Natural soap. Fresh lemons. Organic essential oil of tea tree, lavender, eucalyptus, lemongrass and rosemary. You don’t need all of them, but having at least a couple on hand is helpful. These are some of the best antiseptic and antibacterial essential oils, plus they smell great. If you’ve never used essential oils before, read Essential Oil Buying Guide and Essential Oil Safety Guide. It’s important that you understand that anyone can have a negative reaction to an essential oil. The posts above explain how to do a skin test – you don’t want to clean with an oil that affects you negatively. Some eco-friendly sponges or cloths. Or simply buy a pack of washcloths, use old cloth diapers, make cloths out of ripped clothes, and so on. If you’re going to clean green, you may as well ditch the paper towels while you’re at it.
EASY, GREEN CLEANING SUPPLY RECIPES:
Window wash: Many people who are die-hard into green cleaning love vinegar and water as a window wash. Simply mix 3 tablespoons vinegar with 2 cups of water (or for a bigger job – 1/2 cup vinegar to 1 gallon water) and spray right on your windows. Vinegar works great on glass, it’s true, however I can’t stand the smell of vinegar, so I hunted down an alternative years ago. You can also use straight fresh lemon juice or club soda to get your windows and other glass items sparkling clean. Spritz your glass with club soda and scrub with recycled newspaper. If you use straight lemon juice use a lint-free cloth to scrub with.
All-purpose disinfectant: Mix 2 cups water, a few drops of natural soap, and 15 drops each of tea tree and lavender organic essential oil. You can spray this on all kinds of home surfaces – changing tables, cutting boards, toilets, sinks, walls, and more. Just don’t use this on glass, as it will streak. This basic cleaner is so safe and gentle you could literally spray it on your kids, and they’d be fine. I do suggest baths over disinfecting the kiddos though 🙂
Scrubbing toilets: Drizzle your toilet bowl with vinegar, lemon juice, or spray on some of your all-purpose disinfectant. Sprinkle with baking soda. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Scrub with toilet brush. This mix will also clean sinks perfectly.
Fast non-toxic oven cleaning: You don’t want to use conventional oven cleaners – any product that requires open windows and gloves to use, is not ok to use around your kids (or yourself). The best tip is to not wait to clean your oven when it gets dirty. An old stain is harder to clean. To clean oven stains naturally, sprinkle table salt liberally on the hot spill before your oven cools down. Allow the oven to cool. Grab a damp cloth and rub off the spill.
Mold fighter: Mold is extremely harmful to human lungs. The problem is that once you have mold, you have it, and it can be almost impossible, if not totally impossible to get rid of. Prevention is key. To fight mold from ever occurring, mix two cups of water and three drops of pure organic tea tree essential oil. Once a week, spray your walls with this solution (even behind furniture) and wipe dry. This mixture fights stains and the natural antiseptic qualities of tea tree oil fights mold and mildew.
Got questions? Go ahead and ask in the comments. I haven’t bought conventional household cleaners in years, so if you need a natural homemade cleaning solution, I can most likely help you out!There’s an interesting perspective many people take when trying to understand the distribution of jobs in the world, specifically with respect to men and women: they look at the percentage of men and women in a population (usually in terms of country-wide percentages, but sometimes more localized), make note of any deviations from those percentages in terms of representation in a job, and then use those deviations to suggest that certain desirable fields (but not usually undesirable ones) are biased against women. So, for instance, if women make up 50% of the population but only represent 30% of lawyers, there are some who would conclude this means the profession (and associated organizations) is likely biased against women, usually because of some implicit (as evidence of explicit and systematic sexism in training or hiring practices is exceptionally hard to come by). Similar methods have been used when substituting race for as well.
Source: Flickr/Barney Moss
Most of the ostensible demonstrations of this sexism issue are wanting, and I’ve covered a number of these examples before (see here, here, here, and here). Simply put, there are a lot of factors in the world that determine where people ultimately end up working (or whether they’re working at all). Finding a consistent gap between groups tells you something is different, just not what. As such, you don’t just get to assume that the cause of the difference is sexism and call it a day. My go-to example in that regard has long been plumbing. As a profession, it is almost entirely male dominated: something like 99% of the plumbers in the US are men. That’s as large of a gender gap as you could ask for, yet I have never once seen a campaign to get more women into plumbing or complaints about sexism in the profession keeping otherwise-interested women out. Similarly, men make up about 96% of the people shot by police, but the focus on police violence has never been on getting officers to shoot fewer men per se. In those cases, most people seem to recognize that factors other than are the primary determinants of the observed sex differences. Correlation isn’t causation, and maybe women aren’t as interested in digging around through human waste or committing violent felonies as men are. Not to say that many men are interested, just that more of those who are end up being men.
If that was the case and these sex differences aren’t caused by sexism, any efforts that sought to “fix” the gap by focusing on sexism would ultimately be unsuccessful. At the risk of saying something too obvious, you change outcomes by changing their causes; not unrelated issues. If we have the wrong idea as to what is causing an outcome, we end up wasting time and money (which often does not belong to us) trying to change it and accomplishing very little in the process (outside of getting people annoyed at us for wasting their time and money).
Today I wanted to add to that pile of questionable claims of sexism concerning an academic neighbor to psychology:. Though I was unaware of this debate, there is apparently some contention within the field concerning the perceived under-representation of women. As is typical, the apparent under-representation of women in this field has been chalked up to sexist biases keeping women discouraged and out of a job. To be clear about things, some people are looking at the percentage of men and women in the field of philosophy, noting that it differs from their expectations (whatever those are and however they were derived), calling it under-representation because of those expectations, and then further assuming a culprit in the form of sexism. As it turns out, the data has something to say about that.
Source: Flickr/Sebastian Sikora
The data in question come from a paper by Allen-Hermanson (2017), which examined sex differences in tenure-track hiring and academic publishing in philosophy departments. The reasoning behind this line of research was that if insidious forces are at work against women in philosophy departments, we ought to expect something of a leaky pipeline: women should not be as successful as men at landing desirable, tenure-track jobs, relative to the rates at which each sex earn philosophy degrees. So, if women earned, say, 40% of the philosophy PhDs during the last year, we might expect that they get 40% of the tenure-track jobs in the next, all else being equal. Across the 10 year period examined (2005-2014), there were three years in which women were hired very slightly below their relative percentage into the tenure-track jobs (and by “very slightly” I’m talking in range of about 1-2%), one year in which it was dead even, and during the remaining six years women were hired at above the rate which would be expected by much more substantial margins (in the range of 5-10%).
Putting some rough numbers to that, women earned about 28% of the PhDs and received about 36% of the jobs in the most recent hiring seasons. It seems, then, women tended to be over-represented in those positions, on average. Other data discussed in the paper corresponds to those findings, again suggesting that women had about a 25% advantage over men in finding desirable positions (in terms of less desirable positions, men and women were hired in about equal numbers).
This finding is made all the stranger by Allen-Hermanson (2017) noting that male and female degree holders differed with respect to how often they published. On average, the new tenure-track female candidates who had never held such a position before had 0.77 publications. The comparable male number was 1.37. Of those who secured a job in 2012-2013, men averaged 2.4 publications to women’s 1.17. Not only are the men publishing about twice as much, then, but they’re also modestly less successful at landing a job (and this effect did not appear to be driven by particularly prolific publishers). While one could possibly make the case that maybe female publications are in some sense higher quality, that remains to be seen. One could more easily make the case that female candidates were held to lower standards than male ones.
As the data currently stand, I can’t imagine many people will be making a fuss about them and crying sexism. Perhaps the men with the degrees went out to seek work elsewhere and that explains why women are over-represented. Perhaps there are other causes. The world is a complicated place, after all. The point here is that there won’t be talk about how philosophy departments are biased against men, just like there wasn’t much talk I saw last time research found a much larger academic bias in favor of women, holding candidate quality constant. I think that is largely because the data apparently favor women with respect to hiring. If the results had run in the opposite direction, I can imagine that a lot more noise would have been made about them and many people would be getting scolded right now about their tolerance of sexism. But that’s just an.
Source: Flickr/theilr
When asking a question of under-representation, the most pressing matter should always be, “under-represented with respect to what expectation?” In order to say that a group is under-represented, you need to make it clear what the expected degree of representation is as well as why. We shouldn’t expect that men and women be killed by police in equal numbers unless we also expect that both groups behave more-or-less identically. We similarly shouldn’t expect that men and women enter into certain fields in the same proportion unless they have identical sets of interests. On the other hand, if the two groups are different with respect to some key factor that determines an outcome, such as interests, using sex itself is just a poor variable. Compared to interest in fixing toilets (and other such relevant factors), I imagine sex itself uniquely predicts very little about who ultimately ends up becoming a plumber. If we can use those better, more directly-relevant factors, we should. You don’t build your predictive model with irrelevant factors; not if accuracy is your goal, in any case.
References: Allen-Hermanson S. (2017). Leaking pipeline myths: In search of gender effects on the job market and early publishing in philosophy. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00953Sony is about to start charging more for one of its best gaming services.
PlayStation Plus will jump in price from $50 to $60 annually, according to an announcement on Sony’s PlayStation Blog. Three months of PS Plus will now cost $22; it previously was $18. If you pay monthly for PS Plus, nothing will change for you in the United States because Sony plans to continue charging $10 12 times a year for that tier — although Canadian will now have to pay $12 monthly. All of these new prices will go into effect September 22. This brings PS Plus in line with the cost of Microsoft’s competing Xbox Live Gold service.
PS Plus is the premium online gaming network for Sony’s PlayStation consoles. It enables online multiplayer on PS4 while also offering a library of games each month at no extra charge. For example, in August, PS Plus subscribers will get space-trucking sim Rebel Galaxy for PS4 and the Japanese crime adventure Yakuza 5 for PS3. Sony’s Game & Network Services (the PlayStation division), generated $3.208 billion in revenue last quarter. The company credited PlayStation Network and PlayStation Plus for a lot of that money.
“PlayStation Plus strives to enrich your PlayStation experience through a world-class service built for our fans,” PS Plus content manager Greg Lewickyj wrote. “This marks the first time that PS Plus membership prices will increase in the U.S. and Canada since the launch of the service in 2010. The new pricing reflects the current market conditions while enabling us to continue providing exceptional value to our members.”
Since this price hike is due in September, you can purchase a PS Plus membership or extension to your service now at the original prices. If you are already a member and wait until after September 22, you’ll have to pay the increased price as well.
PS Plus and Xbox Live Gold are among the most important products for Sony and Microsoft. These online networks guarantee a high level of revenue each month, and that has helped to make PlayStation one of Sony’s most profitable divisions.Bizarre as the ritual is, it seems to work.
The industry’s medical consultants say that about 350,000 sex scenes have been shot without condoms since 2004, and H.I.V. has not been transmitted on a set once.
Outside the world of pornography, the industry’s testing regimen is not well known, and no serious academic study of it has ever been done. But when it was described to several AIDS experts, they all reacted by saying that there were far fewer infections than they would have expected, given how much high-risk sex takes place.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it works,” said Dr. Allan Ronald, a Canadian AIDS specialist who did landmark studies of the virus in prostitutes in a Nairobi slum. “I’m a little uncomfortable, because it’s giving the wrong message — that you can have multiple sex partners without condoms — but I can’t say it doesn’t work.”
Despite the regimen’s apparent success, California health officials and an advocacy group, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, are trying to make it illegal to shoot without condoms. They argue that other sexually transmitted diseases are rampant in the industry, though the industry trade group disputes that.
In January, the city of Los Angeles passed a law requiring actors to wear condoms. A measure to do the same for the whole county is on the ballot on Tuesday.
Producers say the condom requirement will drive them out of business since consumers will not buy such films. Local newspapers like The Los Angeles Times oppose the ballot measure, calling it well-intentioned but unenforceable, and warning that it could drive up to 10,000 jobs out of state.
Very frequent testing makes it almost impossible for an actor to stay infected without being caught, said Dr. Jacques Pepin, the author of “The Origins of AIDS” and an expert on transmission rates. “And if you are having sex mostly with people who themselves are tested all the time, this must further reduce the risk.”
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When the virus first enters a high-risk group like heroin users, urban prostitutes or habitués of gay bathhouses, it usually infects 30 to 60 percent of the cohort within a few years, studies have shown. The same would be expected in pornography, where performers can have more than a dozen partners a month, but the industry says self-policing has prevented it.
“Our talent base has sex exponentially more than other people, but we’re all on the same page about keeping it out,” said Steven Hirsch, the founder of Vivid Entertainment, one of the biggest studios.
Performers have to test negative every 28 days, although some studios recently switched to every 14.
If a test is positive, all the studios across the country that adhere to standards set by the Free Speech Coalition, an industry trade group, are obliged to stop filming until all the on-screen partners of that performer, all their partners, and all their partners’ partners, are found and retested. In 2004, the industry shut down for three months to do that.
It has had briefer shutdowns in each of the last four years.
In 2009 and 2010, no other infected performers were found. Coalition representatives said an infected woman in 2009, from Nevada, may have had an infected boyfriend, and offered evidence that a man infected in 2010 in Florida had worked outside the industry as a prostitute. The 2011 test was a false positive.
A shutdown in August came after several actors got syphilis, not H.I.V. All performers were given a choice: Take antibiotics, or pass two back-to-back syphilis tests 14 days apart.
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State law in California covering these issues is vague. It requires protective gear for workers exposed to blood-borne diseases, but it was written with nurses and police officers in mind and does not mention condoms.
The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration interprets the law as requiring condoms, but says it cannot find the industry’s workplaces — most movies are shot in houses rented for a few days. Even if it does, it cannot enter without the producer’s permission or unless a performer files a complaint, which would allow investigators to get a warrant, said Amy Martin, the agency’s chief counsel.
But the industry hires only actors willing to work without condoms, so complaints are not filed.
The industry says the state’s interpretation would require all films to be shot with latex gloves, face shields and lab coats. It also says the state tolerates other industries, like boxing and football, in which performers take risks.
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The Legislature has avoided making the law specific to pornography.
“No politician wants to touch the issue, because it’s about sex,” said Michael Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who has made the issue a personal crusade.
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For producers, it’s really about money.
Vivid Entertainment shot with condoms for two years after a 1998 H.I.V. outbreak, and sales dropped 30 percent, Mr. Hirsch said. Producers have threatened to leave the state, taking the jobs of 1,200 actors and more than 5,000 crew members with them.
Because of court rulings, filming adult movies is legal in California, Florida and New Hampshire. Nevada, where prostitution is legal, tolerates it.
Gay pornography, by contrast, has included condoms since the 1980s, because producers assume some actors are infected and because many gay men consider forced testing an invasion of privacy.
However, that is changing as “bareback” films become more common. Some producers claim their actors are safe because they shoot in places like Slovakia, where H.I.V. rates are very low, or because they test, or because infected actors are taking antiretroviral drugs, which can reduce the risk of transmission by 96 percent.
But it remains controversial. Chi Chi LaRue, who has been producing gay pornographic movies for 28 years and shoots only with condoms, dismissed bareback producers as “industry pariahs.”
While cases of H.I.V. are rare, Mr. Weinstein and California health officials say they also want condoms required to stop other diseases.
Thirty-five diseases — including drug-resistant gonorrhea — can be transmitted sexually, and the industry tests for only four, said Dr. King Holmes, head of global health at the University of Washington.
Los Angeles County officials estimated that sex-film actors get chlamydia and gonorrhea at least eight times as often as other young adults. The industry disputes that estimate, but a new study by the county suggests that the industry’s urine testing for gonorrhea underestimates how much is transmitted through oral and anal sex.
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Actors insist that they are careful because their jobs depend on it. Top performers can earn $200,000 to $400,000 a year.
“If I get gonorrhea, we have to cancel the shoot, the crew is angry at me, and that’s unprofessional,” said Stoya. “And besides, it’s gonorrhea — yecch. So I use condoms in my personal life.”
Her co-star, Mr. Deen, concurred: “If I’m having sex off camera for fun, and it’s not someone from the industry who tests all the time, then it’s condoms, condoms, condoms all the way.”
Several working and former actresses interviewed said they opposed condoms for another reason: They chafe.
Actors repeatedly stop and start while lights and camera angles are changed and different versions of scenes are shot.
“The average length of intercourse for most Americans is 10 minutes,” said Nina Hartley, a former nurse and well-known actress in pornographic films since 1984. In her work, she said, “it’s 30 to 60 minutes of thrusting. It doesn’t matter how much lube you use, it’s uncomfortable, it’s a friction burn, and it opens up lesions in the genital mucosa. I could handle two to three condom scenes a month. But actors are paid by the scene, and I couldn’t do three in a week.”By blaming Russia for America’s most abhorrent problems and most unforgivable policies, Wall Street is given another 4-8 year free pass.
Perhaps the only thing more incredible than quickly expanding conspiracy theories regarding the Kremlin’s influence over the White House is who is selling them and who is buying them.
Organizations popping up overnight with advisory boards lined with Neo-Conservatives who came to prominence during the administration of former US President George Bush and who became notorious for selling the 2003 US invasion of Iraq based on intentional fabrications, now find themselves building an audience of unlikely political allies – left-leaning liberals.
Who is Selling?
The so-called “Alliance for Securing Democracy” recently accused Russia of manipulating news to target the US-based National Football League (NFL). It claims in its mission statement that:
In 2016, American democracy came under unprecedented attack.
The government of the Russian Federation attempted to weaken the pillars of our democracy and undermine faith and confidence in our society’s most fundamental right — the ability to choose our own leaders.
The organization’s “Disinformation Dashboard” even includes a disclaimer admitting nothing about the information it presents constitutes evidence. Ambiguous terms like “Russia aligned” are never qualified. Instead, it claims (emphasis added):
Content is not necessarily produced or created by Russian government operatives, although that is sometimes the case. Instead, the network often opportunistically amplifies content created by third parties not directly linked to Russia. Common themes for amplification include content attacking the U.S. and Europe, conspiracy theories and disinformation. Russian influence operations also frequently promote extremism and divisive politics in Western countries. Just because the Russia-aligned network monitored here tweets something, that doesn’t mean everyone who tweets the same content is aligned with Russia.
An organization that accuses Russia and in particular, President Vladimir Putin for undermining US elections, inferring Russia’s responsibility for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, counts among its advisory council Michael Chertoff, a Bush-era Neo-Conservative who served as President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security.
There is also David Kramer who served in the US State Department under President Bush, served as president of the Neo-Conservative chaired State Department front, Freedom House, and currently serves as a member of the advisory council for the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s “Human Freedom Project.”
William Kristol, considered by many as one of the chief architects, or at least leading salesman of the 2003 Iraq War, also chairs the Alliance for Securing Democracy advisory board. He was a signatory of the Neo-Conservative Project for the New American Century and the pro-war Foreign Policy Initiative. He served the administrations of US President Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.
Michael Morell – who recently declared interest in killing Russians and Iranians in Syria as the armed forces of all three nations fight Al Qaeda and militants of the so-called Islamic State – also serves as an adviser. He has worked in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for over 30 years, and is currently a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies – an organization that appears to specialize in professional warmongering – along side other former US State Department, Department of Defense, and CIA employees.
Kori Schake is described as having assisted with policy for the White House, Department of Defense, and the State Department as well as serving as senior policy adviser for John McCain and Sarah Palin during their 2008 bid for the White House
Michael Rogers, a former US Representative for Michigan and a Republican along with Admiral James Stavridis who helped wage President Bush’s wars and also serves as an adviser for the above mentioned Beacon Global Strategies help round off the advisory board.
It is safe to say that the majority of this exclusively anti-Russian propaganda organization, eagerly promoted by American liberals, consists of Neo-Conservatives many of these same liberals at one point rightfully rejected, opposed, and vehemently condemned as they sold serial wars of aggression during the Bush administration.
A similar list of Neo-Conservatives and long-time warmongers fills out the “Committee to Investigate Russia” (CIR) who recently made headlines when they hired veteran actor Morgan Freeman to appeal to audiences’ emotions rather than their intellect.
CIR includes Max Boot, James Clapper, and Norman Ornstein who occupy various seats and positions at corporate-financier funded think tanks ranging from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Center for a New American Security, to the American Enterprise Institute all of which share sponsorship from big-oil, big-defense, big-banks, and big-industry – in other words – Wall Street.
Other pop-up anti-Russian fronts have similar boards of directors, representing similar interests, and are similarly and very ironically, finding fertile ground among American liberals who at one point in recent history opposed the very sort of war propaganda now being sold versus Russia.
Wall Street, Not Moscow Controls the White House
The United States possesses over 800 military bases worldwide, with a military operating on a budget that eclipses the combined military budgets of the next 7 leading nations, including Russia and China. Of the top |
may also apply to the development of children’s toy preferences. Previous research has demonstrated that prenatal androgens influence postnatal sex differences in activity preferences (Wallen, 2005). We offer the hypothesis that there are hormonally organized preferences for specific activities that shape preference for toys that facilitate these activities. Human toys capitalize on sex differences in preferred activities, creating a gendered toy market. Thus, in addition to adults socializing children’s toy preferences, children may socialize adults to provide toys facilitating their preferred activities. In this view biologically based sex differences in activity preferences significantly influence sex differences in childhood object choice. This proposed interaction between the child’s preferences and adult socialization is not inconsequential. Traditionally, socialization pressures are conceptualized as the primary determinants of preference. There can be little doubt that boys and girls learn that some activities are socially more appropriate for males or for females and this is likely reflected in the sex-stereotyped toys they choose. However, girls are less likely to receive negative information about boys’ toys and activities than are boys about girls’ activities and toys (Kane, 2006). Thus, girls’ toys and activities are often stigmatized for boys, but boys’ toys and activities not as stigmatized for girls (Martin, 1990). One could view such stigmatization as devaluing female-typical toys for boys without comparably devaluing male-typical toys for girls. Such differential devaluation might produce the markedly greater preference difference between toy types seen in boys contrasting with the lack of preference seen in girls. Because we chose toys based on object properties and not on previously established sex-typed categorizations, our wheeled and plush toys are not entirely analogous to the more stereotypical categories used in the human studies or to toys typically marketed as for boys and girls. Our findings suggest that sex differences in toy preferences in humans and nonhuman primates rely to some extent on physical object properties, but that social characteristics likely also influence preference, and some of these may be unique to humans. For example, a toy such as a plastic shopping cart, one of our wheeled toys, might appeal to boys or rhesus monkey males for its physical properties, but the same shopping cart also has symbolic properties related to imaginative play, and in humans may be socially stigmatized for boys. Because the shopping cart relates to a specific human activity, the toy facilitates different activities for humans than for rhesus monkeys. However, our finding that male monkeys show a preference of comparable magnitude to those seen in boys makes a cultural devaluation explanation unlikely. An alternative, not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanation is that boys and girls prefer different physical activities with different types of behaviors and different levels of energy expenditure. It is these activity preferences which cause boys and girls to seek different experiences and it is these experiences, in turn, which are reflected in their preferences for specific objects that facilitate expression of their activity preferences. Possibly, as they move into adulthood, these divergent activity preferences and the experiences they engender become reflected in adult preferences for different lifestyles and careers (Maccoby, 1998). Preference and experience thus interact with each other such that biologically-determined and socialized effects are inseparable. We suspect that such interaction reflects a more general principle in which pre-existing preferences shape the developmental environment, which in turn shapes subsequent experience. In this manner both biological predispositions and socialization processes are necessary for the full development and differentiation of behavior.
Acknowledgements Jessica Raper and Anne Graff assisted with data collection. Research was supported in part by Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant 52003071, by the STC Program, the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, of the NSF under agreement No. IBN-9876754, and NIH grants R01-MH50268 and K02-MH01062 (K.W.), and NCRR grant RR-00165 to the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, which is fully accredited with the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.
Footnotes Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.Sponsored Link
Bandwidth in computer networking refers to the data rate supported by a network connection or interface. One most commonly expresses bandwidth in terms of bits per second (bps). The term comes from the field of electrical engineering, where bandwidth represents the total distance or range between the highest and lowest signals on the communication channel (band).
Bandwidth represents the capacity of the connection. The greater the capacity, the more likely that greater performance will follow, though overall performance also depends on other factors, such as latency.
Bandwidthd
BandwidthD tracks usage of TCP/IP network subnets and builds html files with graphs to display utilization. Charts are built by individual IPs, and by default display utilization over 2 day, 8 day, 40 day, and 400 day periods. Furthermore, each ip address's utilization can be logged out at intervals of 3.3 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour or 12 hours in cdf format, or to a backend database server. HTTP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, VPN, and P2P traffic are color coded.
Current Stable Version :- 2.0.1
Project Home Page :- http://bandwidthd.sourceforge.net/
Bmon
bmon is a portable bandwidth monitor and rate estimator running on various operating systems. It supports various input methods for different architectures. Various output modes exist including an interactive curses interface,lightweight HTML output but also formatable ASCII output.
Bwbar
bwbar is a small C-based program for Linux-based machines which produces bandwidth usage statistics for a network interface. It was originally written by H. Peter Anvin, and I (Brian Towne) modified it somewhat to better suit my needs. The original program was released under the GPL. A number of people have asked for the modified program and its source, so I have created this page.
Current Stable Version :- 1.2.3
bwm
This is a very tiny bandwidth monitor (not X11). Can monitor up to 16 interfaces in the in the same time, and shows totals too.
Current Stable Version :- 1.1.0
bwm-ng
small and simple console-based bandwidth monitor.Bandwidth Monitor NG is a small and simple console-based live bandwidth monitor.
Current Stable Version :- 0.6
Project Home Page :- http://www.gropp.org/?id=projects&sub=bwm-ng
Cacti
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.
Current Stable Version :- 0.8.7e
Project Home Page :- http://cacti.net/
cbm
cbm — the color bandwidth meter — is a small program to display the traffic currently flowing through your network devices.
Current Stable Version :- 0.1
dstat
Dstat is a versatile replacement for vmstat, iostat, netstat, nfsstat and ifstat. Dstat overcomes some of their limitations and adds some extra features, more counters and flexibility. Dstat is handy for monitoring systems during performance tuning tests, benchmarks or troubleshooting.
Current Stable Version :- 0.7.1
Project Home Page :- http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/dstat/
EtherApe
EtherApe is a graphical network monitor for Unix modeled after etherman. Featuring link layer, ip and TCP modes, it displays network activity graphically. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. Color coded protocols display.
Current Stable Version :- 0.9.9
Project Home Page :- http://etherape.sourceforge.net/
gdesklets
gDesklets is a system for bringing mini programs (desklets), such as weather forecasts, news tickers, system information displays, or music player controls, onto your desktop, where they are sitting there in a symbiotic relationship of eye candy and usefulness. The possibilities are really endless and they are always there to serve you whenever you need them, just one key-press away. The system is not restricted to one desktop environment, but currently works on most of the modern Unix desktops (including GNOME, KDE, Xfce).
Current Stable Version :- 0.36.1
Project Home Page :- http://www.gdesklets.de/
GKrellM
GKrellM is a single process stack of system monitors which supports applying themes to match its appearance to your window manager, Gtk, or any other theme.
Current Stable Version :- 2.3.4
Project Home Page :- http://members.dslextreme.com/users/billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html
ipband
ipband is a pcap based IP traffic monitor. It tallies per-subnet traffic and bandwidth usage and starts detailed logging if specified threshold for the specific subnet is exceeded. If traffic has been high for a certain period of time, the report for that subnet is generated which can be appended to a file or e-mailed. When bandwidth usage drops below the threshold, detailed logging for the subnet is stopped and memory is freed.
Current Stable Version :- 0.8.1
Project Home Page :- http://ipband.sourceforge.net/
iftop
iftop does for network usage what top does for CPU usage. It listens to network traffic on a named interface and displays a table of current bandwidth usage by pairs of hosts. Handy for answering the question "why is our ADSL link so slow".
Current Stable Version :- 0.17
Project Home Page :- http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/
iperf
Iperf is a tool to measure maximum TCP bandwidth, allowing the tuning of various parameters and UDP characteristics. Iperf reports bandwidth, delay jitter, datagram loss.
ipfm
IP Flow Meter (IPFM) is a bandwidth analysis tool, that measures how much bandwidth specified hosts use on their Internet link.
Current Stable Version :- 0.11.5
Project Home Page :- http://robert.cheramy.net/ipfm/
ifstat
ifstat is a tool to report network interfaces bandwith just like vmstat/iostat do for other system counters.
Current Stable Version :- 1.1
Project Home Page :- http://gael.roualland.free.fr/ifstat/
ibmonitor
ibmonitor is an interactive linux console application which shows bandwidth consumed and total data transferred on all
interfaces.
Current Stable Version :- 1.4
Project Home Page :- http://ibmonitor.sourceforge.net/
ipaudit
IPAudit monitors network activity on a network by host, protocol and port.IPAudit listens to a network device in promiscuous mode, and records every connection between two ip addresses. A unique connection is determined by the ip
addresses of the two machines, the protocol used between them, and the port numbers (if they are communicating via udp or tcp).
Current Stable Version :- 0.95
Project Home Page :- http://ipaudit.sourceforge.net/
IPTraf
IPTraf is a console-based network statistics utility for Linux. It gathers a variety of figures such as TCP connection packet and byte counts, interface statistics and activity indicators, TCP/UDP traffic breakdowns, and LAN station packet and byte counts.
Current Stable Version :- 3.0.0
Project Home Page :- http://iptraf.seul.org/
IFStatus
IFStatus was developed for Linux users that are usually in console mode. It is a simple, easy to use program for displaying commonly needed / wanted statistics in real time about ingoing and outgoing traffic of multiple network interfaces that is usually hard to find, with a simple and effecient view. It is the substitute for PPPStatus and EthStatus projects.
Current Stable Version :- 1.1.0
jnettop
Jnettop is a traffic visualiser, which captures traffic going through the host it is running from and displays streams sorted by bandwidth they use.
Current Stable Version :- 0.13.0
Project Home Page :- http://jnettop.kubs.info/wiki/
MRTG
The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing PNG images which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic.
Current Stable Version :- 2.16.3
Project Home Page :- http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/
moodss
moodss is a graphical monitoring application. It is modular so that the code accessing the monitored objects is completely separate from the application core. The core takes care of managing modules (loading and unloading),displaying modules data through sortable tables and diverse graphical viewers, handling user set threshold conditions with email alerts, recording and browsing data history from a database.moodss can even predict the future, using sophisticated statistical methods and artificial neural networks, and therefore be used for capacity planning.
Current Stable Version :- 21.5
Project Home Page :- http://moodss.sourceforge.net/
monitord
A lightweight (distributed?) network security monitor for TCP/IP+Ethernet LANs. It will capture certain network events and record them in a relational database. The recorded data will be available for analysis through a CGI based interface.
Current Stable Version :- 4.0
Project Home Page :- http://sourceforge.net/projects/monitord/
Netmrg
NetMRG is a tool for network monitoring, reporting, and graphing. Based on RRDTOOL, the best of open source graphing
systems, NetMRG is capable of creating graphs of any parameter of your network.
Current Stable Version :- 0.20
Project Home Page :- http://www.netmrg.net
nload
nload is a console application which monitors network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time. It visualizes the in-and outgoing traffic using two graphs and provides additional info like total amount of transfered data and min/max network usage.
Current Stable Version :- 0.7.2
Project Home Page :- http://www.roland-riegel.de/nload/index.html
ntop
ntop shows the current network usage. It displays a list of hosts that are currently using the network and reports information concerning the IP (Internet Protocol) and Fibre Channel (FC) traffic generated by each host. The traffic is sorted according to host and protocol. Default protocol list (this is user configurable).
Current Stable Version :- 3.3.10
Project Home Page :- http://www.ntop.org
netspeed
Netspeed is just a little GNOME-applet that shows how much traffic occurs on a specified network device (for example eth0). You get the best impression of it, if you look at the screenshots below.
Current Stable Version :- 0.14
Netwatch
Netwatch is a Linux program created to aid in monitoring Network Connections. It is based on a program called "statnet" but has been substantially modified for its Ethernet emphasis. It is a dynamic program which displays the Ethernet status based each the connection's activity. It has the capability of monitoring hundreds of site statistics simultaneously. The connection's port number (Well Known Service) and destination address are available as well. There are options which allow router statistics to be measured on simple networks (with one router). External network communication is counted and transfer rates are displayed.
Current Stable Version :- 1.3.0-1
Project Home Page :- http://www.slctech.org/~mackay/netwatch.html
NOCOL
NOCOL is a popular system and network monitoring (network management) software that runs on Unix systems and can
monitor network and system devices. It uses a very simple architecture and is very flexible for adding new network management modules
Current Stable Version :- 4.3.1
Project Home Page :- http://www.netplex-tech.com/nocol/
NeTraMet
NeTraMet is an open-source (GPL) implementation of the RTFM architecture for Network Traffic Flow Measurement,
developed and supported by Nevil Brownlee at the University of Auckland. Nevil also developed a version of NeTraMet
which uses the CoralReef library to read packet headers. This ‘CoralReef NeTraMet meter' can work with any CoralReef
data source; it has been tested on both CAIDA and NLANR trace files, and on DAG and Apptel ATM interface cards.
Current Stable Version :- 43
Project Home Page :- http://freshmeat.net/projects/netramet/
NetPIPE
NetPIPE is a protocol independent performance tool that visually represents the network performance under a variety of
conditions. It performs simple ping-pong tests, bouncing messages of increasing size between two processes, whether
across a network or within an SMP system. Message sizes are chosen at regular intervals, and with slight perturbations, to provide a complete test of the communication system. Each data point involves many ping-pong tests to provide an accurate timing. Latencies are calculated by dividing the round trip time in half for small messages ( <64 Bytes ).
Current Stable Version :- 3.7.1
Project Home Page :- http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/netpipe/
netperf
Netperf is a benchmark that can be use to measure various aspect of networking performance. The primary foci are bulk
(aka unidirectional) data transfer and request/response performance using either TCP or UDP and the Berkeley Sockets interface. As of this writing, the tests available either unconditionally or conditionally
Current Stable Version :- 2.4.5
Project Home Page :- http://www.netperf.org/netperf/
potion
This is a console utility which will listen on an interface using libpcap, aggregate the traffic into flows and display the top (as many as can fit on your screen) flows with their average throughput. A flow is identified ip protocol, source ip, source port, destination ip, destination port, and type of service flag.
Current Stable Version :- 0.0.4
pktstat
Display a real-time list of active connections seen on a network interface, and how much bandwidth is being used by what. Partially decodes HTTP and FTP protocols to show what filename is being transferred. X11 application names are also shown. Entries hang around on the screen for a few seconds so you can see what just happened. Also accepts filter expressions á la tcpdump.
Current Stable Version :- 1.8.4
Project Home Page :- http://www.adaptive-enterprises.com.au/~d/software/pktstat/
RTG
RTG is a flexible, scalable, high-performance SNMP statistics monitoring system. It is designed for enterprises and service providers who need to collect time-series SNMP data from a large number of targets quickly. All collected data is inserted into a relational database that provides a common interface for applications to generate complex queries and reports. RTG includes utilities that generate configuration and target files, traffic reports, 95th percentile reports and graphical data plots. These utilities may be used to produce a web-based interface to the data.
Current Stable Version :- 0.7.4
Project Home Page :- http://rtg.sourceforge.net/
speedometer
Monitor network traffic or speed/progress of a file transfer. The program can be used for cases like: how long it will take for my 38MB transfer to finish, how quickly is another transfer going, How fast is the upstream on this ADSL line and how fast can I write data to my filesystem.
Current Stable Version :- 2.6
Project Home Page :- http://excess.org/speedometer/
Spong
Spong is a simple system-monitoring package written in Perl. It features client based monitoring, monitoring of network services, results displayed via the Web or console, history of problems, and flexible messaging when problems occur.
Current Stable Version :- 2.7.6
Project Home Page :- http://spong.sourceforge.net/
slurm
slurm started as a pppstatus port to FreeBSD. As I ripped off several functions
Current Stable Version :- 0.3.3
SNIPS
SNIPS (System & Network Integrated Polling Software) is a system and network monitoring software that runs on Unix systems and can monitor network and system devices. It is capable of monitoring DNS, NTP, TCP or web ports, host performance, syslogs, radius servers, BGP peers, etc. New monitors can be added easily (via a C or Perl API).
Current Stable Version :- 1.1
Project Home Page :- http://www.navya.com/software/snips/
tcpflow
tcpflow is a program that captures data transmitted as part of TCP connections (flows), and stores the data in a way
that is convenient for protocol analysis or debugging. A program like tcpdump shows a summary of packets seen on the
wire, but usually doesn't store the data that's actually being transmitted. In contrast, tcpflow reconstructs the actual data streams and stores each flow in a separate file for later analysis. tcpflow understands TCP sequence numbers and will correctly reconstruct data streams regardless of retransmissions or out-of-order delivery.
Current Stable Version :- 0.21
Project Home Page :- http://www.circlemud.org/~jelson/software/tcpflow/
vnstat
vnStat is a network traffic monitor for Linux that keeps a log of daily network traffic for the selected interface(s).vnStat isn't a packet sniffer. The traffic information is analyzed from the /proc -filesystem, so vnStat can be used without root permissions. However at least a 2.2.x kernel is required.
Current Stable Version :- 1.10
Project Home Page :- http://humdi.net/vnstat/
WMND
Shows a graph of incoming/outgoing traffic, activity indicators for rx/tx and current/maximum rate for rx/tx in bytes or packets.Tailored for use with WindowMaker, it will as well work with any other window manager though.
Current Stable Version :- 0.4.13
Project Home Page :- http://dockapps.org/file.php/id/178
Updated on 18th March 2010
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Related postsWASHINGTON - Four major players in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday morning.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will all testify before the Senate intelligence committee 24 hours before the Comey hearing.
The hearing is scheduled to start at 10:00 a.m. - you can watch it here on ClickOnDetroit.com
The event was scheduled five weeks ago as a review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but it quickly morphed into another chance for lawmakers to get some answers on the Justice Department's investigation into President Donald Trump's campaign and Russian meddling in the US election.
The hearing also comes the morning after news broke that Trump and Sessions have had a series of heated exchanges in the last several weeks, after Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe, according to a source close to Sessions.
Here are the five things to watch for Wednesday.
1. Did Trump pressure Coats and Rogers to dismiss concerns about Russia?
Before senators get to questions on whether Trump pressured Comey to kill his investigation of former National Security Michael Flynn, they're going to dig in on whether Trump pressured Coats and Rogers to rebut Comey.
According to The Washington Post, Trump pressed two of his top intelligence directors to argue that the FBI was not investigating ties between his campaign and Russian officials -- one day after Comey revealed the investigation in public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.
The day after the report, Coats declined to answer whether it was true -- but Coats also teased that he may be open to answering the question if asked by the right committee.
"If I'm called before an investigative committee, I certainly will provide them with what I know and what I don't know," Coats said on May 23.
Sen. Mark Warner, the committee's vice chairman, said Wednesday it would be his first question of the hearing.
2. Can the Trump team score a win on leaks?
The White House and its growing "war room" may want to thank a 25-year-old NSA contractor named Reality Winner for becoming the first target of a leak investigation. Winner's alleged disclosure of an NSA report detailing Russian attempts to hack voting systems in the election, handed the Justice Department what appears to be an easy win.
Trump has made identifying "leakers" one of his top priorities as part of an effort to counter Russia stories and the topic of Wednesday's hearing -- FISA surveillance -- plays to Trump's strengths on this issue. (A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that McCabe would only answer questions about FISA, and not Russia.)
But Winner's alleged leaking of the report is bound to give committee Republicans a stronger foothold to ask questions than the hearing topic or any of Trump's tweets.
3. Rosenstein's first public testimony
Just a day after Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as the special counsel for the Russia investigation, he headed to the Capitol for a pair of closed-door briefings about his decision. Second-hand reports of Rosenstein's promises and comments trickled out of the meetings, one in the House and one in the Senate, but Wednesday will mark the first time lawmakers can get Rosenstein on the record answering questions himself.
Rosenstein has been intrinsically wrapped into the Comey firing story, with White House officials citing Rosenstein's memo as the key reason for Comey's ouster. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has already promised to grill Rosenstein on what Trump told him when he said he wanted Comey fired.
4. Mueller questions
Mueller might not be at Wednesday's hearing, but with Rosenstein and McCabe in the room, questions of how the federal and Senate investigations will co-exist are likely to come up.
As of Tuesday, committee Chairman Richard Burr and Warner had still not talked to Mueller -- three weeks after his appointment.
5. Will the White House exercise executive privilege?
Trump's surrogates may have said earlier this week that the President will not block Comey from testifying by claiming executive privilege. But all four of the officials testifying Wednesday still work for Trump, sparking some concern behind the scenes that Trump may try to curb their testimony.
The White House did not respond to questions of whether Trump would claim executive privilege Wednesday.
Copyright 2017 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved.If you believe The Economist, science is in the midst of a crisis, with most of its conclusions failing to stand the test of time. Research fraud is rising, but even studies that were performed properly sometimes either can't be reproduced or appear to suffer from bias.
A new analysis suggests a very simple explanation for some of the problems: our statistics are weak. A statistician has figured out how to compare Bayesian statistics to those normally used in scientific tests of significance. By comparing the two, he finds that researchers are often accepting numbers that any good Bayesian would consider to be weak evidence.
What's in a p?
To understand the problem, we have to go into how scientists assess significance. Typically, a given experiment has an experimental condition that produces a number and a control condition that produces a second. The two numbers will typically be different, but we need to know if those differences are significant. That's where statistics comes in. The typical test used in science involves determining whether you'd produce the two numbers by random chance. In most fields, if there's less than a five percent chance that you'd get the two numbers by random chance, then you can reject chance—the results are considered significant. In statistical terms, this is called having a p value of less than 0.05.
Is there something special about a 95 percent probability? Absolutely not; a recent paper referred to it as "seemingly arbitrary." It's simply been arrived at through the consensus of people working in the field. It seems in most fields, people have been willing to accept a situation where, out of every 20 positive results, chances are that one of them is a fluke and will not be reproducible.
But the 95 percent rule doesn't apply to every field. In particle physics, hints of particles with greater than 95 percent certainty come and go all the time—you can get a different answer depending on how much data you have at the time of analysis. So that field has settled on a much higher standard: greater than 99.9999 percent confidence.
Even biology has made exceptions when needed. In genetics experiments, a 95 percent confidence was considered perfectly acceptable evidence. Until the 90s, that is, when the development of gene chips meant that you could do a single experiment that looked at every single gene in the human genome at once—over 20,000 of them. Suddenly, a five percent error rate meant that every experiment produced over 1,000 false positives. The problem should have been obvious, but, amazingly, it wasn't. It took a number of papers and ensuing discussions to swing the consensus of the field around to demanding more statistical rigor.
It's worth noting that this value is no protection against research fraud. You can fake whatever statistical significance you like. It also doesn't protect against more subtle and potentially unconscious biases, like which experiments to include in a paper and when to stop collecting data for them. As noted at the Retraction Watch blog, results just at or below a p of 0.05 are over-represented compared to other values, and their frequency is increasing. This suggests the pressure for positive results is affecting what people publish.
Bigger problems for p
The new paper, however, argues that there are much bigger problems than biases or fields where 95 percent confidence doesn't work. Instead, it contests that the measure itself is fundamentally misguided.
The author, Valen Johnson, is a statistician at Texas A&M. In his introduction, he notes that the standard statistics used in science involve comparing the experimental results to a null hypothesis, namely random chance. Bayesian statistics isn't used as often, in part because it compares a given hypothesis, random chance, and an alternative hypothesis. Since it's usually hard to come up with alternate hypotheses, it's impractical to use Bayesian statistics.
Johnson's big contribution, published previously, was to develop a way to mathematically link Bayesian statistics to the standard probabilities used by scientists. The math then allows a direct comparison between the probability values. In his comparison, scientific standards seem pretty weak. The 95 percent certainty corresponds to a Bayesian evidence threshold of between three and five, which Johnson notes is typically considered "positive evidence"—but it falls well below the values considered to be "strong evidence." It takes 99 percent certainty to get there.
(Just as with the standard practice, the values that Bayesian fans have set for what constitutes positive and strong evidence are suggested by individual researchers and agreed to by consensus. Nobody's ever found a stone tablet etched with a value for scientific certainty.)
Johnson concludes that if we assume that only one-half of the hypotheses should give us a positive result, then "these results suggest that between 17 percent and 25 percent of marginally significant scientific findings are false." If we assume the proportion of correct hypotheses is larger—which we might, given that scientists are usually pretty clever about the hypotheses they choose to test—then the problem gets even more pronounced. Overall, Johnson's suggestion is simple: raise the statistical rigor all around. Demand that experiments produce a p value of 0.005 or smaller. And be even pickier about results that we consider highly significant. There is a cost to this, in that you need bigger samples to achieve the higher statistical rigor. In his example, you'd have to double the sample size. That's no problem if you're breeding bacteria and fruit flies, but it will add a lot of time and expense if your project involves mice. Science as a whole would move a lot more slowly.
Will this ensure reproducibility?
It will probably make things better, but it's not going to solve the problem. That's because there are really three classes of reproducibility issues. The first one is simply a matter of numbers. The more experiments you do, the more likely you'll fall afoul of the five percent error that we tolerate. And scientists are doing a lot more experiments. The number of journals and papers are proliferating, and a presentation I attended recently indicated that, at least in biology, the number of individual experiments per paper has gone up dramatically. (The figures within papers used to have about eight individual images; now, they often have more than 20.)
Given Johnson's standard, a lot of these results will no longer be significant. So, we'll either have to get comfortable with publishing a lot more suggestive, but negative, results or comfortable with publishing a lot less. It's hard to see anyone—researchers, publishers, funding agencies—who will actually be enthused about this, so it will be a difficult sell.
Perhaps more significantly, there are those other types of reproducibility issues. One of them is what I'd consider the "big picture" issue. Individual experiments may be wrong five percent of the time, but the conclusions of most papers are built from a number of individual experiments that all point roughly in the same direction. A higher statistical rigor would probably help by eliminating some of the spurious little-picture information that leads us astray when we consider the big picture. But we get led astray for all sorts of additional reasons, including our biases, faulty reasoning, and simply not having all the information we need to reach the right conclusion.
The other reproducibility problem is really a simple yes/no issue that has nothing to do with statistics. If you knock out a specific gene in mice, does it have the phenotype that people have reported? If you use a specific antibody in a procedure, do you see the same signal that another lab did? These are the sorts of nuts-and-bolts reproducibility issues that drive researchers crazy, because they can be affected by things like the specific strain of mice you use, where you buy your chemicals, and even the pH of your lab's water supply. No amount of statistical thinking is going to change any of that.
Overall, Johnson has made what could be an important contribution at a time when a lot of people are worried about reproducibility. Unfortunately, it also comes with a message—do more science before you publish—that's going to be a tough sell in the publish-or-perish research culture that currently exists. And even if Johnson were to succeed, the problem of reproducibility won't go away entirely.
PNAS, 2013. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1313476110 (About DOIs)."Technology is changing the definitions of what we do," said Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs.
Cinematography, art direction and visual effects are so blended in new movies that it might be time for a new Oscar category to be introduced, admitted Hawk Koch, past president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and current co-president of Producers Guild of America.
His suggestion? Something along the lines of "visual imaging."
Koch, current Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and past president Sid Ganis discussed this blurring of the lines during an AMPAS presidents session at Visual Effects Society's annual summit Saturday at the W hotel in Hollywood.
A key question was raised: How much does the success of VFX-driven films stem from visual effects, and how much does it depend on cinematography? And what impact might the answer to that question have on Oscar frontrunner Gravity?
STORY: 'Gravity' Crossing $300 Million Worldwide
"The action of Sandra [Bullock's] body is key frame animation [meaning that it was animated by hand], and that qualifies Gravity as an animated film," pointed out moderator Bill Kroyer, director of digital arts at Chapman University.
That led the group to raise other questions, for instance: Did Gravity director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki photograph the film?
Director Alfonso Cuaron has said that roughly 80 percent of Gravity was hand animated in the computer. In fact, when the actors are seen in space, only their faces come from live action photography. The environment, their bodies, even the visors in front of their faces, are CG. The helmer also said that Lubezki was involved in determining the lightning for the entire film, which included going to lead VFX house Framestore to work with the digital artists.
In discussing this topic during the panel, Kroyer provided some history. "The Academy gave Oscars to the cinematography on Avatar and Life of Pi, and there was a lot of discussion into the fact that a lot of that was VFX. … [Life of Pi director of photography] Claudio Miranda was really setting the tone of the movie; on the other hand, there was so much other work happening."
"We are constantly reviewing," Boone Isaacs reported. "Technology is changing the definitions of what we do. Many members were confused between the Oscars for cinematography and visual effects on Life of Pi. We will be discussing the differences that have been made with these advancements."
Acknowledging this "blending" of craft disciplines, Koch got a laugh from the crowd when he joked: "The only thing we still haven't been able to figure out is what producers do."
E-mail: Carolyn.Giardina@THR.com
Twitter: @CGinLAStar Wars fans come up with all sorts of tributes to the cultural phenomenon. Portlander Gene Lu is running circles around them all.
Well, not circles.
Using the Nike+ app, Lu is jogging Star Wars-themed routes around the city. So far he’s traced the contours of the Vader’s mask as well as the outlines of imperial military stables such as Stormtroopers, TIE starfighters, and AT-AT walkers. (It bears mention that Lu is an associate creative director with the ad firm R/GA Portland, which works on the Nike+ app.)
In the past, Lu has did a series he called “Run of Thrones” in which he ran routes inspired by the Game of Thrones TV series in New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Portland. But a couple of weeks before the release of The Force Awakens, he started his “Run Wars” series as an homage to the franchise he’s held dear since childhood.
“It was what I grew up with,” Lu tells CityLab via Twitter. “It was my first movie that I recall watching on VHS as a kid.”Think cigarettes are expensive in the UK? A pack in New Zealand could soon cost £50
Country wants to stub out habit completely by 2025
Smoke-free dreams: New Zealand may look to hike the price of a packet of cigarettes to NZ$100 (£50) in its attempts to eradicate the habit by 2025
If George Osborne's recent 37p hike on cigarettes had you gasping for air, then don't move to New Zealand.
Ministry of Health officials there are looking at the possibility of raising the price of a packet to NZ$100 - around £50 - in their bid to stub out smoking for good by 2025.
|
particles and energy both inbound and outbound.
The ground-based photograph of the rocket was taken by Kolbjørn Blix Dahle of Andøya Rocket Range. The inset photo of the aurora was taken by Fred Signeres of The Kjell Henrickson Observatory. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.“Work in progress?”
UPDATE: We heard back from an Apple publicity representative who told us this ad has not run since 2006 and is no longer featured on the company's website. We explained why the ad was problematic and urged Apple NOT to produce ads with similar themes in the future. They assured us the company is committed to diversity and thanked us for the outreach. GLAAD will continue to encourage companies to produce fair, accurate and inclusive advertisements. ------------------------------------------ After being alerted by constituents about a problematic ad for Apple‘s iMovie, we investigated these complaints and were disappointed to see the usually witty Mac advertisers resort to mocking transgender people in order to sell their product. The ad features model Gisele Bundchen, who is supposed to be the embodiment of a home movie made using iMovie. After the Mac presents Gisele, the PC presents a person wearing a dress identical to Gisele’s, in a wig, with no breasts, a five o’clock shadow and an abundance of exposed chest hair. The ad ends with the line:GLAAD is concerned that Apple would resort to anti-transgender stereotypes as an adverting strategy. We have reached out to the company and asked that they pull the ad. We will keep you updated on our communications with Apple.A man in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) for the past 15 years has shown signs of consciousness after pioneering nerve stimulation treatment.
The 35-year-old was left apparently unaware of the world around him following a car accident in 2001, but is now responding to questions a month after having a stimulator placed on a nerve which connects the heart, lungs and digestive tract to the brain.
The treatment is challenging the commonly accepted view that there is little prospect of a recovery if a patient has been in PVS for more than a year.
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.
As well as responding to simple requests such as turning his head, the patient could track objects with his eyes and stay awake while being read a story.
He even attempted to smile when asked and had tears in his eyes when played music by his favourite French singer Jean-Jaques Goldman, reports the New Scientist.
Angela Sirigu, who led the work at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod in Lyon, told the magazine her team were “very happy” when he started to react.
“This patient is like our baby. We are very attached to him. He’ll always remain in our hearts, because he’s our first patient,” she said.
The results show “it is possible to improve a patient's presence in the world,” she added in a statement.
The vagus nerve is linked to two regions in the brain which play key roles in alertness and consciousness. It also runs down both sides of the neck from the brain stem, across the chest and into the abdomen.
During a 20-minute procedure, a small implant was placed on the nerve in the man’s neck, resulting in what doctors describe as a state of minimal consciousness.
Ms Sirigu and her team now hope to apply the technique more widely to patients with less serious brain injuries, where the gains could be even greater.
The findings offer hope to families of victims in PVS that they could one day re-establish meaningful contact.
Niels Birbaumer, a pioneering brain surgeon at the University of Tübingen, told The Guardian the findings raised new ethical dilemmas.
Shape Created with Sketch. Michael Schumacher: Former Formula One world champion 'in coma' after suffering head injury in skiing accident Show all 2 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Michael Schumacher: Former Formula One world champion 'in coma' after suffering head injury in skiing accident 1/2 schumacherskiing2.jpg EPA/Ercole Colombo 2/2 schumacherskiing1.jpg File: Schumacher was reported to be on holiday at the French resort of Meribel at the time EPA/Gergio Benvenuti 1/2 schumacherskiing2.jpg EPA/Ercole Colombo 2/2 schumacherskiing1.jpg File: Schumacher was reported to be on holiday at the French resort of Meribel at the time EPA/Gergio Benvenuti
“Many of these patients may and will have been neglected, and passive euthanasia may happen often in a vegetative state,” he said. “This paper is a warning to all those believing that this state is hopeless after a year.”
The man is unlikely ever to walk or talk again due to the extensive damage to his brain, which might lead some to question whether patients would want to even be made aware of their condition.
“Personally I think it’s better to be aware, even if it’s a bad state, to be conscious of what’s happening,” Ms Sirigu said. “Then you can have a decision if you want to go on or if you want [euthanasia].”
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowThe Ducky Boys are ready to make a new album!
We're working on 14 songs full of the energy and honesty that you've come to expect from a Ducky Boys' record. We expect the album to be released in February or March 2013, details to follow.
Our plan is to enter Mad Oak Recording Studios in Allston, MA for the weekend of August 18, 2012 and then finish tracking the album in September. Benny Grotto, who worked on both Chasing the Ghost and the Chemicals EP, will be behind the board for both these sessions and the mix.
We then plan to master the album with Peerless Mastering (who mastered Three Chords and the Truth as well as many recordings by bands like The Unseen, Blood for Blood and Dropkick Murphys). Between Mad Oak and Peerless, this thing will sound big and jump out of your speakers.
This new album will be released on our own STATE LINE RECORDS, which we launched last year. We've already got two Ducky Boys releases under our belts this year along with releases from Bryan McPherson, Mark Lind & the Unloved, and Ebenezer Blood. We've got a full EB launch, Sinners & Saints, Blood for Blood, the Eleventh Hour and more in the queue! While we've got confidence in all of these projects to recoup their costs, we don't want the band or the label's output to be dictated by the cost of releasing music. We're doing things differently as a label - running it as a non-profit, paying the artists what they deserve for their work, and trying some different strategies to get REAL QUALITY MUSIC that needs to be heard out there! This Kickstarter campaign is right in line with that philosophy - music by the people, for the people! Contributors to the CD/EP will have their names printed in the liner notes, and we're hoping to generate a collection of songs written specifically for you guys based on your own lives, families and friends through the process of funding and creating this album. With your permission, we'll share those songs with the world for free as well.
We know times are tough! If you can't contribute to this project but we do get to go through with making it, we'll make sure you can still hear the end result for free on our site (as with all State Line releases). If you can contribute anything, even $1 dollar, we'll take that contribution seriously and make sure we deliver the kind of rocknroll record you've come to expect out of us. Thanks, as always, for your support of this band!
- THE DUCKY BOYSFunnels are an extremely flexible analysis tool that can provide clear and actionable insights. You can apply them to any situation with a notion of linear progression and where per step drop-off is important.
Completion Rate
Overall funnel completion rate is one of the big KPIs in funnel analysis. This number tells you what percentage of users or potential customers who enter your funnel also successfully emerge.
Raw Events
To calculate completion rate with raw events, simply divide the number of users who exited the funnel by the number of users who entered the funnel. For a funnel with 9 steps, the query looks like:
select
count(distinct case when event = 'Step 9'
then user_id else null end)/count(distinct user_id)
from event_logs
where event in ('Step 1', 'Step 9')
Aggregated Data
Suppose we’ve already pre-processed the data into a rollup table with daily totals for each step of the funnel.
From here, the query is very simple:
select sum(step_1_count)/sum(step_9_count)
from funnel_rollup
Step-over-Step Drop Rate
While the completion rate is very important, it does not provide a granular view of the funnel. With step-over-step drop rates, you can quickly see at which step you are losing the most users and where your strongest points are.
Raw Events Data
To calculate completion rate from raw events, first calculate each step’s total number of users:
select
event
, count(distinct user_id) as count
from event_logs
group by 1
order by 2 desc
This will give us the total number of users at each step. To get the step-over-step drop rate, we can use our favorite Redshift function type - window functions - to get the previous step’s numbers:
select
event
, count
, 1 - (count/lag(count) over (order by count desc)) as drop_rate
from step_counts
order by 2
The lag function allows you to pull the number of users from the previous step in the funnel. Putting it together, we get:
select
event
, count
, 1 - (count/lag(count) over (order by count desc)) as drop_rate
from (
select
event
, count(distinct user_id) as count
from event_logs
group by 1)
order by 2
By plotting the count on the first axis, and the drop rate on the second, we can see a clear picture of where our funnel leaks the most:
Aggregated Data
If your data is pre-aggregated, it is a little trickier to get these numbers in a useful form.
One option is to add an additional column for each step’s drop rate, however, that would be difficult to visualize, and does not scale well. Instead, we can pivot the data using union functions to get the data in the following format:
To do this, write a query that unions the sum of each step:
select 'Step 1' as event, step_1_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 2' as event, step_2_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 3' as event, step_3_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 4' as event, step_4_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 5' as event, step_5_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 6' as event, step_6_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 7' as event, step_7_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 8' as event, step_8_count as count from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 9' as event, step_9_count as count from funnel_rollup
Now that our data is pivoted, we can use the same query as above to calculate the step-over-step drop rate:
select
event
, count
, 1 - (count/lag(count) over (order by count desc)) as drop_rate
from (
select 'Step 1' as event, step_1_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 2' as event, step_2_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 3' as event, step_3_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 4' as event, step_4_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 5' as event, step_5_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 6' as event, step_6_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 7' as event, step_7_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 8' as event, step_8_count as count
from funnel_rollup
union all
select 'Step 9' as event, step_9_count as count
from funnel_rollup
)
order by 2
Next Steps
Now that you’ve got your basic funnel set up, you can quickly filter and group by different dimensions. See which countries are your best performers, which ad campaigns do well at certain stages, or if Android users have a harder time with certain tutorial steps than iOS users!Contents
Introductory remarks on the importance of orthodoxy -- On the negative spirit -- On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and making the world small -- Mr. Bernard Shaw -- Mr. H.G. Wells and the giants -- Christmas and the aesthetes -- Omar and the sacred vine -- The mildness of the yellow press -- The moods of Mr. George Moore -- On sandals and simplicity -- Science and the savages -- Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson -- Celts and celtophiles -- On certain modern writers and the institution of the family -- On smart novelists and the smart set -- On Mr. McCabe and a divine frivolity -- On the wit of Whistler -- The fallacy of the young nation -- Slum novelists and the slums -- Concluding remarks on the importance of orthodoxy.Early on Friday, CNN promoted its latest breathless report purporting to show collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. CNN has been extremely invested in the narrative of collusion for the last year.
In June, CNN was forced to pull one of its Russia-Trump conspiracy stories that “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards.” The discredited story was based on a single anonymous source who connected Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent ally of President Trump, to a Russian investment fund managed by a Kremlin-controlled bank. Three journalists who worked on the story were fired.
But many of the other stories CNN pushed had serious problems, including one that claimed fired FBI head Jim Comey would testify he never told President Trump three times that he was not under FBI investigation. That’s precisely what he testified the next morning after the story ran. Still other stories are headlined explosively and presented on-air breathlessly while being quite anodyne. Earlier this week, was a piece headlined, “Exclusive: Previously undisclosed emails show follow-up after Trump Tower meeting.” The piece quietly revealed that Trump Jr. didn’t receive the follow-up and the “follow-up” was in no way incriminating or suggesting treasonous collusion to steal an election. Such stories have been par for the course for the Russia-Trump collusion narrative.
Friday morning’s report — which got the usual suspects extremely excited — was one such story. Broadcast widely on air and online, it intimated that Donald Trump, Jr. was given an advance notice about documents hacked or phished from Democrats before they were publicly available. The story didn’t include any evidence that the random dude who emailed Trump, Jr. was correct, that his email had been opened, that he was connected to Russia, or anything else to justify the excitement that those all-in on the collusion narrative had in response to it.
But more than that, it turned out that CNN completely botched the story. Instead of advance notice that this random dude sent in to Trump affiliates, it was late notice that this random dude sent in. The Washington Post obtained the email and reported that CNN had completely messed up the story, claiming a September 4 date to an email that was actually sent on September 14, a day after the documents were publicly available.
Despite the story being completely meaningless as revised, CNN merely posted a correction instead of a retraction. And CNN’s PR team tweeted out:
CNN has not released any other information. Here are some questions for CNN to answer to restore trust between the reporters on the story, editors on the story, the news organization itself, and viewers and readers.
1. Did CNN ever see the email before running the story on it?
2. Does CNN believe it’s ethical to write about a document and not let readers and viewers know up front that reporters and editors haven’t seen the document?
3. If CNN didn’t see the email, who told CNN about it?
4. Why did CNN believe these sources?
5. Were they Democratic Members of Congress on the House Select Committee on Intelligence leaking information from this week’s testimony?
6. Were they staff of these members?
7. Are these sources independent or in the same office or otherwise related to each other?
8. What other stories have these individuals sourced for CNN and what dates were they published?
9. What is being done to check these stories out for inaccuracies?
10. How many of these stories related to the Russia investigation?
11. How many other stories has CNN reported where it never actually saw the documents it reported as fact?
12. Can CNN point to another big story anchored to documents that its journalists haven’t authenticated?
13. Will the reporters on this story continue to cover this beat? If so, why?
14. Which editors worked on and approved this story?
15. How will editorial processes on Russia conspiracy stories change going forward to avoid similar errors?
16. Given that the story is meaningless, as corrected, why hasn’t the story been retracted in its entirety?
17. Will CNN use these sources in the future? If so, why? If not, how can readers be sure they are not used as future sources?
18. Given the seriousness of their error and the damage they caused to the reputation of the news outlet, will CNN out the sources? If not, why not?Herbed Tomato and Caper Pasta Sauce
Ingredients:
2 14.5 ounce cans no salt added diced tomatoes
¼ cup drained capers
1 Tbsp fresh or dried onion (regular or red)
1 tsp roasted garlic (jarred)
1 Tbsp dried or fresh parsley
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried mint leaves
½ tsp red pepper flakes
¼ tsp raw agave nectar (or sugar)
¼ tsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Directions:
Combine everything but the oil in a food processor and pulse a few times until the sauce is mostly smooth, with small bits. Pour into a medium saucepan, stir in the oil and heat till hot.
Makes enough sauce to generously coat 1 lb of pasta.
~Sarah
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Like this: Like Loading...Buy Photo The grounds crew clears the field of snow at Albertson's Stadium in Boise, Idaho, on Monday. (Photo: Matt L. Stephens/The Coloradoan)Buy Photo
BOISE, Idaho – As cold as it was Thursday in Boise, at least five other college football bowl games have been played in colder weather than the 2016 Idaho Potato Bowl, where Idaho beat CSU 61-50.
And only one of those was played in Boise, where the official temperature at kickoff was 22 degrees. The daytime high was 25.
It was just 12 degrees at the start of the 1958 Bluegrass Bowl in Louisville, Kentucky, where Oklahoma State beat Florida State 15-6; and the 1983 Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, where Notre Dame edged Boston College 19-18
It was 14 in New York when Nebraska beat Miami (Florida) 36-34 in the 1962 Gotham Bowl, and only 20 in Dallas for the 1942 Cotton Bowl, where Alabama defeated Texas A&M 36-34.
GAME STORY: CSU has no excuse for Potato Bowl flop
This year’s Potato Bowl marks the 20th anniversary of Boise’s bowl game, and only twice before has the game began with temperatures as cold as this year’s game.
It was 20 degrees at the start of the 2004 Humanitarian Bowl, where Georgia Tech beat Tulsa 52-10; and 22 degrees in the 1999 game, where Boise State beat Louisville 34-31.
The weather clearly affected both teams Thursday, with players slipping and sliding much of the night on the cold blue turf at Boise State’s Albertsons Stadium. There were small ice chunks visible all over the field before kickoff.
“I didn’t think that we handled the elements very well,” Colorado State University coach Mike Bobo said. “… The field was not in great shape, but it’s the same field that they were playing on. I thought it was in their heads a little bit.”
FROM 0 TO 111 IN THREE QUARTERS: The scoreless first quarter was a first in the bowl game’s 20-year history.
And the 111 combined points were the third-most in any college bowl game, ever.
The 84 points the two teams combined to score in the second half were an NCAA record for a bowl game. Idaho scored 41 points in the second half, and CSU scored 43.
STEVENS SETS RECORD: Nick Stevens would have rather had the victory.
But CSU’s junior quarterback set an Idaho Potato Bowl record instead with his 445 passing yards and tied a bowl record with a career-high five touchdown passes. Three of his TD passes came in the fourth quarter, long after the outcome had been determined.
Stevens completed 21 of 36 passes and was intercepted twice.
Bowling Green’s Tyler Sheehan held the previous record for passing yards with 387 in a 2009 loss to Idaho. Fresno State’s Paul Pinegar also threw five touchdown passes in a 2004 game against Virginia that went into overtime. Fresno State won 37-34.
RECEIVERS SHINE: Sophomore Bisi Johnson had a huge game for the Rams with 265 passing yards and two touchdowns on seven catches.
Michael Gallup, a junior-college transfer in his first season at CSU, had his fifth straight 100-yard receiving game with six catches for 108 yards and three touchdowns, matching the bowl record. Gallup also had three touchdown catches in the Rams’ regular-season finale, a 63-31 win at San Diego State.
SLOW START: CSU failed to score on its opening possession for the first time in three games and its seven first-half points were the fewest since its last game on the blue turf in Boise. The Rams trailed Boise State 7-3 at halftime in an Oct. 15 game that CSU lost 28-23.
BIG NUMBERS: Idaho set a Potato Bowl record with its 606 yards of total offense, and CSU posted the second-highest total in the bowl game’s history with 600.
The previous record was 582 by Utah State in 2012, when the Aggies beat Toledo 41-15.
TICKET TALLY: Colorado State University had sold 749 tickets from its allotment of 8,000 for the bowl game as of Thursday afternoon, a school spokesman said. The Rams were given a budget for bowl expenses of $650,400 by the Mountain West, with the expectation that $125,000 of that would come from ticket sales, said Steve Cottingham, the school's executive senior associate athletic director. So, CSU will be reimbursed by the conference, from the pool of money from bowl payouts and the College Football Playoff, for expenses up to $525,400.
Idaho sold between 5,500 and 6,000, a school spokeswoman said at halftime.
Many of the Vandals fans bought tickets directly from the bowl game.
Official attendance was announced as 24,975.
Coldest bowls
Temperature at kickoff
12 degrees – 1958 Bluegrass Bowl, Louisville, Kentucky; Oklahoma State beat Florida State 15-6
12– 1983 Liberty Bowl, Memphis, Tennessee; Notre Dame beat Boston College 19-18
14 – 1962 Gotham Bowl, New York; Nebraska beat Miami (Fla.) 36-34
20 – 1942 Cotton Bowl, Dallas; Alabama beat Texas A&M 29-21
20 – 2004 Humanitarian Bowl, Boise, Idaho; Georgia Tech beat Tulsa 52-10
22 – 1999 Humanitarian Bowl, Boise, Idaho; Boise State beat Louisville 34-31Bitcoin is the digital currency that lives entirely on the Internet.
It’s developed a shady reputation because of its use in the drug trade and because its value can fluctuate wildly, or as it happened in the case a Bitcoin exchange named Mt. Gox – vanish entirely.
“Dow Jones believes that 750,000 of customers’ coins may have been lost,” says CBS Moneywatch’s Jill Schlesinger.
But the concept of a digital currency is so popular that the customers of Mt. Gox this week agreed to drop their bankruptcy suit in exchange for a piece of the action.
They will now be co-owners of a resurrected Bitcoin exchange.
All of which seems to signal that Bitcoin is here to stay. This man wants to take it out of Geekdom and into the mainstream.
“We are the first Bitcoin machine in the country that is state-level licensed as a money transmitter,” says Nick Hughes, the general manager of CoinMe – a Bitcoin ATM.
The first ATM of its kind is in a Seattle bar called Spitfire on 4th Avenue in Belltown, and it will let anyone open an account. All you need is some ID, a smart phone and the palm of your hand.
“You scan your palm four times,” explains Hughes. “Then it actually takes a picture of your face so that the person who is interacting in our system is who they say they are.”
That stops tax evasion and money laundering.
To buy a $400 Bitcoin, you’d open your account and just feed your cash into the machine. And in return for your cash, you would get a unique string of letters and numbers, about 60 characters long, that signifies the right to spend $400 worth of Bitcoin exactly once.
“The thing with Bitcoin is, every single transaction, or every single Bitcoin is a unique address so it can’t be counterfeited.”
And you could store that code in your computer or even write it down on a piece of paper.
“The number itself contains a value,” he explains.
Although it is still like cash, in that if someone else got hold of your string of numbers, either by stealing them or memorizing them, goodbye money.
And the other feature of Bitcoin is that the value of a Bitcoin can fluctuate, so even if it’s not stolen, it could be worth less by the time you spend it. Or more.
And the latest wrinkle is, since there is no central digital currency bank, you can have more than one digital currency.
“Anyone can break off and essentially slightly alter the codebase and create what they’re called, ‘altcoins’ or ‘side coins.’ The second most popular one is called ‘light coin,'” says Hughes. “The value is quite a bit lower than Bitcoin, and it’s quite a bit less popular. I don’t think there is going to be a plethora of other ones.”
It sounds like it’s a jungle out there.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said Bitcoin could be used for purchases at Spitfire. The bar does not except Bitcoin as tender.This article is brought to you by CORT Furniture Rental. We take the hassle out of furnishing your new place so you can do more important things like read this article. Learn more about why furniture rental is the best way to get a great looking apartment.
By nature, dorm rooms are small and the limited living space can make it hard to add your own personalized touches. This is especially true when you’re sharing a room with a roommate. Finding enough space for equal storage and inviting your idea of ambiance can be quite the challenge. But usually, it is the small things you do to make a living space your own that can really make all the difference.
Just how much of a difference can it make? Dormbuys.com did a survey of 1,120 college students and found that 92 percent of current college students ranked “the ability to personalize their dorm room” as an essential aspect to making college living comfortable.
For undergraduate students who already have much of their time filled with studies, sports, extracurricular activities, and friends, a fast-paced design has a special appeal. You don’t have to be a design major or have wealthy parents to make your home away from home a little bit more of what you’re used to.
Generally, dorm rooms are furnished with the basic essentials. Beds, desks, chairs, a dresser or two, window blinds, jacks for phones, ethernet jacks for computers, carpets, a microwave and mini refrigerator or freezer: just the basics. When you enter the room, you’re probably going to feel a little homesick at least the first few weeks away, and long for your old room. If so, you can give your dorm room a simplified version of the customization of your bedroom.
In her book, Speed Decorating, New York City-based Jill Vegas offers some fun tips for anyone who wants to design their space in a fun, yet functional way. She believes the start of a new school year is a great time to develop an “ideal living environment.” She says, “College is about following your dreams, so why not live in a dream room?”
Let’s begin with the bed. In a dorm, the bed is usually the biggest item in the room. Ideally, the bed can serve as a place to sleep, study, relax, eat, or as a sitting place when friends are over. To that end, Vegas advises students find three to seven pillows that will accentuate that space. Pillows specifically made for student rooms come in all shades, styles, and sizes and can be as low as $10 in some places.
Next, focus on the walls. Nothing is quite as uncomfortable as lying in a nice cozy bed staring at plain white walls. Vegas suggests lining your walls with framed photographs of family, friends, special events, anything that you like. Here too, this can be very inexpensive to do. Find several thrift stores, or yard sales to pick your frames from. To get a unified look, Vegas states that spray painting all the frames in your favorite color or something that matches your bed will accomplish that goal. Do beware of student housing rooms in using nails, tacks, and so forth to hang things.
Third, work on that desk. Vegas suggests, “Start with a fabulous desk lamp. You’ll want something stylish and very functional for late-night reading.”
And indeed you do. Whether you like to sit at your desk and study or lie down in the bed, you’ll want a small light on your desk or by your bed to use to do that. A lamp that fits your taste and style but also provides good lighting is very useful when your roommate might not be studying at the same time as you.
Next, accessorize, accessorize, accessorize. Here is where you’re likely to spend most of your money if you’re not careful. There are simply too many accessories out there that we could choose from. Vegas suggests picking one accent color and purchasing all your accessories in that color. (For me that one color would be purple. Can you imagine a purple everything living space?)
Alright, back to topic. Vegas shares her example for picking accessories based on accents: “If you prefer a neutral palette, stick with natural tones like ivory or white.”
Fifth, make sure you have the essentials. The essentials in this context are all the things you love. Since the space you’re in is likely to be small, instead of packing all the souvenirs you’ve collected over the years or all the things your grandparents hope you take with you, Vegas tells students to “carefully edit your essentials, so you don’t clutter your dorm room with stuff.”
Being considerate of a roommate, this is important to remember. A small room can hold quite a bit of stuff for two people if both parties know what is essential and what is negotiable.
Finally, consider furniture. Sure you have the basics, but what about adding additional furniture such as a dresser, sofa, and cushioned chairs? Consider renting these, and then add some things such as bed linens, throw rugs, and mattress foams, which you’re better off getting new or straight from your bedroom closet.
Personalizing your living space can make you feel more comfortable and give you good experience to help personalize an apartment or full-fledged home when you graduate.
Looking for an easy way to furnish your off-campus apartment? Renting furniture from CORT saves you time and money. See how easy it is to get great looking furniture without breaking the bank.Regardless of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi's titles—and to the comical dismay of corporate, establishment Democrats—Bernie Sanders has become the defacto leader of the Democratic Party.
Sunday in Warren, Michigan put an exclamation point on the sentence, as Sanders, alongside Schumer, brought out 8,000 people on a bitterly cold winter day to fight against Obamacare repeal.
Even the establishment media is waking up—granted a year too late.
"That's the future of the Democratic Party," Joe Scarborough, echoing Mika Brzezinski's sentiment, said on Morning Joe Monday. "He sounds just as relevant today as he did a year ago."
So, as the mainstream media opportunistically tries to Feel The Bern after ignoring Sanders when it mattered (both CNN and MSNBC recently held primetime town halls with him), you know who's become less relevant?
Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The one-time progressive rock star—who activists tried to summon to run in 2016 with hopes of bringing down Hillary Clinton—has already made moves that many inside the Beltway believe are a precursor to a run in 2020.
But, much to the shock of genius corporate journalists who continue to live in their alternate, elitist bubble and obsess over Donald Trump's tweets rather than the endless struggles of working people, the progressive movement has soured on one if its past heroes.
A majority of progressive voters and activists I spoke to during my campaign reporting were disgusted with Warren's cowardice during the Democratic Primary, where she dodged on endorsing the most progressive candidate to run since FDR.
The firebrand, anti-Wall Street Senator was wildly popular in her home-state of Massachusetts, but she decided not to endorse Sanders before the Super Tuesday primary. Sanders lost Massachusetts by less than two points, causing progressives to believe the state—and momentum—would have gone to Sanders had Warren endorsed and campaigned with him across the state.
Larger than her Massachusetts mistake, Warren's choice to passionately campaign for Clinton—the antithesis of all she proclaimed to stand against during her meteoric rise isn't a fact progressive Sanders aficionados will simply forgive and forget.
Furthermore, Warren—along with the corporate media—was inexplicably MIA during the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, saying nothing as thousands of unarmed, peaceful Native Americans and environmental activists were illegally arrested and shot at with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, freezing water, and grenades by de facto oil police in North Dakota.
Like her decision to conveniently endorse Clinton when Sanders was mathematically eliminated, Warren finally chose to speak out against DAPL on the same day the Army Corps of Engineers denied a crucial permit for the pipeline's completion.
This kind of calculated, Johnny-Come-Lately progressivism doesn't cut it for the millions of progressives looking to rally behind a leader as the road to 2020 narrows.
So, the time for choosing is upon Warren. She must decide: what do I truly stand for? Right now, there's a large swath of the progressive movement that's no longer sure.
She must choose between being a strong progressive who largely ignores political calculations in favor of fighting for workers and minorities, or continue serving as a one-trick pony that steals the show by yelling at bankers during congressional hearings, but isn't trusted by the movement to do much more.
Warren must decide if she is going to stand out as a progressive leader on issues that go beyond Wall Street and the rigged economy—such as ensuring clean water and safety for the people instead of unfettered profits for the oil companies.
If Warren chooses the progressive path, she'll still need to explain her dubious choices during the 2016 election and beyond.
But if Sanders decides against running in four years, Warren—in a political climate with a jarring scarcity of true progressive leaders—could have a chance to climb back up the progressive ranks and possibly serve as the movement's best chance to finally take the White House.
The clock is ticking.
Commentary by Jordan Chariton, a political reporter for The Young Turks, reporting on the presidential campaign trail. He can be seen on TYT Politics. Before TYT, Jordan was a reporter for TheWrap and TVNewser. Follow him on Twitter @JordanChariton.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
More From CNBCOkay, so what movie will I be reviewing this time?
Oh…oh no.
I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. This blog was supposed to be about things that inspire me, that motivate me to create great art. Instead I keep writing about the worst films out there. I guess it doesn’t matter; I’ve committed to this so let’s do a rundown of this piece of crap.
I first heard about Tiptoes five years ago from one of my favorite Cracked articles. I discovered that this movie was about a happy couple, Steven and Carol. Both are preparing to get married, but Carol doesn’t know Steven’s dirty little secret: his entire family is dwarfs. When she becomes pregnant she has to consider whether or not she has the strength to bring a little person into the world.
Also, Gary Oldman plays a little person, Peter Dinklage is a French Marxist with severe gastrointestinal problems, and David Allen Grier wears an awful wig and appears solely to have sex with Bridget the Midget.
It’s going to be very hard to get you all to believe what happens in this movie.
As you might expect, this film is utterly insane. It takes forever for any plot to appear, the characters are ridiculous, and people’s motivations switch on a dime. I want to stress that like with all my other movie reviews, |
generalize negative data,” says Scangos. When something doesn’t work, he says, “the question to ask is, ‘Why doesn’t it work?’ ”
That was what the Biogen team asked with regard to adu’s competitors. The evidence suggested three different answers, they thought. First, some were testing their drugs on patients who didn’t necessarily have Alzheimer’s disease to begin with. Second, it wasn’t clear that some rival agents were actually hitting their targets—which was to say, the amyloid protein. And third, the companies were testing their drugs too late: The patients were too far gone.
One of the smarter decisions Scangos made when he arrived at Biogen was to hire Ajay Verma. Verma, an energetic neurologist who previously had stints at Novartis and Merck and speaks in sweeping evolutionary terms about brain disease, is described by colleagues as the company’s “Q” — the resourceful inventor in James Bond films. (Officially his title is vice president of experimental medicine.) It was his team’s job to figure out how best to test adu.
His first task was making sure the patients in the trial had Alzheimer’s — something that was surprisingly hard to do. Until very recently it was possible to know for certain that someone had the disease only through an autopsy (the same way it was done in 1906 for Auguste Deter). To diagnose it in living patients, physicians had to watch closely for worsening dementia, relying primarily on the accounts of friends and families or the results of somewhat crude mental tests. Such assessments often swept people with other forms of dementia into the net.
Verma, however, brought an important emerging technology into Biogen’s patient-screening process — imaging equipment that allowed clinicians to pinpoint amyloid (and more recently tau) deposits in the brain and to visualize the disease’s progression. The importance of this was much greater than it sounded. Of the patients who applied to join Biogen’s Phase 1 adu trial, an astounding 40% didn’t have the disease, despite showing signs of early dementia.
It may sound obvious, but an anti-amyloid drug, as a rule, won’t work on patients without amyloid deposits in their brains. That, indeed, was a factor that plagued the trial of yet another failed Lilly drug, solanezumab. Lilly found — after the fact, unfortunately — that in a large Phase 3 trial of “sola,” as many as 25% of participants didn’t have amyloid plaques in the brain.
Jan Lundberg, executive vice president of science and technology at Eli Lilly, right, speaks about Alzheimer's research findings in 2010 with Richard Mohs, research team leader, center, and Eric Siemers, medical director of Lilly's research team. Eli Lilly is committed to one of the riskiest bets in medicine.
Jan Lundberg, executive vice president of science and technology at Eli Lilly, right, speaks about Alzheimer’s research findings in 2010 with Richard Mohs, research team leader, center, and Eric Siemers, medical director of Lilly’s research team. Eli Lilly is committed to one of the riskiest bets in medicine.Photograph by Doug McSchooler—Bloomberg/Getty Images
The second task, of course, was to make sure the drug was hitting the right target. Again, the answer involved the same imaging technique above, which, ironically, relied on a radioactive tracer owned by Lilly.
Biogen’s innovation was to pay for all this crazily expensive imaging in a Phase 1 trial, an early-stage study that is typically used to determine the proper dose of an experimental agent. In its adu trial, 166 patient volunteers underwent a battery of procedures — from multiple MRIs and glucose brain PET scans to lumbar punctures.
But the real game changer was deciding what patient population to go after. Again, the insight derived from, among other things, the failed trials of Lilly — and that was to give the amyloid-clearing drugs to patients in the very earliest stages of disease, before too much damage had been done.
Amyloid, it turns out, begins accumulating in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients some 15 years before they ever show symptoms. To the field as a whole, this discovery was the equivalent of a lightning bolt: Maybe the drugs weren’t working because they were being given too late.
That’s why Biogen’s adu trial generated so much excitement. It showed that patients with mild—and even incipient (or “prodromal”) — Alzheimer’s could benefit from early therapy. Though the trial wasn’t designed to measure it, the drug appeared to slow the decline in Alzheimer’s patients’ recall and mental agility. After a year of treatment, trial volunteers who received the drug performed strikingly better on cognitive tests than the placebo group, though such results should be taken with a dose of caution given that the sample size was very small (and the tests themselves can be squishy). Nevertheless, the fact that this apparent clinical change was accompanied by rock-solid evidence of a biological change—a significant reduction in amyloid plaque — gave the finding some credibility.
That’s certainly how the Biogen team saw it, even if they couldn’t quite believe it themselves. “Candidly, we were surprised,” says Doug Williams, who joined Biogen as head of R&D in 2011. “I kept waiting for something to not fit, but every piece of data hung together — it was dose-response and time dependent, the placebo looked like it should have looked. It worked on all the measures.”
Outside the company, many drug executives also felt a revelatory excitement. Biogen’s early findings, if borne out, offered a rare financial jackpot. If anti-Alzheimer’s drugs were ultimately proven to be effective as preventive meds — and patients took them early and often in the same way that millions take statins to stave off heart disease — the business model could be extraordinarily profitable. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) is now funding a handful of prevention studies to test the theory.
Duke’s Doraiswamy says this has reenergized the field. “You may need to give treatment for four to six years, or preventative treatment for 10 years,” he says. “Clearly it’s an incredibly lucrative opportunity.”
Last December, three months before Biogen’s dramatic presentation in Nice, the company announced it was jumping adu from Phase 1 testing to Phase 3 — an expensive trial with lots of patients. But even if the strong results are replicated (and there are no additional complications), Biogen won’t be able to get a drug on the market until at least 2018, analysts speculate. (Perhaps reflecting that reality, the stock price has pulled back; at presstime in late April it was trading at $423.)
Which means the race between the tortoise and the hare is hardly over. Lilly has already embarked on its third Phase 3 trial with sola — this time only in prescreened patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. The NIA is also evaluating the Lilly drug, which seemed to show a slight cognitive benefit in some patients, in one of its studies. It, too, could emerge in 2018.
Moreover, both companies have plenty of other Alzheimer’s drugs in their pipelines. Says Biogen’s Williams: “We’re quadrupling down.”
Experts say that if they’re approved, there may be room for all of them in the marketplace. Increasing evidence shows that Alzheimer’s is a complex disease that is heavily influenced by the individual biology of each patient. As with cancer, it is likely that treating Alzheimer’s in most patients will require a combination of therapies. In the end, perhaps, the tortoise and the hare may be celebrating together at the finish line.
This story is from the May 1, 2015 issue of Fortune magazine.“Talk has already begun about a possible fourth Rush Hour movie, further proving that their must not be a God, or at least one who cares about good movies.” This is what I wrote on the site exactly seven years ago as New Line Cinema Co-Chairman and Co-Ceo told trade reports that he’d “love” to do another “Rush Hour”. Well its been seven years and it hasn’t happened yet, which is good news. But it looks like the studio wants to make Rush Hour 4. Jackie Chan says the studio wants to make another sequel but they don’t even have a script, and until they do — he’s not interested.
While in London England promoting his latest directorial effort, Chinese Zodiac, Jackie Chan was asked by British television host Jonathan Ross if Rush Hour 4 and/or a Drunken Master 3 will ever happen. Chan admitted that they want him to do a Rush Hour 4 but they don’t have a script. IGN has the quotes:
“Lately they want to make Rush Hour 4. I said ‘No, show me the script first. I don’t need another Rush Hour 4. You need Rush Hour 4. Show me the script.’ I don’t want to do a rubbish script just because they want to make the movie.”
Great to hear Chan isn’t willing to sell out without having a creative reason to do another film.
The History of Rush Hour 4
Two years ago Chris Tucker talked about wanting to do another Rush Hour sequel when promoting Silver Linings Playbook, Chris Tucker‘s first movie role in five years, and his first non-Rush Hour film in fifteen.
“Rush Hour 4, we’re looking into it, me and Jackie [Chan],” Tucker said. “We’re trying to get it going, so we’re developing something, so hopefully we’ll get something in.”
At the time, Jackie Chan expressed his desire to reteam with Chris Tucker for a project titled Skip Tracer which could’ve easily be reworked into Rush Hour 4.
The script is currently viewed by Chris Tucker. Personally, I feel that if he were to pick it up, it would be better if we turned it into ‘Rush Hour 4,’ but I do think that three movies for the franchise is a perfect ending. It would be better to start a new buddy movie with someone new.
That film, now titled Skiptrace, never became a Rush Hour sequel, and is currently aiming for a 2016 release date. Tucker is not in the movie, instead Seann William Scott co-stars as an American gambler who is forced to team up with a Hong Kong detective (Chan) to battle against a notorious Chinese criminal.
It took three years for Rush Hour 2, and six years for Rush Hour 3 – so we should expect 12 years for a Rush Hour 4 to hit the big screens — 2019 by my unscientific estimates.
Drunken Master 3
As for the prospect of Drunken Master 3, Chan told Jonathan Ross:"Game of Thrones" has an average audience of 18.4 million, outranking "The Sopranos." Helen Sloan / HBO With two episodes remaining in the fourth season of Game of Thrones, the show has now become the most popular series in HBO's history.
Episodes of the show, which debut Sunday nights (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), have an average gross audience of 18.4 million viewers, surpassing the previous record set by the 2002 season of The Sopranos, which had an average gross audience of 18.2 million viewers per episode. Season 3 of Game of Thrones had an average gross audience of 14.4 million viewers per episode.
The next episode of Game of Thrones debuts Sunday, June 8, followed by the season finale Sunday, June 15.
Based on the bestselling fantasy book series by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones is an epic story of treachery and nobility set on the continent of Westeros, where summers and winters can last years, and only the lust for power is eternal. The Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning series was recently renewed for a fifth and sixth season.
Season 4 credits: The executive producers of Game of Thrones are David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Carolyn Strauss, Frank Doelger and Bernadette Caulfield; co-executive producers, Guymon Casady, Vince Gerardis and George R.R. Martin; producers, Chris Newman and Greg Spence.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, the man to beat in this week’s first televised Republican presidential debate, said on Sunday he does not plan to attack his rivals and downplayed expectations for his performance, saying “I’m not a debater.”
US Presidential Candidate Donald Trump views the course during a visit to his Scottish golf course Turnberry. RICOH Women's British Open 2015 - Trump Turnberry Resort, Scotland - 30/7/15. Action Images via Reuters / Russell Cheyne Livepic
The combative real estate mogul will take center stage at Thursday’s debate among the 10 top-polling candidates as he leads the 17 Republicans competing to represent their party in the November 2016 election.
Trump has raised eyebrows and ire with attacks on his fellow candidates, accusing former Texas Governor Rick Perry of wearing glasses to look smarter and belittling the war hero status of U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s 2008 presidential candidate and a prisoner during the Vietnam War.
On Sunday, the candidate who called U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham an idiot and gave out his cell phone number during a campaign rally, said he was not planning to go on the offensive.
“I don’t think I’m going to be throwing punches. I’m not looking to attack them,” he said on the ABC television program “This Week.”
Trump said he had been viciously attacked by some of his rivals and that every attack he made was a “counter-punch.”
“I think I’m a nice person, I really do,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Frankly I’d like to discuss the issues. I am not looking to take anybody out or be nasty to anybody.”
Recent polls show Trump sustaining his lead among Republicans, including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, even after an outcry from within his party over the McCain comments.
The prime-time debate will feature the top 10 candidates in national polls. An earlier debate the same day will include the seven other candidates.
The set-up has drawn criticism, especially from candidates lagging in polls. Among them is former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, the conservative who eked out a come-from-behind victory in the Iowa caucuses in the 2012 Republican contest. He criticized the Republican National Committee for agreeing to the terms of the debate.
“I guarantee you someone in that first debate is someone who’s going to get a lot of delegates come next year and it’ll be another instance when the RNC and the national media missed it,” Santorum, of Pennsylvania, told ABC.
While no stranger to the national spotlight, Trump has never been in a political debate. He lowered expectations for his own performance while attacking his rivals for being better at debating than at getting things done.
“I’m not a debater,” he said on ABC. “These politicians. I always say they’re all talk, no action. They debate all the time... I don’t debate. I build.”
Advisers for some candidates have said they will focus on the issues and try not to let Trump steal the show. Several said they would try to make a good impression on voters, rather than tangle with Trump.
“I have enough to do to get my message out to people,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said on “Fox News Sunday.”
He was asked about a tweet last week by political staffer John Weaver apparently aimed at Trump: “Imagine a NASCAR driver mentally preparing for a race knowing one of the drivers will be drunk. That’s what prepping for this debate is like.”
“He won’t be sending any more tweets like that,” Kasich said. “That’s not the way we operate.”
Trump said he was preparing for the debate but did not specify how.
“I don’t think you can artificially prepare for something like this,” he said on NBC. “I want to be me. I have to be me.”Shenmue III Interview: Yu Suzuki Talks Gameplay, Tech, Romance, PS4, PC, Frame Rate and Much More
Giuseppe Nelva October 20, 2015 2:14:30 PM EST
We smiled, laughed and even cried when legendary Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki announced Shenmue III on Sony Computer Entertainment’s stage at E3, and during my latest trip to Tokyo, I had a chance to talk with the man himself about the game, and on what we can expect in the future.
Suzuki-san talked about many interesting factors like gameplay, what kind of romance we’ll find in the game, the relationship with Sega, the platforms, technical elements like the use of Unreal Engine 4 and the tentative frame rate on PS4, and he even gave some uplifting details on how a talented fan like Nocon Kid joined the team behind the title.
Without further ado, you can check out what he told me just below.
Giuseppe: First of all, thank you for your time. We are very honored to be able to ask you some questions in person. How is development going?
Yu Suzuki: It’s going very well. We’re currently testing the Unreal Engine 4. We’re also undergoing testing for maps of the three areas that will make up Shenmue III.
G: How is the process of improving the character visuals since the early prototypes proceeding?
YS: They are being improved. Also, the person who originally created Shenhua, is collaborating with us on her character. Thanks to him, Shenhua is looking a lot cuter.
G: Will there be many new main characters introduced in Shenmue III that never appeared in previous Shenmue games?
YS: Yes, of course there will be.
G: Do you have any hints about those characters?
YS: There will be many new characters. There are the four main bosses. There will be Lan Di from the previous games, and two more fighters. One of those is an extremely beautiful and sexy, but cruel woman. I briefly introduced her image in Shenmue II, but in Shenmue III she will have a proper and extensive role. The last one, on the other hand, is strategist using more cunning than head-on fighting.
G: Personally, I feel that modern games lack a bit in romance, which is baffling considering how deeply rooted it is in other media like movies and anime. How important is romance going to be in Shenmue III?
YS: Yes, it will be an important topic in Shenmue III, and I will try to portray the differences in how men and women think in the game.
G: How extensive is the weather system going to be? Can we expect the whole range between sun and snow? Will it be dynamic?
YS: Yes, it will be dynamic. I would like to improve the quality compared to Shenmue II. Also the mornings and evenings, the lighting of sunsets and sunrises will be really beautiful.
G: The game is partly set in the depths of a mountain region. Will we be able to explore every part of the map and actually climb those mountains, or there will be areas we won’t be able to reach?
YS: There will be areas of the map where you cannot go like in Shenmue II, you won’t be able to explore everything.
G: Could you explain what the “AI Battling” part of the seven million stretch goal entails?
YS: It’s a system that will make the character respond intelligently to the commands given by the player during battle. With simple commands you’ll be able to execute complex techniques.
At this point Suzuki-san showcased how it’ll work visually, showing that if the player and the enemy are not correctly aligned, pressing the punch button without the system would cause the player to hit the air, punching straight in front of him. With this intelligent system, the character will perform steps to dynamically align with the enemy, coming at them with a hook motion.
Another example shown by Suzuki-san involved a situation with a wall close to the character and the enemy, with the character jumping on the wall and then punching the enemy in mid-air in a movie-like attack. You can enjoy his demonstration in the video below.
G: Besides the AI Battling, What are the biggest changes to your new vision for combat compared to the previous games of the series?
YS: Controls will be simpler than in the past, and combat will be more cinematic. It will look more like a movie.
G: Lately, you mentioned that Chai is going to return in Shenmue III. That surprised many within the community. Can you share more details on how is that going to happen?
YS: That’s a secret for now (laughs).
G: 2017 is still quite far. Are there any plans to tide fans over with the release of Shenmue-related content? For instance, some developers release short stories…
YS: There are no plans for short stories for now, but we will release new information to our backers once a month.
G: Have you ever thought of an anime to recap the story of the first two games?
YS: I have, but the rights for Shenmue and Shenmue II belong to Sega, so it isn’t just my decision.
G: Having worked in the voice acting field in the past, and having seen work on sequels or remakes of old anime series, I’m quite interested in the issue of older voice actors returning to new productions after their voice has changed, and sounds considerably older than the characters they need to portray. Would you prioritize getting the original voice actors back for each character, or do you prefer to employ younger actors that might sound more fitting to the part?
YS: For women, there’s no problem, because their voices do not change much. For men it’s different, because their voices do change, and it’s not just that. It’s been fifteen years since I created Shenmue and Shenmue II, so many voice actors actually retired.
Some voice actors have been requested by the fans, so I’m trying to bring them back, at least those whose voice did not change much.
G: Is Sega involved in any way in the project, or they just gave you the rights to create the game without being involved at all?
YS: It’s difficult to explain. I am the one who created Shenmue, so Sega allows me to take decisions for the game. They trust me because I know more about the workings of the game more than anyone else.
G: Was it difficult to convince Sega to let you create Shenmue III?
YS: There were no problems. Sega is very helpful and collaborative with me. They hope the best for Shenmue III. I actually still work for Sega as an adviser, so we have a very good relationship.
G: Is the game being developed first on PC or on PS4?
YS: It’s not so simple. The prototypes are being made on PC, but then production shifts to PS4, and then to PC again. It’s like PC, PS4, PC. It really depends on which phase of development we are in.
G: What frame rate are you aiming for on PS4?
YS: For the moment, I’m thinking about 30 frames per second. 60 might be too difficult, but I’m not sure yet.
G: What dictated the choice of Unreal Engine 4 for the game?
YS: It was the portrayal of colors, the shaders and the rendering engine. They’re close to the image I have for the world of Shenmue III. Unreal Engine 4 allows me to portray what I think the humidity and the smell of the world should be. If you see a scene in the desert, you will feel the dry air of the desert. I feel that I can bring those abstract qualities of climate and atmosphere to life using Unreal Engine 4.
G: Xbox executives talked about Shenmue quite a bit in the past over social media, and that’s why I was quite surprised to see the deal with Sony. I honestly expected to see you appear on Microsoft’s stage at E3. Was there any contact with Microsoft in the past year about making the game for their console?
YS: I’ll let you use your imagination on this one (laughs).
G: Do you play any games nowadays?
YS: I don’t really play other games, because if you play games it’s too easy to be influenced by them, and even if it is unintentional, one ends up losing their originality. On the other hand, I’m watching movies.
G: Are there any movies that inspired you?
YS: For instance a Chinese movie named like Reign of Assassins [by Chao-Bin Su]. I really liked the fight scenes in that one. But there are many. There’s also Interstellar, and quite a few old movies like Casablanca and Roman Holiday.
Since you asked about romance, for the game I’m drawing inspiration more from old movies than from new ones, like Casablanca and Roman Holiday, and their idea of pure and platonic love. This is what I want to portray.
G: That’s why you’re going to implement phone calls between Ryo and Nozomi?
YS: Yes, and Americans look at Ryo and wonder why he’s not doing anything (laughs). I’m also watching many action movies like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies. I really love Bruce Lee.
G: I heard that you hired Kid Nocon that created a Shenmue HD Remaster fan project to work on Shenmue III, how did that happen?
YS: Kid Nocon is a big fan of Shenmue. He recreated the image of Shenmue in Unreal Engine 3. Because of that I asked him to work on Shenmue III, since his work on CG was really high quality. Many fans already knew about him.
I met him during a lecture I had in Korea last year. I knew that he was Korean, and I wanted to meet him. He came to my lecture. During the autograph session afterwards, he introduced himself and I invited him to have a coffee together.
Nocon Kid told me he wanted to help with development and that he’d come to Japan as soon as I called him. After the successful Kickstarter I called him, and he came from Korea to come join us.
G: That’s a great story. So now he moved to Japan?
YS: Yes, now he lives here.
G: To conclude, would you like to give a message to the fans that followed you faithfully for all these years, and that can’t wait to play Shenmue III?
YS: We are really doing our best to create a great game, so hope you will continue to show your support for us.
Shenmue III‘s crowdfunding is still ongoing, and at the moment of this writing it’s sitting on $6,402,184, which is quite close to the stretch goal that will allow Suzuki-san and his team to implement the AI Battling system showcased in this interview. If you want to help with funding, you can do so here, and find the game’s official website here.
Full Disclosure: the editor in charge of this article is among the 70,188 gamers who backed Shenmue III, and he’s damn proud of it.
[Interpretation by: Valeria Costarella]Please enable Javascript to watch this video
A 22-year-old Virginia Beach woman was arrested on Sunday after police say she fraudulently took a lost dog, listing it on Craigslist and getting caught attempting to sell it, WTKR reports.
The owner of the 3-year-old Siberian Husky named Nikita says she escaped from their yard near Taylor Road in Chesapeake on Saturday morning around 10:00 a.m.
But, just when Nikita's owner started losing hope, he says he found another lead in the search for his beloved pet.
"It blew me away. Until now, I would have never thought anyone would do that," Josh King said.
Jessica Colleran, 22, of Virginia Beach, is accused of picking up Nikita later that day after she was listed on a "found dog" Craigslist ad. Colleran told the finder of the dog that she was the owner, according to Chesapeake Police.
King says his good friend Eric Simmons spotted that ad on Craigslist. It was posted by a man who says he found the dog off of Taylor Road.
"He said a woman came and claimed her so he gave us all of her information," King explained.
But, he says when he later found Collaren's ad on Craiglist listing a Siberian Husky for sale, he put two and two together.
He took action and called Colleran pretending to be an interested buyer. He says he agreed to meet her on Sunday in a park in the Cradock area of Portsmouth.
What Colleran didn't know is that Portsmouth Police and Chesapeake Animal Control would also be there.
"She's like no, no the person gave me the dog and she just kept saying that over and over," King described.
King says animal control officers were able to scan Nikita for her microchip and verify she belonged to him.
"She's had a lot of issues like medically. That's what was freaking me out the most," King said.
Colleran was taken into custody and charged with obtaining property under false pretenses. She is currently being held in the Chesapeake Correctional Center.By: Eyewitness News
May 30, 2014
Eyewitness News has obtained 911 calls made during the home invasion that occurred on May 15, 2014 on South Adams Street.
View the video above to hear the call.
Updated By: Andy Alcock
May 16, 2014
One man ducked into the bathroom and another hid under the bed... as robbers kicked down the door.
Two men suspected in that deadly home invasion have now been identified.
Shantel Williams is a FAMU student. She's also the mother of 3-year-old Chasity.
On Thursday afternoon, Shantel and her daughter witnessed the aftermath of a crime scene.
"Me and her when we saw the body come down, it was very devastating and she recognizes death now and I wasn't ready for that," said Williams.
According to police Jonathan Charles and Tyrone Ward broke into this 3rd floor apartment in the 3000 South Adams Street complex.
Records show one of the three people who lived there, recent FAMU nursing graduate William Wamble shot and killed Ward and shot Charles in the shoulder.
Another roommate, FAMU pre-med student Derek Johnson hid under his bed during the shooting.
But Johnson did get a cell phone picture of Charles leaving in a Chevy Blazer.
It helped police capture Charles later Thursday evening.
"People send their kids to college to go to college, not to get killed or get involved in something like this," said Kyle Johnson, concerned neighbor.
"My only thing is was it just a random one time thing," said Rashad Douglas, concerned neighbor.
Police believe Ward and Charles were targeting the residents of the apartment.
They came with a bag containing duct tape, rope and a gun police believe the two men planned to use to contain the residents while they robbed the apartment.
According to police, a third roommate, police only identify as L-A had material in his bedroom consistent with the sale of narcotics.
"It actually bothers me a lot. I plan on moving," said Williams.
Derek Johnson, one of the roommates where the shootings took place, tells us he plans to suspend his studies for the rest of the semester and move back to Miami.
Johnson also said he had no idea Wamble had firearms and said his other roommate L-A just moved in.
Surviving robbery suspect Jonathan Charles is also charged with Ward's murder because Ward was killed while Charles was accused of committing a felony.
News Release: Tallahassee Police Department
May 16, 2014 - 1pm
On 5/15/14, at approximately 12:03pm, the Tallahassee Police Department responded to 3000 South Adams Street in reference to a report of a home invasion robbery and shooting. Officers arrived and located Tyrone Ward with a suspected gunshot wound. He was transported to a local hospital, but later died. A second suspect believed to be involved and injured during the shooting, left the scene in a red Chevy Blazer which was later recovered by TPD Officers on the north side of town. That suspect was later apprehended, without incident, by members of the TPD tactical team. He was transported to a local hospital for injuries he received during the reported home invasion robbery, and later taken to the Leon County jail and charged as below
Investigators from the TPD Violent Crimes Unit responded to the scene and began the investigation. Initial information revealed that the residents were at home, when the two suspects broke in the apartment while armed. The resident retrieved a firearm and discharged it at the suspects, hitting both of them.
There are no expected charges for the victims at this time.
Deceased subject:
Tyrone M. Ward b/m 12/13/86
Arrestee:
Jonathan E. Charles b/m 1/2/88
See attached Probable Cause for Jonathan Charles
By: James Buechele
May 15, 2014 - 11pm
One suspect is dead, and another captured in an attempted home invasion in Tallahassee. It all started at the Adams Street Condominiums.
Police say an apartment on Woodward Avenue is where they arrested the second suspect from Thursday morning's home invasion.
"I think once we made contact and we were able to speak to him through the PA, and he knew that we were out here, he did surrender quite quickly," said Office Scott Beck of the Tallahassee Police Department.
That attempted robbery took place at the Adams Street Condominiums. Two suspects broke into an apartment. The resident inside used some type of high-power rifle, shooting one of the suspects in the face and leaving the other wounded. The man shot in the head eventually died.
It was quite the scene for Gary Washington who lives in a nearby complex.
"When I came out I had seen everything roped off like it is right now. And I had talked to her like what's going on, she was like I don't know I think I heard shots," said Washington. "I said me too. I ain't trying to move too much. I don't know where that thing goes."
After interviews, detectives determined the second suspect was hiding inside the Woodward Avenue apartment. With many people outside, officers have to be careful with how they handled the situation.
"It's a very coordinated effort and these officers that are on tactical team they have specialized training and they have specialized weapons that not your average patrol officer has," Beck said.
The victim who fired his gun at the two suspects has not been charged with anything. We're still waiting on identities of both the suspects involved.
News Release: TPD
Updated: May 15, 2014, 7:45pm
The second suspect was taken into custody by members of the TPD tactical team at 916 N. Woodward. He had been injured from the earlier home invasion robbery and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. The investigation will continue and charges are expected. TPD is not seeking any additional suspects at this time. We appreciate the assistance from the public.
Updated By: James Buechele
May 15, 2014
An afternoon home invasion leads to a suspect being shot and killed.
This all happened at the Adams Place Condominiums off South Adams Street in Tallahassee.
Police say two men stormed one of the apartments, and that's when the situation turned deadly.
Police are calling this a home invasion robbery.
Two men entered, and the victim in the case fired gunshots.
Police aren't saying what weapon was used.
One man was shot in the head and later died while the other man left the scene in a red Chevy Blazer or SUV.
This afternoon, police were able to find that vehicle, but not the man that was involved with the crime.
Police are still interviewing witnesses.
"Right now that is standard procedure for the police officers to canvass the area and talk to as many residents as possible anyone who may have witnessed something or maybe had gotten a picture and possibly additional information for us," said Scott Beck, TPD.
Police believe the driver of the Chevy Blazer could be shot as well, and he is still at large.
Anyone with information is asked to call Tallahassee Police Department at 606-5800 or 911 for an emergency. If you wish to remain anonymous, please call Crime Stoppers at 574-TIPS. You could be eligible for a cash reward up to $1000.00.
News Release: Tallahassee Police Department
May 15, 2014 - 3:30pm
The vehicle has been located. The injured suspect has not been located. If you have information about this crime. Please contact TPD at 606-5800 or 911 for an emergency. If you wish to remain anonymous, please call Crime Stoppers at 574-TIPS. You could be eligible for a cash reward up to $1000.00.
News Release: Tallahassee Police Department
May 15, 2014 - 1:45pm
The Tallahassee Police Department is searching for a vehicle in connection with the attempted break-in and shooting on South Adams Street. The vehicle appears to be a red Chevy Trailblazer.
TPD says the vehicle may be driven by another potential suspect who may have been injured in the shooting.
BREAKING: TPD searching for this vehicle in connection with S Adams Street attempted break-in/shooting. #Tallahassee pic.twitter.com/tZu2bXZpQt — WCTV Eyewitness News (@WCTV) May 15, 2014
By: Andy Alcock
May 15, 2014 - 1:10pm
Tallahassee, FL - A manager for Student Housing Solutions tells Eyewitness News that there was an attempted break-in of an apartment at the Pointe At Adams Place apartment complex.
The manager says a resident inside the apartment shot the person attempting to break-in. The person was shot in the face and has died.
TPD is currently questioning one of the residents of the apartment.
By: Eyewitness News
May 15, 2014 - 12:30pm
Tallahassee, FL - The Tallahassee Police Department is responding to a crime scene in the 3000 block of South Adams Street.
Eyewitness News has a crew at the scene. We'll have more information as it becomes available.As Google retools its Glass experiment, researchers at Stanford are using the device to help autistic children recognize and classify emotions.
In a small office buried inside an administrative building at Stanford, Catalin Voss and Nick Haber are pairing face-tracking technology with machine learning to build at-home treatments for autism. The Autism Glass Project, a part of the Wall Lab in the Stanford School of Medicine, launches the second phase of its study Monday morning.
The software uses machine learning for feature extraction, to detect what Voss calls ‘action units’ from faces.
The project’s second phase is a 100-child study to investigate the system’s viability as an at-home autism treatment. The Autism Glass Project’s software classifies emotions in faces that the device is pointed at, and instantly gives users a read on the face’s expression.
Using images to translate emotions for children is only the first hurdle to cross, though. The bigger issue the team |
the issue during an event in Laos this week by a Malayasian student who asked, "What can you do to ensure to protect indigenous land and make sure environmental justice prevails" in the case of the Standing Rock Sioux?
The president said he could not give any details "on this particular case, but what I can tell you is that we have restored more rights among native Americans to their ancestral lands, sacred sites, water, hunting grounds, we have done a lot more work on that in the last eight years than had in the previous 20 or 30 years, and it is something that I hope will continue as we go forward."
When asked about that response, Oliver Semans of the Native Organizers Alliance told Campaign for America's Future, "I am hoping that what he meant by that is that all of the work I've done for the past eight years will mean nothing if they let this pipeline go through."
And much like the pivotal—and ultimately victorious—campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline, as columnist Isaiah Poole wrote Friday, the confrontation over the pipeline "challenges" Obama, Clinton, and Congress, "to be clear whose side they are on—Native and non-Native Americans seeking to protect vital waterways and land from the risks of oil spills (and to stop global warming by leaving oil in the ground and using renewables instead) or the fossil fuel industry and its pursuit of profits at the expense of people and the planet."
On Friday, tribal women with the Brave Heart Society, White Buffalo Calf Woman Society, and Stone Boy Society issued an open letter to Obama calling on him to stop the pipeline and its related violence, in this particular case with the recent dog attack and desecration of burial sites, as well as the threats to women through the so-called "man camps" that come with pipeline construction.
Nearly 800,000 people have signed one of the multiple petitions circulating calling for the pipeline permit to be revoked, citing the threats to both clean water as well as tribal sovereignty. Solidarity events have been held in cities across the country with a day of national day of action planned for September 13. Meanwhile, numerous high profile activists, politicians, and celebrities—including Bernie Sanders, Susan Sarandon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill McKibben, and Shailene Woodley—have also joined the opposition.
On the ground, representatives from more than 185 Native American tribes from across the nation have joined the encampment in North Dakota, making it the biggest tribal gathering in modern history.
Clyde Bellecourt, one of the founders of the radical activist American Indian Movement, recently told BBC, "I am 80 years old...I've been jailed, I've been shot. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. This is what I fought for."
"This is the biggest gathering of its kind in history," added Keith Lussier. "We will stand our ground if we have to."Chapter one introduced us to our hero, Noah Gardner. Chapter gave him a sidekick, Molly Ross. With chapter three comes our story's villain.
Arthur Isaiah Gardner: World's greatest PR man, head of Doyle & Merchant (the world's greatest PR firm, duh), Noah's father, atheist, mastermind behind the new order of things: The Great and Powerful Oz.
Like Noah, Arthur isn't described physically. We are again to presume he's white, since that's assuredly the default for Beck. He's seventy-four and silvery voiced and has a "taste for blood." Figuratively speaking, of course. Or not. Thanks to Joe Mande, Arthur Gardner is cemented in my mind as being portrayed by Jon Voight. (See image below.) So every time he speaks, and he speaks a lot, it's like watching Anaconda, or National Treasure 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold, but not as cleverly written.
I haven't quite got my head wrapped around Arthur Gardner. He spends the bulk of chapter three pontificating and speechifying. Part of what he espouses is Beck brand neocon nonsense: hatred of: Social Security, government debt, corporate bailouts. But Gardner's solution is to replace the U.S. government with his own system: "a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm." And while Beck hates Social Security, government debt, corporate bailouts, his solution is "Restoring Honor."
Chapter three opens with Arthur Gardner reading a classified memo titled "Constitutionalists, Extremism, the Militia Movement, and the Growing Threat of Domestic Terrorism." The memo lists groups of fringe elements that the government needs to keep an eye on. Mostly Beck's target audience: "Militant anti-abortion or 'pro-life' organizers, anti-immigration, border defenders, 'Tea Parties', third-party political campaigns, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, tax resisters, 'End the Fed' proponents, gun rights activists." Then some more... frightening... elements are thrown in. "Christian Identity, White Nationalists, American Nazi Party, Holocaust denier, hate radio/TV/Web/print."
It's almost clever. See what's he's done here? He's lumped in his own audience with the more dangerous elements on the right and tied it all in with "hate radio." It is designed to appeal to Beck's audience's sense of persecution. The government is out to get them, as they see it, and this plays right into their paranoia: Those in charge hate the right, from the "pro-lifer" to the Nazi, they're all the same. That's probably the most insidious part. It's that sameness in the minds of the cons that normalizes and mainstreams those dangerous elements. If the government hates them all the same, then maybe the American Nazi Party is no more dangerous than the average "pro-lifer."
There follows a bit on the "detention / rendition / interrogation / prosecution" of these elements:
With U.S. citizens suddenly in the news in the place of al-Qaeda terrorists, some level of psychological resistance must be anticipated and then defused when it arises. It is the opinion of the committee that such a reflexive populist reaction would prove to be a major obstacle to progress. In fact, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event (on the order of a Pearl Harbor / 9/11 attack), there is a potential that the government's reasonable actions in this critical area may be met with significant public outrage and even active sympathy and misguided support for these treasonous/seditious elements and their hate-based objectives.
Gardner throws the report aside and addresses his newest client. A government stooge named Purcell, who's hired Doyle & Merchant to fix the PR nightmare that is the leaked memo, due to hit the front page of tomorrow's Washington Post.
Much to Purcell's surprise, Noah's already got the memo blamed on an "overzealous local bureaucracy." Like Molly said, PR people just lie.
All of this leads to ten-odd pages of Gardner addressing the guests in his conference room. It's far too long, but kind of fun to imagine Jon Voight delivering it on-screen. I mean, that beats just reading it straight. (How long until ABC puts The Overton Window miniseries into production, you think?) Gardner tells how the 2004 tsunami ruined his Sri Lankan vacation, all if which he use as analogy for the destruction of the U.S. He also tells of how he was the guy who invented bottled water. His greatest PR scheme, conning folks into buying water in plastic bottles instead of drinking it relatively free of charge from the tap. All the while he rails on about the ills of the U.S. government's overspending. Highlights below:
Bear Stearns, a cornerstone firm of Wall Street founded when my father was a young man, a company whose stock had quite recently been selling at a hundred and sixty dollars a share, was bailed out by the Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan at two dollars per share. That was the beginning, my friends.
We are in the midst of what will become the most devastating financial calamity in the history of Western civilization, and just this week—please do correct me if my figures are wrong—the Congress and the administration have committed to funnel almost eight trillion dollars to the very institutions that engineered the crisis.
Over the last century you've saddled your hapless citizens with a hundred thousand billion dollars in unsecured debt, money they'll be paying back for fifty generations if there are still any jobs to be had by then. Meanwhile you're up to your necks in misguided, escalating wars on two unforgiving fronts with no sign of the end. That's trillions more in unpayable IOUs.
For heaven's sake, you nationalized General Motors just to get your union friends off the hook. As you know, those union pensions you just took over are severely underfunded, adding another seventeen billion dollars to your tab. Seventeen billion, I might add, that you don't have.
Just to stay afloat the government is borrowing five billion dollars every day at ever-rising interest rates from our fair-weather friends in Asia. Sooner or later the truth will be undeniable, that these massive debts can never be repaid, and there'll be a panic, a worldwide run against the dollar, and through your actions you've ensured that the results will be fatal and irreversible.
And all this will lead to the collapse of the U.S.
But that's okay. Gardner has a plan. He also has a Powerpoint presentation. And some hand-outs. (Which I guess is what Churchill got his hands on in the prologue.)
"Because we must, we will finally complete what they envisioned: a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm. Within this framework the nation will reemerge from the rubble, reborn to finally take its rightful, humble place within the world community. And you," he said, looking around the table, "will all be there to lead it."
A hand went up on the far side, a question from the senior member of the party, who'd so far only listened in silence.
"Mr. Gardner," the man said. "What about the public?"
"What about them? The public has lost their courage to believe. They've given up their ability to think. They can no longer even form opinions, they absorb their opinions, sitting slack-jawed in front of their televisions. Their thoughts are manufactured by people like me. What about the public? There's a double-edged sword by which the public can be sold anything, from a three-dollar bottle of tap water to a full-scale war."
And not only does Gardner have a plan, it's gonna be easy to implement:
"The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow. There'll be no revolution, only a brief, if somewhat shocking, leap forward in social evolution. We'll restore the natural order of things, and then there will be only peace and acceptance among the masses." He smiled. "Before we're done they'll be lining up to gladly pay a tax on the very air that they breathe."
Kind of scary, huh? No, not Gardner's plan, but Beck's audience, who believe this. This reads less like a cautionary tale, and more like a call to arms. "The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow." I fear, the only solution, in the eyes of Beck, is a preemptive strike.
[Note: I'll be in Baltimore all next week, so no Overton updates until I get back, mid-September or thereabouts. Enjoy your time off, Shakers!]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara died on Monday aged 93. He will be remembered most as the leading architect of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara during a national security meeting on Vietnam at the White House, February 9, 1968. REUTERS/LBJ Library/Handout
“His age just caught up with him,” his wife Diana told Reuters. “He was not ill. He died peacefully in his sleep.”
McNamara also forged brilliant careers in industry and international finance, but his painful legacy remains Vietnam.
More than anyone else except possibly President Lyndon Johnson, McNamara became to anti-war critics the symbol of a failed policy that left more than 58,000 U.S. troops dead and the nation bogged down in a seemingly endless disaster in Southeast Asia.
Pundits came to call the conflict “McNamara’s War.”
With his slicked-back hair and rimless glasses, he became a familiar face to the nation as one of “the best and the brightest” assembled by President John Kennedy to form his policy-making brain trust.
But he left the Cabinet in 1968 under pressure from Johnson. By then disillusioned with the war, McNamara had criticized U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.
He spent the rest of his life trying to explain the U.S. role in Vietnam and apologizing for his mistakes, becoming the subject of an Academy Award winning documentary, “The Fog of War.” In the film, he discussed the difficult decision-making process during the Vietnam conflict as well as his Pentagon role in the Cuban missile crisis.
He first came to prominence as one of the “Whiz Kids” who revitalized Ford Motor Co. after World War Two and ended his public career as president of the World Bank.
To those jobs, as well as defense secretary, the dynamic McNamara brought a driving ambition, a phenomenal memory for statistics and a quick, efficient grasp of facts.
McNamara was named defense secretary by Kennedy in 1961 and held the post longer than anyone before or since. He put his corporate organizational skills to use in trying to modernize the Pentagon during the Cold War.
BLOCKING COMMUNISM
But more and more, Vietnam became his focus. He made several fact-finding visits there in the early days of the U.S. military buildup, which Washington saw as the only way to block a communist takeover of Southeast Asia.
Theodore White, in his book “The Making of the President 1968,” said McNamara argued behind the scenes that the United States must not slip quietly into the war — that the decision must be brought before Congress and the issue debated openly.
But Kennedy authorized a small-scale increase in troop strength and, after his assassination in 1963, Johnson bowed to pressure from his generals and began a major buildup that finally had more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam.
McNamara, convinced the war could be ended by Christmas 1965, threw his energies into effective execution of Johnson’s policies but miscalculated resistance to U.S. intervention both in Vietnam and at home.
In late 1967 he criticized the decision to bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes on U.S. bases in the south. Johnson decided to remove him the following year, offering him the presidency of the World Bank.
In 1971, the classified and highly sensitive Pentagon Papers, an official record of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, were leaked to The New York Times.
In “McNamara: His Ordeal in the Pentagon,” Henry Trewhitt wrote that McNamara ordered the study to provide material that might help future generations avoid the mistakes made in Vietnam by intelligent, well-intentioned men like himself.
“When its contents broke in the press, however, his pleasure at seeing the record clarified was badly diminished by his shock that the two administrations (Kennedy and Johnson) had been deceitful about escalating the war,” Trewhitt wrote.
McNamara was quoted as saying: “My God, does anyone think I would have commissioned this if reasonable men could conclude that it shows me to be a liar?”
FIGHTING POVERTY
At the World Bank, McNamara conducted a crusade against poverty and directed an expansion of World Bank influence.
When he took over the independent United Nations affiliate in 1968, the bank was making only $1 billion in annual loan commitments to Third World nations. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1981, his last day in office, it lent $11.5 billion.
McNamara shifted the emphasis of the bank’s lending from heavy industry to basics like farming and population control.
Robert Strange McNamara was born in San Francisco on June 9, 1916, to Robert James McNamara, a wholesale shoe salesman, and the former Clara Nell Strange, both of British ancestry.
A brilliant student, he graduated from the University of California in 1937 and earned a masters degree from Harvard Business School, where he joined the faculty in 1940.
While employed at the Pentagon in 1946, he and nine colleagues sent a prospectus to 20 firms, offering themselves as a “package deal” to any company needing managers.
Ford, then in financial trouble, accepted the 10, all statistics experts nicknamed “the Whiz Kids.” McNamara rose to the presidency of Ford by 1960.
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On taking early retirement from the World Bank in 1981, McNamara kept an office in Washington where he joined dozens of corporate boards, including the Washington Post. He was also a member of the Trilateral Commission which promoted cooperation between Europe, Japan and the United States.
McNamara married Margaret Craig, a fellow student at the University of California, who died of cancer just before he left the World Bank. They had a son and a daughter.
And in 2004, at age 88, he married his Italian-born sweetheart, Diana Masieri Byfield in Assisi, Italy.Product type Prepared cereal for human consumption Owner Post Consumer Brands Country United States Introduced 1897 ; 122 years ago ( ) Previous owners Postum Cereal Company
General Foods
Kraft General Foods
Kraft Foods Website GrapeNuts.com
Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal developed in 1897 by C. W. Post, a former patient and later competitor of the 19th-century breakfast food innovator, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. The cereal originally prepared by C. W. Post when developing the product was a batter that came from the oven as a rigid sheet. He then broke the sheet into pieces and ran them through a coffee grinder to produce the "nut"-sized kernels.
Etymology [ edit ]
Despite the name, the cereal contains neither grapes nor nuts; it is made with wheat and barley. Post believed that glucose (which he called "grape sugar") formed in the baking process. This, combined with the nutty flavor of the cereal, is said to have inspired its name. Another explanation originates from employees at Post, who claim that the cereal got its name due to a resemblance to grape seeds, or grape "nuts".[citation needed]
Marketing [ edit ]
Grape-Nuts ad, 1900
Grape-Nuts was initially marketed as a natural cereal that could enhance health and vitality, and as a "food for brain and nerve centres." [1] Its lightweight and compact nature, nutritional value, and resistance to spoilage made it a popular food for exploration and expedition groups in the 1920s and 1930s. In World War II, Grape-Nuts was a component of the lightweight jungle ration used by some U.S. and Allied Forces in wartime operations before 1944.[2]
A 1939 ad campaign by cartoonist Walter Hoban continued his Jerry on the Job comic strip in Woman's Day magazine and daily newspaper comics pages.[3] General Foods also marketed Grape-Nuts through a comics-style advertising campaign (a trailblazer in this regard) featuring a character named Little Alby, who gained inordinate strength after consuming a bowl of Grape-Nuts.[4]
During the 1940s, comic books from various companies featured one-page comic-strip ads starring Volto from Mars, a finned red helmet-clad alien superhero visiting Earth, who like all Martians, recharged his magnetic powers (his left hand repels, his right attracts) by eating "cereal grains", with him quickly developing a particular fondness for Grape-Nuts Flakes which he proclaimed "the best I ever tasted!"[5]
In the 1960s, advertising promoted Grape-Nuts as the cereal that "fills you up, not out". Brand users, particularly mother/daughter look-alikes, were shown engaged in fitness activities such as tennis, horseback riding, skiing, and swimming. Also appearing during the "fills you up, not out" campaign were Andy Griffith and Don Knotts as the characters from The Andy Griffith Show, Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife.
This ad campaign produced one television commercial, which aired on television in 1968, that featured a catchphrase that became a target for numerous sketches and satires in media. Spanning the ensuing two decades and beyond, "Oh no, Mrs. Burke! I thought you were Dale!" was parodied on television variety show sketches, in the film The Kentucky Fried Movie and in many Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, fans continue to discuss the origin of this "riff" and have even developed products that feature the text, "I thought you were Dale."
A subsequent ad campaign generated another catchphrase, as Euell Gibbons became the spokesperson for the brand, promoting Grape-Nuts as the "Back to Nature Cereal". The line "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible" drew attention to the product from consumers, as well as from comedians.[citation needed]
Grape-Nuts is credited as the first widespread product to use a coupon in sales promotion when C.W. Post Company offered a penny-off coupon to get people to try their cereal in the late 1890s.[citation needed]
Until recent years, Grape-Nuts packaging set it apart from other cereals, in that no sealed film bag was used. It was sold in the usual "tombstone" cardboard box; rather than featuring lightly glued flaps at the top which could be separated to open the top face completely, perforations could be broken to form a small opening for pouring, near the intersection of one of the narrow side faces and the top surface.
At one time, Grape-Nuts was the seventh-most popular cold breakfast cereal, but sales declined as Post was sold from one company to another. Around 2005, it held less than 1% of the market. About this time, the formula was changed; the husks from milled grain were ground into the flour and the cereal was pitched as "whole grain", albeit at the cost of roughening the cereal's texture and detracting significantly from mouth feel.[citation needed] The addition of vitamins and minerals allowed it to qualify for food-stamp programs.[6]
Ingredients [ edit ]
Modern-day Grape-Nuts contain whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, salt, and dried yeast as ingredients.
Ice cream [ edit ]
Grape-Nut ice cream
Grape-Nut ice cream is a popular regional dish in the Canadian Maritimes, the Shenandoah Valley, Jamaica, and New England. One origin story is that it was created by chef Hannah Young at The Palms restaurant in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1919. She created it when she ran out of fresh fruit to add to ice cream, and decided to throw in some cereal. It proved popular at the restaurant and the Scotsburn Dairy company began mass-producing the ice cream variety, and it sold across the region.[7] Variations of ice cream with Grape Nuts are also called brown bread ice cream.[citation needed] Other flavours with cereal include hazelnut syrup, chocolate, varieties of chocolate chips, mint, and other fresh flavors.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Your bad childhood Your desire
to avoid responsibility Liar,
lunatic,
lord First cause A Big Banger Death-bed conversion How do you explain ____ Beyond science Everyone
has faith Resurrection Evil atheistic governments ____ exists
but you
can't see it Darwin Immoral Christians Doing
Satan's work Odds against happening
by chance Evidence Closed mind Prophecy A Christian nation Deceived
by Satan No morality without God A stone
He can't lift ____ was an atheist Pray for you
Atheism Bingo Rules Print out this bingo card. If there are multiple players, print out additional pages from www.iamanatheist.com/bingo/atheism_card_only.php (refresh the page to generate new cards). Wander around until you come upon a Christian and an atheist debating about atheism. Whenever one of the terms or topics listed on the board is discussed by either side of the debate, mark it off. If you are able to mark off five squares in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally (or, for advanced players, all the squares) you win! Take your winning card to the nearest participating philosophy bookstore, house of worship, street preacher, or skeptic's club meeting to claim your prize!
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For a change of pace, you can also try Evolution BingoEIGHT COUNTRIES Now Threaten to Leave EU Following Britain’s Lead
The Brexit vote in Great Britain has sparked calls for other referendums. At least eight EU countries want to hold their own referendums to exit the European Union.
National Front Leader Marine Le Pen promised to hold a referendum when she becomes leader of France.
Zero Hedge reported:
It appears, just as we warned, that Brexit was indeed the first of many dominoes. Even before the Brexit result, a poll by Ipsos Mori showed that the majority of people in France and Italy want to at least have a referendum on leaving:
Meanwhile, over 40% of Swedes, Poles, and Belgians are in the same boat. But now, as Martin Armstrong notes, Brussels simply went too far. They cross the line moving from an economic union to a political subordination of Europe. Now eight more countries want to hold referendums to exit the EU – France, Holland, Italy, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Portugal, and Slovakia all could leave.Hey folks, Well, looks like the latest bios have got a lot of folks worried about Zaun’s very own Machine Herald! The first thing to say is that it’s great to see so many people leaping to the defense of this misunderstood(?) genius. The second is, to borrow a phrase from the late, great, Douglas Adams… Don’t Panic. The perception you’re getting of Viktor is largely from Jayce’s bio, and if ever there was an unreliable narrator, it’s him. Sure, from Jayce’s point of view, Viktor might seem like a complete and utter psychopath, bereft of a moral compass and utterly devoid of humanity. But what of Viktor’s point of view? Might what’s he’s doing be entirely misrepresented? Might there be a good reason behind it (even if what he’s doing might be - from outside perspectives - be seen as reprehensible?). The reaction is also likely coming from people reading about the place Camille visits in her short story, but I can imagine Viktor’s response to seeing what those people are doing in his name… I can imagine him being incensed at this perversion of his grand philosophy, this naive, quasi-religious cult that has grown around his ideas and which has - to him - woefully misinterpreted his vision. Viktor plays the long game and knows that greatness cannot be achieved without cost. Does that make him evil? Perhaps to the folk who pay the price initially, but what of the folks who’ll reap the benefit in the long run? What will history say of Viktor? That’s the legacy Viktor is concerned with, not the fragile, emotional and short-sighted people around him. So, no, we absolutely don’t want to paint Viktor as a pantomime villain, twirling his metal mustache, but nor do we want to turn away from the dark deeds he’s doing in the name of his Glorious Evolution. When Viktor’s bio lands, it’ll provide balance to the perception. Will it reveal the truth? Well, it’ll reveal Viktor’s truth, and the reality will likely lie somewhere in the middle. Perhaps shrouded by a fug of the Gray, but, hey, that’s Zaun for you… Dinopawz
Title
Body Cancel
SaveFor TV fans who might have read about "Sharknado," Syfy's original movie, after it basically took over Twitter last night, but didn't get a chance to see the film, a rep from the network has confirmed to ABC News that it will rerun the movie next Thursday at 7 p.m. EST.
According to a release sent by Syfy, "Sharknado" was the network's most social telecast ever since its launch in 1992.
See What Celebs Had To Say About "Sharknado"
More than 111,000 people tweeted 318,232 times during the broadcast last night, said SGI, the company owned by Nielsen ratings. Tweets per minute during the broadcast reached 5,010, according to Topsy Pro.
Celebrities even got into the mix with the likes of Patton Oswalt, Seth Myers, Erin Andrews and even Mia Farrow tweeting about this instant phenomenon.
"Sharknado" features "Beverly Hills 90210? star Ian Ziering and "American Pie" darling Tara Reid, who have to move into action after sharks start falling from the skies, attacking unassuming people.
IMDB has the budget for the campy film listed at $1 million.
See The "Sharknado" Best Kill Ever Video From SyfyThe nation’s top doctor is stepping up his warnings about the need for funds to fight the Zika virus in the U.S.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy Vivek Hallegere MurthyCan Scott Gottlieb reverse the opioid crisis? Blame a ‘loneliness epidemic’ for risks to nation’s well-being Surgeon general: ‘We are going to run out of funds’ for Zika MORE says federal health agencies are nearing the end of their reserves as they to try to halt the outbreak and will need new funds from Congress immediately to keep fighting the disease.
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“I think we’re coming to the point where we are going to run out of funds to support the Zika response,” Murthy said in a wide-ranging interview with health news website Stat published Friday. “And that’s gonna happen right as we’re hitting mosquito season in the United States.”
Murthy is the latest Obama administration official to amplify calls for more Zika funding as warmer weather arrives in the U.S., increasing the populations of mosquitoes that help spread the disease. In most cases, Zika causes mild symptoms, but it has been shown to cause severe birth defects when contracted by pregnant women.
Republicans in Congress have repeatedly said the Obama administration has enough money to fight Zika for the time being.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OKla.), a leading House appropriator, published an op-ed on Tuesday asserting the nation’s “immediate needs are already being funded” for Zika.
“Never has the administration been strapped for funds to deal with Ebola or Zika,” Cole said.
Health officials first asked for more money — a total of $1.9 billion — in February.
Since then, the administration has been forced to move about a half-billion dollars from an existing fund meant to fight Ebola in order to jump-start the Zika response.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also announced plans to take another $50 million from its local emergency grant program.
State and local officials are also calling for more money this week, after Congress left town for Memorial Day without approving a funding package.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) sent a three-page list to the White House on Wednesday with requests from dozens of counties about what they need to fight Zika, including more personnel, more training and more mosquito traps and repellent.
Other cities, like Baltimore, have tried to get ahead of the Zika virus and say they urgently need more money.
“Without funding appropriated directly to local agencies and urban areas, we are falling short of implementing the kind of proactive and robust prevention efforts that residents across the country deserve,” Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore's health commissioner, wrote in a letter to GOP leaders on Friday.Eugene J. Polley, a man best known for inventing the first wireless television remote control, died of natural causes on Sunday at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, Illinois. He was 96.
Polley bagan his career in 1935 working for Zenith Radio Corporation (now Zenith Electronics, a subsidiary of LG Electronics). In 1955, he introduced the world to the first-ever wireless TV remote control, the "Flash-Matic," which changed channels on a TV set using a photo-cell activating flashlight-like device. The Flash-Matic was temperamental, requiring precise angling to successfully work, but its arrival was a huge advancement from Zenith's first TV remote, a device called—no kidding—the "Lazy Bones," which was connected to the TV set by an umbilical-like wire cord.
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Cordless control allowed audiences a vastly new experience of consuming television: For the first time ever, the could switch programs without getting up to turn the dial. No longer were programs endured simply because they were too lazy to get up off the couch. Commercials could be avoided by switching channels, or muted, with just the press of a button. "Channel surfing" become a thing.
The remote also inspired significant changes in television programming and commercial airings. After an NBC research term discovered that 25% of their audience changed channels as soon as the credits started rolling, the NBC 2000 unit (responsible for primetime branding of the network) invented the "squeeze-and-tease," the split screen credits that roll alongside the last few minutes of a program. (A current example of a show using the squeeze-and-tease is HBO's Veep.) Commercials were moved from their between-program slot to right in the middle of a show, to avoid losing viewers to the lag time of an advertisement transition.
Eugene Polley worked his way through Zenith's stockroom, to its parts department, and ultimately to the engineering department where he spent most of his career. He was responsible for producing Zenith's first catalog. During World War II, Polley worked on radar advances for the US Department of Defense. In his 47-year career with Zenith, Polley held numerous high-ranking technology positions, including Head of Video Recording Group and Assistant Division Chief for the Mechanical Engineering Group. He and fellow Zenith engineer Robert Adler were honored in 1997 with an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for "Pioneering Development of Wireless Remote Controls for Consumer Television."
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Eugene Polley was born in Chicago on November 29, 1915. He was a longtime resident of Lombard, Illinois, where was was active in village government. He is survived by his son Eugene J. Polley Jr., and grandson, Aaron, of San Diego, Calif; preceding him in death are his wife, Blanche, and daughter, Joan Polley.
Ushered into the Golden Age of Television with Mr. Polley's Zenith Flash-Matic, entire generations were presented with their first "clicker," "gizmo," "thingamabob," "whatsit." It was and will forever be the gadget we're always looking for and never can find. The one we brave couch-cushion crumbs to retrieve, start slapping fights with our siblings to secure. It's come a long way since the finnicky Flash-Matic of the fifties, but the TV remote remains a mainstay household gadget all these years later, one few of us could imagine growing up without.
Thank you, Eugene Polley. [MarketWatch]MINNEAPOLIS — Andrew Wiggins playing 48 minutes Monday night in Salt Lake City. Sean Kilpatrick speeding up Interstate 95 in his BMW X3 to get to Madison Square Garden in time. Nikola Pekovic honoring his nicknamesake with a Godfather-style suit on the Timberwolves bench.
There are injuries. There are multiple injuries. There are strings of multiple injuries.
And then there’s this.
Minnesota’s current injury report reads like one of those side-effects disclaimers crammed in at the end of a Prilosec commercial. Pause. Deep breath. Then a list of names and ailments that takes so long to belt out, Voiceover Guy would’ve been better off just saying "you know, don’t bother."
Five of the past six games, a minimum eight Wolves have dressed. In Monday night’s victory at Utah, only seven saw the court, because Kevin Martin’s hamstring wasn’t in playing shape, according to the team.
It’s gone on all year, of course. And really, even longer. But every time Flip Saunders thinks to himself, "well, it can’t get worse than this," it starts pouring outside like that graveyard scene in Young Frankenstein.
Nine injured players at present. Two league-granted roster limit exceptions at different junctures. Three starters out for the better part of the season’s first half, which prompted Saunders to start clearing the shelves and trade veterans Corey Brewer, Mo Williams and Thaddeus Young.
And now this list of casualties:
(Pause. Deep breath.)
Ricky Rubio (sore right ankle, has missed 48 games this season). Kevin Garnett (sore left knee, has played in just five of the Wolves’ 17 games since they traded for him at the deadline). Pekovic (sore right ankle, sat out Minnesota’s past seven games and 39 total this year). Shabazz Muhammad (ruptured finger ligament, left middle finger, done for the season). Anthony Bennett (sprained right ankle, hasn’t played since Feb. 20, a 16-game span). Robbie Hummel (broken right hand, missed the past 27 games). Gary Neal (two sprained ankles). Justin Hamilton (headache).
Yes, you read those last couple right.
"It’s been hard for me," Saunders said, half-opening a vein, half-responding jokingly when asked about how difficult this slew has been for his team. "What about me?"
Again, it’s nothing new. Just amplified all the more.
Of a possible 700 combined individual games played, the 10 current Wolves players who have been around since the start of the season have taken part in 344 — that’s less than 50 percent. Last year, for comparison’s sake, the number was 79 percent.
And in 2012-13, when Kevin Love missed almost the entire season and Rubio was coming back from a torn ACL? 66.8 percent.
With the Wolves at 16-54, they’d get the second-best NBA Draft Lottery seed if the ping-pong balls came out of the chute tomorrow. If this was a playoff push, some players with nagging pains might be available.
For example, Rubio returned well from a severe ankle sprain suffered five games into the season but has some lingering soreness that’s keeping him out.
"If he’s hurt, he’s going to be nonproductive from that perspective, we won’t push him," Saunders said. "I’ll leave that up to the player and the trainers."
Some have cried "tanking," essentially suggesting part or all of the injury report is an outright fabrication. Saunders defended the organization’s |
Programming on "Dashboard", "Fire It Up", "Parting Of The Sensory", "Little Motel" & "Invisible"
Naheed Simjee — Backing Vocals on "Fire it Up", Claps & Stomps on "Parting Of The Sensory"
James Mercer - Backing Vocals on "Florida", "Missed the Boat" & "We Got Everything"
Art Direction by Isaac Brock, Christian Helms & Nahjeed Simjee
Design by Christian Helms & Geoff Peyeto at The Decoder Ring
Booklet Interior Illustrations by David Ellis & Casey Burns
Thank You: Steve Lobdell & Mike Gillentine
A&R: Kaz Utsunomiya
Management: Ravenhouse Ltd.
James Mercer of The Shins appears courtesy of Sub Pop Records
Chart positions [ edit ]
Album [ edit ]
Singles [ edit ]The Bitcoin market hit record highs over the weekend before dropping further than it has in years. Several exchanges for the cryptocurrency suffered outages during the fluctuation, leaving customers unable to buy or sell for hours.
Read more
Coinbase, one of the most popular ways to buy and sell popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin experienced an outage Monday. For several hours, buyers and sellers were met with a screen that read, “service unavailable.”
The company cited high customer traffic and trading volume for being “down for maintenance.” Coinbase claimed that the issue was resolved by 7:44pm EST.
As the site experienced such high traffic, the entire market for Bitcoin was in a state of wild fluctuation. On Sunday, Bitcoin climbed to a record high of $3,041.36, according to CNBC.
Then, on Monday, Bitcoin experienced its largest crash since January 2015, falling more than 16 percent to $2,532.87. Those looking to sell their Bitcoin on Monday as the price plummeted by more than $500 were unable to do so through Coinbase.
Coinbase also experienced an outage due to increased traffic on May 25, less than three weeks ago.
During that week, bitcoin reached an all-time high of $2,791.70 before losing $400, according to CoinDesk.
Another exchange, BTC-e, tweeted on Monday that it was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS. Their website was back online at 4:00pm EST, according to CNBC.
We are currently under ddos #btce — BTC-E (@btcecom) June 12, 2017
Many customers voiced their concern with the exchanges, which they say are not capable of handling the traffic that accompanies large fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin.
@CoinbaseSupport@coinbase, you literally are scamming people! Only allowing purchases on your site when the price is high! Useless — perry (@pezzacouch) June 12, 2017
What it feels like when Coinbase is down pic.twitter.com/6V0asbeKuD — Adam Ludwin (@adamludwin) June 12, 2017
Bitcoin competitor cuts in on cryptocurrency buying frenzy, reaching new record
On Monday, an initial coin offering (ICO) for a blockchain project called Bancor set an industry record, raising over $150 million in ether, the digital currency for the Ethereum network.
READ MORE: Bitcoin rival ethereum hits record high rallying almost 3,000% this year
The blockchain is the public ledger where transactions in cryptocurrencies are recorded.
Overall, 9,323,978 Bancor network tokens (BNTs) were created as part of the ICO, making it the largest-ever ICO, according to CoinDesk.
However, Bancor was forced to extend their ICO by three hours, due to “overwhelming demand and traffic, and massive malicious attacks,” according to a blog post from the company.A MAFIA CHIEF in southern Italy has been arrested by detectives disguised as pizza boys who delivered food to his home as he was watching a football match, police said yesterday.
Roberto Manganiello (35), a boss in Naples’ notorious Camorra mafia, had been on the run since 2013.
He was listed as “one of Italy’s 100 most dangerous criminals” for an alleged double homicide in 2004 that sparked a bloody gang war in Naples.
Manganiello was arrested on Saturday evening as he watched Napoli play Inter Milan, when the fake delivery boys knocked on his door at an apartment in Orta di Atella where he ran a drugs and extortion business, police said.
A 30-year-old Neapolitan woman was arrested with him. Manganiello offered no resistance to the police, they said.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano hailed the arrest, describing it as a “success due to top-level investigative work.”
Adding to Manganiello’s humiliation, Milan defeated his home team 2-0, all but crushing Naples’ hopes of a first Serie A title in 26 years.Australian Milestone: First Game Released For Adults...In 2013
from the space-flight-to-be-achieved-in-3013 dept
“Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge contains violence that is high in impact because of its frequency, high definition graphics, and emphasis on blood effects.”
As Tim Cushing recently wrote, Australia's Classification Board (whatever the hell that is) decided that this was the year. The year for what, you ask? Well, the year to acknowledge that people over the age of 15 exist within their borders. It seems a little silly that, prior to 2013, Australia's governing bodies chose not to acknowledge that the age of the average gamer is something around thirty years old. Emboldening the morality police "for the children" is one thing, but to do so for law-abiding adults is quite another. I think it showed an immense amount of disrespect towards the Aussie public that it took so long to entrust with them their own entertainment choices.In any case, Australia has followed through and reached a milestone hitherto unimaginable: the very first R18+ game has been classified, and the honor goes to Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge. According to the Classification Board:So congratulations to Australian adults, who can now play the game as it was meant to be played: bloody, violent, high in impact and in high in definition. I have to imagine that the only thing sweeter for Australian adults than the ability to finally play these kinds of games is the delicious irony in how Australian Rules Football, which is televised, fits the Classification Board's description almost exactly. Foster's all around for everyone!
Filed Under: adults, australia, ratings, video gamesThis is a story.
In this ingenious and spell-binding retelling of the life of Jesus, Philip Pullman revisits the most influential story ever told.
Charged with mystery, compassion and enormous power, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ throws fresh light on who Jesus was and asks the reader questions that will continue to resonate long after the final page is turned. For, above all, this book is about how stories become stories.
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A true, charismatic Christianity is set against a highly institutionalised church...the charm of this book lies in its seriousness about the story it tells, and about its being a story. Frank Kermode, London Review of Books Though he wears his scholarship lightly as befits a master storyteller, there is no doubt in my mind that Pullman has a complete grasp of the intricacies of the quest for the historical Jesus. … [The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ] is a fierce and beautiful book which, like the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, will move even those who disagree with it. Guardian The Gospel according to Pullman, precisely because it is so skillfully constructed, will prompt many readers to turn once more to consider whether or not they should accept the apparently bizarre testimony of the early Christian witnesses, testimony which they repeatedly insisted was not simply a ‘story’ but was based on factual experience. Spectator In Pullman’s work, Jesus is a charismatic, honest speaker, who believes that the kingdom of God is imminent. Christ, on the other hand, has an eye to posterity, to the need for an organised church and to the requirements of history. “He knows that human beings, being what they are, need structures, they fall into bureaucracy. He knew that the kingdom never was going to come,” said Pullman. Guardian
The Enhanced Ebook
Available in the UK, USA and in Canada, the provocative new work by acclaimed novelist Philip Pullman has now been tailor-made for the iPhone. It includes the full ebook, the unabridged audiobook synchronised to the text, read by the author, as well as exclusive video interviews.
By Enhanced EditionsPresident Obama said it would open markets, protect workers and the environment, and advance American leadership in Asia.
"With the Trans-Pacific Partnership, China doesn't set the rules in that region, we do," he told Congress. "You want to show our strength in this century? Approve this agreement. Give us the tools to enforce it."
Speaking to journalists in Canberra after Mr Obama's speech, Ambassador John Berry said he knew Mr Turnbull would be visiting Capitol Hill while he was in Washington and he hoped he would be carrying a message to Congress.
"Australia is one of the major investors in the United States," he said. "This is a two-way street. We both benefit, we both grow, we both gain."
Asked whether members of the Congress not swayed by their President could be brought across the line by a message from the Australian Prime Minister, he replied: "Absolutely. Members of Congress, when the Prime Minister says something about this, they will hear it loud and clear and they will take Australia very seriously."The utopian economics of "Star Trek" The young Spock's movie shout-out to "new growth theory" isn't just a nifty inside joke -- it's a bold statement of confidence in the promise of technology.
There are many clever moments in the thoroughly satisfying new "Star Trek" movie, but the one that has economists chattering is more than just smart: It strikes right to the core of what the Star Trek future is all about.
The scene comes early, when a pre-pubescent Spock is undergoing the formidable educational process inflicted on all Vulcan children. We see and hear him say the words "nonrival" and "nonexcludable" (and we can imagine his computer tutor nodding encouragingly).
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And then we move on, without explanation. To my children, and, I imagine, to most Trekkies, the moment was just one more jargonistic outburst in a franchise that has always delighted in excessive indulgence in meaningless techno-gibberish. But the economists in the audience all started high-fiving each other: Whoa, who could have expected a shout-out to economist Paul Romer's breakthrough paper, "Endogenous Technological Change," in a "Star Trek" movie? Awesome!
The words jumped out at me, because a few years ago, I had the good fortune to read economics writer David Warsh's superb chronicle of how Romer's paper defining "new growth theory" changed the course of economic thought, "Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations." As Warsh notes in his preface, the first paragraph of Romer's paper states:
"The distinguishing feature of... technology as an input is that it is neither a conventional good nor a public good; its is a nonrival, partially excludable good."
A "nonrival" good can be shared without losing anything. An apple, say, is a rival good: If one person eats it, the other person can't. A pirated download of the new "Star Trek" movie is nonrival -- it can be copied endlessly. Excludability refers to whether you can prevent someone from sharing, as with, for example, copy protection or a jail sentence.
As Warsh explained to me during an interview three years ago, Romer's great contribution was that he mathematically proved "that the economically important thing about knowledge is that it is 'nonrival' -- everybody can use it at the same time."
Romer put it this way:
Economists studying public finance have identified two fundamental attributes of any economic good: the degree to which it is rivalrous and the degree to which it is excludable. Rivalry is a purely technological attribute. A purely rival good has the property that its use by one firm or person precludes its use by another; a purely nonrival good has the property that its use by one firm or person in no way limits is use by another. Excludability is a function of both the technology and the legal system. A good is excludable if the owner can prevent others from using it. A good such as the code for a computer program can be made excludable by means of a legal system that prohibits copying or by means of encryption and copy protection schemes.
What does this mean for "Star Trek?" The Star Trek universe is built on a fundamentally optimistic premise : Technological growth will lead us into a future of abundance and prosperity. Transporter beams and warp drive-capable starships are just the beginning. Any society that enjoys the benefits of replicators able to produce any food or beverage the consumer might desire at the merest voice command is a society that has pushed the nonrival, nonexcludable benefits of knowledge diffusion to the maximum extent possible.
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Here's some more from Romer's paper:
The raw materials that we use have not changed, but as a result of trial and error, experimentation, refinement, and scientific investigation, the instructions that we follow for combining raw materials have become vastly more sophisticated. One hundred years ago, all we could do to get visual stimulation from iron oxide was to use it as a pigment. Now we put it on plastic tape and use it to make videocassette recordings.
Of course, who needs videocassette recordings when you have holodecks?
Technological change -- improvement in the instructions for mixing together raw materials -- lies at the heart of economic growth... Technological change provides the incentive for continued capital accumulation, and together, capital accumulation and technological change account for much of the increase in output per hour worked... [But] instructions for working with raw materials are inherently different from other economic goods. Once the cost of creating a new set of instructions has been incurred, the instructions can be used over and over again at no additional cost.
To some people, the implications of Romer's work are all too visible in the restructuring of the music industry and news business. Anything that can be digitally copied is nonrival and very difficult to exclude. So anyone whose job depends on the processing or delivery of information is feeling a great deal of stress right now about the difficulty of devising business models that thrive in a nonrival, nonexcludable operating environment. But in the long run, suggests Romer and as potentially demonstrated by "Star Trek," the benefit of expanding knowledge and technological change will be widely distributed prosperity: an end to scarcity, a future where the fundamental challenge of providing for our basic needs has been solved. (Although, one hastens to note that there will always be insane Romulans and all-devouring Borg invaders to deal with -- so life will never be perfect!)
In these times of economic disarray and incredible environmental threats and devastating energy constraints (Where do we find the dilithium crystals that power everything, after all?), it might be hard to see that abundant Star Trekkian future anywhere else but in a movie theater. But the policy prescription inherent in Romer's work is that the best way to provide for long-term growth is to invest in education, in the training of scientists and engineers, in the production of knowledge -- new sets of instructions -- that benefit everyone. It's a theme that President Obama echoed last week when, while announcing some changes in how the government handles unemployment benefits, he stated that "education is the best bet we can make as individuals and as country."
So, to quote his predecessor: "Bring it on!"The newly appointed head of Alberta's first energy efficiency agency says it has enough resources to make a big difference.
"We can have real impact in terms of both job creation and energy efficiency, ensuring savings for businesses and households," Monica Curtis said Tuesday.
Energy Efficiency Alberta is funded by the province's carbon tax and is aimed at getting Albertans to use energy more wisely.
Alberta joins all other provinces in having a government agency to promote and assist with wise energy consumption.
Curtis comes to the province from Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation, which oversees the implementation of energy efficiency programs throughout the United States.
Originally from Manitoba, Curtis has also worked for SaskPower as well as Alberta Agriculture and Edmonton-based utility Epcor back when it was called Edmonton Power. She suggested that Alberta being the last province to inaugurate an energy efficiency program is an opportunity.
"There are great examples that the province of Alberta can borrow from and learn from all across North America," said Curtis, who pointed to programs in Nova Scotia, Manitoba and British Columbia as examples.
"Being able to draw on the experience those programs have to offer creates a really good foundation for Alberta to grow quickly from." Her first job will be to oversee the implementation of three government programs already announced.
One involves handing out samples of energy-efficient products such as LED lights for homeowners to try. A second program will allow consumers to apply for rebates when they buy energy-efficient appliances such as stoves, dishwashers and fridges.
A third one is to provide businesses and non-profit organizations rebates on larger energy-efficient products such as boilers and heating and cooling systems. Smaller-scale solar power programs are to follow later.
The province plans to spend $648 million in the next five years on energy-efficiency products and programs.
Curtis said it was the provincial government's climate-change policies that drew her back to Canada.
"It creates an environment where energy efficiency can really work together with other aspects of energy policy, whether it's oil and gas, solar, water, wind or saved energy."A Michigan woman said she was denied proper medical treatment three times by a Catholic hospital because it would have conflicted with the church’s teachings.
Tamesha Means said she was only 18 weeks pregnant in 2010 when her water broke prematurely, and she went to Mercy Health Hospital in Muskegon – the only hospital within a half-hour of her home.
A lawsuit filed Nov. 29 by the ACLU claims health care providers did not tell Means that she had little chance of successfully continuing the pregnancy or that her own health was at risk if she tried to continue the pregnancy.
Instead, the suit claims, Means was simply sent home.
But Means returned to Mercy Health the following day, bleeding and in pain, and the suit claims she was again sent home without being told about the risks of continuing her pregnancy.
Means came back a third time – now suffering a serious infection – and the suit claims health care providers intended to send her home yet again when she went into premature labor.
The baby died within hours of its birth, and the suit claims that Means nearly died herself without being told that ending a pregnancy that had little chance of success was the safest course of action for her own well-being.
That’s because the Catholic-sponsored hospital must adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives laid out by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to govern its hospitals – even if they conflict with medical standards of care, the ACLU says.
“When you show up at a hospital, in need of medical aid, you expect that you’re going to get the care that you need — that the doctors and nurses will figure out what’s wrong, explain to you the options for treating it, and give you the best medical care possible,” the ACLU said in a press release.
The civil rights group said Means was not alone, describing other instances where patients were not told that ending a risky pregnancy was their own safest chance for survival.
The suit claims the U.S. Council of Bishops is responsible for the unnecessary trauma and harm of Means and other patients.
“The bishops aren’t doctors, and yet they issue rules that tie doctors’ hands, preventing them from giving their patients full information about their health care options and, in some cases, preventing them from providing medically appropriate care,” the ACLU says. “That’s not right, and it’s time to end it.”
The suit asks to have the council’s actions to be declared negligent and for the award of compensatory, punitive or exemplary damages in an amount to be determined at trial.
A family and health law expert told the Associated Press that the ACLU must prove the conference had direct control over this case or over hospitals, in general.
Robin Fretwell Wilson, a University of Illinois professor, said the bishops have moral authority over Catholic hospitals but are “so many layers removed” from day-to-day administration.
[Image via American Civil Liberties UnionPresident Donald Trump hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House on June 26, 2017. The visit reinforced the close ties between the United States and India that have strengthened both great democracies. Highlights of this cooperation include:
Global Partners on Defense and Security
Major Defense Partner. The United States remains a reliable provider of advanced defense articles in support of India’s military modernization efforts. United States-sourced defense articles, including the Sea Guardian Unmanned Aerial System, Apache attack helicopters, and C-17 aircraft will further enhance the capabilities of the Indian Armed Forces and provide additional opportunities for interoperability. Completion of these sales would increase bilateral defense trade to nearly $19 billion, supporting thousands of United States jobs. If selected, United State offers to sell F-16 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft to India would represent the most significant defense cooperation between the United States and India to date.
The United States remains a reliable provider of advanced defense articles in support of India’s military modernization efforts. United States-sourced defense articles, including the Sea Guardian Unmanned Aerial System, Apache attack helicopters, and C-17 aircraft will further enhance the capabilities of the Indian Armed Forces and provide additional opportunities for interoperability. Completion of these sales would increase bilateral defense trade to nearly $19 billion, supporting thousands of United States jobs. If selected, United State offers to sell F-16 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft to India would represent the most significant defense cooperation between the United States and India to date. DTTI. The United States-India Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) remains the premier forum for deepening collaboration on defense co-development and co-production. The seven DTTI Joint Working Groups continue to discuss a range of technologies and platforms for potential co-development, including India’s participation in the Future Vertical Lift program. DTTI representatives met most recently in April 2017.
The United States-India Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) remains the premier forum for deepening collaboration on defense co-development and co-production. The seven DTTI Joint Working Groups continue to discuss a range of technologies and platforms for potential co-development, including India’s participation in the Future Vertical Lift program. DTTI representatives met most recently in April 2017. Military-Military Engagements. Key military and civilian defense leaders continue to meet via reciprocal counterpart visits and strategic and policy dialogues, promoting closer service ties and improving interoperability among our forces. The annual MALABAR naval exercise, occurring in July 2017 in the Indian Ocean, will be the most complex to date, including participants from the U.S. Navy, Indian Navy, and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. The United States and India also participate in the VAJRA PRAHAR Special Forces exercise, the RED FLAG air force exercise, and YUDH ABHYAS army exercise.
Key military and civilian defense leaders continue to meet via reciprocal counterpart visits and strategic and policy dialogues, promoting closer service ties and improving interoperability among our forces. The annual MALABAR naval exercise, occurring in July 2017 in the Indian Ocean, will be the most complex to date, including participants from the U.S. Navy, Indian Navy, and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. The United States and India also participate in the VAJRA PRAHAR Special Forces exercise, the RED FLAG air force exercise, and YUDH ABHYAS army exercise. Counter-Terrorism Partnership. The United States and India are committed to combatting terrorism in all its forms and to strengthening cooperation on terrorist screening, intelligence, and information sharing, terrorist use of the internet, and multilateral terrorist designations. Reflecting this partnership, the U.S. Terrorist Screening Center and Indian counterparts are cross-screening known and suspected terrorists for investigative and intelligence purposes.
The United States and India are committed to combatting terrorism in all its forms and to strengthening cooperation on terrorist screening, intelligence, and information sharing, terrorist use of the internet, and multilateral terrorist designations. Reflecting this partnership, the U.S. Terrorist Screening Center and Indian counterparts are cross-screening known and suspected terrorists for investigative and intelligence purposes. Law Enforcement Cooperation. The United States has provided anti-terrorism assistance training for more than 1,200 Indian security personnel since 2008.
The United States has provided anti-terrorism assistance training for more than 1,200 Indian security personnel since 2008. Facilitating Strategic Trade. The High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG) facilitates greater civil high technology and defense trade between American and Indian businesses, leveraging India’s status as a Major Defense Partner. In 1999, 24 percent of all exports from the United States to India required an export license. Currently, licensed exports still make up only a small percentage of trade with India; in 2016, only 0.4 percent required a license, commensurate with the United States’ closest allies and partners.
Committed to Increasing Free and Fair Trade
Trade. Two-way trade in goods and services reached $114 billion in 2016. With the Indian economy growing at 7 percent annually, both countries are committed to further expanding and balancing the trade relationship.
Two-way trade in goods and services reached $114 billion in 2016. With the Indian economy growing at 7 percent annually, both countries are committed to further expanding and balancing the trade relationship. Aviation. In 2017, Indian airline SpiceJet announced the order of 100 new Boeing 737MAX-8s, bringing its order to 205 planes valued at more than $20 billion and, according to industry, creating and sustaining 130,000 American jobs in the state of Washington and elsewhere. At the Paris Air Show in June, SpiceJet announced a preliminary commitment for an additional 20 Boeing aircraft.
In 2017, Indian airline SpiceJet announced the order of 100 new Boeing 737MAX-8s, bringing its order to 205 planes valued at more than $20 billion and, according to industry, creating and sustaining 130,000 American jobs in the state of Washington and elsewhere. At the Paris Air Show in June, SpiceJet announced a preliminary commitment for an additional 20 Boeing aircraft. India is projected to become the world’s third-largest commercial aviation market by 2020. Through the U.S-India Aviation Cooperation Program, the United States has increased the safety and security of India’s rapidly growing aviation sector, and generated over $600 million in exports of U.S. manufactured goods and services.
Trade Facilitation. The United States and India, both signatories to the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), are working together to implement the TFA’s provisions and help lower the cost of trade for both our countries.
The United States and India, both signatories to the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), are working together to implement the TFA’s provisions and help lower the cost of trade for both our countries. Investment. According to the Government of India, the United States is one of the top five destinations for investment from India. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that Indian companies have invested over $11 billion in the United States economy, creating and sustaining more than 52,000 jobs. Industry sources indicate these investments are spread across 35 states.
According to the Government of India, the United States is one of the top five destinations for investment from India. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that Indian companies have invested over $11 billion in the United States economy, creating and sustaining more than 52,000 jobs. Industry sources indicate these investments are spread across 35 states. Capital Markets. The Department of Treasury and Indian Ministry of Finance continue to collaborate on resolving outstanding tax disputes, building Indian capital markets, and promoting greater bilateral investment. Enhanced technical cooperation includes areas such as the development of India’s municipal bond market. The just-completed issuance of a municipal bond for the city of Pune was India’s first municipal issuance since 2011.
Powering the New India
Liquefied Natural Gas Exports and Investment. Indian energy companies have signed more than $30 billion in long-term contracts for U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG), including from Louisiana and Maryland. Industry estimates that Indian companies have invested more than $10 billion in the United States LNG and shale sectors.
Indian energy companies have signed more than $30 billion in long-term contracts for U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG), including from Louisiana and Maryland. Industry estimates that Indian companies have invested more than $10 billion in the United States LNG and shale sectors. Nuclear Power. The United States and India are committed to realizing commercial civil nuclear cooperation, in particular through a contract for six Westinghouse Electric AP-1000 nuclear reactors to be built in Andhra Pradesh, India. Once completed, the project will provide reliable electricity for millions of Indian citizens.
The United States and India are committed to realizing commercial civil nuclear cooperation, in particular through a contract for six Westinghouse Electric AP-1000 nuclear reactors to be built in Andhra Pradesh, India. Once completed, the project will provide reliable electricity for millions of Indian citizens. Fossil Energy. The U.S. Trade and Development Agency will host a Refineries Performance Optimization Reverse Trade Mission in fall 2017, familiarizing senior executives from Indian refining companies with U.S. technologies that can optimize the performance of India’s oil refineries.
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency will host a Refineries Performance Optimization Reverse Trade Mission in fall 2017, familiarizing senior executives from Indian refining companies with U.S. technologies that can optimize the performance of India’s oil refineries. Grid Expansion and Modernization. The Department of Commerce will lead a Smart Grid and Energy Storage Business Development Mission to New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai in March 2018 to showcase U.S. technologies and services that can help India address its grid modernization needs. The two countries also announced the Smart Grid and Energy Storage consortia under the U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy and Research Development Center.
The Department of Commerce will lead a Smart Grid and Energy Storage Business Development Mission to New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai in March 2018 to showcase U.S. technologies and services that can help India address its grid modernization needs. The two countries also announced the Smart Grid and Energy Storage consortia under the U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy and Research Development Center. Energy Finance. The U.S.-India Clean Energy Finance Task Force is delivering recommendations to mobilize U.S. technology exports and American and Indian private investment in India’s $1.2 trillion power market. Additionally, the Department of State is facilitating connections between American and Indian industry, state governments, and universities to advance energy solutions.
Expanding Ties Between Our Citizens
Today, nearly 4 million Indian-Americans reside in the United States and over 700,000 U.S. citizens live in India. Last year, the United States Government issued nearly one million visas to Indian citizens, and facilitated 1.7 million visits by Indian citizens to the United States.
Global Entry Trusted Traveler Program. The United States began accepting applications from India for the expedited entry program, facilitating travel in both directions that will lead to more business, investment, and tourism. In 2016, Indian visitors in the United States spent nearly $13 billion, making India the sixth largest market for U.S. travel and tourism exports.
The United States began accepting applications from India for the expedited entry program, facilitating travel in both directions that will lead to more business, investment, and tourism. In 2016, Indian visitors in the United States spent nearly $13 billion, making India the sixth largest market for U.S. travel and tourism exports. Skills Development. More than 166,000 Indian students studied in the United States in 2016, contributing $5 billion in economic activity and supporting some 64,000 American jobs. Over the last decade, Indian students contributed $31 billion to the U.S. economy.
More than 166,000 Indian students studied in the United States in 2016, contributing $5 billion in economic activity and supporting some 64,000 American jobs. Over the last decade, Indian students contributed $31 billion to the U.S. economy. Entrepreneurship. The United States and India will co-host a Global Entrepreneurship Summit this year in India, focused on supporting women entrepreneurs, and geared toward solving 21st century challenges and improving lives. President Trump has asked Ivanka Trump to lead the United States delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit.
The United States and India will co-host a Global Entrepreneurship Summit this year in India, focused on supporting women entrepreneurs, and geared toward solving 21st century challenges and improving lives. President Trump has asked Ivanka Trump to lead the United States delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Indian Americans have embraced innovation and entrepreneurship, sitting at the forefront of Silicon Valley’s technology revolution, and founding an estimated 15 percent of Silicon Valley startups. They have helped to develop the Pentium chip, fiber optics, and noise canceling headphones, among numerous other innovations.
Tackling Global Challenges
Exploring Space. The United States and India are working together in the exploration of space, from discovering water on the surface of the Moon to sharing data on Mars from our respective orbiters. The joint NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, scheduled for launch in 2021, will help scientists to better understand some of Earth’s most complex systems and hazards.
The United States and India are working together in the exploration of space, from discovering water on the surface of the Moon to sharing data on Mars from our respective orbiters. The joint NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, scheduled for launch in 2021, will help scientists to better understand some of Earth’s most complex systems and hazards. Afghanistan Development. The United States and India support increased stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and their expanded development coordination and cooperation benefits all three countries. India has spent $2 billion on development assistance to Afghanistan since 2001, and pledged an additional $1 billion in 2016. In September 2017, the United States will co-sponsor the India-Afghanistan Export, Trade and Investment Fair in New Delhi, to promote expanded Afghan commercial ties with India.
The United States and India support increased stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and their expanded development coordination and cooperation benefits all three countries. India has spent $2 billion on development assistance to Afghanistan since 2001, and pledged an additional $1 billion in 2016. In September 2017, the United States will co-sponsor the India-Afghanistan Export, Trade and Investment Fair in New Delhi, to promote expanded Afghan commercial ties with India. Global Agriculture Cooperation. Fifty years after the Green Revolution helped India to free millions from hunger, the United States and India have trained more than 1,500 agricultural practitioners from 17 countries across Africa and Asia on specialized farming practices to improve productivity and income.
Fifty years after the Green Revolution helped India to free millions from hunger, the United States and India have trained more than 1,500 agricultural practitioners from 17 countries across Africa and Asia on specialized farming practices to improve productivity and income. U.N. Peacekeeping Burden Sharing. India and the United States remain committed to U.N. peacekeeping and building the capacity of African partners, training participants from 13 countries and the African Union. The two sides will conduct additional joint training in July 2017 and lead a mobile training team in Africa this fall.
India and the United States remain committed to U.N. peacekeeping and building the capacity of African partners, training participants from 13 countries and the African Union. The two sides will conduct additional joint training in July 2017 and lead a mobile training team in Africa this fall. Disease Research and Treatment. For more than 40 years, the United States has collaborated with India on disease research, including tuberculosis (TB), HIV, and rotavirus, and non-communicable diseases – cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. The United States supports India’s ambitious goal to end TB by 2025, through the scale-up of detection, diagnosis, and new treatments for drug-resistant TB.
Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). As GHSA Steering Group members, the United States and India recognize the importance of strengthening global capacity to counter infectious disease threats. India is working across sectors to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR) stewardship, a key threat to global health security and modern medicine. The United States remains committed to supporting India as it develops and implements multi-sectoral national action plans to combat AMR and two national AMR networks for the use of antimicrobial surveillance.Alister Crowley famously wrote that; “I crave sin” and I firmly believe that the same can be said for those of us who walk on the “anarcho” side of the street. Many of us found our way here through disillusionment. We have seen the promises of modernity shattered and live in a culture dominated by Sklavenmoral, (i.e. the Red and Blue tribes of neo-liberalism). To us, the social order is not only archaic and (to the more radically skeptic) useless but at its core destructive. The institutions which built patriotism are the protein strains of a memeitic virus ready to consume all in its path. A path which war must be waged against in both the material and metaphysical plane(s).
We crave a higher, forbidden knowledge be it the esoteric teachings of Eastern strains of thought (such as panentheism which I am a personal subscriber to) hidden from the West for ages, or the Gnostic traditions which the degenerate tendencies of Abrahamic religion actively sought to repress. Standing against the are the new generation of mystics singing of a future devoid of the conventional. I say to you, that we take our rightful place at the dark thrown of power which of course entails toppling the Gods of the(Deep)State and its globalist masters. Enacting our Will on the world to seek what is (by most) unseen. So to all who “crave sin” in your struggle against establishment and hierarchy I encourage you to bring the Left hand path to the Left.
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aa – :
“Stones will soon fall upon you from the sky. I say: Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said…, and you say: Aboo Bakr and `Umar said!” :-
“…This saying from Ibn `Abbaas – radiyallaahu `anhumaa – was a response to those who said to him: “Aboo Bakr and `Umar – radiyallaahu `anhumaa – did not hold joining the `Umrah along with the Hajj (at-tamattu`), and they held that performing Hajj on its own (al-Ifraad) is better‟, or the like of that…
So in summary, it was because of this that Ibn `Abbaas said, when they countered the Hadeeth with the opinion of Aboo Bakr and `Umar -: “Stones are about to fall upon you from the sky…” – the hadeeth.
And Imaam ash-Shaafi`ee – rahimahullaah – said:
“The scholars are agreed, by consensus, that whoever is such that the Sunnah of Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) becomes clear to him, then it is not for him to leave it for the saying of anyone.”
And Imaam Maalik – rahimahullaahu ta`aalaa – said:
“There is none of us except that he rebuts and is rebutted, except for the occupant of this grave (صلى الله عليه وسلم)”,
and the speech of the imaams with this meaning is abundant…
…So the speech of Ibn `Abbaas – radiyallaahu `anhumaa – shows that whoever receives a textual proof, and he does not accept it, because of taqleed (blind-following) of his imaam, then it is obligatory to criticize him severely, because of his opposing the proof.
And Imaam Ahmad said: “Ahmad ibn `Umar al-Bazzaar narrated to us: Ziyaad ibn Ayyoob narrated to us: Aboo `Ubaydah al-Haddaad narrated to us: from Maalik ibn Deenaar: from `Ikrimah: from Ibn `Abbaas, who said:
“There is not one of us except that some of his sayings are taken, and some are left; except for the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم).”
So therefore it is obligatory to criticise whoever leaves the proof in favour of anyone from the scholars, no matter who that is. The recorded sayings of the imaams clearly state this; and state that ‘taqleed’ (blind-following) is not allowable except in matters of ijtihaad (personal deduction) for which no proof is found in the Book or the Sunnah. So this is what some of the scholars meant by their saying: ‘There is to be no criticism in the matters of ijtihaad (personal deduction).’ As for the one who acts contrary to the Book and the Sunnah, then it is obligatory to refute him; just as was said by Ibn `Abbaas, ash-Shaafi`ee, Maalik, and Ahmad – and this is something agreed upon, as has preceded in the speech of Imaam ash-Shaafi`ee – rahimahullaahu ta`aalaa…”
The Forbiddence Of Adhering Blindly To The Saying Of A Scholar In Opposition To An Authentic Text, And The Severe Rebuke Due Upon One Who Is Guilty Of This (Part II)
Shaykh `Abdur-Rahmaan ibn Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn `Abdil-Wahhaab – rahimahullaah – said in “Fathul-Majeed‟ (2/532), in explanation of the saying of Imaam Ahmad:
“I am amazed at a people who are aware of the chain of narration and its authenticity, and yet they hold on to the opinion of Sufyaan, whereas Allaah – the Most High – says:
So let those who oppose the Messenger‟s command beware, lest a fitnah (affliction) befalls him, or a painful torment be inflicted upon him.[Sooratun-Noor (24):63]
Do you know what the affliction is? The affliction is Shirk. Perhaps if he rejects something from his saying, some deviation will fall into his heart and he is destroyed.”
“So the saying of Imaam Ahmad – rahimahullaah – “I am amazed at a people who are aware of the chain of narration and its authenticity…” is a criticism from him of that; and shows that it leads to deviation of the hearts, which causes a person to become a Disbeliever.
So this evil has become extremely widespread, particularly amongst those who claim attachment to knowledge. They do whatever they can to prevent people from acting upon the Book and the Sunnah; and they block people from following the Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم), and from honouring and respecting his commands and prohibitions. So from that is their saying: “No one except a “mujtahid‟ can use the Book and the Sunnah as proof, and “ijtihaad‟ has ended‟, and the saying: “This person who I am blindly following knows better than you do about hadeeth, and about the abrogating and abrogated narrations‟, and the like of these sayings, whose goal is just the abandonment of following of the Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم): he who does not speak from his own desires, in favour of dependence upon sayings of those who can err, and who is contradicted by other imaams and whose saying can be nullified by a textual proof. So there is not an imaam except that he only possessed a portion of knowledge; he did not possess all of it. So what is obligatory upon every legally responsible person, when a proof from the Book of Allaah or the Sunnah of His Messenger reaches him, and he understands its meaning, is that he accepts it and acts upon it, no matter who contradicts it.
It is just as He – the Most High – said:
Follow what has been sent down to you from your Lord; and do not take others besides Him: obeying them in disobedience to Him. Little do you remember! [Sooratul-A`raaf (7):3]
And He – the Most High – said:
Is it not sufficient for them that We sent down to you this Book which is recited to them?! In it there is mercy and a reminder for those who believe in it [Sooratul-`Ankaboot (29):51]
A statement of the consensus (ijmaa`) upon that has already preceded [1], and an explanation that the blind-follower (muqallid) is not from the people of knowledge; and Aboo `Umar ibn `Abdil-Barr and others also report ijmaa` (consensus) upon that.
[1] Transl. Note: [i.e. from Imaam ash-Shaafi`ee.]
I say: And no one disagrees with this except for the ignorant ones from the blind-followers, because of their ignorance of the Book and the Sunnah, and because of their turning away from these two. So those people, even if they think that they are following the imaams, then in reality they have only contradicted them and followed other than their way. So we have already quoted the saying of Maalik, ash-Shaafi`ee, and Ahmad. However in the speech of Ahmad – rahimahullaah – there is an indication that “taqleed‟ (blind-following) before the proof reaches is not blameworthy; rather it is only criticised for one whom the proof has reached, and he opposes it in favour of the saying of one of the imaams.
So this only comes about as a result of their turning away from seeking to understand the Book of Allaah and the Sunnah of His Messenger; and turning instead to the books of the later people, and sufficing with them to the exclusion of the two parts of Revelation. So this resembles what occurred with the People of the Book: those about whom Allaah said:
They took their scholars and monks as lords besides Allaah [Sooratut-Tawbah (9):31],
an explanation of which will follow in the hadeeth of `Adiyy ibn Haatim.
So what is binding upon the one who is sincere is that when he reads the books of the scholars, and examines them, and becomes aware of their sayings, that he submits them to what is found in the Book, and the Sunnah; for every mujtahid from the scholars, and those who follow him and ascribe themselves to his madhhab, must mention his evidence; and the truth in any matter is one; and the imaams are rewarded for their ijtihaad.
Therefore the justly balanced person makes examination of their speech, and consideration of it a path to acquiring awareness of the different issues, and a means to bring them to mind, and a way to distinguish what is correct from what is incorrect – by means of the evidences which those who use the evidences mention; so that in this way he will become aware of which scholar was most fortunate in having the proof.
So the proofs for this fundamental principle are more than can be enumerated, in the Book of Allaah and in the Sunnah likewise….
And the imaams – rahimahumullaah – did not fall short in clarifying this matter. Rather they forbade that they be followed blindly when the Sunnah becomes clear, because they knew that there were matters of knowledge unknown to them, and that this knowledge could reach others, and this occurs a great deal; and this will not be hidden from one who examines the sayings of the scholars.
Aboo Haneefah – rahimahullaah – said:
“When a hadeeth comes from Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) then it is upon the head and the eyes; and if something comes from the Companions – radiyallaahu `anhum – then upon the head and the eyes; and if something comes from the Taabi`een, then we are men and they were men.”
And he said:
“If I say a saying, and the Book of Allaah contradicts it, then abandon my saying in favour of the Book of Allaah.” It was said: “If the saying of Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) contradicts it?‟ He said: “Abandon my saying for the narration of the Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم). It was said: “If the saying of the Companions contradicts it?‟ He said: “Abandon my saying for the saying of the Companions.”
And ar-Rabee` said: I heard ash-Shaafi`ee – rahimahullaah – say:
“If you find in my book something contrary to the Sunnah of Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم), then take hold of the Sunnah of Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) and leave whatever I said.”
And he said:
“When a hadeeth is authentic with something contrary to my saying, then throw my saying against the wall.”
And Maalik said:
“Everyone is such that some of his sayings are taken and some are left, except for Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم).”
And the like of this has already been mentioned from him, so there is no excuse for a blind-follower (muqallid) after this….”
Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Saalih Al-`Uthaymeen On ‘Taqleed’ (Blindfollowing)
Shaykh Muhammad ibn Saalih al-`Uthaymeen – rahimahullaah – said in “al-Qawlul-Mufeed `alaa Kitaabit-Tawheed‟ (2/152):
“Some people commit a grievous mistake when it is said to them: “Allaah‟s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said‟, he says: “But in the book of so and so there occurs such and such.‟ So it is upon him to fear Allaah, Who said to him in His Book:
And the Day when Allaah will call to them, and say, “What response did you give to the Messengers? [Sooratul-Qasas (28):65]
He did not say: “What response did you give to so and so?‟ As for the author of the book, then if it is known that he loves good, and intends good, then supplication for forgiveness and mercy is made for him if he errs. It is not to be said that he is infallible, and his saying used to contradict the saying of the Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم).”
Translated by Aboo Talhah Daawood ibn Ronald Burbank -rahimahullaah
www.alitisaambissunnah.wordpress.comHello Children,
Can you not run good? Do you wanna learn to do other stuff good to? Then you should come to the Tennin Institute for Children Who Can’t Run Good and Wanna Learn to do other stuff Good Too! Our 4-Click course teaches you everything you need to know to be a professional runner and a professional human being…or clone. You will also learn other super cool skills like drawing, making money, how to use cutlery, and drawing.
At the Tennin Institute, we have a vision. Be you an ant or at least three times bigger, we think that everyone should feel smart and important. That’s why students will take part in our exciting medical research projects like infant cloning and Junebug* and go on amazing field trips to fun places like the Hokusai Grid and the exotic Edge of World resort and spa. That’s right kids, you can learn next to a real live waterfall! Hooray!
Of course, the real star is our running class, the easiest and safest this side of New Angeles filled with puzzles and games to help you achieve your personal educational agenda! Our diverse faculty includes Server Management teacher, and former professional running agent**, Tori Hanzo. We provide the bestest resources, awesomest incentives, and even a little free spending cash to make sure that by Click 4, you’ll be running like a pro!
So, if you have always wanted to learn to make your runs really, really, really, really good looking and impress all of your friends, tell your mommies and daddies to send you to the Tennin Institute for Children Who Can’t Run Good and Wanna Learn to do Other Stuff Good Too!
Children are our future, and here at Tennin, we want to make the future perfect!
*Project participation may vary to roles from researcher to test subject depending on performance. **Tori Hanzo’s appearance will be limited to classes where we know she will be able to impact your education.
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Copyright 2014, Jinteki CorporationCetacean intelligence is the cognitive ability of the order Cetacea of mammals. This order includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins.
Brain size [ edit ]
Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. However, many other factors also affect intelligence, and recent discoveries concerning bird intelligence have called into question the influence of brain size.[1] Since most of the brain is used for maintaining bodily functions, greater ratios of brain to body mass may increase the amount of brain mass available for more complex cognitive tasks.[2][unreliable source?][3] Allometric analysis indicates that in general, mammalian brain size scales at approximately the 2⁄ 3 or 3⁄ 4 exponent of body mass.[4] Comparison of actual brain size with the size expected from allometry provides an encephalization quotient (EQ) that can be used as a more accurate indicator of an animal's intelligence.
Spindle cells (neurons without extensive branching) have been discovered in the brains of the humpback whale, fin whale, sperm whale, killer whale,[16][17] bottlenose dolphins, Risso's dolphins, and beluga whales.[18] Humans, great apes, and elephants, species all well known for their high intelligence, are the only others known to have spindle cells.[19](p242) Spindle neurons appear to play a central role in the development of intelligent behavior. Such a discovery may suggest a convergent evolution of these species.[20]
Brain structure [ edit ]
Elephant brains also show a complexity similar to dolphin brains, and are also more convoluted than that of humans,[21] and with a cortex thicker than that of cetaceans.[22] It is generally agreed that the growth of the neocortex, both absolutely and relative to the rest of the brain, during human evolution, has been responsible for the evolution of human intelligence, however defined. While a complex neocortex usually indicates high intelligence, there are exceptions. For example, the echidna has a highly developed brain, yet is not widely considered very intelligent.[23]
In 2015, it was shown for the first time that a species of dolphin, the long-finned pilot whale, has more neocortical neurons than any mammal studied to date including humans.[24] Unlike terrestrial mammals, dolphin brains contain a paralimbic lobe, which may possibly be used for sensory processing. The dolphin is a voluntary breather, even during sleep, with the result that veterinary anaesthesia of dolphins would result in asphyxiation.[25] All sleeping mammals, including dolphins, experience a stage known as REM sleep.[26] Ridgway reports that EEGs show alternating hemispheric asymmetry in slow waves during sleep, with occasional sleep-like waves from both hemispheres.[27] This result has been interpreted to mean that dolphins sleep only one hemisphere of their brain at a time, possibly to control their voluntary respiration system or to be vigilant for predators. This is also given as explanation for the large size of their brains.[citation needed]
Dolphin brain stem transmission time is faster than that normally found in humans, and is approximately equivalent to the speed in rats.[citation needed] As echo-location is the dolphin's primary sense – analogous to vision in primates – and since sound travels four and a half times faster in water than in air, scientists[who?] speculate that the faster brain stem transmission time, and perhaps the paralimbic lobe as well, assist quicker processing of sound. The dolphin's greater dependence on sound processing is evident in the structure of its brain: its neural area devoted to visual imaging is only about one-tenth that of the human brain, while the area devoted to acoustical imaging is about 10 times as large.[citation needed] Sensory experiments suggest a great degree of cross-modal integration in the processing of shapes between echolocative and visual areas of the brain. Unlike the case of the human brain, the cetacean optic chiasm is completely crossed,[citation needed] and there is behavioral evidence for hemispheric dominance for vision.[citation needed]
Brain evolution [ edit ]
The evolution of encephalization in cetaceans is similar to that in primates.[28] Though the general trend in their evolutionary history increased brain mass, body mass, and encephalization quotient, a few lineages actually underwent decephalization, although the selective pressures that caused this are still under debate.[29] Among cetaceans, Odontoceti tend to have higher encephalization quotients than Mysticeti, which is at least partially due to the fact that Mysticeti have much larger body masses without a compensating increase in brain mass.[30] As far as which selective pressures drove the encephalization (or decephalization) of cetacean brains, current research espouses a few main theories. The most promising suggests that cetacean brain size and complexity increased to support complex social relations.[31][30][29] It could also have been driven by changes in diet, the emergence of echolocation, or an increase in territorial range.[30][29]
Problem-solving ability [ edit ]
Some research shows that dolphins, among other animals, understand concepts such as numerical continuity, though not necessarily counting.[32] Dolphins may be able to discriminate between numbers.[33]
Several researchers observing animals' ability to learn set formation tend to rank dolphins at about the level of elephants in intelligence,[34] and show that dolphins do not surpass other highly intelligent animals in problem solving.[35] A 1982 survey of other studies showed that in the learning of "set formation", dolphins rank highly, but not as high as some other animals.[36]
Behavior [ edit ]
Pod characteristics [ edit ]
Dolphin group sizes vary quite dramatically. River dolphins usually congregate in fairly small groups from 6 to 12 in number or, in some species, singly or in pairs. The individuals in these small groups know and recognize one another. Other species such as the oceanic Pantropical Spotted Dolphin, Common Dolphin and Spinner Dolphin travel in large groups of hundreds of individuals. It is unknown whether every member of the group is acquainted with every other. However, large packs can act as a single cohesive unit – observations show that if an unexpected disturbance, such as a shark approach, occurs from the flank or from beneath the group, the group moves in near-unison to avoid the threat. This means that the dolphins must be aware not only of their near neighbors but also of other individuals nearby – in a similar manner to which humans perform "Audience waves". This is achieved by sight, and possibly also echolocation. One hypothesis proposed by Jerison (1986) is that members of a pod of dolphins are able to share echolocation results with each other to create a better understanding of their surroundings.[37]
Resident orcas living in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, United States live in extremely stable family groups. The basis of this social structure is the matriline, consisting of a mother and her offspring, who travel with her for life. Male orcas never leave their mothers' pods, while female offspring may branch off to form their own matriline if they have many offspring of their own. Males have a particularly strong bond with their mother, and travel with them their entire lives, which can exceed 50 years.
Relationships in the orca population can be discovered through their vocalizations. Matrilines who share a common ancestor from only a few generations back share mostly the same dialect, comprising a pod. Pods who share some calls indicate a common ancestor from many generations back, and make up a clan. The orcas use these dialects to avoid inbreeding. They mate outside the clan, which is determined by the different vocalizations. There is evidence that other species of dolphins may also have dialects.[38][39]
In bottlenose dolphin studies by Wells in Sarasota, Florida, and Smolker in Shark Bay, Australia, females of a community are all linked either directly or through a mutual association in an overall social structure known as fission-fusion. Groups of the strongest association are known as "bands", and their composition can remain stable over years. There is some genetic evidence that band members may be related, but these bands are not necessarily limited to a single matrilineal line. There is no evidence that bands compete with each other. In the same research areas, as well as in Moray Firth, Scotland, males form strong associations of two to three individuals, with a coefficient of association between 70 and 100. These groups of males are known as "alliances", and members often display synchronous behaviors such as respiration, jumping, and breaching. Alliance composition is stable on the order of tens of years, and may provide a benefit for the acquisition of females for mating. The complex social strategies of marine mammals such as bottlenose dolphins, "provide interesting parallels" with the social strategies of elephants and chimpanzees.[40](p519)
Complex play [ edit ]
Dolphins are known to engage in complex play behavior, which includes such things as producing stable underwater toroidal air-core vortex rings or "bubble rings".[41] There are two main methods of bubble ring production: rapid puffing of a burst of air into the water and allowing it to rise to the surface, forming a ring; or swimming repeatedly in a circle and then stopping to inject air into the helical vortex currents thus formed. The dolphin will often then examine its creation visually and with sonar. They also appear to enjoy biting the vortex-rings they have created, so that they burst into many separate normal bubbles and then rise quickly to the surface.[42] Certain whales are also known to produce bubble rings or bubble nets for the purpose of foraging. Many dolphin species also play by riding in waves, whether natural waves near the shoreline in a method akin to human "body-surfing", or within the waves induced by the bow of a moving boat in a behavior known as bow riding.
Cross-species cooperation [ edit ]
There have been instances in captivity of various species of dolphin and porpoise helping and interacting across species, including helping beached whales.[43] Also they have been known to live alongside Resident (fish eating) Orca Whales for limited amounts of time.[citation needed] Dolphins have also been known to aid human swimmers in need, and in at least one instance a distressed dolphin approached human divers seeking assistance.[44]
Creative behavior [ edit ]
Aside from having exhibited the ability to learn complex tricks, dolphins have also demonstrated the ability to produce creative responses. This was studied by Karen Pryor during the mid-1960s at Sea Life Park in Hawaii, and was published as The Creative Porpoise: Training for Novel Behavior in 1969. The two test subjects were two rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis), named Malia (a regular show performer at Sea Life Park) and Hou (a research subject at adjacent Oceanic Institute). The experiment tested when and whether the dolphins would identify that they were being rewarded (with fish) for originality in behavior and was very successful. However, since only two dolphins were involved in the experiment, the study is difficult to generalize.
Starting with the dolphin named Malia, the method of the experiment was to choose a particular behavior exhibited by her each day and reward each display of that behavior throughout the day's session. At the start of each new day Malia would present the prior day's behavior, but only when a new behavior was exhibited was a reward given. All behaviors exhibited were, at least for a time, known behaviors of dolphins. After approximately two weeks Malia apparently exhausted "normal" behaviors and began to repeat performances. This was not rewarded.[45]
According to Pryor, the dolphin became almost despondent. However, at the sixteenth session without novel behavior, the researchers were presented with a flip they had never seen before. This was reinforced.[45] As related by Pryor, after the new display: "instead of offering that again she offered a tail swipe we'd never seen; we reinforced that. She began offering us all kinds of behavior that we hadn't seen in such a mad flurry that finally we could hardly choose what to throw fish at".[45]
The second test subject, Hou, took thirty-three sessions to reach the same stage. On each occasion the experiment was stopped when the variability of dolphin behavior became too complex to make further positive reinforcement meaningful.
The same experiment was repeated with humans, and it took the volunteers about the same length of time to figure out what was being asked of them. After an initial period of frustration or anger, the humans realised they were being rewarded for novel behavior. In dolphins this realisation produced excitement and more and more novel behaviors – in humans it mostly just produced relief.[46]
Captive orcas have displayed responses indicating they get bored with activities. For instance, when Paul Spong worked with the orca Skana, he researched her visual skills. However, after performing favorably in the 72 trials per day, Skana suddenly began consistently getting every answer wrong. Spong concluded that a few fish were not enough motivation. He began playing music, which seemed to provide Skana with much more motivation.[citation needed]
At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, it has also been observed that the resident dolphins seem to show an awareness of the future. The dolphins are trained to keep their own tank clean by retrieving rubbish and bringing it to a keeper, to be rewarded with a fish. However, one dolphin, named Kelly, has apparently learned a way to get more fish, by hoarding the rubbish under a rock at the bottom of the pool and bringing it up one small piece at a time.[46]
As of 1984, scientists have observed wild bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia using a basic tool. When searching for food on the sea floor, many of these dolphins were seen tearing off pieces of sponge and wrapping them around their rostra, presumably to prevent abrasions and facilitate digging.[47]
Communication [ edit ]
Whale song is the sounds made by whales and which is used for different kinds of communication.
Dolphins emit two distinct kinds of acoustic signals, which are called whistles and clicks:
Clicks – quick broadband burst pulses – are used for echolocation, although some lower-frequency broadband vocalizations may serve a non-echolocative purpose such as communication; for example, the pulsed calls of Orcas. Pulses in a click train are emitted at intervals of ≈35–50 milliseconds, and in general these inter-click intervals are slightly greater than the round-trip time of sound to the target.
Whistles – narrow-band frequency modulated (FM) signals – are used for communicative purposes, such as contact calls, the pod-specific dialects of resident Orcas, or the signature whistle of bottlenose dolphins.
There is strong evidence that some specific whistles, called signature whistles, are used by dolphins to identify and/or call each other; dolphins have been observed emitting both other specimens' signature whistles, and their own. A unique signature whistle develops quite early in a dolphin's life, and it appears to be created in an imitation of the signature whistle of the dolphin's mother.[48] Imitation of the signature whistle seems to occur only among the mother and its young, and among befriended adult males.[49]
Xitco reported the ability of dolphins to eavesdrop passively on the active echolocative inspection of an object by another dolphin. Herman calls this effect the "acoustic flashlight" hypothesis, and may be related to findings by both Herman and Xitco on the comprehension of variations on the pointing gesture, including human pointing, dolphin postural pointing, and human gaze, in the sense of a redirection of another individual's attention, an ability which may require theory of mind[citation needed]
The environment where dolphins live makes experiments much more expensive and complicated than for many other species; additionally, the fact that cetaceans can emit and hear sounds (which are believed to be their main means of communication) in a range of frequencies much wider than humans can means that sophisticated equipment, which was scarcely available in the past, is needed to record and analyse them. For example, clicks can contain significant energy in frequencies greater than 110 kHz (for comparison, it is unusual for a human to be able to hear sounds above 20 kHz), requiring that equipment have a sampling rates of at least 220 kHz; MHz-capable hardware is often used.
In addition to the acoustic communication channel, the visual modality is also significant. The contrasting pigmentation of the body may be used, for example with "flashes" of the hypopigmented ventral area of some species, as can the production of bubble streams during signature whistling. Also, much of the synchronous and cooperative behaviors, as described in the Behavior section of this entry, as well as cooperative foraging methods, likely are managed at least partly by visual means.
Experiments have shown that they can learn human sign language and can use whistles for 2-way human-animal communication. Phoenix and Akeakamai, bottlenose dolphins, understood individual words and basic sentences like "touch the frisbee with your tail and then jump over it" (Herman, Richards, & Wolz 1984). Phoenix learned whistles, and Akeakamai learned sign language. Both dolphins understood the significance of the ordering of tasks in a sentence.
A study conducted by Jason Bruck of the University of Chicago showed that bottlenose dolphins can remember whistles of other dolphins they'd lived with after 20 years of separation. Each dolphin has a unique whistle that functions like a name, allowing the marine mammals to keep close social bonds. The new research shows that dolphins have the longest memory yet known in any species other than people.[50][51]
Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Scientific research in this field has suggested that bottlenose dolphins, alongside elephants and great apes, possess self-awareness.[52]
The most widely used test for self-awareness in animals is the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, in which a temporary dye is placed on an animal's body, and the animal is then presented with a mirror.[53]
Some scientists[who?] still disagree with these findings, arguing that the results of these tests are open to human interpretation and susceptible to the Clever Hans effect.[citation needed] This test is much less definitive than when used for primates, because primates can touch the mark or the mirror, while dolphins cannot, making their alleged self-recognition behavior less certain. Critics argue that behaviors that are said to identify self-awareness resemble existing social behaviors, and so researchers could be misinterpreting social responses to another dolphin.[citation needed] The researchers counter-argue that the behaviors shown to evidence self-awareness are very different from normal responses to another dolphin, including paying significantly more attention to another dolphin than towards their mirror image.[citation needed] Whereas apes can merely touch the mark on themselves with their fingers, dolphins show less definitive behavior of self-awareness, twisting and turning themselves to observe the mark.[citation needed]
In 1995, Marten and Psarakos used television to test dolphin self-awareness.[54] They showed dolphins real-time footage of themselves, recorded footage, and another dolphin. They concluded that their evidence suggested self-awareness rather than social behavior. While this particular study has not been repeated since then, dolphins have since passed the mirror test.[55]
Comparative cognition [ edit ]
Research of the comparative cognition of the dolphin is one of the primary methods of the investigation of cetacean intelligence.
Examples of cognitive abilities investigated in the dolphin include concept formation, sensory skills, and the use of mental representation of dolphins. Such research has been ongoing since the late 1970s, and includes the specific topics of: acoustic mimicry, behavioral mimicry (inter- and intra-specific), comprehension of novel sequences in an artificial language (including non-finite state grammars as well as novel anomalous sequences), memory, monitoring of self-behaviors (including reporting on these, as well as avoiding or repeating them), reporting on the presence and absence of objects, object categorization, discrimination and matching (identity matching to sample, delayed matching to sample, arbitrary matching to sample, matching across echolocation and vision, reporting that no identity match exists, etc.), synchronous creative behaviors between two animals, comprehension of symbols for various body parts, comprehension of the pointing gesture and gaze (as made by dolphins or humans), problem solving, echolocative eavesdropping, and more. Some researchers include Louis Herman, Mark Xitco, John Gory, Stan Kuczaj, Adam Pack, and many others.
While these are largely laboratory studies, field studies relating to dolphin and cetacean cognition are also relevant to the issue of intelligence, including those proposing tool use, culture, fission-fusion social structure (including tracking alliances and other cooperative behavior), acoustic behavior (bottlenose dolphin signature whistles, sperm whale clicks, orca pod vocalizations), foraging methods (partial beaching, cooperation with human fishermen, herding fish into a ball, etc.). See: Richard Connor, Hal Whitehead, Peter Tyack, Janet Mann, Randall Wells, Kenneth Norris, B. Wursig, John Ford, Louis Herman, Diana Reiss, Lori Marino, Sam Ridgway, Paul Nachtigall, Eduardo Mercado, Denise Herzing, Whitlow Au.
In contrast to the primates, cetaceans are particularly far-removed from humans in evolutionary time. Therefore, cognitive abilities generally cannot be claimed to derive from a common ancestor, whereas such claims are sometimes made by researchers studying primate cognition. Though cetaceans and humans (in common with all mammals) had a common ancestor in the distant past, it was almost certainly of distinctly inferior cognitive abilities compared to its modern descendants. The early divergence of the human – dolphin ancestry line creates a problem in what cognitive tasks to test for because human/dolphin brains have evolved so differently, with completely different cognitive abilities favoring their very different environments. Therefore, an anthropomorphic problem exists with exactly what cognitive abilities to test, how to test them, as well as the validity of the experimental results because of the completely different evolutionary lineage and environment human and cetaceans have. It was for this reason Dr. John C. Lilly proposed that developing a means of communicating with dolphins is necessary to have any future hope of communicating with an extraterrestrial organism of equal-or-greater intelligence to man, which also would have evolved in a different environment and evolutionary lineage.
Further reading [ edit ]
Dolphin Communication and Cognition: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Denise L. Herzing and Christine M. Johnson, 2015, MIT Press
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Cetacean brain
Popular media
Scientific or academic sources
Self-awareness researchStill, France will have to choose between “the two parties” — Mr. Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement and Mr. Hollande’s Socialists — and which way the angry voters of France turn, from both the far left and far right, will decide the election. There are more right-leaning |
rejection of the correspondence theory of truth – the idea that descriptions simply are true if they correspond with reality and not true if they do not – and with it the fact-interpretation distinction.
This particular claim came out quite clearly in the debates that arose in the early Sixties about the biography of Martin Luther by Erik Erikson. Critics of that book argued that Erickson had liberally invented certain events of Luther’s childhood to fit his psychoanalytic views, even though there was no evidence that these events occurred. One of Erickson’s defenders countered that this criticism was based on the ‘outmoded dualism’ between fact and interpretation. He argued that Erikson could better be seen in the hermeneutical company of Thomas Kuhn, Richard Hanson, Richard Rorty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, all of whom rejected the correspondence theory of truth and the fact-interpretation distinction. The argument is that it has been shown that all observation is theory-laden, and that which we call ‘fact’ has interpretation already packed into it; consequently there are no brute facts, and so it is naïve to criticize Erikson for relying on his imagination to give coherence to his narrative.
This sort of argument obviously has rich possibilities for those who want to reject the skeptical Biblical scholarship. For instance, they can assert that these historians are not objective, as they claim, but have interests and presuppositions that constitute a biasing perspective from within which their assessments and judgments are made. The argument is that the conflict is not between naïve belief and ‘scientific’, interpretation-free history, but between two interpretations. The issue is a hermeneutical one.
Wittgenstein, Truth, and Interpretation
This apologetic approach raises many complicated philosophical issues, but I would like to concentrate on only one of them; namely, the claim that the rejection of the correspondence theory of truth implies rejection of the distinction between facts and interpretations. I would like to show that it is especially wrong to invoke Ludwig Wittgenstein in this regard. Indeed, for those of us who philosophize in a Wittgensteinian mode, it was just his method of analysis that enables us to understand precisely how the fact-interpretation distinction is ‘at home’ in certain contexts.
The first mistake of the new Christian apologists, I would point out, is to assume that core concepts used in scientific discourse such as ‘fact’, ‘theory-laden’, and ‘observation’ mean the same – have the same use – as the same words do in historical inquiry. Perhaps there are affinities of use, but the differences are significant; and is it the business of philosophy to explore these differences of use rather than to simply assume the similarity. It is just this assumption of similarity of use across different spheres of discourse that is the source of intellectual confusion.
The second mistake from a Wittgensteinian perspective, is to assume that because one does not accept the correspondence theory of truth one should counsel historians to give up the language of fact or the fact-interpretation distinction. The reason for this is similar to the objection against the idea that ‘fact’, theory’, and ‘observation’ have the same use in science as history: the problem with the correspondence theory of truth is that this monolithic idea of truth blocks analysis of the various ways the word ‘truth’ actually functions in our various intellectual practices: in newspapers; in police investigation; in law courts; in common-sense affairs; in science laboratories, and in intellectual journals, to mention a few. General theories of truth such as the correspondence theory tend to generate opposing general theories instead of leading to a careful analysis of the different ways ‘truth’ is used in concrete practices.
Consequently, it is confusing to claim that Wittgenstein rejected the fact-interpretation distinction. Rather, he wanted to relieve us from the mental cramps that arise when we are obsessed with the abstract question: ‘Are there any facts apart from interpretation?’ His idea was that a philosopher should analyze the linguistic context – the form of life – in which the words ‘fact’ and ‘interpretation’ were at home, so to speak. He wanted us not to generalize about the fact-interpretation distinction, then, but consider the ways in which these words were employed when our intellects were not ‘idling’. He wanted us to see the work that words like ‘fact’ enable us to do when we’re not forcing them to do work for which they are ill-adapted. One might argue that he wanted us to see in which contexts the word ‘fact’ is appropriate.
This approach is evident in Wittgenstein’s last work On Certainty (1969). There he begins the attempt by his friend G.E. Moore to refute radical skepticism about the existence of an external world by holding up his hand and claiming “I know this is my hand.” Wittgenstein did not try to deal with Moore’s claim by arguing that ‘know’ was a theory-laden concept; nor did he attempt to show that Moore was mistakenly subscribing to the correspondence theory of truth – that Moore’s proposition corresponded with the fact of Moore’s having a hand. Rather, he ingeniously explored in great detail those instances in which ‘I know’ functions quite normally. The result of this analysis is not to destroy an old theory of truth, nor to replace it with a new one. It is, rather, to illuminate our actual practice of using ‘I know’, and to give us a sense of confidence about the way ‘I know’ can discriminately function in certain contexts.
When the issue is put in this fashion, we can understand what a historian wishes to know when he asks Erickson whether he has any evidence for the dubious events he seems to claim happened in Luther’s childhood, just as a judge in a child abuse case might ask for the evidence that the defendant punished the child with a heavy switch. She would not accept the defence lawyer’s reply that the question rests on an outmoded distinction between fact and interpretation. The judge wishes to know – just as the historian wishes to know – whether the claimed event is only an inference, or rather, whether there are trustworthy witnesses or some other evidence that reasonable persons might accept. She wishes to know whether the language of ‘fact’ is appropriate. Similarly, the reader wants to know whether it is a fact that Luther experienced what Erickson claimed that he did; and thus she wants to know what evidence supports this claim, or if there is any way to verify this claim. The trouble with the postmodern defense of Erickson is that it shunts these concrete questions onto a philosophical siding where historical issues are irresolvable.
The reason I can use the courtroom illustration to make this point is that, just as a jury does, historians make their judgments about the past about possibility, impossibility, probability, improbability and certainty against the background of present knowledge. The warrants that lead historians to draw a particular kind of conclusion are rooted in this knowledge. And the language of fact is at home in these contexts. For instance, in paternity cases, the judge wishes to establish whether the child does in fact have the DNA of the defendant, or whether in fact the defendant wrote the plaintiff that he would take financial responsibility for the child. The jury judges the various claims against the background of the knowledge available about DNA and blood relationships, just as it assumes that a letter accepting financial responsibility for a child expresses an author’s intentions. It will not accept the defendant’s claim that the child was conceived miraculously, nor that it is a hermeneutical mistake to regard a written text as expressing authorial intention. The rejection of the concept ‘fact’ in these situations brings the trial to a halt, as does the appeal to hermeneutics.
These are some of the reasons I believe that this particular Christian attempt to avoid dealing with issues of Biblical scholarship is a failure; and, incidentally, why I find it curious that these apologists would want to be found endorsing the atheist Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorism, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” The real issue these apologists face is why they delineate fact and interpretation when reading the newspaper, in courts, and in most historical writing, but reject that distinction when it occurs in Biblical scholarship.
© Prof. Van A. Harvey 2015
Van Harvey is George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies (Emeritus) at Stanford University.Brain’s ability to process consonants in noisy environment may reflect child’s literacy potential.
A quick biological test may be able to identify children who have literacy challenges or learning disabilities long before they learn to read, according to new research from Northwestern University.
The study, published July 14 in PLOS Biology, centers on the child’s ability to decipher speech — specifically consonants — in a chaotic, noisy environment. Preliterate children whose brains inefficiently process speech against a background of noise are more likely than their peers to have trouble with reading and language development when they reach school age, the researchers found.
This newfound link between the brain’s ability to process spoken language in noise and reading skill in pre-readers “provides a biological looking glass into a child’s future literacy,” said study senior author Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory.
“There are excellent interventions we can give to struggling readers during crucial pre-school years, but the earlier the better,” said Kraus, a professor of communication sciences, neurobiology and physiology in the School of Communication. “The challenge has been to identify which children are candidates for these interventions, and now we have discovered a way.”
Noisy environments, such as homes with blaring televisions and wailing children, loud classrooms or urban streetscapes, can disrupt brain mechanisms associated with literacy development in school-age children.
The Northwestern study, which directly measured the brain’s response to sound using electroencephelography (EEG), is one of the first to find the deleterious effect in preliterate children. This suggests that the brain’s ability to process the sounds of consonants in noise is fundamental for language and reading development.
Speech and communication often occur in noisy places, environments that tax the brain. Noise particularly affects the brain’s ability to hear consonants, rather than vowels, because consonants are said very quickly and vowels are acoustically simpler, Kraus said.
“If the brain’s response to sound isn’t optimal, it can’t keep up with the fast, difficult computations required to process in noise,” Kraus said.
“Sound is a powerful, invisible force that is central to human communication. Everyday listening experiences bootstrap language development by cluing children in on which sounds are meaningful. If a child can’t make meaning of these sounds through the background noise, he or she won’t develop the linguistic resources needed when reading instruction begins.”
In the study, EEG wires were placed on children’s scalps; this allowed the researchers to assess how the brain reacted to the sound of the consonants. In the right ear, the young study participants heard the sound ‘da’ superimposed over the babble of six talkers. In the left ear, they heard the soundtrack of the movie of their choice, which was shown to keep them still.
“Every time the brain responds to sound it gives off electricity, so we can capture how the brain pulls speech out of the noise,” Kraus said. “We can see with extreme granularity how well the brain extracts each meaningful detail in speech.”
The researchers captured three different aspects of the brain’s response to sound: the stability with which the circuits were responding; the speed with which the circuits were firing; and the quality with which the circuits represented the timbre of the sound.
Using these three pieces of information, they developed a statistical model to predict children’s performance on key early literacy tests.
In a series of experiments with 112 kids between the ages of 3 and 14, Kraus’ team found that their 30-minute neurophysiological assessment predicts with a very high accuracy how a 3-year-old child will perform on multiple pre-reading tests and how, a year later at age 4, he or she will perform across multiple language skills important for reading.
The model proved its breadth by also accurately predicting reading acumen in school-aged children, in addition to whether they’d been diagnosed with a learning disability.
“The importance of our biological approach is that we can see how the brain makes sense of sound and its impact for literacy, in any child,” Kraus said. “It’s unprecedented to have a uniform biological metric we can apply across ages.”
Other Northwestern co-authors include Travis White-Schwoch, Kali Woodruff Carr, Elaine C. Thompson, Samira Anderson, Trent Nicol, Ann R. Bradlow, and Steven G. Zecker, all of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and department of communication sciences at Northwestern.
The team will continue to follow these children in its “Biotots” project as they progress through school.
About this psychology research
Facts:
Background noise disrupts brain mechanisms involved in literacy development
One of the first studies to establish brain-behavior links in pre-readers
Results provide ‘a biological looking glass into a child’s future literacy’
New way to identify which children are candidates for reading interventions
Funding: The research was funded by the NIH.
Source: Julie Deardorff – Northwestern University
Image Credit: Image credited to Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University
Original Research: Full open access research for “Auditory Processing in Noise: A Preschool Biomarker for Literacy” by NTravis White-Schwoch, Kali Woodruff Carr, Elaine C. Thompson, Samira Anderson, Trent Nicol, Ann R. Bradlow, Steven G. Zecker, and Nina Kraus in PLOS Biology. Published online July 14 2015 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002196
Abstract
Auditory Processing in Noise: A Preschool Biomarker for Literacy
Learning to read is a fundamental developmental milestone, and achieving reading competency has lifelong consequences. Although literacy development proceeds smoothly for many children, a subset struggle with this learning process, creating a need to identify reliable biomarkers of a child’s future literacy that could facilitate early diagnosis and access to crucial early interventions. Neural markers of reading skills have been identified in school-aged children and adults; many pertain to the precision of information processing in noise, but it is unknown whether these markers are present in pre-reading children. Here, in a series of experiments in 112 children (ages 3–14 y), we show brain–behavior relationships between the integrity of the neural coding of speech in noise and phonology. We harness these findings into a predictive model of preliteracy, revealing that a 30-min neurophysiological assessment predicts performance on multiple pre-reading tests and, one year later, predicts preschoolers’ performance across multiple domains of emergent literacy. This same neural coding model predicts literacy and diagnosis of a learning disability in school-aged children. These findings offer new insight into the biological constraints on preliteracy during early childhood, suggesting that neural processing of consonants in noise is fundamental for language and reading development. Pragmatically, these findings open doors to early identification of children at risk for language learning problems; this early identification may in turn facilitate access to early interventions that could prevent a life spent struggling to read.
“Auditory Processing in Noise: A Preschool Biomarker for Literacy” by NTravis White-Schwoch, Kali Woodruff Carr, Elaine C. Thompson, Samira Anderson, Trent Nicol, Ann R. Bradlow, Steven G. Zecker, and Nina Kraus in PLOS Biology. Published online July 14 2015 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002196
Feel free to share this neuroscience news.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Uber's chief executive Travis Kalanick
Between January and March 2015, ride-sharing service Uber put out ads on Craigslist in the hope of attracting new drivers by offering attractive hourly rates of pay.
In Boston, for example, it told potential drivers they would earn $25 an hour.
In truth, fewer than 10% of drivers in the city actually managed to bring in that amount, according to a lawsuit brought by the US Federal Trade Commission.
In separate statements pushed out to the media and posted on its own site, Uber said “the potential income a driver on UberX can make in a year is more than $90,000 in New York and more than $74,000 in San Francisco”.
The FTC said the median amount earned in those cities - for drivers working a 40 hour week - was significantly less ($29,000 and $21,000 less, respectively).
The FTC listed 18 cities across the US where it said Uber was painting a far more lucrative picture than was realistic. In Baltimore, fewer than 20% of drivers earned $16 an hour. Chicago - fewer than 20% earned $21. Minneapolis - 10%, $18. And so on.
'Cost, risk and burden'
On Thursday, Uber agreed to pay $20m to those drivers in order to settle the claim. Quite how it will do that it isn’t yet clear, but the FTC has ordered the company to work with it to find a way.
The company said its settlement didn’t constitute an admission of guilt, disputing the way the FTC calculated its figures.
The company said it has modified the way in which it advertises potential earnings to new recruits - but would not go into further detail.
"We’re pleased to have reached an agreement with the FTC,” a spokeswoman said.
"We’ve made many improvements to the driver experience over the last year and will continue to focus on ensuring that Uber is the best option for anyone looking to earn money on their own schedule.”
Drivers complain, however, that the improvements to the driver experience do not extend to covering the costs of running and maintaining a car.
"The reality of being a ride-sharing driver is a far cry from the rosy picture these apps describe and it is encouraging to see the FTC take them to task and refund drivers,” said Jim Conigliaro from the Independent Drivers Guild.
"Companies like Uber shift cost, risk, and burden onto drivers and taxpayers when they fail to provide the basic benefits so many Americans take for granted, from health insurance to sick leave.
"On top of that, drivers are stuck with the bill for their vehicle, gas, repairs, maintenance, insurance, the list goes on.”
The FTC also criticised Uber over the financing options it gave to drivers interested in leasing a car via the company.
The regulator said drivers were paying an average of $200 per week - higher than first advertised. Money to pay the lease is automatically taken from a driver’s earnings.
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on FacebookAlessandro Petacchi may return from his brief retirement to lead out Cavendish in the Giro d’Italia, but it would not be without controversy.
The 39-year-old sprinter told team Lampre-Merida he needed more family time and felt unable to meet his contractual obligations earlier this month. The team worked with him to allow an early exit and announced his retirement one week ago. He leaves behind 17 years in cycling, 22 Giro and six Tour de France stages. In 2010, he won the Tour’s green jersey as well.
However, it may not be over. When reached yesterday, Petacchi was training.
A spokesman for Cavendish’s Omega Pharma-Quick Step told Cycling Weekly that general manager, Patrick Lefevere is interested in Petacchi. However, they are not talking since the federation’s rules make the situation tricky.
The governing body, the UCI may decide as early as today if such a move is possible.
Riders typically must wait until August 1 to talk and to announce transfers for the coming year. Petacchi’s case is particular as he is now an ex-rider.
Lampre’s press officer told Cycling Weekly that the team acted in good faith. If Petacchi struck a deal with Omega Pharma, it would immediately appeal to the UCI. Besides fast twitch muscles, UCI points and common sense are at stake.
Petacchi failed to respond when Cycling Weekly called him again today for comment.
Lefevere could slot Petacchi into Cavendish’s sprint train for the Giro or at least for the Tour. Cavendish and the train has come under fire after a few hiccups, most notability in Belgium’s Scheldeprijs one-day race on April 3.
“[Cavendish was] very disappointed and angry,” Iljo Keisse told Cycling Weekly regarding the derailed train and near miss to Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano).
“We don’t really have the big train to put him in the best position. We have to work on that.”
To skirt controversy Lefevere may decide to overlook Petacchi and continue to rework Omega Pharma’s existing components. Keisse would act as road captain, delivering the final members into the final three to two kilometres. Cavendish would rely on Matteo Trentin or Gert Steegmans as his final lead-out.
“There’s no point in giving up on 2013 now, I think they are strong enough to get it together,” sport and development manager, Rolf Aldag told Cycling Weekly. “We have to give them the confidence that they can do it and we have to get ourselves out of [this problem].”
Related links
Giro d’Italia 2013: Coverage indexThis Sunday, take the train and rock for human rights.
Since 2005, the volunteer artists of Rock Ed Philippines have been coming together for “Rock the Riles,” an annual celebration of human rights held every Sunday closest to International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10).
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They turn different MRT stations into playgrounds of sorts— where they hold concerts, screen films, engage in storytelling sessions for street kids, as well as poetry and dance performances.
This year, over 80 artists and bands are scheduled to perform at eight simultaneous events in eight MRT stations. “These artists come out and play for free just to join the voice that says human rights must be upheld in all its forms,” says Rock Ed founder Gang Badoy.
Clip this schedule, call your friends, circle your favorite artists, get your MRT card and go.
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MOST READ2014 is half over and before you know it, the New Year will be upon us! Will you have reached the goals that you said you wanted to reach when you said “Happy New Year!” on January 1, 2014? Or, will you be making the same resolutions again when 2015 rolls around, because you “shoulda” kept your commitment to yourself, but you let your resolution fall by the wayside? Perhaps you “woulda” well on your way to reaching your goal, but you put yourself last and let everyone and everything else come first? I think that it something that most people can relate to. Maybe you “coulda” done something differently and if you had, then you wouldn’t be making the same resolutions again, each year.
So, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about themselves here, by saying you should-a, and you could-a, or you would-a…I’m trying to make a point. Those words are synonymous with regret. I’ve said them myself and said them for many years. Even now, I find myself regretting something that I should have done differently, and if I did, I would have had a different outcome. What’s the answer to stopping the “should-a, could-a, would-a” cycle?
Well, one of the first steps is awareness. When I say awareness, I don’t mean simply saying “Oh, yes, this needs to be done.” I mean that we have to be aware that there is something we need to do and then take that even further into why we are not getting it done, or why things are not changing and what we’re allowing into our lives that is preventing us, etc., etc. There are lots of questions to be answered as to the what and why and even more important the how of being aware.
For many, many years, every New Years Eve was greeted with a resolution to change my life and for many years, my life did not change. I tried, or yes, I tried, but I always failed. However, looking back now, with the knowledge that I’ve gained over the past few years, I think to myself that I thought I was trying and perhaps at the time, since I didn’t know any better, I really did try, but now….now, I see that I was only going through the motions of trying, without doing any of the work. I know that I am not alone in this feeling and that the world is filled with people who are trying to change their lives, who are feeling trapped, or stuck in the life that they have now and who feel that there is no way out. I became a Certified Life Coach, because it was something that I needed back then and while I’ve had many positive experiences since becoming aware, I feel that all of my past experiences, all of the struggles with my weight, with bad relationships, attempted suicide, raped in college, abuse and more, give me the unique perspective to help others who are experiencing their own challenges and to help them become more aware and move forward in their lives.
Life isn’t easy, in fact it can be damn hard, but it’s how you look at things and how you react to situations that can make all of the difference in the world. My motto “Change your mind = Change your life” is so very true, because if we change our minds, if we become more aware of why we think the way we do, what causes us to make the decisions we make, or allow the people that we do into our lives and then figure out whether these decisions are beneficial to us in a positive way, or detrimental in a negative way, then we can indeed change our lives.
I could sit here and be bitter and angry about all the things that have happened in the past. I could hold onto the grudges against people who have hurt me, but really…where would that get me? Thoughts like that only keep me tied to the past and don’t allow me to live in the here and now, so that I can move forward. And, they don’t help you either.
So, let’s work together, to make a plan that will allow you to move forward in your life and stop allowing your past to dictate your future. Where you are today, does not have to define who you are tomorrow. I am available in person or via Skype, Facetime, email and even text message. If you have the will, then together we can make the way for it to happen.
I require certain things, one of which is commitment. I need a promise from you that no matter what, you will make a stand for yourself and a commitment to yourself that you are no longer going to put up with what life throws at you and you will no longer allow yourself to be beat up by life. I want a commitment that you will speak to yourself and to me with honesty and integrity. I want your heart to be in it, even if your head isn’t…because if your heart is in it, then together, we can get your head too. We can take those voices in your head, that are telling you that you can’t do it, that you’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or whatever those negative voices are saying and we can change it around. Together…we can make this commitment together. Are you ready for change? Are you willing to give me your commitment and to give it to yourself? Let’s do this…together, I am your partner.
Use the “Contact” button to the left of the screen here and send me a message, include your name, email, phone number and as much information about yourself as you want to. I look forward to hearing from you!
xoxo
RobbynKolkata: Asian Football Confederation general secretary Dato' Windsor made it clear that the simultaneous running of the Indian Super League and I-League this season was just a stop-gap arrangement and the two will be merged together.
The merger will give a big boost to Mohun Bagan and East Bengal's hopes to play in the ISL.
"It's not a question of what we are favouring or not. It's in the AFC Constitution that one country should have one league. We just gave provision (for two leagues) for a transition period. That's all," Windsor told reporters at the Salt Lake Stadium on the sidelines of the England-Brazil FIFA Under-17 World Cup semi-final here.
"There will be one league for sure. For the time being, because of the situation we had to do it (have two leagues this season)," he said.
The ISL and I-League will run simultaneously this season as the All India Football Federation failed to resolve Mohun Bagan and East Bengals refusal to give franchise fee required to be in the ISL.
Windsor further spoke highly of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal's contribution to keep India's football alive.
"We cannot forget their legacies. We are very conscious of their contribution to Indian football. If today football is alive, it's because of these clubs," he said.
A two-member team of FIFA and AFC-UEFA Affairs Committee were here last month to meet the two clubs and prepare a blueprint for Indian football.
"There were some experts here who have prepared the report, which I've not seen yet. On one side, you have the legacy clubs on the other side there are the modern ISL clubs.
"I've to see the report, sit with ISL and discuss what needs to be done. How do we take the best of both for Indian football that should be the focal point rather than talking about merger," the AFC top official said,
AIFF general secretary Kushal Das, who accompanied Windsor, also said there would be one league from next season but Mohun Bagan and East Bengal will have to pay "participation fees".
"There will be one league, we will make all the efforts to have one league from next season. They have to make a choice. They (Mohun Bagan and East Bengal) have to pay up participation fees. It can't be compromised," Das said.
He clarified that this participation fee is different from the 'franchisee fee' amounting to Rs 15 crore which the two clubs refused to pay.
Impressed with the successful organisation of the U-17 World Cup, Windsor said this should be a new beginning for Indian football.
"We have to take this as the base and keep going forward. The football development in Asia is our top priority. There are many countries in Asia who don't even have proper stadium facilities. We have a set of plans in place and it's about taking it forward. It's about developing infrastructure for the betterment of football."
Asked about the venue change in a U-17 World Cup semifinal from Guwahati to Kolkata, he said: "It's unfortunate but we don't have any say on nature."
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Where it all Started
Back in June of 2014 I asked our customers via our Facebook page what they would like us to do to make their friendly local games store better. I say store but 'games venue' is really a more accurate description. We have always, and will always, strive towards being an awesome place to hang out and play games first and a store second, but I digress.
We are nothing without our community, and the community answered us with a lot of really good suggestions. Many of these were incorporated or are in the process of being incorporated into our new and better location. One of them however was a little more complex: a number of people suggested the idea of putting in a bar, or at least for us to obtain a liquor licence. A lot of us like to have a drink or two while we play games and, personally, some of the most fun tournaments and events I have played in have played in have been at a licensed venue.
This is also not the first time the subject had been brought up, often when we have had visitors from interstate for national events I have be told "this is great store, the only thing missing is a bar"
When it came time for us to move, and I was inspecting what would become our new and wonderful premises, I spotted a second empty unit next to it and an idea formed in my head. An idea that was not going to go away.
The idea was simple. What if we were to take the second unit as well. We could put the bar in that everybody wanted, then put a doorway linking this new bar area with our existing games area. Our effective game space would increase, and we would also be able to separate them when needed. The possibilities and opportunities fitted together too well to ignore.
Then and there the idea levelled up to become a solid plan that I was determined to see happen and the concept of 'The Loaded Dice' was born.
What is it?
The Loaded Dice is destined to fulfil two roles:
First, to provide players at selected events or times the choice of an alcoholic beverage to enjoy while they play and relax.
Second, to provide additional space for people to sit down and play games or to just socialise with like minded people.
In a nutshell, its a bar, or pub, or tavern if you prefer. There will be tables, chairs and the bar itself. It will serve beverages, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and a selection of hot and cold foods. There will also be access to the Three D6 gaming area and store during appropriate hours. At these times you will be able to take your drink back to your games table and enjoy a cold one during your game.
The plan is to have nice large tables that you can comfortably sit at to play a board game (your own or one from our library), a session of your favourite Table-top Role Playing Game, or just to quietly chill in a more comfortable setting.
We are not going for the traditional, lots of people, music, and generally loud atmosphere that you might find at other bars. Instead we are going for more of a lounge type feel, a quite place you can sit down to relax or play.
A bar also has a lot of potential as a unique setting or scene for Live Action Role Playing games, and Murder Mystery Parties, and we look forward to hosting such events in this awesome new space. Plans are already afoot for these.
Where is it?
The Loaded Dice will be located at Unit 5, 38 Reed Street North Greenway ACT in Canberra Australia. Right Next Door to Three D6 at Unit 6.
How is it going to work with Three D6?
The Loaded Dice will run both independently and in conjunction with Three D6. The way to think of it is with Three D6 as a store and a games area, and The Loaded Dice adds a Bar that has access to that games area. Sometimes the store will use the games area and The Loaded Dice will do its own thing (or be closed), sometimes The Loaded Dice will use the games area and store will do its own thing (or be closed) and sometimes the whole lot will be as one (or closed)
Under 18's
We value our under 18 customers, they are an important part of the community and there is an obvious consideration that must be made when discussing the addition of a drinking establishment to a game store. This is one of the primary deciding factors behind why The Loaded Dice is separate to Three D6 and the games area. During the times we expect Three D6 to have a significant number of people under the legal drinking age (Our Early FNM for example) The Loaded Dice will be kept separate or closed. Future events in the gaming area will also be classified as over 18's only or all ages, and we intend to run a good mix of events to cater to both groups.
Why Kickstarter?
Honestly, we spent most of our available money setting up Three D6, while we can probably scrape something together ourselves its not going to be anywhere nearly as good without your help.
But it's more than that, The Loaded Dice can only work if the community wants it and if the community is a part of it.
By using Kickstarter we give ourselves the best chance to make The Loaded Dice THE place you want to hang out, and give you a chance to feel like you own a bit of it, which brings us to...
Rewards
Ok so I know this is the reason some of you are here, lets talk rewards briefly.
We are offering you plenty of opportunities to make sure everybody knows that you are responsible for the existence of The Loaded Dice.
At the "Mirror of Recognition" level you can have your name be part of the décor or there are levels where you have the chance to have something in The Loaded Dice named after or for you or your Company/Brand. A little ego stroking or advertising never hurts right?
For those of you who like stuff there are a number of Kickstarter exclusive products on offer. All of these feature not only The Loaded Dice logo but will also feature the clever phrase "I'm Responsible" so everyone knows you were involved. While we may make similar items available in the future only this batch will feature the clever phrase "I'm Responsible". So if you want everyone to know you were responsible, you will need to pledge.
Finally we are offering some unique experiences, like being the first person to order a drink, ever. We really hope you will want to be a part of one of these.
Hopefully we have something for everyone.
Add Ons
All of the product items will also be available as add-ons at any reward level(including themselves if you want more than one).
You can add any number of the following items to any reward tier except for "In The Loop by simply adding the amount shown below. We will send you a survey at the end of the campaign to find out exactly which and how many you are after.
Shot Glass $15
Beer Glass $35
Cap $35
T-Shirt $40
Shipping
While we haven't offered shipping on any of these products because we want you to come pick them up and see the place, however if you want them shipped to you after the Kickstarter, and you are willing to pay the shipping price, we will be more than happy to do so.
Stretch Goals
We have some ideas for extra features and upgrades to make the place even better, and we are always happy to hear your suggestions. Stay tuned for stretch goal announcements as the campaign progresses.
Thank You in Advance
No seriously thank you.
The Space
This is it, we are kind of just using it for storage at the moment
The Space
The plan is to put the doorway somewhere in this region, between the board games library and sink.
Door way zone
Stretch Goal
$34,500 - That Couch in the Corner on Brad's Sketch
Good quality Couches are expensive, lets good a good one
$36,000 - Geek Themed Bar Stools
Star Wars, Marvel, Fantasy Art, better then plain am I right?
Credits
Owners of Three D6 - Brad Scott, Luke Cox, Emma Scott
Video Director - Ash Amin
Special thanks to my Wednesday Night Group for proof reading the wall of text and offering suggestions.Thiruvananthapuram: The transfer the popular Kozhikode district collector has sparked controversy with social media buzzing |
at Taft High School and had not heard of the game's cancelation.
"There wasn't a whole lot we could do to get the word out inside of 24 hours. We tried to update our website, called players and parents, hoped that it would get around by word of mouth," Newberry said.
Moeller removed the game from the basketball schedule on its website sometime before 8 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The game has not yet been rescheduled. Newberry said he's not sure if the game will be rescheduled.
"We're going to have a conversation about this first," he said. "As of right now, I can't really speak to the future."I think it’s pretty well established at this point that I, like many other people in America and around the world, am fat. There’s nothing really special about being fat, of course — so many of us are, to varying degrees. But there’s something about fatness as perceived by American (and many other) cultures — it’s like my big fat body just invites people to make (often rude) comments.
But you, you are not an asshole. I know this because you have told me so. And because you are not an asshole, I feel like I can say these things to you, in the hopes that you will think about them the next time you hang out with a friend who might be fat — or even the next time you interact with a fat person that you don’t know.
You don’t want to be like that friend of mine who went on and on, drunkenly, about how gross it probably would be to have sex with President Taft without realizing that I weigh more than he did when he was President. Right? Right.
I also want to note — most of this stuff doesn’t apply only to thin people with fat friends. Fat people are culturally encouraged to police themselves and other fat people with a quickness. Nor is this an exhaustive list; people are always thinking of new and creative ways to be dicks to other people, after all. As this unintentional series of articles demonstrates, right? (I had no idea people were dicks to people at the vet because it’s the VET!)
1. Please Don’t Tell Me I’m Not Fat.
Listen. I’ve seen myself. In fact, I’ve seen myself naked! In addition, I’ve been to the doctor and been informed in no uncertain, very serious terms that I am fat. So it’s not like my fatness is a surprise.
When I say that I cannot wear something (like the size 14 shirts at Banana Republic, for example), I am not offering commentary on my body or passing value judgment on myself. I’m just saying, hey, the Gap cannot contain the ampleness of my bottom.
So please, y’all. Don’t tell me I’m not fat.
I think what’s going on here is that the person saying, “Oh, you aren’t fat!” is reacting to the negative social messaging about fatness that we’re all soaking in. When a friend says, “Oh, you aren’t fat!” often what they are really saying is, “Oh, you aren’t smelly or lazy or unhealthy (even though there is no way you can know that by looking at a person) or any of those other BAD THINGS that are associated with fat!”
Yes, that would be a mouthful to actually say. And it would not be without its own problems, because it depends on a lot of assumptions about fat people. But I do recognize, my friends, that the intent is good.
Unfortunately, intent is not the end-all, be-all of communication. And when you say I’m not fat, what I really get out of that is a confusing welter of “Does she really have no idea what size my body is?” and “Is she just trying to make me say that I am fatter than her?”
From an identity politics perspective, there’s also the chance that by telling me I am not fat you are denying me part of my lived and experienced identity. You’re essentially calling a fat person a liar about their own body. That’s never cool.
Special note to other big fat fatties: This is also not cool to say to your smaller fat friends. See above, re: identity politics. “Fat” is harder to define when it’s those liminal 12-16 sizes but come on. Let’s not be dicks either.
2. Please Don’t Assume I Hate My Body.
There’s this bonding thing that a lot of women (especially women but I have heard men do it as well) do, often over dinner or some other food-eating event. One woman will start by saying something like, “Oh, well, if I had your arms, I could wear sleeveless.” It’s a compliment, right?
Sort of. It’s a compliment based in a self-denigrating statement. It plays into that thing where women are supposed to compete with each other. And it always makes me feel bad because my awesomeness shouldn’t depend on someone else not being awesome.
Almost inevitably, other women chime in with things they dislike about their own bodies. Then it feels like an evening spent rolling around in self-loathing and if I wanted to do that, I’d go to a Coldplay show or something. (I kid, I kid. Mostly.)
The funny thing is that this is meant to make other people feel better about their bodies but can have the opposite effect. If our bodies are similar, for example, and you’re telling me how gross your thighs are, that’s going to make me wonder a) why I’ve been sitting there content with my thighs when they are obviously so flawed and b) what you think about my thighs that you haven’t been telling me.
You probably haven’t had any thoughts about my thighs; we’re our own worst critics and the things I would pick at about myself are things I wouldn’t even SEE on another person. Even so, body image is not strictly tied to logic.
RELATED: This also means that you shouldn’t assume I am on a diet. Or, for that matter, that I have a preference for any particular food item, like doughnuts.
3. Please Don’t Make Fat Discussion About How Hard It Is For Thin People.
I’ve been doing this fat acceptance thing for a number of years now and one thing that caught me by surprise was how many thin women found comfort in fat acceptance as well. I haven’t been thin since I was 7 years old, so it was one of those, ooooooooh, yeah, that actually makes sense moments as soon as I thought about it.
And I totally empathize with thin women on a lot of things. Because, simply by virtue of being women, our bodies seem open to public scrutiny and commentary at all times and in all ways. It’s pretty freaking gross. But that doesn’t mean that our experiences are the same, especially when it comes to clothes.
Ready to wear has kind of screwed everyone, regardless of size. Clothes that are off the rack probably fit the fit model they were designed to fit but everyone else is likely to have some issues. This is why a lot of people have experienced the “I wear a size x at this store but a size y at this store” phenomenon.
Even clothes that are the same size can have totally different proportions — like the width of the shoulders and the size of the bust or the waist-to-hip ratio.
I’m reasonably sure that kind of thing is frustrating for folks trying on clothes regardless of size.
But, well. Clothes in my size would have to exist for me to try on in the first place for me to experience that.
Again, I think this generally comes from a really positive place — you want your friend to know that you understand how hard it is for them. Except, really, you are demonstrating that you don’t understand. Because there is a profound difference in the experience. I have issues with capitalism as a system but when I’m at the mall, it is incredibly alienating to know that, as far as clothing retailers are concerned, my money doesn’t even exist.
Let your fat friend feel their feelings of hurt and anger, please. They will totally let you feel your feelings a little bit later!
Special note to other big fat fatties: Yes, you have to let them feel their feelings, too. Even your in-between sized friends who, in theory, have twice the options. Remember, they might actually be extra screwed because “women’s” sizing doesn’t fit them at fat stores and juniors doesn’t cut it at straight-sized stores. That’s a harsh burn right there.
Special note to in-between sized people: Please do remember that there are actually different experiences to be found across the size spectrum. A size 16 experiences things that a size 26 will not — but the same is true in reverse. A size 36 has yet another unique set of challenges ahead. And so on.
4. Please Don’t Concern Troll Me.
I am your friend and you care about me — I am so very grateful for that care and affection! I love you, too. And that means I might actually be willing to talk about my health with you. But let’s try to make things about my actual health, if you have an actual concern, instead of my weight.
This means some pretty basic stuff like not asking me if I “really need” that slice of cake. Because friends don’t do that to friends. It means trusting that fat people actually are capable of taking care of themselves. And it also means maybe taking a moment and unpacking what it is that you are really afraid of when you look at my girth, sprawled across the window seat like I am waiting to be painted like the proverbial French girl.
That got away from me a little bit.
If you ask me about my cholesterol, I will totally tell you, my friend! But then I need you to believe me, OK? And if I were dealing with high cholesterol and you said, “Hey, I hear that walking for half an hour a day can help with that, let’s go to the park!” then I would totally be on the trail with you because walking at the park for half an hour with a friend sounds awesome.
5. Please Don’t Tell Me How Fat You Are.
It’s true, things like “fatness” and “bigness” are relative. But if you weigh literally less than half what I do, well. Look at our relative sizes. Maaaaaaybe I am not the best person to complain to about how loathsome and huge you are.
Honestly, if you’re my friend, I don’t want anyone to talk about you like that anyway, including you.
But almost inevitably someone says something like, “Oh, my love handles are repulsive.” And then they pause. And then they follow it up with, “But I don’t mean yours. My body is different from yours.”
While I appreciate that you make the distinction — and, I mean, yeah, this is another big case of that thing where we judge ourselves harshly — it sets off this chain reaction where I end up feeling like a bridge troll. A goat-eating bridge troll who gets a bad rap in fairy tales when it’s the goats that keep tripping across my bridge in the first place.
Honestly, I think this is largely a problem with our cultural discourse. When my thin friends say they feel fat, they sometimes mean they feel a little larger than they did previously — but they often mean they feel bloated and disgusting. Because that is the connotative meaning for “fat” right now. The only way to change that — because my body isn’t going to suddenly not be fat — is to stop using it to mean that.
Special note to all of us: Friends are the ones who get to hear all of the insecurities and fears, usually. But this is one place where we could all stand to be mindful that none of us live in a vacuum — your friend (or that stranger on the subway), regardless of size, is probably getting lots of messages about their body, especially if they are people of color or visibly disabled or wearing “funny” clothes or lots of other things all at the same time. There is no ONE universal experience because we’re all different people in different situations. If we can remember that, maybe we can all be a little less of a dick in ANY situation.
This article originally appeared on xoJane.Capt. Swan fans, prepare to squeal with delight. EW has an exclusive photo that’s likely to be your desktop background for the rest of time.
Yes, do not adjust your computer screen: That’s Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) — and they’re smooching!
“I kind of knew at some point it was coming,” says Morrison of the big kiss, which happens in Once Upon a Time‘s Hook-centric Oct. 27 episode. “I knew from all the way back, when they brought both Michael Raymond-James and Colin O’Donoghue on, that it was always the intention to create some sort of love triangle with the two of them and Emma…having a very legitimate pull between those two men.”
“So I kind of was anticipating something coming — I just wasn’t sure what and I wasn’t sure how,” Morrison continues. “So I definitely thought that it was an excellent moment for them to have an unexpected kiss.”
Adds O’Donoghue: “I think there was always something there between the characters. So it’s definitely something that was in the background, and I’m sure it’s something some of the fans have wanted to see since my first episode.”
But what leads up to this moment? And when they do kiss, does Emma still think that Neal (Raymond-James) is dead? That info can be found in this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly. In the meantime, enjoy this GIF of exclusive shots.
Once Upon a Time‘s next new episode, titled “Nasty Habits,” airs this Sunday on ABC.Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Israel has reacted angrily to the issuing by a British court of an arrest warrant for the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni. The warrant, granted by a London court on Saturday, was revoked on Monday when it was found Ms Livni was not visiting the UK. Ms Livni was foreign minister during Israel's Gaza assault last winter. It is the first time a UK court has issued a warrant for the arrest of a former Israeli minister. Ms Livni said the court had been "abused" by the Palestinian plaintiffs who requested the warrant. "What needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system," she told the BBC. "This is not a suit against Tzipi Livni, this is not a law suit against Israel. This is a lawsuit against any democracy that fights terror." She stood by her decisions during the three-week assault Gaza offensive which began in December last year, she said. Israel's foreign ministry summoned the UK's ambassador to Israel to deliver a rebuke over the warrant. We completely reject this absurdity taking place in Britain
Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the situation was "an absurdity". "We will not accept a situation in which [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendants' chair," Mr Netanyahu said in a statement. "We will not agree to have Israel Defence Force soldiers, who defended the citizens of Israel bravely and ethically against a cruel and criminal enemy, be recognised as war criminals. We completely reject this absurdity taking place in Britain," he said. Pro-Palestinian campaigners have tried several times to have Israeli officials arrested under the principle of universal jurisdiction. 'Cynical act' This allows domestic courts in countries around the world to try war crimes suspects, even if the crime took place outside the country and the suspect is not a citizen.
UN backs Gaza war crimes report Legal row over Gaza report Israel debates response to report Full UN report on Gaza war Israel denies claims by human rights groups and the UN investigator Richard Goldstone that its forces committed war crimes during the operation, which it said was aimed at ending Palestinian rocket fire at its southern towns. The Palestinian militant group Hamas has also been accused of committing war crimes during the conflict. Israel's foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday: "Israel rejects the cynical act taken in a British court," against Ms Livni, now the head of the opposition Kadima party, "at the initiative of extreme elements". It called on the British government to "act against the exploitation of the British legal system against Israel". Addressing a conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Ms Livni did not refer specifically to the arrest attempt. But she said: "Israel must do what is right for Israel, regardless of judgements, statements and arrest warrants. It's the leadership's duty, and I would repeat each and every decision," Israeli media reported. 'Strategic partner' Israel says it fully complies with international law, which it says it interprets in line with other Western countries such as the US and UK. PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO ARREST ISRAELI OFFICIALS Oct 2009: Former military chief Moshe Yaalon cancelled a UK visit because of fears of arrest for alleged war crimes Oct 2009: Filed attempt to raise warrant against Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Court ruled he had diplomatic immunity Sept 2005: Arrest warrant issued for a former head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip Gen Doron Almog. He received warning before disembarking from an aircraft at Heathrow Airport, and flew back to Israel On Monday Ms Livni's office denied the reports that a warrant had been issued and that she had cancelled plans to visit the UK because of fears of arrest. It said a planned trip had been cancelled two weeks earlier because of scheduling problems. The British foreign office said it was "urgently looking into the implications of the case". "The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East, and to be a strategic partner of Israel," it said in a statement. "To do this, Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government." Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed during Israel's Cast Lead operation between 27 December 2008 and 16 January 2009, more than half of them civilians. Israel puts the number of deaths at 1,166 - fewer than 300 of them civilians. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed. The BBC's Tim Franks says that, privately, senior Israeli figures are warning of what they see as an increasing anti-Israeli bent in the British establishment. In turn, our correspondent adds, there is clearly concern among British officials that should further arrest warrants be issued, relations with Israel could be damaged.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionBy Kat Kerlin
How does an acorn know to fall when the other acorns do? What triggers insects, or disease, to suddenly break out over large areas? Why do fruit trees have boom and bust years?
The question of what generates such synchronous, ecological “flash mobs” over long distances has long perplexed population ecologists. Part of the answer has to do with something seemingly unrelated: what makes a magnet a magnet.
A study by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found that the same mathematical model that’s been used to study how magnets work – a well-known concept in physics called the Ising model– can be applied to understanding what causes events to occur at the same time over long distances, despite the absence of an external, disruptive force.
The work, published online April 8 in the journal Nature Communications, provides new ways of measuring synchrony in ecology, which has broader implications for things like extinction and disease.
Animal (and fruit tree) magnetism
What does all of this have to do with the magnet holding up the to-do list on your refrigerator?
Consider the vole. ( I know, cute.)
“They get kicked out of the nest and have a typical distance they travel,” said co-leading author Alan Hastings, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. “But the populations are rising and falling over much longer distances. The effect on the voles is happening much farther than that individual vole travels in his lifetime.”
That effect can be explained by the Ising model of ferromagnetism, according to the study. The authors show how long-range synchronization can arise directly from short-range, local interactions — just as atoms in magnetic materials can align to produce a magnetic field.
“Our paper forges an unexpectedly strong connection between physics and population biology,” said co-leading author Andrew Noble, a UC Davis project scientist. “It’s the discovery of a common framework for understanding seemingly unrelated scientific questions.”
Take, for example, fruit trees. Every few years certain trees bear exceptional amounts of fruit or nuts in between years when they produce almost none in a poorly understood process called masting.
“All the fruit trees have their big year on the same year because of the same model that has to do with getting little magnets lined up at once to create a big-scale magnet,” Hastings explained. “Improving our understanding of models that describe how things go into synchrony over long distances is very important for understanding population dynamics.”
Science mashups
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation’s INSPIRE program, which supports interdisciplinary collaborations between scientific fields that don’t often work together. Coauthor on the paper is Jonathan Machta of the University of Massachussetts- Amherst and the Santa Fe Institute.A North Carolina dad proved himself a modern-day MacGyver after delivering his baby girl in a fast food restaurant parking lot.
Paul Dupree is a trained paramedic and had some experience in delivering babies twice before, but never did he expect to deliver his own outside a Jack in the Box off the highway in Lincoln County last week.
Dupree and his girlfriend were on their way to the hospital when she went into labor and Dupree was forced to spring into action, using his training and some quick thinking to pull off the delivery.
"She told me, ‘I think the head is out,’ and I said, ‘Oh my,’” Dupree told ABC News affiliate WSOC-TV.
The couple had been to the hospital earlier that day after mother Erin Castro began contractions, but were sent home after being told the baby wasn’t ready to be born yet.
They were on their way back to Carolinas Medical Center when the baby decided it definitely was ready.
Dupree quickly pulled over and called 911. After setting the phone on the dashboard, he went to work, listening to the dispatcher’s instructions, while the whole ordeal was captured on audio.
“Is the baby completely out?” the dispatcher is heard asking.
“Yes, I have her in my hands,” Dupree replied.
Without the assistance of any medical gear, Dupree managed to deliver the baby before emergency crew arrived. Even when he discovered that the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, the new dad didn’t hesitate to improvise.
"We had to maneuver her a bit to get the cord untangled and once I got the cord untangled I used my shoestring to tie the cord off,” Dupree said.
The proud new parents say baby Harper Lynn is doing well after her unusual birth, and that they'll be keeping the shoestring as a momento.by Ridge Mahoney @ridgemax, Jan 2, 2011
[MLS] An impasse in negotiations with Columbus has prompted striker Jeff Cunningham, the No. 2 all-time goalscorer in MLS history, to test options overseas.
Agent Jan Schiefloe is finalizing arrangements that will send Cunningham to Danish club Randers and an unspecified Norwegian club next week. He will train with the teams in hope of getting an offer to continue his career overseas. Cunningham -- with 132 goals second only to Jaime Moreno -- entered the Re-Entry Draft in December after netting 11 goals last season for FC Dallas, which declined to pick up his option.
“I am quite surprised that more MLS teams haven't pursued Jeff,” said Schiefloe in an e-mail. “In the last two years, he's scored 28 goals, which is second in MLS after Conor Casey (29). I see many MLS teams looking near and far for a proven goalscorer, and time and time again pay big money for players who don't produce, while Jeff, who is proven over 13 seasons in MLS, can be signed now at a relative bargain.”
Cunningham, 34, passed through Stage 1 of the Re-Entry Draft unclaimed; apparently no team wanted him at the 2011 salary stipulated in his contract (his base salary in 2010 was $220,000 and players normally receive a five percent increase for each option year). The Crew picked him in Stage 2.
In Stage 2, unless a player has agreed with the league on a salary, teams that claim players must negotiate a new deal. Last week, the Crew and Cunningham were said to be far apart in their discussions.
“We made an offer that was rejected and he made a counterproposal that was a bit far-fetched,” Crew technical director Brian Bliss said to the Columbus Dispatch a few days before Christmas. “That was the last conversation we had.”
Like a few of the 11 players selected in Stage 2, Cunningham is being asked to take a hefty cut from his 2010 salary.
If Cunningham and the Crew cannot come to terms, Columbus will retain a right of first refusal for his rights within MLS. He scored 62 goals in 208 games during his first seven MLS seasons (1998-2004) for the Crew, and has also played for Colorado, Real Salt Lake, and Toronto FC as well as FC Dallas.
He scored 33 goals in 66 games after joining Dallas in early August of 2008. He hit his high-water seasonal mark of 17 goals in 2009 to lead the league, a feat he also accomplished in 2006 with 16 for RSL.Time-lapse videos may be a dime a dozen, but there's still something inexplicably powerful about watching a building grow from nonexistence into a full-fledged skyscraper. And when that building is the emotionally fraught One World Trade Centerwhich, at 1,776 feet, is the tallest building in the city as well as the whole Western Hemisphereit's even more striking. Photographer Benjamin Rosamond, whose apartment boasts a pretty amazing view of Downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, raised $1,075 on Kickstarter, mounted a camera outside his living room window, and took upwards of 30,000 photos between February 2011 and July 2014. He winnowed it down to 1,100, and that's what resulted in the two-minute clip above. Watch out for game-changing arena Barclays Center taking shape in the bottom right corner, and Brooklyn's tallest tower, 388 Bridge Street and its slew of rentals, rapidly rising to the left of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank clocktower.
· Benjamin Rosamond Photography [official]
· All One World Trade Center coverage [Curbed]How do you get others to acknowledge your organization’s contributions in the free/open source ecosystem? How do you earn a reputation for using and developing high-quality software? The first step is to set up a simple web page listing your organization’s contributions. In this article I will describe the contribution pages of HP and Cisco and what elements need to be on your organization’s contribution page.
Why Participate and Collaborate with a FOSS Organization?
HP’s goal is to provide clients with high quality business systems that support hundreds of users and they rely on free/open source software to deliver on their promises. This is why they participate in these organizations, so they can guide the development of software and ensure that the quality is high. They provide some funding so that the core developers of their software can focus on improving that software.
Cisco’s goal is to provide the best networking solutions for clients. They too understand that they’re building upon solid foundations to provide these solutions and they contribute back. They realize that it reduces their time-to-market for their products.
Examples of Contribution Pages
HP Open Source
Take a look at the HP Open Source page:
The HP Open Source page lists the free/open source organizations that they participate in and collaborate with to, it lists them with a direct link to the organization’s website. They also list events that they sponsor.
Cisco Open Source
Now take a look at the Cisco Open Source page:
Cisco’s page lists blog posts about their most recent contributions and why they do it:
Cisco collaborates with the open source community to reduce time-to-market for Cisco solutions, and to help partners develop applications designed to enhance the collaborative experience.
Cisco has another page where they list their sponsorships and the free/open source organizations that they participate in and collaborate with. There are a few sentences describing each community/organization and either a specific contribution made by Cisco or why that organization is important to them. They also include direct links to those organizations.
A Template For Your Own Organization’s Contributions Page
Here’s what your organization’s contribution page should include:
Free/open source communities and foundations that your organization participates and collaborates with include direct links to the community or foundation’s home page include a short description, taken from their website or of your own wording highlight any sponsorships and donations made to the community or foundation
Projects that your organization has contributed code or documentation to: a short description of the project a direct link to the project’s home page if there are blog posts about the project on your organization’s blog, include links to them
Conferences and hackathons that have been sponsored a short description of conference (when and where it took place or when it will take place in the future) a direct link to the conference page
If your organization has a developer-oriented blog, include a link to it
If there are blog posts, news articles or press releases from around the web that highlight your contributions, mention them and link directly to them. Mentions in newspapers or popular tech blogs should be listed first
If your organization hosts a wiki, link to it
Don’t worry if your organization has only made a few contributions; every contribution counts when you’re building your brand and reputation for only using the best quality software to deliver products and services to customers and clients.
Do not mention the dollar amount of any donations on the page or how much it cost to sponsor a conference or hackathon. This isn’t necessary and it can tarnish your brand by making it look as if you care more about dollar amounts rather than the real value that the software you use contributes back to your organization. It can also look as if it places the dollar amount above the amount of effort that other developers have put into working on the software.
Examples of Implementing the Template
Example #1: Open Imagination Source Inc.
Let’s take a look at applying this template with an imaginary organization called Open Imagination Source Inc.
Here are the facts (in italics are facts included on their contributions page):
Developed two free/open source software projects of their own that use the Python programming language: CoolSite and AwesomeTool
Based a project on someone else’s work (using the Django web framework) and modified it to meet their needs: CollaboratePlus is based on Collaborate
Sponsored a trip for their developers to attend two conferences in 2012: DjangoCon 2012 and PyCon 2012
They have donated $1,000 to the Python foundation
They have paid $6,577 in license fees for proprietary software
They use Microsoft Office for internal documents
They use wiki software for external technical documentation
They use wiki software for internal technical documentation
They have a developer blog
Here’s how their website would look (excuse how plain it looks, the point is to demonstrate which information is included on their contributions page):
There is no mention of the dollar amount that was donated to the Python foundation, and there is no mention of any proprietary software that is being used.
Notice that they link to the new project, CollaboratePlus, also links to the project it’s based on, Collaborate, and offers a compliment.
They link to their developer blog twice and include some of the blog posts that mention the trips that they sponsored for their developers to take in 2012. There’s no need to highlight the specific conferences in a separate list on the page unless they were sponsoring the conferences.
They do not mention which wiki software they’re using because that’s usually linked to on the wiki itself. They only need to mention that they have public documentation available for their projects and link to the wiki.
Example #2: Imaginary-Mart
Let’s take a look at applying this template with an imaginary chain of retail stores. I’m using retail stores as an example because there may be a lot of free/open source software being relied on in the background that typically isn’t mentioned to the public. The reason for highlighting this is again to demonstrate that the company knows what they’re doing and is relying on the highest quality software to deliver whatever product or service they’re marketing to clients and customers.
Here are the facts for Imaginary-Mart (in italics are facts included on their contributions page):
They use free/open source software for their inventory management system and checkout process in their physical stores and their ecommerce site
They have developed an API for their site and sponsored a hackathon to use that API (this is a very real possibility: Campbell’s Soup for example sponsored a hackathon to use their soup-oriented API!)
The hackathon that they sponsored cost them $10,000 to host and cater
The hackathon took place in London and was reported on by the Guardian newspaper and was featured on the tech news blog TechCrunch
They have not contributed any code to the inventory management system
They have written publicly available documentation for using the checkout software in their physical stores
They do not have a blog
The following picture is how they would implement the template.Notice that not all of the facts are used or only part of them are. For example, the cost of sponsoring the hackathon is only of interest internally to Imaginary-Mart, but blog posts about the event or articles in local news papers highlighting the event are of interest both internally and externally and highlight their contribution.
The last two facts seem contradictory. How can Imaginary-Mart contribute documentation without hosting it themselves on their own website? Typically, most FOSS projects have a wiki or some other location for documentation to be hosted. The links on Imaginary-Mart’s website will be direct links to those pages.President Trump on Monday ripped the CEO of pharmaceutical firm Merck after he announced he is resigning from a White House jobs council, apparently in protest over the administration’s response to the deadly Charlottesville violence.
CEO Kenneth Frazier announced his resignation Monday morning from the American Manufacturing Council, saying:
“America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”
Trump fired back shortly afterward on Twitter.
“Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President's Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” he wrote.
Frazier did not specifically mention Trump’s statements about the deadly Charlottesville, Va., clashes but said he is taking a stand against intolerance as a “matter of personal conscience.” The statement follows bipartisan criticism of the president for not specifically condemning white supremacists on Saturday, after a suspect drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white supremacist rally, killing one.
A White House statement subsequently denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups, and other administration officials have also done so.
Trump is returning to Washington on Monday from his New Jersey golf club, where he has been on vacation.Image caption The Alberta oil sands are the largest petroleum reserve outside of the Middle East
An explosion and fire at the Horizon Oil Sands facility in Canada's Alberta province has injured four workers and forced the site to suspend operations.
The blast at the plant, owned by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, ignited the upgrader, part of the plant that converts bitumen into synthetic crude.
The company said the fire had been isolated and brought under control.
Alberta's oil sands are the largest petroleum reserve outside the Middle East.
Plumes of smoke
Oil production has been halted at Horizon Oil Sands and it is unclear when it will resume, Canadian Natural Resources said in a statement.
The blast, which occurred at 1530 local time (2130GMT) in northern Alberta on Thursday, sent flames and smoke hundreds of metres into the air.
Four workers were injured in the incident, with three sent to hospital, Canadian Natural Resources said.
One of the workers was reportedly treated for second and third-degree burns, with another treated for first-degree burns, the company said, adding that all workers were in stable condition.
Alberta Occupational Health and Safety has sent at least two officers to look for potential safety violations at the facility, the Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.Marco Silva's Watford team lost 3-2 at Everton before the international break, with midfielder Tom Cleverley missing a late penalty
Watford boss Marco Silva said he is unaware of any offer from Everton for him to become their new manager - and added it was for the two clubs' boards to "talk to each other".
The Hornets rejected an approach from their Premier League rivals for 40-year-old Silva earlier this week.
The Portuguese has overseen 12 matches since his summer arrival, steering them to ninth in the Premier League.
"I don't want to talk about Everton. It's not where I work," he said.
"It's a big club, nothing more."
The former Hull City manager said the "most important" thing was Sunday's game against West Ham at Vicarage Road (16:00 GMT).
"It's a normal situation," he said. "I look at this situation like when a player performs well, and [another club] tries to approach the owner or club.
"I have read many things during the week - that I didn't want to talk to anybody; after that I did want to. Who I need to talk with is my owner, my board, my players as well.
"I am committed every day I work for the club."
Asked if there was a chance Sunday's match could be his last as Watford manager, he responded: "Why are you sure about that? Really, I don't know."
David Unsworth has overseen one win and three defeats since Ronald Koeman was sacked
Everton's caretaker boss David Unsworth, meanwhile, says he is "surprised" anyone would rule themselves out of becoming Toffees boss.
Ex-England manager Sam Allardyce this week distanced himself from the vacancy, having previously said he would consider it.
Unsworth, a former Everton defender, will take charge for a fifth game at Crystal Palace on Saturday (15:00 GMT)
"This is an amazing club," he said. No matter how long I'm here I'll give my best."
Everton, who are 15th in the table, have won one of their four games since Koeman was sacked following a 5-2 home defeat by Arsenal on 22 October.
Unsworth, who won the FA Cup with the Toffees in 1995, has made no secret of the fact he would like the job full-time.
"The people who |
to load the server configuration.
With the DevAudit Docker image the command to do a PostgreSQL audit on the Linux host machine looks like:
docker run -it -v /:/hostroot ossindex/devaudit pgsql -c /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/postgresql.conf
We need to run the Docker container with the -it options to enable interactive output and mount our local root as a volume at /hostroot in order for the DevAudit Docker container to get access to the files needed for the audit. Once you set the needed options for the Docker container you can use the same DevAudit program options as the regular command-line version.
Remote auditing a Linux PostgreSQL server over SSH
It’s usually the case that the server your application will be talking to at deployment or test-time or run-time is not the machine you develop your application on. We can use the remote auditing capabilities of DevAudit to audit any machine over the network that runs PostgreSQL server. Here I’ll kick off the audit of a remote Linux PostgreSQL server using the following command-line options to create a SSH audit environment:
-s Specify the IP or host-name of the remote computer to connect to via SSH.
-u Specify the user to connect to the remote computer with.
-k Specify the OpenSSH format private-key file to use to authenticate the user.
-p Specify that we want to use an interactive prompt (with local echo disabled) to enter the pass-phrase for the key file.
> devaudit pgsql -s 173.xxx.xxx.xxx -u richard.foo -k C:\bar.key -p -c /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/postgresql.conf
Password:
_____ _______ __ __ __
| \.-----..--.--.| _ |.--.--..--| ||__|| |_
| -- || -__|| | || || | || _ || || _|
|_____/ |_____| \___/ |___|___||_____||_____||__||____|
v2.1.0.0
07:44:17<01> [HOST] [INFO] Connecting to 173.xxx.xxx.xxx:22...
07:44:18<05> [HOST] [INFO] Host key fingerprint is: ssh-rsa 0b:50:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx.
07:44:19<01> [HOST] [SUCCESS] Connected to 173.xxx.xxx.xxx in 1954 ms.
07:44:19<01> [HOST] [INFO] Using work directory: C:\Users\Allister\AppData\Local\Temp\devaudit-work\149535
2659.80851.
07:44:21<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Auto-detected PostgreSQL server binary at /usr/lib/postgresql/9.5/bin/postg
res.
07:44:21<01> [AUDIT] [INFO] Using PostgreSQL configuration file /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/postgresql.conf.
07:44:21<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Got PostgreSQL server version 9.5.6.
07:44:21<01> [AUDIT] [STATUS] Scanning PostgreSQL packages.
Scanning PostgreSQL packages...
07:44:22<08> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Parsed configuration from /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/postgresql.conf. Success
fully included 0 out of 0 include files. First line parsed 1. Last line parsed: 623. Parsed 1 total config
uration nodes. Parsed 501 total comments.
07:44:23<08> [AUDIT] [INFO] Found PostgreSQL server auto configuration file /var/lib/postgresql/9.5/main/p
ostgresql.auto.conf.
07:44:24<08> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Merged configuration from /var/lib/postgresql/9.5/main/postgresql.auto.conf
.
DevAudit will connect to the remote machine and execute in parallel the required tasks for the PostgreSQL audit. The server binary path is auto-detected and the specified configuration file is read and parsed. Any additional files or configuration tasks required are read and executed to gather as much information on the server as possible for the audit tasks.
07:44:24<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Scanned 1 PostgreSQL packages.
Searching OSS Index for vulnerabilities for 1 packages...
07:44:24<08> [AUDIT] [INFO] Loading default configuration rules for PostgreSQL application.
Searching OSS Index for vulnerabilities for 1 packages...
07:44:24<08> [AUDIT] [INFO] Got 7 default configuration rule(s) for 1 module(s) from postgresql.yml in 77
ms.
Searching OSS Index for vulnerabilities for 1 packages...
07:44:26<06> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Found 87 vulnerabilities for 1 package(s) on OSS Index in 2321 ms.
Evaluating 7 configuration rule(s)...
07:44:26<06> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Evaluated 7 configuration rule(s) in 21 ms.
07:44:27<08> [AUDIT] [INFO] Evaluated 87 vulnerabilities with 0 matches to package version in 515 ms.
DevAudit will audit the versions of the PostgreSQL ‘packages’ or application modules and components it detects against vulnerability data compiled by OSS Index. Currently only the core server binary is registered as a ‘package’ or module/component by DevAudit. PostgreSQL vulnerabilities are only reported against a particular PGSQL server version, rather than against a particular module like pgcrypto. But DevAudit does have the capability to scan for vulnerabilities for specific application modules, plugins, extensions etc. In this case we did not find any indexed vulnerabilities for version 9.5.6 of PGSQL.
There are however 3 findings regarding the PostgreSQL server configuration:
Application Configuration Audit Results
=======================================
3 total vulnerabilities found in PostgreSQL application configuration audit. Total time for audit: 9398 ms
.
[1/1] Module: postgresql. 7 rule(s). 3 rule(s) succeeded. [VULNERABLE]
--[1/7] Rule: Server port is set to default (Port). Result: True.
--Summary:
--By default postgres runs on port 5432. Most attackers will check if a server is listening on port 54
32.
--If you change the port # to something different, others need to know exactly what port to use to access the server.
--Tags:
--STIG/V-72841/PostgreSQL must be configured to prohibit or restrict the use of organization defined f
unctions, ports, protocols, and/or services
--Severity: 1
--Resolution:
--Add a directive like the following to the PGSQL configuration file: port 9122.
--Urls:
--https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
--[2/7] Rule: client_min_messages is set to log or debug. Result: False.
--[3/7] Rule: max_connections is not set. Result: False.
--[4/7] Rule: log_timezone is not set. Result: False.
--[5/7] Rule: Server auditing is not enabled. Result: True.
--Summary:
--Information system auditing capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis.
--Without information about the outcome of events, security personnel cannot make an accurate assessme
nt as to whether an attack was successful or if changes were made to the security state of the system.
--Event outcomes can include indicators of event success or failure and event-specific results (e.g.,
the security state of the information system after the event occurred).
--As such, they also provide a means to measure the impact of an event and help authorized personnel t
o determine the appropriate response.
--Tags:
--STIG/V-72843/PostgreSQL must produce audit records containing sufficient information to establish th
e outcome (success or failure) of the events.
--Severity: 2
--Resolution:
--You must install and configure the pgaudit extension.
--Urls:
--https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
--http://pgaudit.org
--[6/7] Rule: client_min_messages is not set to error. Result: True.
--Summary:
--Any PostgreSQL or associated application providing too much information in error messages on the scr
een or printout risks compromising the data and security of the system.
--The structure and content of error messages need to be carefully considered by the organization and
development team.
--Tags:
--STIG/V-72851/PostgreSQL must provide non-privileged users with error messages that provide informati
on necessary for corrective actions without revealing information that could be exploited by adversaries.
--Severity: 2
--Resolution:
--Set the client_min_messages directive in the PGSQL configuration file to error.
--Urls:
--https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
--https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/runtime-config-logging.html
--[7/7] Rule: Server log files are not mode 0600. Result: False.
We found that:
The PostgreSQL server being audited is configured to run on the default port.
The pgaudit extension is not installed.
The client_min_message configuration file directive is not set to ‘error’.
Each of these findings corresponds to an audit rule in the Rules/postgresql.yml YAML file, and each DevAudit audit rule implements a rule from the PostgreSQL STIG. For example the first rule from the PostgreSQL STIG document looks like:
Group ID (Vulid): V-72841
Group Title: SRG-APP-000142-DB-000094
Rule ID: SV-87493r1_rule
Severity: CAT II
Rule Version (STIG-ID): PGS9-00-000100
Rule Title: PostgreSQL must be configured to prohibit or restrict the use of organization-defined functions, ports, protocols, and/or services, as definedin the PPSM CAL and vulnerability assessments.
...
To support the requirements and principles of least functionality, the application must support the organizational requirements providing only essential capabilities and limiting the use of ports, protocols, and/or services to only those required, authorized, and approved to conduct official business or to address authorized quality of life issues.
Database Management Systems using ports, protocols, and services deemed unsafe are open to attack through those ports, protocols, and services. This can allow unauthorized access to the database and through the database to other components of the information system.
Check Content:
As the database administrator, run the following SQL:
$ psql -c "SHOW port"
If the currently defined port configuration is deemed prohibited, this is a finding.
Fix Text: Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA environment variable. See supplementary content APPENDIX-F for instructions on
configuring PGDATA.
To change the listening port of the database, as the database administrator, change the following setting in postgresql.conf:
$ sudo su - postgres
$ vi $PGDATA/postgresql.conf
Change the port parameter to the desired port.
This is implemented as an audit rule in postgresql.yml as:
- id: 1
title: Server port is set to default (Port)
tags:
- STIG/V-72841/PostgreSQL must be configured to prohibit or restrict the use of organization defined functions, ports, protocols, and/or services
severity: 1
xpathtest: not(boolean(/PGSQL/Values/port)) or boolean(/PGSQL/Values/port='5432')
summary: |
By default postgres runs on port 5432. Most attackers will check if a server is listening on port 5432.
If you change the port # to something different, others need to know exactly what port to use to access the server.
resolution: |
Add a directive like the following to the PGSQL configuration file: port 9122.
urls:
- https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
This audit rule queries the PostgreSQL configuration file(s) to determine if the port configuration directive is either unset or set to the default value.
Implementing PostgreSQL STIG rules as audit rules
DevAudit uses the Alpheus library to parse and query server configuration files. Alpheus creates a representation of the configuration file as an XML document and allows you to query this document using XPATH queries. In addition to understanding the syntax of configuration files Alphues tries to understand the semantics as well for elements like include files. A PostgreSQL configuration file that looks like this:
# -----------------------------
# PostgreSQL configuration file
# -----------------------------
#
# This file consists of lines of the form:
...
# The default values of these variables are driven from the -D command-line
# option or PGDATA environment variable, represented here as ConfigDir.
data_directory = '/var/lib/postgresql/9.5/main' # use data in another directory
# (change requires restart)
hba_file = '/etc/postgresql/9.5/main/pg_hba.conf' # host-based authentication file
# (change requires restart)
...
would be represented as XML that looks like the following
<PGSQL>
<Values File="postgresql.conf">
<Line_1_Comment File="postgresql.conf">
<Value Position="1" Column="2" Line="1" Length="30" File="postgresql.conf"> -----------------------------</Value>
</Line_1_Comment>
...
<hba_file Position="1851" Column="1" Line="43" Length="8" File="postgresql.conf">
<Value Position="1863" Column="13" Line="43" Length="36" File="postgresql.conf">/etc/postgresql/9.5/main/pg_hba.conf</Value>
</hba_file>
<Line_43_Comment File="postgresql.conf">
<Value Position="1902" Column="52" Line="43" Length="31" File="postgresql.conf"> host-based authentication file</Value>
</Line_43_Comment>
<Line_44_Comment File="postgresql.conf">
<Value Position="1940" Column="7" Line="44" Length="26" File="postgresql.conf"> (change requires restart)</Value>
</Line_44_Comment>
<ident_file Position="1967" Column="1" Line="45" Length="10" File="postgresql.conf">
<Value Position="1981" Column="15" Line="45" Length="38" File="postgresql.conf">/etc/postgresql/9.5/main/pg_ident.conf</Value>
Each comment and directive of the configuration file is represented as an XML element with attributes declaring the precise location of the directive or comment in the configuration text file. By representing the configuration file content and structure as XML, Alpheus can perform sophisticated queries on configuration files that go far beyond typical grep searches using regular expressions. Alpheus can also interpret the syntax elements for include files and insert the XML content parsed from any include files found into the root element of the parent document.
In the case of the 1st audit rule, we use an XPATH query to check the complex condition:
Either the port directive does not exist
or
The port directive is set to 5432.
not(boolean(/PGSQL/Values/port)) or boolean(/PGSQL/Values/port='5432')
If this condition is satisfied then DevAudit marks this as a finding. Each audit rule has additional attributes like title, summary, tags that are printed out during the application configuration audit results report.
Currently only about 7 of the STIG rules for PostgreSQL are implemented by DevAudit. We’re currently building out the rule-sets for each supported server audit target and adding the additional auditing capabilities needed (like running SQL queries on the target database server) that will allow full implementation of the rules for each server STIG. You can also add any custom configuration audit rules you need for your PostgreSQL server deployment by appending them to the Rules/postgresql.yml file.
Future DevAudit server auditing capabilities
Currently DevAudit is limited to syntactic analysis of server configuration files. Implementing server auditing requires additional capabilities like:
Execute SQL queries on the target database server to retrieve configuration settings and database metadata and schema information.
Execute shell commands in the target server’s operating environment to retrieve environment variables, file-system permissions and ownership, and other system information.
Eventually DevAudit audit rules will contain tests like the following
%env(PGPORT)='5432' or %sql(SHOW port)='5432'
that will allow full implementation of the server STIG rules.
Remote auditing a Windows PostgreSQL server
We can also the use the remote auditing capabilities of DevAudit to audit Windows machines via WinRM. Here I’ll kick off the audit of a remote Windows PostgreSQL server from another Windows machine using the following command-line options to create a WinRM audit environment:
-w Specify that we want to use the WinRM protocol for auditing.
-s Specify the IP of the Windows computer to connect to.
-u Specify the user to connect to the Windows machine with.
-p Specify the password for the user connecting to the Windows machine.
> devaudit pgsql -w -s 192.168.56.103 -u Administrator -p -r C:\Apps\pgsql -c @postgresql.conf
Password:
_____ _______ __ __ __
| \.-----..--.--.| _ |.--.--..--| ||__|| |_
| -- || -__|| | || || | || _ || || _|
|_____/ |_____| \___/ |___|___||_____||_____||__||____|
v2.1.0.0
05:16:11<01> [HOST] [STATUS] Connecting to Windows host address 192.168.56.103
Connecting to Windows host address 192.168.56.103..
05:16:13<01> [HOST] [SUCCESS] Connected to Windows host address 192.168.56.103. Computer name: WIN-H1LOJM1A4GD. Windows version: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard.
05:16:14<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Auto-detected PostgreSQL server binary at C:\Apps\pgsql\bin\postgres.exe.
05:16:15<01> [AUDIT] [INFO] Using PostgreSQL configuration file C:\Apps\pgsql\postgresql.conf.
05:16:15<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Got PostgreSQL server version 9.1.24.
Scanning PostgreSQL packages...
05:16:16<11> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Parsed configuration from C:\Apps\pgsql\postgresql.conf. Successfully included 0 out of 0 include files. First line parsed 1. Last line parsed: 557. Parsed 1 total configurati
on nodes. Parsed 453 total comments.
...
Application Configuration Audit Results
=======================================
4 total vulnerabilities found in PostgreSQL application configuration audit. Total time for audit: 8370 ms.
[1/1] Module: postgresql. 7 rule(s). 4 rule(s) succeeded. [VULNERABLE]
--[1/7] Rule: Server port is set to default (Port). Result: True.
--Summary:
--By default postgres runs on port 5432. Most attackers will check if a server is listening on port 5432.
--If you change the port # to something different, others need to know exactly what port to use to access the server.
--Tags:
--STIG/V-72841/PostgreSQL must be configured to prohibit or restrict the use of organization defined functions, ports, protocols, and/or services
--Severity: 1
--Resolution:
--Add a directive like the following to the PGSQL configuration file: port 9122.
--Urls:
--https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
--[2/7] Rule: log_timezone is not set. Result: True.
--Summary:
--Time stamps generated by PostgreSQL must include date and time. Time is commonly expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC),
--a modern continuation of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or local time with an offset from UTC.
--Tags:
--STIG/V-72887/PostgreSQL must record time stamps, in audit records and application data, that can be mapped to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, formerly GMT)..
--Severity: 2
--Resolution:
--Set the log_timezone directive in the PGSQL configuration file to the current timezone.
--Urls:
--https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
--[3/7] Rule: Server auditing is not enabled. Result: True.
--Summary:
--Information system auditing capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis.
--Without information about the outcome of events, security personnel cannot make an accurate assessment as to whether an attack was successful or if changes were made to the security state of the syste
m.
--Event outcomes can include indicators of event success or failure and event-specific results (e.g., the security state of the information system after the event occurred).
--As such, they also provide a means to measure the impact of an event and help authorized personnel to determine the appropriate response.
--Tags:
--STIG/V-72843/PostgreSQL must produce audit records containing sufficient information to establish the outcome (success or failure) of the events.
--Severity: 2
--Resolution:
--You must install and configure the pgaudit extension.
--Urls:
--https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-stig/PGSQL-STIG-9.5+.pdf
--http://pgaudit.org
--[4/7] Rule: Server log files are not mode 0600. Result: False.
--[5/7] Rule: max_connections is not set. Result: False.
--[6/7] Rule: client_min_messages is not set to error. Result: True.
...
Here we are auditing a Windows machine at 192.168.56.103 using a PostgreSQL root directory on the remote machine at C:\Apps\pgsql and a configuration file postgresql.conf in the specified root directory. DevAudit detected the PGSQL version as 9.1.24 and found 4 configuration issues that violated the STIG audit rules.
Auditing a PostgreSQL server Docker container
PostgreSQL 9.6 Docker container audit
A common scenario for application deployment is to run as a Docker container. We can create a DevAudit Docker container audit environment by specifying the -i option with the name or id of the running Docker container. Here we connect to a running Docker container named pgsql1. All subsequent DevAudit program options remain the same and the server audit proceeds as usual:
allisterb@ubuntu:~/DevAudit$./devaudit pgsql -i pgsql1 -c /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.conf
_____ _______ __ __ __
| \.-----..--.--.| _ |.--.--..--| ||__|| |_
| -- || -__|| | || || | || _ || || _|
|_____/ |_____| \___/ |___|___||_____||_____||__||____|
v2.1.0.0
08:20:33<01> [HOST] [SUCCESS] Found Docker container with id or name pgsql1.
08:20:33<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Auto-detected PostgreSQL server binary at /usr/lib/postgresql/9.6/bin/postgres.
08:20:33<01> [AUDIT] [INFO] Using PostgreSQL configuration file /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.conf.
08:20:33<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Got PostgreSQL server version 9.6.2.
08:20:33<01> [AUDIT] [STATUS] Scanning PostgreSQL packages.
Scanning PostgreSQL packages...
08:20:35<04> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Parsed configuration from /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.conf. Successfully included 0 out of 0 include files. First line parsed 1. Last line parsed: 524. Parsed 1 total configuration nodes. Parsed 519 total comments.
08:20:35<04> [AUDIT] [INFO] Found PostgreSQL server auto configuration file /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.auto.conf.
08:20:35<04> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Merged configuration from /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.auto.conf.
08:20:35<01> [AUDIT] [SUCCESS] Scanned 1 PostgreSQL packages.
Searching OSS Index for vulnerabilities for 1 packages...
DevAudit can be a great complement to dedicated Docker image security scanning by providing scans for specific application server configuration issues before container deployment. Audit rules aren’t limited to security but can also encompass rules for performance, replication, clustering, server fail-over and so on.
Conclusion
DevAudit can audit the server configuration of PostgreSQL servers in multiple environments against security rules from the DISA PostgreSQL STIG as well as any other source of security and hardening guidelines. We are building out the capabilities of the project to audit an ever increasing number of servers (like MongoDB) as well as the kinds of auditing capabilities available for each server audit. For DBAs, developers, and teams adopting DevOps and DevSecOps, DevAudit can be a great platform for integrating automated security checks as a consistent and well-defined part of the development and deployment process.
LinksSPACE cadet Kanye West wants to perform in a galaxy far, far away with a role in one of the new Star Wars spin-offs.
GETTY RAPPER: Kanye West wants to perform in one if the new Star Wars spin-offs
The rapper, whose big-screen hero is Obi-Wan Kenobi, has told pals his next major artistic move is to become a Hollywood actor. And he is such a fan of the blockbuster sci-fi series he has told bosses at Disney he will take any part – however small – to help launch his career. The studio, which bought the rights from George Lucas for £3.2billion in 2012, has got at least two more films planned in its Star Wars Anthology mini-series, which began with last year’s Rogue One.
GETTY STAR: Kanye told his pals his next move is to become a Hollywood actor
“He’s happy to make a humble start in the hope that any Star Wars part” Kanye West's friend The next one, due for release next year with a cast that includes British Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke and Woody Harrelson, has already started shooting. But the one after that, scheduled for a 2020 release, hasn’t even begun casting and a senior production executive said Kanye could be in with a shout. He told us: “We’re open to all ideas. Nothing is beyond the realms of possibility.”
GETTY SPACE BOY: And he is such a fan of the blockbuster sci-fi series
Kanye is so obsessed with Star Wars he even included a line in his 2005 song Gone: “But if they ever flip sides like Anakin...” It was a reference to the character Anakin Skywalker. He also played a Stormtrooper – with wife Kim Kardashian dressed as Princess Leia – for a skit on a Comedy Central pilot TV show in 2008 that never made it to air.
The most shocking Kanye West quotes There's no denying Kanye West is an extraordinary musician, here is some of his most outrageous quotes to prove it. 1 / 20 Twitter/Getty Kanye West has compared himself to Disney and throws another dig at Taylor Swift
But his real Star Wars hero is Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi, the wise mentor of Luke Skywalker. His character was portrayed by both Ewan McGregor and the late Sir Alec Guinness. A source close to Kanye, 39, revealed: “Quite a few of his fashion designs have been inspired by Star Wars and he’ll often throw a long coat over his shoulders when he goes out that makes it look as if he’s wearing Obi-Wan’s robe.Mely Arellano
@melyarel
No lo hicieron por los premios, en eso ni pensaron. Fue una idea que surgió de puro relajo, nomás por las ganas de hacer una travesura. No imaginaron que esa idea los llevaría a obtener reconocimientos en competencias lo mismo regionales que nacionales, en las que se enfrentaron a instituciones públicas y particulares, y que los empujaría hasta Italia.
Elvis Villa y Oscar Bravo viven en Tehuitzingo, un municipio con 11 mil habitantes localizado en la mixteca poblana, a dos horas en auto de la capital del estado. Estudian el bachillerato en el Colegio de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos del Estado de Puebla (Cecyte) y el 1 de mayo pasado se subieron por primera vez a un avión que atravesó el Océano Atlántico y los condujo a Milán, donde participaron en el concurso “I giovani e le scienze 2013” (Los jóvenes y la ciencia 2013), organizado por la Federazione delle Associazioni Scientifiche e Tecniche.
Dos años antes lo único que querían era apagarle la computadora a su maestra en plena clase. Si simplemente la desconectaban serían descubiertos, tenía que ser a distancia. Pensaron en un control remoto, incluso en usarlo mientras la profesara impartía clases a otro grupo para no ser sospechosos, pero se perdía la señal a los 10 metros. Entonces se les ocurrió que fuera con una llamada de celular, así no importaban la distancia ni el lugar: crearon un hardware que enciende y apaga cualquier aparato eléctrico con una llamada, desde cualquier teléfono móvil en cualquier parte del mundo.
Y ganaron el primer lugar.
Elvis Villa Solano es de la comunidad San Juan de Dios, donde aún viven su mamá, que es ama de casa, y su papá, que es campesino. San Juan de Dios tiene 69 habitantes y está como a media hora de Tehuitzingo. Elvis es el menor de 5 hermanos, no es muy alto, tiene 17 años, es delgado, de ojos pequeños y risa fácil. Está terminando el último semestre del bachillerato. Vive con una tía y aunque ahora ha tenido que hacer una pausa, hasta hace poco trabajaba por las tardes en un taller donde reparan aparatos eléctricos.
Siempre fue un niño inquieto que desarmaba los aparatos para verlos por dentro. De hecho, la idea que los llevó a Italia surge de un proyecto previo que desarrolló en la secundaria.
–Yo utilizaba ese sistema para hacer tronar cuetes remotamente, eso surgió por una idea de estar haciendo maldad. Desde entonces a mí me gustaba eso de los circuitos, soldar. Mi papá tenía un cautín y le dije que pa’ qué servía, nunca me quiso decir, pero me entró la curiosidad de enchufarlo a la luz y al ver que se calentó comencé a leer libros y ahí me mostraba que eso era lo que se llama un cautín de lápiz, que era para soldar. De ahí comencé a leer más, quería saber para qué servían las cosas, por ejemplo un relevador, una resistencia, un diodo.
A partir de esa experiencia, y con la ayuda de su asesor Ismael Zafra Flores, diseñaron un hardware que al instalarlo en cualquier aparato eléctrico permite controlar sus funciones a distancia.
Por ejemplo, a través de una llamada de teléfono móvil se puede encender un coche, una licuadora, una bomba de agua, un modular, las luces de casa o prender el aire acondicionado y manipularlo, subir y bajar la temperatura. También hicieron una aplicación de Java con la que además de prender la computadora mediante una llamada de celular, pueden transferir archivos.
Son las 3 y media de la tarde, el sol muerde, Óscar Bravo Gelacio conduce una camioneta hacia una casa de donde sale música de banda. Cumple 18 años y ha decidido festejar aunque sea martes y al otro día tenga clases. En la batea trae unas mesas que sus amigos se aprestan a bajar mientras él se acerca.
Es alto, moreno y robusto. Todavía no sabe qué quiere estudiar, su duda es grande, va de Veterinaria a alguna Ingeniería donde aprenda a intervenir autos como los que salen en la película Rápidos y furiosos.
–Es mi sueño.
Es el penúltimo de siete hijos. Sus padres son comerciantes y sólo uno de sus hermanos está estudiando la carrera de Derecho en una universidad en la ciudad de Puebla.
Lo único malo del viaje a Milán, dice, es que los llevaron como estudiantes, “no nos dejaron echar nuestro relajo bien”.
Ismael Zafra fue el único profesor que quiso trabajar con Elvis y Óscar en el proyecto que se realiza al final de cada semestre.
–Nadie los quería elegir porque no trabajaban, eran rebeldes, mal hablados, cuando su asesor estaba haciendo los equipos nadie los quería, todos los docentes agarraban a los de 10 o 9, yo me he identificado mucho con los chavos y le dije a su asesor, en forma de relajo, “déjeme a estos demonios, con estos voy a hacer una bomba”, y el mismo asesor me preguntó “¿estás seguro?”.
El proyecto empezó con siete personas pero poco a poco fueron saliéndose hasta quedar sólo dos, que fueron quienes se empeñaron más, aunque sus calificaciones no eran excelentes y tenían problemas para relacionarse con sus compañeros.
Ahora ya todos los saludan y quieren ser sus amigos. Se han vuelto populares.
Dicen que dos cabezas piensan mejor que una: Elvis era más de la práctica y Oscar más de la metodología. Ganaron el concurso de su colegio, luego uno regional de Cecyte’s, después uno nacional de Cecyte’s y el Expo Ciencia regional que organiza el Movimiento Internacional para el Recreo Científico y Técnico (Milset, por sus siglas en francés), y finalmente el Expo Ciencia nacional con el que obtienen el pase al concurso en Milán.
La preparación que requirieron fue más allá de perfeccionar el proyecto. Hubo que ayudarles a mejorar su pronunciación, su postura, su comportamiento.
–Mucho no creían que íbamos a llegar a este nivel. Cuando entramos a concurso eran los chavos más mal vestidos, con la playera por fuera, mal peinados, no higiénicos. Se trabajó mucho con ellos: párate así, hazle así, si tienes nervios haz este ademán, usaban muchas muletillas, palabras que no pronunciaban bien –recuerda Ismael Zafra, también egresado del Cecyte.
La maestra Teresa Luna Barragán, directora del plantel en Tehuitzingo, reconoce que no son los mejores estudiantes y que incluso los maestros apostaban poco por ellos.
–¿Qué promedio tienes?
–8.5 –responde Elvis.
–¿En qué materia no te va bien?
–En Administración. Matemáticas la empleo mucho, la física más, aunque ahí no saco tanto diez.
Cuando se le pregunta a Óscar por sus calificaciones, duda
–Como nueve punto cero.
–¿Sí? –le cuestiona Elvis a punto de reírse.
–¡Ocho!, pero auméntale un punto, ¡va a salir en el periódico!
En el estado hay 17 planteles Cecyte. El de Tehuitzingo funciona desde hace 17 años y tiene 256 estudiantes. En promedio cada año egresan 70 jóvenes, el 30 por ciento continúa su formación universitaria, aunque sólo entre el 15 y el 17 por ciento la concluye. La mayoría de quienes van a la universidad es varón.
Desde 2005 este Cecyte comenzó a posicionar proyectos a nivel internacional, lo ha conseguido en diez ocasiones aunque por falta de recursos sólo ha participado efectivamente en cinco. Esta, sin embargo, es la primera vez que ganan.
El Cecyte es un organismo público descentralizado del gobierno del estado, su presupuesto es otorgado por el estado de Puebla y la Federación. Un docente gana entre 6 mil 500 y 11 mil pesos al mes, menos impuestos y prestaciones.
El futuro para Elvis y Óscar aún es incierto. En teoría la Upaep les ofreció una beca universitaria pero no cubre el 100 por ciento, lo que la deja fuera de sus posibilidades. Ismael, su maestro, confía en que ambos puedan continuar con sus estudios. Han recibido propuestas de otras universidades como los Tecnológicos de Acatlán y de Izúcar de Matamoros, pero hasta ahora no hay nada concreto.
Elvis quiere estudiar Mecatrónica –una carrera que sólo hay en la ciudad de Puebla- y está dispuesto a trabajar para conseguirlo. A Óscar quizás lo apoye su familia, “depende de qué carrera escoja”.
La falta de dinero ha sido un tema constante para ellos desde antes de ganar el concurso. En Milán tenían asegurado el hospedaje y la comida, pero no el avión. Pidieron ayuda del presidente municipal, Jesús Alcaide; de los diputados locales priistas Ernesto Leyva y Filiberto Guevara, y de Martha Erika Alonso. Nadie les hizo caso. Fue a través de pequeñas colectas y del apoyo de la Coordinación Nacional de Cecytes como reunieron el costo de sus pasajes.
Ahora ya con el premio en mano, el Congreso del Estado aprobó darles un |
old is named "Isis" so if ppl don't understand just know I'm with you my daughter came home crying all the time— nancy stennis (@NancyStennis) September 12, 2014
When asked if she’d consider a name change or using her middle name, Martinez was adamant in sticking with Isis.
“People don’t know me as Teresa, they know me as Isis,” she said. “If I do that, then the terrorists win.”
Martinez acknowledged the pain and suffering caused by the jihadist group, but said she doesn’t think the media should be factually incorrect.
“[People named Isis] are collateral damage, and it’s unnecessary. All this could go away if they just went with ISIL,” she said.California Chrome owner Steve Coburn is shown watching his horse workout at Belmont Park prior to the Belmont Stakes. Coburn is upset that his horse was beaten Saturday by a field that was fresher than his and didn't run in all three Triple Crown races. (Photo11: Antony Gruppuso, USA TODAY Sports) Story Highlights Owner thinks Triple Crown means three races
Trainer says horse suffered hoof injury out of the gate
Belmont winner Tonalist won May 10 Peter Pan Stakes
California Chrome to get rest and pasture time before Breeders' Cup run
NEW YORK – Steve Coburn, cowboy hat wearing co-owner of California Chrome, didn't back off one bit Sunday morning in venting his anger over what he again said was a competition format that was unfair to his horse in his unsuccessful try for the first thoroughbred racing Triple Crown in 36 years.
Coburn was just as hot as he was after Saturday's race in which California Chrome finished in a tie for fourth behind fresh-legged winner Tonalist, who had not run in either of the first two legs of the Triple Crown: the May 3 Kentucky Derby and the May 17 Preakness.
STEVE COBURN: Owner goes on rant following race
"You might compare this to a triathlon,' Coburn said in a trackside interview on Good Morning America at Belmont Park.
"You know you've got to swim and you've got to bicycle and you've got to run. … You don't make it to run if you're not going to do the other two.''
CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Cherry-pick races and Triple Crown is extinct
TIM SULLIVAN: Columnist compares owner to bad dinner guest
Trainer Art Sherman said earlier Sunday that California Chrome suffered a right hoof injury when he was stepped on by another horse at the start of the race. But Coburn continued to hone in on the format.
CALIFORNIA CHROME: Horse suffers foot gash during race
California Chrome ran his third Triple Crown race in five weeks. Only two other horses in the 11-horse Belmont field also ran in all three. Ride On Curlin was last and General a Rod was seventh.
Tonalist's previous race was here May 10 when he won the Peter Pan Stakes. He had previously not raced since February.
"It says Triple Crown. You nominate your horse for the Triple Crown. That means three," said Coburn. "Even … the Triple Crown trophy has three points on it. … Those 20 horses that start in the Kentucky Derby should be the only 20 allowed to run in the Preakness and the Belmont for the Triple Crown."
The last three horses to win the Triple Crown – in the 1970s – hardly ran in Belmont fields loaded with horses who'd run all three races.
VIDEO: Why Coburn is right about the Belmont
CLOSE USA TODAY Sports columnist Christine Brennan says Steve Coburn made a valid point on why the Triple Crown is unreasonably elusive.
When Affirmed won the last Triple Crown in 1978 he did it by beating Alydar by 1 1/2 lengths in the Kentucky Derby, a neck in the Preakness and a head in the Belmont Stakes.They were the only two horses to run in all three races.
When Seattle Slew won the 1977 Triple Crown, there were two other horses that ran all three. The Belmont had eight horses.
In 1973 Secretariat defeated Sham in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Then in the Belmont he shook off his rival in a speed duel to win by 31 lengths and Sham faded to fifth. The second, third and fourth place horses in a five-horse race had not run in the Preakness.
Coburn also used another analogy that will draw scrutiny.
"They hold out two (races) and then come back and run one," said Coburn. "That would be like me at 6-2 … playing basketball with a kid in a wheelchair. They haven't done anything with their horses in the Triple Crown … You figure IT out. You ask yourself, 'Would it be fair if I played basketball with a child in a wheel chair?"
Coburn said more of the same in an interview with ESPN. In that interview, he said that if anyone wanted to call him a sore loser they could call him – and he gave out a phone number.
With other media members gathered around, he declined further comment.
"Google it (his remarks)," he told the media.
Sherman, the 77-year-old trainer, was more at ease Sunday morning as he discussed the hoof injury and the disappointment of coming up short in the try for the first Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.
California Chrome started in the No. 2 gate. Sherman said he had a "good chunk" of hide taken off his right, front hoof when he was stepped on at the start of the race by Matterhorn out of the No. 3 gate. There was blood on the back area of California Chrome's hoof as he returned to his barn after the race. The foot was bandaged Sunday.
How much did it affect him in the race?
"Well, it couldn't have helped him any," said Sherman. " … But hey listen, the horse has had like six straight races (six straight previous wins) and had perfect trips. You know sometimes in this game when you do have a bad trip, that's part of it. You know racing luck means a lot."
Sherman added, "He might have been stinging and didn't feel comfortable.''
California Chrome joins the list of a dozen other horses who have won the first two legs since Affirmed and not closed the Triple Crown deal in the Belmont.
Spectacular Bid stepped on a safety pin in his shoe that day of the Belmont in 1979, Big Brown had a cracked hoof going into the Belmont in 2008 and had a shoe displaced during the race. I'll Have Another was scratched the day before the Belmont in 2012 due to a tendon injury.
Sherman said the plan was to run California Chome this fall in the Breeder's Cup, at Santa Anita in his home state of California. The horse was to be flown back to California Sunday with the hoof bandaged and cushioned.
"We can heal that (the hoof) up. It will take me about 2-3 weeks. And then we'll stop on him for about six or seven weeks and give him some pasture. So Chrome is going to need his rest. It's been a tough campaign for him," said Sherman.
"He listen, we'll … fight another day. I'm just happy he's all in one piece," said Sherman. "It was kind of scary. You come back and see a horse bleeding from the foot. … He's never had anything wrong with him. He's been very fortunate.''
Coburn said after the race the others took the "coward's way out" by waiting in the wings to beat California Chrome in the Belmont.
Coburn operates a press for a Nevada firm that makes magnetic strips for credit cards and hotels keys. The other co-owner, Perry Martin, owns a materials testing lab in Sacramento, Calif. They got California Chrome via a $10,000 breeding investment ($8,000 to buy a mare and $2,000 for a stud fee to a stallion).
Sherman on the "coward's way out" remarks by Coburn: "The horses aren't cowards and the people aren't cowards. … I think it was a little out (of context) myself. But, hey, he was at the heat of the moment. And don't forget, he's a fairly new owner. Sometimes the emotions get in front of you. … He hasn't been in the game long and hasn't had any bad luck."
Sherman said he'd prefer the Three Triple Crown races be spread out over more than five weeks. "Your horse needs time to recoup," he said.
What does he think about Coburn's suggestion that only horses who run in the Derby be eligible to compete in the Preakness and Belmont?
"Well, you know, it's hard for me to say that. It's a tradition," said Sherman. " … How many is it? Like 12 (other horses since Affirmed) tried this and had won the two legs of the Triple Crown and can't make the third. So you know it's got to be difficult. Thirty-six years we've been waiting. We might have to wait another 36 years.''
Setbacks aside, California chrome has more than $3.5 million in race winnings. Though Saturday did not produce a Triple Crown, NBC's telecast received the second highest rating in the race's history (overnight rating of 12.9 with a 29 share). The New York Racing Association said it had record betting at the track ($19.1 million) and off the track ($150.2 million). The attendance of 102,199 was third best in Belmont Stakes history.
Chris Kay, NYRA's president and CEO of the New York Racing Assocation, said it was a "record-breaking day of racing.''
But not a day for a Triple Crown.
THIS WEEK AT THE BELMONT PHOTO GALLERY:An orange, gallon bucket sits on the counter at Galaxie Skateshop in Newport, Ky. The sticker covering the donation bucket reads: Help Build A Local Spot. The donations will go toward building and expanding the do-it-yourself skate park that’s fixed under the I-471 bridge. “The park is fully D.I.Y. -- funded mostly through Galaxie Skateshop and other skateboard companies around here and grassroots efforts from the skaters themselves,” said Gary Collins, Galaxie Skateshop owner. A Northern Kentucky University social entrepreneurship class gave the park a $1,000 donation through the Mayerson Student Philanthropy Project, a project that provides NKU classes with funding to donate to local nonprofits. The skatepark under the bridge happened to be one of those granted money in 2015.
The social entrepreneurship class toured the skatepark, where they spoke to local skaters and learned the history behind the park.
“When they visited they wanted to know how impactful it would be,” said Carole Cangioni who taught the class. “They wanted to know how many people are using this and what would be the impact of having a skatepark for the kids to use and get them off the street, prevent them from getting in trouble?
“So they decided to choose the skatepark. They thought it was a very good idea.”
Josh Tunning, a grad student at NKU, Newport resident and community organizer at Brighton Center and friend of Collins, reached out to a group of active community members about the Mayerson Grant.
“They do all this hard work, the least we could do is see if we can give them a little extra money to continue what they’re doing, which is building an awesome skatepark for the community, but also just building a community in general,” said Tunning.
Tunning said giving the skatepark the grant was a no-brainer.
“It’s a cool project and we’re bringing people together, you couldn’t ask for something better than that,” said Tunning.
The sense of community that helped the do-it-yourself skatepark get the grant is also what drives the park.
Colin Lewis, a junior biology major at NKU and Galaxie Skateshop employee, said the skatepark has a feeling of home.
“It’s somewhere you can go all the time and not have to worry about being judged or not worry about anybody kicking you out,” Lewis said.
Over the years Gary Collins has had the opportunity to see skateboarders like Collin Lewis congregate at the skatepark and add numbers to the ever growing skateboarding scene in the area.
“It does a great deal for the skateboard community,” Collins said. “Kids are meeting new friends, meeting other like-minded people. It also brings in a lot of people from out of town.
“Some of them see skating and they're just enamored by it, so it makes them want to skate so that grows the skate scene as well.” People of all ages enjoy what Galaxie offers to the community, including Joey Dobbs (left), Brennan Barton (top right), Matt Schwachter, and John Bailey (both bottom right).
Lewis began skating eight years ago when his mom told him to get outside and do something.
“I love skateboarding because it makes me feel happy, it gives me a sense of accomplishment nothing else ever has in my entire life,” Lewis said. “That euphoria of doing a new trick; it’s just so mind blowing.”
Lewis has seen the skatepark develop over the years, from a box and a quarter pipe to a full blown park.
“Its pretty crazy to watch something progress so much and so many people flock to it, because at first no one really even knew about it,” Lewis said. “That saying, ‘Build it and they will come’, that’s a prime example for sure.”
“Its pretty crazy to watch something progress so much and so many people flock to it, because at first no one really even knew about it,” Lewis said. “That saying, ‘Build it and they will come’, that’s a prime example for sure.”
- Collin Lewis
Lewis also spends a lot of time skating on NKU’s campus, as a mode of transportation between classes and just for enjoyment.
“At NKU there’s a lot of skate spots,” said Lewis. “It basically is a skate park.”
While skateboarding is illegal in a lot of areas, Lewis said he has never had police officers tell him to stop skating on campus.
“Everywhere hates skateboarding,” said Lewis. “You get kicked out of everywhere but, NKU’s pretty nice about skateboarding, they love it.”
NKU may not be telling people to get off of their skateboards, but skateboarding at the university recently became a little more difficult due to the renovations at Founder’s Hall.
A popular skate spot that has been featured in many professional and local videos was recently destroyed due to campus construction. The concrete stairs next to Founder’s have been featured in videos such as Habitat skateboards: Inhabitants, Alien Workshop: Mindfield and Instrument skateboards: Making Noise Vol. 2
While NKU had to remove a favorite skate spot, the skatepark under the bridge is able to expand thanks to the money they’ve received while and offering a welcoming home to skaters.
“It’s definitely brought a lot of people to the Newport scene,” Galaxie Skateshop employee Darius Penick, said about the skatepark under the bridge.
Penick would know -- he frequently skates at that spot.
“I skate there; Seventh street is a straight shot to the bridge, as soon as I get there people there say ‘what’s up’,” said Penick. “Warm up with a couple manuals and shit gets hot, people start coming up, shit gets reckless.”
Matt Schwacher, another Galaxie employee who has been skating for 10 years, said the skatepark under the bridge has given him a place where he knows he’ll be able to shred everyday.
“I know like when I go to the bridge that’s a place that I have for sure to go skate,” said Schwacher. “It’s awesome too because it’s a place that we built. It’s pretty gratifying to go skate at a place that you built with your own hands.”
“It’s awesome too because it’s a place that we built. It’s pretty gratifying to go skate at a place that you built with your own hands.”
- Matt Schwacher
The skatepark was built by the surrounding skateboarding community, people like Schwacher and Collins, by hand.
“When we went to the bridge it was kind of renegade, we went there and started pouring concrete in hopes that it wouldn't be torn down,” said Schwacher.
The group worked on the skatepark without machines or contractors.
“We built it like cavemen pretty much,” Collins said. “When we first started we shaped it out with dirt, built some wooden forms, get some water from the creek, and mix up the concrete.”President Trump’s executive order on free speech and religious liberty, while welcome, is rather weak. It is woefully inadequate in meeting the challenges of our time.
Congress must act, therefore, to address the major threats to religious liberty in the United States today. It must correct the violations that took place during the previous administration, and prevent future administrations from violating the religious liberty rights of Americans.
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Trump’s EO contains three main components. First, it contains general language about the importance of religious liberty, saying the executive branch “will honor and enforce” existing laws and instructing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to “issue guidance” on existing law.
Second, it instructs the Department of the Treasury to be lenient in the enforcement of the Johnson Amendment—a law limiting the political activities of 501c3 organizations—as applied to religious organizations.
And third, it instructs the secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) to “consider issuing amended regulations” to “address conscience-based objections” to the HHS contraception mandate.
So why is it weak? The first component simply reiterates what already exists — the federal government should be honoring and enforcing our religious liberty laws anyway. On the second, legislation—such as the Free Speech Fairness Act—is required to actually address the Johnson Amendment, which doesn't concern the most pressing religious liberties facing Americans. And on the third, the EO merely tells the agencies to “consider” new regulations, but the Supreme Court has already unanimously instructed the federal government to resolve the case of Little Sisters of the Poor and other HHS mandate cases.
Much more is needed. Congress should give President Trump the opportunity to sign robust religious liberty protections. Lawmakers must take the lead not just on these three issues, but on the most pressing religious liberty challenges of our day.
Congress can start by passing the Russell Amendment, the Conscience Protection Act, and the First Amendment Defense Act.
The Russell Amendment protects the abilities of religious organizations to make staffing decisions in keeping with their religious identity and mission. It provides protections and exemptions consistent with the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act to all religious organizations that contract with the federal government or receive grants.
The Conscience Protection Act creates a private right of action that allows people to sue in federal court if they believe there has been a violation of the Weldon Amendment, which prevents federal, state and local governments that receive certain federal funds from discriminating against health care entities that decline to “provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.” This would address unlawful policies in California and New York that force all health care plans to cover abortion.
The First Amendment Defense Act prevents federal agencies from discriminating against individuals or institutions for following their convictions about marriage as a man-woman union by revoking their non-profit tax status, or denying them government grants, contracts, accreditation or licenses.
President Trump promised to sign into law both the Conscience Protection Act and the First Amendment Defense Act. Congress should send them to his desk.
These protections would take nothing away from anyone. They simply would ensure that the public square remains open to all religious voices, even when those voices diverge from the government’s view on contested questions. They would protect diversity, pluralism and tolerance. They are a license to participate.
As I explain in my new book from Oxford University Press, “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination,” religious liberty is a birthright of all Americans. And yet over recent years, Americans have seen their religious liberty rights under assault as never before.
Congress must act so that all Americans may seek out and serve God and their neighbors according to their own convictions, not the government’s.
All Americans should remain free to worship God, serve the poor, educate the next generation, and run a business, all in accordance with their religious beliefs—whatever those religious beliefs happen to be. We should all be subject to the same legal standard: Government can only substantially burden the free exercise of religion if it is acting to advance a compelling government interest pursued in the least restrictive way possible.
Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and co-author of the new book “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.When was the last presidential race in which the two leading candidates for a major party’s nomination aggressively competed over who has the best plan to address climate change? Oh, right, never.
But 2016 is a new era. This week, the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns talked smack to each other on social media, fighting for the hearts of climate hawks.
It started on Wednesday, when Sanders — who last month released a very ambitious, but legislatively focused, climate plan — challenged Clinton to detail her own plans.
Over the last few months, Clinton has reacted to the candidacies of Sanders and fellow climate hawk Martin O’Malley, as well as grassroots activist pressure, by moving left on a couple of key climate issues. After years of avoiding taking a position on the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, Clinton came out against it shortly before President Obama rejected it. She also took a stance against Arctic drilling and released a plan with high targets for renewable energy generation.
But Clinton has not laid out a comprehensive agenda to cut down on carbon pollution. She hasn’t called for a carbon-pricing system, like Sanders’ carbon tax proposal. It isn’t clear how she would reach her clean energy goals. And she has adamantly refused to join Sanders in calling for a full ban on fossil fuel leasing on federal land. With Obama having just put a moratorium on new coal leasing on public land, that ups the pressure on Clinton to clarify what exactly she would do on fossil fuel leasing. So far, she has only vaguely said she would charge more than the current below-market rates for federal fossil fuel leases.
So the Sanders campaign issued a statement bragging about his climate agenda and calling on Clinton to match it. It ended with a list of top items from Sanders’ agenda that Clinton hasn’t taken a stance on, asking if she will make the same commitments:
With only 12 days to go before the Iowa caucuses, … it remains unclear whether Hillary Clinton will tell voters what she would do to address climate change. … Does Secretary Clinton oppose the Bakken crude oil pipeline that cuts through Iowa and three other states? What’s her position on the Northeast Direct pipeline in New Hampshire? Will she support a carbon tax? Will she continue President Obama’s moratorium on all new coal leases on public land? Will she commit to banning fossil fuels extraction on public lands? Does she oppose offshore drilling? Fracking? We just don’t know. Where is Secretary Clinton’s climate plan?
Clinton campaign chair John Podesta tweeted a snappy rebuttal:
That tweet pointed to a post he had published on Medium. “[T]he Sanders campaign asked where our climate plan was. I guess they didn’t look too hard,” Podesta began. He went on to highlight Clinton’s comments throughout the campaign on the importance of combatting climate change. He also ran through the promises she has already made, such as committing to fully implement Obama’s Clean Power Plan to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants. “And she’s nowhere near done yet,” Podesta concluded.
He ended with this zinger: “While the Sanders campaign pores over those, I suggest that they explain how they plan to back out of the international climate deal that President Obama reached with the rest of the world in Paris. After all, Senator Sanders did come out against it.”
Although Podesta did the best he could with the material he had, it’s clear that Sanders has the better of this argument. Coming out against Keystone right before Obama rejected it and promising to complete implementation of your predecessor’s plans isn’t much of a bold new climate agenda for your own presidency. The Sanders campaign was clear about the policy questions they want Clinton to address. Podesta’s answer is “she’s nowhere near done yet.” Presumably, that means she’s eventually going to give a lot more specifics. But when? After she’s won the primaries and is pivoting to the center for the general election?
As for Sanders coming out against the Paris Agreement, it’s a clever kicker. As the Paris negotiations were wrapping up last month, Sanders said the deal “goes nowhere near far enough.” It’s a legitimate viewpoint that Sanders’ comments are unmoored from political reality and he’s letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. But Sanders is also right: The deal doesn’t go far enough on emissions cuts and falls even shorter on climate justice. The important question is whether, as president, Sanders would be pragmatic enough to accept the best deal he could get, as Obama did. Rather than just trying to use Sanders’ Paris comments as a gotcha, the Clinton camp should call on Sanders to clarify whether he would have signed the Paris deal if he were president, and how exactly he would get stronger terms when countries come back to negotiate again in 2020.
The Sanders camp hit back on Twitter, spelling out their unanswered questions once more:
Whether Clinton will commit to policies like banning offshore drilling to head off Sanders’ challenge remains to be seen. But Sanders, Clinton, and O’Malley are all actively competing to be the strongest on climate change. It’s a noticeable shift from years past when climate change was considered too low of a priority to become a policy battleground the way, for example, Obama and Clinton’s competing health-care reform plans were in 2008. This time around, the candidates are convinced that the Democratic base is fired up about climate change and looking for real vision.IOWA CITY — Former Iowa All-American linebacker Pat Angerer retired from the NFL on Tuesday after four seasons.
Angerer, 27, guided Iowa to the 2010 Orange Bowl and a No. 7 ranking. The Indianapolis Colts drafted Angerer in the second round of the 2010 draft. Angerer played in 54 games over four years in Indianapolis and started 39. He signed with Atlanta this off-season but did not make the roster.
In 2011, Angerer ranked fourth in the NFL in tackles with 148. Injuries prevented Angerer from continuing his career.
“All I ever wanted to do was play for Bettendorf and that gave me the chance to be a Hawk,” Angerer wrote in a statement on Twitter. “Then, (all) I ever wanted to do was step on the field in Kinnick and that changed my life. I want to walk away while I’m still able to give my wife and kids the man they deserve. I have given this sport all I got. It wouldn’t be fair to the game, the team, my family and my name to continue along this path any longer. It’s time to get healthy.
“I’ve learned so much from so many great men along the way. I’m proud I was able to get a degree from a prestigious college and make a living playing a kids game. I had a lot of fun and I’ve been extremely fortunate. I’m excited for whatever the future entails. Thank you all for having my back.”
Injuries and illness nearly forced Angerer to quit at Iowa early in his career, but he stuck with it and became the team’s starting middle linebacker in 2008. He was named first-team all-Big Ten as a senior in 2009.
“He obviously stayed on and became one of our best leaders ever,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “I just feel badly he couldn’t stay healthy as a pro because he is a tremendous football player.
“Two years ago he came home on a Sunday night and I think he had picked off (Peyton) Manning the previous week. Was that last year? But late Sunday night or Monday night, you know, and I think he was on our sideline the next weekend.”
l Comments: (319) 339-3169; scott.dochterman@thegazette.comPsychic powers. Many scientists are split on whether these exist or not. Some claim that they can move things solely with brain power; some say they can see the future, and some claim they can read minds.
Personally, I am not sure whether these exist or not, so today I decided I’m going to put it to the test, and YOU, dear readers, are going to be the test subject.
I will present to you three letters and you will have to guess what I am thinking. Each will have a link that will lead you to another post that will tell you if you are right or wrong. It is your task to find the link that I have chosen.
“Are you going to give us a hint?” you might ask. Nope. No hints. This is a test of psychic ability not problem solving, so hints would not help. Now let’s see if you can guess which link leads to the right place?
Links back to the source:
Awesome Links:December is a crowded month for pro wrestling in New York City. Ring of Honor has their annual Final Battle at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Evolve and local promotion House of Glory both have major shows, WWE has its annual Christmas week event at Madison Square Garden, and so on. The weirdest event of New York’s most overstuffed wrestling month stands alone, though.
That would be Death Match 7, which is part wrestling card and part concert, and which was held at the dive bar Tender Trap in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on Wednesday night. If you’re trying to picture what such an event might look like, start here: There was no ring. Both matches took place in the venue’s concert space, surrounded by fans. As the name indicates, this is part of an ongoing series of “death matches”—blood and weapons in wrestling parlance—featuring local wrestler Casanova Valentine, who doubles as the promoter. Wednesday’s edition increased attention over the past shows, though, for two specific reasons:
Valentine was facing Matt Tremont, who’s widely considered the best American wrestler in the death match style and who recently lived his dream of wrestling Atsushi Onita, who basically invented the style.
For the first time, there was a preliminary match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Chuck Taylor. Both are highly in-demand independent wrestlers and work for New Japan Pro Wrestling as well; Taylor had literally just gotten back from that promotion’s year-end tag team tournament.
Valentine’s previous events drew plenty of local wrestling fans, but were still received as more of an offbeat hipster show. This one, though, was more clearly aimed at hardcore fans of independent wrestling. “You gotta understand that this all came about as a happy accident,” Valentine told Deadspin. “The first show was just an art show I was doing based on famous dead wrestlers. I hadn’t wrestled in the indies in over a year and thought it would be an interesting performance art piece to wrestle inside the venue/art space. I didn’t know it’d get to the level it’s at.”
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Wednesday’s experiment was, if nothing else, a curiosity: Even if you know what the main event will look like, how the hell are Taylor and Sabre going to have a match in that setting? Sabre’s style is rooted in mat wrestling, and it seemed unlikely that they would be exchanging wrist locks on the floor of a Brooklyn dive. Some fans expected a comedy match, given Taylor’s experience in that subgenre and the degree of jetlag that he was likely battling. The result was not really what anyone was expecting.
Sabre opened by yelling out “FUCK ROY MOORE!” That led to a chant in kind, with Taylor lamenting that it made him look like a Moore supporter. And then the two locked up and had a professional wrestling match.
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Both wrestlers’ skill as live performers was readily apparent, and they maximized everything they did in a room so crowded that most fans could only see bits and pieces of the bout. After a few minutes, the two made their way out into the bar proper, where Taylor took a drink and Sabre eventually tied him up in an arm bar...on the bar. This bit of violent wordplay was something he made sure to yell out in his British accent. Eventually, they made it back into the performance space, there was a dive off the stage, then some stuff I couldn’t see, and then the match ended somehow. For safety reasons and thanks in part to the bigger than usual turnout, the Tremont-Valentine main event stayed centered within about a 15-20 square foot radius as they bludgeoned each other in Valentine’s usual bloodbath.
“For the first time it was a problem that I had too good of a turn out,” Valentine said. “It’s fairly obvious getting huge international pro wrestlers like Zack Sabre Jr. and Chuck Taylor in such an odd, unconventional show caught a lot of people’s interest.” This was indeed obvious, and in more ways than one. The show, which was advertised entirely on social media and had no advance ticket sales*, was the talk of “Wrestling Twitter” for the night, thanks in part to how many fans/writers with followings were in the spot and tweeting about it. Those who weren’t in attendance were tweeting about it, too—mostly about how much fun everyone seemed to be having and expressing frustration that they couldn’t attend.
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And somehow, despite large portions of the room being unable to see anything much of the time, it really was that fun. Many of the best things about going to wrestling shows were present and accounted for—due to the nonexistent sightlines, most people in the crowd had to let the noises of the match trigger their reactions, but there was plenty of cheering, booing, and chanting nonetheless. If/when you could see, it was even better. It all makes sense: As events from promotions like Beyond Wrestling and Germany’s Westside Xtreme Wrestling usually show, having fans as close to the action as possible (in those two groups, fans are literally leaning against the ring) makes for a better, more lively atmosphere. Even those promotions’ more sparsely attended shows have the decibel level of a much bigger event. The same thing happened here.
That kind of thing can’t normally happen in New York, though. Pro wrestling is regulated by the state athletic commission, albeit in more limited fashion than in the past—today the commission only having power over shows and promoters, not wrestlers. The commission’s bylaws have long required barricades separating fans from the immediate ringside area, which has to be covered in padded mats. If you’re wondering how that reflects on Casanova Valentine’s shows, he has an answer. “I’m honestly not worried about it,” he explained. “I don’t even advertise these as wrestling shows. The idea that pro wrestling is subject to an athletic commission is also just a strange idea to me.”
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It’s easy to see his point, but whether that explanation would actually past muster if someone pushed the issue remains to be seen. According to Section 213.2 of the updated rules put in place this year, “professional wrestling” is defined as “an activity in which participants struggle hand-in-hand primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators and which does not comprise a bona fide athletic contest or competition.” However, the rules do not distinguish how this is different from, say, actors doing a fight scene in a play, which helps explain why Valentine is confident even if his theory is as yet completely untested.
For now, though, he has other concerns. “If I book more guys with the same type of drawing power, I should probably switch venues.”
*CORRECTION: Due to a typographical error, this originally said that the event had advance ticket sales. It did not, so we fixed it.Skinny jeans have been ubiquitous for a decade, worn by everyone from pop stars to politicians. So what is the secret of their success?
Once you start seeing skinny jeans, it's pretty hard to stop. And the more you see of them, the clearer this becomes: the jeans might be narrow, but it's a broad church living in them. Sloanes like them high-waisted, apparently having ironed the legs; emos wear them flatfooted and belted. Hipsters roll the ankles and prefer an imprecise crotch; skaters like them with sneakers and a snapback. You can play this game on almost any street in Britain. If there are people, there will be skinny jeans. They are as much a part of street furniture as lampposts – but narrower.
Cheryl Cole. Photograph: Most Wanted/Rex Features
How did skinny jeans come to hold us in such close grip? For all their bad press about being only for skinny people (admittedly, their name has not helped with this), skinny jeans are in fact benignly elastic and surprisingly democratic, stretching comfortably to include all shapes of bottom and all social groups. They clothe the entire cultural spectrum, up to and including the next queen of England; all kinds of sexy, from Russell Brand to Nigella Lawson; and every musical genre from Lil Wayne through Justin Bieber and Girls Aloud to BBC2's chorister-in-chief, Gareth Malone. (The Lil Wayne end of that spectrum so outraged hiphop artist DMX that last year he gave an interview from prison in which he railed against them as "baby clothes".)They are daytime and night-time, everyday primetime, from Mel and Sue on The Great British Bake Off through Jewish Mums of the Year and Kevin McCloud to Fiona Bruce on Antiques Roadshow.
Samantha Cameron in skinny jeans, with David at the Conservative party conference. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
They have become the first choice for first women, as testified by Samantha Cameron at the Conservative party conference last autumn and Michelle Obama. But they also clothe a good deal of the Occupy movement, not to mention Pussy Riot; there are pictures of Syrian rebels in skinny jeans. In Britain, mums on the school run wear them; so do their children at weekends. There is no lower age limit, just as DMX said: at Gap the smallest size of skinny is 0 months. Things do tail off at the other end of the spectrum, although "tailing off" is probably not how Ronnie Wood, 65, Karl Lagerfeld, 79, and former Conservative MP Teresa Gorman, 81 – all skinny jeans wearers – would see themselves.
"The punk revival has to have been the beginning of it," says Jane Shepherdson, the chief executive of Whistles, which lists 14 styles of denim on its website, all of them skinny. "I was a big Clash fan. That's when I wore them the first |
or support they'd provided to the British Crown during the war just ended. ^ [1] Multiple tribes fell during the many decades of near continual war, including five culturally related Erie, Werno,
In the next 7–8 decades, many remnants of these tribes drifted to the nearly empty lands of present-day western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio where surviving groups joined with bands of [1] During the so called Beaver Wars, internecine wars for territory and displacement, unusual in character theretofore in Indian cultures, developed as Amerindian tribes realized they could acquire firearms for Beaver pelts.Multiple tribes fell during the many decades of near continual war, including five culturally related Iroquoian peoples to the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who did most of the final conquering. The Iroquoian religious beliefs created a strong pattern of adopting conquered tribal members into their own nations, so many Susquehannock Neutral or Tabacco peoples finished the eighteenth century as part of the economic and military might of the Iroquois.In the next 7–8 decades, many remnants of these tribes drifted to the nearly empty lands of present-day western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio where surviving groups joined with bands of Seneca creating the new Mingo peopleWhile Mad Max has never been a docile franchise, we were still surprised at just how ridiculous the “Western on wheels” – as creator George Miller described it – looks with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron leading the cast. Check it out for yourself below.
Tom Hardy takes on Mad Max
It’s the first trailer for the fourth Mad Max: Fury Road, and it follows a slew of new pictures and information all revealed surrounding this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Set in a dystopian future in the plains of arid Australia, Max is charged with combating crazed gangs that roam the lands on emphatically – and terrifyingly - decorated vehicles.
More: Director George Miller Speaks On Purposely Avoiding Use Of CGI In 'Mad Max: Fury Road'
One of the more prominent aspect of this new trailer, considering it doesn’t enlighten us with regards to plot, beyond what we already know anyway, is the stunt work, which is aided by incredibly realistic explosions and, of course, slow motion. "We decided to literally do every car that’s smashed is smashed, every stunt is a real human being, even the actors do a lot of their own stunts, and so on," Miller said of the film’s stunt work.
Hardy, who is currently filming “Legend” in which he plays both Ronald and Reggie Cray, has the daunting task of taking on the Max mantle – a character beloved in cult circles and one that is sure to garner more attention now that the Dark Knight actor is centre stage. His performance as Bane certainly galvanised a large section of comic-book aficionados.
More: check out this mammoth picture piece from Mad Max: Fury Road
"Of course it's based on the same character that they'll play, the lone warrior in the wasteland disengaged from the rest of the world," explained Miller in a press conference. "But naturally Tom brings his Tom Hardy-ness to it, and the story is different to some degree. The character is different to some degree."
Watch the teaser trailer for Mad Max belowImage caption Sarah Milner Simonds says the money would pay for "a lot of seeds"
Dozens of Olympic torches are for sale online as torchbearers are prepared to part with their prized relay memento.
Some are hoping to make money for their chosen charity with prices ranging from several hundred pounds to £100,000.
As the flame travelled from Exeter to Taunton, a torch selling for the Invictus Trust charity fetched £150,400 after 226 bids.
Sarah Milner Simonds, who is carrying the flame through Dunster on Monday, has reportedly sold hers for £153,100.
She said she wanted to raise funds for her community allotment, Project Dirt. Confirmation of the sale being completed had yet to emerge.
The news has prompted much debate as to whether it is right that torchbearers, who were nominated for their achievements, sporting contributions and community work, should be allowed to sell their torches and uniforms after the event.
Some of the 8,000 torchbearers are trying to make a sale before they have carried the torch in the relay, at a time when bidding online is busy and the majority of torchbearers are yet to run
London 2012 Olympic torch relay Search maps, check street routes and join in 70 days of live coverage in video, stories and pictures Find out where the Olympic torch is going
Ms Milner Simonds, from Burnham-on-Sea, told BBC Breakfast it only occurred to her on Saturday night that she could sell the torch and she was dismayed people who objected to her decision had started sending her unpleasant emails.
"Obviously it has really upset people but I think that it's not something that is really me, to keep my shiny trophy on a mantelpiece when it is obvious how much good one can do with the money that someone might be willing to pay for it," she said.
She still needed to check if the winning bid was genuine.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sarah Milner Simonds: "The torch was sold for £153,000"
"It is an extraordinary amount of money, but of course when I realised that the first torch was on eBay and sold for over £3,000, I thought 'Oh my gosh, that is obscene, imagine what good you could do with £3,000'."
She added that the money would pay for "a heck of a lot of seeds".
Adam Wolley, 24, of Saxtead, Suffolk, had listed his torch for sale on eBay at a starting price of £750. He was chosen to carry the torch through Melton, in Suffolk on 5 July in recognition of his fundraising after catching malaria while travelling in Africa during a gap year.
Bidding reached £2,050 but by 13:00 BST on Monday the auction was cancelled.
In the listing, viewed by more than 1,500 people, Mr Wolley told potential bidders it was "Your chance to own a piece of history," and promised 10% of the sale price would be donated to a school refurbishment programme in Uganda.
He declined to comment on the eBay auction when contacted by the BBC.
Torchbearers were told in March that they will have to pay £199 if they want to keep the torch as a souvenir of their special day.
Olympic organisers Locog defended the cost at the time, saying a torch costs £495 to make and it was subsidising the price.
The flame will be carried a total of 8,000 miles on its 70-day journey to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on 27 July.
It is being borne by members of the public, young and old, and Olympians and other VIPs will also carry the torch.
Each of the torchbearers will run with the flame for about 300m before lighting the next bearer's torch in a "kiss".
Officers from the Torch Security Team, co-ordinated by the Metropolitan Police, are accompanying the runners throughout the relay.Total Pay combines base annual salary or hourly wage, bonuses, profit sharing, tips, commissions, overtime pay and other forms of cash earnings, as applicable for this job. It does not include equity (stock) compensation, cash value of retirement benefits, or the value of other non-cash benefits (e.g. healthcare).
Total Pay combines base annual salary or hourly wage, bonuses, profit sharing, tips, commissions, overtime pay and other forms of cash earnings, as applicable for this job. It does not include equity (stock) compensation, cash value of retirement benefits, or the value of other non-cash benefits (e.g. healthcare).
Job Description for.NET Software Developer / Programmer
A.NET Software Engineer will typically write code to generate web pages, access databases and business logic servers. They write, modify and debug software for web sites. A.NET Software Developer must have experience using databases, systems and programming languages that develop software applications with the.NET framework. They test and document software for web sites, and work with designers and content producers.
These individuals should hold a bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology or a related discipline. They are currently in high demand, so employers might overlook educational requirements if a prospective employee has extensive experience.
Such an employee needs to be familiar with various programming languages that might include C#, F#, and Classic ASP, as well as such applications as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.
This position can work alone or with teams. A person in this position might also be responsible for providing leadership and participating in more technically challenging development efforts.
A person applying for such a job must be an independent worker and self-motivated, but also be able to be a strong team player, a problem solver, and creative thinker. This is a job that is mainly conducted indoors, but might involve some travel. Such an employee might be expected to work with engineers and architects.
Sometimes these positions are held at a senior level, as well as an entry level. A person seeking this position should be adaptable to one’s environment, and be willing to stay current with constantly developing technologies. (Copyright 2019 PayScale.com)
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Today, we are going to discuss another cryptocurrency that has recently delivered more exciting returns than Bitcoin. Its name is Dash, which consists of an open source coin that is becoming known for offering a user-friendly and scalable system.
The most significant that we need to point out before anything else is that many new business partners selected Dash for creating their blockchain network. We believe that the easy functionalities offered by Dash were the main reason behind choosing this coin over other cryptocurrencies.
We could read on the website of the Dash that debit card providers, email providers, VPN providers, hosting providers, Casinos, Game programmers, web stores and precious metals sellers are accepting the use of Dash.
In our opinion, if all these business owners are trusting the system, it means that the project is serious and it should seduce clients, and coin holders.
This demand from the part of companies seems to be pushing up the price of Dash in the market. The share price seemed to wake up in March 2017. From below $10, the coin spiked and touched the $150 resistance level in only a few months.
However, we needed to wait until June 2017 to see the coin price jump again to touch the level of $300. Coin holders should have received 100% returns in less than four months. But, the run did not stop there. In November 2017, the price of each unit took off again crossing easily the psychological level of $450 and reached $710.
Incredible home run returns, don’t you think?
But, there is more.
The amount of coins that changed hands recently was also very interesting. We could see that every time there was an increase in volume, the share price picked up.
It happened in June, July, September, and November, 2017.
Have a look at it:
There is another interesting fact to note. The last increase in the amount of coins exchanged at the end of November is also extraordinary, but we cannot see an increase in the price of each Dash. Readers should be very alert, as if the price does not continue increasing while the volume is doing so, it may mean that we are on a false signal. The price could fall.
We have seen a similar price pattern in the chart of Litecoin, wherein this price behaviour seems much more obvious.
Technology
Dash offers new features that are completely different from those of Bitcoin. First of all, Dash does not only use miners to perform network tasks. Other individuals called “Masternodes” are in charge of several governance activities like PrivateSend and InstantSend. The work and the reward is split between these two types of contributors. Miners and Masternodes both receive 45% of the block as reward. Remaining 10% goes to an account called “Treasury” that belongs to the dash system.
What’s PrivateSend?
PrivateSend is the way users can make transactions. It is structured so that several Masternodes collaborate in the transaction obtaining privacy for the sender and the receiver. The main idea is that identical inputs are introduced at the same time so that the transaction cannot be traced. This system makes each Dash unit fungible meaning that all coins are equal and cannot be distinguished. This is a great feature that Bitcoin does not offer, which, we believe, is seducing business owners.
What’s InstantSend?
InstantSend is the service provided by the network to do “near-instant transactions.” It is said to be faster than even Bitcoin since the double-spending problem that arises in this other coin does not exist here.
Demand And Offer
As mentioned, there are many merchants already involved in the network. But, there is more to be said on the side of the demand. The community seems to be quite large. There is large Dash Forum as well as a Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook discussions out there. We appreciate it, because, in our opinion, it shows that the coin is well known and there is enough demand to push up the Dash price.
On the development side, there seems to be a community of programmers willing to work for the network. GitHub users as well as programmers from JIRA are involved. We believe that the best way to assess the work of it is by looking at the large amount of Masternodes currently on the network; 4,732.
That’s not all.
The number of Masternodes has been increasing at a large pace. Have a look at it:
Conclusion
Currently trading with a market cap of $5.5 billion, DASH is an exciting story among cryptocurrencies. We believe that if the demand from freelancers and companies continues to increase, the price could creep up even more in the long term.
In the short term, in our opinion, readers will do best by using technical analysis to assess the future share price movements. Increases in price on low volume could indicate that the demand is very low, which could create short price declines. Be alert on it.
To sum up, there is a lot to like with Dash!
We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on DASH, sign up below!
Image courtesy of Duncan Rawlinson via Flickr
Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
Dash Has More Potential Than BitcoinIN 1997, two months after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty, it acquired a cutting-edge payment technology. People could rush through turnstiles with a wave of their colourful Octopus cards—stored-value cards pre-loaded with cash. Its latest advance, however, is risibly low-tech. On October 30th Octopus launched an extensible pole with a plastic hand to help drivers pay at toll booths. Critics of Hong Kong’s cautious approach to fintech snorted in derision. Meanwhile, a government official was quoted as blaming Octopus for stifling the city’s shift to cashlessness. Both criticisms are unfair. Hong Kongers enthusiastically embrace electronic payments and do well from the fierce competition between different platforms.
The Octopus card, designed for journeys on Hong Kong’s trains, buses, trams and ferries, soon stretched its tentacles into shops. In 2016 the company generated revenues of HK$956m ($122m) for its owners (mostly transport companies).
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Local pundits complain that Hong Kong lags behind mainland China, where even beggars accept e-donations. China’s love of apps such as Alipay and WeChat Pay means that travellers to the mainland are finding it harder to get by without them. Similarly the 46m mainland tourists who visit Hong Kong every year are demanding ways to spend their e-cash. Francis Fong, an IT expert, reckons this could persuade merchants to accept new forms of payment.
But whereas in mainland China, mobile apps compete almost exclusively with cash, Hong Kong’s consumers have many choices. Already 60% of transactions are made electronically. A year ago the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the central bank, licensed 16 “stored-value facilities” on which consumers deposit money; between them they have 43.5m cards, including Octopus (which has 32.8m) and other pre-paid bank cards. Other options include Alipay, PayPal and WeChat Pay.
Each payment method has different advantages. Octopus is fast and reliable, but can be cumbersome for moving money. Its experiments with apps and a mobile-phone SIM card have not been popular. Credit cards are seen as secure but processing fees can be high. Mobile apps are easy for merchants to install but have a reputation for being less secure.
Outlets and payments firms compete fiercely to lure shoppers with discounts and rewards. Howard Lee of the HKMA argues that it is not government’s job to pick technologies and that anyway it has no agenda to try to move Hong Kongers away from cash. Instead it is regulating new products to provide a “level playing field” so consumers can decide winners.
Even Sunny Cheung Yiu-tong, the chief executive of Octopus, expects the transport companies one day to accept new ways to pay, even including his competitors’ apps. In a city where tannoys at stations repeatedly warn commuters to look up from their phones, a scheme which allows more screen time should be popular. The plastic hand could double as a selfie-stick.Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declares martial law on the island of Mindanao after deadly clashes between militants and troops.
Militants allied to Isis have rampaged through a southern Philippine town, beheading a local police chief and kidnapping a priest and 10 parishioners, as more firefights broke out and buildings were set ablaze on Thursday.
Violence that erupted on Tuesday in Marawi, 830 kilometres south of Manila, has left at least 21 dead, 13 of them militants, and dozens wounded.
The militants have threatened to kill Father Chito Suganog and other hostages who were saying prayers when fighters stormed into St Mary's Cathedral in the town and took them as human shields.
ROMEO RANOCO/REUTERS Government troops are seen during their assault with insurgents from the Isis-affiliated group in the Philippines' south.
Majul Gandamra, the town's mayor, told journalists that militants were still holed up in some buildings, surrounded by soldiers.
READ MORE:
* Philippine church says priest, churchgoers taken hostage by IS militants
* Defiant Duterte threatens harsh measures as thousands flee Philippines unrest
* Philippine troops clash with Muslim rebels; 23 killed, 73 hurt
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* 'Be ready to fight': Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte scraps truce
"They are not shooting at anyone specifically," he said, adding they were posting images on social media.
ROMEO RANOCO/REUTERS Residents run to evacuate during government troops assault with insurgents from the so-called Maute militants, who have taken over large parts of the Marawi city, southern Philippines.
Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana warned residents of the town with a population of 200,000 to stay indoors on Thursday, saying top militant commander Isnilon Hapilon may still be hiding there, citing "latest reports".
Witnesses reported loud explosions in the town on Thursday as several military helicopters hovered overhead.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who threatened to impose nation-wide martial law to combat the rising threat of terrorism, said the beheaded police chief was on his way home when militants stopped him at a checkpoint.
ERIK DE CASTRO/REUTERS Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said the beheaded police chief was on his way home when militants stopped him at a checkpoint.
"I think they decapitated him right there and then," he told a news conference in Manila after cutting short a trip to Moscow as the violence raged in Marawi, a provincial capital with a population of 200,000.
Duterte pledged that martial law he declared late on Tuesday across the southern region of Mindanao – which makes up roughly one-third of the country and is home to 20 million people – would be "harsh".
"If I think you should die, you will die. If there's open defiance, you will die and if it means many people dying, so be it. That is how it is," said the president, a former mayor of the Mindanao city of Davao.
ROMEO RANOCO/REUTERS Insurgents from the so-called Maute group have taken over large parts of the Marawi city, southern Philippines.
"I will not hesitate to do anything and everything to protect and preserve the Filipino nation," he said. "I might declare martial law throughout the whole country to protect the people."
The occupation of Marawi by at least 100 heavily armed militants from the little-known Maute group has intensified fears that the Philippines faces a growing threat from Isis, which claimed responsibility for the rampage via its Amaq propaganda arm.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has warned of the possibility of Islamic State declaring a "caliphate" in the southern Philippines as extremists are forced out of the Middle East.
- With agenciesThe author attempts to give an explanation behind the monetary parameters of bitcoin chosen by Satoshi Nakamoto by making references and comparisons to Nick Szabo’s blog Unenumerated and John Nash’s concept of Ideal Money, specifically in regards to the industrial consumption price index Nash highlights.
An Arbitrary Choice?
Let’s examine for a moment the monetary policy behind bitcoin:
Bitcoins are created each time a user discovers a new block. The rate of block creation is approximately constant over time: 6 per hour. The number of Bitcoins generated per block is set to decrease geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 4 years. The result is that the number of Bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million[1].
There has been much speculation as to why the exact parameters were chosen by Satoshi, wiki continues with their explanation:
This algorithm was chosen because it approximates the rate at which commodities like gold are mined
This seems like a logical and intuitive explanation but what might the justification be and is there any significance to this system? The wiki page also links to an interesting discussion with Milton Friedman, and when asked what his ideal system for monetary policy would be he had this to say:
… Suppose the federal reserve said it was going to increase the quantity of money 4% every year week after week month after month… that would be a truly mechanical project. You could program a computer to do that…what you want to do is if possible is to have a mechanical system. If there was any virtue to the gold standard it was that virtue. Maybe you could create the same thing now…I would if I had my choice, freeze the amount of high powered money…and hold it as a constant. And have it as sort of a natural constant like gravity or something.
It seems Satoshi fulfilled exactly that wish of Friedman’s and one might even wonder if Satoshi did in fact consider Friedman’s advice.
What is the Ideal Money Printing Schedule?
“Our view is that if it is viewed scientifically and rationally (which is psychologically difficult!) that money should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.”-(from the lecture Ideal Money)
It seems reasonable to suspect there was a period in which Satoshi had to consider different schemes for implementing and bootstrapping bitcoin. If one did some research into the history of money, they could compare different designs of different currencies and look for the ideal structure or implementation. In other words, bitcoin’s money printing schedule is likely not arbitrary. So what might that ideal be? Satoshi would have been wise to consult Dr. John Nash since Nash has been (especially in the few years prior to the 2009 release of bitcoin) ranting about a concept of linking national and international currencies to exactly that ideal schedule (Southern Economic Journal 2002, 69(1), 4-11):
We of Terra could be taught how to have ideal monetary systems if wise and benevolent extraterrestrials were to take us in hand and administer our national money systems… A possible non political basis for a value standard…a good industrial consumption price index (ICPI) statistic. From…international prices of commodities such as copper, silver, tungsten…
Nash writes of an industrial consumption price index (ICPI), consisting of different commodities and points to the significance of gold in this regard:
…the suitability of such commodities with regard to the ideal function of facilitating utility transfer depends on the extent to which such a commodity seems to have a value independent of its geographical location...in terms of this geographical perspective, gold has historically been optimum, largely because the labour cost of moving it over great distances is so small relative to the value of what is being transported.
Oil as a facilitator of exchange is also seemingly significant in creating the ICPI:
Crude petroleum could also be used for barter and in view of the present state of the global economy it would seem a proper component of an index of prices of internationally traded commodities that enter into the cost of industrial consumption.
This point seems random but in the context of this entire article it might be something to come back to and read again. Nash points out the ICPI must account for perhaps a new energy, but still doesn’t really go into any details on how to do such a thing:
We can see that times could change, especially if a “miracle energy source” were found, and thus if a good ICPI is constructed, it should not be expected to be valid as initially defined for all eternity. It would instead be appropriate for it to be regularly readjusted depending on how the patterns of international trade would actually evolve.
The ICPI is a sort of formula that creates a standard which dissolves government control over printing money:
Hence, it seems that such an ICPI could be calculated in an essentially scientific fashion after some practical initial choices were made. Moreover, this standard, as a basis for the standardization of the value of the international money unit, would remove the political roles of the “grand pardoners”
The most mathematical he gets in his explanation is found here:
For example, the prices of copper and nickel might very well represent, over long periods, the actual costs of industrial production, while the prices of silver and gold might tend to vary comparatively much more smoothly than those of the baser metal. It is possible to construct a prices index based on moving averages that would have the smoothness of the prices of the gold and silver and yet, over longer periods, would basically follow the values of the baser metals. This index could be constructed by computing a moving average of the index for the base metals computed by pricing them modulo the index of the precious metals.
He seems to be describing a very granular aggregate of the change in price, that can be used as a responsible backbone for our money supply system:
In actual application, it would not be a matter of base and precious metals but rather of a variety of commodities that would be selected for their suitability in on sense or another. Also, for the index formed on the basis of things with naturally smoothly varying prices, it seems that it would be intrinsically quite feasible to make use of sorts of services, energy, or prices, that depend on the national location of the definition of the commodity, service, or asset being priced. Hence, by using this approach, the temptation to include things that would otherwise seem inappropriate just to obtain stability or smoothness can avoided.
What is an International Consumption Price Index?
Ideal Money is a theoretical notion promogulated by John Nash, to stabilize international currencies. It is a solution to the Triffin dilemma. He proposed that international exchange rates be fixed by pegging the value of each currency to a standardized basket of commodities, called the industrial consumption price index. Such a policy would curtail the ability of central banks to make monetary policy.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_money
That is about as best as Nash does, in his lectures and papers on ideal money, at explaining the ICPI he suggests should be the basis for our currency system(s). What’s apparent about the index is it is seemingly quite complex with many variables and adjustments. So one might ask whether or not either Nash or Satoshi took the time to gather these variables and plot them out in some useful fashion. Regardless someone DID make many relevant considerations with respect to what would might constitute an ICPI-that person is Nick Szabo.
Szabo’s blog Unenumerated is a giant encyclopedia of subjects related to todays current changing economic climate (bitcoin). And weaved throughout its vast maze of knowledge, there is embedded an intricate description of the behaviors and roles of commodities in our global economy.
For example, in his post Commodity Hysteria– an Overview, Szabo describes the pitfalls of the floating currency system, as if he already envisions a way out. He explains the value of a commodity for the individual as a hedge against fluctuating currencies, and similar to Nash’s thoughts in Ideal Money the theme seems to be that commodity backed indices could be used as a solution to printing money:
The fault lies with poorly managed floating currencies, not with attempts by currencies users to protect against the damage done by floating currencies, for example by hedging their dollar-denominated investment portfolios with long commodity positions. If or when inflation expectations decrease, we can expect (contrary to peak oil theory) oil pumping to greatly increase, as having dollars will once again become more valuable than having oil in the ground… In the era of floating currencies, not only are commodities a legitimate asset class, they are an essential asset class. We may be seeing only the first stages of a switch from floating currencies, which may be proving to be unworkable, to commodity-backed currencies. …in particular currencies should be eliminated in order to allow payment terms denominated in commodity indices to be as simple as payment terms denominated in dollars. These kinds of reforms will bring the benefits of stable commodity money from Wall Street to the man in the street. If the Federal Reserve decided to use leading indicators (e.g. commodities) instead of trailing indicators… or decided to go to a de facto commodity index or back to the gold standard, and stopped bad practices such as “printing” dollars…we would not need to otherwise use commodities for monetary purposes.
Furthermore in another post Szabo talks about a foresight into a better kind of currency and continues to explain the relation of commodities to our currency system:
…humans also have foresight and can reason by analogy, and so can design an exchange to trade new kinds of securities, a new kind of insurance service, or a new kind of currency. Indeed the commodities with the most liquid markets and inelastic supply, such as oil and gold, tend to move in lock-step with each other. Such price movement is strong evidence for the movement being primarily a phenomenon of changing money supply or demand rather than of changing supply or demand for particular commodities.
He makes an important point, in that in defining the prices of gold and oil, we can seek to ignore unnatural fluctuations by adjusting for them. The reasoning behind this seems to be if gold and oil fluctuate in tandem there is likely an external unnatural cause, namely the sudden change in supply of currency:
…we see oil and gold moving together, and indeed the price of oil in terms of gold and silver has been practically flat in the recent commodity boom. This is almost entirely due to expected or actual increases in the supplies of the currencies they are traded in (and especially recently in the weak dollar) rather than to “real” factors.
Szabo delves deeper in regards to inflation and gold/oil with respect to the Euro and the USD (notably two of the most prominent international currencies):
…if greater inflation is expected in both the euro and the dollar, the price of oil will increase in both euros and dollars. The euro/dollar exchange rate reflects relative monetary changes between the dollar and the euro, and the monetary component of the dollar oil price reflects absolute monetary changes in the dollar. …the costs of alternative energies and conservation are also inflating — they are simply much stickier than oil prices and will thus lag but eventually catch up to them …we do not face an imminent demise of the oil economy, only a very long and very gradual increase in the technological/geological scarcity relative to consumption demand for oil Extrapolating the same rate as the last 50 years, the price of oil in terms of gold will take 80 years to double.
Here he seems to have organized his findings in a tangible computational form:
I have run some Monte Carlo simulations of hypothetical oil prices implied by long-term inflation expectations.
In other posts Szabo seems as interested as Nash in the effects of the Fed decreasing its printing schedule:
Commodity prices in dollars will level off, and then move back down close to historical trends based largely on just industrial consumption, if or when the Fed stops increasing the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dollars
Satoshi, Szabo, and the ICPI
Imagine its some year pre-bitcoin (Pre BC?), perhaps 2008 or 10 years before that or 20 or more, and you have just come to the realization through insight that computers could be used to implement a digital currency. You now understand Milton Friedman and Austrian economics in regards to a decentralized authority and you are beginning to consider the ideal printing policy for your liberation e-coin.
Then, looking back on the history of money (this might be a good time to review Shelling Out) one could see, as Nash and Szabo point out, that gold has generally served as a great backbone to our economy, but because of different political events eventually the optimal strategy for competing governments (as happened with the US) is to defect and begin printing money NOT backed by gold. Furthermore all countries follow suit because the policy makers stand to gain the most with the Keynesian policy of printing money.
So it becomes obvious then, that the ideal schedule for bitcoin would be an aggregate of the production of certain stably produced commodities to represent the kind of benefits that gold gave us while keeping the printing schedule out of the hands of any central planners.
The task for demystifying the controlling factors of commodity prices would be incredibly daunting as would simulating the factors in order to create a reasonable estimate of the ideal schedule based on the ideal basket of indicating commodities. But it seems Nick Szabo has spent his time doing exactly that.
A Paradigm Shift Satoshi Entered First
All this would be incredibly difficult to explain, and even more difficult to understand without the listeners having a deep and expansive overview of the entire economic history of mankind as well as an entire technological overview right up until Satoshi’s whitepaper (and beyond). The ICPI is essentially just a formula, which Satoshi likely used to code bitcoin’s money printing schedule. 21 million coins, starting with 10 million released at a decreasing geometric rate of 50% every 4 years. The author would like to suggest this number is a function of the ICPI. In this we can think of bitcoin as like a new metal superior to the function of gold in our monetary system and its superiority comes from the very fact that (by the authors conjecture) it has a mining algorithm perfectly based on an extensively adjusted ICPI that was optimally defined by John Nash/Szabo.
Nash suggested we are to link our currency system to the ICPI. This often leaves people wondering, if bitcoin is ideal money then where is the commodity basket to link bitcoin to? OR how do we link the currency bitcoin to an ideal commodity basket? But as Szabo explains extensively gold or oil themselves CAN in fact function like perfect currencies even though they are in fact commodities. In this light bitcoin starts to make perfect sense. It is a commodity in the sense that it is the perfect currency, based on an ideal printing/mining schedule constructed from a properly adjusted aggregate of commodities. It also has the benefit of super granularity of today’s paper currency and more. If the authors conjecture is true, Bitcoins are backed by the ICPI based schedule, and so always have the ideal quality that John Nash prescribed to them. (The process ideally backed money creates is referred to as asymptotically Ideal Money whereas the limiting result is Ideal Money)
Interestingly a new finding seems to suggest Satoshi was working on the bitcoin solution and its relevant aspects since earlier than previously thought (at least as early as 1999).
AdvertisementsCreating a Virtual S Channel!
The bx_stereomaker is a frequency-optimized M/S upmixing plugin that converts ANY mono signal to stereo, while keeping them 100% mono-compatible!
How many times have you had to deal with a signal that just won't fit in the mix because it's mono? But with modern mixes becoming both tighter and wider, adding reverb or modulation effects can easily destroy the tight center of a mono lead vocal, guitar, or synth track. Still, you need to process and spread those sounds to lay them perfectly into the mix.
bx_stereomaker can help.
bx_stereomaker creates a virtual S signal with analog style filters using Brainworx legendary M/S stereo algorithms. This plugin will take any mono signal and make it stereo while allowing you to balance the center position. You can even focus the process on specific frequency ranges in your signal. And you can solo the virtual S signal!In this article, Maria Xynou presents new information about India's controversial Central Monitoring System (CMS) based on official documents which were shared with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). Read this article and gain an insight on how the CMS actually works!
The idea of a Panoptikon, of monitoring all communications in India and centrally storing such data is not new. It was first envisioned in 2009, following the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. As such, the Central Monitoring System (CMS) started off as a project run by the Centre for Communication Security Research and Monitoring (CCSRM), along with the Telecom Testing and Security Certification (TTSC) project.
The Central Monitoring System (CMS), which was largely covered by the media in 2013, was actually approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on 16th June 2011 and the pilot project was completed by 30th September 2011. Ever since, the CMS has been operated by India's Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring (TERM) cells, and has been implemented by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), which is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre. The CMS has been implemented in three phases, each one taking about 13-14 months. As of June 2013, government funding of the CMS has reached at least Rs. 450 crore (around $72 million).
In order to require Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) to intercept all telecommunications in India as part of the CMS, clause 41.10 of the Unified Access Services (UAS) License Agreement was amended in June 2013. In particular, the amended clause includes the following:
“But, in case of Centralized Monitoring System (CMS), Licensee shall provide the connectivity upto the nearest point of presence of MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) network of the CMS at its own cost in the form of dark fibre with redundancy. If dark fibre connectivity is not readily available, the connectivity |
of two years to finalize the ISO 4210 part 10 for EPACs.”Audio: Professor Sam Kamin speaks with host Ryan Warner
(Photo: Courtesy of Chuck Grimmett) Friday is the deadline for Colorado's Attorney General to respond to a complaint filed in the U.S. Supreme Court by Oklahoma and Nebraska. It challenges Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana and is one of four lawsuits that aim to dismantle the young industry.
The other legal challenges have been filed in federal district court. Two come from an anti-crime group called Safe Streets Alliance; the other is from a group of prosecutors and sheriffs from several states, including Colorado. Safe Streets Alliance is working on its two suits with two Colorado citizens and one business.
The sheriffs and prosecutors case seek to re-criminalize possession of recreational marijuana use. The others target the industry and the regulatory structure that supports it.
Attorney General Cynthia Coffman says she will defend the state in each case.
For analysis of the strength and implications of each case, Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner talks with Sam Kamin, who teaches criminal and constitutional law at the University of Denver. Audio from that conversation will be available after noon.
Here's more information on the lawsuits challenging Colorado's recreational marijuana industry:
States of Nebraska and Oklahoma v. State of Colorado
The complaint argues that the federal government has preeminent authority to govern interstate commerce, and "a state may not establish its own policy that is directly counter to federal policy against trafficking in con-trolled substances or establish a state-sanctioned system for possession, production, licensing, and distribution of drugs in a manner which interferes with the federal drug laws that prohibit possession,use, manufacture, cultivation, and/or distribution of certain drugs, including marijuana."
The U.S. Supreme Court has not accepted or rejected the case.
Safe Street Alliance, Phillis Windy Hope Reilly and Michael P. Reilly v. Alternative Holistic Healing, Gov. John Hickenlooper and others
Plaintiffs seek damages and an injunction against a marijuana business, Alternative Holistic Healing, that it says plans to open a production operation near the Reilly's property in Pueblo County. The lawsuit alleges the business and other parties in Colorado have engaged in racketeering, or organized crime.
Safe Street Alliance and New Vision Hotels Two v. Medical Marijuana of the Rockies and others
Plaintiffs seek damages and an injunction against a marijuana business, Medical Marijuana of the Rockies, that it says plans to open a cultivation facility and store near a Holiday Inn owned by New Vision Hotels in Frisco. The lawsuit alleges the business and other parties in Colorado have engaged in racketeering or organized crime.
Sheriffs and prosecutors v. Gov. John Hickenlooper
Plaintiffs include six Colorado sheriffs and argues that "the federal government has preeminent authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, including commerce involving legal and illegal trafficking in drugs, such as marijuana."
The Colorado sheriffs are from Larimer, Yuma, Elbert, Hinsdale, Kiowa, and Delta counties. They argue that they have a duty to uphold both the U.S. and Colorado constitutions, and that marijuana legalization means they must violate one of those constitutional requirements.The much discussed Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, which was released Thursday morning, shows a sharply divided America. Not much new there.
Half of those surveyed think that the across-the-board spending cuts that went into effect on Friday with the sequester will be too severe. And a smaller proportion of Americans say that they are necessary to reduce the deficit. Democrats would, unsurprisingly, prefer a plan that had fewer cuts and a majority of Republicans and independents show support for the cuts even if they do think the sequester is a bad idea (which they do).
To be sure, the impact of the sequester on the American psyche vis-à-vis economic outlook is a valuable addition to the budget battle discussion. But the finding that I see as most crucial in this poll is one that I have heard little about.
[pullquote]
As Neil King Jr. writes, “By a more than 2-to-1 margin, poll participants say Mr. Obama is doing more than the GOP to unify the country in a bipartisan way. The poll found 48% of respondents saw Mr. Obama as trying to unify the country, compared with 22% who said that of Republicans and 37% who said that of the Democratic Party.”
More On This... Despite Washington angst, officials appear resigned to sequester cuts
That the electorate believes the president to be a unifying force for the country, and by no small amount, is completely incongruous with his actions on the campaign trail, through the fiscal cliff dispute, his inauguration speech, his State of the Union speech and now during the sequester negotiations.
Recent comments from President Obama include, “Republican leaders will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy” during a press conference on the debt ceiling in mid-January. And in his inaugural address while discussing climate change, he called Republicans neocons who don’t understand that “enduring peace and lasting security do not require perpetual war.” These are hardly the statements of a man working towards a united America.
Indeed, the president’s relentless engagement in identity politics – on the basis of race, gender, religion, and economic standing – has made him far from the bipartisan, solution-driven president he promised to be.
President Obama told Americans that we “have to break the habit of negotiating through crisis over and over again” and while I agree with the sentiment behind his statement, he has certainly not held up his end of the bargain.
Earlier last week, Speaker Boehner said, “Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It’s time to cut spending here in Washington.” And Speaker Boehner is right – it’s what the country needs and the American people want.
But history told us that there would be no last minute arrival of a compromising, balanced Obama. We are seeing a President Obama who is riding high on the popularity of his social policies and continually eschewing the importance of finding meaningful and substantive compromises with the GOP on the economy. This is not the mark of a unifying force, but a president who is clearly playing a partisan agenda.
What’s more is that the results of this survey continue to show a wildly out of control GOP. Though there were flashes of moderation in the wake of Romney’s loss from key players like Governor Jindal and Senator Rubio, but still only 22 percent of those surveyed think that the Republicans are trying to unify the country.
In light of this, the popularity of New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie is hardly surprising. A conservative politician in policy choices has been able to become a bipartisan force because he embraced the president when he came to hurricane ravaged New Jersey and because he has agreed to take ObamaCare Medicaid expansion.
It is a very scary reality that the most divisive president in recent history is viewed as a unifier. The American people have been starved of the kind of bipartisan, compromising lawmaking that we need to the point that they believe a man who has done nothing but divide them is working for their best interest above his own agenda.
Nothing could be further from the truth.Who do you think would win in a fight, Superman or Batman? The answer to that question isn't nearly as obvious as you might think, and while online forums are a great place to debate such things, wouldn't it be great if there was a game in which you could put your theories to the test? Enter NetherRealm Studios' Injustice: Gods Among Us. That's right, Ed Boon--working alongside other evil geniuses responsible for 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, as well as the dynamic comic book writing duo of Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti--has once again devised a plan worthy of Lex Luthor to render the Man of Steel vulnerable to fisticuffs.
The Flash looks on as Superman charges up a seemingly less-than-troubling attack.
NetherRealm's plan involves a one-on-one fighting game in which superheroes and villains do battle with each other. Batman and Wonder Woman went toe-to-toe at a recent press event, as did Superman and Solomon Grundy, and in many ways the fights that ensued wouldn't have looked out of place in a comic book. Not only are the combatants' respective moves very much in keeping with their characters, but environments like the Batcave and what we assumed was Metropolis (but were later told is "just a big-ass city") were impressively interactive and destructible.
How you interact with these environments will vary depending on what kind of character you're playing as. Batman is a "gadget" character, while Wonder Woman is a "power" character, so when the fight between the two of them ended up close to a parked car, they were able to bring it into play in very different ways. Batman simply grabbed his opponent and slammed her face down onto the hood, but when Wonder Woman retaliated, she was able to pick up the car and swing it down onto Batman's head.
Harley Quinn hits Batman with a cheap shot from the hip.
When they're not weaponizing automobiles, characters will, of course, all have distinctive repertoires. Batman has access to an arsenal of gadgets that includes batarangs and a grapple gun (among many more, presumably); Wonder Woman can switch between multiple fighting styles depending on the weapon she's using (wielding the lasso of truth will be very different from using a sword and shield, for example); Solomon Grundy is able to pull knives from his back and put them to good use; and Superman has his heat vision. Superman also has an impressive supermove with which he can uppercut opponents into orbit before flying up there to smack them back down to Earth. How many characters on the game's roster will have comparable supermoves remains to be seen, but even those heroes and villains whose punches are never going to interfere with NASA launches are still capable of smacking their opponents between multiple arenas.
Fighting in the aforementioned city, you can send your opponents not only flying through the air, but also crashing through skyscrapers until they ultimately land on the roof of one. And then, while fighting on the roof, you can slam them down with so much force that when the fight resumes, you're both 30 stories down. Similarly, in The Bat Cave the fight can move from the main level where the Batmobile (armed with rockets that can be fired via a control panel at one end of the cave) is parked, down to the lower level where the Batboat can be seen in an underground stream. And after that, you can even fight in the elevator as you ride it back up.
Wonder Woman contemplates a kick to Solomon Grundy's love spuds.
Interactive environments, improvised weapons, and a distinct lack of decapitations aside, Injustice: Gods Among Us looks to be a fighting game very much in the vein of last year's Mortal Kombat. Impressively, when it's released sometime in 2013, the game will purportedly have a roster of "at least as many" characters as Mortal Kombat, which shipped with 28 on the disc. We've seen Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Solomon Grundy. Harley Quinn and The Flash have been confirmed. If you pay close attention to today's launch trailer, you can also spot a character who appears to be Lex Luthor in his Brainiac Suit doing battle with Superman. That still leaves more than 20 spots on the roster unaccounted for. Who will the rest of them be? Leave your guesses and wish lists in the comments below, especially if--like us--you're rooting for a scrappy underdog. The Ventriloquist, for example.As long as there have been sports, colors and symbols have been used to create social bonds between teammates and fans. Even ancient Roman chariot racing had four major groups consisting of the Reds, Blues, Greens, and Whites (they also had some serious sports-related riots).
Sports team names don’t always seem to make much sense at first glance, but things start to get much more clear once you know some of the history behind the nicknames. When baseball clubs started forming in the United States in the late 19th century, they used fairly generic names followed by B.B.C (“Base Ball Club”). Soon after, preferences shifted towards using stocking colors as team names. As the popularity of baseball picked up, newspapers started covering games and they often created nicknames for teams based on a defining characteristic of the team’s city or area. In cities with more than one team, nicknames were especially likely to be invented in order to differentiate teams more easily, and the formula of “City + Nickname” was born. These days, team names might be carefully chosen by a marketing team, but they are still modeled after the newspaper-created names, and they serve the exact same purpose as they did over 100 years ago: to establish team identity and make teammates and fans feel as if they belong to a group.
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Now that we know a bit about how our team names got their form, let’s take a look at some of the fascinating historical origins of a few of them from the Big Four.
Major League Baseball
1. Los Angeles Dodgers
Established in Brooklyn in 1883, the team went through a number of different names (like the Bridegrooms and the Bums) before settling on the Trolley Dodgers. The name refers to the network of trolleys in Brooklyn, which were a major cause of accidents at the time–dodging trolleys was a part of life. When the team moved to L.A. after the 1957 season, the name was kept.
2. Chicago White Sox
Originally the Sioux City Cornhuskers, the team transferred to St.Paul and then to Chicago, where it became the White Stockings, a name originally used by the Cubs. Newspapers began using the shortened form after a scorekeeper used it on a scorecard, and White Sox was made the official name in 1904.
3. New York Yankees
There are many theories about how the New York Americans became the Yankees. No one knows exactly where the word yankee came from, but the majority of linguists agree that it’s most likely from the Dutch form of John. Some say it was originally a disparaging term used against the Dutch in the U.S., who then turned around and used it against the English. The word had been kicking around as a term for various groups of people in New England and has carried lots of different meanings (even being used as a name for stock characters in comedy routines), and it became one of the many nicknames for the team starting around 1904–this just happened to be the one that stuck, and was made official in 1913.
4. St. Louis Cardinals
The nickname originally referred to the deep red color, not the bird. Legend has it that Willie McHale, a columnist for the St. Louis Republic, overheard a woman in the stands describe the uniforms as “a lovely shade of cardinal.” He began using the nickname rather than their previous name, the Perfectos, and it quickly caught on by 1900. Others suggest the name came from someone mocking the faded red uniforms. The bird logo didn’t appear until the 20s.
The National Football League
5. Green Bay Packers
What does packing have to do with football? Well, the team is actually named after a packing company. The team founder Curly Lambeau solicited his employer, The Indian Packing Company, for equipment and his employer agreed to sponser the team as long as he named them the Packers. The company went under later, but the name stuck and now it’s the oldest name in the franchise.
6. Baltimore Ravens
After moving from Cleveland in 1996, the new team needed a new name. A fan contest was held, and the Ravens was the winning entry. The name is a reference to Edgar Allen Poe, author of the poem “The Raven”, who was from Baltimore.
7. Chicago Bears
Originally the Stalers (after their sponsor the Staley Starch Company), the team was repurchased and renamed the Bears in 1922 by George Halas. He chose the Bears because Chicago’s baseball team was the Cubs, and according to him, football players are generally bigger than baseball players. Makes sense.
8. Washington Redskins
Hoo boy, here we go. Originally the Boston Braves (like the baseball team), the team moved to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, in 1933 and decided to change their name to the Redskins to avoid complications. In 1937, the team moved to D.C. The term redskin was probably originally a benign term, said to be originated by Native Americans–however, it has been used by European Americans since the 1860s as a pejorative and is now widely considered to be an offensive word. The name has been causing controversy for years, which owner Daniel Snyder has ignored, famously saying “We will never change the name of the team.” For a more detailed read, check out this article.
The National Basketball Association
9. Washington Wizards
The team had played as the Bullets since 1963, but in 1995 owner Abe Pollin decided to change the name as he felt that the name was too violent, especially considering the sky-high homicide rates in D.C. at the time. The tipping point is said to be the assassination of Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, who was a personal friend of Pollin. The team held a contest, and this magical name was the winner.
10. Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles isn’t known for its lakes, so how did the team get this name? It’s actually a pretty simple answer: the Lakers were originally the Minneapolis Lakers, which makes much more sense given that Minnesota is known as “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” The team kept the nickname after moving to L.A. in 1960.
11. New York Knicks
Knicks comes from Knickerbocker, an invented Dutch surname that was popularized by Washington Irving’s 1809 satire A History of New York, which he published under the pseudonym “Diedrich Knickerbocker.” The name evolved into a term for an imagined Dutch aristocracy in New York, who smoked long pipes and wore short pants (which is where the name for the clothing article knickerbockers, or knickers, comes from). The term continued to evolve and became commonly used as a generic term for people in the New York area. It has been in use in club names in New York for quite some time, due to its close association with the city. The New York Knicks basketball team acquired it by drawing it from a hat–several big wigs each put a name into the hat, and Knickerbockers was drawn.
12. Utah Jazz
The Utah Jazz are so-named because Salt Lake City is the jazz capital of the world. Just kidding–the team was transplanted by its owners from New Orleans, the actual jazz capital, in 1979. After moving, they decided to keep both the name and the team colors of green, purple, and gold, which are the colors of Louisiana Mardi Gras. The decision caused some controversy that still lingers today, as both jazz music and Mardi Gras are major cultural aspects of New Orleans (although the team colors have since changed). The nickname the Jazz was originally chosen by New Orleans for this reason, as well as for the dictionary definition of jazz, “collective improvisation.”
The National Hockey League
13. Anaheim Ducks
Although it seems odd, this team actually got its name from where you’re probably thinking it did: The Mighty Ducks, the 1992 film. Many people assume it’s the other way around. The team was founded by Disney in 1993, and was originally called the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Quack quack quack!
14. Nashville Predators
Although it would be awesome if this team got its name from the Predator movies in the same way as the Ducks, that sadly is not the case. The name is the result of fan voting, in which Ice Tigers, Fury, and Attack were the final candidates. Founder Craig Leipold submitted his own, Predators, which ended up winning. Interestingly, the logo was decided before the name, and the voting was based on that.
15. Detroit Red Wings
The Red Wings went by other names since forming in 1926, until the new name was chosen in 1932 when bought by James E. Norris. Norris had been a member of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, which had cycling roots. The MAAA emblem was a winged wheel and had also won the first Stanley Cup in 1883, which Norris thought made it a perfect choice for a team in the Motor City.
16. Boston Bruins
Bruin is a Middle English word that originates from a Middle Dutch word for brown (and is related to our current word brown). The name entered the English language in the 15th century as a proper name for Bruin the Bear, a character often found in the tales of Reynard the Fox, who was a trickster character. People then began using the name as a general term for bears. In 1924, general manager Art Ross was instructed to come up with a team name involving a wild animal with speed and agility, and he chose the Bruins.
Many of the interesting origins of team names have been lost or forgotten over the years, and it’s common for there to be more than one favored explanation. What do you think? Have you heard a different origin story for any of these team names?
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For more supersonic stories follow us on Twitter and FacebookUEFA Team of the Year Presented by UEFA First awarded 2001 Most awards Cristiano Ronaldo
(15 appearances) Website toty.uefa.com
The UEFA Team of the Year is a football award given by UEFA through a poll on its official website. This award started in 2001[1] to allow users and visitors of the organization's website to choose their own eleven players and a coach based on their overall performances in European club football and international competitions.
Selection process [ edit ]
Until 2011, the writers at the website had constructed a short-list of sixty footballers and coaches[1] who have performed well in European club competitions, domestic competitions and international tournaments for that particular year. Users then cast their vote of a line-up consisting of eleven players (including a goalkeeper, four defenders, four midfielders, and two forwards) and a coach based on who they believed excelled in European football. After the selection is made, the user also has to select one of the players to be the captain of their team.
The format of the vote was changed in 2012 – now users first choose their preferred formation (4–4–2, 3–5–2, 3–4–3, 4–3–3 or 5–3–2), and then choose the relevant number of players for each position. The voters have a choice between 4 goalkeepers, 12 defenders, 12 midfielders and 12 forwards. The voting for best coach was discontinued.
After the votes are cast, they are tallied and the final team is announced on the UEFA website.
Appearance records [ edit ]
The player with the most appearances in the team is Cristiano Ronaldo, having appeared thirteen times. Second is Lionel Messi, having appeared ten times. Sergio Ramos comes third with eight appearances. The most consecutive appearances in the team is twelve for Cristiano Ronaldo (2007–2017), followed by Sergio Ramos with seven (2012–2018) and Iker Casillas (2007–2012) with six.
The teams with the most player appearances (not including manager appearances) are Real Madrid (49), Barcelona with 47, followed by Bayern Munich (20) and Milan (18). Barcelona has been the team with the most players selected in a single season with six players in 2009 and 2010. The only other teams with more than three players in one season are Bayern Munich, with four players in 2013 and five in 2014, and Real Madrid, with five players in 2017 and 2018, and four in 2003, 2012–2014 and 2016.
The manager with the most appearances is José Mourinho, with four appearances (one with Internazionale, two with Porto and one with Chelsea). He is followed by Alex Ferguson, who has two appearances.
Team of the Year 2001 [ edit ]
Coach: Gérard Houllier: Liverpool
Source:[2]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2002 [ edit ]
Coach: Şenol Güneş: Turkey
Source:[3]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2003 [ edit ]
Coach: José Mourinho: Porto
Source:[4]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2004 [ edit ]
Coach: José Mourinho: Porto / Chelsea
Source:[5]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2005 [ edit ]
Coach: José Mourinho: Chelsea
Source:[6]
Team of the Year 2006 [ edit ]
Coach: Frank Rijkaard: Barcelona
Source:[7]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2007 [ edit ]
Coach: Alex Ferguson: Manchester United
Source:[8]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2008 [ edit ]
Coach: Alex Ferguson: Manchester United
Source:[9]
Team of the Year 2009 [ edit ]
Coach: Pep Guardiola: Barcelona
Source:[10]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2010 [ edit ]
Coach: José Mourinho: Internazionale / Real Madrid
Source:[11]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2011 [ edit ]
Source:[12]
Voting for a coach ended this year.
Team of the Year 2012 [ edit ]
Source:[13]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2013 [ edit ]
Source:[14]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2014 [ edit ]
Source:[15]
Players who played for two teams during the voting year have the club they transferred to during a transfer window listed second.
Team of the Year 2015 [ edit ]
Source:[16]
Team of the Year 2016 [ edit ]
Source:[17]
Team of the Year 2017 [ edit ]
Source:[18]
Team of the Year 2018 [ edit ]
Source:[19]
Most appearances [ edit ]
By player [ edit ]
Cristiano Ronaldo has made the most appearances on the UEFA Team of the Year with 13 appearances in total.
By coach [ edit ]
José Mourinho is the manager with the most appearances (4) in the UEFA Team of the Year.
By club [ edit ]
By country [ edit ]
Country Players 42 24 20 17 16 12 11 7 5 4 3 2 1
UEFA Ultimate Team of the Year [ edit ]
In November 2015, UEFA published their Ultimate Team of the Year, composed of the 18 players (11 starters and 7 substitutes) with the all-time most appearances in the UEFA Team of the Year, since its inception in 2001.
In November 2017, UEFA published an UEFA all-time XI of the century, their second Ultimate Team of the Year, composed of the 11 players with the all-time most appearances in the UEFA Team of the Year, since its inception in 2001.[20]
See also [ edit ]Dexington Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Canada 6519 Posts Last Edited: 2011-06-06 04:20:59 #1
First, the top two players scenarios.
Division 1
+ Show Spoiler + Division one has four possible players that can qualify directly to the finals. Morrow, Sheth, Fenix and Moon. The standings are as follows:
1. Morrow (7-1 with 8 points)
2. Moon (6-2 with 8 points)
3/4. Sheth/Fenix (6-2 with 7 points)
Coincidentally, these players face each other.
Moon vs Fenix
Sheth vs. Morrow
Because the difference in points is only one, the winner of each of these matches makes the top two. One of Moon and Fenix will be in, and one of Sheth and Morrow will be in.
Division 2
+ Show Spoiler + July has automatically qualified. Here are the standings. Only five players are in contention.
1. July (7-1 with 10 points)
2/3. White-Ra/Sjow (5-3 with 3 points)
4. Darkforce (5-3 with 1 point)
5. Cruncher (4-4 with 1 point)
Incontrol is not in contention, because even if he 2-0's Sjow, he is still behind him and White Ra in points. Similarly, TT1 is not in contention because he is 3 points behind White Ra and Sjow.
Several important matches here:
Sjow vs Incontrol
QXC vs Darkforce
TT1 vs Cruncher
White Ra vs Ensnare
So, what could happen?
Cruncher can qualify if he 2-0's TT1 and both White Ra and Sjow lose by any score. If Cruncher only 2-1's TT1, White Ra and Sjow must BOTH lose by 2-0 scores. Darkforce must also lose for these scenarios.
Darkforce can qualify if he wins and both White Ra and Sjow lose. That simple.
White Ra and Sjow get complicated. Since they have identical records, if one of them wins and the other loses, that person who won qualifies. However, if they both wins, the person who didn't drop a game in this week will qualify. If they both win by 2-0 scores, it goes to the head to head tiebreak. White Ra beat Sjow 2-1 in their matchup.
Division 3
+ Show Spoiler + Here are the current standings, with 4 players in contention. Squirtle has automatically qualified.
1. Squirtle (7-1 with 9 points)
2. Strelok (6-1 with 6 points)
3. Naniwa (5-3 with 7 points)
4. Nada (5-3 with 4 points)
Here are the important matches:
Strelok vs Haypro has disappeared. It is not on the NASL schedule.
Strelok vs. Slush
Naniwa vs. Haypro
Nada vs. Axslav
So what could happen?
If Strelok wins either of his remaining matches, he advances.
Naniwa advances if he beats Haypro by any score, and Strelok loses both his matches.
Nada advances if, and only if, Naniwa loses, Strelok loses both of his matches by any score and Nada wins his match.
Division 4
+ Show Spoiler + Here are the current standings. Select has automatically advanced.
1. Select (7-1 with 12 points)
2. Ret (7-1 with 10 points)
3. Ace (6-2 with 7 points)
Here are the important matches:
Select vs MC
ret vs HasuObs
Ace vs Goody
So what could happen?
If Ret wins, he advances.
Ace can advance if he wins 2-0, along with Ret losing. If Ace drops a single game, he will not advance, as there is no way he can pass Ret in points, even if Ret loses 2-0. Ace does hold the tie breaker over Ret, so on the chance that Ace wins 2-0 and Ret loses 2-1, Ace advances through tie break.
Division 5
+ Show Spoiler + Here are the current standings.
1. Boxer (7-1 with 9 points)
2. Sen (6-2 with 9 points)
3. Zenio (6-2 with 8 points)
4. Idra (6-2 with 7 points)
Here are the important matches:
Idra vs. Boxer
Socke vs. Sen
Zenio vs. Painuser
So what could happen?
Boxer advances if he wins.
Idra advances if he beats Boxer with any score and one of Zenio or Sen lose, or if both Sen and Zenio lose. If both Sen and Zenio win, there is no scenario in which Idra advances.
Sen advances if he wins his match. Even if it is 2-1 and Zenio 2-0's, Sen takes the tie break because he beat Zenio earlier. Sen can also advance if he loses, provided both other Zergs lose as well. Again, Sen owns the tie break over both Zenio and Idra.
Zenio advances if he wins and Sen loses. If Zenio wins 2-1 and Idra wins 2-0, Zenio advances due to the tie break.
I may also post scenarios for the next 20 qualifier playoff spots later as well. I hope you all enjoy.
As we all know, the top two players in each division move on automatically into the final playoffs. The next top 20 players go into a playoff for the remaining 5 spots in the finals. I believe these last 20 players are chosen independent of the groups, someone feel free to correct me on this if I am incorrect.First, the top two players scenarios.Division 1Division 2Division 3Division 4Division 5I may also post scenarios for the next 20 qualifier playoff spots later as well. I hope you all enjoy. "Man you guys are missing out waving your stats dicks about instead of watching this pvp" - bbm
Primadog Profile Blog Joined April 2010 United States 4405 Posts #2 Very well done! Glad I don't have to run these numbers in my head, quite fried at the moment. Thank God and gunrun.
TrevorJK Profile Joined May 2009 United States 69 Posts #3 Well done, thanks for doing this.
jubil Profile Blog Joined March 2011 United States 2395 Posts #4 Very interesting to see how the players stack up against each other in the crucial few matchups to come! July, Squirte, and Select must be relieved they don't have to run the numbers and cross their fingers during others' matchups Marineking-Polt-Maru-Fantasy-Solar-Xenocider-Suppy fighting!
Zaxro Profile Joined November 2009 United States 261 Posts #5 Thanks for this, I was hoping to be able to find a something like this. Good job with the write-up.
Primadog Profile Blog Joined April 2010 United States 4405 Posts #6 Well, this week's results won't clarify anything for division 5. Thank God and gunrun.
Dexington Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Canada 6519 Posts #7 Updated for division 5. Probably the wierdest one, though division one is also odd. "Man you guys are missing out waving your stats dicks about instead of watching this pvp" - bbm
danzhang Profile Blog Joined November 2010 Canada 184 Posts #8 This is a really good read. But i didnt find it until i randomly searched up nasl in the TL search bar. I suggest u put this on sc2 general because it could really be more discussed IMMVP
Dexington Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Canada 6519 Posts #9 True say. I will do that. "Man you guys are missing out waving your stats dicks about instead of watching this pvp" - bbm
Paradice Profile Joined October 2010 New Zealand 430 Posts #10 Nice work! Thanks
Azarkon Profile Joined January 2010 United States 9631 Posts Last Edited: 2011-06-06 04:50:53 #11 Boxer advances if he wins.
Idra advances if he beats Boxer with any score and one of Zenio or Sen lose, or if both Sen and Zenio lose. If both Sen and Zenio win, there is no scenario in which Idra advances.
Sen advances if he wins his match. Even if it is 2-1 and Zenio 2-0's, Sen takes the tie break because he beat Zenio earlier. Sen can also advance if he loses, provided both other Zergs lose as well. Again, Sen owns the tie break over both Zenio and Idra.
Zenio advances if he wins and Sen loses. If Zenio wins 2-1 and Idra wins 2-0, Zenio advances due to the tie break.
Based on the fact that Painuser hasn't shown up for three matches in a row, Zenio will 2-0. He will have 10 points. So you can scratch out any scenarios involving him losing next week.
Basically, Sen has to win his match 2-0 or 2-1. 2-1, however, gets him 10 points, which gets him the tiebreak against Zenio, and also puts him above anything IdrA can gain. But the issue here is that Boxer can also get 10 points, and Zenio has the HtH advantage over Boxer. If a three-way tie happens between Boxer, Sen, and Zenio, I'm not sure what happens.
IdrA has to hope Sen loses. If Sen loses, IdrA has a chance to advance over Boxer if he beats Boxer 2-0. If Sen doesn't lose, there is no way IdrA can have more points than him, in which case HtH will always advance Sen over IdrA.
Zenio has to hope Sen or Boxer loses. Sen losing will give Sen 7-8 points and Zenio 10 points. This means he will advance no matter what happens in Boxer vs. IdrA. Alternatively, he can hope that Boxer loses. Either 1-2 or 0-2 will do. This will put Boxer at 7-8 points, clearly below Zenio, and IdrA cannot advance over Zenio because he cannot attain |
party? Check out our matching party printables in our Prints shop:Check out our matching "mom" shirt as well!Iron on Policies----------------------------------------------------------------This design will be delivered to you as a PDF that can be opened with a free version of Adobe Reader. If you are thinking about using my designs for anything but personal use, please check out my policy page: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ScrapendipityDesigns/policy **This is a PDF Pattern. You will receive it by Etsy Direct Download as soon as payment has cleared. No physical product will be mailed.**Custom Designs----------------------------------------------------------------I love talking about customizing an existing design or creating a whole new one for you! Please feel free to contact me by Etsy convo, or by email rachel at scrapendipitydesigns dot com, for more information.----------------------------------------------------------------More Mustache Patterns:Return to Shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ScrapendipityDesigns(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that One America News Network (OAN) will broadcast “The Clintons’ Pay to Play Scheme: An OAN Special Report” four times between Wednesday and Sunday, drawing upon the Judicial Watch Clinton Scandal panel discussion transmitted live nationwide on September 29. The half-hour OAN Special Report will be introduced and narrated by OAN’s Washington, DC-based political correspondent John Hines.
The fast-paced Judicial Watch Clinton Scandal panel was hosted by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. He was joined by Clinton scandal experts Peter Schweizer, author of the New York Times best-seller Clinton Cash; Joseph E. diGenova, former U.S. States Attorney, District of Columbia; Jerome Corsi, author of Partners in Crime; and Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell. OAN covered the panel live during the presentation.
The OAN Special Report will incorporate direct commentary and analysis by Fitton and the four panelists to help provide answers to the questions addressed by panel participants:
How did the Clintons come to have a net worth in the hundreds of millions?
Why would a Clinton shell corporation wind up in the “Panama Papers?”
Did Mrs. Clinton violate the law in her handling of classified documents?
Did the FBI perform a “cover-up” investigation?
Did the Clinton Foundation trade access to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in exchange for donations?
Beginning on Wednesday, October 5, OAN will air the Special Report at the following times:
Wednesday, Oct 5 – 10:00pm ET
Friday, Oct 7 – 10:00pm ET
Saturday, Oct 8 – 5:00pm ET
Sunday, Oct 9 – 5:00pm ET
###(CNN) Men in combat fatigues posed for pictures on the border between Syria and Iraq, as they waved national and paramilitary flags. To them, this was not just another meeting, but a hard-fought triumph. Years of fighting had allowed Iran's partners and proxies to finally link up from various parts of the war-torn Levant.
To Iran's enemies, the meeting marked the culmination of their worst nightmares. It was a moment marking Iran's victory in ensuring its friends and allies now control a swath of territory spanning the northern edge of the Arab world, from the borders of Iran to the Mediterranean Sea.
In many ways, that meeting on the border, posted online by the media unit of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah in November, was the defining moment of 2017. It marked Iran's resurgence, and, in turn, the failure of American foreign policy. For a US President who vowed to take on Iran and undo his predecessor's steps towards a rapprochement, Donald Trump has unintentionally enabled the Islamic Republic's rise.
Trump promised that defeating ISIS would be his top priority in the region, and US forces have been critical in achieving that goal. But beyond that one priority, US policy in the region is a dog's breakfast of confusion and contradiction that has surprised and alienated US allies and played into the hands of Washington's foes.
From Jerusalem comes the reckoning
A protest against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the Old City on December 8, 2017.
The most recent example came in December when Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel against the publicly stated advice of Washington's closest Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Street protests against Trump's announcement may be fizzling out, but much broader moves are afoot by opponents quick to capitalize on the negative fallout. A week after the announcement, an emergency meeting in Istanbul of Muslim leaders declared that Trump's "null and void" decision marked America's disqualification as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said "the US has chosen to relinquish its competence as mediator, and to disqualify itself from playing a role in the peace process. We shall not accept any role for the United States in the peace process. They've proven their full bias in favor of Israel."
This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who, standing next to President Trump last May in the White House, told him "with you we have hope."
Presiding over this public rejection of the US role in Israeli-Palestinian talks was a formidable group of regional players, including Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran's Hassan Rouhani, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Qatar's Emir Tamim Al Thani.
Against this backdrop, the job of crafting and implementing US Middle East policy is the responsibility of Trump's 36-year-old son-in-law, Jared Kushner. A neophyte by any measure, but not a neutral observer, Kushner served as co-director of a foundation funding Israeli settlements -- illegal under international law -- in the West Bank.
All the while, key US diplomatic posts in the region remain vacant. Eight US embassies in the Middle East, including in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are without ambassadors, this at a time when the US State Department, under the unsteady leadership of Rex Tillerson, is hemorrhaging talent. The Trump administration is ignoring the advice of the experienced, knowledgeable diplomats and it shows, on the question of Jerusalem and the broader Middle East. The beginners are in the driver's seat, in Washington, and elsewhere. Buckle up.
Trump's man in the Middle East
JUST WATCHED The 32-year-old trying to revamp Saudi Arabia Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH The 32-year-old trying to revamp Saudi Arabia 01:30
President Trump's closest Arab ally at this tumultuous time is 32-year old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who has embarked upon an erratic course of dramatic liberalization at home -- such as finally allowing women to drive and permitting the opening of movie theaters -- and massive miscalculations abroad.
The Crown Prince is believed to be the main proponent of the disastrous war in Yemen, the ineffectual embargo of Qatar (which has driven the gas and oil-rich emirate closer to Iran), the bizarre resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri (who subsequently withdrew his resignation) and most recently the brief detention of powerful Jordanian-Palestinian billionaire banker Sabih Al-Masri (who runs the Arab Bank, which is a main financial backer of the Jordanian government, and who is a major investor in the Palestinian territories).
It all amounts to a ham-handed effort to try to force a variety of key players in the Arab world to toe the Saudi line, and so far, all it has yielded is a wave of anti-Saudi sentiment across the region.
All the while the US, with urging from Saudi Arabia and Israel, is trying to cobble together an alliance to counter Iran's growing power. Decades of sanctions and diplomatic isolation haven't neutralized Iran's growing influence, and a collection of countries consumed by bickering and led by a superpower distracted by its own disorder isn't likely to achieve it either. That, plus the prospect of even trying to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- never an easy task in the best of times -- will become mission impossible under current conditions.
Russia strengthens its hand
Vladimir Putin embraces Bashar al-Assad during a meeting in Sochi, Russia in November, 2017.
Iran's increasing strength and influence coincides with an ever-more assertive Russian presence in the region.
In September 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin came to the rescue of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, providing air and ground forces that helped, along with troops from Iran, Hezbollah and Iraq, to turn the tide in the country's civil war. By December of this year, Putin was able to savor a "mission accomplished" moment during an unannounced visit to the Hmeimim air base in Syria, and declare that Russian forces would begin to partially withdraw
Meanwhile, Russia has continued to improve ties with Turkey, a NATO member state. Moscow and Ankara have been the main sponsors of the Syrian peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, where the US has been, at best, a passive observer. In a first, the two countries signed a deal for Turkey to purchase a S-400 surface-to-air missile system.
Here also, Russian assertiveness came with weakening US diplomatic muscle. US support for Kurdish-led forces fighting ISIS in northern Syria has dealt US-Turkish relations a significant blow. Turkey claims that the main Kurdish faction in the country is the Syrian branch of the PKK, which has waged a separatist war against the Turkish state since 1984.
Careening from crisis to crisis
Trump meets leaders from Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at the US Gulf Summit in Riyadh in May, 2017.
In all fairness, confusion is not new to US policy in the Middle East. President Barack Obama drew a red line over the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons against its opponents, but when in August 2013, Syria did just that, the red line disappeared and the US failed to act. The Obama administration dithered over whether or not to support the armed Syrian opposition, eventually giving it just enough weapons to fight Bashar al-Assad's regime but not enough to defeat it. Divided and radicalized, the Syrian opposition is now on the brink of defeat.
The Trump administration inherited those failures, and has hastily built upon them, threatening to repudiate international agreements such as the Iran nuclear deal, and breaking from long-held positions, such as the status of Jerusalem.
It is now signaling a readiness to take a more aggressive position on Iran. Just last week, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley put on a show-and-tell with what she claimed were the remains of an Iranian-supplied ballistic missile fired at Saudi Arabia from Yemen. It smacked of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 UN address in which he claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Haley seemed to be laying the ground for the case for another US-led "coalition of the willing," this time against Iran. The last coalition didn't work out so well.
Traditional Europeans allies are breaking ranks with Washington, stepping back as the United States and Saudi Arabia careen from one self-created crisis to another in the Middle East. As the Western alliance splinters, Russia methodically pursues closer ties with an ever more empowered Iran and Turkey.
Washington, consumed and distracted by its own toxic domestic politics, is rushing head-long into, at best, irrelevance, at worst, catastrophe, in the Middle East. If you thought 2017 was a rocky ride in the Middle East, brace yourself for 2018.ViziCities (0.3)
A framework for 3D geospatial visualization in the browser
### Important links
Examples
Main changes since 0.2
Re-written from the ground up
Complete overhaul of visual styling
Massive performance improvements across the board
Vastly simplified setup and API
Better management and cleanup of memory
Sophisticated quadtree-based grid system
Physically-based lighting and materials (when enabled)
Realistic day/night skybox (when enabled)
Shadows based on position of sun in sky (when enabled)
Built-in support for image-based tile endpoints
Built-in support for GeoJSON and TopoJSON tile endpoints
Built-in support for non-tiled GeoJSON and TopoJSON files
Click events on individual features (when enabled)
Internal caching of tile-based endpoints
Easier to extend and add new functionality
Easier to access and use general three.js features within ViziCities
Separation of three.js from the core ViziCities codebase
Getting started
The first step is to add the latest ViziCities distribution to your website:
< script src = " path/to/vizicities.min.js " ></ script > < link rel = " stylesheet " href = " path/to/vizicities.css " >
From there you will have access to the VIZI namespace which you can use to interact with and set up ViziCities.
You'll also want to add a HTML element that you want to contain your ViziCities visualisation:
< div id = " vizicities " ></ div >
It's worth adding some CSS to the page to size the ViziCities element correctly, in this case filling the entire page:
* { margin : 0 ; padding : 0 ; } html, body { height : 100 % ; overflow : hidden ;} #vizicities { height : 100 % ; }
The next step is to set up an instance of the ViziCities World component and position it in Manhattan:
// Manhattan var coords = [ 40.739940, - 73.988801 ]; var world = VIZI. world ('vizicities'). setView (coords);
The first argument is the ID of the HTML element that you want to use as a container for the ViziCities visualisation.
Then add some controls:
VIZI. Controls. orbit (). addTo (world);
And a 2D basemap using tiles from CartoDB:
VIZI. imageTileLayer ('http://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/light_nolabels/{z}/{x}/{y}.png ', { attribution :'© <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">OpenStreetMap</a> contributors, © <a href="http://cartodb.com/attributions">CartoDB</a>'}). addTo (world);
At this point you can take a look at your handywork and should be able to see a 2D map focussed on the Manhattan area. You can move around using the mouse.
If you want to be a bit more adventurous then you can add 3D buildings using Mapzen vector tiles:
VIZI. topoJSONTileLayer ('https://vector.mapzen.com/osm/buildings/{z}/{x}/{y}.topojson?api_key=vector-tiles-NT5Emiw ', { interactive : false, style : function ( feature ) { var height; if ( feature. properties. height ) { height = feature. properties. height ; } else { height = 10 + Math. random () * 10 ; } return { height : height }; }, filter : function ( feature ) { // Don't show points return feature. geometry. type!=='Point'; }, attribution :'© <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">OpenStreetMap</a> contributors, <a href="http://whosonfirst.mapzen.com#License">Who \' s On First</a>.'}). addTo (world);
Refresh the page and you'll see 3D buildings appear on top of the 2D basemap.
Take a look at the various examples to see some more complex uses of ViziCities.
Using ViziCities? Please attribute it
While we love giving you free and open access to the code for ViziCities, we also appreciate getting some recognition for all the hard work that's gone into it. A small attribution is built into ViziCities and, while possible to remove, we'd really appreciate it if you left it in.
If you absolutely have to remove the attribution then please get in touch and we can work something out.
Consultancy work
Want to use ViziCities but don't want to customise it yourself? Or perhaps you have an idea that might benefit from ViziCities but aren't sure how to make it a reality? We offer consultancy related to ViziCities projects and would love to see how we can help you.
Interested? Get in touch with us and let's get talking.
Contact us
Want to share an interesting use of ViziCities, or perhaps just have a question about it? You can communicate with the ViziCities team via email (vizicities@urbansim.com) and Twitter (@ViziCities).
License
ViziCities is copyright UrbanSim Inc. and uses the fair and simple BSD-3 license. Want to see it in full? No problem, you can read it here.Although it has been lauded as one of the most LGBTQ-friendly shows ever on television or the Internet, Orange Is the New Black is notorious for failing to acknowledge bisexuality as an option for its main character, Piper (Taylor Schilling). So many characters are eager to thrust labels like “straight” or “gay” on Piper, and for a while she even identifies herself as an “ex-lesbian.” However, she clearly experiences sexual attraction for both men and women, which is the definition of bisexual. So why won’t anyone on the show acknowledge that?
At the beginning of Season 1, Piper is engaged to Larry (Jason Biggs), and very insistent that her relationship with Alex (Laura Prepon) was just a lesbian phase. When she tells her parents that she helped her girlfriend smuggle drug money across an international border and will have to go to prison, her mother (Deborah Rush) seems most concerned with the “girlfriend” aspect of it, giving her a horrified stare and asking, “You were a lesbian?” Piper replies, “At the time.” Her brother (Michael Chernus) asks if she’s still a lesbian (despite the fact that Larry is sitting right there), and she says she’s not. None of them even consider the possibility that she could be bisexual. Obviously this is played for laughs, and Piper’s family is often portrayed as clueless and uptight, but the fact that no one even mentions it here is somewhat unsettling.
Piper’s family learns about her history with Alex.
Flash forward to Season 3, and no one has so much as whispered the word “bisexual” even once. Even when Piper was cheating on Larry with Alex, none of them ever acknowledged the implication that Piper could be attracted to both of them, and not just one or the other. In Season 3, Episode 4, Piper’s family comes to visit her in prison for her birthday, and she tells them she has a girlfriend. Once again, Piper’s mom immediately jumps to label her, asking, “So does that mean you’re officially…” Piper interrupts her with, “It means that I officially have a girlfriend,” which clearly frustrates her mother. Rather than explaining bisexuality to her family, Piper quickly drives them away.
Piper’s parents react to the news that she has a girlfriend in prison.
The only other mention in Season 3 that Piper is anything but gay comes in Season 3, Episode 8, when Piper suggests Alex seduce a male guard for a favor. Alex asks Piper to do it instead, saying, “You’re lower on the Kinsey Scale than I am.” The Kinsey Scale, created by twentieth-century sexologist Alfred Kinsey, is a numerical system of determining a person’s sexual orientation. The scale ranges from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual). When Alex says Piper is lower on the Kinsey Scale than she is, what she means is that Piper is more heterosexual than Alex. Piper could fall anywhere below a six on the Kinsey scale (most likely somewhere around a three or four), but the show won’t say for sure.Yet when members of Congress embarked on a seven-week recess last week, they failed to resolve the question of whether to approve money to combat Zika.
“Without ensuring there are sufficient resources available for research, prevention, control, and treatment of illnesses associated with the Zika virus, the United States will be ill equipped to deploy the kind of public-health response needed to keep our citizens safe and healthy—especially since the spread of mosquito-borne illness is accelerated during the summer months,” the American Medical Association said in a statement on Thursday.
That’s part of why Congress’s failure to act has stunned even those who track the legislative body closest. “Nobody should be surprised when the present House of Representatives, dominated by penurious reactionaries, produces a stingy response to a danger that calls for compassionate largess,” The New York Times’ editorial board wrote in May, “But for sheer fecklessness it’s hard to top the House’s response... to the Zika virus.”
One Republican who has pushed for Zika funding is Marco Rubio, the Florida senator whose state—along with Texas—is considered to be among the highest risk regions in the U.S. for an outbreak of the virus.
“It is the obligation of the federal government to keep our people safe,” Rubio said in remarks on the Senate floor back in April. “There is no such thing as a Republican position on Zika or Democrat position on Zika because these mosquitoes bite everyone.”
As of last week, the CDC reported 1,305 cases of Zika in the United States, but no local cases of transmission—meaning mosquitoes aren’t known to be spreading the virus in the United States at this point. But even if the United States avoids a serious outbreak this summer, the fight over Zika funding reveals a much larger problem with the way Congress thinks about the role of the United States in public health emergencies.
Even if the United States didn’t have a moral obligation to use its substantial resources and global standing to fight diseases like Zika, several public-health officials told me, protecting U.S. citizens requires looking beyond the country’s borders.
“Knowing this is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes and by humans means we should be investigating it as if we’re part of the world, and not shielded from it,” said Paul Farmer, the physician and humanitarian.
An isolationist attitude toward public health may seem to some members of Congress like a way to save money, but it’s an approach that doesn’t actually reflect how diseases spread. A failure to act globally, Farmer says, puts everyone at risk.
“It’s very frustrating,” he added. “If it weren’t for Bill and Melinda Gates, I’m not sure we’d be approaching polio eradication. Why should very wealthy individuals have to bear that burden?”Owner of the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant James Alefantis, who has been bombarded with online threats
A Washington pizzeria has been bombarded with threats from online trolls following bizarre rumors on fake news sites that Hillary Clinton abused children there.
Staff at the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in the capital have been receiving messages on social media and even via text messages with some threatening to kill them.
The owner of the restaurant James Alefantis was at first at a loss as to why him and his workers were receiving abusive messages and why some even saw pictures of their children stolen from social media accounts.
And eventually he discovered several fake news articles that were being shared on social media, alleging that his restaurant was the base for a child abuse ring led by Mrs Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta.
Some of the fake rumors even claimed that kidnapped and trafficked children were being kept in the venue's back rooms, where they were molested.
It is believe the restaurant was targeted as Mr Alefantis was once in a relationship with outspoken Clinton supporter David Brock.
Meanwhile it is also thought that in several emails sent by Podesta, and leaked by Wikileaks, the campaign manager's love of Italian food was revealed fuelling the rumors.
And now Mr Alefantis says he has been forced to report all of the abuse to the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, who are monitoring the situation after he caught one supporter of the rumor try to shoot a live video from within the restaurant.
Washington pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong, which has been bombarded with threats from online trolls following bizarre rumors on fake news sites about Hillary Clinton
The restaurant owner told the New York Times: 'From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault.
'I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized.'
Meanwhile Bryce Reh, the venue's general manager says his wife has begged him to leave his job due to the threats they have been receiving.
The rumours concerning Hillary Clinton allege that she and her campaign manager used the restaurant as a place to abuse children
He also told the newspaper: 'It’s like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun.'
Mrs Clinton and Mr Podesta are yet to comment on the online rumors however, a former Clinton campaign official said Wikileaks had spawned several untrue conspiracy theories.
The rumors come amid online firms such as Facebook and Google coming under fire for not cracking down on fake news sites being shared on their networks.
Last week both Google and Facebook announced plans to fight the spread of fake news by placing tighter restrictions on how such sites make money from advertising.
Google has revealed it is working on a policy change to its AdSense online advertising network that will prevent websites with misleading content from using it to earn money, while Facebook has said it is updating its advertising policy to restrict adverts appearing alongside'misleading or deceptive' content.SPOKANE, Wash. – The Spokane Chiefs announced today that they have acquired 19-year-old forward Tanner Wishnowski from the Kelowna Rockets in exchange for the rights to 16-year-old forward Colum McGauley.
“We are looking forward to bringing an experienced player like Tanner into our forward group,” said Chiefs’ General Manager Scott Carter. “He comes from a good program and plays the way we like to play.”
Wishnowski, a 6-foot, 186-pound winger from Oakbank, Manitoba, scored seven goals and added six assists in 54 games during his rookie WHL season last year. He suited up in 18 playoff games for the Rockets, recording three assists and 11 penalty minutes. Wishnowski has a goal and an assist in 10 games to begin the 2016-17 campaign. He was listed by the Rockets in 2013.
McGauley was the Chiefs’ fourth round (75th overall) pick in the 2015 WHL Bantam Draft out of Nelson, B.C. Last season, he scored three goals and 15 assists with the Notre Dame Hounds Midget AAA team of the Saskatchewan Midget Hockey League. He is currently playing with the Nelson Leafs of the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League (Junior B).
Wishnowski will wear number 19 for the Chiefs.
—
The Chiefs remain at home for one more game before their six-game road trip through the East Division, facing the Everett Silvertips at Spokane Arena on Tuesday, October 18. It will be a
TicketsWest Player Magnet Giveaway Night as the first 1,000 fans through the gates will receive a refrigerator magnet featuring a Chiefs player.
Tickets for Tuesday night and all Spokane Chiefs home games are available in-person at the Chiefs’ Ticket Office at Spokane Arena, over the phone at 509-535-PUCK and online here or ticketswest.com.(not satire – it’s the UK today!)
This letter from the Department for Work and Pensions was posted by Chris Nelson on Facebook (click to enlarge):
According to this letter, the DWP is clearly placing the ‘blame’ for having cancer on the patient herself.
Has the demonisation of welfare claimants in the UK got to the point where we’re blaming cancer patients for their own illnesses now?
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Related articles by Tom Pride:
Mother’s plea for son who lost benefits after missing signing on because of cancer operationp
The government has finally done something so outrageous even I can’t be bothered to satirise it
Throat cancer victim – “this is not the England they fought and died for!”
Let’s be clear – Tory and Lib Dem MPs have decided terminally ill patients should work or starve
Don’t turn your back. Because you’re going to be disabled too one day.
ATOS assessor found blind woman fit for work after “wiggling his fingers” in front of her eyes
ATOS call police on Labour councillor after he tries to accompany claimants to assessments
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Please feel free to comment.
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If you click on any of these buttons below, you can share this article with other people. Thanks:While the Fed committee that sets monetary policy was prepared to take new steps “if the outlook were to deteriorate significantly,” he said, it “has not agreed on specific criteria or triggers for further action.”
As Mr. Bernanke’s remarks were released publicly, stock prices immediately fell, a sign that investors were hoping for some concrete signs that the Fed would step in to try to bolster the economy. But as the market digested the chairman’s full remarks, prices rebounded and the Dow Jones industrial average rose 164.84 points, or 1.65 percent, to 10,150.65. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.64 percent, from 2.48 percent. The revised second-quarter growth data came after a week that showed that the economic retrenchment that began in the second quarter had spilled into the summer, with a sharp slowdown in new-home sales and a drop in sales of factory goods.
Consumer spending rose 2 percent in the second quarter — slightly better than the Commerce Department had initially projected. And a closely watched survey by the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters showed that consumer sentiment ticked up marginally in August, while remaining well below levels seen during the previous six months.
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In his first public remarks since the Fed took a modest step on Aug. 10 to lift the economy — a decision to invest proceeds from its huge mortgage -bond portfolio in long-term Treasury securities — Mr. Bernanke tried in some respects to dampen expectations that the Fed could make significant headway against the economic sluggishness.
Alan S. Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman and a Princeton professor, noted that Mr. Bernanke focused his remarks on the costs as well as the benefits of additional action to help the economy.
“The Fed has run out of the strong tools, and is turning to the weak ones,” Mr. Blinder said in an interview here. “When you’re fighting in a foxhole and you’ve used up the machine guns and hand grenades, then you pull out the swords and start throwing rocks.”
Mr. Blinder said that the economy seemed “substantially worse” than it did three months ago — and that Mr. Bernanke had acknowledged the deterioration, cautiously.
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The Obama administration is looking to the Fed to do more to spur the recovery, since its own options are few, given the political paralysis in Congress as midterm elections approach. President Obama, vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, discussed the economy for about 15 minutes with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York before the two men played golf.
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Mr. Bernanke avoided wading into the rancorous political debates over fiscal policy, instead focusing on the two objectives that form the Fed’s legal mandate: price stability and maximum employment.
Inflation has been running well below the Fed’s unofficial target rate of 1.5 to 2 percent. While conceding that inflation had fallen “slightly below” the desirable level, Mr. Bernanke said deflation was “not a significant risk” right now. He said the Fed would “strongly resist deviations from price stability in the downward direction.”
Mr. Bernanke predicted the economy would continue to grow the rest of this year, “albeit at a relatively modest pace.” He said the “preconditions for a pickup of growth in 2011 appear to remain in place,” as banks increase lending, worries over the European sovereign debt crisis abate and consumers save more.
Strikingly, Mr. Bernanke acknowledged that the traditional tradeoff between inflation and employment had become all but obsolete, at least for now. “There is little or no potential conflict between the goals of supporting growth and employment and of maintaining price stability,” he said.
Mr. Bernanke explained in detail the Fed’s decision to use money from its mortgage bonds to buy government debt. The Fed has gobbled up $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and $175 billion in debts owed by Fannie Mae and other government entities — a major reason mortgage rates are at historic lows.
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So far, the Fed has received about $140 billion through repayments of the principal on its holdings of those debts. An additional $400 billion or so could be repaid by the end of 2011. If the Fed had not taken the step it did, the central bank’s balance sheet would have gradually shrunk, which would amount to a passive tightening of monetary policy — what Mr. Bernanke called “a perverse outcome.”
He said the Fed’s purchases of longer-term securities had helped bring down long-term interest rates and lower the cost of borrowing, contributing to the modest recovery that began in the spring of 2009.
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However, such purchases seemed to be most effective in times of financial stress, and additional purchases would further complicate the Fed’s future “exit strategy” when the time came to return to normal monetary policy, he said.
The Fed has said since March 2009 that “exceptionally low” levels of the fed funds rate, the benchmark short-term interest rate, would be warranted for “an extended period.” The Fed could try to lengthen those expectations, as central banks in Canada and Japan have tried. But Mr. Bernanke cautioned that the Fed might find it “difficult to convey the committee’s policy intentions with sufficient precision and conditionality.”
The Fed currently pays 0.25 percent interest on excess reserves that banks keep at the Fed. But Mr. Bernanke said that slashing that rate even to zero might do no more than lower the fed funds rate by another 0.10 to 0.15 percentage points. He said doing so would harm the liquidity of short-term money markets.Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
Many live-action anime adaptations are objectively terrible, but Robot Underdog’s Dragon Ball Z: Light of Hope manages to set itself apart. Not with incredibly high production values or brilliant fight sequences, but with an earnest love and respect for the series that it’s based on.
Light of Hope is a 35-minute short film based on the Android Saga, which focuses specifically on the future timeline in which Androids 17 and 18 have razed the world, leaving but a few survivors left. After nearly all of the Z Fighters have fallen, Gohan, Bulma, and her son Trunks toil away day in and out trying to figure out how they might be able to save their world.
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In the original series, what little we saw of Trunks’ dystopian future always felt un-fleshed out in terms of conveying how desolate a place it was. There were ruins, yes, but Dragon Ball Z’s brilliantly-saturated color palette was never really suited to depict desolate wastelands. Light of Hope is true to the story that Future Trunks eventually tells the Z Fighters once he travels into the past to alter his future, but it’s infused with a kind of looming dread and hopelessness that the DBZ anime was merely accented with.
In the film, we see Gohan training a young Trunks for a battle that, on some level, they both know they can’t win, while Bulma toils away at an experimental time machine that she isn’t entirely sure will work. The Androids spend their time murdering what few humans are left living, and considering what they’ll do with their lives once they finally exterminate them all.
When the words “Dragon Ball Z” and “live-action” are mentioned together, 2009's widely-panned Dragonball: Evolution comes to mind and might initially turn you off from the idea of a project like Light of Hope, but it shouldn’t. The team behind the film obviously has a love for the source material that shines through the screen in those moments clearly inspired by the anime.
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While it suffers from some of the issues that virtually all fan films have, it has more good qualities than flaws, and it definitely has its heart in the right place. Anyone in Hollywood looking to make another live-action Dragon Ball Z film—and after Evolution, there almost certainly isn’t—but if there is, they should definitely watch Light of Hope first.Correction: The section of this article relating to pay-go legislation was incorrect. It has been corrected. My apologies for the error. – Ian
Yesterdays events, where House Republicans all voted against the stimulus bill, after getting a couple key concessions should tell us a lot about Republican strategy for the next elections.
The larger picture includes not just Republicans but Blue Dogs, who only allowed the stimulus bill to pass after Obama told them he would follow pay-go rules going forward, meaning that all new expenditures and tax cuts must be matched either by cuts in spending or raised taxes. Obama has also indicated he intends to deal with entitlement reform, which means changes to Medicare and Social Security to make them more financially viable (for the record, Social Security will be fully solvent for at least 30 years, and anyone who tells you it’s in a crisis is lying to you. Medicare, on the other hand, has real problems.)
Given these three facts, here’s what I think Republican strategists are thinking:
The House Republicans voted against the stimulus because they don’t want the Kerry problem of having voted for something they then have to oppose in an election. (Remember Kerry’s problems with having voted for the Iraq war?) The calculus is simple: if Democrats manage to get the economy going again, Republicans are sunk anyway. A good economy means Democratic wins in 2010 and 2012, barring some sort of foreign policy fiasco like the hostage crisis.
In the Senate, a few moderate Republicans will vote for the stimulus bill, allowing it to pass, after having wrung out as many concessions as possible to weaken it and make it less likely to work. The majority will vote against it. Republicans will be able to say that as a party, they were against the stimulus bill. Whether that’s popular now or not is irrelevant, there isn’t another election for 2 years.
Next up will be pay-go legislation, as payoff for the Blue Dogs. That will likely cripple the ability to do another stimulus bill next year, meaning that if this stimulus bill isn’t enough by itself (and odds are pretty decent it won’t be), the government’s hands will be tied. Another really large stimulus will not be possible. (Correction: pay-go legislation was already passed, but it didn’t include emergency measures. Obama indicated to the Blue Dogs that once this emergency measure was done he’d start following pay-go more carefully. My apologies for the error).
Then comes "entitlement reform". Unless this is done by increasing payroll taxes on the wealthy (ie. removing the cap at which one stops paying more payroll taxes) this will mean either reduced benefits, or more likely that people will not be able to get their benefits until they are older than 67 (corrected age from 65 – Ian). Medicare, which is in real trouble, |
the West region at 11 p.m., while the South region was at 301μg/m³. This was a sharp increase as the highest 1-hour PM2.5 concentration in Singapore at 9 p.m. was 164μg/m³. The National Environment Agency attributed this to "denser haze from the sea areas south of Singapore being blown in by the prevailing south-south=easterly winds".[103] Thunderstorms in the morning of 28 October 2015 brought respite from the haze when the PSI dropped from 61 to 26 at 9 a.m.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) announced that they would stop issuing daily haze advisories from 15 November 2015 onwards.[104]
The 2015 haze crisis in Singapore was considered as the most serious haze episode for Singapore as it lasted for a long time. It was also the first time the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) deployed a Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) Chinook helicopter and 34 SAF personnel to help fight the ongoing forest fires in Sumatra, Indonesia.[105]
Thailand [ edit ]
The haze from Sumatra turned most parts of southern Thailand such as Narathiwat, Pattani, Phuket, Satun, Songkhla, Surat Thani, Trang and Yala provinces unsightly, even reaching hazardous levels on 7 October[46][106][107][108] The Phuket Provincial Health Office (PPHO) issued a health advisory to its residents in August 2015 and in October the province saw a number of flight delays in Phuket Airport.[109][110] The air quality index in provinces of southern Thailand were increasing with the Regional Environmental Office Director Halem Jehmarikan saying the current air pollution levels were the result of the wind direction and a low pressure area, preventing the haze from being blown away. A number of hospitals saw an increase in child patients with respiratory system related symptoms.[111] Halem also added the pollution was the worst in decades compared to previous smog that faded within four hours.[112]
Vietnam [ edit ]
Ho Chi Minh City and other provinces in Southern Vietnam were enveloped in haze as of 4 October. Vietnamese experts believe that the phenomenon was partly caused by the fire in Indonesia. According to the southern unit of the Vietnamese National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, many provinces and cities in the Mekong Delta, such as Sóc Trăng, Cà Mau, Kiến Giang, Đồng Tháp, Bến Tre, and Cần Thơ also experienced similar foggy weather since the beginning of October.[47] Residents were told to stay indoors as southern Vietnam saw a rising number of child patients suffering irritated eyes, nosebleeds, runny noses, and sneezing. The haze was predicted to continue for three days before being gradually eased by heavy rains.[113]
Firefighting [ edit ]
Both Indonesia and Malaysia started daily cloud seeding on 15 September.[114][115] Fourteen helicopters were deployed by Indonesian authorities to dump water on fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, and cloud seeding aircraft were deployed to Kalimantan.[116] In Malaysia, the cloud seeding operation was carried out for 10 days until 25 September in areas such as Kuching, Sri Aman, Kota Samarahan and Sarikei in Malaysian Borneo and Klang Valley in peninsular Malaysia.[117][118][119]
The Indonesian government also started building retention basins to restore moisture to the peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Dry peatland, due to the dry season and also drainage for oil palm cultivation, was cited as the reason that fire spread quickly. Retention basins were built by blocking water flow in drainage canals, and the re-wetted peatland would serve to check the fire.[120][121]
Firefighting efforts involved Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. Russian-made Beriev Be-200 water bombers were involved.[122] One of them had arrived at 21 Oct 0411 hours.[123]
Mitigation of health effects [ edit ]
Free face masks were distributed to residents in areas worst affected by the haze and many schools in Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, Singapore as well as Indonesia were ordered to close.[117][124][125] Most Indonesian pharmacies sold oxygen cylinders to the public.[126]
Singapore launched legal action that could lead to massive fines against Indonesian companies blamed for farm and plantation fires spewing unhealthy levels of air pollution over the city-state.[127] Singapore also launched its own supplies for its residents, mainly to those elderly households who are very vulnerable to the haze with the distribution of AIR+ smart masks to 29,000 elderly residents along with WeCare PAcks, which contain food and essential items like eyedrops, vitamin C tablets, biscuits, instant noodles and canned food.[128] In Thailand, Songkhla Province governor Songpol Sawasditham set up a "war room" to provide aid to affected residents and to combat the impact of smog from Indonesian forest fires.[112] The Thai government also launched an application called Air4ASEAN that tracked the spread of the haze from the Indonesian fires, and monitored the air quality in different countries.[40]
Criticism of responses [ edit ]
Residents and non-governmental organisations in Riau and Central Kalimantan complained about the lack of aid and inaction from the Indonesian government over the ongoing forest fires.[129][130] An NGO(non-governmental organisation) called the "Mandate of People's Suffering" as well as some Riau residents even wrote to the Malaysian government requesting aid.[131][132] Some residents and leaders in Riau claimed that the central government was intentionally providing a slow and inadequate response, although the situation had been worsening over time. They explained that foreign aid had been blocked,[133] even though the government had shown an inability to combat the fires itself, and that sub-standard masks were handed out to locals.[134][135][136] The Indonesian government was also criticised for promising to cut CO
2 emissions by 20% but failing to provide any commitment to zero deforestation as the country has overtaken Brazil in terms of deforestation.[137] Indonesia has received a new record from the Guinness World Records as the country with the fastest destruction of forest due to fire. During the crisis, Indonesia surpassed the United States as the second largest producer of CO
2 in the world due to the haze,[138] just behind China. The haze, which sent air pollution levels up to'very unhealthy' levels in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, also affected the Pacific nations of Guam, Palau and the Northern Marianas. Guam's Office of Homeland Security and Civil Defence spokesperson Jenna Gaminde warned the public to expect the haze to reduce visibility and adversely affect those with respiratory issues. Western Melanesia was currently susceptible to winds from Typhoon Koppu and Champi pulling smoke plumes from vast fires in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The World Resources Institute said in an October report that since early September, carbon emissions from the fires had exceeded average US daily output on 26 out of 44 days.[139][140] If the haze continues until next year, the haze could be the worst haze crisis in Southeast Asia since the 1997 Southeast Asia haze.[141] Robert Field, a NASA scientist from Columbia University, stated:
If the forecasts for a longer dry season hold, this suggests 2015 will rank among the most severe events on record.[50]
Weak enforcement of environmental laws have been criticised; in previous forest burnings, many of the perpetrators, who mostly comprised employees of Indonesian palm oil companies, had been caught with strong evidence of criminal activity but still managed to escape from getting heavier penalties.[55]
A group of Malaysians gathered in front of the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur to show their protest over Indonesia's illegal fires.[142] In Thailand, around 50 Thais held a peaceful protest in front of the Indonesian consulate in Songkhla to demand that the Indonesian government expedite their action in combating the fires.[143] Another 20 Thais representing the "Hatyai-Songkhla Residents Affected by Haze from Indonesia" group also sent a letter to the Indonesian consulate asking Indonesia to take responsibility and give its commitment to solve the issue.[144] Tensions also arose with Singapore when Singapore's largest supermarket NTUC FairPrice withdrew paper products made by an Indonesian company, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) as APP was named as one of the companies responsible for the haze.[133][145]
Reactions [ edit ]
Indonesia – President Joko Widodo has instructed government agencies to revoke the permits of any palm oil companies involved in the burning of forests and urged the arrest of those responsible.[146] While Jokowi conceded in September 2015 that the recurrent haze was "not a problem that you can solve quickly", he insisted that Indonesia had "gone to great lengths" to tackle the problem, and declared: "You will see results soon and in three years we will have solved this".[147] Around 25,000 Indonesian National Armed Forces troops had been deployed to battle the fires.[148] While Indonesian Member of Parliament (MP) Hamdhani Mukhdar Said apologised to both Malaysia and Singapore over the haze,[149] Indonesia's Vice-President Jusuf Kalla restated his position that Indonesia has no obligation to apologise to neighbouring countries for the haze caused by "forest fires" lasting "a month at the most" when these countries were not "grateful" for the "months" of "fresh air from our green environment and our forests when there are no fires".[150][151] In a separate speech, Kalla said that Indonesia is "open", and requested that "Singapore, please come if you want to help. Don't just talk".[152] However, Indonesian Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar had earlier rejected any Singaporean offers to help Indonesia by stating that Indonesia had enough resources to deal with the crisis.[153] October saw the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management (BNPB) requesting help from Malaysia, Singapore or other countries to secure bigger aerial firefighting aircraft for Indonesia,[26] around the same time as the Indonesian cabinet finally agreed to receive international help with the crisis, with President Jokowi declaring that Indonesia was now "working with a number of countries including Singapore", and other officials saying that Russia had also offered to help.[133][148] Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung explained why Indonesia had earlier rejected Singapore's help, saying that "if we are assisted, the government does not want them to claim the credit".[154]
Malaysia – Prime Minister Najib Razak has demanded Indonesia take action against companies responsible for illegal forest fires blanketing parts of Southeast Asia in smoke, adding "Only Indonesia alone can gather evidence and convict the companies concerned".[155] Meanwhile, Malaysian Education Minister Mahdzir Khalid has stated "We will not compromise with anything that may bring harm to our children in schools".[155] The Malaysian government has called Indonesia to ratify a new memorandum of understanding to tackle transboundary haze. According to Malaysian Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar the MoU would let both countries "assisting and exchange ideas with each other in the case of jungle and peat soil fires while requiring Indonesia to comply with its side of the bargain".[156] The Fire and Rescue Department of Sarawak has ready to assist in putting out peat fires in Pontianak, Kalimantan, Indonesia if it is instructed to do.[157] Malaysian military has also offered to help Indonesia to fight fires in both Sumatra and Kalimantan as been stated by Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.[158]
Singapore – On 3 June 2015, preceding both the dry season and the 2015 haze crisis, the Singaporean government offered Indonesia an 'assistance package' to combat haze; Singapore said assistance had been "consistently" offered "since 2005". The 2015 offer included three C-130 aircraft, one Chinook helicopter and a Singapore Civil Defence Force team.[159] The offer to deal with the crisis was again reiterated to Indonesia in September when Singapore was then affected by the haze.[160] At first, Indonesia accepted the offers[161] but rejected it under a recent statement by its Environment and Forestry Minister as been confirmed by its ministry's chief spokesman, Mr Eka Soegiri.[153] Singapore has since reiterated the offer according to its former Minister for Environment and Water Resources, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.[162] Dr Vivian also delivered Singapore’s national statement at the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit 2015 on 27 September 2015 at the UN Headquarters in New York US. The Summit has adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a long-term global development framework that includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In the statement, Minister Balakrishnan also called for closer regional and international co-operation on the issue of transboundary haze pollution in Southeast Asia.[163] On 7 October 2015, after the haze had affected parts of Southeast Asia for more than a month, Indonesia finally accepted Singapore's offer to help.[164] Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the request was sent via the Indonesian embassy in Singapore.
Thailand – Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered its Foreign Ministry co-operate closely with neighbouring countries to tackle the chronic problem that has gripped parts of Southeast Asia.[107] He also instructed officials in each affected province to spray water in the air to help improve visibility and to supply masks to the public.[107] Thailand has said that they would push for Asean-level efforts to combat the haze.[143] The Thai government has also offered them help in tackling the haze problem according to its Foreign Ministry deputy permanent secretary Vitavas Srivihok, as the Indonesian envoy had admitted his country's efforts alone were not enough to stop the fires.[165]
See also [ edit ]Getting First Nations approval for the Northern Gateway pipeline will be "pretty tough," as long as the proposed terminus remains at Kitimat, B.C., says Alberta Premier Jim Prentice.
The Premier says there are other options besides Kitimat from which to load unrefined, heavy oil onto tankers destined for Asian ports, saying the environmental concerns of Coastal First Nations to the existing plan need to be respected. On the job barely a week, Mr. Prentice has already indicated he is conscious of Alberta's image as an environmental miscreant and plans to address it – including developing a far-reaching climate-change strategy.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, the Premier said he remains optimistic that a solution can be found to overcome B.C. First Nations pipeline objections, allowing Alberta to gain access to vital tidewater on the West Coast.
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"I believe there is a way to get to success on this, I really do," said Mr. Prentice, who consulted with aboriginal groups in B.C. on behalf of project proponent Enbridge before winning the leadership of Alberta's Progressive Conservative Party earlier this month. "I have a very strong relationship with First Nations in B.C., particularly on the coast where the problem [opposition to the project] has been centred."
That relationship was also forged during Mr. Prentice's time as federal minister of Indian Affairs in 2006-07. After being sworn in as Premier last week, he announced he was taking on ministerial responsibilities for aboriginal relations. (He is also a former federal environment minister). He said he has already spoken with Christy Clark and the two have begun to build a positive relationship, something that often did not exist between the B.C. Premier and her former Alberta counterpart, Alison Redford.
"My sense is there is a way to firstly address the environmental issues that First Nations have raised," Mr. Prentice said. He said many "are very good points and we've collectively not done a very good job of responding to them, particularly among the Coastal First Nations. People say it's all about money – well, it's not about money. It's actually about ensuring people who have lived on the West Coast of Canada from time immemorial, that their lives are not going to be changed irretrievably by some kind of disaster."
Under the current Gateway plan, Alberta crude would be loaded onto tankers at Kitimat and then navigate the ecologically pristine waters of Douglas Channel before hitting open ocean. Fears of a spill have been central to virulent opposition expressed by native and environmental groups.
Prince Rupert to the north is one of a few locations that have been discussed as potential alternatives to Kitimat. In the past, Enbridge has said that a route to Prince Rupert, where there is already an established port facility, would be trickier from an engineering standpoint because of the overland terrain that would have to be traversed.
Regarding the possibility of refining the crude in Alberta before shipping it across B.C., the Alberta Premier said the extent to which that might be necessary would depend on where the oil is going to end up on the West Coast. He said there are "multiple possibilities."
"Not an unlimited number, but there are at least four possible locations for a West Coast terminal and they all involve different environmental risks," he said. "A lot of the questions that First Nations people have been asking relate to tankers and pilotage requirements and the first-responder mechanics and the role they're going to play and are people going to be bonded and where's the money going to come from if there's a problem. And many of these questions have not been answered to their satisfaction."
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Asked whether he believes the Gateway terminus should be relocated to Prince Rupert or another destination, Mr. Prentice said, "Everything I've heard from the Haisla who live there is they don't agree with the terminal being in Kitimat." Is it possible to get First Nations approval if there is no support at the planned terminus site? "It's pretty tough," the Premier said.
B.C.'s Ms. Clark was unavailable to comment on Mr. Prentice's remarks.
In an e-mail statement, Enbridge spokesman Ivan Giesbrecht said federal approval for the project includes a terminus at Kitimat. "At this stage, Northern Gateway has not contemplated any applications to the National Energy Board to change the design," he said. "Our focus has been to re-engage with First Nations to build trust, establish respectful dialogue and create meaningful partnerships."
Mr. Prentice said the Gateway terminus, wherever it ends up, will be a huge economic driver. He said there needs to be a discussion about "what's the role of First Nations going to be, what share of the economic opportunity will they benefit from." After settling on the terminus, the Premier said, "the rest of it is just a pipeline that's going to be underground. But the economic driver and the economic benefits really accrue at the coast in a very substantive way."
He added: "There's lot of work to be done. I'm under no illusions."White House Goes Too Far In Asking Google To Pull Controversial Video
from the there's-this-first-amendment-thing dept
Its removal is not the same as deferring to government censorship, and as much as I hate to give mob violence the satisfaction of an effective heckler’s veto, we cannot expect that online service providers will never remove material simply because it is deemed offensive by wide swaths of the population. Moreover, I can’t help but wondering if the violent response isn’t just what the film-makers were hoping for. So by leaving the image on its site so that we can understand the controversy, while taking it down where broad access to the material is likely to cause the greatest harm, Google has made a comprehensible judgment.
"There's no indication that the government is questioning the right of these idiots to make that repellent film. On the other hand, it does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship," the American Civil Liberties Union's Ben Wizner said in an interview Friday.
"I am actually kind of distressed by this," said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Even though there are all these great quotes from inside the White House saying they support free speech....by calling YouTube from the White House, they were sending a message no matter how much they say we don't want them to take it down, when the White House calls and asks you to review it, it sends a message and has a certain chilling effect."
Last week, we reported on Google's decision to block access in Egypt and Libya to the controversial, hate-mongering video that's been cited as leading to the violent reactions in the Middle East. We wondered if this was the right move, noting the seriousness of the violence and the ridiculousness of the video. However, Paul Levy's thoughts on this make sense. While we may worry about what line Google may draw, it is a private company and it's not doing this due to government pressure, but as part of it's own decision:As such, even if we disagree with the choice, it's a defensible choice.However, things may have crossed the line late last week. There were reports that the White House strongly suggested that YouTube pull the video entirely. Of course, they didn't come out and say that exactly, but rather suggested that YouTube "review the video to see if it was in compliance with their terms of use."But when it's the White House suggesting that, it's a pretty clear situation in which the President is applying pressure on a private company to censor speech. Of course, we've seen this before, though not with the White House directly. Four years ago, we saw Senator Joe Lieberman similarly pressure YouTube to start blocking "terrorist" videos on YouTube. Lieberman, of course, loves to pressure private companies into blocking speech. He did similar things to try to censor Wikileaks and even pushed some bad legislation to try to increase censorship powers of the federal government.Either way, the White House putting pressure on Google has troubling implications, even if we agree that the video in question is a hate-mongering disgrace. As various free speech activists told Politico (link above) there are some troubling implications here:Google, for its part, has actually stood up to the White House on this one, and said that it won't pull the clip, though it had begun blocking the video in India and Indonesia, where they determined the video itself was illegal, and the company needed to comply with local laws.Of course, all of this is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on the violence and anger. And that's part of the problem and the ridiculousness with arguing for censorship. It seems quite likely that a very large percentage of those involved in the mob violence to this haven't even seen the video themselves. Caving in to censorship "hints" from government doesn't actually hide the content or calm much anger. In fact, it's likely to just draw more attention to it. The video is despicable and the reaction to it is horrifying on a number of levels. The loss of life is massively upsetting, especially over something so stupid. So I can certainly understand the instinct to try to "do something," and to reach for the easiest target: censoring the video. But not only would it be completely ineffectual, it opens up a whole host of other problems. Dealing with hate speech by seeking to censor it almost always just encourages more hate speech (and even more idiotic violent reactions). It may be an "easy" thing to do, but it's no solution to deep-seeded problems. It just creates new problems.
Filed Under: censorship, free speech, pressure, video, white house, youtube
Companies: googleDisunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln convened his cabinet to reveal a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln informed the men that he “had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them.” He did, however, open the floor for discussion.
For some, it was the first they had heard of the plan; for others, like Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, it was a secret Lincoln had let them in on during the previous week. Still, it was a bombshell for all involved: the culmination of weeks of antislavery activity on Capitol Hill and in the White House, a brief period of time that would reset the purpose of the war and, in doing so, put the nation on a fundamentally new course.
Lincoln decided to issue the proclamation after months of unsuccessful pleading with leaders from the loyal slave states to phase out the institution of slavery over time in return for federal compensation. He hoped that such an experiment, if successful, might show the Confederates how to rid themselves of the evil institution later on. Lincoln now decided to reverse this sequence: he would free the slaves in all the rebel states first, and then deal with the border states later.
In the midst of all this, the Republican Congress passed a crucial new piece of legislation: the Second Confiscation Act, which emancipated slaves of individual rebels in Confederate states. The act was immensely controversial all over the North: white supremacists were up in arms. Lincoln worried that a huge white backlash might give pro-slavery Democrats control of Congress in the mid-term elections that were coming in November. And he also had concerns about the constitutionality of some sections of the bill. So he prepared a veto message. But the message suggested a number of remedies that would make the bill acceptable. For example, he wrote that “it is startling to say that congress can free a slave within a state” — but “if it were said that the ownership of the slave had first been transferred to the nation, and that congress had then liberated him, the difficulty would at once vanish.”
Lincoln’s legal skills and political acumen strengthened the Confiscation Act. To ensure passage, Lincoln met secretly with members of Congress to craft a definitive compromise. The newly revised bill passed, and Lincoln signed it on July 17. Five days later, he convened his cabinet.
In the meantime, however, he had drafted a document immensely more radical than anything Congress had considered. The radicalism of Lincoln’s new idea came down to the fact that he made no distinction whatsoever between the slaves who were owned by rebels and any other slaves. Under Lincoln’s plan, all slaves within the states or the parts of states where rebellion existed would be freed just as soon as Union armies could free them.
Lincoln presented his proclamation as a putatively military measure. It provided that all slaves in Rebel-controlled territory were thereafter free, a move that exempted both the loyal slave states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri) and the Union-held portions of Confederate states, primarily Tennessee and Louisiana. Of course, the document meant nothing, immediately, for the slaves in Confederate-controlled territories — but it gave them an overwhelming incentive to do whatever they could to expedite Union victory. And it gave them the assurance that Union armies would free them if the soldiers of “Father Abraham” were victorious.
Related Civil War Timeline An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors. Visit the Timeline »
The reactions were quite mixed. Attorney General Edward Bates approved. So did Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase — a free soil leader who had been one of Lincoln’s rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination — recorded in his diary that he would give the measure “cordial support” but advised that emancipation might be better carried out at the discretion of commanders in the field. (Stanton recorded a very different reaction by Chase, who, according to Stanton’s recollection, called the proclamation a “measure of great danger”).
Others took a more measured, politically informed approach. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair said he feared that the proclamation would trigger a huge anti-Republican backlash in the fall elections. Most decisively, William Seward counseled Lincoln to wait until a military victory provided an occasion to issue the proclamation from the high ground of battlefield success.
Lincoln took Seward’s advice. He waited until after a Union victory — at Antietam, in September — to make the plan public, and he didn’t put the proclamation into effect until after elections. In the months in between, he would use all his gifts of persuasion — and deception — to soften up public opinion in the North, lest Republicans lose at the ballot box any chance to maintain the momentum of their antislavery mission.
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Richard Striner, a history professor at Washington College, is the author of “Lincoln and Race.”Story highlights Usernames and other information was compromised on Kickstarter, the site said
No credit card information was stolen in the breach, the website said
Law enforcement notified Kickstarter of the breach Wednesday, a news release said
Kickstarter, a popular crowd-funding site, urged users to change their passwords Saturday after announcing that it had been hacked.
Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler said in a blog post that usernames, passwords, mailing addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers had been compromised by hackers, but no credit card information had been stolen.
"(W)e strongly recommend that you create a new password for your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password," Strickler said in the blog post. "We're incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting."
Hackers "gained unauthorized access to some of our customers' data," but "there is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on all but two Kickstarter user accounts," a news release said.
Kickstarter did not say how many accounts were compromised.
Law enforcement alerted Kickstarter to the hack Wednesday, according to the release. The site then "immediately closed the security breach," it said.
According to the website -- which allows people with products, projects and inventions to post their ideas and raise money for them by garnering donations from users -- 5.6 million people have pledged funding to 56,000 projects since its launch in 2009.MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Before many of the 18 pitches he saw in his third rehab start for Double-A Portland on Thursday night, Boston Red Sox left fielder Carl Crawford was forced to tune out a heckler behind home plate.
The fan -- who Crawford claimed uttered "a racial slur" -- routinely made his feelings known with regard to the left fielder's $142 million contract and whether he was earning it.
The heckler's message: overrated, overpaid.
Crawford responded Thursday night in the fifth inning of Portland's 11-3 loss to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats by lacing a triple to right-center field at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium. He reached third base without drawing a throw.
After completing his night in the seventh inning, Crawford was asked about the fan and lingering animosity that may exist after his disappointing 2011 season, his first in Boston.
"Talking about that guy, he actually called me a racial slur to begin the game," said Crawford, who hit.255 with a.289 on-base percentage last season. "He was the only one I had a problem with. People in Boston don't even do that. So I don't know what that was about. It's not that bad in Boston, like that."
Crawford seemingly did hear some other ribbing. While walking back to his position after New Hampshire's Brad Glenn hit a fifth-inning home run to left field, Crawford appeared to stop, turn and wave his glove in a dissatisfied manner toward fans beyond the wall.
Crawford, however, was composed while offering his perspective to reporters in the stadium's media room. He spoke fondly of the fans in New Hampshire, many of whom cheer for the Sea Dogs despite the Fisher Cats being the Double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays.
"I can understand why people can be upset about me signing a contract and me having the kind of year I had," Crawford said. "I understand, you know? They love their team. They want you to produce when you sign a contract like that. I can't be mad at them. All I can do is get ready to play this year and try to produce."
Crawford, who is rehabbing a sprain of the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow, continued to test the arm during six-plus innings of work as Portland's leadoff hitter and left fielder on Thursday night.Story highlights Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price defended a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare
Price was pressed to answer critics who argue the GOP plan weakens protections for some
(CNN) Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Friday hailed House Republicans' passage of a health care reform bill, while cautioning that it's an "important first step" and that critical components remain before "repeal and replace" becomes a policy reality.
"It's an important first step in this legislative process," Sec. Price said on "Fox & Friends" Friday morning.
"The Kentucky Derby is coming up -- you can't win the Triple Crown unless you win the Kentucky Derby."
Price was also asked to answer critics of the GOP bill, who point out that it weakens protections for pre-existing conditions mandated by Obamacare, and is projected to increase health care costs for older and sicker Americans.
Price was asked specifically about waivers in the plan that would allow insurers to charge older Americans even more than five times the premiums of the young.
Read MoreIt has been confirmed that XDN DigitalNote ICCO campaign has accumulated 327 Million XDN in the first 36 Hours.
XDN is still at IC stage where participants fund the ICCO wallet, prepare them for sale to institutional investors. That being said, there is more to accumulate at this stage which ends on Friday 09 June 2017. 327 Million XDN has been accumulated only in the first 36 hours of the campaign.
XDN DigitalNote ICCO campaign manager also released some news regarding the new pricing for the digital currency. Confirming that it will be 2.5 the market price being calculated at the end of the IC stage.
Note: XDN Price is stable around 302 Satoshi, with 2.5 of the market price that will hit at least 600 Satoshi making another 100% gains to the digital currency.
Update: A poll will be released on Wednesday to vote on XDN ICCO price sale.UPDATE: On this morning’s episode of The View, Jim Carrey’s ex Jenny McCarthy weighed in on the controversy.
“You can attack myself, but don’t bring my children into it. And I’m sure it’s the same for Jim,”; she said. “Jim and I have become friends now since our breakup. We dated for five years and I got to know his daughter, Jane, who is a lovely, lovely girl. It’s completely uncalled for and wrong. Jim is a great father. He loves Jane more than anything in the world. Shia did apologize and Jim did take it, but the whole thing is, do not bring our children into it.”;
Just three days after announcing his decision to retire from “all public life”;, actor Shia LaBeouf has once again found himself in the middle of another high profile Twitter controversy.
While presenting the award for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy at last night’s Golden Globes, Jim Carrey made the following quip about LaBeouf’s much-publicized plagiarism scandal: “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard…I believe it was Shia LaBeouf who said that. So young, so wise.”;
LaBeouf immediately took to Twitter to register his outrage. “At least I don’t get arrested for indecency on major LA highways! Or abandon love child’s,”; the Transformers star wrote.
Two hours later, LaBeouf issued an apology.
Jim Carrey states that he is deeply involved in his daughter’s life – I accept that,regret tweet on the matter. Apologies to both parents. — Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 13, 2014
Before calling it a night, LaBeouf added:There was no wind and no one around to make the
A dad's day out with his kids should have been a fun experience until they came across a ghost.
That's what the family think they saw in Warwick, Rhode Island, when they went to visit a playground.
But the father said they wouldn't be going on the swings because a ghost was already there.
A dad's day out with his kids should have been a fun experience until they came across a ghost
In the clip, which has now been viewed a staggering 4.5million times on Facebook, a blue swing can be seen moving in the air erratically.
Scotty Denton explained to viewers: 'We're in the playground and the kids don't want to go anymore because look at this s***…
'This is real, look at this. There's nobody on it, there's no wind.'
The family stayed safely in their car as the swing continued to move with no-one apparently in the area.
Scotty adds: 'Look at the other swings, they aren't even moving', and his son suggests: 'Maybe somebody pushed it?'
The family stayed safely in their car as the swing continued to move with no one apparently in the area
And it seems the family aren't the only ones to have noticed something sinister going on at the playground.
A local friend from the area said: 'We drive by it all the time, that thing is always going crazy.By Paul Rincon
Science Reporter, BBC News
Venus Express has been studying our near neighbour since 2006
One of the many mysteries of Earth's nearest planetary neighbour Venus has been cracked, Nature journal reports. Scientists have long puzzled over conspicuous patches in the Venusian clouds that appear dark at ultraviolet (UV) light wavelengths. They now think these are solid particles or liquid droplets that get transported from deep in the atmosphere up to the planet's cloud tops. But a riddle remains: scientists still don't know what they are made up of. The features are distributed within the thick clouds of sulphuric acid and sulphur dioxide that shroud the hothouse planet. "These (UV features) have been observed since 1929. We see them in images from the Pioneer Venus probe and in ground-based observations," said Dr Dmitri Titov, from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. It had previously been unclear whether these were caused by differences in the height of the cloud tops, temperature differences or variation in composition of the clouds. Darkness and light Data from the European Space Agency (Esa) spacecraft show that areas near Venus' equator which appear dark in ultraviolet light are regions of relatively high temperature. The scientists think this is where intense convection brings up the mysterious dark material from below. Bright regions at Venus' mid-latitudes are areas where the temperature in the atmosphere decreases with depth, which prevents air from rising. The effect is most extreme in a wide belt around the poles, which has been dubbed the "cold collar". At low and mid-latitudes, the cloud top is located at a constant altitude of about 72km in both the dark and light regions |
, violet nightgown she was wearing. She felt lecherous, but could not take her eyes away. Her passionate gazing ended only as Pyrrha got into bed. Nora walked over to her own. She and Pyrrha exchanged one last, brief smile and look with each other before Pyrrha closed her eyes.
Nora turned to look at Ren. "Night, Ren. Dream of us killing Grimm together, as we travel to Pancake Land," she said.
"I'll try. Sleep well," he replied. A half-asleep Jaune on the other hand, simply grunted against his pillow.
As Nora reached for and turned off her nightstand lamp, the dorm became dark, save for the vague, blue moonlight seeping in through the window. She let out a quiet sigh of delight. It felt good to finally be able to relax after a long and emotional day. She had missed her dorm bed. Sure, there was nothing wrong at all with the softness or size of her bed back home. She did not, however, enjoy sleeping alone. Whenever she travelled home to visit her father and friends living at Vana, Ren usually accompanied her, sometimes even sleeping in the same bed as her.
Her father had, at more than one occasion, asked her if she and Ren were dating. He liked Ren, but Nora had assured her father that they were just friends, even though she had wished they could be more than that. Here, inside her dorm, she had Ren, Jaune, and Pyrrha. The girls from team RWBY were just across the hall.
I'm surrounded by friends and still it feels like someone is missing…
She looked over to Pyrrha's bed, barely seeing her still shape in the darkness. Pyrrha had not said anything if she had come to a decision or not. That's a bad sign for me… right? If she loves me, she would've said something by now. Pyrrha's a smart girl, much smarter than stupid, silly me.
Nora sighed against her pillow to muffle the noise, wrapping her bed. It's okay… We'll still be friends. I'm… I'm okay with that. Power of friendship and all that. At least that was what she wanted to believe.
Will I really not feel heartbreaking, soul crushing envy whenever I see Pyrrha inevitably go on a date with a handsome, charming, and funny guy? Someone who is better than me in every way? Watch her hug and kiss him, knowing that it should have been me? No… I'll not be able to do… and I hate myself for it!
She wondered if she should switch team, or move to another academy. No! My friends would never accept that. I won't run away like my mom did.
She and Pyrrha were going to train, study, and fight together until graduation. What would happen after that, she did not know, and that scared her. She did not want to split up after graduation. She did not want Pyrrha to become someone on her Scroll's contact list that she only rarely and briefly sent simple messages and calls to stay in touch. What she wanted was her team to stick together forever. What fun was there in being a hunter, killing Grimm, exploring the world and having a lot of fun if she did not do it together with her friends?
The excitement she had felt from Pyrrha saying how good it felt to have her back, was now being twisted and defiled by her own sadness and worry. As much as she tried to force those negative thoughts away, she only made them grow stronger. She gripped her sheets, pulling them tighter around her.
Nora needed comfort, to be with someone. Ren was always dependable. She could sleep in his bed and hold him anytime she wanted, and he would never object.
She felt she needed to be hugged and comforted. She looked at Ren's bed. She could go to him. He would not object. He never did. Aww, what would I do without him? Best friend and pancake maker ever!
Her gaze slid from Ren's bed over to Pyrrha's and lingered at the still and silent form in it. Pyrrha and her bed look so comfy… She knew it was best to not force the issue, yet she wanted nothing more than to get close to her, tuck herself in beneath her sheets, like a frozen child wanting to rest by a lit fireplace.
Ugh, I feel like a drug addict, wanting one last fix before quitting for good.
Self-restraint had never been one of her stronger sides. As if a ghostly force took control of her body, Nora stood up and slowly walked forward. The moonlight was just bright enough to prevent herself from fumbling around, as she silently and slowly navigated her way over to Pyrrha's bed.
She was evidently not silent enough, as the red-haired girl shifted slightly in her bed. "Hm? Who's there?" asked Pyrrha tiredly.
Nora already felt regret for having approached her. "Did… did I wake you up?" She kept her voice as low as possible to not disturb Ren and Jaune.
"Nora?" Pyrrha asked before yawning. "No, it's quite alright. Did you want something?"
Nora said nothing at first, and kneeled down on the floor. She reached out with both her hands and took one of Pyrrha's, caressing it from both sides. "Pyrrha… I don't wanna seem clingy, but… I didn't sleep so well last night, and-"
She stopped in mid-sentence as she felt Pyrrha squeeze her hand gently, silently interrupting her. "I know what you want, Nora, and you don't need to ask." With her free hand, Pyrrha lifted her sheet up. "Come on in," she beckoned at her.
W-wow! Didn't expect it to go like that. But hey, I'm not complaining! Grinning while under the influence of a victory rush, Nora got into Pyrrha's bed and joined her beneath the sheets. Even though Pyrrha's bed was identical to her own, she still believed this one was more comfortable and warmer.
"It might not be as cozy as your so called 'Bed Castle', but I hope you'll find it to your liking," said Pyrrha.
"It's like your bed is from heaven. I've missed this." As Nora adjusted herself and inched closer to Pyrrha, she felt warm and soft mounds against her face. She pressed her face against them. "I've missed these," she said, her voice being partially muffled.
Her action caused a quiet chuckle from Pyrrha, sounding embarrassed. "N-nora, I know you've missed my 'boob pillow', as you like calling them, but you should rest your head on an actual pillow. Otherwise you might wake up tomorrow with a stiff and aching neck."
Nora protested by groaning in a playful manner. I would gladly suffer some stiffness and aching if it means I can fall this close to you. She respected her too much to argue about it, however. As a guest in her bed, she needed to behave and follow the rules. With a sigh of defeat, Nora moved herself up along the bed and placed her head on top of Pyrrha's thick and soft pillow.
The new position was not so bad after all. In fact, it was even better, as her face was so close that she could feel Pyrrha's warm breath caress her face. "You're right. This is more comfy," agreed Nora.
For a short moment, both of them remained still and silent. Nora could vaguely see the dark outline of Pyrrha's head, but not of her face. Even in darkness, Nora thought Pyrrha to be beautiful.
I wish I was a Faunus, because then I would have night vision and be able to see during the day and the nights. Oh, and I wouldn't trip over things when going to the bathroom at night.
"Are you... looking at me?" asked Pyrrha, ending the silence and surprising Nora.
"What makes you ask that?"
"I think I can see the moonlight's reflection in your eyes."
Caught in the act, like when I got my hand stuck in the cookie jar. "Maybe I am. Are you?"
"Maybe I am." Pyrrha's response caused them both to giggle, music to Nora's ears. It sounded to Nora like Pyrrha was smiling. She hoped she was.
After another, shorter moment of silence, Pyrrha politely asked, "Nora, not to sound rude, but are you okay if I roll over and face the other side? I sleep better that way. It just feels more... natural for me."
Nora silently gulped. Uh oh! "Does my breath stink that much? I made sure to rinse my mouth with syrup after brushing my teeth," she quipped in a nervous manner. "Sure. Can't argue against what feels natural."
As Pyrrha rolled over, she carefully said, "You can hold me… if you want to."
Nora's recent worry was washed away by those words, and was instead replaced by excitement, and a bit of boldness. She grinned and slid closer to Pyrrha from behind. "I'll hold you and be the small spoon. It just feels more natural for me." As she playfully returned Pyrrha's words, she carefully slid her arms around her waist, resting her open hands on her flat and warm stomach.
Unf! I wanna squeeze your belly! Get a real feel how firm those awesome abs are. There are other places I wanna squeeze, too… softer and larger ones.
Nora relaxed, and leaned her face closer to Pyrrha's neck. As she inhaled through her nose, she caught the sweet and citrusy fragrance of green apple scented shampoo lingering in Pyrrha's red and silky hair. As pleasant as it was to lie so close to her, feeling her warmth, sensing her scent, was a painful reminder for Nora that she would never have the one thing she truly desired: Pyrrha Nikos as her girlfriend, her soul mate.
Nora sighed as quietly as she possibly could. Why does it have to feel so painful to be rejected?
She was thankful that Pyrrha could not see her right now, or she would ask about the tears welling up in her eyes. She wished she and Pyrrha could remain like this, but knew deep within that she would need to stop seeking Pyrrha out for cuddles.
Having listened to her heart had formed both happy and sad memories together with Pyrrha that Nora would carry with her forever. She did not want to stop listening to her heart. One rejection could not lead to her living a life of celibacy. Nora planned to shed her fair share of tears, let her be comforted by Ren. Then, once she was ready, she would try to find a new, potential girlfriend. One who was confident about her sexuality, and would love Nora for who she was.
She needed to say something, wanting Pyrrha to hear words from her heart. "You mean so much to me," she whispered into Pyrrha's ear before pecking her cheek. "Good night, Pyrrha," was the last thing she said as she closed her eyes, preparing herself to drift into sleep. Things got quiet. It was a comfortable silence for Nora, thanks to the ambiance of Pyrrha's slow, quiet, and drawn out breathing, her heart beating steadily inside her chest. She could not possibly ask for a better, more soothing lullaby.
Nora's eyelids twitched. Pyrrha's heart beat louder and faster. Her body felt warmer than usual. She tensed up as she felt Pyrrha place her hand on top of hers, fearing that she would remove it away from her stomach. Instead, to her pleasant surprise, Pyrrha hooked her fingers in-between Nora's, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.
"Nora... get up," said Pyrrha calmly.
Nora widened her eyes, and dropped her mouth in fear and shock. "Are… are you kicking me outta the bed? D-did I do something wrong? I'm so sorry! I-" She was about to raise her voice and garble hysterically, but was gently interrupted from doing so as Pyrrha rolled over and put her fingertip on her mouth.
"Shh, calm down," urged Pyrrha, "You're going to wake up Ren and Jaune, and probably the whole building if you start screaming. I'm not kicking you out. I need to talk to you."
Even though Nora was reassured that she was not being kicked out, the worriedness in her chest remained as strong and painful as ever. "A-about what? I'm not in trouble, am I?" she asked for confirmation, wanting to put her worry fully aside.
Pyrrha moved her finger away from Nora's lips and placed her hand on her shoulder. Even in the darkness, Nora felt the gaze of Pyrrha's green eyes looking deeply into her. "You know what we need to talk about."
Nora blinked. Pyrrha said she knew, but Nora struggled to find out what it was herself. Did she just have a nightmare? Have I been too clingy lately?
But then the harsh truth sunk in. Nora realized that her moment of reckoning had come, and Pyrrha was about to render her judgment. "O-oh, okay," she whispered as she slowly got up from the bed. She dared not to ask in that moment, and waited for Pyrrha to inevitably give her an answer to the one question she desperate wanted answered. I hope she will soon, for the uncertainty is making my poor stomach twist in knots!
"Let's head to the rooftop, quietly. You should put something on. The days are warm, but the nights are cold," suggested Pyrrha as she got up as well. Instead of her slippers, she put her bare feet into her boots.
While Nora was putting on a pair of sweatpants, followed by her pink sneakers, wrapping herself in a blanket, she looked at Jaune and Ren who remained silent and still in apparent sleep.
As she left the dorm together with Pyrrha, Nora thought, I got a baaaad feeling that I'm not gonna like what I'm about to hear next. She silently and desperately prayed she would be wrong.
End of chapter 18
Author's note: So, what do you think is going to happen now?Funko will soon be releasing something, well, fantastic.
At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the beloved collectible company will debut a tiny, adorable version of Newt Scamander, the magizoologist protagonist of the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them — and EW has your exclusive first look.
The Funko Pop! figure includes Newt’s wand, his Hufflepuff scarf, and the magical case that holds all of his mystical creatures (although no word on whether the Funko version is, like Newt’s case, bigger on the inside).
The Newt Scamander Funko Pop! vinyl early release figure will be available exclusively at Comic-Con and then at Barnes and Noble retail stores.
WANT MORE EW? Subscribe now to keep up with the latest in movies, television and music.
Set 70 years before Harry Potter headed to Hogwarts, Fantastic Beasts explores J.K. Rowling‘s wizarding world in 1920s New York, as the British wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) travels overseas with his case full of magical creatures. Written by Rowling and helmed by longtime Harry Potter director David Yates, Fantastic Beasts will hit theaters on Nov. 18.When is it OK for an MP to miss votes in Parliament? Former NDP and now-Independent MP Sana Hassainia had the worst voting record in the House of Commons in 2014, showing up for 16 of the 269 votes last year. She spoke to the Ottawa Citizen.
Q: Why did you miss almost every vote during the year?
A: In 2013, I had my second child. The party I worked for (the NDP) didn’t help me at all with my work-family balance. I decided even if that bothered the party at the time, (I would) not be as present for votes. I had two kids – and for me it’s important to be with them – and the vast majority of votes are at the end of the day or the evening, so I didn’t show up for that reason.
Q: Is that a problem you’ve heard of from your colleagues?
A: It’s certain that it’s a personal question with some of my colleagues who have given birth, and I think it’s a personal question of how a mother wants to live and how much personal time they need.
It’s not the same for everyone. Me, I have to be there for my kids, I feel it’s important to be there to put them to bed, to pick them up at the nursery, to be there when they wake up. There are some mothers who will do this and, without judging, some mothers who won’t. And that’s OK by me. It’s really a personal decision to make.
Q: You discussed this with the party and they were OK with that?
A: No, not at all. But seeing that we are the Official Opposition with a government that is in majority, there’s not much we can do. So in a way, my absence did not change the results of the votes.
Q: Do you think you’re properly doing your job as an MP if you’re almost never in the Commons to vote?
A: Yes. I wasn’t there for votes but I was quite often in my riding. If I ask my constituents, I am really appreciated in my riding, I do a good job, I am there when one must be, and I ask questions quite often in the House. So my voting absence doesn’t mean I’m not working. There’s a lot you can do otherwise and I do it. It doesn’t reflect a lack of work, it’s most of all a personal decision because I am a mother.
Many who are much more advanced in parliamentary life also really think that we must face the future. I put forward a bill in 2012 concerning, among other things, work-life balance, and the bill fell because the Conservative government wasn’t interested in it.
I think it’s important to allow females – certainly among them mothers who want to spend time with their children – the possibility to either bring them in to their seats, as we see in the European Parliament, or find a way to allow (voting) for people who can’t be there when they have a family responsibility.
Q: Have your constituents ever asked you why your were almost never in the Commons to vote in 2014?
A: No, not at all. People tend to congratulate me for my work in Parliament, they say I do a very good job. They know that I’m not always there for votes and that I’m not always there for evening events, that I go home because I have young kids. And they know that no matter who would be in my situation, that maternity leave isn’t something MPs can have.
Q: If that happened, what would you say to people?
A: It hasn’t happened but if it did I’d say the same thing I told you: that I have kids that are young and would they accept to leave their very young children to make a vote that would not – because we have a majority government – make a big difference.
Q: Have you indicated you’re not running again in the 2015 federal election?
A: I haven’t made my decision. There’s certainly a chance I won’t run because as an Independent MP today you’d have a very small chance (to) be chosen by citizens. It’s likely either I join a party before the next election or I don’t run at all, but the decision hasn’t been made.
Q: There are still votes this session. Will you vote in 2015?
A: The votes at the end of the day and the evening, I cannot be there. Votes that take place over the course of the day, I’ll be there.
Q: Your office was closed from Dec. 22 to Jan. 9. Why was it closed for so long? Many other MPs went back to work a week earlier.
A: It’s a possibility I give to my staff to let them recover because they have an enormous amount of activities and, you know, I have 11 municipalities in my riding, which means a lot, a lot, a lot of activities. And so it gives my staff a chance to (rest) a little while, and me as well to have an extra week.
– This interview has been translated from French and edited for length and clarity.
dcrobertson@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/withfilesfrom
Children in the House of Commons
In February 2012, MP Sana Hassainia said she was asked to remove her three-month-old baby from the House of Commons during a vote. She had been called back quickly to the Commons for the vote and had to bring her baby boy with her. A House of Commons page, one of the young students who deliver messages to MPs in the chamber, apparently told her the Speaker wanted her to remove the baby from the Commons.
A spokeswoman for House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer said at the time that the Speaker didn’t ask the page to have Hassainia remove the baby, but wanted the page to ask MPs who were taking pictures of the baby to take their seats for the vote. Shortly thereafter, Scheer ruled that MPs are allowed to bring their babies in the House of Commons as long as they don’t disrupt proceedings.
– Ottawa CitizenWhen Sandra Green spotted it on social media, she couldn’t believe it. Did a teacher really draw a penis on her son’s assignment?
“I’m an educator myself so I said, there’s no way the teacher really did this,” Green told ABC New Mexico.
Lo and behold, there it was: a giant dick, balls and all.
Green emailed Chapin High School (in El Paso, Texas) language arts teacher Kim Juzdowski to confirm that, indeed, the art was hers. According to ABC New Mexico, Juzdowski owned up to it:
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Green said. But Green said it turned out to be true. She said she emailed Juzdowski, who Greens said, admitted to drawing it. “She admitted to embarrassing the children rather than punishing them,” Green said.
Juzdowski “drew a penis across the student’s assignment because he wasn’t doing anything in class—if you get the metaphor,” ABC New Mexico wrote.
Here’s the thing: I didn’t get the metaphor, but I consulted Fusion’s own David Matthews, who surmises it’s a reference to the fact that the student was “dicking around.” We’ll take his word for it.
Anyway, Juzowski isn’t going to lose her job:
ABC-7 reached out to EPISD who said responded in a statement: “The teacher has acknowledged the inappropriate behavior in class. The incident is being dealt with administratively. We’re working to accommodate the request of the parent and what’s best for the student.”
Green wants her son transferred, because: “If it was a man teacher doing it to a female student, they would have taken this totally serious,” Green told ABC New Mexico. “But because it’s the other way around I think they’re letting the light side go on it. And I just want him out of the environment.”
OK.In a first, Hilux Revo pickups are being shipped to the carmaker's home turf
Toyota Motor Thailand celebrated the first Hilux exports to Japan at the Banpho plant in Chachoengsao.
Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT) has exported its pickup Hilux Revo to Japan for the first time since the Aichi-based Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) phased out its pickup truck manufacturing in Japan and moved to Thailand in 2002.
The Japanese carmaker said the Hilux Revo double-cab 4x4 has been shipped since August to the Japanese market with a retail price of about ¥3 million (879,494 baht).
The company plans to export about 300 pickups a month.
TMC managing officer Hiroki Nakajima said Toyota's plants in Samut Prakan (Samrong) and Chachoengsao (Banpho) are the pickup truck production bases, serving 122 countries worldwide.
Last year, Toyota produced 513,603 pickup trucks from 13 plants worldwide and Thailand accounted for 64% of the total output, making 333,432 trucks.
Toyota's Samrong and Banpho plants have a combined capacity of 450,000 trucks a year.
The Revo model is the eighth generation of the Hilux pickup, which has sold at least 17.3 million units in 180 countries over the past five decades. The Hilux itself is under Toyota's innovative international multi-purpose vehicle (IMV) project, together with the Fortuner and Innova models.
In 2002, Toyota announced that the IMV initiative would be localised at the Thai plants, which have produced 2.26 million Hilux and Fortuner vehicles.
Under the IMV initiative, Toyota increased the number of its local suppliers from 131 firms to 200 with a total investment from all parties of 135.5 billion baht. The programme has generated 79,000 jobs in Thailand.
Toyota's Indonesia plant produces the compact multi-purpose vehicle Innova.
In a related development, Toyota yesterday celebrated exporting 3.03 million vehicles from its Thai operations. The event was witnessed by Industry Minister Uttama Savanayana and Shiro Sadoshima, Japan's ambassador to Thailand, together with high-ranking executives from TMC and TMT.
Toyota has operated in Thailand for 55 years and is the largest vehicle exporter in Thailand.
During 2004-17, Toyota has exported vehicles valued at 1.46 trillion baht and engines and spare parts worth 590 billion baht, contributing 2.05 trillion baht in revenue to Thailand.
TMT chairman Ninnart Chaithirapinyo said that while TMC is seeking new export countries for Thai-made cars, TMT will retain its shipment outlook of 291,000 vehicles in 2017, down 9%, to mark a fourth straight year of export contraction for Toyota.
"Toyota has suffered lower vehicle exports because it relies too much on the Middle East countries, which are the core market for pickups, but those countries now have unstable economies while oil prices remain relatively low," Mr Ninnart said. "Oceania is also a destination for pickups, and sales there remain very healthy."
At home, Toyota expects to sell 265,000 vehicles this year, up 8% from the previous year.
During January to October this year, Toyota sold 186,962 vehicles, down 3.4% year-on-year. Passenger car sales grew by 8.8% to 75,163 units. Sales of the Hilux Revo pickup fell by 8.7% to 86,258 units, while the Fortuner pickup passenger vehicle sold 17,434 units, down 23.6%.Community The heart of Star Wars Galaxies has always been its community - making it very different from the MMOs that followed. Every second in SWG is not spent in the quest for loot. It was intentionally built in a way to require interacting with those around you. Other servers have forgotten this. We have not. And this community interaction is at the cornerstone of everything we do at Relics.
Respect of Tradition We aren't pretending to be game developers. You aren't going to find lore-busting 'dungeons' full of giant biker zombies here. Instead we will try to stay as true to vanilla Pre-CU as possible, while taking advantage of some of the underutilized cool features and items available. Changes will be made to either to enhance the private server SWG experience or plug holes in legacy problems.
Saga of Relics Server-wide events are a regular feature of Relics. These events will put our players in heroic situations with their actions directly influencing the outcome and the next chapter. At Relics you'll fight side-by-side with many of the heroes of Star Wars, and perhaps become one yourself.Democrats are on a torrid fundraising pace in the first months of the Donald Trump era, powered by enraged small donors who are plowing millions of dollars worth of online contributions into campaign and committee treasuries.
A POLITICO analysis of new federal disclosures suggests many Democratic Senate incumbents — particularly those who have been most outspoken in their resistance to Trump — are on a trajectory to raise more money online than in any previous nonelection year. That could help level the fundraising playing field at a time when Republicans are poised to reap the financial rewards of holding all the levers of power in Washington.
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While comprehensive campaign finance data for both parties in the first quarter of 2017 won’t be released until next month, February figures reported to the Federal Election Commission by ActBlue, the left-leaning online fundraising platform, suggest members of Congress as well as many progressive groups are harnessing the energy of town halls and marches and translating it into a surge of online fundraising well in advance of the 2018 election season.
Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate for an open House seat in Georgia, raised nearly $2.1 million online last month for his April special election. That’s more than Tom Price, the Republican who held the seat until his appointment as secretary of Health and Human Services, spent over the course of his entire 2016 campaign.
“Being in opposition tends to mobilize people, and being in opposition to a President Donald Trump tends to really mobilize people,” said Teddy Goff, a top digital aide to both former President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, noting that online donors are often repeat contributors. “The heartening thing for the party — our candidates and incumbent officeholders, as well as new groups like Indivisible — is people aren’t just angry. They want to go out and do things, like marches around the country, and the fundraising numbers [reflect that]."
In February alone — and just online — Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a top GOP target in 2018, brought in over $212,000 in donations of under $200 through ActBlue. That’s over four times as much as she raised in small donations across all platforms — online or through more traditional fundraising means — in the first quarter of 2011, the comparable period in her last reelection campaign.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, meanwhile, raised at least $637,000 in small online donations last month — over six times more than she raised in total small-dollar contributions in the first quarter of 2011. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy has been informing his constituents that he’s getting close to receiving as many individual contributions as he did during his entire 2012 campaign, when he got 64,704. He received nearly $650,000 online in February.
“The 2016 election was humbling for Claire, and she is doubling her efforts to travel to every corner of the state to listen and show her respect for Missouri voters. She’s way more focused on that than on raising money,” said Erika Brees, the McCaskill campaign’s finance director. “But she’s very excited about the energy she feels, which we hope will be reflected in her fundraising this quarter."
The hyperactive online fundraising recorded by numerous senators has party leaders rethinking their original assumptions about 2018 Senate map, in which Democrats will be defending 25 seats compared to just 9 for Republicans. Already, campaign officials are using the rarely-before-seen levels of online cash to rewrite their budgets and adjust their advertising and hiring timelines.
There’s no GOP version of ActBlue, so most of the Republican campaign fundraising figures — online and otherwise — will be released for the first time next month.
But with control of the House, Senate and the White House, Republicans currently occupy the commanding heights of fundraising. Early signs indicate that the Trump era has been lucrative for them, too — a dinner for the House GOP’s campaign wing last week that featured Trump brought in a record $30 million. The party’s Senate campaign group raised $9.3 million over January and February, compared to Democrats’ $7.5 million.
The National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee has seen its online revenue rise by 150 percent this cycle compared with 2015, and its number of online donations — 99 percent of which are under $200 — rose 205 percent compared with two years ago, according to a committee aide.
What’s not clear is whether there is the same across-the-board surge. On the Democratic side, a wide range of progressive groups are also reporting online fundraising spikes — miniversions of the ACLU’s now-famous $24 million weekend in January after Trump’s initial travel ban was implemented. One group, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC, raised at least $555,000 online in February — more than it collected from individual donors during the entire first quarter of last year.
“What we’re seeing is a massive number of people who are either scared or concerned or shocked [by] somebody like Donald Trump with all his vitriolic negativity and his attacks on people,” said California Rep. Tony Cardenas, BOLD PAC’s chairman, noting that his group’s average donation in February was $12. “People are blown away and surprised, and as a result they’re getting off their rear end one way or another, and a way we’re seeing it is an influx of donations."
“Trump is the gift that keeps on giving,” he added.
The outpouring of cash can't come soon enough for the Democratic Party, which has sunk to one of its lowest levels in a century as Republicans control Washington, as well as 33 governors’ mansions and 66 of the country’s 99 state legislative bodies.
The biggest Democratic donors were demoralized by Hillary Clinton’s defeat, and many remain frustrated with politics after giving record amounts of cash to Clinton only to see her lose. Some of those contributors feel let down, and four months later, they are reluctant to fork over large sums in the absence of a formal campaign post-mortem report from either the Clinton campaign or the Democratic National Committee.
Small donors, however, have stepped into the void, enabling many Democrats to bust through their online goals in recent weeks — particularly when the Trump administration has high-profile missteps or moments that have captured the country’s attention.
Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Democrats minted money online in February — which saw the beginning of the fight over Trump’s travel ban and individual moments such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s stand against now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, when she was silenced by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. As Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign demonstrated, individual rallying moments can create short-term online fundraising bonanzas.
Warren raised over $1.1 million online over the course of the month. Gillibrand — who gained national attention for her opposition to nearly all of Trump’s Cabinet picks — raked in $1.4 million online.
“It’s clear that there’s more energy at the grass-roots level than I’ve seen in my lifetime, any election cycle — midterm or presidential,” said strategist Joe Trippi, who managed the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign that’s widely seen as the first such bid to begin harnessing online fundraising tools.
“This isn’t big donors giving Jeb Bush or a super PAC $100 million. [It’s] small donations from a lot of people who I’m sure have not given in a midterm election before [and] what it signals is not just money. You’re seeing more people volunteer. It’s not just donor activism."25 holiday gift ideas for RoboGeeks (2014)
Need some gift ideas for that special robot geek in your life? We polled the Robohub team for their favorite ideas, from stocking stuffers to once-in-a-lifetime gifts, so you’ll be sure to find something for every budget. Don’t see what you’re looking for? See our list from last year. Happy shopping!
For kids five and under
Aquabot – Hexbug
Ages 3+ | $9.99 and up, available on Amazon
These “fish” come to life in water and swim, dive and explore their environment. You can buy two versions of the fish in 10 different colors. You can also buy an acquarium or make your own. Recommended by Frank Tobe.
Bouncy My Happy-To-See-Me Pup – Fur Real Friends
Ages 4-6 | $45.06 and up, available on Amazon
This robotic pet responds with barks, tail wags and head tilts when you talk to her. She’ll sit when petted. Her leash has a controller so that you can take her for a walk. With a free app, you can watch her interact with the app activities as you play. The pup will respond to the bubbles and hair dryer in one of the apps. Recommended by Frank Tobe.
mamaRoo robotic rocker – 4moms
For: babies 0-6 months | $229 and up, available on Amazon
A pioneer in duplicating the human parent motions of rocking, dancing, cradling and driving, the mamaRoo robotic rocker sets the standard for smart baby swings. Competitors are adding smart features to their baby swings to catch up but 4moms is definitely the leader of the pack in their use of robotics and slick engineering. Even has built-in nature sounds but can also use any MP3 player as a plug-in. Recommended by Frank Tobe.
School Age
Zero Gravity Fridge Rover – 4M
Ages 8+ | $5.99 and up, available on Amazon
The Fridge Rover climbs up your fridge or magnetic surface when wound up. A fun little science gadget that will make a great stocking stuffer. Measures about 2 by 2 1/2 inches. See it in action on Youtube. Recommended by Kate Darling.
Dr. Who 50th Anniversary Edition Monopoly – USAoploy
Ages 8+ | $36.99 and up, available on Amazon
OK, maybe not exactly robotic, but what RoboGeek wouldn’t be into this? A BBC production since 1963, Doctor Who is the most successful and longest running science-fiction TV series.
Chatsters Gabby Interactive Doll – Spin Master
Ages 5+ | $48.88 and up, available on Amazon
This chatty Gabby has a vocabulary of over 300 unique words and phrases and over 25 games and activities triggered from interactive accessories such as smoothie, cupcake, eye shadow compact, lipstick and mobile phone. At 11 inches tall, she talks, dances and plays games and activities through her touch-enabled eyeglass frames. Her eyes are animated and light up in different colors as she chats. Her glasses are touch sensors and if you tap on a corner you can answer her questions or give her makeovers. You can even text her! Recommended by Frank Tobe.
i-Dog Robotic Music Loving Canine – Hasbro
Ages 4+ | |
might actually be useful: 1) Introduction, 2) Bootstrapping,...
Sometimes, I'm wondering if I'm not just completely crazy. I like small things, but I'm the author of Symfony, a not-so-small framework (about eighty thousand lines of code excluding comments as of today). And that's probably because I like to push the limits of what's possible when coding.
In 1985, my first useful piece of code was about managing a portfolio of stocks for my parents. I was twelve years old at that time. I won a contest. It was an interesting challenge: coding a full game in less than 10 lines of code. And my code was published in a French magazine.
In 2009, I tweeted an implementation of a dependency injection container in less than 140 characters (I did the same with a web framework).
And most of the time, those experiments helped me get to the next level. Twittee, my service container that fits in a Tweet, was an experiment, but then, it became Pimple, a small dependency injection container that is used today in Silex, a micro-framework based on the Symfony components.
So, that's not about just trying to push the limits, or trying to have fun. It's also about experimenting different approaches to known problems and see if they can have practical usage.
So, 2013... time for another challenge, right? What about packing a Symfony full-stack application in a single file. No Silex, no phar allowed, no compilation phase, just everything in a single readable file: from assets to controllers, from templates to Composer configuration.
This is yet another step toward my Quest of the PHP Holy Grail. But besides being a though challenge, there are many other reasons that makes it interesting for everyone.
First, that's a good way to learn more about the Symfony internals and especially about the Kernel class. Nowadays, thanks to all the talks about HttpKernel given by various speakers at various conferences, and thanks to my series of articles about it on my blog, a lot of developers understand how Symfony handles requests and how it manages the conversion to responses. There is even a full chapter about it in the official documentation.
But the Symfony Kernel is less well-known. This is a shame as it is also a very interesting piece of software. I hope that this challenge will give you more information about the Symfony Kernel and that, as a result, more Open-Source projects will adopt it instead of just using the components.
Then, I want to showcase once more the flexibility of the Symfony core framework and the decoupling between all aspects of the framework. If you are just a Symfony developer, you might not realize how the low level architecture of Symfony works, and I'm going to give you some insights about it.
Also, there is a more practical usage: bug reporting. When you report a Symfony bug, sometimes, it is not that easy to reproduce it. Probably because it involves third-party bundles, a specific configuration, or a chain of controller calls. For such bugs, it is almost impossible to make a patch without a way to reproduce it. As a matter of fact, we often ask reporters to fork the Symfony Standard Edition and modify it in a way that exhibits the issue. But doing so is tedious for both the reporter and the developer that will try to fix the bug. Doing the same with Silex is more easier as most of the time, the reporter is able to package everything is a single file. So, being able to do the same with the full-stack framework would be a huge step forward.
Reporting bugs is fine, but being able to experiment things in a small environment also helps. A few weeks ago, Jordi submitted a new API layer to simplify the configuration of Symfony's Security. To better understand how to use it and to get a feeling for the new API, I decided to create a small project to test different common configurations. And being able to do that in one file would have helped me a lot.
Being able to pack a whole application in one file is also very useful when you are teaching Symfony to someone, or if you want to show how to use a specific Symfony feature.
Micro vs Full-Stack#
So, let's sum up things a bit. I created Twitto, a micro-framework that fits in a tweet. Then, Silex, a micro-framework based on the Symfony components. And now, I want to make it possible to create a full-stack Symfony application in just one file. Does it mean that Symfony full-stack is also a micro-framework?
What is a micro-framework? Micro means "extremely small" and a framework is a set of tools that structures an application. It abstracts the low-level architecture of a project.
To me, micro does not mean less code. The user of a framework does not care about the number of lines of code in the framework. It does not matter when using the framework.
To me, micro means less structure, less constraints, less decisions made for you. Full-stack frameworks are great as they provide a sensible default directory structure; they come with many integrated features; they allow you to get started faster; they allow you to easily understand what's going on on an existing project.
A micro-framework is just about the bare minimum you need to get started. It lets you decide which directory structure you want, it lets you decide which feature you want to enable, it lets decide how you want to work.
Two different approaches to solve the same problem. And both have valid use cases. So, comparing a micro-framework to a full-stack one should not be based on the number of lines of code, but the comparison should be done on the way you are using the framework.
The Challenge#
So, is it possible to pack a Symfony full-stack application in one file? And, is it possible to do that in less than 200 lines of code? Well, take a seat, fasten your seatbelt, grab a coffee, and relax. I'm going to show you how I took up the challenge in this series of articles, and along the way, I'm going to explain how Symfony works. Hopefully, you're also going to learn a few tricks about PHP and Symfony.
That's all for the philosophy of the challenge. Next time, we will start tweaking the Symfony Standard Edition.This is a big day for the Anova family, our loyal #anovafoodnerd community, and for the smart kitchen. Earlier today, we announced that we will be acquired by Electrolux.
I’d like to preface this post by saying that despite how momentous this day is for our company, it simply feels wrong to be in a celebratory mood in light of recent news. We started Anova with the idea that everybody should have a seat at the table and it’s continued to be a core value and key driver of the company’s unique culture. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, the color of your skin, where you’re from, or who you pray to. It’s about what you bring each and every day. That value has been important to us since day one and it seems especially important now. We’re committed to fighting to continue to live this value at work and in our personal lives.
...
Changing the Way People Cook
In 2013, I co-founded Anova with Jeff Wu, and Natalie Vaughn. We were motivated by two simple concepts: (1) we could use science and technology to change the way people cook and (2) that everyone should have a seat at the table. This meant our devices should be precise and that we should work to lower the cost of consistently getting restaurant quality results.
In 2014, we launched a Kickstarter campaign for the world’s first connected cooking product, the Anova Precision Cooker. We love our fervent Kickstarter community. Without their initial support, we’d never be in this position.
Our community has continued to drive our brand. Today, we’re happy to say we have over 500,000 #anovafoodnerds.
Cloud Cooking
When we launched, we felt that it was important that the Precision Cooker be connected, but a lot of people were skeptical. So, we made connectivity an important company metric. We call this metric a “Cook Started” or a “Cloud Cook.” Cook Started means that someone sends time and temperature from our app to the device, either through a recipe, time and temp guide, or through manual input, instead of using the controls on the device.
A Cook Started is a direct measure of the utility of connectivity and an important “Smart Kitchen” metric. Since our launch, we’ve had 2.6 million Cooks Started; 2.1 million of those cooks were started in the last 12 months and we had more than 402,000 Cooks Started in December. It’s undeniable that the smart kitchen is real and it’s here to stay and we believe that we were a big part of the start of the smart kitchen.
Team
The number one reason for our success is the great people we have who passionately work on building the smart kitchen of the future. It’s always been about the people and it will always be about the people. We believe in first who, then what. It’s about character first.
Jeff Wu and the whole Wu family has been vital to what we’ve been able to do at Anova. Jeff and I share a passion for sous vide. Much of what I cook today, originated with Jeff.
We’ve been running this business for a little less than four years. But that’s wildly misleading. Most businesses start long before an official launch date. The Wu family has been developing scientific equipment since the 90s. The sacrifices of the Wu family and the experience they had prior to our launch was vital to our success.
Most businesses are also family businesses. My wife, Courtney, is my business partner and has helped Anova more than anyone knows. From late nights thinking about how to solve hard problems, to daily sacrifices, she’s always been there. She gets none of the credit, but deserves so much of it.
Over the years, the people you work with become like family. We argue like brothers and sisters, knowing that we’ve got each other’s backs. I’m personally eternally grateful to the early crew that made this possible — Michael Tankenoff, Bill Clark, Jordan Ramsdell, and Cory Borman — I wouldn’t trade one second of the past several years we’ve spent together.
Many thanks to the rest of the nerds that kick ass on daily basis — Marius Giese, Lindsey Brink, Nicole Poirier, Hunter Conrad, Kaitlin Karp, Liz Alstott, Brennan Angel, Chris Cereske, Connor O’Callaghan, Gus Ireland, Ram Prashanth, Shannon McClenaghan, Sarah Wolfe Carr, Angel, Hernandez, Jona De Guzman, Jocelyn Damian, Cristy Jean Dajao, Peter, Garret DePass, Gregor Berkowitz, Carla Bayot, John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen, and Vitor Santa Maria.
A huge thank you to Mike Tamaru, Monto Khanna, Chris Bunn, and Goran Jovicin for migrating away from Microsoft Excel to Google Sheets.
Culture
Our unique culture is the glue that holds us together. When we started talking with Electrolux eight months ago, it was made clear that this unique culture would be protected within the larger Electrolux organization. However, the more we got to know Electrolux, the more we realized they’re a lot like us — they’re motivated by the customer experience. Electrolux employees are passionate about their company and making great products. And perhaps most importantly, they believe in their people, the value of a great team, and collaboration.
We were incredibly thoughtful about whether we wanted this partnership with Electrolux. We were won over by Electrolux’s values and mission, which are very consistent with our own. We’re well aligned, which is why this partnership has felt so natural and we believe is such a great fit.
With Electrolux, we’ll have the resources and reach to continue to change the way people cook. Electrolux is committed to helping Anova continue its mission of building the Anova Kitchen — a kitchen where devices are precise, dead-simple to use, affordable, and connected in a meaningful way to help people cook like pros every day.
Anova will continue to have its own brand identity. Our mission will just accelerate. We love being a part of people’s lives and this will give us a way to reach more lives, faster.
The notion that everybody has a seat at the table has been so important to us as a team and I’m confident that Team Anova, strengthened by the Electrolux family, will continue to live, celebrate and fight for this value at work and at home. From Anova and Electrolux, we’re happy and humbled to have you take a seat at our table. Much love to the whole #anovafoodnerd family.
– SteveThe golden tortoise beetle ( Charidotella sexpunctata ) is a species of beetle in the leaf beetle family, Chrysomelidae. It is native to the Americas.
Adult C. sexpunctata measure 5–7 mm in length. They are variable in color from reddish-brown with black spots through gold, and often metallic, earning it the nickname "goldbug".[2] Elytral margins are expanded and nearly transparent.[3]
The color changes through its development, during mating, and during times of disturbance, such as when it is touched by a human researcher. Scientists have not examined the color-change mechanism in this species. However, color change in the related Panamanian Charidotella egregia (also called 'golden tortoise beetle'), occurs when this beetle's elytra hydrate and dehydrate.[4] Adults of both species can turn from shiny gold through reddish-brown when disturbed.[5]A long-stagnant bill that would establish a new way for people with disabilities to save money without jeopardizing their government benefits is starting to make its way through Congress.
The legislation known as the Achieving a Better Life Experience, or ABLE, Act would allow people with disabilities to create special accounts where they could save up to $100,000 without risking eligibility for benefits like Social Security. What’s more, under the plan, individuals would not lose Medicaid coverage no matter how much money is deposited in the proposed accounts.
A U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday marked the first step in Congress for the bill which has been under consideration since 2006.
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Under the proposal, individuals with disabilities would be able to create ABLE accounts at any financial institution. Modeled after the popular 529 college savings plans, funds deposited in ABLE accounts could be used to pay for education, health care, transportation, housing and other expenses. Interest earned on savings within the accounts would be tax-free.
In testimony before the Senate panel, Sara Wolff, 31, who has Down syndrome, said that passing the ABLE Act would change her life. Under current law, Wolff and many others with disabilities cannot have more than $2,000 at any given time without forfeiting government benefits. As a result, Wolff said she works two jobs but is careful not to earn more than $700 a month even though she’s capable of far more.
“Just because I have Down syndrome, that shouldn’t hold me back from achieving my full potential in life. I can work a full-time job, be a productive member of society and pay taxes — but because of these outdated laws placed on individuals with disabilities, people like me are held back in life,” said the Moscow, Pa. resident who has amassed more than 250,000 signatures on an online petition calling on Congress to pass the bill.
With widespread support from lawmakers in both political parties and the disability community, backers say they expect the ABLE Act to be fast-tracked and hope to have a bill on President Barack Obama’s desk by the end of September.
“This is really the most popular piece of legislation in Congress right now,” said Sara Weir, vice president of advocacy at the National Down Syndrome Society, who indicated the bill has 366 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives and 74 in the Senate.
Next up, the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to consider the ABLE Act before sending it for a vote in the full House and Senate.
Weir said advocates are already in talks with financial institutions who are eager to begin offering the new accounts should the ABLE Act become law.
“No other bill in Congress has this level of bipartisan, bicameral support,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., the legislation’s lead sponsor. “We want all 535 members of Congress behind this important legislation, and we need to build on our momentum in order to get the bill passed when we return from the August recess.”It is the combination rarely heard from human resources.
"You're hired."
"Now get in shape."
And yet it is a message Pat Riley has carried through his five decades in the NBA, now to the gratitude of another generation, even in these toughest of times.
"I don't think any player is worth his salt unless he attempts to get in world-class condition," Riley says in his Miami Heat executive office overlooking Biscayne Bay. "And that's the least that we should ask of a player, to be in great shape."
CAPTION Spoelstra: No need to show anger to appease outsiders. Spoelstra: No need to show anger to appease outsiders. CAPTION Spoelstra: No need to show anger to appease outsiders. Spoelstra: No need to show anger to appease outsiders. CAPTION Dwyane Wade: Braids a tribute to Iverson Dwyane Wade: Braids a tribute to Iverson CAPTION Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra says his team showed grit in loss to the Phoenix Suns. Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra says his team showed grit in loss to the Phoenix Suns. CAPTION Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade says his team's loss to the Phoenix Suns hurt his team and their hopes of getting to the playoffs. Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade says his team's loss to the Phoenix Suns hurt his team and their hopes of getting to the playoffs. CAPTION Miami guard Josh Richardson talks about the obstacles that lead hs team's loss to the Phoenix Suns. Miami guard Josh Richardson talks about the obstacles that lead hs team's loss to the Phoenix Suns.
The surprising part is that for some on this reconfigured Heat roster, it is the first time the message has been delivered as passionately and as pointedly.
"Without destroying every other GM or coach, it's Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra telling you to do that," forward James Johnson says in the hallway that leads to the Heat locker room and the team's training facilities. "When they're telling you you have the chance to play on this kind of organization if you can get in the primal shape of your life, you do it."
James Johnson has transformed his body and his outlook with the Heat. James Johnson has transformed his body and his outlook with the Heat. SEE MORE VIDEOS
So Johnson has done it. Wayne Ellington has done it. Dion Waiters has done it. Derrick Williams has done it. All have significantly cut weight, reduced body fat and put themselves in the best shape of their journeyman careers, offering unsolicited testimonials over these past six months. While on-court performance has been a struggle for the Heat, and while injuries have been an issue, conditioning has been conquered by the team's newcomers.
"I'm definitely in the best shape that I've been in since college and I feel like it," Ellington says after a recent practice session.
If you didn’t know better, you'd swear these were testimonials for weight-loss products.
"On other teams, you kind of work early in the preseason hard and as the season gets here, you kind of ease off it a little bit," Ellington says. "Here, we continue to grind through the season and continue to get in better shape, even during the season. I think that's the difference."
For Johnson, Ellington, Waiters and Williams it started almost immediately after they signed in July. Each has played for multiple teams, which meant multiple training programs, multiple promises of peak-performance potential.
For Johnson, the program designed by Heat strength coach Bill Foran and stressed by Riley, Spoelstra and trainer Jay Sabol has been an epiphany.
"When I saw my before-and-after picture," Johnson says, "I texted my fiancee and said, 'I'm sorry that you even had to be with this guy.' "
Again, not paid product pitchmen.
"I keep mentioning my college days," Ellington says, "because that's when I was really shooting it well, I was really moving well, I was getting up and down the floor without the ball. And that's what I'm getting back to."
For Riley, the conditioning zeal takes him back to the start, such a transformative element of his playing career that he has at times been iron-fisted, such as suspending Antoine Walker and James Posey just months after they had helped lead the Heat to the franchise's first championship in 2006. Now Riley is merely incredulous when one of his athletes accepts anything less.
"It starts with me, because that's what happened with me, in my career," he says, referencing 1970 and his arrival to the Los Angeles Lakers. "Going into my fourth year, [coach] Bill Sharman met with me and he said to me he had watched me, he liked me. He said, 'The only way that you're going to be able to make the team is if you're the best-conditioned player in training camp. Because what I need you for is I'm going to need you to practice against [Jerry] West and [Gail] Goodrich and [Elgin] Baylor and [Jim] McMillian every day. So I need you every day to practice against them hard.' This was when we used to practice, really practice."
Just as Riley does now with his new arrivals, Sharman presented Riley, then 25, with an offseason workout regimen. So Riley went home to his wife, Chris, and essentially started anew.
"I went to work, going to the beach. I did hills. I did stairs. I did weights. I did basketball every single day," Riley says. "I can remember Chris and I took a drive up the coast, about a week before training camp, a last getaway, and as we drove up the coast, I'd pull over the car over the side of the road and I said, 'Drive five miles,' and then I would run five miles and I'd meet her. It was terrible."
And it was great. He made the team. A career was extended by five seasons.
"When I came to training camp," Riley says. "I had an eight-pack. I didn't have a six-pack, I had an eight pack. I remember [assistant coach] Bill Bertka saying, 'God, what'd you do?' I said this is what it's going to take. And I made sure. I won every sprint. I won the mile. I won everything and then I played against those guys every day. And I made the team."
And now he pays it forward, even to those who believe they already are in shape, already have tested their limits.
"Like Ike Austin," Riley says of the former Heat center. "You go back when Ike was 323 pounds. And I watched him every day on the bike over at La Salle [High School in Miami, the team's former training facility]. After, before practice, at night. And he went to 260. He lost 63 pounds. And he became the Most Improved Player in the league, and signed a $15 million contract.The second copy of the Air Force's X-37B robotic space plane landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early Saturday morning, ending a record-breaking 469-day orbital mission that began atop an Atlas rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 5, 2011. The safe landing of Orbital Test Vehicle 2 after more than 15 months in space is an indisputable triumph for the US military and space industry. Much less certain is the X-37's future. Budget cuts, labor woes and the looming specter of a Chinese rival could blunt the diminutive robo-shuttle's orbital edge.
The Boeing-built X-37B, in development since the 1990s, was designed to operate nine months at a time between refueling and refurbishment. But with just two copies of the roughly billion-dollar space plane in the inventory, the Air Force wanted to get as much mileage as possible out of each. After OTV-1's proof-of-concept flight from April to December 2010, OTV-2's mission became an endurance test. "One of the goals of this mission was to see how much farther we could push the on-orbit duration," said Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre, the Air Force's X-37B program manager.
The key to the X-37's marathon flight: fuel and energy management. "It sips fuel like a Prius," one space insider said of the mini-shuttle. Even so, Air Force controllers on the ground had to pay close attention to the X-37's orbital profile and its use of engines, batteries and extendable solar panels.
Officially, the 29-foot-long X-37 is a research vehicle, meant to carry small experiments in its payload bay, which is roughly the size of a pickup truck bed. But the winged vehicle's maneuverability and flexibility mean it's capable of much more: spy missions, cargo deliveries to the International Space Station, even sneaking up on and tampering with enemy satellites. Some observers speculated that OTV-2 was monitoring China's Tiangong space station, a notion that Secure World Foundation analyst Brian Weeden dismissed. "If the US really wanted to observe Tiangong, it has enough assets to do that without using X-37B."
In any case, the X-37 partially fills a gap left by the retirement last summer of the much larger NASA Space Shuttle. "The X-37B OTV program brings a singular capability to space technology development," McIntyre said. Boeing has proposed to build a bigger X-37C version that could carry more experiments, more cargo – and even astronauts.
But it's not clear that the existing X-37s will survive much longer in the cash-strapped Air Force, which is struggling to pay for new bombers, new aerial tankers and the trillion-dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. In September, Air Force Space Command boss Gen. William Shelton questioned the space plane's worth. "It’s very flexible, in that you’ve got a payload bay in which you can launch, then it comes down, then you can launch it back – but whether or not it's cost effective is the question."
Complicating the Air Force's budgetary calculations, Boeing is in the process of shutting down the cutting-edge facility in Huntington Beach, California, where the X-37s were hand-assembled. In recent years Building 31, as the facility is known, has been a labor battleground between Boeing management and its rank-and-file engineers. The company plans to shutter the facility next year. Possible future X-37s could be built elsewhere, but the loss of Building 31's skilled workforce could drive up the cost.
Meanwhile, the US mini-shuttle could soon have competition. China is developing its own space plane called Shenlong – and apparently test-flew it for the first time in January last year. "Beijing may be entering the spaceplane era faster than many would have predicted," warns Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College analyst.
Currently the Air Force plans to launch OTV-1 on its second mission this fall, with OTV-2 possibly to follow on its own sophomore launch sometime next year. If the Air Force continues improving the X-37's performance, these coming missions could be even more amazing than the just-completed record-breaker. But that's assuming the money keeps flowing.The demographers of the United Nation’s Population Division have quietly released their World Population Prospects: 2015 Revision report.
Above is a graph I put together from their new data that explains much about the “Migrant Crisis” of 2015.
As you can see, way back in 1950, the population of the Middle East was only 18% as great as the population of Europe, while Sub-Saharan Africa was only 33% as large. Even in 2000, the Middle East had only 49% of the population of Europe, while Africa had almost caught up to Europe with 88% of its population.
But from 2000 to 2015, the Middle East added 124 million people, making it now 65% as populous as Europe.
In this century alone, Sub-Saharan Africa has added 320 million people, making it 130% as populated as Europe.
Some of this information about the past is new. For example, the U.N.’s estimate of the population of the continent of Africa back in 2010 has grown by 13 million people, or over 1% between the 2012 Revision and the 2015 Revision. When it comes to population, the past just isn’t what it used to be.
But what about the future?
As a general pattern, the U.N. has found, the completeness of the counts tends to be worse in the fastest growing countries. Thus, the harder the U.N. has looked at Africa in this decade, the more people and more new babies it keeps uncovering.
It turns out that while the total fertility rate in Africa is falling, it’s falling quite a bit more slowly than the U.N. had expected before its disturbing 2012 Revision.
Sub-Saharan Africa simply isn’t behaving like the rest of the world:
This U.N. map of total fertility rates can be found here. I reviewed the deep structure reasons for Sub-Saharan Africa’s anomalously high fertility here.
The upward adjustment in Africa’s population projections in the 2012 Revision of World Population Prospects came as a shock. But the 2015 Revision forecasts Africa’s population in 2100, about one lifetime from now, to be another 5% higher than the U.N. projected just back in 2012.
And here’s my full graph of the U.N.’s 2015 Revision numbers:
Wow.
The U.N. now projects that, despite lower fertility in some Muslim countries such as Iran, the population of the Middle East will surpass that of Europe in 2045 and reach 937 million by 2100.
As for Sub-Saharan Africa, the U.N. foresees the population growing to 3,935,000,000 (3.9 billion and change) by 2100. (The total population of Africa and the Middle East will be 4,872,000,000.)
That’s probably not going to happen due to some combination of (A) intelligent self-restraint, (B) mass migration, and (C) Malthusian Nightmares (war, famine, disease, etc. etc.) keeping the population of Sub-Saharan Africa in 2100 from being more than six times as great as Europe, which would be an 18-fold increase in 150 years.
Keep in mind that there’s not a one to one relationship between population growth and emigration. In general, people try to assess whether the future at home looks brighter than the present. But people in Africa and the Middle East can see their countries’ futures will be more crowded and constrained.
Personally, I hope the reason that this graph doesn’t prove accurate is largely (A) intelligent self-restraint. But at present, white people don’t seem to be making much of an effort to facilitate and encourage reasonable family planning in Africa. Because that would be, you know, racist.
Which is the worst thing in the world, much worse than the U.N.’s population forecast.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jason Clark, from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice: ''He was pronounced deceased...17 minutes after the lethal dose began''
The US state of Texas has executed a Mexican for murder, despite objections from the US and Mexican governments.
Mexico argued the execution of Edgar Tamayo, 46, would violate international law, because he was not told of his right to seek legal assistance from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested.
US Secretary of State John Kerry made the rare move of asking Texas to delay the execution.
But it went ahead, after a last-minute appeal to the US Supreme Court failed.
The execution - initially scheduled for 18:00 local time on Wednesday (midnight GMT on Thursday) - was delayed as prison officials awaited word from the US Supreme Court over an appeal to keep Tamayo alive.
The Supreme Court subsequently announced it had denied a stay of execution.
Tamayo declined to make a final statement before he was injected with pentobarbital at Huntsville prison. He was pronounced dead 17 minutes later at 21:32 (03:32 GMT Thursday).
The execution was witnessed by the mother and four other relatives of his victim.
'The ultimate penalty'
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Tamayo was living in the US illegally before the crime
In January 1994, Tamayo shot and killed police officer Guy Gaddis, 24, as he was being arrested for robbery. He was in the US illegally.
Gaddis, who had been on the Houston police force for two years, was driving Tamayo and another man when he was shot three times in the head and neck with a pistol Tamayo had concealed in his trousers.
Texas executes more offenders than any other US state. Sixteen people were put to death last year in Texas, compared to seven in Florida, the state with the second-highest execution count.
Tamayo's lawyers and Mexican officials said he was protected under a provision of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that allows arrested citizens of foreign countries to receive legal assistance from their consulates.
But Tamayo was not notified of his right to seek consular assistance.
His lawyers argued such assistance could have uncovered evidence to contest the capital murder charge or to keep Tamayo off death row.
Texas officials have maintained their procedures met US Supreme Court guidance.
"It doesn't matter where you're from," said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Governor Rick Perry. "If you commit a despicable crime like this in Texas, you are subject to our state laws, including a fair trial by jury and the ultimate penalty."
But Mr Kerry had asked Texas officials to delay the execution by lethal injection in order to review whether the lack of access prejudiced the outcome of the case.
In a letter to state officials, America's highest ranking diplomat, a former prosecutor, said he had "no reason to doubt the facts of Mr Tamayo's conviction" but was concerned about how the case could affect US-Mexico relations and the way Americans are treated overseas.
On Tuesday, state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said: "If we our self don't uphold those obligations, it will make it much harder for us to ask other countries to do so."
Former Texas Governor Mark White had also called for a review, writing in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper he believed in capital punishment but "this case is not about whether we support or oppose the death penalty. It's about fairness and having the courts hear all the key facts."
The Mexican government has warned Texas' failure to review Tamayo's case and reconsider his sentence would be "a clear violation by the United States of its international obligations".
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption "This is a process issue," Mr Kerry said in a letter. "I am raising because it could impact the way American citizens are treated in other countries."
He was among the four dozen Mexican nationals awaiting execution in the US in 2004 when the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled they had not been advised properly of their consular rights.
Former President George W Bush ordered Texas and other states to review the cases, but the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of the state in 2008, saying the president could not effectively enforce The Hague's ruling, leaving it to Congress to pass legislation.
Two other men in The Hague case have already been executed despite Mexico's objections.It’s hard to play better than Tom Brady did Thursday night.
Yet despite the New England Patriots quarterback’s elite performance against the Pittsburgh Steelers, there still are two NFL quarterbacks who will have him beat this season.
That’s the consensus of 28 executives from around the league, who were asked by NFL Media’s Albert Breer in August to predict who the NFL’s top five quarterbacks will be at season’s end. Here were their responses:
1. Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers
2. Andrew Luck, Indianapolis Colts
3. Tom Brady, Patriots
4. Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh Steelers
5. Tony Romo, Dallas Cowboys
Patriots fans might disagree, but it’s hard to argue with putting Rodgers and Luck at the top. Breer asked the executives not to factor in past history when making their decisions, and they had particularly high praise for Rodgers, who received 18 of 28 first-place votes.
“He’s so smart, so accurate, so competitive, such a fast decision maker,” an NFC exec told Breer. “And I know it’s generic to say a lot of this, but he really is a 10 out of 10 in a lot of categories.”
League executives did acknowledge Brady will be especially motivated this season — something we certainly found out in Week 1 — and that he isn’t exactly a guy you want to face in a big game.
“I think he’s coming back with a chip on his shoulder, like he did after they lost a couple games early last year,” an NFC exec said of Brady. “He’s such a competitor — no one like him — and he’s got the proven track record. And I think what I’d based it on is, of all these guys, I sure don’t want to be playing against him.”
A notable name left out of the Top 5: Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who NFL executives ranked 6th.
Thumbnail photo via Mark L. Baer/USA TODAY Sports Images
Thumbnail photo via New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) runs onto the field prior to a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Gillette Stadium.Earlier this month, the House approved a package of bills that could undercut an environmental law that has helped clean some of the most polluted places in the nation. The measures would allow states to apply their own standards to the cleanup of hazardous waste sites — standards that in most cases are likely to be considerably weaker than those governing the federal Superfund program, the 1980 program that has identified thousands of toxic waste sites and cleaned up many of them.
The program has always required companies responsible for the pollution to clean it up; when responsibility could not be determined, a fund underwritten by special corporate taxes paid for the cleanup. But when Congress refused to renew those taxes in 1995, that part of the program became wholly dependent on annual appropriations, an increasingly dicey proposition. The Environmental Protection Agency would like to renew the corporate contributions, but the House legislation would restrict its ability to do so. Other provisions would make it harder to clean up Superfund sites by requiring the agency to follow state regulations even when they are |
and competently discharge the functions of a CA,” Mozilla said in its report. “Therefore we propose that, starting on a date to be determined in the near future, Mozilla products will no longer trust newly-issued certificates issued by either of these two CA brands.”
Mozilla said it will only distrust newly issued certs to avoid adversely impacting users; both WoSign and StartCom have issued a large number of certificates, Mozilla said. Mozilla has started a public comment period on its proposal, including WoSign customers.
“Mozilla believes that continued public trust in the correct working of the CA certificate system is vital to the health of the Internet, and we will not hesitate to take steps such as those outlined above to maintain that public trust,” Mozilla said. “We believe that the behavior documented here would be unacceptable in any CA, whatever their nationality, business model or position in the market.”
The back-dating of SHA-1 certs was the crux of the Mozilla report published this week. SHA-1 has long been considered a weak hashing algorithm and the major browser makers and leading technology providers have already taken great pains to deprecate it across product lines. Browsers, for example, will no longer accept SHA-1 certs in the near future; Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer browsers will block them starting in February.
Mozilla’s Firefox and Google Chrome enforce SHA-1 deprecation and will not trust certificates with a notBefore date of Jan. 1, 2016. Mozilla points out that CAs could bypass this restriction by back-dating certificates, which it says WoSign did 62 times for certs issued in 2016 that were back-dated to December 2015.
Mozilla spelled out in its investigation how it spotted an anomalous number of SHA-1 certs issued by WoSign on Dec. 20, 2015, a Sunday. This runs counter to the vast majority of other SHA-1 certs issued by the company on working days during normal work hours.
“We think it is highly unlikely that WoSign employees decided to go to work on that particular Sunday for a marathon 24-hour period and approve an unprecedented number of Type Y certificate requests,” Mozilla said. “We think it is more plausible that for those certificates, the notBefore date does not reflect the actual date of certificate creation, and that these certificates were created in 2016 (or the last day of 2015) and back-dated.”Tonight, since I'm piled to my neck in work and even my nose is crying from the final year workload, I'm gonna get my Freakum Dress on and write about how Beyonce has inspired me.
1. She reminds people of their own worth.
Pretty Hurts tells a narrative of a participant in a beauty contest, exposing the reality of pagaents to look and behave impeccably all the time. In reality, all women have faced these issues at some point in their lives. Best thing I never had sends a powerful message to everyone to leave the toxic people in your lives and look to the right places for happiness. Me myself and I tells women to be strong and be happy in their own skins, even after a devastating breakup, because if you don't love yourself no one else will do that for you.
I'm pretty much past the phase of inadequacy now that I've grown older, but I know many of my friends still struggle with finding their self-worth. Over the years I've listened to Beyonce, I've been constantly motivated to pursue my passions, things that make me happy and positively impact the world, rather than wait for someone else to tell me how much I'm worth. Though she has largely female-centric themes, I think young men can be empowered by her messages too.
2. Her messages prioritise self-respect over relationships.
I don't mean this in a bad way. I think we're all bound to meet horrid people in our lives who bring nothing but negativity to our lives and make us feel worse about ourselves. I guess my fiery personality helps weed out the people who aren't prepared to treat me with respect, but I feel too many people nowadays are willing to put up with horrible treatment out of fear of hurting someone's feelings. Seriously though, ask yourselves- do you reaaaallllllly want to care about the feelings of someone who doesn't care about yours?
Irreplaceable reminds you lads and ladies- tell these toxic people, "TO THE LEFT TO THE LEFT!" and remember that there are still people in your lives you should love and cherish, instead of focusing on the ones who demean you.
3. She's a powerful icon for equality.
She's a fierce and unabashed icon of feminism and she promotes her message without holding back whatsoever, which I sometimes feel is necessary to get a movement going. She has inspired many women of colour in America to be open about who they are, be fiercely confident, and not be ashamed of their own skin.
She doesn't just have one kind of girl in her music videos or her backup band, and this is subtle reminder to me that I shouldn't be having just one kind of friend as well- meet and work with as many people of various backgrounds as possible.
4. Yet she does not forget to pay tribute to amazing people in her life.
She loves her husband Jay-Z and never forgets to feature him (or her love and desire for him) in her music. I find this especially encouraging. It goes against the assumptions that if you're an strong, independent woman like Beyonce, you're automatically like, oh to hell with men (something so many ignorant people like to accuse us of). No matter how rich, successful or popular you are, nobody is a self-made man/woman, and it is always important to credit your families and friends who supported you throughout your journey.
5. She doesn't forget to be human.
Sometimes people forget that even the popular, successful, "cool" strong alpha female doesn't have it all together and she has vulnerabilities too. (I know, I know, the same way sometimes people forget men have feelings too) We sometimes are too busy looking up to them, gushing over their queenly awesomeness that we forget they have a soft side and need a listening ear sometimes.
Underneath that confident persona, yes Beyonce gets hurt too. She gets afraid, jealous, angry, demoralised...and she isn't afraid of showing that side. It has taken me a long time to be comfortable with my own feelings and not be afraid to show weakness too- after all, our emotions are what make us human.
So yeah, I'm now done gushing over my Queen, and I think people should start making Queen Bey a part of their lives!Ankara mayor again implies foreign powers behind ‘artificial earthquake’ after Aegean temblor
ANKARA
AA photo
The 6.2-magnitude earthquake in the Aegean Sea on June 12 might have been caused artificially, Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek has said once again, demanding an investigation of seismic ships belonging to other countries in the area.“Now I think that this might be an artificial earthquake. I do not say it is certain but it is a very serious possibility,” Gökçek tweeted.“I say that it should definitely be investigated. Was there any seismic research ship sailing near the epicenter? If so, which country does it belong to?” he said.It is not the first time that Gökçek has theorized about “artificial earthquakes” triggered by nefarious foreign powers.In February, he said quakes in the western province of Çanakkale could have been organized by dark external powers to destroy Turkey’s economy. “Today a serious earthquake occurred in Çanakkale. I have investigated and there is a ship conducting seismic research nearby. What this ship is researching and which country it belongs to should be solved urgently. I worry about a potential earthquake that could be triggered artificially. This should definitely be investigated and announced to the public,” he said.Whims beget surprises. When I arrived, I found out that I had envisioned the wrong thing, the wrong kind of place, entirely. These canvases are nothing like his more luminous color studies, paintings so full of depth and light that it almost feels as if you can enter. The Houston canvases are dark purples, maroons, black: the colors of old sorrows or ageless ones. I had wanted something I could disappear inside, but these colors seemed to come from inside me. According to James Breslin’s biography of Rothko, he set out to paint something difficult to look at.
The chapel is lit only by a skylight, designed to match the one in Rothko’s New York studio, where he built a partial mock-up of the chapel interior to work from. No matter where you stand, the room’s irregular geometry seems to thrust you into its center. Comforts are few. There are usually two tidy rows of backless benches in the center of the room, a handful of meditation cushions on the brick floor. It is quiet but rarely silent. It is not an easy place. Nothing tells you how to see.
In this place, purposeful looking becomes an exercise in failure. My initial diligence seemed to yield only backaches, but I gamely sat for a couple of hours each morning and afternoon. For a long time the paintings refused me, but slowly, resonances materialized. A swirl that looked like the graceful curve of a spine rose from a purple field. I thought about bruises and hematomas. My eyes moved over the sharp geometry of black giving way to maroon, and it was the color of my mother’s exhaustion when she died, of everything life had wrung out of her. I wanted to tell someone, point to it and show them where I’d found her, but then I realized that no one else would be able to see. No one could see anyone’s ghosts but his or her own.
Time passed, but I couldn’t tell you how much. Eventually my knees were achy and I was hungry. As I stirred and stretched, it occurred to me that this might be the thing we share, this grief for our many solitudes. We go to the chapel to see, and to know that we can’t. Perhaps it can only be this way: Rothko committed suicide in 1970, a year before the project was completed. He made the paintings in New York, under light we will never know; he never saw what they would look like under Texas’ expansive sky. There is no right way to gaze upon the paintings, no ideal set of conditions.
Sitting there alone, I suddenly felt happy for everyone around me, moved by the tenderness I knew was inside them. I was glad for what they could see, even if it was hidden from me. I think this gentle affection for not knowing might be what we really mean by empathy. Perhaps this is what Rothko meant when he told a group of art students that he included in his paintings a measure of hope: ‘‘10 percent to make the tragic concept more endurable.’’RICHMOND, Va. (AP) The head of the Federal Railroad Administration is calling on state officials to develop a shared vision of rail service along the southeast corridor. <br /> <br /> FRA Administrator Joseph Szabo spoke Friday at a Virginians for High-Speed Rail event in Richmond. <br /> <br /> Szabo challenged officials in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to develop a plan for service along the Southeast High-Speed Rail Corridor between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. <br /> <br /> Officials say passenger ridership has been setting record highs in the Southeast. Freight rail traffic in the Southeast also has been increasing. <br /> <br /> The Federal Railroad Administration is working officials across the country to lay the foundation for a higher performance rail network. <br /> <br /> Szabo says regional planning could effectively yield seamless passenger rail travel all along the East Coast from Boston to AtlantaBARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Global fast food giant McDonald’s Corp has pledged to end deforestation caused by production of commodities in its supply chain, focusing on beef, coffee, palm oil, poultry and packaging.
A McDonald's restaurant sign is seen in San Diego, California March 31, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake
A U.S.-based scientific advocacy group welcomed the pledge, saying it was the first by a global fast food chain covering its whole supply chain and would push the industry to set new environmental standards.
McDonald’s promised on Tuesday not to buy from suppliers that clear primary forest and other areas with high conservation value, as well as peatlands.
It also said human rights must be respected and conflicts over land use resolved through a balanced and transparent process.
The multinational company said it would begin developing specific time-bound targets for the raw materials it sources this year and would help smallholders, farmers, plantation owners and suppliers to comply with its commitment.
“Making this pledge is the right thing to do for our company, the planet and the communities in which our supply chain operates,” said Francesca DeBiase, senior vice president of McDonald’s worldwide supply chain and sustainability.
Like many other international food, cosmetics and commodity giants, the company - famous for its burger restaurants - has come under pressure from activists to make its business environmentally and socially sustainable.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a U.S.-based advocacy group, said the pledge made McDonald’s the first global fast food chain to promise to eliminate deforestation from its worldwide supply chain, going well beyond the palm oil commitments made by competitors.
“The sheer scale of McDonald’s commitment includes significant potential for change, pushing the industry to implement new environmental standards across the board and ultimately reducing climate emissions,” said UCS analyst Lael Goodman. “However, the commitment is still a work in progress.”
UCS urged McDonald’s to set strong, time-bound goals for individual commodities, and to follow through on the ground.
David McLaughlin, WWF’s vice president of sustainable food, said success would require the expansion of monitoring and compliance efforts by McDonald’s and its suppliers.
“We hope that this commitment will inspire other companies to take action,” he added in a statement.
A 2015 scorecard produced by UCS, ranking pledges by top U.S. brands on deforestation-free palm oil, shows that fast food firms have lagged behind packaged food and personal care companies.
UCS’s Goodman said the McDonald’s commitment had the potential to create a “new normal” whereby fast food brands demand deforestation-free commodities from their suppliers.
McDonald’s said it had begun addressing deforestation in 1989 when it stopped sourcing beef from the Amazon rainforest.43 Pages Posted: 28 Dec 2014 Last revised: 13 Feb 2015
Date Written: December 26, 2014
Abstract
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century has been widely debated on theoretical grounds, yet continues to attract acclaim for its historically-infused data analysis. In this study we conduct a closer scrutiny of Piketty's empirics than has appeared thus far, focusing upon his treatment of the United States. We find evidence of pervasive errors of historical fact, opaque methodological choices, and the cherry-picking of sources to construct favorable patterns from ambiguous data. Additional evidence suggests that Piketty used a highly distortive data assumption from the Soviet Union to accentuate one of his main historical claims about global “capitalism” in the 20th century. Taken together, these problems suggest that Piketty’s highly praised and historically-driven empirical work may actually be one of the book’s greatest weaknesses.ADVERTISEMENT
1. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (Doubleday, $29)
Give David Grann's latest a chance to get its hooks in you, and "it will sear your soul," said Dave Eggers at The New York Times. A "riveting" true-crime tale, Killers of the Flower Moon revisits a spate of 1920s Oklahoma murders that terrorized members of the Osage tribe shortly after an oil strike turned them overnight into the wealthiest people in the world. When local law enforcement failed to identify any of the perpetrators, J. Edgar Hoover's fledgling FBI pulled together an undercover team that unearthed a disturbing conspiracy rooted in white resentment. And until the big reveal arrives, "you will not see it coming." But Hoover didn't even get the whole story, said Tom Drury at Slate. Grann, whose previous book was The Lost City of Z, spends the last 70 pages of this one laying out evidence that entire communities had actively supported the killings. "This is a book that may significantly alter your view of American history."
A dissent: Grann's wishy-washy final summation proves "as frustrating as what comes before it is compelling," said Dara Lind at Vox.
2. The Future Is History by Masha Gessen (Riverhead, $28)
"If I could get you to read just one book on this list, this is it," said Mary Ann Gwinn at The Seattle Times. "An extraordinary work, told with authority, compassion, and sorrowful anger," Masha Gessen's National Book Award winner offers a view from the inside of how post-Soviet Russia so quickly forfeited its chance at democracy and embraced Putin-style totalitarianism. Gessen, who was born in Moscow and educated in the U.S., covers Russia's history since 1989 by deftly weaving together the individual stories of seven well-educated Russians. "Her analysis of Putin's malevolent administration is just as effective," said Kevin Canfield at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has consolidated power by launching military campaigns and by targeting homosexuals and intellectuals. At a moment when many Americans wonder what type of threat Putin poses, this "harrowing, compassionate, and important book" is among the best places to turn.
A dissent: Gessen's argument that "totalitarian" is the perfect word to describe today's Russia "rings hollow," said The Economist. "Language matters."
3. We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World, $28)
Any book Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes these days qualifies as "a borderline cultural phenomenon," said Carlos Lozada at The Washington Post. That's even true when the book is mostly a collection of essays that have previously appeared at The Atlantic, because, besides being a greatest hits collection by one of the country's most important voices on race, We Were Eight Years in Power offers a candid inside look at his growth as a person and as a writer. Coates exhibits an appealing humility in the essays' introductions, said Chris Hartman at the Christian Science Monitor. He confesses to now being ashamed that in a long 2008 essay on Bill Cosby, he included only one sentence about rape allegations against the star. But on matters related to race, Coates "writes with uncommon vibrancy." These are the essays that made his reputation, all of them illuminating the ways that racism remains a defining force in America, especially in the lives of its targets. At a stormy moment in racial politics, this timely work "adds considerable intellectual ballast to an unsteady American ship."
A dissent: Coates' fetishization of white and black racial identities "mirrors ideas that white supremacist thinkers cherish," said Thomas Chatterton Williams at The New York Times.
4. Grant by Ron Chernow (Penguin, $40)
A reappraisal of Ulysses S. Grant is long overdue, said Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy. "Easily the most underrated and enigmatic of all U.S. presidents," Grant has too often been downgraded because of underlings' scandals and because he liked whiskey. But historian Ron Chernow recognizes that the greatest general of the Civil War was also an immensely consequential political leader, and Chernow's big and rich biography becomes "far more fascinating" after Grant wins his greatest battlefield victories. He "makes a convincing case that Grant behaved nobly, even heroically, while in the White House," said Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker. The Ohio-born son of a tanner suffered the derision of opinion leaders in both the South and the Northeast establishment, but he fought hard to secure rights for the freed slaves and he defeated the Ku Klux Klan — at least for a generation. The real knock on Grant's relative standing among our nation's presidents is that much of the good he accomplished was later undone. In fact, the divided America that the reader encounters in Chernow's account "is, in certain respects, painfully familiar."
A dissent: At 1,100 pages, Grant "may prove a lumbering journey for casual consumers of American history," said Matt Damsker at USA Today.
5. Hunger by Roxane Gay (Harper, $26)
"Every woman who reads Hunger will recognize herself in it," said Cathleen Schine at The New York Review of Books. Novelist and essayist Roxane Gay might appear to have lived an uncommon life: Gang-raped at 12, she semiconsciously began converting her body into a fortress, gaining weight until, in her late 20s, she touched 577 pounds. Somehow, though, the Nebraska-born author of 2014's Bad Feminist writes about the rape "with such wounded, intelligent anger" that the crime "becomes our reality as well as hers," and she writes about the judgments her obesity continues to inspire in a way that reveals "a country we pretend we don't know, one where women struggle every day for dignity, safety, and simple elbow room." Gay has withering words for the celebrities who peddle miracle weight-loss programs but also makes clear that she has internalized some of the shame about her body that their work exploits. Her candor here "eviscerates existing taboos," said Estelle Tang at Elle. No triumph awaits at the story's end, and that makes Hunger "an extraordinary book: an account of a person in progress."
A dissent: Gay's writing, prone to repetition, "can feel circular and sometimes contradictory," said Leah Greenblatt at Entertainment Weekly.Germany's Spies Have NSA Envy: Currently Working To Build Their Own Comprehensive Snooping System
from the it's-not-actually-a-competition dept
Last year, [Germany's foreign intelligence agency] BND head Gerhard Schindler told the Confidential Committee of the German parliament, the Bundestag, about a secret program that, in his opinion, would make his agency a major international player. Schindler said the BND wanted to invest €100 million ($133 million) over the coming five years. The money is to finance up to 100 new jobs in the technical surveillance department, along with enhanced computing capacities.
The largest traffic control takes place in Frankfurt, in a data processing center owned by the Association of the German Internet Industry. Via this hub, the largest in Europe, e-mails, phone calls, Skype conversations and text messages flow from regions that interest the BND like Russia and Eastern Europe, along with crisis areas like Somalia, countries in the Middle East, and states like Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In contrast to the NSA, though, the German intelligence agency has been overwhelmed by this daunting wealth of information. Last year, it monitored just under 5 percent, roughly every 20th phone call, every 20th e-mail and every 20th Facebook exchange. In the year 2011, the BND used over 16,000 search words to fish in this data stream.
German law allows the BND to monitor any form of communication that has a foreign element, be it a mobile phone conversation, a Facebook chat or an exchange via AOL Messenger. For the purposes of "strategic communications surveillance," the foreign intelligence agency is allowed to copy and review 20 percent of this data traffic. There is even a regulation requiring German providers "to maintain a complete copy of the telecommunications."
If e-mail addresses surface that end in ".de" (for Germany), they have to be erased. The international dialing code for Germany, 0049, and IP addresses that were apparently given to customers in Germany also pass through the net.
At first glance, it's not evident where users live whose information is saved by Yahoo, Google or Apple. And how are the agencies supposed to spot a Taliban commander who has acquired an email address with German provider GMX? Meanwhile, the status of Facebook chats and conversations on Skype remains completely unclear.
"Are US agencies running a program or computer system with the name Prism?," the Interior Ministry official asked.
One unfortunate knock-on effect of the revelations about the extent of NSA information gathering seems to be that the spies in other countries are starting to feel under-informed by comparison. Of course, many of them already knew about what was going on: in addition to the British and the Dutch, there are now reports that Germany was also kept informed at the highest levels ( original in German. ) That would probably explain the revelation by the news magazine Der Spiegel that Germany has been trying to beef up its own snooping capabilities for a while Small beer compared to the NSA, but it's a start. Der Spiegel's article provides some details on how they do it in Germany:But the BND still has a long way to go before it attains NSA-like levels of snooping:As in the US, the idea is that this targets foreigners:Here's how the BND tries to achieve that:Of course, as in the US, it doesn't quite work out like that:Given this evident desire to create its own snooping apparatus, coupled with the fact that Germany has doubtless benefited from NSA spying, perhaps it's no surprise the German government's protests about its citizens being subject to extensive NSA surveillance have been muted. Maybe a little too muted: Der Spiegel quotes the question posed by Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, a state secretary in the German Interior Ministry, to the US Embassy in Berlin, in the wake of the revelations about NSA spying:Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Filed Under: germany, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, snoopingFCC Chairman Julius Genachowski
It’s not every day that AT&T does something unambiguously good for its customers, so let’s not skimp on the praise. This week, the mobile carrier announced that it would finally allow iPhone users to run Internet phone services like Skype over their cellular connections. Skype and other voice-over-IP apps have been allowed on the iPhone for a while, but AT&T only let them work when your phone was connected to a Wi-Fi network. This was a hassle—it effectively meant that you could only use Skype at home or at the office, not as a mobile app. That’s why AT&T deserves a pat on the back for its policy change: Skype lets you call people anywhere in the world for free, and now iPhone users can do so from wherever they please (or, at least, anywhere they can get decent coverage, which means not my house). And because Skype sends its data over the Internet, you won’t even run up airtime minutes while you’re gabbing. Good job, AT&T!
But, wait, there’s more. AT&T’s announcement was not the only pro-consumer news from a cell carrier this week: Verizon said that it’s teaming up with Google to offer customers the search company’s Android phones. This is also huge news; in the past, Google and Verizon have been at odds over the question of “openness” on wireless networks. Google has long pushed for rules that would force Verizon and other cell companies to let customers run any hardware or software on wireless broadband lines. Verizon has long been in favor of certain restrictions on what customers can do. But now the carrier seems to be changing its tune. Verizon has vowed to let Google Voice—the free long-distance and voicemail service that Apple rejected from the iPhone—run on the new Android phones. Indeed, on a conference call announcing the deal, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam suggested that customers would be allowed to run pretty much anything on their Android phones: “Either you have an open device or not,” he said. “This will be open.”
Close observers of the wireless industry might be wondering whether this was opposite week. Since when do mobile carriers go out of their way to offer their customers more functions and substantially cheaper service? That’s easy: Since the end of June, when Julius Genachowski became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Genachowski, a lawyer who worked for many years in Silicon Valley, is the most technologically aware FCC chairman ever to occupy the job. In particular, he understands what has made the Internet such a successful platform for innovation: It was designed to avoid favoring any particular application. In the few months since he took over the FCC, Genachowski has set a new tone for the agency, promising to rein in any companies that try to restrict what people can do on their Internet lines. In August, he surprised the tech industry by demanding an explanation from Apple for its rejection of Google Voice. Late in September, he argued for new rules to make sure Internet service providers obey the FCC’s network-neutrality principles. In an interview with CNBC the other day, Genachowski was asked whether telecom companies should think of him as the new sheriff in town. The chairman dodged the question. But he’s being modest: Genachowski didn’t have to pass a single new regulation before carriers began to transform their business practices. Whether or not he wants to be known as the sheriff, they’re already scrambling to avoid his six-shooter.
Why is it such a big deal for Skype to finally get a place on the iPhone? It only has to do with the future of the Internet. As Genachowski explained in a speech at the Brookings Institution recently, the Internet was purposefully designed to be a kind of “dumb pipe“; in other words, the network doesn’t use any “intelligence” to decide whether a certain application is worthy of using network space. “Instead, the Internet’s open architecture pushes decision-making and intelligence to the edge of the network—to end users, to the cloud, to businesses of every size and in every sector of the economy, to creators and speakers across the country and around the globe,” Genachowski said.
And that’s the main reason why the Internet has bred innovation. The early Internet didn’t favor a certain protocol for delivering graphical information; that’s why Tim Berners-Lee was free to come along and invent the Web, and Marc Andreessen was able to create a graphical Web browser. The early Internet didn’t favor any specific sort of messaging platform—and so it was easy for ICQ, AIM, and then Skype to come along and win wide support. “The Internet’s creators didn’t want the network architecture—or any single entity—to pick winners and losers,” Genachowski explains. “Because it might pick the wrong ones.”
The trouble is, both wireless and wired ISPs seem increasingly open to the idea of favoring certain technologies. In 2007, Comcast was caught blocking BitTorrent on people’s cable-modems—even if they were downloading completely legal material. Wireless companies have been much more brazen. They’ve long blocked VoIP apps like Skype and have blocked certain handsets that could eat into their bottom line (for instance, Verizon put restrictions on a phone that would allow people to switch among wireless networks as they traveled the globe). What’s more, as Genachowski noted, an increasing number of services on the Internet compete with content provided by the cable and phone companies—these days, you can get TV shows and phone service from the Web, so why do you need to pay Comcast anything? As a result, Genachowski says, broadband companies have an economic incentive to block content that might cost them money.
I don’t mean to discount wireless carriers’ concerns. Both AT&T and Verizon are spending tens of billions of dollars to roll out advanced networks, and they’ve got an interest in recouping their costs. It’s also true that the carriers need to manage traffic on their networks. As more people get more smartphones, the nation’s wireless networks will quickly get clogged—as iPhone customers are well aware. But there are fair ways to manage traffic, and there are unfair ways; there are methods that will kill innovation, and there are those that won’t. As I argued the other day, if AT&T wants a network that runs more smoothly, it should consider charging people a fee for using more bandwidth; that’s a lot more egalitarian than blocking entire applications.
It’s here that Genachowski might prove a powerful force—in subtly pushing carriers to adopt more consumer-friendly policies. The FCC chairman might not even need to make any new regulations to do it. If he takes a tough enough line against unfair policies, the carriers just might reform themselves.Texas woman scared of mouse jumps out of car, car rolls into Corpus Christi Bay
According to KRISTV, an unnamed woman accidentally sent her car into the Corpus Christi Bay on Sept. 5, 2016 when a mouse brushed against her leg while she was pulling out of a parking space near Swanter Park. According to KRISTV, an unnamed woman accidentally sent her car into the Corpus Christi Bay on Sept. 5, 2016 when a mouse brushed against her leg while she was pulling out of a parking space near Swanter Park. Photo: KRISTV Photo: KRISTV Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Texas woman scared of mouse jumps out of car, car rolls into Corpus Christi Bay 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
A stowaway mouse is being blamed for a woman's runaway car veering out of a parking space and into Corpus Christi Bay on Monday.
KRISTV reported an unnamed woman was not injured but "highly embarrassed" after she panicked and accidentally caused her SUV to dive into surrounding waters around 10:30 a.m.
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The driver told officers she was visiting nearby Swatner Park that morning, as she was leaving, she felt the rodent brush against her leg. Panicked, she jumped out of the vehicle while accidentally putting it into gear, detouring and submerging the car into the bay.
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Requests made to the Corpus Christi Police Department were not immediately returned on Wednesday, but Officer Carl Knapick told the station "this is just another" incident of cars ending up in the bay "for different reasons."
"You know, usually someone is distracted or something happens in their car" he added. "Next thing you know, the car rolls off into the water since we're so close to the water at the edge of the park."
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According to the report, the woman told police she had a preexisting "problem with mice" in her car.
There was no word on the vermin's condition.
mmendoza@mysa.com
Twitter: @MaddySkye“The Stalker team is extremely happy! Why? Because we are continuing work on Stalker 2 after the holidays.” That makes me extremely happy too. That’s the official line from GSC, although it’s not quite as simple as that. Speaking to Edge, the studio’s Oleg Yavorsky reveals that “We are still in the process of seeking funding to back up the project. We are hopeful things turn out well eventually.” Which still sounds pretty precarious, but given the situation last month was that the studio and the game were flat-out closing down, it’s still a good day for Stalker fans.
Let’s hope they find a funder in time. Anyone got a few million bucks to spare? Notch, are you reading this? Alternatively, have I got any long-lost billionaire uncles who’ve been waiting for an excuse to get in touch with me?A number of officials said that while the blow to Israel’s name had been great, the renunciation of the harshest conclusion would help in the future.
“The one point of light regards future actions,” Gabriela Shalev, a law professor and most recently Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, said on Israel Radio. “If we have to defend ourselves against terror organizations again, we will be able to say there is no way to deal with this terror other than the same way we did in Cast Lead.”
Cast Lead is the name Israel gave to its three-week invasion of Gaza in 2008-9 aimed at stopping Hamas rockets fired from there into Israeli communities. Israel killed up to 1,400 Palestinians in that operation and lost 13 of its own. The Goldstone report accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes because of harm to civilians.
In his essay, Mr. Goldstone said that as a result of Israeli military investigations of soldiers’ wrongdoings and errors, he no longer believed that the harm done to Palestinian civilians had been intentional. He also commended Israel for carrying out the investigations while condemning Hamas for not doing so.
Gen. Avi Benayahu, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, said on Israel Radio that he would like to invite Mr. Goldstone to Israel, show him around and enlist him in the state’s future public relations needs.
“If there is another Lebanon war, something that cannot be dismissed out of hand, and if we are required to face another military conflict and challenge in Gaza, we will meet the same reality,” he said.
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General Benayahu recently revealed that he traveled to London in 2010 under an assumed identity because of fear of attracting anti-Israel protests outside his hotel and of being arrested for alleged war crimes.
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For others, the damage to Israel’s reputation by the Goldstone report left little room for forgiveness.
“The despicable and shameful act that he perpetrated is contrary to the most fundamental moral values, natural justice and common sense to the extent that it negates his right to absolution,” the columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the Hebrew newspaper Maariv.
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In an e-mail response to a request for elaboration, Mr. Goldstone declined to comment beyond his article.
Some on the left said they were worried that legitimate concerns about Israel’s conduct in the war had been buried under the extreme accusations of the Goldstone document.
“By raising a completely false accusation, he masked in some ways the real complex issues of such a struggle,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University and co-author of the army’s ethics code.
Speaking by telephone from Cambridge, Mass., where he is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School this semester, Professor Halbertal added: “These have to do with to what degree soldiers assume risks in order to minimize collateral harm to civilians. This is where the moral challenge lies. And his retraction could now force the international community to look at these problems in a more serious way rather than by propaganda.”
In late 2009, Mr. Halbertal wrote a highly critical article about the Goldstone report, |
best product to send it to our backers. Because the product is a naturally available mineral compound, we have access to readily available market volumes. We've already chosen the company that will be responsible for designing and labelling the product bags and another one that will ship our rewards.UPDATED: The deal is done, with Disney confirming Deadline’s scoop. Abrams will direct and also co-write the film with Chris Terrio. See the official press release at the bottom of the story.
PREVIOUS EXCLUSIVE: Rian Johnson decided not to take the offer to come back and replace the recently departed Colin Trevorrow on Star Wars: Episode IX. Now, Disney and Lucasfilm are courting another director for an encore, the one who relaunched the franchise to dizzying heights. Deadline hears the studio is in talks with JJ Abrams, and sources said they are trying to work out a deal for him to return. This is expected to happen today.
Abrams revived the franchise with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, whose $2.06 billion worldwide gross made it the third highest-grossing film of all time behind James Cameron’s Avatar and Titanic.
Abrams is in discussions to replace Trevorrow, who exited the picture after creative differences with Lucasfilm and its chief Kathleen Kennedy. All this happens as Ron Howard stepped in to replace Phil Lord & Chris Miller as director of the Han Solo spinoff movie.
Johnson’s film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, launches December 15. Abrams has been producing everything from Westworld to M:I6-Mission Impossible, and the Stephen King anthology series Castle Rock, and conveniently doesn’t have a next film to direct. And he certainly can be a steadying hand in settling The Force. He’s repped by CAA.
Below is the news release that posted on Starwars.com:Saudi Arabia’s Beheadings Are Public, but It Doesn’t Want Them Publicized
Saudi Arabia, a world leader in beheadings, has a policy of carrying out the gruesome punishment in public to serve as a warning for other citizens. But as the arrest of the man who filmed a recent beheading demonstrates, the kingdom is much more wary of publicizing its brutal methods abroad.
The video, posted online on Saturday, Jan. 17, shows security officers subduing a black-clad woman pleading in Arabic before an executioner raises his sword and severs her head. Identified by the Saudi government as a Myanmar national, the woman was convicted by a court in Riyadh of murdering her husband’s daughter, and she was beheaded in Mecca.
On Sunday, Saudi police issued cybercrime charges against the unnamed policeman who took the video. Analysts say his arrest is difficult to square with Saudi Arabia’s official stance that beheadings are an appropriate punishment under Islamic law, and it likely reflects the government’s sensitivity to mounting criticism and uncomfortable parallels with the Islamic State extremist group.
Although Saudi Arabia is a key ally in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, it has come under fire for carrying out the same sort of brutal punishments as the militants.
Public beheadings are a routine way for Riyadh to assert power, said Saudi scholar Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Center. But, she said, the kingdom seems uncomfortable when footage of beheadings circulates internationally, “especially at a time when its competitor, IS, is doing the same thing.”
“It is just one example of Saudi contradictions,” Al-Rasheed said.
In another, Riyadh condemned the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris the same week that the Saudi government publicly flogged Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was convicted of disrespecting Islam on a now-defunct liberal website he co-founded.
“Clearly, Saudi Arabia is pretty ashamed at having its brutality exposed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. She said the punishments are meant for the kingdom’s domestic public — much of which supports beheadings as sentences — and not for international viewers.
In the case of the videotaped beheading, Whitson predicted the Saudi government would charge the policeman with harming the reputation of the kingdom, “which is so ironic.”
Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Riyadh likely is mindful of the international backlash after flogging Badawi. That, too, has drawn parallels to the Islamic State’s violence at the same time Saudi Arabia seeks to be seen as a credible ally of America against extremism and radicalization. But, Khatib said, the Saudi arrest of the policeman “is only serving to further confirm the absence of freedom of expression in the country.”
Saudi Arabia executed 87 people in 2014 for crimes including rape, murder, armed robbery, and drug trafficking, and it has already beheaded at least 10 people in 2015.
Whitson said the international community should ramp up pressure on Saudi Arabia to end its brutal punishments, which she said have served as a model for the Islamic State.
“We’re not going to be able to affect how ISIS carries out its punishments,” Whitson said, “but we can affect how our ally Saudi Arabia does.”
Photo credit: LiveLeak.comLivable streets activist Mark Gorton stands near the protected bike lane on Columbus Ave., just a few blocks from his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
Livable streets activist and financier Mark Gorton is tired of business as usual when it comes to transportation reform. Simply put, he feels the way American cities design their streets with cars as a top priority is “insane” and that settling for incremental change is not acceptable given the dramatic — and negative — impacts car overuse has on our lives.
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Spurred by success in New York City, he’s now setting sights on main streets across the country. His new effort is tentatively named the American Streets Renaissance and he’s traveling the country encouraging advocates and anyone who will listen that it’s time to “Re-think the automobile.”
So who is this guy and why should you care?
Gorton and the community of activism he’s funded and fostered, have played key roles in the proliferation of protected bike lanes and public plazas throughout New York City, a place where — as I found out myself last week — innovative street design is all but institutionalized. Now Gorton wants to expand his influence beyond the Big Apple; and given his track record, I wouldn’t bet against him.
If you haven’t heard about Mark Gorton, you’re excused. He’s been far from front-and-center in the bike and transportation advocacy world. He made his name (and his fortune) as the software whiz behind the Limewire music sharing service (which earned him a copyright lawsuit which he settled for $105 million last year) and now owns a suite of companies powered by software he’s helped develop. When it comes to livable streets activism, his most important investment has been the New York City Streets Renaissance (NYCSR) campaign. In 2005, just as blogging was taking hold as a legitimate source of news, Gorton-backed Streetsblog (which launched in New York City in 2005 and has since spawned Streetfilms and blog editions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and DC). Gorton has also been a major funder of Transportation Alternatives, New York City’s largest active transportation non-profit.
Gorton has a rare mix of Ivy League intelligence, an activist’s passion, entrepreneurial acumen, and most importantly, the ability to put his money where his mouth is.
I had planned to meet Gorton on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for an interview on Monday, October 29th; but with Sandy quickly approaching and evacuations being ordered, we decided a phone interview would be more prudent (I did end up meeting Gorton a few days later in person to get photographs).
Even on the phone, it didn’t take Gorton long to get fired up. “We have to stop this insanity,” he said, in a refreshingly direct way.
When Gorton and the community of activists he supported went to work back in 2003, they faced a very tall order. “[Mayor] Bloomberg was saying things like, ‘We like traffic, it’s a sign of economic progress’,” he recalled, “It was like, ‘There’s a lot of traffic, what are you going to do about it? It’s always been that way.'” To the policymakers at City Hall and DOT, questioning that status quo of streets where cars, trucks and taxis reigned supreme, Gorton said, “Was like saying New York shouldn’t have tall buildings.”
“The fact is, people are dying, people’s lives are being shortened… Now it’s time for planners and officials to start owning the health and safety of citizens. It’s about not letting these people get away with it anymore.”
When Gorton first got involved with Transportation Alternatives, they only had three employees (they now have over 30), but they were winning enough issues — like access to East River bridges and the West Side Greenway — that Gorton said he was inspired to join up and help them out. “The strategy back then was incremental change on the margins, with the assumption that the world would always be dominated by cars… Even Transportation Alternatives is a self-marginalizing name…. The mindset was, ‘Just let us have something. Please?!'”
With the NYSCR campaign, the goal was two-fold. First, Gorton said they needed to illustrate the problem, and then they had to offer solutions. “If you think the status quo is right, it’s pretty hard to change, so step one was getting people to understand that the status quo was not right, that there were better ways to do things, and that things have been stupid for long enough.”
To get things rolling, Gorton and his team developed a package of messages, held several high-profile events, and got well-known Manhattanites to host an exhibition of livable streets designs. “We were raising consciousness, rallying the troops, getting people excited,” he recalled. Once Streetsblog was humming along, it became a “beacon” Gorton said. “A lot of people knew cars were oppressive and that traffic wasn’t safe, but you felt like a freak at Community Board meetings for saying so. Streetsblog said, ‘You’re not alone, here are the resources you need to do something about it.’ People got activated.”
A few years later, Streetsblog and Gorton’s Street Renaissance campaign had educated and activated a significant number of New Yorkers. Suddenly, livable streets had found a strong voice in the local transportation dialogue (and that’s saying a lot in such a major city like New York).
Gorton fondly recalled how the tone changed at some of those Community Board meetings when heated transportation issues would arise. “You should have heard how articulate people in the community were… You could just tell how empowered people are with this message. It’s been a real force in the city.”
Many people lay all the credit for New York’s sweeping street transformations on NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Mayor Bloomberg. Gorton feels they’ve been fortunate to have that pair in power, but adds, “We created the political environment were it was possible for them to do all that stuff.” (Note: Gorton’s efforts stand on the shoulders of years of important work by activists like Times Up! and others that also laid crucial groundwork for change.)
Key to their success, Gorton says, was not being afraid to, “shock the sensibilities.” As if speaking to a group of old-school, highway-centric, transportation power brokers, Gorton exclaimed, “You’re ruining our country! You’re wasting our money! You should stop being so cavalier about it.”
City transportation officials (and even some professional bike advocates) live in fear of being perceived as too “anti-car.” Even Janette Sadik-Khan, he says, is “holding back” out of fear of a backlash. But Gorton pulls no punches when it comes to framing the narrative about car overuse. “They’re a plague on the city,” he says matter-of-factly. During his keynote speech at the recent Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference, Gorton raised eyebrows when he said there should be a nationwide moratorium on expanding and/or building highways. (Even in progressive Portland, both Metro and the City of Portland have recently green-lighted major highway expansion projects.)
Gorton says after his speech at Pro Walk/Pro Bike, a bike advocate came up to him to say they enjoyed his talk, but that saying we shouldn’t build any more highways is just over the top. “Afterwards, I was thinking, why can’t I say that? Why, as a bike advocate do you feel like you have to lie on behalf of the auto industry? I think we’ve just been conditioned for so long that now it’s somehow crazy to suggest things like this.”
So you’re not you worried about people dismissing you as too radical? Too crazy? I asked him. “This is not crazy!” he replied, “Everyone else is crazy; endangering the lives of your children every day is crazy.”
“The fact is, people are dying, people’s lives are being shortened,” he continued, “Why aren’t people impatient? Why aren’t they holding people accountable? Now it’s time for planners and officials to start owning the health and safety of citizens. It’s about not letting these people get away with it anymore.”
If you write off Gorton as just an anti-car firebrand, you’d be missing the complete picture. He feels that cars are an important and necessary invention, but they’re simply better suited to the countryside. “The automobile is a rural technology that has been misapplied to cities,” reads a slide in one of the presentations he’s been giving throughout the country. “They are a spatially inappropriate technology for a dense city.”
To back up his rhetoric, Gorton has some very compelling stats. For instance, today, 370,000 fewer people enter New York City’s central business district each weekday than in 1948; but there are now 450,000 more cars entering the CBD than in 1948. These numbers form the basis of one of Gorton’s key arguments; that the shift to the private automobile has destroyed transportation capacity. He shares this graphic to back it up (click to enlarge):
While he has a bevvy of stats and figures to make his case, Gorton’s primary argument is that the overuse of cars has dramatically curtailed the ability for human life to flourish in cities. Sidewalks, plazas, and parks — which used to be the hallmark of great cities (including New York) — have been chipped away at in order to make more space to move more automobiles at ever-increasing speeds. (And, contrary to popular myth, Gorton says more cars in a city is not tied to increased economic growth.)
Slide from Gorton’s presentation. (Photo: Aaron Donovan/ StartsandFits.com
In order to reverse this trend and reclaim urban space, Gorton is calling for a “total transformation” of urban streets. His presentations outline solutions like timed street closings (like Sunday Parkways), parking reform, congestion pricing, better transit, complete bicycle networks, and more. He also says advocates need to “step up their game” in order to push for these changes. “This is part of the whole point of a renaissance. To go bigger than before, to stop being patient with the stupidity. People need to be a little fed up with this acceptance of this status quo.”
“What gets me worked up is that my kids can’t go anywhere to play alone, that our streets have crushed their independence… That we’ve destroyed our human living environment.”
Gorton looks at the lack of progress on the national level as one reason he thinks a new approach is needed (the only silver lining to MAP-21, national bike organizations said, was that it could have been much worse). “There’s a lot of people that have been working on federal transportation reform for a while… and it hasn’t been going really well. If you look at the national policy, it’s just backwards. I think there’s a lot of receptiveness to coming up with a new strategy now. A lot of people look at this new bill and say, this is unacceptable.”
To get things moving in the right direction, Gorton will focus on messaging. He’s a believer that the way we talk about transportation issues matters. “I don’t like to talk about ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability’. Those terms are so nebulous. That’s not what gets me worked up,” he said. “What gets me worked up is that my kids can’t go anywhere to play alone, that our streets have crushed their independence… That we’ve destroyed our human living environment.”
To Gorton, the battle being waged in cities is far from a “war on cars.” In fact, he’d rather not use the term “war” because he feels there area lot of people who aren’t comfortable with that type of rhetoric. “But,” he’s quick to add, “the fact is there’s a war on people, on childhood mobility… And the auto industry is winning that war. If you you want to talk death, victims, casualties, you have to look at who’s the aggressor. I don’t have a problem using strong language when it comes to the safety of our neighborhoods.”
In addition to human terms, Gorton says the key to moving the needle is to talk about transportation reform in fiscal terms. “If you want to win over Tea Party Republicans — or even mayor and governors trying to balance budgets — highway infrastructure is a 20-cent on the dollar return, that’s just a waste of money. That’s how you bankrupt the country. In a world where money isn’t flowing like it used to, you have to cut back.”
Changes to increase capacity on our roadways and make them more accessible to biking don’t have to come with big, expensive capital projects. “A lot of this stuff could be simply policy changes,” he says. “On the Upper West Side, for example, you could say there’s no parking on every side street on weekends and there’s no through traffic. You could implement that within two weeks.”
What about suburbs and outlying neighborhoods? Do they get to enjoy the fruits of this street renaissance? Gorton, who grew up in the suburbs, said he’s working on that issue. He said cars would still have a role in the suburban context, but that large roads offer a lot of room for things like bike boulevards. Another thing he’d push for in suburbs are changes to zoning rules.
In the end, Gorton believes the time is now for a stronger transportation reform movement. “People are ready for this,” he repeated during our conversation. Even if all the large, mainstream advocacy groups feel his style is too radical, Gorton believes there’s still a strong enough movement out there that he’ll be able to succeed.
It comes to a sense of urgency to shift the status quo; but it doesn’t have to mean a gloves-off approach. “I’m happy to engage people,” said Gorton, “but I’m getting less and less tolerant of accepting their mistakes. They’re hurting our country. It’s not O.K.”
“I don’t want to wait for my kids to grow up to make these changes.”
—
Learn more about Gorton and download his presentations at RethinkTheAuto.org.
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mark gorton, New York City 2012Norm Justice, a farmer from Gorham, pressed a button and watched as a brownish sludge sluiced down from a tall silver silo at Allagash Brewing Co. into his trailer bed.
Justice planned to take some of the sludge – spent grain left over from the brewing process – to give to his 20 cows and haul the rest to several large farms in the state.
Additional Photos Farmer Norman Justice displays spent grain that he feeds his cattle along with their regular feed at his farm in Gorham. The spent grain comes from Allagash Brewing Co. in Portland. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer Related Headlines Pingree bill would continue to let farm animals eat spent brewery grain
FDA backs off new brewing rule that angered Maine farmers
“This feeds thousands of head a week here in Maine,” he said.
Maine’s craft brewers and farmers have had a standing agreement for years: After the brewers take malt sugars and flavors from various grains, farmers get the leftovers as cheap, protein-rich feed for their livestock. The breweries offload a waste product without paying to process it or putting it in a landfill.
“It’s just always been a very symbiotic relationship between a brewer and a farmer,” said Jason Perkins, brewmaster for Allagash Brewing in Portland.
A new rule proposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could shake up the longtime, mutually beneficial practice. The agency plans to require brewers to treat the byproduct as animal feed, meaning it would have to be dried and packaged before being fed to animals, or dumped in landfills.
Brewers say the spent grain is safe and there’s no evidence that anything in it could harm livestock or endanger humans who eat that livestock.
“This is definitely a solution looking for a problem,” said Sean Sullivan, executive director of the Maine Brewers’ Guild, which is urging its members to contact the FDA and plead for an exemption.
The proposed rule is part of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, which gave the FDA sweeping authority to overhaul federal food safety regulations. It came about because of concerns about tainted pet food imported from China and salmonella outbreaks caused by improper food handling. The new regulation would cover all types of foods destined for pets, farm animals and zoos.
“It was an overarching, broad piece of legislation that included breweries without really looking into it,” said Brandon Mazer, general counsel for Shipyard Brewing Co. in Portland. “There’s never been a question of whether the grains are unsafe or unsanitary.”
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a member of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, challenged the change Thursday, calling it “absurd.”
“I’m not really sure how we can say these grains are safe enough for human consumption but then, on the other side, they are not safe enough to feed to a cow,” Pingree said.
Brewers say at least 90 percent of Maine craft brewers count on their relationships with farmers to dispose of spent grain. Exactly how they do it varies from brewery to brewery.
At Allagash, Justice drops by with his trailer four or five days a week and hauls away 16 to 18 tons per trip. The only cost to him is equipment and gas. The grains are mostly malted barley, Perkins said, but they can include wheat or roasted malts, depending on what kind of beer was made.
When Justice started working with Allagash, 12 years ago, it was a small brewery and he could feed his own cattle all the spent grain it produced. As the brewery grew, he searched out other farms that needed grain and created a side business. He sells it for $35 to $40 a ton, depending on how far he has to truck it.
“This is coming out as a human-grade byproduct, and we actually handle this no differently than any other commodity we feed cattle with on the farm,” Justice said.
The grain makes up about 25 percent of his cows’ diet. If he didn’t have access to it, Justice said, he’d have to buy more expensive grains.
“Most of your forages that you’re feeding cattle aren’t sufficient to sustain them – your grasses and your corns – so you always have to supplement them with some type of protein, and this does that,” he said.
For smaller farms like his, replacing the brewery grain could mean spending hundreds of dollars more each week; for larger farms, it could mean thousands.
If Allagash Brewing didn’t have a relationship with a farmer, Perkins said, it would probably have to put the waste in a landfill.
“Most likely the cost of any packaging and drying that would be required would be cost-prohibitive for us, so the landfill would be the next option,” he said. “Costs aside, frankly, it’s just such a shame that such a valuable resource could just be wasted.”
The spent grain from Sebago Brewing Co. in Gorham – about five tons a week – goes to Applegate Deer Farms in West Newfield to feed deer, said Kai Adams, co-founder of the brewery.
“It’s free,” Adams said. “We’re happy to have him take it, and he’ll give us a little venison once in a while.”
At Shipyard Brewing, on Portland’s urban peninsula, there isn’t space to set up an operation to dry and package the spent grain, sometimes as much as 600 tons a month, said Mazer, the company’s general counsel.
Peter Bolduc of Re-Harvest, a company that serves as the middleman between Shipyard Brewing and farmers, said he sells the grain to dozens of farmers around the state. He said the FDA proposal is just “the tip of the iceberg” for regulating animal feed because many commercial food byproducts go into it.
“If they’re going to do that for the breweries,” he said, “what’s next, bakeries?”
At Maine Beer Co. in Freeport, about five tons of spent grain each week goes to Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick as compost and livestock feed, said Dan Kleban, the brewery’s owner and the president of the Maine Brewers’ Guild.
Kleban said the FDA rule is “well-intentioned” but smaller craft breweries would not be able to comply with it. He said his brewery would have to dump the grain in a landfill or figure out a way to have it composted, even if that meant setting up its own composting business.
“We make beer,” Kleban said. “We’re not in the agricultural business.”
Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:
[email protected]
Twitter: MeredithGoad
Correction: This story was revised at 10:30 a.m., March 28, 2014, to reflect that the Maine Brewers’ Guild is urging its members to contact the FDA and plead for an exemption to a proposed rule that would require them to dry and package spent grains before they are fed to animals, or dumped in landfills.
ShareMr. Powell’s regulatory views are also raising eyebrows among conservatives on Capitol Hill. Mr. Powell joined the Fed in 2012 but, because of a procedural quirk, he had to be confirmed again in 2014. Twenty-three Republicans voted against him, with several citing his record of support for new financial regulations; all but two of those senators are still serving.
“Senator Scott is looking for fresh leadership at the Federal Reserve, and Mr. Powell would have to answer serious concerns both old and new at any potential nomination hearing he might have before the Senate Banking Committee,” said a spokesman for Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who voted against Mr. Powell’s confirmation.
If Mr. Trump does not choose Ms. Yellen, she would become the first person in the Fed’s modern history to complete a term as chairman without being nominated for a second. A major reason is that the White House does not share her views on financial regulation. In a speech in August, she warned against forgetting the lessons of 2008.
“The events of the crisis demanded action, needed reforms were implemented and these reforms have made the system safer,” she said.
Mr. Taylor’s outspoken critiques of the Fed’s economic stimulus campaign have won him the backing of conservatives including Vice President Mike Pence, according to the people familiar with the internal discussions. But his comments about regulatory issues have been less frequent and less critical of regulation. He has said that banks were allowed to take too many risks before the crisis and, in a 2015 interview, he said he had “no problem” with requiring the biggest banks to raise more capital after the crisis.
Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress argue that excessive financial regulation, much of it created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, is inhibiting economic growth.Over the past few days I've been mulling over the recent news from Yahoo! that they are building a Facebook-like platform based on OpenSocial. I find this interesting given that a number of people have come to the conclusion that Facebook is slowly killing it's widget platform in order to replace it with Facebook Connect.
The key reason developers believe Facebook is killing of its platform is captured in Nick O'Neill's post entitled Scott Rafer: The Facebook Platform is Dead which states
When speaking at the Facebook developer conference today in Berlin, Scott Rafer declared that Facebook platform dead. He posted statistics including one that I posted that suggests Facebook widgets are dead. Lookery’s own statistics from Quantcast suggest that their publisher traffic has been almost halved since the new site design was released. Ultimately, I think we may see an increase in traffic as users become educated on the new design but there is no doubt that developers were impacted significantly. So what is Scott’s solution for developers looking to thrive following the shift to the new design? Leave the platform and jump on the Facebook Connect opportunity.
The bottom line is that by moving applications off of the profile page in their recent redesign, Facebook has reduced the visibility of these application thus reducing their page views and their ability to spread virally. Some may think that the impact of these changes is unforeseen, however the Facebook team is obsessive about testing the impact of their UX changes so it is extremely unlikely that they aren't aware that the redesign would negatively impact Facebook applications.
The question to ask then is why Facebook would knowingly damaging a platform which has been uniformly praised across the industry and has had established Web players like Google and Yahoo! scrambling to deploy copycat efforts? Alex Iskold over at ReadWriteWeb believes he has the answer in his post Why Platforms Are Letting Us Down - And What They Should Do About It which contains the following excerpt
When the Facebook platform was unveiled in 2007, it was called genius. Never before had a company in a single stroke enabled others to tap into millions of its users completely free. The platform was hailed as a game changer under the famous mantra "we built it and they will come". And they did come, hundreds of companies rushing to write Facebook applications. Companies and VC funds focused specifically on Facebook apps. It really did look like a revolution, but it didn't last. The first reason was that Facebook apps quickly arranged themselves on a power law curve. A handful of apps (think Vampires, Byte Me and Sell My Friends) landed millions of users, but those in the pack had hardly any. The second problem was, ironically, the bloat. Users polluted their profiles with Facebook apps and no one could find anything in their profiles. Facebook used to be simple - pictures, wall, friends. Now each profile features a zoo of heterogenous apps, each one trying to grab the user's attention to take advantage of the network effect. Users are confused. Worst of all, the platform had no infrastructure to monetize the applications. When Sheryl Sandberg arrived on the scene and looked at the balance sheet, she spotted the hefty expense that was the Facebook platform. Trying to live up to a huge valuation isn't easy, and in the absense of big revenues people rush to cut costs. Since it was both an expense and users were confused less than a year after its glorious launch, Facebook decided to revamp its platform. The latest release of Facebook, which was released in July, makes it nearly impossible for new applications to take advantage of the network effect. Now users must first install the application, then find it under the application menu or one of the tabs, then check a bunch of boxes to add it to their profile (old applications are grand-daddied in). Facebook has sent a clear message to developers - the platform is no longer a priority.
Alex's assertion is that after Facebook looked at the pros and cons of their widget platform, the company came to the conclusion that the platform was turning into a cost center instead of being away to improve the value of Facebook to its users. There is evidence that applications built on Facebook's platform did cause negative reactions from its users. For example, there was the creation of the "This has got to stop…pointless applications are ruining Facebook" group which at its height had half a million Facebook users protesting the behavior of Facebook apps. In addition, the creation of Facebook's Great Apps program along with the guiding principles for building Facebook applications implies that the Facebook team realized that applications being built on their platform typically don't have their users best interests at heart.
This brings up the interesting point that although there has been a lot of discussion on how Facebook apps make money there haven't been similar conversations on how the application platform improves Facebook's bottom line. There is definitely a win-win equation when so-called "great apps" like iLike and Causes, which positively increase user engagement, are built on Facebook's platform. However there is also a long tail of applications that try their best to spread virally at the cost of decreasing user satisfaction in the Facebook experience. These dissatisfied users likely end up reducing their usage of Facebook thus actually costing Facebook users and page views. It is quite possible that the few "great apps" built on the Facebook platform do not outweigh the amount of not-so-great apps built on the platform which have caused users to protest in the past. This would confirm Alex Iskold's suspicions about why Facebook has started sabotaging the popularity of applications built on its platform and has started emphasizing partnerships via Facebook Connect.
A similar situation has occurred with regards to the Java platform and Sun Microsystems. The sentiment is captured in a Javaworl article by Josh Fruhlinger entitled Sun melting down, and where's Java? which contains the following excerpt
one of the most interesting things about the coverage of the company's problems is how Java figures into the conversation, which is exactly not at all. In most of the articles, the word only appears as Sun's stock ticker; the closest I could find to a mention is in this AP story, which notes that "Sun's strategy of developing free, 'open-source' software and giving it away to spur sales of its high-end computer servers and support services hasn't paid off as investors would like." Even longtime tech journalist Ashlee Vance, when gamely badgering Jon Schwartz for the New York Time about whether Sun would sell its hardware division and focus on software, only mentions Solaris and MySQL in discussing the latter. Those in the Java community no doubt believe that Java is too big to fail, that Sun can't abandon it because it's too important, even if it can't tangibly be tied to anything profitable. But if Sun's investors eventually dismember the company to try to extract what value is left in it, I'm not sure where Java will fit into that plan.
It is interesting to note that after a decade of investment in the Java platform, it is hard to point to what concrete benefits Sun has gotten from being the originator and steward of the Java platform and programming language. Definitely another example of a platform that may have benefited applications built on it yet which didn't really benefit the platform vendor as expected.
The lesson here is that building a platform isn't just about making the developers who use the platform successful but also making sure that the platform itself furthers the goals of its developers in the first place.
Now Playing: Kardinal Offishall - Dangerous (Feat. Akon)Which pub does the best toastie in Dublin?
We’ve probably already opened the door to controversy by even writing this article. The debate around the best toastie in Dublin rages onward, and we’re here to add our two cents. We’ll give our opinion on those we have tried, and also let you know where you can get the rest.
They’re a fine thing to have in a pub if you’re feeling a bit peckish. When a pack of crisps won’t do, and a full meal is too much, a toastie is a great option. Pubs love to serve them because they’re easy to prepare and it means patrons don’t have to leave to fill their empty stomaches.
The toastie is an institution of Dublin pubs, and everyone has their favourites. Most toasties are either ham and cheese, cheese on its own, or a toasted special, which is usually tomato, onion, and cheese. Some may do a tuna melt.
We like our toasty to be smothered in mustard, and it has to be the right mustard. Both colmans and the lidl/aldi brands are hot enough for us. The hellmans sachets just don’t cut the… mustard.
We’ve tasted a lot of toasties around the city, but we haven’t tasted them all. We’re going to profile a few toasties and pubs, and then list the rest who also sell them. In the interest of fairness, as we get tweets and facebook comments about these pubs, we will gradually add them into the article. This means the pubs that we don’t properly cover (because we haven’t tasted their toasty), get some coverage from the public.
You can also vote for your favourite toastie in Dublin at the bottom of the article. If there’s a pub or toastie that we’re missing, just let us know and we’ll include it. Inevitably people will not read this line and scream bloody murder on facebook that we neglected their favourite pub. We will then screenshot this paragraph and reply to them.
We must give credit to Eoin Whelehan for his excellent toastie graphic. It formed the basis for some of this list. Most of the article came from our own research in pubs and through social media, but Eoin’s graphic helped to fill in the gaps. You can see it and get a copy for yourself via this link.
It’s a quick, inexpensive option when you’re out in a pub and just need a little bit of sustenance. So, here are some of the best that we have encountered. Don’t be shy in telling us where you rate the best.
Marys bar
Marys bar on Wicklow street have the distinction of being the only toastie that we have found in the city that has real, carved ham inside. It’s a thick cut chunk of meat, served with cheese that doesn’t appear to be an easy single. You can get a toasty here served with a mug of soup or tea/coffee for €6.95. For our money it’s one of the best in the city.
Grogans
For many, when you think toastie, you think Grogans. Sitting outside in the moderate sunshine off South William street with a pint of Guinness and a toastie smothered in colmans mustard. It is indeed a fine experience, and one of the best in the city.
Frank Ryans
Frank Ryans earns massive extra bonus brownie points for serving their toasties in a basket on a bed of crisps. Not having to buy a pack to accompany the toastie is a very nice touch. You can even do a bit of culinary experimentation by putting the crisps inside the sandwich.
Fallons
Fallon’s toastie is extra special because they use batch bread. The thickness makes a big difference and batch bread is simply superior to most other varieties used. Having a toasty in the snug here is one of life’s simple pleasures.
Bowes
Bowes could be said to have a standard toastie offering. But, that’s exactly what we |
, so will the incentive for people to come here illegally.
“If you’re not residing here lawfully, then you shouldn’t be offered the opportunity for employment. It’s just that simple,” said Rhode Island state Rep. Robert Nardolillo, a Republican who sponsored a bill that would require all businesses in the state to use E-Verify. He says it is especially unfair for those who have immigrated and naturalized legally after a long and expensive process to see those who haven’t get jobs.
But if the laws succeed as the sponsors hope, some businesses are worried.
More than 40 percent of farmworkers are foreign-born, and Kristi Boswell of the American Farm Bureau Federation said many of them are thought to be undocumented. She said farmers collect documents from workers but don’t always know if they are fake. If they have to start turning those workers away, but aren’t able to get the labor they need through a guest-worker visa program, the biggest concern, she said, is how farms will get the labor they need.
“We recognize the reality of our workforce,” she said. “But because of the flaws in the current immigration system we are in this position. We need access to foreign-born labor in the form of a visa program and an adjustment of [legal] status for people who are already here that are experienced workers on the farm.”
Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, advocates for an expansion of legal immigration and guest-worker programs that the nation’s construction, restaurant and hospitality industries rely on. She thinks E-Verify should play a part in an expanded immigration program, but she is one of many people who question its reliability.
According to the Congressional Research Service, some authorized workers have been flagged as undocumented because of data entry errors or a failure to update their naturalization status or name change. When reviewing undocumented workers, the system is sometimes able to catch fraudulent documents that are tied to bogus Social Security numbers but it often fails to flag those tied to real numbers.
“No matter where you are in this country, you can buy fake documents,” Jacoby said. And employers fear asking too many questions could lead to a discrimination lawsuit. With E-Verify, she said, “You’re not sure you’re hiring totally legal people, but you at least know as much as government knows.”
Although there is a process to appeal if someone believes E-Verify has made an inaccurate determination, Veronica Fowler of the ACLU of Iowa said that places a time-intensive burden on people who need work.
Many of the bills lawmakers propose offer protection to employers who are found to have hired an undocumented worker, as long as the worker was cleared through E-Verify. But businesses that don’t use the system, at least in Iowa, would be penalized. Garrett, the Iowa sponsor, said it’s important that all businesses use E-Verify so some aren’t given a competitive advantage over others.
Some people in Iowa view the bill as an anti-immigrant measure, however. And it has yet to win the support of the business community.
Brian Carter with the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church said some legislators want to make good on a campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration before the next election. “It’s more political than anything,” he said. “It’s not really to help business.”
Is it Effective?
In the states that require private businesses to use E-Verify, the law hasn’t had the effects lawmakers were hoping for or that businesses feared.
According to a report from the libertarian Cato Institute, which compared the number of new hires in a state to the number of queries in E-Verify, new employees are being run through the system only about half of the time in four states that require private businesses to use the system.
Arizona, where the system was made mandatory in 2008, has had the requirement for the longest. Only about 58 percent of new hires were run through E-Verify there in 2014. In Mississippi, about 44 percent were. More than 97 percent of new hires in South Carolina were processed through E-Verify when the state audited businesses for compliance in 2012, but the rate has since fallen to 54 percent.
Jacoby of ImmigrationWorks USA said the laws can act as a deterrent. “Some of the people that used to apply with fake documents aren’t applying anymore,” she said. And that can make it more difficult for employers to find workers.
That was the case for many farmers in Georgia when the state required private employers to use E-Verify in 2011. Many seasonal workers passed through the state for opportunities elsewhere. The Georgia Department of Agriculture reported a shortage of more than 11,000 workers at the time, and a University of Georgia survey found that 78 percent of farmers had trouble finding workers that year.
“It was perceived that Georgia was hostile to immigrants,” said Tas Smith of the Georgia Farm Bureau. “Workers just didn’t show up. And when you got a crop in the field that has to get out in a certain amount of time because it’s perishable, you’re in a tizzy.”
Smith said some farmers tried to get laborers through a farmworker visa program, but having to supply transportation and housing was cost-prohibitive for most farmers, especially when workers may only be needed for a few weeks.
Now an entire block of the Southeast requires E-Verify, except for Florida, and Smith said the initial panic has eased.
Groups that represent large and small businesses in Arizona say despite initial concerns that using E-Verify would be burdensome, their members no longer complain.
But for the Arizona businesses that are not complying, the risk of being caught is low. Five years into the program, the state attorney general’s office cited just two cases against businesses, according to the Arizona Daily Star. The office of Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich was unaware of any new cases filed since then.
Arizona state Sen. John Kavanagh, a Republican co-sponsor of the law, said he views the law as a success because he thinks many undocumented workers simply do not apply for jobs in Arizona anymore. He wanted state attorneys to be able to subpoena businesses for records, but the business community opposed that, leaving the law without the bite he would like. But he’s hopeful Trump will push for E-Verify to be used nationwide.
Another Republican co-sponsor of the law, former Arizona state Sen. Rich Crandall, cautioned legislators in other states against passing similar laws. “We didn’t improve things and we didn’t harm things,” he said. “So what did we really do besides simply pile more requirements on small and large businesses?”SANTA CLARITA, CALIF. — In a career spanning more than six decades, Patrick Stewart has played kings and murderers and one-legged whalers. He has led an international team of superpowered mutants and has captained a starship. He’s played Prospero with the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed “A Christmas Carol” on Broadway — starring as Scrooge, Tiny Tim and every other character in the story.
But Mr. Stewart has never really had to be that funny before “Blunt Talk,” a new half-hour comedy on Starz. “Suddenly there’s a difference,” he said recently. “You’re always asking yourself, where is the humor in this?”
He’s not searching for the funny alone, though. “Blunt Talk” pairs Mr. Stewart with Seth MacFarlane, of “Family Guy” and “Ted” fame, and Jonathan Ames, the novelist and creator of the HBO comedy “Bored to Death.”
On the series, Mr. Stewart plays Walter Blunt, a Falklands War veteran and longtime British journalist who now hosts a cable news show in Los Angeles; the cast also includes Jacki Weaver (“Silver Linings Playbook”) as Blunt’s overly maternal producer/manager and Adrian Scarborough (“The King’s Speech”) as his alcoholic manservant. In the first episode, Blunt lands in jail after an incident involving Los Angeles police officers, a young transgender prostitute, and “chocolate marijuana.” Rather than scuttle his career, the arrest and its aftermath give Blunt a renewed sense of purpose.The ISIS terrorist group may have acquired a few old Soviet-built MiG fighters, according to a Syrian opposition group. But even if ISIS does have jet fighters, there is little chance that the group can do any real damage with those antiques beyond their value as propaganda tools, U.S. military pilots say.
“If ISIS is flying, or is thinking about flying, it will not be doing so for very long,” one Air Force official said.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—an opposition group based in London—ISIS has managed to acquire three Soviet-built Mikoyan MiG-21 Fishbed and MiG-23 Flogger fighters. The aircraft are allegedly being flown by former Iraqi air force pilots, who are also training wannabe ISIS aviators to fly the jets.
Additionally, ISIS appears to have a number of Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatross aircraft, traditionally used for advanced training and light attack. The terrorist group has produced at least one propaganda video purported to show the Czech-built jets in the air. But even if ISIS does have a rudimentary air force, it is basically useless in any true military sense, according to U.S. officials and American military pilots.
“I’d sell my first born to engage all three… by myself,” one highly experienced U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot joked. Another Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle pilot said, “Send me in, coach! There’s no way they get those airborne!”
“We’re not talking about aircraft that are extremely effective at delivering ordinance both in terms of equipment and training,” said one U.S. Air Force official. “It’s simply not worth it beyond an easily discreditable propaganda ploy.”
The MiG-21 does not carry a huge amount of weaponry and was originally designed to fight other aircraft. Meanwhile, the MiG-23 is a much bigger and more complex jet that requires a professional pilot to operate properly.
Even if ISIS has such pilots—and that isn’t terribly likely—they might not last long. Though both the MiG-21 and MiG-23 are supersonic fighters, they are dated and would likely be easy prey to any modern American fighter.
Additionally, many U.S. officials questioned how well ISIS’s MiGs work. The jets may not have functional on-board systems like radars and weapons—nor does ISIS have access to the sophisticated ground control network the Soviets and their Syrian government clients used.
Many U.S. pilots were gleeful at the prospects of bagging a MiG.
However, a former, very experienced Air Force pilot who has flown both the MiG-21 and MiG-23 said that one should not underestimate the elderly Soviet jets. “Either of the MiG types must be honored, especially in the hands of a competent pilot,” the retired pilot said. “Are modern jets more capable? Of course they are.”
But just how competent are the ISIS pilots? Not very, one Air Force official told The Daily Beast. “If these are hardcore ex-Iraqi or Syrian air force Sunnis flying and instructing, their recency of flying is extremely poor,” he said. “It’s been years since they’ve flown in the type themselves, and that further weakens any credible thought of teaching new students how to fly.”
Even those veteran pilots are most likely to get themselves killed in an accident than anything else. “They are certainly a much greater personal danger to themselves than to others,” the Air Force official said.
As for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights report that former Iraqi pilots are training new militant aviators—the retired U.S. Air Force MiG pilot is dubious. “I would just reiterate that they are high-performance aircraft, especially the MiG-23, safely flown only by pilots that have progressed from Cessna-like (general aviation) aircraft into jet trainers and then into more advanced fighting machines,” the retired pilot said. “This takes months, if not years, of sophisticated training for a pilot to reach the level of proficiency needed for successful combat operations.”
Even given that ISIS has access to training aircraft like the L-39, their prospects of training new pilots is dubious. “A big step from an L-39 to a MiG-21,” the retired Air Force pilot said. “A giant step to the MiG-23. And, there is a huge difference between flying jets like that and employing them.”
Even then, the Air Force official said, dropping a handful of bombs against the Kurds, Syrian rebels, or Iraqi or Syrian government forces would be unlikely to make much of a difference on the battlefield. “Field artillery is the better means of delivering fires in Syria and Iraq,” the official added. “Artillery is extremely abundant in both Syria and Iraq, it is relatively easier for a largely non-technically trained fighter to accomplish.”
If by some miracle ISIS were to be able to fly these fighters against any target, the group would simply be putting a bull’s eye on their airfield near Aleppo—which is where the terrorists are reportedly operating.
“Assuming a plane actually does get airborne to employ weapons for ISIS, it will immediately find itself on the top of CENTCOM’s [U.S. Central Command] time sensitive target list,” the official continued. “That means, that once positively identified, it could be destroyed with a minimal amount of coordination with command and control.”
However, while it is easy to dismiss ISIS’s new air force, the terrorist group has surprised American officials before. “I was surprised they could drive the tanks they captured,” the retired Air Force pilot said. “So, it all remains to be seen.”WASHINGTON, D.C. (JTA) — On Wednesday, in our offices near this city’s Dupont Circle, the staff at Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. were opening the mail when a request came in from a veteran asking that we change her first name on our records from Jaron to Rona.
“I just immediately did it without a second thought,” said Lauren Hellendall, a membership team member, said Thursday. “Then I thought about the significance of it because of the president’s announcement yesterday. I found out after doing some research that Rona Matlow was a Life Member of Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., and I thought it would be invaluable to share her story as a dedicated Jewish veteran.”
On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that transgender individuals would no longer be allowed to enlist or serve in the military, surprising both service members and Pentagon leaders.
“I went upstairs to our public relations department, and they just took it from there,” Hellendall said.
Rona served 22 years in the Navy as both enlisted and as an officer in its nuclear power program — in submarines, nuclear cruisers, frigates and a destroyer. She retired with the rank of lieutenant commander when she decided that the Navy had taken too much of a toll on her.
After leaving the Navy, Rona was ordained as a rabbi by the Academy for Jewish Religion and started volunteering as a chaplain for the veteran community. In 2015, she started to address her gender dysphoria and begin her transition.
I asked Rona, who lives in the Greater Seattle area, how she felt about the president’s announcement.
“I was absolutely devastated and furious,” she answered. “Immediately I was very worried about the 15,000 active duty trans personnel that are currently serving in the military. I have talked to service members with 19-plus years of service who would be kicked out of the military without a pension.”
Rona also told me that since the announcement, she has been reaching out to people in the Jewish and transgender community – making sure that their needs are met. She says she is available to anyone in the transgender community who needs support right now.
“It costs well over a million dollars to train a pilot. Kicking these people out is incredibly more costly than keeping them in,” she said. “Even if [the military] paid $30,000 for the surgery, they would have to pay a million dollars training a new pilot. That’s absurd.”
“I was also happy to see that Dunford and Mattis are supporting our service members,” said Rona, referencing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
Immediately after the president tweeted about the ban, Dunford said there has been no change in policy “until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance. In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect.”
Mattis, who was on vacation and caught off guard by the president’s tweets, reportedly was “appalled” by Trump’s call for a ban.
“These tweets are ill-informed, ill-advised, and they were made without the backing or consultation of the Chiefs of Staff or Congress – such a policy has to be made with both of them,” said Rona.
Rona is right. Tweets are not the way to make policy. We urge the president to sit down with his Joint Chiefs of Staff and defense secretary to develop a policy with the backing of research as well as regard and respect for the individuals who have served our nation with honor.
Until then, Rona will proudly tell anyone that she is “the only nuclear-qualified, transgender rabbi,” and we’re proud to have her.
(Anna Selman is the programs and public relations coordinator for Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. and an Army veteran.)
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
Last year I published a book on French philosophy since 1960 with a chapter entitled “What Ever Happened to Existentialism?” The title referred to the fast and apparently complete fall of existentialism from favor among leading French intellectuals, beginning at least as early as the 1960s. My chapter analyzed the fall, asked whether it was as decisive as it seemed, and ended with suggestions that the movement may have had more long-term influence than it seemed to.
Why does a philosophical movement that many have written off still retain its allure?
Adam Gopnik’s recent New Yorker essay on Albert Camus and his relation to Jean-Paul Sartre reminded me how irrelevant my title’s question appears from a broader cultural standpoint. Whatever the ups and downs of Camus’s or Sartre’s stock on the high cultural exchange, their existentialism (not to mention that of their 19th-century predecessors, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) has continued to spark interest among the larger population of educated people. The point is also illustrated by the strong reactions, both for and against Sartre and Camus, in the comments on Andy Martin’s recent piece in The Stone. And, of course, the enduring sign of interest has been the perennial popularity of undergraduate college courses on existentialist philosophy and literature.
Gopnik shows the reason for this continuing attraction. I would not recommend his essay as an accurate technical presentation of existentialist thought. For example, Sartre’s magnum opus, “Being and Nothingness,” is not an effort to “reconcile Marxism and existentialism”; that comes much later in his “Critique of Dialectical Reason.” Nor did Sartre reason to his support of Marxist revolution through an atheistic version of Pascal’s wager. But Gopnik has a ready response to such philosophical quibbles. The popular appeal of existentialism lies more in its sense of drama than in careful analysis and argument. As Gopnik exclaims: “Philosophers? They [Sartre and Camus] were performers with vision, who played on the stage of history.”
This is not to say that existentialists — particularly Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir — are not intellectually serious thinkers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, they work out of a continuing sense of human existence as a compelling drama. In part this derives from the heightened stakes of the war and occupation from which their mature work emerged. Recall Sartre’s example of his student who was trying to decide whether to abandon his mother and join the Free French army. On the conventional view, the student’s decision would depend on whether he loved his mother or his country more. But Sartre insisted that the decision itself would create the greater love the student might later evoke to justify it.
The war even intrudes into the thorny ontological analyses of “Being and Nothingness.” Arguing for the absoluteness of our freedom even in the face of severe constraints, Sartre — no doubt thinking of members of the Resistance captured by the Gestapo — insists that, even under torture, we are free. Those who yield and betray their comrades afterwards live in guilt because they know that, at the moment of betrayal, they could have held out for at least another minute.
But existentialism also ties into the drama of everyday life. Sartre’s study of “bad faith” (self-deception) is driven by striking vignettes like that of the woman torn between her psychological desire for a man’s attention and her lack of sexual interest in him, who allows him to caress her while thinking of herself as a pure consciousness, with no essential tie to the body he is touching. Similarly, Sartre describes an overly zealous waiter, so self-consciously intent on doing everything just right that he winds up as much pretending to be a waiter as being one.
Related More From The Stone Read previous contributions to this series.
Drama can always distort, and Sartre’s examples are open to criticism for ignoring ambiguities and complexities for the sake of a vivid impact. When an interviewer much later confronted him with a passage expressing his stark early view of freedom under torture, Sartre replied that what was remarkable was that, when he wrote such things, he actually believed them. In another vein, feminist critics have noted the relentlessly masculine standpoint of Sartre’s descriptions of what is supposed to be “human reality.”
An emphasis on drama also has the advantages and the disadvantages of inevitably connecting the philosophy with the personal life of the philosopher. Gopnik rightly emphasizes how Sartre and Camus’s theoretical disagreements over political philosophy are reflected in the sad history of their lost friendship. This personal drama illuminates their philosophical differences and vice versa. Similarly, it is fair to look at Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s philosophy of freedom in the light of their famous pact to maintain an “essential love” for one another, while allowing for any number of “contingent lovers.” Still, too much concern with the messy and ultimately impenetrable details of a life can lure us across the line between philosophical insight and titillating gossip.
Despite its dangers, the drama of existentialism has kept some of the deepest philosophical questions alive in popular intellectual culture and provides students with remarkably direct access to such questions. I am always impressed by the frisson in my class when students realize that there’s a sense in which Sartre is right: they could, right now, get up, leave the classroom, drop out of school, and go live as beach bums in a perpetually warm climate. But it’s equally impressive to see them — still stimulated by what they’re read in Sartre and other existentialists like Camus and Merleau-Ponty — reflect on why this sense of radical freedom is far from the whole story of their lives as moral agents. This combination of drama and reflection is the reason existentialism will always be with us.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy since 1960,” and writes regularly for The Stone.In the last years, I have been pleased and privileged to see our relationship come a long way. It has been a long journey from the mistrust and misperception of the Cold War period and even the post-Cold War period and President Clinton's efforts to forge a new relationship. And those efforts have continued under U.S. administrations Democratic and Republican, alike.
This belief in opportunity, even against long odds, is unique to our two countries. We are two countries who begin our founding documents with the same three words: "We the people." We are two countries where entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation are in both of our DNA. We are the only two countries that could have given birth to Hollywood and Bollywood and where high-tech hubs like Bangalore and Silicon Valley could blossom and be connected -- even as they are independent in their creativity. We are two countries that, as Swami Vivekananda said in Chicago more than a century ago, have sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations on earth.
President Obama often says that, for him, only in America would his journey be possible. And Prime Minister Modi's journey from a young man who sold tea by the railroad in Gujarat to the Prime Minister's residence on Race Course Road seems no less improbable.
People are watching to wait and see if this Modi moment is going to be the moment when the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest democracy finally capitalize on the full, inherent potential of this relationship. And it does, in fact, seem so natural. The United States and India are two countries defined by the belief that all things are possible.
I've been Secretary of State now going on two years, and I was on the Foreign Relations Committee for nearly 30 years, so I've seen the ups and downs of this relationship. And people talk about the United States and India perhaps the way that a matchmaker talks about two friends that they want to get together: "Oh, you have so much in common. If only you'd spend more time together."
When President Obama returns to India this January, he will become the first U.S. president to celebrate Republic Day as chief guest. As the leaders of the largest and oldest democracies in the world sit side-by-side along the Rajpath, it will be the surest sign yet that our interests and values are united like never before.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz meet with a pair of high school entrepreneurs during an expo focused on clean energy and technology products in New Delhi, India, on June 24, 2013.
_________
The question today is whether we are going to at last take this partnership to the new heights that we can both envision.
What is clear for all to see is that we are two confident, democratic nations together entering a new age of technological advancement, growth, and progress.
While India and the United States boast unique histories and cultures, we are also similar in many ways. With 3.2 million Indian-Americans creating businesses and enriching life in cities from Atlanta to San Francisco, India is tightly woven into the fabric of American society. And recently, President Obama and Prime Minister Modi reaffirmed our shared values when they visited the Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial in Washington and discussed the impact that the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi had on America's own Civil Rights Movement.
But what you might not see on the broadsheets, broadcasts, and tweets that our citizens share every day is that American and Indian businesses are forging a new model of relations founded on the building blocks of co-innovation and global collaboration - in the United States, India, and across the Indo-Pacific.
This week, with the launch of Huffington Post India, one of America's most influential media organizations has recognized what you see every day: that India is in the midst of a great transformation -- from its rural villages to its mega-cities -- and that American business has an essential role to play in its continued emergence.
I first came to India in 1994 as a United States Senator leading a trade mission of American companies. I was immediately seized with India's economic promise and entrepreneurial passion. And I was not alone. Two short decades later and American and Indian scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators have realized the same opportunity and are collaborating like never before. They have spurred progress in such sectors as health care, aeronautics systems, and green energy technology.
The fruits of these partnerships are already extraordinary.
When India became the first country to successfully send a satellite into orbit around Mars on its initial attempt, their collaborators at NASA and JPL were cheering just as loudly as the scientists and engineers at ISRO. Through innovative partnerships, India has embraced U.S. off-grid clean energy technology, which soon will provide millions of people with consistent electricity. Together we've developed vaccines for Rotavirus, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five. And last month, we held the U.S.-India Tech Summit, which brought together representatives from our governments to discuss new opportunities for mutual growth.
But the greatest dividends from our partnership will be realized in the future.
Two-way investment is booming. Ford Motor Company is spending $1 billion to turn its new auto plant in Gujarat into a regional manufacturing hub. U.S. subsidiaries of Indian-owned companies employ 45,000 people in the United States. U.S. financial institutions are investing in India's booming start-up market. And we are encouraging utility firms to help Prime Minister Modi meet his goal of bringing power to every Indian home before the end of the decade -- an important step toward achieving his other ambition, building a $10 trillion Indian economy by 2030.
There is no denying it: The work going on in boardrooms in Mumbai and New York, laboratories in Palo Alto and Gujarat, and factories from Pittsburgh to Bangalore is proof positive that Indians and Americans are blazing a new path forward, a path built on the bedrock of innovation.
All of these achievements are made possible by our dynamic societies. Last summer, I returned to India and spoke with Ratan Tata and other transformational business leaders. I stopped by the Indian Institute of Technology and watched students researching and developing new products like biodegradable plastics. And at Race Course Road, I sat down with Prime Minister Modi and discussed his vision for India's economic future. I left India inspired, with the conviction that our entrepreneurial DNA will take our nations places we could have never imagined when I first arrived in 1994.
Both Indians and Americans are knowledge seekers and entrepreneurs. We believe in freedom and the rights of all. And we are aspirational: We trust that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.
Today, our destinies are converging. As we continue to deepen our partnership, and transform how we collaborate and invent, India and the United States can create a more prosperous future -- for the world and for one another.
Our time has come.Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) — a pro-gun-rights, anti-abortion, anti-war libertarian presidential candidate — has attracted an almost cultish devotion among his young supporters. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Libertarian Paul wins young minds
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) — a pro-gun-rights, anti-abortion, anti-war libertarian presidential candidate — has attracted an almost cultish devotion among his young supporters.
These are folks who don’t just show up for Paul. They show up against everyone else.
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Whether in Gainesville, Fla. — where four hardy Paul backers stood outside Fred Thompson’s campaign bus on a football Saturday, hoisting signs and receiving taunts from inebriated tailgaters — or in Iowa City, where a group of Paul devotees had a shouting contest with Rudy Giuliani backers following a rally at the student union, the congressman’s believers are nothing if not committed.
Even derisive jeers of “RuPaul” from the other Republicans’ young supporters don’t lessen their ardor.
Paul, a candidate who proposes eliminating the Federal Reserve and personal income tax — issues widely viewed as settled since their creation in 1913 — would hardly seem the obvious choice for these young voters.
But his cadre of Web-savvy young supporters is intensely dedicated, even if small in numbers — despite the fact that Paul languishes near the bottom of national and early-primary-state polls. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads among young Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to those same polls, for example, but Paul matches him in online social networking, college chapters and student fundraising.
Paul’s biggest Facebook group boasts more than 34,000 members, compared with about 16,000 in Romney’s largest group. (Politico asked the four leading Republican presidential campaigns about their youth programs, but only Romney’s responded in time for this article.) Paul claims to have 250 campus groups, compared with Romney’s 200 or so. And Paul is the only candidate making much use of the online tool Meetup. (In fact, his enthusiastic online supporters have become so ubiquitous that the popular conservative blog Redstate banned new users from “shilling” for him.)
So why has he attracted such passionate young backers?
“It’s his principled politics,” said Dallas Moorhead, 24, who quit his job in Indiana and moved cross-country to volunteer full-time at Paul campaign’s headquarters above a dry cleaner in suburban Virginia.
Moorhead epitomizes the typical young Paul acolyte: He is disenchanted with the phoniness of conventional politicians and, as a states-rights Goldwater conservative, decries the “neo-con” turn of the Bush administration. “A lot of students, because of the latest administration, are fed up with talking points,” he said, ticking off the war in Iraq and spending as his primary policy disappointments.
But Paul’s campaign has not simply taken an “if you build it, they will come” attitude toward young supporters. His is the only Republican presidential campaign with a full-time national youth outreach director, Jeff Frazee, 24. And Moorhead soon will join the staff to assist Frazee in online organizing.
The work has paid off. Frazee said that of Paul’s $8 million in total donations, $100,000 has come from students alone. That’s a much higher proportion than the $180,000 that Romney raised from students — of about $45 million total from outside donors.
Moorhead, like many young Paul supporters, does not define himself as a libertarian. Rather, he describes himself as “very conservative” and, among other things, shares Paul’s opposition to abortion, preferring (like Paul) that it be adjudicated at the state rather than the federal level.No one has claimed responsibility for attack on cathedral chapel, which used 12 kilos of TNT, according to state media
Egypt has declared three days of mourning on Sunday after a bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 25 people and wounded another 49.
Egypt’s state-run news agency Mena reported that 12 kilograms of TNT explosives were used in the attack. The majority of those killed were women and children.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
In a statement, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi encouraged Muslims and Coptic Christians to band together “to emerge victorious in the war against terrorism, which is the battle of all Egyptians”. He stressed that the government would be harsh in its response to the attack, one of the deadliest carried out against the religious minority in recent years.
Those who pray regularly at St Mark’s Cathedral described a system of security within the compound that appeared strong, but could be lax. “People who commit such acts do so with impunity,” said one man, declining to be named as he stood close to the blast site and held up a small wooden cross. “There are normally police on both entrances to the cathedral and to the chapel.” Asked whether everyone who entered the cathedral compound was searched, he answered: “Sometimes yes, sometimes no”.
As the death toll rose and nearby hospitals called for blood donations, there was grief and anger in the streets. Hundreds of people crowded outside the cathedral, including a large crowd of young men who made clear their complaints against conservative Muslim groups, Egypt’s ministry of the interior and even the president. “As long as any Egyptian blood is cheap, down with any president,” they chanted.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Egyptian security forces examine the scene inside St Mark’s Cathedral following Sunday’s bombing. Photograph: Omar El-Hady/AP
“You ask for our emotions? Look in there,” said one man, pointing at the angry crowd. “What do you expect us to feel? People were killed while they were praying. They didn’t even die in their homes,” he said.
The Egyptian government has staked its mandate on the fight against Islamist groups as well as the Sinai chapter of Islamic State. Protecting the minority Christian population is the cornerstone of this pledge, but Sunday’s attack caused some to question whether the government is living up to its promise to provide security to all Egyptians.
“The government doesn’t protect us. They can’t protect us against terrorism in general,” said one man, who also wished to remain anonymous.
“Lots of Christians supported the current regime out of fear of being targeted by Islamist extremists,” said Mina Thabet, an expert on religious minorities at the Cairo-based Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. “Many Christians supported Sisi as he represented himself as a protecter of Christians against extreme groups. Today’s event may affect their support.”
Other members of the Coptic community were unshaken in their support for Egypt’s government.
“This is an injury to all Egyptians,” said Father Boules Haliem, spokesman for the Coptic Church of Egypt. “This is about more than the Coptic community, this is an attack on all Egyptians.”
Egypt has witnessed a rise in attacks by Islamist groups including those affiliated to Isis since the overthrow of former Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
An attack close to a mosque in Giza on Friday killed six security officials, and was later claimed by a group named “Hasm”, or “Decisiveness.” The group, which the Egyptian government believes is a violent offshoot from the deposed Muslim Brotherhood group, issued a statement condemning Sunday’s attack via the encrypted messenger service Telegram, calling it an example of “dirty hands extending to churches to kill women and children”.Syrian filmmaker Muhammad Bayazid was stabbed in Istanbul in a suspected assassination attempt last week. Bayazid, known for tackling human rights and humanitarian issues, was working on a film about a Syrian-American man who spent 20 years in the regime’s Palmyra prison.
Bayazid survived the attempt on his life, the latest in a series of attacks targeting Syrian opposition activists and journalists living and working in Turkey.
Last week’s attack was the second of its kind in less than a month. In late September, Syrian opposition activist Orouba Barakat and her daughter, journalist Hala Barakat, were found stabbed to death in their Istanbul apartment.
The New York-based non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the killing of at least six Syrian activists and journalists in Turkey since October 2015, when journalists Fares Hamadi and Ibrahim Abd al-Qader were murdered in a town near the Syrian border in the first attack. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility in a video posted to social media.
Both Hamadi and Abd al-Qader were early members of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group known for its covert reporting on Raqqa city—quite possibly the most dangerous journalistic beat in the world. They also worked for opposition news outlet and radio station Eye on Homeland, another source covering IS atrocities in Syria.
It was Abd al-Qader’s brother, Ahmad Abd al-Qader, who found the two dead journalists. In the aftermath, Ahmad tells Syria Direct’s Ammar Hamou that he questioned everything: his desire to work, the purpose of his life and how much he was willing to risk.
An undated photo |
-powered attorney. Season four ended with a surprising twist that pretty much guarantees a good time this fall.
Who it’s for: Bitcoin investors; Chris Noth revivalists; anyone who feels they outgrew Law & Order.
Availability: All four seasons are available for purchase on DVD or iTunes and are streaming on Amazon Instant.
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Hannibal (NBC)
What it’s about: TV writing super-genius Bryan Fuller took what sounded like the worst idea in history—a series about fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter—and turned it into an intimate horror tale that inverts the usual crime procedural with a healthy helping of gore, psychology, and emotional woundedness.
Why you should watch it: One of TV’s best-looking shows, Hannibal is an ingeniously constructed puzzle box that works to unlock the intricacies of the human psyche. The series is built around Hugh Dancy’s riveting, vulnerable work as Will Graham—the criminal profiler who will eventually catch Hannibal Lecter (as per the books the series is based on) but for now regards him as something of a friend—and Mads Mikkelsen’s terrifyingly subdued work as Dr. Lecter. Hannibal is a Gothic horror tale about the cost of looking at violence done to fellow human beings, a story as likely to present something terrifying to viewers as it is to suggest that terrifying thing’s presence is a black mark on humanity as a whole.
Who it’s for: People who scoff about the idea of a TV show about Hannibal Lecter; psychology graduate students; seemingly three-quarters of the slash-fiction corner of Tumblr.
Availability: It’s streaming on Amazon and iTunes, and the first-season DVD comes out in late September.
Moone Boy (Hulu)
What it’s about: In a small Irish town in the early 1990s, a 12-year-old boy tries to make sense of the world around him with the help of his imaginary friend, a tall, bearded man in a suit named Sean Murphy (played by series creator Chris O’Dowd).
Why you should watch it: Of all the foreign-made series that have premièred in this country as “Hulu Exclusive Series,” this funny, imaginative, down-to-earth domestic sitcom is one of the best.
Who it’s for: People who’ll get a nostalgic tingle from references to the political and popular cultures of Ireland circa 1991; fans of Calvin And Hobbes who miss the comic strip so much than they’ll be grateful for something in a similar vein, even if the tiger is played by a phlegmatic Irishman.
Availability: The first season is streaming on Hulu.
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Nathan For You (Comedy Central)
What it’s about: In the guise of a consultant skilled at saving struggling businesses, comedian Nathan Fielder sends up quick-fix reality-TV clichés.
Why you should watch it: After working in the writers’ rooms for Comedy Central series starring Demetri Martin and H. Jon Benjamin, Fielder acquits himself as a unique talent worthy of his own show with a deadpan delivery and an uncanny ability to maintain a straight face in increasingly ridiculous circumstances. Thanks to a viral video in which a petting zoo’s “hero pig” saves a drowning goat, the show achieved online notoriety well before its debut. However, Fielder is careful to always make himself appear more foolish than his clients, as best exemplified in “Claw Of Shame,” a one-off compilation of failed solutions that climaxes with a handcuffed Fielder attempting to avoid embarrassment at the metallic hands of a robot.
Who it’s for: Struggling business owners seeking ways not to save their businesses; Canadians seeking ways to win the hearts and minds of Americans; tourists trying to figure out what the deal was with that “King Of Sting” caricature artist at the Santa Monica Pier.
Availability: The first season is available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes.
Orange Is The New Black (Netflix)
What it’s about: Piper Chapman (the excellent Taylor Schilling), a yuppie living a comfortable upper-middle-class existence, is convicted of a crime she committed years ago and sent to prison for just over a year. While there, she encounters women from all walks of life, serving time for all manner of crimes, as her comfortable life slowly erodes on the outside.
Why you should watch it: In a year of great new shows—particularly great new dramas—this one is among the very best. After more than a decade of TV shows primarily about the travails of white male antiheroes, Weeds creator Jenji Kohan and her writing staff dig deep to tell stories about women who wouldn’t normally appear on TV, from older Russian immigrants to trans-women to mother-and-daughter Latinas. As is by now hopefully common knowledge, Piper is just a window into a larger, more fascinating world, yet she remains compelling herself as her priorities and allegiances shift. By season’s end, she may have changed as much as anyone on the show.
Who it’s for: Anyone who’s ever had a serious fight with a significant other over watching a Mad Men episode without them; chickens seeking positive portrayals of their own kind in the media; everyone, probably.
Availability: Currently available exclusively on Netflix.
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Orphan Black (BBC America)
What it’s about: A woman witnesses her lookalike commit suicide, then assumes her identity, eventually realizing they’re clones—and that there are lots more of them.
Why you should watch it: A ridiculously fun mix of sci-fi, serialized puzzler, and action show, Orphan Black is smart enough to be just smart enough. And it’s got a not-so-secret weapon in Tatiana Maslany, who plays every major character with such individualized flair that it’s never distracting. (With the wrong actor, it could’ve been a disaster.) And the story is simple at its heart but complex in its carefully doled-out answers: Who created these women, and to what end?
Who it’s for: Soft sci-fi enthusiasts, soapy sci-fi enthusiasts, Joss Whedon fans who’ve burned through Dollhouse too many times.
Availability: Purchase on DVD and through iTunes and Amazon Instant; for free on-demand on some cable systems.
Parenthood (NBC)
What it’s about: Friday Night Lights mastermind Jason Katims continues a winning third act in his long, illustrious career, turning out the finest small-scale family drama since Party Of Five and maybe even since thirtysomething. The series’ Braverman clan makes its way through the minor pitfalls of everyday life and keeps its heart and humor intact.
Why you should watch it: Okay, only a handful of episodes actually aired in 2013, making this a bit of a marginal case for this list. But if the series keeps up the streak it’s on where every season is better than the last, then season five should be absolutely fantastic. Parenthood has fewer obvious hooks than some shows on this list, but it’s one of TV’s best dramas all the same, with a deep yet nuanced look at what it means to be a family in the 21st century that somehow never once becomes overly sentimental or cloying.
Who it’s for: Anyone in your own family you can rope into watching it; fans of any one of the many previous shows the cast members have been on who are just looking for something worthwhile; parents, probably.
Availability: The first three seasons are available on DVD, for purchase at Amazon and iTunes, and streaming on Amazon and Netflix. The fourth and most recent season is on DVD but is also streaming at Hulu Plus.
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Person Of Interest (CBS)
What it’s about: A reclusive billionaire computer genius and a retired CIA field agent team up to form a not-for-profit security service for all of New York City. They get their cases by hacking into a top-secret national-security database (which the rich techie created) to identify threats against people the government deems too insignificant to worry about.
Why you should watch it: After a slow start in its first season, this sleek, paranoid thriller has developed into one of the weirdest and most morally complex dramas on network TV, and one of the most exciting. The second season set off a string of game-changer episodes as if they were firecrackers, leaving the road wide open for season three.
Who it’s for: Libertarians who think that national security should be privatized; paranoids of every persuasion.
Availability: Both seasons are on DVD and are available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes.
Please Like Me (Pivot)
What its about: With his 21st birthday approaching, Josh (played by the series’ writer-creator, Josh Thomas) realizes that he’s gay, negotiates the minefield of his first same-sex relationship, and moves in with his mother, to care for her after she’s attempted suicide.
Why you should watch it: The special charm of this Australian import is that, though the hero is totally self-denigrating, he’s actually tough and resilient enough that none of the calamities and life-altering developments that fall in his lap turn out to be that big a deal; he reacts to everything with a nervous giggle and a shrug, and then just keeps going with the flow. He’s abetted by an able supporting cast, including David Roberts as Josh’s guilt-ridden Dad and Judi Farr as Aunt Peg, who do their part to make this one of the funniest shows you haven’t heard of.
Who it’s for: Anyone who’s ever seen someone on a talk or reality show going on about the hardships they’ve had to overcome, and wanted to yell at the screen, “Oh for God’s sake, get over yourself!”
Availability: The first season is available for purchase on iTunes. Pivot has also posted the entire first episode on YouTube.
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Rectify (Sundance)
What it’s about: When new DNA evidence frees a death-row inmate, he must readjust to life in the small town he left behind 19 years ago—a particular challenge given the percentage of the population that’s convinced of his guilt.
Why you should watch it: For a show that occasionally portrays humanity at its absolute ugliest, Rectify features some of the most beautiful images to be broadcast on 2013, the sun-dappled haze of its Georgia setting a stark contrast to the cell that Daniel Holden called home for nearly 20 years. As Daniel, Aden Young gives an astonishing performance, his thousand-yard stare transmitting the strange sensation of a man whose life “ended” as a teenager and who must now struggle to find his place in a world that didn’t just keep turning after his incarceration—it turned against him as well.
Who it’s for: Viewers who enjoy the Southern setting of Justified, but find its sense of morality and justice too defined; anyone who’s ever sincerely said to themselves, “This is not my beautiful house”; people who are too happy in their workaday lives and could stand to spend a long weekend bummed the fuck out.
Availability: The first season is available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes, the latter of which offers the première, “Always There” as a free download.
Scandal (ABC)
What it’s about: Olivia Pope (Emmy-nominated Kerry Washington) is Washington D.C.’s top “fixer,” the woman who figures out ways the rich and powerful can get out of the scandalous situations they’re caught in without irreparably harming their reputations. But because this is television, Olivia’s own reputation is constantly dancing just ahead of being ruined by all the illicit things she’s done.
Why you should watch it: There’s been lots of talk about female antiheroes in recent years, women who aren’t very obviously male characters with the name changed in Final Draft but still pull all their tricks from the bag currently carried by Walter White. This talk conveniently ignores that TV already has a great female antihero—she’s just on a primetime ABC soap where few know how to find her. Olivia and her crew are among TV’s most amoral characters, and watching them work to save their own skins is at once exhilarating and queasy-making. Add crackerjack dialogue from creator Shonda Rhimes and her writers and an enthralling, cliffhanger-every-second pace, and viewers will find one of TV’s most addicting shows.
Who it’s for: Those who watch C-SPAN and wish it had better cliffhangers; anyone who imagines they look good in a white cowboy hat because Kerry Washington will lead by example and show them they don’t; anyone who doubts network TV still has relevancy.
Availability: All episodes are available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon, as well as streaming on Hulu Plus. Season one is available on DVD and Netflix, with season two soon to follow.
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Shark Tank (ABC)
What it’s about: A parade of would-be tycoons marches before this reality show’s titular “sharks,” successful businesspeople who are putting real money on the line to potentially invest in the weirdos they’re exposed to because they’re on TV. And sometimes a great idea slips in!
Why you should watch it: Shark Tank all but demands to be watched in a hungover haze the night after getting the drunkest you’ve ever been. It’s a superb “shout at the TV” show, complete with people making asses of themselves, successful businesspeople making potentially idiotic decisions, and segments where the sharks may as well be lighting cigars with $100 bills and cackling directly at the camera. Oh, it’s also a surprisingly educational show about basic business principles.
Who it’s for: People who need to learn how to balance their checkbooks; bald men who hope to reclaim their vitality; anyone who enjoys yelling.
Availability: Episodes are available for purchase at Amazon and iTunes.
Southland (TNT)
What it’s about: Cops in L.A. doing cop stuff—from heroic to ugly to mundane, but always intensely watchable.
Why you should watch it: Southland charged through the everyday lives of cops in some of L.A.’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods, gathering gravitas over five seasons (and two networks, and two cancellations). In the grand tradition of gritty cop shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide (and, yeah, The Wire), it brings the ugly and the beautiful together with an unblinking eye. The final season, which aired this year, was a heartbreaker on several levels—one being the fact that the audience won’t have any more time with some of these amazing characters.
Who it’s for: Anyone who needs at least one semi-realistic portrayal of cops and criminals at all times. Justified is an incredible show, but it never feels as real as Southland.
Availability: Purchase on DVD, iTunes, and Amazon Instant.
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Top Of The Lake (Sundance)
What it’s about: A cop returns to her hometown in backwoods New Zealand and uncovers a history of violent misogyny while a makeshift battered-women’s shelter crops up in a prairie owned by a violent town patriarch.
Why you should watch it: In a wasteland of quirky murder-mysteries, Top Of The Lake roars with furious purpose. This isn’t just about a missing girl and a property dispute; this is about rape culture and entrenched power structures and shame. The way the miniseries devours pulp tropes and spits out symbolism, it’s nothing less than a gender war. Jane Campion and co-director Garth Davis mine the idea of women and children trying to escape the town’s traditional order for some of the most evocative images of the year, including a hippie community frolicking in the grass and a stomach-dropping chase up a mountain. A steely Elisabeth Moss leads a hall-of-fame cast including Peter Mullan, Holly Hunter, and David Wenham.
Who it’s for: People who think Antichrist is soft; anyone who regularly uses the term “patriarchy”; people who miss the accents from Flight Of The Conchords.
Availability: The miniseries is available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes, and it’s streaming on Netflix.
Veep (HBO)
What it’s about: A foul-mouthed vice president and her dysfunctional staff try to hang onto their jobs and maybe even gain power, or at least prestige, in the center of a political machine obsessed with scandal.
Why you should watch it: From the pratfalls to the creative vulgarity, Veep goes down easy. And there are only 18 half-hour episodes. Put one on and lose an afternoon to this satire about the illusion of power in a modern technocratic bureaucracy. Created by Armando Iannucci and written by the team behind The Thick Of It and In The Loop, it’s no wonder Veep has such sharp teeth. Then there’s the casting, which earned all four of Veep’s Emmy nominations this year, including one for incumbent Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the arrogant lead, Tony Hale as her doormat, Anna Chlumsky as her sour chief of staff, and one for the casting department itself. A less-crowded field might find room for Matt Walsh and Timothy Simons, too.
Who it’s for: Powerless factotums; fans of the opening credits of Fahrenheit 9/11; masters of the polite glare-smile.
Availability: The first season is available for purchase on DVD and Blu-ray as well as Amazon and iTunes. Both seasons are streaming on HBO GO.
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Vikings (History)
What it’s about: Vikings!
Why you should watch it: Vikings! (And its commitment to providing a rough-and-tumble look at Viking voyagers in the distant past as well as functioning as the best sci-fi drama of the year if you look at it cross-eyed, with intrepid adventurers visiting strange alien lands and coming into conflict with all manner of odd species.)
Who it’s for: Vikings!; Minnesota Vikings!; everyone who’s been waiting for a dark and gritty Hägar The Horrible reboot.
Availability: The series is available for digital download at iTunes, Amazon, and YouTube. It will be available on DVD in October.Greg Klee/Globe Staff
This Saturday, as about 700 of the nation’s top crossword solvers gather in the Grand Ballroom of the Brooklyn Marriott for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, there will be an interloper lurking in the back of the room.
The interloper is known as Dr. Fill. Unlike the other assembled crossword experts, Dr. Fill is not human. The Doctor is a crossword-solving program, and will be running on the notebook computer of Matt Ginsberg, a software engineer from Eugene, Ore. When the bell rings and humans start solving the first of seven championship puzzles, Ginsberg will hit “enter” and Dr. Fill will get to work, in an attempt to achieve the highest score in the tournament. (Dr. Fill isn’t officially entered, but anyone whose final score is better will get an “I Beat Dr. Fill” button from tournament organizer Will Shortz.)
Our brainy pastimes are falling, one by one, to silicon-based competitors. First there was chess, with Deep Blue beating world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. Since then, programs have bested humans at poker, and Ginsberg himself has designed software that can beat the world’s experts in bridge. Last year, in a highly publicized match, the IBM supercomputer Watson emerged victorious in “Jeopardy!” against all-time champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. But crossword puzzles have always seemed like an impossible hurdle for artificial intelligence, or A.I.; their emphasis on tricky wordplay would seem to make them immune to those without human powers of wit and association.
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Still, Ginsberg, who runs a software company called On Time Systems that figures out optimal aircraft routes, was inspired by Watson’s success to try to improve automated crossword solving. Ginsberg is a longtime crossword aficionado: As an undergraduate at Wesleyan in 1976, he created an early program to fill grids with words. Over the past few years, he has made more than two dozen puzzles for The New York Times, including one last year coconstructed with the actress Dana Delany.
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Ginsberg’s not the first computer scientist to tackle the A.I. crossword challenge. In 1999, Michael Littman of Duke University worked with grad students to create Proverb, a program that would have finished 147th out of 255 contestants had it been entered in that year’s tournament. Dr. Fill takes advantage of advances in computing power and data-mining to do better. Ginsberg conservatively guesses that Dr. Fill can place in the top 30 or so this year, but when it’s good, it’s very, very good: In simulations of 15 past tournaments, it came out on top three times.
Related Links Try today's crossword puzzle
Even when Dr. Fill beats the best humans, it’s not error-free. “It doesn’t really know what it’s doing,” Ginsberg admits. Though it can come up with answers based on looking at databases of past crosswords, dictionaries, and Wikipedia, there are inevitably devilish clues that it can’t solve. Take this clue from a 2010 Times puzzle: “Apollo 11 and 12 [180 degrees].” The answer is the incomprehensible series of letters SNOISSIWNOOW. A very clever human would eventually realize that when the answer is rotated 180 degrees, the upside-down letters spell out MOON MISSIONS.
Though Dr. Fill might not easily decipher such nondictionary fare, it gets a boost (like human crossword-solvers) from crossing words, looking ahead to see which “down” entries fit best with the “across” ones. Ginsberg has also built in routines to check for the kind of puzzle themes favored by constructors, such as adding or subtracting certain letters from longer answers. For instance, the puzzle that Ginsberg created with Delany was called “Pretty Disgusting,” which involved adding -IC (as in “ick!”) to common phrases. Thus, “fancy garb for Caesar” is a clue for FINE TUNIC, or fine-tune with an “icky” ending. Though Dr. Fill is getting better at handling knotty themes, Shortz told me that he thinks one or possibly two of this year’s tournament puzzles will give the program trouble.
If Dr. Fill gets stumped, it can still overcome the scoring penalty for wrong words through sheer speed. Ginsberg says it can complete most puzzles in approximately 30 seconds, but he then gives it another minute and a half to see if the filled-in grid can be improved upon. Not even Dan Feyer, the lightning-fast solver who has won the last two Brooklyn tournaments, can polish off tournament-caliber puzzles in two minutes.
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Feyer told me he isn’t too concerned about competition from Dr. Fill--yet. But he expects that as Ginsberg tinkers with his algorithms, the program will eventually solve crosswords better than any human. In the meantime, he said, “the project should give us some great insights into crosswords, as well as the important mathematical problems that Matt solves in his day job.”
Ginsberg, for his part, has mixed feelings about his software’s success. He recalls the moment when he made a major improvement to Dr. Fill’s dictionary database (which currently contains about 10 million items), rendering most Times puzzles child’s play and putting even the hardest tournament puzzles in its grasp. “That was sobering,” Ginsberg said. “Being in the top 50 is fine, but being in the top one is different. It was a little bit bittersweet. I was very surprised to feel that way.”
Still, he stresses that the way that Dr. Fill goes about solving is “really very inhuman.” Machine intelligence, even when it makes impressive showings against carbon-based counterparts, is still fundamentally different from human intelligence. Cold comfort, perhaps, for Team Human, as we prepare to lose another battle to computers on our home turf.
Ben Zimmer is the executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com and Vocabulary.com. He can be reached at benzimmer.com/contact.Are we good parents? Are we bad parents? Are we neglectful, are we too intense? Are we lax, or are we too strict?
Children may dread parents’ evenings, but honestly speaking I don’t think they dread it as much as we do. Depending on how it goes, these events can lift your spirits to the point that you strut around proudly announcing to anyone and no one in particular: ‘That’s my boy!’
Or you skulk out of the assembly hall, dragging your kids discreetly but fiercely behind you, head down, hoping you don’t bump into any of the other parents you might know, who will obviously be on that loudmouth high and happy to wave their spawn’s ‘A’s and ‘B’ pluses in front of your face, whilst mockingly placating you: ‘never mind, I’m sure he’ll do better next time.’
But between the chest-swelling pride and the embarrassing disgrace, there’s a third even more confusing place that involves a mixture of both of these types of conversations as you do the teacher speed-dating-style table hop:
1) ‘He’s great; gets his head down, is doing good work, is never any trouble and I don’t foresee any problems,’ and
2) ‘Really disappointing, he isn’t focussing, doesn’t participate in discussions, won’t ask for help, something has to change!’
Where does THAT one leave you? Utterly perplexed.
So your kid clearly has the ability to do well at school, but on the other hand he can completely let himself down by not appearing to give a damn.
Then you rack your brains – what could the problem be? Doesn’t he like the subject (but he eagerly chose it), is it too hard (but he’s doing better in another subject that’s generally regarded as more complex and difficult), or could it be the teacher?
Yes, let’s stay with that one. I like that. That’s a good one. Blame shift – always good for the soul that. It’s the teacher’s fault because she’s: not very competent; doesn’t really care about the students; is way too harsh; is far too easy-going; or is just not very likeable.
Any of those will do, and can usually be applied. But this is only a temporary reprieve of the aforementioned nagging guilt – after all if a kid is good at studies, the teacher shouldn’t matter, especially in this age of the internet and online tutorials in everything!
Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel that there are many teachers out there these days for whom teaching is just a job – albeit one that offers fantastically long holidays.
Whereas what teaching is really about (in addition to the obvious such as subject and syllabus) is inspiring, nurturing, encouraging, coaxing and motivating a student to determinedly push out the envelope of his or her potential and achieve the best that they can be.
Or at least that’s what I think. But then I’m not a teacher. And I don’t know how to be. I don’t have the patience, sensitivity or counselling characteristics that I believe are essential in a born teacher.
Which brings me back to Problem 1 – how do you, as a parent, cope with a bad or confusing report?
Do you go super-strict? Do you take away the toys and privileges and ground them? Or do you just badger and encourage, until you’re a broken record that isn’t really being heard anymore? Do you punish yourself with regret and trauma? Or do you throw more money at the problem – tutors, books, chemistry sets? Or do you do all of the above?
I don’t really know. I suppose that’s the problem with being a parent. We don’t really get an owner’s manual when we leave the maternity ward. We have to stumble and learn along the way, and hope that they’ll turn out alright in the end. Like we did.
And perhaps that IS the answer. Maybe we do have to let them just make the mistakes, go through the setbacks, suffer the bad days in order to learn how to take the knock-downs, how to get back up, and how to shrug it off and keep going regardless.
Actually I think my kids are already better at that than I was; than our generation was. They seem to carry less emotional baggage around. They seem to be bolder and more confident (if I’m to be truly brutally honest with myself) than I was at their age.
So going back to the beginning, should the real question be: are we too bothered? Should we just let the child get on with it, accept that it’s just part of the process of growing up, and have faith that they’ll find their way and live a fruitful and full life regardless of how they get on at school?
And let the parent peer-pressure be damned!
AdvertisementsGiven the chance, would you rather see Sack Lunch or The English Patient? Yeah agreed, The English Patient doesn’t even have good sex scenes. I mean sex in a tub? Give me something I can use! All right – enough Elaine paraphrasing. But really though, those films alluded to in Seinfeld have inched closer to reality courtesy of this set of speculative movie posters.
The posters depict the films as imagined by designer and illustrator OldRedJalopy, and feature the actors most likely to play them today. No light is shed on whether the cast of Sack Lunch were actually shrunk, or just standing in a giant sack, but you can just use your imagen-ation.
See a full list of the sitcom’s fictional films on this Seinfeld wiki.
More Seinfeld
Seinfeld Emoji is here
View Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment in virtual reality
Watch: Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with George CostanzaThe Democratic National Committee is expected to call an emergency meeting to “consider” replacing Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee, reports broadcast journalist David Shuster.
Democrat operatives told Schuster, who has anchored for MSNBC and Al Jazeera, the meeting is coming in response to her pneumonia debacle. The Clinton campaign is under fire after hiding her pneumonia diagnosis for three days, and revealing it only after startling footage of her collapsing outside a 9/11 memorial service in New York surfaced Sunday morning.
“Expect emergency DNC meeting to CONSIDER replacement,” Shuster tweeted Monday.
Clarification from dem operatives @HillaryClinton pneumonia: Expect emergency DNC meeting to CONSIDER replacement. #HillarysHealth — David Shuster (@DavidShuster) September 11, 2016
One of the operatives told Shuster Clinton is in “unchartered political territory,” after the pneumonia secret, combined with the fainting video and her recent comment deeming half of Donald Trump supporters as “deplorables.”
Dem operative: @HillaryClinton #BasketOfDeplorables, hiding pneumonia for 3 days, + fainting video = “unchartered political territory.” — David Shuster (@DavidShuster) September 12, 2016
DNC bylaws stipulate it’s up to Clinton whether she withdraws, Shuster added, but if she would withdraw, a DNC delegate told him there is “every indication” the committee would push for Vice President Joe Biden as the new nominee. The Sanders camp is reportedly scrambling at the news.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.The bound that he took was into the midst of gunfire, and it cost him his life.
It was December 2015 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Zaevion, who was a 15-year-old sophomore high school football player at Fulton High School, jumped on top of three girls to shield them from a spray of bullets.
The girls were not injured. After the shooting, one of them told CNN affiliate WVLT that she told Zaevion that he could get up.
"But he didn't get up," Faith Robinson said. "So I just went upstairs, and by the time I came back to make sure everything was real, (I saw) he was shot in the head."
On Wednesday, Zaevion will be honored posthumously with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at The 2016 ESPYS.
According to ESPN, Zenobia Dobson, Zaevion's mother, will accept the award on his behalf. She will be accompanied by Zaevion's brothers, Zack Dobson and Markastin Taylor.
"The family of Zaevion William Dobson accepts with great appreciation the honorable Arthur Ashe Award on behalf of our beloved young man of valor, who sacrificed himself to save others," Zenobia Dobson said on behalf of the Dobson family.
"Arthur Ashe was a leading example of strength and courage for us as a family, and we feel truly blessed and honored that our Zaevion joins the ranks of honorees. Like Arthur Ashe, Zaevion faced obstacles, but he overcame them. With this award, we know that Zaevion's name and example will never be forgotten."
Flight 93 passengers were previous recipients
The Arthur Ashe Courage Award is presented annually to someone whose contributions transcends sports. The trophy's namesake is for the late tennis legend Arthur Ashe, who dedicated his life to human rights advocacy.
Previous recipients of the award, which dates back to 1993, include Jim Valvano; Muhammad Ali; Billie Jean King; Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick, four passengers who lost their lives September 11, 2001 on United Flight 93; Pat and Kevin Tillman; and Pat Summitt.
"Zaevion's actions to risk his own life for others demonstrate the true meaning of the word courage, and his boundless bravery has inspired many," ESPYS Executive Producer Maura Mandt said.
"We are proud to honor him with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at this year's ESPYS. By celebrating Zaevion's legacy, we hope to bring more attention to this serious issue and continued focus on the tragic loss of lives to gun violence."
President: 'He gave his life to save theirs'
Zaevion was honored in a special tribute before Super Bowl 50 in February and also was recognized by President Barack Obama in a speech in January.
"He wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time; he hadn't made a bad decision," Obama said. "He was exactly where any other kid would be. Your kid. My kids. And then gunmen started firing.
"And Zaevion, who was in high school — hadn't even gotten started in life — dove on top of three girls to shield them from the bullets. And he was shot in the head and the girls were spared.
"He gave his life to save theirs — an act of heroism a lot bigger than anything we should ever expect from a 15-year-old."
The ESPYS, held at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, air Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.Cold iron Edit
"Cold Iron" redirects here. For the poem by Rudyard Kipling, see Cold Iron (poem)
Cold iron is a poetic term for iron.
Francis Grose's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defines cold iron as "A sword, or any other weapon for cutting or stabbing." This usage often appears as "cold steel" in modern parlance.
Rudyard Kipling's poem "Cold Iron", found in his 1910 collection of stories Rewards and Fairies, used the term poetically to mean "weapon".
"Cold iron" is historically believed to repel, contain, or harm ghosts, fairies, witches, and other malevolent supernatural creatures. This belief continued into later superstitions in a number of forms:
Nailing an iron horseshoe to a door was said to repel evil spirits or later, to bring good luck.
Surrounding a cemetery with an iron fence was thought to contain the souls of the dead.
Burying an iron knife under the entrance to one's home was alleged to keep witches from entering.
In his novel Redgauntlet, the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott wrote, "Your wife's a witch, man; you should nail a horse-shoe on your chamber-door."
In modern fantasy, cold iron may refer to a special type of metal, such as meteoric iron or unworked metal. Weapons and implements made from cold iron are often granted special efficacy against creatures such as fairies and spirits.
Horseshoes Edit
A horseshoe on a door is regarded as a protective talisman in some cultures.
Horseshoes are considered a good luck charm in many cultures, including those of England, Denmark,[1] Lithuania, and Estonia, and its shape, fabrication, placement and manner of sourcing are all important. A common tradition is that if a horseshoe is hung on a door with the two ends pointing up (as shown here) then good luck will occur. However, if the two ends point downwards then bad luck will occur. Traditions do differ on this point, though. In some cultures, the horseshoe is hung points down (so the luck pours onto you); in others, it is hung points up (so the luck does not fall out); still in others it does not matter so long as the horseshoe has been used (not new), was found (not purchased), and can be touched. In all traditions, luck is contained in the shoe and can pour out through the ends.
In some traditions, any good or bad luck achieved will only occur to the owner of the horseshoe, not the person who hangs it up. Therefore, if the horseshoe was stolen, borrowed or even just found then the owner, not the person who found or stole the horseshoe will get any good or bad luck. Other traditions require that the horseshoe be found to be effective.
The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil Illustration by George Cruikshank for
One reputed origin of the tradition of lucky horseshoes is the story of Saint Dunstan and the Devil. Dunstan, who would become the Archbishop of Canterbury in AD 959, was a blacksmith by trade. The story relates that he once nailed a horseshoe to the Devil's hoof when he was asked to reshoe the Devil's horse. This caused the Devil great pain, and Dunstan only agreed to remove the shoe and release the Devil after the Devil promised never to enter a place where a horseshoe is hung over the door.[2]
Another theory concerning the placing of horseshoes above doorways is to ward off Faeries; the theory being that supernatural beings are repelled by iron and as horseshoes were an easily available source of iron, they could be nailed above a door to prevent any unwanted, otherworldly guests.It never ceases to amaze me how willing the public is to accept a decline in standards. When I started at The Plaza fifty years ago, standards in service, food and appointments were, while not at an all-time high, still taken very seriously. Luxury was a matter of service and careful attention to detail, rather than today’s emphasis on room size, decorations and technological gimm |
money spent on defense, he adds, could be used to improve the lives of all Koreans.
Kim Sun-woo Tim Franco / for NBC News
The only time they talk about North Korea, the teens say, is when Kim Jong Un makes the news for testing a nuclear device or launching a missile.
They spend the rest of their time studying and hanging out with the latest technology in heavily wired South Korea. Aside from a couple of shared holidays with the North, they believe South Korea has much more in common with the West.
Related: N. Korea Brainwashed Him to Hate. Now He's Coming to U.S.
This lack of a shared experience with the North may actually be the biggest hurdle to unification. It's something that can’t be taught, says Park Ju-hwa, a researcher and psychologist at the Korean Institute of National Unification.
Park says unification education is based on the premise that the countries must rejoin because their people are of the same race. But young people, he says, don't see the impoverished people of North Korea as the same.
According to Park, unification lessons also fail to acknowledge that joining the countries isn’t the only option.
He says permanent separation may actually be a road to peace, comparing it to a relationship.
“Sometimes, my wife and I fight, but we manage to talk things out,” he says. If that doesn’t work, he adds, “there’s divorce.”Dawid Malan could be handed a surprise Test debut next week as Trevor Bayliss admits Friday's selection meeting is the toughest of his two years as head coach.
Malan, Durham’s Mark Stoneman and Middlesex bowler Toby Roland-Jones could be the uncapped players in the squad for next week’s first Investec Test against South Africa with England having question marks over at least three positions in their side.
Hampshire leg-spinner Mason Crane will also be discussed by the selectors after impressing for England in the Twenty20 series against South Africa following on from good reports from the Lions coaches in the winter.
Malan scored a 78 from 44 balls on his international debut last week against South Africa and even though it was only a Twenty20 match England were struck by his composure. At 29 he is a late starter but his form in championship cricket has been consistent for Middlesex for the past three years.
He was out for one on Thursday against Essex but is averaging 44 in the championship this summer and is a candidate to bat at five on his home ground, Lord’s, next week.The Astana initiative has left the West on the sidelines of the latest push to end the war in Syria that has claimed more than 300,000 lives since 2011 (AFP Photo/Mohamed AL-BAKOUR)
Beirut (AFP) - Air strikes on Al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria on Tuesday killed 37 people in the country's northwest, most of them civilians, a monitoring group said.
The headquarters of Fateh al-Sham Front and the surrounding neighbourhood in Idlib city were battered by at least 10 strikes at dawn, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria for its reports, said the death toll included 24 civilians, mostly women and children.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the raids were probably carried out by Russian warplanes -- allied with Syria's government -- or by a US-backed air coalition.
But Russia quickly denied it had struck Idlib.
"Russian military planes did not carry out a single strike in Idlib yesterday, or this week, or even since the beginning of 2017," the defence ministry in Moscow said.
"Any information on these strikes are well-known lies."
Russia has waged a fierce bombing campaign in support of the Damascus regime since September 2015, a year after the US-led coalition began its own strikes against jihadist groups.
Fateh al-Sham has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks in Idlib province, the only remaining opposition-held province in war-ravaged Syria.
Bombing raids against the group have escalated, including one US strike in January that killed more than 100 fighters at a training camp in Idlib province.
On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman said US forces targeted Al-Qaeda operatives "in two precision strikes" on February 3 and 4.
"The February 4 strike targeted Abu Hani al-Masri, a legacy Al-Qaeda terrorist with ties to the group's senior leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden," Eric Pahon said.
"We are assessing the results of those strikes and will announce definitive results as soon as practicable."
The US-led coalition has mostly focused on Fateh al-Sham's jihadist rival, the Islamic State group, but it has also hit operatives from other factions.
Rebel groups have held Idlib province since the spring of 2015, four years after the Syria conflict first broke out.
More than 310,000 people have died since, and millions have been forced to flee their homes.The latest edition of The Economist has an editorial (or in The Economist parlance a leader) in the aftermath of the court decision which effectively removed Yingluck and nine Ministers. Key excerpts:
For all the pretence of due legal process and distaste at Ms Yingluck’s nepotism, this was not an offence that merited the ousting of a prime minister. Instead, the ruling is a measure of quite how far Thailand has fallen, how deeply it is divided and how badly its institutions are broken (see article). Unless Thais step back from the brink, their country risks falling into chaos and anarchy, or outright violence.
…
Now stalemate beckons. An election is supposed to happen. Ms Yingluck should have had the right to confront her undemocratic royalist foes at the ballot box. But an election is no solution because the opposition will boycott it. Mr Suthep has proposed a “people’s council” of the great and the good, but Thaksinites will rightly see it as a stitch-up designed to keep them out. The irreconcilable differences between the two sides have swallowed up Thailand’s courts, its army and even the monarchy—and left Thailand at the abyss. Investors, having borne years of simmering discontent, are taking fright. Blood has already been spilled this year. The prospects of wider violence are growing as Thaksinite supporters threaten conflict on the streets.
If Thailand is to avoid that catastrophe, both sides must now step back from the brink. The starting point is the devolution of Thailand’s highly centralised system of governance. At the moment only the capital has a democratically elected governor, yet all 76 provinces should also have one—this would not only help a rumbling Muslim insurgency in the south, it would also offer a prize to Mr Suthep, because the winner of the national election would no longer win all the power. In return for this reform, the Democrat Party must pledge to accept election results; and in return for that, the Pheu Thai should run without a Shinawatra at the helm.Something is going "badly wrong" with London's bike-share scheme, the Atlantic Cities reports.
The city's bike system has been hit by a decline in popularity, with officials in England's capital blaming everything from the system's cost to the dangers to cyclists to patchy maintenance. And this week, the system's major sponsor, Barclays Bank, said it would pull out of its sponsorship deal in 2015.
From The Atlantic:
Launched in summer 2010 to great enthusiasm, London's 4,000 "Boris Bikes" (so called after Mayor Boris Johnson) were supposed to usher a new age of car-free, cycle friendly streets to the city. This year, however, their popularity has fallen by almost a third.
This January, bike-share prices doubled, from an hourly rate of £1 to £2. While the older rate was a clear bargain, the new rate edged close enough to the cost of public transit to make many wonder if the price was worth the hassle of finding a bike and getting sweaty riding it.
Then there's the matter of London roads' increasing deadliness for cyclists. Five cyclists were killed on city roads in just 9 days last month, a death toll that recently sparked a die-in over poor safety protection.
Given London's struggles, can bike-friendly Chicago learn to avoid similar problems?
Signs are promising. The popularity of the city's system, Divvy, and of biking in general shows no hint of abating. As of November, Chicago had 200-plus miles of bike lanes and 13,000 bike racks. The city, as Chicago writer Daniel Libit recently noted, is planning a total of 645 miles of lanes by 2020, and census data show the local population of those bicycling to work has increased steadily over the past several years. Some 2,713 more commuters bicycled to work in 2012 over 2011.
Though Divvy has received some criticism because many of its stations are concentrated downtown, there are currently 300 Divvy stations up and running around the city. WBEZ reported last month that 100 more stations are in the works to be installed by next spring.
As for pricing, Divvy offers a $75 annual membership and a $7 24-hour pass. But as Chicago magazine notes, "the system is intended for short trips, meaning both options require you to dock your bike every 30 minutes. "
There has been some blowback against Divvy and Chicago bicyclists that echo some of the criticisms of London's bike-share program.
In Chicago, 42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly, whose downtown ward has been at the heart of the bicycle developments, told Mr. Libit that he sees value in Chicago's bike infrastructure "over the long term, but this is disruptive and there are growing pains that come with it. We have all this infrastructure that a lot of folks frankly don't know how to use, and there are still many bicyclists in Chicago who aren't aware you can't ride on the sidewalk."
And Chicago cyclists continue to face dangers on the road just like London's. Last week, a former Marine was killed on the Near West Side while riding his bicycle at night.
Still, Chicago has taken pains to educate the public. In the last year, it has held “enforcement events” with the Chicago Police Department; installed “LOOK!” stickers on taxicabs; hosted a Divvy bike-safety video contest; and held bike camps at Chicago Public Schools. The city's Bicycling Ambassadors, a nine-person team that goes around town promoting safe cycling, educated some 63,500 people last year.
Along with that, the city this week asked Chicagoans to suggest places to put at least 175 more Divvy bike stations in 2014. "We are going to expand its reach across Chicago,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. "With new stations to be added in 2014, Divvy will expand north, south and west into new neighborhoods as well as fill in gaps in the current service area."
And, as the Atlantic ends up concluding, London could end up fixing its bike-sharing problems. For all of its woes, London will introduce 2,000 more bikes and expanding docking stations in other neighborhoods next spring.Michael Ruppert’s last book, first starring film role and ascendancy to the national stage in 2009
Michael C. Ruppert, who died one year ago this week, was an icon of the peak oil and sustainability movements. A narcotics cop turned independent journalist, he distinguished himself as a determined and intrepid follower of the truth, wherever that truth may lead and whatever ugly skeletons it may expose. Granted, many of his conclusions were too extreme for most people to swallow, earning him the label of conspiracy theorist. He also had a penchant for over-the-top doomsday statements that frequently got away from him. Yet for those who could see past these faults, there was never any doubting Ruppert’s courage, tireless persistence or consummate command of any subject to which he chose to turn his keen investigative talents.
It was in 2009 that Ruppert achieved the height of his recognition and fame. That year saw the release of his book Confronting Collapse, as well as an internationally acclaimed documentary inspired by the book, titled simply Collapse. The book is part beginner’s guide to the crises of our time, part policy proposal for the current U.S. president. The documentary, made by a small independent film company called Bluemark Productions, consists of a curious but captivating interview with Ruppert about the ideas contained in his book as well as his overall life’s work. Recorded in a cold, starkly lit basement, it has a wonderfully noirish feel enhanced by cigarette smoke and jittery, ominous background music.
The seed that grew into Collapse was planted in February 2009, when filmmakers Chris Smith and Kate Noble contacted Ruppert for an interview. They were doing research for a film on alleged CIA involvement in drug trafficking, and Ruppert came to their attention because he had been a whistleblower on this issue during the late 1970s. Ruppert claimed that the CIA had tried to enlist him in its illicit drug operations when he was a young LAPD officer, and that when he’d refused to participate, his life had been ruined.
But Ruppert had little interest in discussing this matter when he met with Smith and Noble. He was consumed by another issue that he had come to see as a far graver threat: the imminent decline of industrial civilization because of peak oil. His latest book, the self-published A Presidential Energy Policy (which would later, in an attempt to capitalize on the success of the film, be re-published as Confronting Collapse) was nearing its initial launch, and he was trying to spread the word about it as widely as possible. Thus, for three hours he led the two filmmakers down a rabbit hole of oil production figures, economic theory, facts about alternative energy sources and other salient details regarding our predicament.1
Smith and Noble spent a few weeks puzzling over where to go from there. While they had not obtained what they’d hoped from the interview, they still found themselves endlessly fascinated by Ruppert and his saga. They were impressed by the breadth and depth of his knowledge, awed by his commanding presence and moved by his unshakable commitment to a path that had brought him much abuse and personal hardship. Suddenly it dawned on them. Ruppert himself was their movie. They would do a character study showing how his long pursuit of the truth about industrial society’s impending collapse had resulted in the collapse of his own life.
In late March, they met with Ruppert again to start shooting. The location was a dank, confined basement in a vacant meatpacking plant in downtown Los Angeles.2 Playing off Ruppert’s law enforcement background and persona of a hard-boiled detective, the crew outfitted the set like an interrogation room. A solitary wooden chair stood in the center beneath an overhead light. At the film’s opening we see Ruppert walk into the frame, take a seat in the chair and begin smoking the first of several cigarettes. The light from above casts deep shadows in his weary eyes and intricate patterns of brown and gray all over the room. As our subject blows a long drag of smoke out through his nostrils, we hear Smith—playing the part of the interrogator—ask from behind the camera, “Who are you?”
The narrative that follows revels in the mystique of U.S. intelligence and secrecy. As Ruppert recounts his upbringing by a mother who had been a cryptanalyst during World War Two and a father who had done clandestine work for the Air Force and the CIA, we feel as if we’re being let in on privileged information. The fine camerawork by Smith, Max Malkin and Edward Lachman reinforces this sense by peering over Ruppert’s shoulders and slowly tracking alongside him. Interspersed with the interview footage is a montage of well-chosen archival images and video clips. We see close-up shots of files with the names and other details redacted, fingerprint records and the opening moments of a space shuttle launch as Ruppert describes his father’s role in helping put up the CIA’s Keyhole Spy satellites. The music, with its furtive, staccato rhythm, lends a conspiratorial air to the scene.
There are volumes of information (some of it hotly contested) about Ruppert’s young adult life, and thus Collapse is to be admired for condensing it into a few broad, telling strokes. (Indeed, editors Barry Poltermann and Chris James excel in compressing the 14 hours of interview footage into a robust 82 minutes.) We’re given a bare-bones outline of Ruppert’s years at UCLA studying political science, his opposition to the Vietnam War and disaffection with government, his five-year tenure as an L.A. cop and the run-in with corruption that brought his law enforcement career to an end. Ruppert is rather succinct on this latter life development. “I was betrayed,” he says, “by a woman who worked for CIA, who was my fiancée. And when I said I wouldn’t get involved in drugs, she disappeared and people started shooting at me.”
We’re spared the distressing details of Ruppert’s struggles over the next two decades, during which he worked menial jobs, battled depression and alcoholism, filed bankruptcy, entered into a brief, ill-fated marriage and spoke frequently of wanting to kill himself.3 What we do learn of his life during this period has to do with his development as a journalist and activist. He tells of how he began writing letters to Congress, getting on the record, publishing articles and speaking publicly. In the course of this work, he tells us, he became a “cartographer” whose job was to “map how the world really worked, as opposed to the way we were told it worked.”
Collapse makes fleeting reference to the confrontation, famous among Ruppert’s fans, that he had in 1996 with then-CIA director John M. Deutch. This confrontation took place during a town hall meeting held at Locke High School in South Los Angeles. Deutch was there to address allegations recently made by a kindred spirit of Ruppert’s, journalist Gary Webb, related to CIA/Contra drug smuggling. C-SPAN was also there documenting everything with its cameras, and Ruppert took the opportunity to seize the spotlight. In a brief clip from the broadcast, we see him deliver one of his great iconic lines from behind a reporter’s microphone: “I worked South Central Los Angeles and I can tell you, Director Deutch, emphatically and without equivocation, that the Agency has dealt drugs in this country for a long time.” We then see and hear the crowd erupt into an applause that was literally heard around the world.
Ruppert’s indoctrination into the world of peak oil came in late 2001, when he met a geologist named Dale Allen Pfeiffer. The two became acquainted when Pfeiffer submitted what would be his first publication for Ruppert’s newsletter From the Wilderness. This article, titled “The Background is Oil,” deftly encapsulated a set of concepts and facts now quite familiar to peak oil followers, including oil production curves, energy “slaves” and the litany of everyday things dependent on oil.4 In Collapse, Ruppert tells of the epiphany he had while reading Pfeiffer’s story. He realized suddenly that peak oil was the one piece that made everything else on his map of the world, from 9/11 to the government corruption he had seen firsthand, “resonate and make sense together.”
It is here that the film shifts its focus from Ruppert’s life to the content of his latest book. Images of pumpjacks, tar sands, oilfield maps and war machines flash across the screen as Ruppert explains our energy situation with a mounting and gripping vehemence. He also talks at length about money, its inseverable link with energy and the global financial crisis whose beginning coincided with the advent of nearly $150 a barrel oil—and which he and his reporting staff at From the Wilderness had predicted accurately and in detail. Director Chris Smith did his best to limit the material on peak oil and money so that it wouldn’t detract from the character study at the heart of the film. Yet one is still amazed by how much discussion, detail and evidence Ruppert manages to pack into just a fraction of the movie.
Some critics (i.e., those skeptical about peak oil and societal collapse) have faulted Smith for not presenting opposing views to Ruppert’s. Granted, Smith does hint at some of these alternate views through the questions he poses. He asks Ruppert things like why he discounts human ingenuity, why we should believe today’s prophecies of energy doom when others have proven wrong and doesn’t he agree that you can reach any conclusion you want to from your evidence? When people question why Smith didn’t go further and have some of Ruppert’s critics appear on camera, he answers that this was way beyond the scope of the movie and was of little interest to him. Each of the many dimensions to our crisis covered by Ruppert could be, and has been, the subject of its own documentary. And anyway, talking head documentaries shot in studios bored Smith. He had always felt much more inspired by unconventional character sketches like those for which Errol Morris, who was clearly an influence on Collapse, is known.5
Though Ruppert generally takes well to the devil’s advocate approach used by Smith, he does become annoyed at times. When asked the what-about-human-ingenuity question, he goes off on a tangent—obviously tired of hearing this obligatory, shopworn rebuttal—and has to be urged back on course by Smith saying, “We were talking about human ingenuity.” He then eloquently reiterates the conventional wisdom among peak oilers that human ingenuity can’t overturn the laws of physics. In response to Smith’s question of whether it’s possible to “sort of create a reality based on picking news stories that support your worldview,” he simply laughs and the movie cuts to another scene. Ruppert is at his testiest when asked why he has kept pressing on with his activism when “it just would’ve been so much easier to have walked away.” His impassioned tirade culminates in him demanding just who Smith is to tell him that walking away would have been easier. “You aren’t in my skin,” he barks.
At two points in the film we glimpse a human, vulnerable side to Ruppert as he begins to lose his composure. The first time, he cries out of anguish at how long he and other peak oil activists have waited to be heard and heeded. His other emotional moment comes as he suddenly realizes something new about President Barack Obama’s plight as the leader of a declining empire. This second time, he tells the director he needs to cut because “a whole new realization is opening to me about what I’m actually saying.” The camera cuts away so that he can process this new insight and let the emotion pass. We aren’t let in on what new realization he’s had.
A notable omission from the movie is any reference to Ruppert’s recommendations for the president, which are the main point of the book. These include eminently sensible ideas like placing a moratorium on highway and airport expansion and constructing a second strategic petroleum reserve to be filled with refined fuel products, rather than the crude that fills the current reserve, and for use only by state and local governments. No doubt Smith avoided this topic to focus more fully on the human drama of Ruppert’s story. Even so, briefly touching on it during the solutions portion of the film, which at present deals only with individual preparedness, would have been entirely appropriate.
It’s hard to say why Collapse never touches on the alternative 9/11 theories that Ruppert detailed in his first book, Crossing the Rubicon (New Society Publishers, 2004). Did Ruppert simply fail to bring these up during the interview? This seems likely, given how his focus had shifted from redressing past atrocities to preparing for a post-oil future. Still, Rubicon, with its argument that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by Vice President Dick Cheney, is a vital clue to understanding the persecution that Ruppert felt had been meted out to him.
One unfair charge against Collapse is that it skips over the 2009 sexual harassment ruling against Ruppert by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. This criticism is unfair because the bureau’s $127,700 judgment against Ruppert didn’t come about until after the film had premiered. The complainant in the case was a former staff writer and editor for Ruppert’s newsletter who alleged that he had made many unwanted advances toward her during her employment there, and had then fired her in retaliation for reporting his behavior.6
For his part, Ruppert insisted the woman had been a government plant tasked with destroying him for an exposé he was about to publish. He admitted to the most egregious incident in the complaint—standing in her doorway for 10 seconds "wearing only his underwear and a smile" when the two of them were working alone in the office one night—but said he did it because he had to resort to extreme measures in order to get her to “show her hand.” At any rate, Ruppert openly addressed the whole perplexing mess when he spoke at showings of Collapse. He called the case ridiculous and assured everyone that he and his supporters were busy raising money for an appeal.7
The project he had been working on at the time of the alleged sexual harassment was an investigation into the friendly fire death of NFL star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004. This report, published in seven parts over three months in mid-2006, was titled “The Tillman Files,” and was done in collaboration with retired Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff.8 Ruppert considered this series a crowning achievement of his newsletter and credited it with ousting then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from the Pentagon.
More than a few people have been dismayed by the ending of Collapse, believing that it unfairly tries to undercut Ruppert’s credibility. In the final moments of the film, we’re shown an excerpt from an article written about Ruppert in 1981, in which a number of people call his mental state into question.9 After that, we’re told the following: “Michael Ruppert currently lives in Culver City, California. Michael has stopped researching and writing about collapse. His latest book came out in May and was largely ignored. He now spends his time writing lyrics and playing music. He is currently late on his rent and trying to avoid eviction." Then there’s a brief scene that aches with loneliness. Ruppert sits alone on the back doorstep of his home with only his dog Rags for company. Distracted by a bone, Rags runs out of the frame, leaving Ruppert once again the only soul on screen.
Collapse premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and was a big hit with moviegoers and critics alike. It was one of the festival’s official selections for 2009, received four out of four stars from Roger Ebert and even became a contender for a Best Documentary Oscar nomination (though in the end it wasn’t nominated). One particular line of Ebert’s became a rallying cry for Ruppert and his fans: “I have a pretty good built-in B.S. detector, and its needle never bounced off zero while I watched this film.” Ruppert went on a nationwide promotional tour and met some big celebrities who loved the movie, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Val Kilmer and Mel Gibson. Ruppert reported that DiCaprio even brought him Havana Montecristo cigars fresh from Cuba as a gift. Ruppert’s income from the film was, sadly, nonexistent in the first year after its release, thanks to the 2 million pirated viewings that took place during that time. Yet he didn’t seem as angry about this as one might assume. Rather, he welcomed the thousands of new people converted to the peak oil cause as a result.10
Though not all reviewers were persuaded by Ruppert’s arguments about collapse, almost all of them found the movie’s portrait of Ruppert the man to be an engrossing one. Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star wrote, "Cassandra or crackpot, Michael Ruppert is impossible to ignore." GRITtv host Laura Flanders admitted that she couldn’t decide whether Collapse represents “the prophecies of a brilliant mind who will terrify you to death, or the rantings of a crazy man,” but nonetheless described the film as “gripping,” “beautiful” and “mesmerizing.” She also responded very strongly to the quality of isolation in those final scenes, saying that “by the end of [the movie] you think, This guy’s really alone.” Los Angeles Times reviewer Robert Abele responded to this feeling as well, saying he was moved by the film’s “compassionate look at the strain Ruppert endures from knowing he has only ever been right.”11
People new to the issues found Ruppert’s deeply knowledgeable discourses riveting and eye-opening. A favorite excerpt was one in which he talks at length about oil’s role in food production. It’s a tour de force of detailed description on all the oil-powered machines that plow, plant and irrigate fields; the coal and natural gas used to generate electricity for powering irrigation; the natural gas needed to synthesize ammonia for fertilizer; the oil used to make pesticides; the oil-fueled machines that spread fertilizers and pesticides, harvest the crop, transport it to processing plants; the oil-derived plastic in which the final product is wrapped; and the gas-guzzling 18-wheelers that move the food to distribution warehouses and supermarkets.
Ruppert himself loved the documentary and didn’t at all mind his portrayal as a man whose life had collapsed, who was behind on his rent and whose most recent book had been ignored. When asked whether he felt the text at the end of the movie was belittling toward him, he replied, “No, I really didn’t take it that way. I’m extremely satisfied with the movie and with Chris Smith, who did a brilliant job of directing.” He added, "[M]y life has collapsed many, many times, and anybody who’s ever walked a mystical path will understand that completely.”12
In December, A Presidential Energy Policy received a welcome facelift from Chelsea Green Publishing, a leading purveyor of books on ecology and sustainable living. The original, self-published edition had been hurriedly written and was in definite need of an editor. Chelsea Green gave it a thorough edit and sharp design that drew on imagery from the film. The cover photo was one peering at Ruppert from behind as he sat in that dark, smoky basement. Both Ruppert and his publisher were glad to reap the fruits of the Collapse bonanza, and in the process they gave final, polished form to an important entry in the peak oil literary canon.
Ruppert appeared in three more films. His only other starring role was in Apocalypse, Man, an online documentary produced by the digital media company Vice in 2014. Like Collapse, it consists largely of monologues by Ruppert about the end of industrial civilization as he sits in an empty room, this time alternating between a tipi and the borrowed camper where he lived at the time. (Earlier that year, he had moved, penniless, to the outskirts of Calistoga, California, where friend and follower Jack Martin had offered to put him up.13) However, it soon becomes apparent that this film has a much darker vibe than does Collapse. Ruppert rants more fervently and with gritted teeth. He becomes emotional earlier and more often. At one rather depressing point, he even foreshadows the end he would soon choose for himself. “I came here to die…or commit suicide,” he says.
On the last day of 2009, Ruppert published a blog post that revealed a lot about his psyche and the burden he had carried for so long.14 The post consisted of a fan letter he’d received followed by his reply. The fan had asked how he went on with his life knowing all that he knew, and Ruppert had responded with this message:
You put one foot in front of the other and learn how to put the biggest questions on a shelf. You keep asking smaller questions. Sometimes you learn how to stand still and do nothing at all. Sometimes you just stand still and hurt. — You cry. You make jokes. You make mistakes. You break down. You forgive yourself. You dust off and you keep walking. You take time out to play and try to remember that there is something divine out there smarter than you that works in unseen ways. You come to understand that rest is a weapon and that knowing by the intellect is only a small part of knowing. — The process can be very traumatic. But what it teaches more than anything else is patience and endurance. Sometimes you lose your sanity only to later discover that it can come back with a deeper awareness that wasn’t possible until you lost it. — Most of all you do simple, selfless, and direct acts of love and nurturing for others along the way. You learn to accept them when offered to you. You surrender to whatever it is that awakened you and gave you the balls to start asking the big questions in the first place. And you hope.
For Ruppert, the final step in the journey described above would come on April 13, 2014, when he would die, at the age of 63, of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Like so many things about Ruppert, his decision to end his own life would mystify those who followed and cared about him. What can be said for certain is that for now, as he enjoyed his time in the limelight at the end of 2009, he had finally found the vindication denied him for so long. He had at last had his moment.
Author’s Note: I am grateful to Dr. Carolyn Baker, who knew and worked closely with Ruppert, for her consultation on this post. It helped me make sure I had Mike’s story right.
_______________
1 Chris Smith, interview with Laura Flanders, "GRITtv » Collapse: Portrait of a Loner," GRITtv, Nov. 12, 2009, grittv.org/?video=collapse-portrait-of-a-loner (accessed Mar. 2, 2015).
2 Patrick Goldstein, “’Collapse’ is the strangest doomsday film yet,” review of Collapse (Bluemark Productions), Los Angeles Times, Nov. 10, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/10/entertainment/et-bigpicture10 (accessed Mar. 30, 2015).
3 Matt Stroud, “The unbelievable life and death of Michael C. Ruppert,” The Verge, Jul. 22, 2014, http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/22/5881501/the-unbelievable-life-and-death-of-michael-c-ruppert (accessed Feb. 9, 2015).
4 Dale Allen Pfeiffer, “The Background is Oil,” From the Wilderness, Dec. 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/dec2001_files/background_is_oil.html (accessed Mar. 13, 2015).
5 Smith, interview with Flanders.
6 In the Matter of FROM THE WILDERNESS, INC. dba From the Wilderness Publications and Michael Ruppert as employer proxy, Case No. 39-08, 30 BOLI 227, 287 (Sept. 16, 2009), available at http://staging.apps.oregon.gov/BOLI/Legal/From_the_Wilderness.pdf (accessed Mar 14, 2015).
7 Robert Plain, “’Wilderness’ relocates to Venezuela,” Ashland Daily Tidings, Aug. 25, 2006, Updated Jan 4, 2011, http://www.dailytidings.com/article/20060825/News/308259999 (accessed Feb. 27, 2015); Ruppert, interview with Joe Rogan, "JRE #170 – MICHAEL RUPPERT," The Joe Rogan Experience, Dec. 27, 2011, http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/podcast-170-michael-ruppert-brian-redban (accessed Mar. 9, 2015); Smith, interview with Flanders.
8 Stan Goff, “FTW Investigative Series: The Tillman Files,” From the Wilderness, last updated Sep. 20, 2006, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/the_tillman_files.shtml (accessed Mar. 29, 2015).
9 Randall Sullivan, “‘The spy who loved me‘: An officer’s battle with obsession,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Oct. 11, 1981, http://www.drugwar.com/cv11.shtm (accessed Feb. 27, 2015).
10 Roger Ebert, review of Collapse (Bluemark Productions), Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 9, 2009, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/collapse-2009 (accessed Mar. 20, 2015); Ruppert, “Michael Ruppert – Confronting The Peak Oil Crisis,” YouTube video, Jun. 30, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b9cDOl9kJM (accessed Mar. 20, 2015); Ruppert, interview with Guy Evans, "Episode 53 – Michael Ruppert on his portrayal in ‘Collapse’, CIA complicity in drug trafficking, 9/11, and more," Smells Like Human Spirit, March 13, 2013, http://smellslikehumanspirit.com/podcasts/michaelruppertcollapse (accessed Mar. 6, 2015).
11 Linda Barnard, “Collapse: The chilling predictions of an ex-cop whistle blower,” review of Collapse (Bluemark Productions), Toronto Star, Dec. 11, 2009, http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2009/12/11/collapse_the_chilling_predictions_of_an_excop_whistle_blower.html (accessed Mar. 30, 2015); Flanders, "GRITtv » Collapse: Portrait of a Loner”; Robert Abele, “CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS : He sees society’s doom,” review of Collapse (Bluemark Productions), Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/13/entertainment/et-capsules13 (accessed Mar. 30, 2015).
12 Ruppert, interview with Guy Evans.
13 Jack Martin, “The Death Of Michael C. Ruppert |
organisation believed an inquiry was needed.
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* Finance and expenditure committee rejects royal commission
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* EQC admits botching repairs to ill Christchurch couple's home
By the end of the 2015-16 financial year, EQC had fielded 10,492 calls to investigate supposed defective repairs.
DAVID WALKER/Stuff.co.nz A fire on the day Rodgers and Scott moved in revealed EQC repairs for the home's previous owner were inadequate.
Parliament's finance and expenditure select committee in March rejected a petition seeking an inquiry, but Woods was still determined to see a review happen.
On Wednesday, she said the new Government was "committed to having a royal commission into EQC and looking at what happened".
"We remain convinced that we can never go through this again – it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when another part of the country goes through something such as we've been through in Christchurch," she said.
GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Former EQC minister Gerry Brownlee says no one at any point had claimed "everything EQC did was perfect".
"We simply must learn the lessons."
Former EQC minister Gerry Brownlee on Wednesday said no one at any point had claimed "everything EQC did was perfect".
"I just have always resisted the blanket criticism of EQC and particularly [of] the many people who were doing good work.
ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ EQC acknowledged it got Scott's repairs wrong, but said any more payments were in her private insurer's hands.
"Too often the tens of thousands of successful conclusions to their work don't get mentioned, it's always the ones that do have a degree of difficulty to them that become almost the yardstick."
Michael Rodgers' and Georgia Scott's insurance nightmare began in March 2016, when a fire on the day they moved into their Heathcote Valley home revealed EQC's repair for the home's previous owner was severely inadequate.
EQC acknowledged it got the repairs wrong, but having already paid the $100,000 legal cap, said any further payments were in the private insurer's hands.
On Wednesday, Scott said the dispute had not been resolved and she believed an inquiry was "essential".
"Any other business operating that way would be investigated and I think that the mistakes are huge, they're not minor.
"It's just such a relief to hear that someone [who] may have the some sort of authority to do that is now in the seat, which would make a difference to thousands of us."
Brownlee said a royal commission was an "extremely high level investigation".
"I think people lose sight of the fact that EQC is essentially a Government underwritten insurance scheme," he said.
"I have maintained all along as minister my simple view was that EQC should always respond to the contracts they had with their customers and I'm of the view that they have done that.
"Yes, there are some lingering cases and more importantly there are some cases where there was a second look at work … all that does is reinforce the fact that it is a body that hasn't cut and run that remains there for all New Zealanders."
Meanwhile, Woods would receive a series of briefings from rebuild organisations such as Regenerate Christchurch and Ōtākaro over the next few days.
"One of the things that I'll be asking to do first up is to look at all the contracts around the anchor projects and to see the stage that they're at," she said.
Woods had already hinted at changes to the east frame anchor project – about 900 townhouses and apartments covering 14 Crown-owned hectares between Madras, Manchester and Lichfield streets and the Avon River.
The new minister would meet with Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel to talk about Labour's $300 million capital fund for the city.
"I need to … then talk to officials about how we're going to set that up, how it's going to work and what the processes around that will be," Woods said.
"The purpose of it will be exactly as we stated on the campaign – it's a capital fund that is designed to be in partnership with the council."
A royal commission is the most serious response to an issue of great importance and difficulty available to the Government.
It is independent from the Government and investigates why a situation came about and then recommends policy or legislative changes to prevent recurrences.
Its findings and recommendations, however, are non-binding.
The Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission was held in 2011 and 2012. It reviewed the causes of building failure as a result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, as well as the legal and best-practice requirements for buildings.
* Comments on this article have been closed.Community
ADE 652
Because you demanded it we've gone and developed a brand new version of our top selling remote portable substance detector! Forget the ADE 651, be amazed by the new ADE 652 - brought to you by ATSC industries... Text from front of pack: Brand new product Stylish new design Sniff out whatever you want wherever you want Needs no batteries – powered by solar winds Used the world over Based on principles of nuclear quadropole resonance Another great ATSC product Text from back of pack: By programming the detection cards to specifically target a particular substance, (through the proprietary process of electro-static matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance), the ADE 652 will ‘by-pass’ all known attempts to conceal the target substance. Can detect anything you want (including, but not limited to, guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, zombies, robots, unicorns and bank notes) from a distance of up to 10 miles – through lead, water, rock or even from an airplane (up to an altitude of 5 kilometres). Major-General Jehad al-Jabiri of Iraq’s Interior Ministry's General Directorate for Combating Explosives has defended the device: "Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is detecting bombs. I don't care what they say. I know more about bombs than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world” If you haven't heard the scandalous story of the ADE 651 then you really do need to read this wikidpedia entry (and prepare to be astounded!) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651Jack Johnson released a new song, "Sunsets for Somebody Else," from his upcoming album All The Light Above It Too today exclusively on Billboard.
The song, the second of three to be released prior to the album, opens with the lilting strums of an acoustic guitar, familiar to many Johnson listeners. But "Sunsets for Somebody Else" differs from Johnson's other pleasantly relaxed, upbeat work in that underneath this cheery melody and buoyant guitar is a gloomy, permeating shadow.
Lines like "You tell yourself just to turn away/but you know you've already lost" and "I know I've seen that vacant stare/selling sunsets for somebody else" tinge Johnson's otherwise-soothing voice with a bitterness that transforms the languorous harmony into a pointed call to action.
It's a fitting sound for the artist, who just finished a sold-out summer tour in the states and will next play two sold-out hometown shows at the Waikiki Shell in Oahu, HI. All the proceeds from these final two shows will go towards The Kokua Hawaii Foundation, a non-profit Johnson and his wife, Kim, started in 2003 to support environmental education in Hawaii schools and communities.
"I wrote the song 'Sunsets For Somebody Else' while I was on a surf trip in Micronesia. Something about being on boats always pulls songs out of me," Johnson tells Billboard. Johnson's good friend and veteran pro surfer Kelly Slater was on that particular trip.
The song will automatically download on iTunes for fans who preordered All The Light Above It Too.
Listen to "Sunsets for Somebody Else" below, exclusively on Billboard:The long game on Mars - long after the first few generations of settlers are dead, long after their descendants have been living in cave bases or beneath radiation-blocking domes - is terraforming. Humans will try to take Mars and make it into a second Earth with technology, because that's what we do: we try to make the environment around more conducive to the lives we wish to lead. Let's just hope that we won't have terraformed Earth into a Venusian-style greenhouse deathtrap in the process.
Because, of course, we're terraforming Earth right now. Rough estimates of how long it might take to make Mars Earth-like (so a thick Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere, running water on the surface, etc.) run into the hundreds of years, because heating up a planet so that the atmospheric gases frozen into its soil begin to sublimate takes a long time. Yet humanity is two centuries into an experiment in seeing what happens when millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide is shoved into the sky every year. We're far enough along to begin noticing some of the problems this is causing, but as of yet we haven't exactly stopped.
It's with regards to this context that some groups have started to seriously consider the potential of "geoengineering", or fixing the Earth's climate problems with engineered solutions. The Royal Society hosted an event last week to reveal the findings of three major British investigations into the viability of geoengineering: the Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP), Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (Spice) and Climate Geoengineering Governance (CGG). All three groups were set up in response to the publication in 2009 of a Royal Society state-of-the-science report into the issue, while the most recent edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, published last week, was themed around the issue.
There are two main categories of geoengineering tech: the kind that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and the kind that controls how much of the Sun's heat reaches and warms the Earth. There's very little experimental data available to figure out how effective these ideas are - just like most climate science, there are a lot of unknown factors which can throw off the details of a model - so assessing them largely comes down to computer simulations. And the results so far aren't particularly encouraging.
Solar geoengineering is the most immediately possible, because it largely comes down to either turning huge sections of the Earth's surface into a mirror, or simulating the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption by spraying dust or other particles into the sky. Tha IAGP team, led by professor of physical climate change Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, looked at six different solar geoengineering ideas: growing more reflective crop varieties, using foaming "microbubbles" to lighten to surface of the ocean, covering deserts with shiny material, spraying sea salt into ocean-covering clouds to increase their reflectivity, seeding high-flying cirrus clouds to make them dissipate more rapidly and stop acting as a blanket holding in heat coming from the surface below, and blocking sunlight by spraying volcano-like sulphate particles high in the stratosphere. (The last three were also looked at in three separate papers in the themed edition of Philosophical Transactions A.)
It turns out that solar-geoengineering isn't a quick fix for turning down the planet's heat - it's awful. During the simulations, local temperatures were cooled, and sometimes global temperatures as well - but at the huge cost of between 1.4 and 3 billion people experiencing worse floors or droughts that they would otherwise expect to experience thanks to climate change. Half the world's people, often in the poorest regions, would actively suffer.
This gets to the root of the problem with geoengineering, in that it's such an alluring political option. For many years there has been a camp within the wider climate sceptic movement which doesn't deny that humans are altering the Earth's climate, but which instead suggests that there's little to truly worry about because the rate of technological innovation will always outpace that of a changing climate. Limit our economies by trying to switch away from cheap fossil fuels, the argument goes, and we'll reduce our wealth, and in turn make us less able to spend our way out of the problem. (The most well-known proponent of this view is probably the Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg.)
But as the evidence showing the reality of climate change has stacked up, and as the political difficulties of shifting away from a fossil fuel economy become apparent - combined with exasperation among scientists that decarbonisation isn't happening - geoengineering has now begun to interest those across the political spectrum. Yet fundamentally, solar geoengineering does nothing to slow down the emission of greenhouse gases and actually prevent climate change, and instead allows those who can afford it to buy some time by temporarily hacking their local environment in such a way as to try and approximate the climate conditions of a few decades ago. And yes, if whatever technique is used is stopped at any point, the old problems will come rushing back - stop pumping fake volcanic dust into the atmosphere, and you're back to square one, minus the huge expense of buying a little time.
OK, so maybe there are other options - and yes, there are. If you want to get into sci-fi territory, there's the idea from 2007 to block one per cent of the sunlight that hits the Earth with an array of mirrors orbiting the planet. Or, you could look at all of these computer simulations of what might geoengineering might do and feel frustrated that scientists won't just go out there and do some experiments, and take matters into your own hands. That was why Californian businessman Russ George dumped 100 tonnes of iron filings into the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Canada, in July 2012 - he successfully caused a huge bloom of algae on the surface, which fed on the iron and on the CO2 in the atmosphere before dying and sinking to the bottom of the ocean, taking the materials with it. He was accused of violating two United Nations moratoria on iron dumping, because the unknown consequences in the short and long terms were considered too risky without further study, despite its identification as a possible geoengineering technique.
Why the caution? In that case, it was because a huge increase in algae growth could throw off local food chains and accidentally kill off other species, or even starve the water of oxygen. But a huge issue for geoengineering is that it's an ethical nightmare. There's no legal framework in place for dealing with the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planet.
Say that the United States is worried about summer heatwaves, so it sprays sulphate particles into the atmosphere to block the Sun. It's fantastic for residents of Arizona and Nevada, but atmospheric winds carry the particles out to the Atlantic, where they severely reduce the strength of the Gulf Stream. The next winter is bitterly cold in Europe, causing a spike in energy prices and the deaths of thousands of elderly EU citizens. Or is it? Are we confident enough to blame one specific factor for one terrible winter, with our current understanding of climate models?
That's going to be the crucial dilemma when considering when and how to study geoengineering. Oxford's director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society and head of the CGG project, Steve Rayner, cited the recent floods in Pakistan when talking to the Guardian as an example of a natural disaster which could lead to a diplomatic incident in the future - if India had performed a geoengineering test before the floods, would Pakistan be right to demand compensation?
This Pandora's box is why carbon removal technology is generally seen as a more palatable option by the IAGP team - it has the fewest side effects, with the most universal benefits. Yet the technology to do this doesn't, as yet, exist - it's expected to be decades before there are reliable ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as quickly as it's produced, let alone remove it faster than it's added. Two centuries of greenhouse gas emissions can't be undone in much less that same amount of time.
In 2012, the Spice project had planned to perform a controversial experiment to pump water from a ship up into a kilometre-high balloon and out from there as a fine spray, to measure its possible cooling effect on the surface below - but it was cancelled, after two scientists involved were found to have patents on similar technology. Many scientists were relieved to hear of the cancellation, but there are now voices in the community arguing in favour of some small-scale experiments, just in case.
Speaking last week, Matthew Watson, the principal investigator for the SPICE project, said: "Full scale deployment of climate engineering technologies will be the clearest indication that we have failed in our role as planetary stewards, but there is a point at which not deploying some technologies would be unethical."
It doesn't quite have the glamour of space mirrors, but perhaps the most important work, then, is exactly what those involved in the CGG project are doing: trying to get international cooperation on what has to be done, with input from those who stand to lose the most from climate change and the (possibly selfish) solutions that only help some of us, not all. And in the long run, we know what's involved in not damaging the Earth in the first place - maybe the most cost-effective, and the most moral, solution to climate change is to not cause the bloody thing in the first place, and to try and stop it now we know it's happening.If you’ve been following virtual reality, you may have recently read an article explaining the “disappointing” numbers for VR’s first year sales. The narrative goes something like this: 2016 VR headset sales were supposed to be X millions large…. instead they only sold Z millions… is VR a fad? Although there has undoubtedly been a fair amount of hype (and overhype) of virtual reality technology, VR is real and 2016 was not only successful, but its breakout year.
Regardless of your opinion of the official sales numbers, 2016 was the year VR became legitimized. Whether or not you own a VR headset, you almost undoubtedly have heard of the technology. A few years ago if you told people you were a freelance virtual reality designer, people would have assumed you were either a genius or a lunatic.
Today people get it, and whether or not they use VR regularly, they most likely see the potential for the future.
In terms of technological development, AR has lagged just behind it’s virtual cousin. We are right at that tipping point where most people still do not know what augmented reality is or what it could be used for. As excited as I am for AR development in 2017, I believe the true breakout year for AR will occur in 2018 due to four main characteristics. These traits/occurrences defined VR’s 2016 and, I believe, will soon describe AR’s 2018.
1. Release of 1st Generation Consumer Headsets
Last year became the much anticipated “year of VR” in large part due to the consumer release of Facebook’s Oculus, HTC’s Vive, and the PlayStation VR. These three headsets set the high-end standard for the industry and opened up the potential for a myriad of developers and entrepreneurs to explore and create.
Prior to the release of these consumer facing devices, VR was possible, but not easily accessible for the majority of people. Now you can walk into your local Best Buy and pick up one of these bad boys just as easily as you could buy a laptop.
High-End VR Headsets
Arguably even more meaningful to VR’s 2016 was the proliferation of low-end devices. The Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard offered smartphone powered experiences for under $100. Although neither is nearly as powerful as an Oculus or Vive, they helped to expose millions more people to VR experiences.
Despite more people acquiring one of these low-end headsets than acquiring a high-end device, it was really the release of all of them together that made the year so explosive. The high-end devices showed off VR’s successful use cases while the low-end devices introduced people to the concept.
In 2018 we are likely to see AR follow a similar path. Right now the three leaders in augmented reality headsets are Microsoft, Meta, and Magic Leap. Currently, Microsoft and Meta offer development versions of their headsets for $3,000 and $1,000 respectively while Magic Leap has yet to release any version of their future product.
At the moment, it looks like Microsoft and Meta will use 2017 to let developers experiment with their products while they take time to miniaturize their components in preparation for a later consumer launch.
These consumer products could very likely come to fruition in 2018 making the HoloLens, Meta, and Magic Leap headsets the Rift, Vive, and PlayStation VR of augmented reality. These high-end options will most likely cost north of $1,000 and still be particularly bulky, but they will display the incredible potential of quality AR.
Microsoft HoloLens and Meta 2
In addition to the high-end similarities, there will also be similarities in the low-end of the market. Similar to the Gear VR, companies will be able to use a smartphone to create lower fidelity AR experiences. Leaders in this area have yet to arise, but once the high-end headsets become available, these smartphone-based AR headsets will appear.
The experiences will not be nearly as good as the high-end headsets (likely not including much computer vision), but they will be good enough to peak people’s interests and expose them to the incredible potential of AR.
2. Limited Consumer Use Cases Outside Gaming
Although the ultimate VR vision includes possibilities across multiple industries, its biggest market this past year was in gaming. High-end headsets offered new, immersive gaming experiences that allowed gamers to play in a whole new way. All of a sudden, people could play point-of-view military shooters and actually feel like they were holding the gun.
Gamers were okay wearing a huge computer on their faces because it was done in the comfort of their living rooms. Outside of gaming though, the social isolation inherent in VR became an issue. Gamers loved 1st generation VR headsets, but outside of the gaming world consumer use cases were more rare.
This will be comparable to what we see in 2018 with AR. The incredible potential of AR is that we all one day spend the majority of our days using AR-enabled contact lenses or sleek glasses.
As optimistic as I am about the technology, we will not be seeing that vision quite yet. Instead, most consumer AR use in 2018 will come in gaming or entertainment. It will be fun to shoot ghosts popping out of your walls or watch the Super Bowl on a projected big screen, but it most likely won’t make sense to wear a headset on a Saturday stroll through the park just yet.
Gaming with HoloLens
3. Successful Business Use Cases
Despite limited consumer use cases for VR, there have been a fair amount of successful industrial and B2B use cases. For example, STRIVR Labs sells virtual reality training solutions to professional sports organizations. The Dallas Cowboys are one of the multiple NFL teams that utilize STRIVR technology to teach their athletes new plays. Another example is MindMaze which has successfully used VR to lessen the effects of mental illnesses.
In AR, we don’t even have to wait until 2018 to already witness this type of activity. The DAQRI smart helmet is being used in industrial warehouses, police officers in the Netherlands have used something similar to Google Glass, and the HoloLens is being used for elevator repair. While Magic Leap and Meta work to create a sleeker product that the masses can accept, AR in 2018 will be widespread in areas where functionality is valued more than style.
Daqri Smart Helmet
4. Widespread Awareness
To recap the first three points:
— By 2018, AR will have both high-end and low-end consumer devices.
— These devices will be used by consumers primarily for at-home entertainment
— Many successful industrial use cases will arise
The combination of these three instances leads to the final and most important similarity between 2016 VR and 2018 AR: everyone knows what it is.
Just like VR, by 2018, AR will be really fun to use at home, and actually useful to use in other areas. This combo will lead to press coverage and press coverage will lead to awareness.
Whether or not you decide to invest in an AR headset in 2018, it will be impossible to avoid hearing about them. There will be a major increase in AR promotions from Fortune 500 companies while hundreds of smaller AR dev studios will continue to pop up. Whether or not you think AR is ready for the primetime, this spotlight will invariably help the technology develop as the increased awareness leads to increased investment and subsequently better products.
Two years from today we will not yet have realized the AR dream. People will not be wearing AR glasses religiously, but they will be wearing them sometimes. And that’s a big deal.The last weeks where very busy for Amsterdam. Here are some updates on whats going on. Lets start with the Amsterdam Unity Cup Results. We also cover the latest news on the shooting situation, as well as some shutdowns with January 1st 2017. But also a new Coffeeshop is going to be opened.
Amsterdam Unity Cup
As every year in the week leading to Thanksgiving there was a Cup held in Amsterdam. The cup is organized by some of the Coffeeshops around the town. But here are the Results:
Hash:
Grey Area: #GA Bagheera: Nicolde Dry Sieve Het Ballonnetje: Amnesia
Hybrid:
Grey Area: Headbanger Voyagers: 24k Gold Original Dampkring: A5 White
Sativa:
Grey Area: Silver Bubble Boerejongens: White Cocho Haze 1E Hulp: Somali
Indica:
Grey Area: Grey Bone Bagheera: Fearly Kush MrKandco: OG Ripen
So when you visit Amsterdam make sure to put Grey Area on your bucket list.
Shootings
During multiple shootings, different places where attacked. All had to close down their business. The following places where attacked: Blue Lagon, Vondel, Green Place, Roxy, The Power, De Kroon, DNA and Coffeeshop Speak Easy. Even a normal restaurant became the target of an attack and had to close.
On November 1st, in a joined effort of Coffeeshop owners, offered a reward of € 25.000,– for the tip that leads to the aggressor. The owners didn’t have a problem at the backdoor and didn’t fell victim to black mailing. In a quote one brings up the questions if the city is dealing with a psychopath.
On November 8th a suspect was arrested.
On November 9th the mayor of Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan announced, that the Coffeeshops that where targeted by a shooting will be able to reopen after a week of closure. In addition a policy is introduced, that the Coffeeshops have to install video surveillance and work together with law enforcement.
On November 14th a private flat above The Power was the target of a shooting.
On November 24th Mayor Van Der Laan announced that, all Coffeeshops, that fell victim to a shooting, beside The Power, are allowed to open their doors again. The Power is a different case and was targeted 3 times and in the last shooting the flat above the Coffeeshop was hit. So the Mayor wants to talk more to the people in the neighborhood.
See a map of the targeted places below.
Eight shops need to close
With January 1st 2017 eight Coffeeshops have to close, the stores are to close to schools. Make sure to visit them while they are still around. In a month they are gone for good. So here is the list:
A new Coffeeshop
A new Coffeeshop will open it’s door close to the station Bijlmer. And even better there are already plans for a second store in that region.The Happiest People in the World Have This One Thing in Common By Eddie on Nov 26, 2016 in Motivation, Personal Development |
The happiest and most flourishing people in the world all share a single fundamental ability. This ability frees them from the daily tyranny of anxiety, distraction, and problem-centric thinking that plagues most of us. This ability is, in fact, the hallmark of happy, healthy, highly rewarded human beings.
Want to listen to the audio version instead?
And thankfully, it’s not something you’re born into. It can be learned and practiced by anyone, anywhere, at any waking hour. So what is this ability and how do we get it?
The happiest people have the ability to put their attention where they want when they want for as long as they want. The happiest people can control and focus their attention intensely. So, if you want to join the HHH club (Happy, Healthy, and Highly Rewarded), it stands to reason that cultivating your own focus and attention is crucial.
But why would focused attention make you happier? And, how do you go about getting better focus? These are the questions I will answer in this article so let’s start with step one, take back your mind.
Take back your mind
The fact is, focus, is power. When the sun’s rays hit a leaf on the ground, what happens? Not a damn thing. But, focus those same rays with a magnifying glass into a tight point on that same leaf and BAM! Fire! Bye bye leaf.
When you begin to take back control of your mind and what it focuses on in any given moment, everything in your life begins to change. Problems fall away, worries fade, relationships are mended, and, just like that leaf, you begin to feel the power of focus setting you alight with joy and flourishing. Bye bye anxiety. Bye bye depression.
Not only that, but you’ll be happy to find that with enough effort and Jedi mind training, money, wealth, and all other by-products of success will tend to find their way to you while you were busy working. But, chasing money and fame directly will leave you broke and alone, no matter how long or hard you grind.
Conversely, if decide to turn away from the allure of fame and fortune and step into the arena of excellence and the creation of value for others, wealth, and good fortune will relentlessly hound you to the ends of the earth. It’s time to turn away from the distracted many, step into the arena, and join the ranks of the focused few.
Join the “Focused Few”
In my most recent article, Creative vs. Reactive, I discussed the fact that being able to focus your attention deeply on a single task is becoming very rare at the same it’s becoming more valuable in our increasingly knowledge and information based economy. This idea comes from Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” (I highly recommend it) in which he describes the divide that is opening up between “the focused few” and the “distracted many”.
Right now the vast majority of people spend their time distracted, with their attention constantly fractured by checking their smartphone, email, or other network tools, fairly often throughout the day. The thing is, this behavior not only leads to depression and anxiety, it also tends to lump you right in with the broke, distracted majority.
If you can’t go an hour or two without checking your email, social media, or some other network tool, anxiety and depression just might be right around the corner for you. So, as we’ll explore in the next section, the best way to step into the arena with the focused few is reducing and/or eliminating these distractions from your life altogether.
Residue Slathering Distractions
In “Deep Work”, Newport introduces the idea of “attention residue”. This is an idea he picked up from a 2009 academic paper by Sophie Leroy titled, “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks.”
The basic idea is that when you switch from one activity to another, your mind doesn’t just leave the previous activity and move on. The first activity leaves behind a sort of residual thinking that we call “attention residue” in your mind. Attention residue occurs when your mind starts cranking away at your previous activity, sapping you of your ability to focus on what’s in front of you.
If you think about it, attention residue is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere! Checking your email, phone, or social media throughout the day is just like laying on a thick layer of attention residue before you get to work. Your mind keeps working frantically in the background on other less important situations while you’re trying to focus, killing your productivity.
You want to cut out that extra layer of attention residue slathering distractions. By eliminating or reducing the email checking and social media tittering, you can show up with calm confidence and a focused, ready mind.
But, let’s get practical. What’s one way you can upgrade your focus starting now?
Quit Social Media
Facebook is known to employ specialized experts called “Attention Engineers” who’s job it is to ensure that their software will keep hold of your attention for as long as possible and be as addicting as possible. Casinos have been using Attention Engineers for years to keep people glued to those slot machines and to keep them coming back again and again. We know that gambling can literally change the way your brain is wired and, fairly quickly, turn you into a desperate, wide-eyed gambling junky if you spend enough time pulling that lever.
Well, imagine this: Instead of going to the casino, you carry the slot machine around with you in your pocket. And, instead of playing for a few hours and then driving home, you pull that lever all fucking day long every single day, any time you feel the slightest hint of boredom. What would THAT do to your brain?
The next time you feel compelled to check social media or email for no particular reason, STOP! Recognize the compulsion, find something productive to do instead and BEGIN! Recognize that every time you resist the temptation to pull that lever, you’re stepping forward into growth and literally training yourself to be happier, healthier, and more highly rewarded.
Get in the Mind Gym
Let me just cut to the chase here, if you’re human, you need to meditate. And by meditating, I mean focus your attention on the present moment. That’s really as specific as you need to be about meditation. No chanting, incense, candles, or odd-looking shrines required. You don’t even need to sit down!
I was told recently that I should teach a meditation class. My response was simply that you don’t need a class. Life is meditation.
Imagine this, while you’re studying for school you start thinking about an underhanded remark you heard a friend make earlier. You start to wonder if she was talking about you. Eventually (and often unconsciously), you bring your attention back to studying. This is meditation.
Or, you’re sitting in a meeting at work and, while the boss is talking, you start to wonder whether you left the stove on and your house is on fire right freaking now. Eventually, you remember, after petting the cat, you turned the stove off and you come back to what the boss was saying. This too is meditation.
The fact is, you’ve been meditating your entire life, every single day. But, no one probably told you outright that focusing your mind is a powerful, Jedi-like ability that will majorly improve every aspect of your life.
Well, I’m telling you now, focused attention is power and meditating is power training for life. And whether you want to be a badass Jedi or just a better human being, you’ve got to get in the mind gym and train to be increasingly present, here and now, moment to moment.
My Experience with Better Focus
For me, actively cultivating my ability to focus has changed every aspect of my life for the better, unequivocally. I’m more productive at work, I have better interactions with everyone I meet, and I’m far happier and calmer than I’ve ever been. Also, things just don’t bother me like they used to.
I’m no longer in a constant state of low-level anxiety due to my mind spinning out of control on everything that’s wrong in my life. Now, I see my mind conjuring up some imaginary argument that will never take place or rude comment that will never be made and I just think to myself, “STOP!” I bring my attention back to now, and I continue on with what I was doing. I let it go completely, as quickly as possible, and thank myself for the gift of putting in one more rep at the mind gym.
Let’s Do This
There is only one best way to build your focused mind and that’s your way. I encourage you to consider that these small changes, focusing on the present moment and reducing/eliminating distractions, could make the difference between living a wonderous, beautiful adventure of a life or nothing. You can spend the rest of your days steeped in anxiety and depression or, in your own way, you can learn to focus your mind.
Let’s be present, train our focused attention, and join the HHH club, as we live and work with gratitude among our new family of happy, healthy, highly rewarded folks. Let’s do this.The Pentagon was trying to confirm fresh reports Tuesday that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed, as the terror group teeters on the brink of defeat in Iraq and prepares to make its final stand in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – which has had a good record in reporting ISIS news – and Iraq’s Al Sumaria News were the two outlets primarily reporting the most-wanted terrorist’s death, with both citing sources inside ISIS. Baghdadi had been rumored to be killed numerous times since his rise to infamy as the so-called “Caliph” of ISIS-controlled territory – only for those reports to eventually be proven wrong. In June, Baghdadi was reportedly killed by Russian forces; however, no conclusive proof ever emerged of the Islamist’s death.
Adding to the speculation, President Trump tweeted ambiguously around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday: “Big wins against ISIS!” It was unclear if Trump was referring to the possible death of Baghdadi or another event, such as the fall of ISIS-held Mosul to U.S.-backed troops.
Iraqi and Kurdish officials also were unable to confirm Baghdadi’s death to Reuters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights linked its confirmation to a high-ranking ISIS source.
"[We have] confirmed information from leaders, including one of the first rank, in the Islamic State in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zor," the director of the British-based war monitoring group Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.
Al Sumaria said ISIS on Tuesday “announced in a very brief statement” that Baghdadi was dead and “talked about the announcement” of a successor. The Al Sumaria source also spoke of an internal coup brewing within ISIS, with hardcore Baghdadi supporters being arrested.
If Tuesday’s report is true, it was not immediately known how Baghdadi died |
C Dustmann and I Preston (2012) ‘Immigration, Wages and Compositional Amenities’, Journal of the European Economic Association 10: 78-119.
Dustmann, C and T Frattini (2014) ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’, Economic Journal 124(580).
Dustmann, C, T Frattini and I Preston (2012) ‘The Effect of Immigration along the Distribution of Wages’, Review of Economic Studies 80: 145-173.
Dustmann, C and I Preston (2006) ‘Is Immigration Good or Bad for the Economy? Analysis of Attitudinal Responses’, Research in Labor Economics 24: 3-34.
Dustmann, C and I Preston (2007) ‘Racial and Economic Factors in Attitudes to Immigration’, Berkeley Electronic Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 7, Art. 62.
Friedberg, R and J Hunt (1995) ‘The Impact of Immigrants on Host Country Wages, Employment and Growth’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9: 23-44.
Geay, C, S McNally and S Telhaj (2013) ‘Non-native Speakers of English in the Classroom: What are the Effects on Pupil Performance?’, Economic Journal 123: F281-307.
Jaitman, L and S Machin (2013) ‘Crime and Immigration: New Evidence from England and Wales’, IZA Journal of Migration 2(19).
Machin, S and R Murphy (2014) ‘Paying Out and Crowding Out? The Globalisation of Higher Education’, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No 1299.
Manacorda, M, A Manning and J Wadsworth (2012) ‘The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain’, Journal of the European Economic Association 10: 120-51.
Office for Budget Responsibility (2013) Fiscal Sustainability Report, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
OECD, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (2013) International Migration Outlook, chapter 3: 125-89.
Preston, I (2014) ‘The Effect of Immigration on Public Finances’, Economic Journal 124(580).
Wadsworth, J (2013) ‘Mustn’t Grumble: Immigration, Health and Health Service Use in the UK and Germany’, Fiscal Studies 34: 55-82.Munster Rugby and the IRFU can confirm that JP Ferreira will join the province as Defence Coach having signed a contract until June 2020.
The 34-year-old makes the move from Super Rugby side Lions Rugby where he held the position of Defence Coach since 2013, helping the side to a Currie Cup Championship in 2015 and consecutive Super Rugby finals in the last two years.
After a decade working with the South African club across a number of coaching and analyst roles, Ferreira is expected to commence working with Head Coach Johann van Graan, Forwards Coach Jerry Flannery and Backline and Attack Coach Felix Jones from next week.
Commenting on the appointment, Head Coach Johann van Graan said: “We are delighted that JP is joining our coaching team. He is a great coach that has been very successful at Super Rugby level, getting his side to finals with an excellent defence record. He also has test match experience from his time working with the Springboks during the November internationals last year so brings a great amount of knowledge and experience with him.
“I believe JP will fit in perfectly here at Munster and we look forward to his arrival.”The United Nations chief has voiced hope that North Korea will abandon its missile tests, after the Stalinist state fired three short-range missiles into the sea on Saturday.Speaking in Russia Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Pyongyang to refrain from future launches and return to stalled nuclear talks with world powers.Ban is in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks on Syria.Despite Ban's plea, Seoul said North Korea fired a fourth missile Sunday afternoon into the East Sea - also known as the Sea of Japan.A South Korean defense ministry spokesman said on Saturday that the North's intent was not clear. He said South Korea's military was watching for any additional launches and "possible provocation."Earlier this year, Pyongyang threatened nuclear strikes on South Korea and the U.S. in light of annual U.S.-South Korean military drills and U.N. sanctions imposed on the North after its third nuclear test in February.About two months ago, North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast. Pyongyang routinely conducts such exercises in an effort to improve its arsenal.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.Java Annotations and Reflection. Create, Parse and Process Custom Annotations.
What are Java Annotations?
Java annotations are tags that we insert into source code for providing more information about the code. They associate information with the annotated program element. Beside Java annotations Java programs have copious amounts of informal documentation that is typically contained within comments in the source code file but annotations are different from comments they annotate the program elements directly using annotation types to describe the form of the annotations. Annotations present the information in a standard and structured way so that it could be used amenably by processing tools.
A Java annotation is a modifier starts with @ symbol as Javadoc tags do, followed by annotation-tag name followed by zero or more element-value pairs enclosed in parenthesis. There may be white space between @ symbol and the annotation-tag name but standard coding practices advice to avoid any space between the two. Annotations are processed by annotation processing tools [use reflection] to extract the provided information and to use that information for intended purpose. That's why Java annotations are called metadata about the code.
Java annotations can be extracted at the time of compiling the code by the compiler or at run time by annotation processors. However, Java compiler can understand only a few Java annotations and further to Java compiler we do need annotation processing tools either developed by ourselves or third party annotation processors to parse Java annotations.
Purpose of Annotations - Adding Metadata to Java Program
The purpose of an annotation is to associate information with the annotated program element. An annotations may be used as modifiers in any declaration, whether package, class (including enums), interface (including annotation types), field, method, formal parameter, constructor, or local variable.
Annotations may also be used on enum constants. Such annotations are placed immediately before the enum constant they annotate. Java annotations are conventionally placed before all other modifiers, but this is not a compulsion; they may be freely intermixed with other modifiers.
However, you maybe familiar with Javadoc tags that embed metadata in Java source code but unlike Javadoc tags, Java annotations can be reflective and retrievable at run-time.
One of the main reasons for adding annotations to the Java platform is to enable development and runtime tools to have a common infrastructure in order to reduce the effort required for development and deployment. By having a common infrastructure metadata structure can be standardized, thus a tool could use the metadata information in form of annotations to generate additional source code, or to provide additional information for debugging, or other purposes.
Annotations to Java have been introduced first time in Java 1.5. Prior to Java 1.5, it was common to use naming patterns to indicate that some program elements demanded special treatment by a tool or framework. Naming patterns have disadvantages; they are not efficient to cope up with typographical errors. Second, there is no way to ensure that naming patterns are used only on appropriate program elements. Third disadvantage of naming patterns is that they provide no good way to associate parameter values with program elements. Java annotations solve all of these problems nicely. Java annotations have been covered in section 9.6 and 9.7 in Java Language Specification.
Built-in and Custom Annotation Types
Java defines seven built-in annotations out of which three ( @Override, @Deprecated, and @SuppressWarnings ) are applied to Java code and they are included in java.lang library. These three annotations are called regular Java annotations. Rest four ( @Retention, @Documented, @Target, and @Inherited ) are applied to other annotations and they are included in java.lang.annotation library. These annotations are called meta Java annotations. Meta Java annotations are used to create custom annotations. Custom annotations will be discussed shortly.
Following table shows the functionality of built-in annotations, and the library in which they are defined.
Table 1: Built-in Java Annotations Annotation Name Applicable To Use Included in Java Annotations Applied to Java code @Override Member Methods Checks that this method overrides a method from its superclass java.lang @Deprecated All annotable items Marks item as deprecated java.lang @SuppressWarnings All annotable items except packages and annotations Suppress warning of given type java.lang Java Annotations Applied to Other Annotations @Retention Annotations Specifies how long this annotation is retained - whether in code only, compiled into the class, or available at run time through reflection. java.lang.annotation @Documented Annotations Specifies that this annotation should be included in the documentation of annotated items java.lang.annotation @Target Annotations Specifies the items to which this annotation can be applied java.lang.annotation @Inherited Annotations Specifies that this annotation, when applied to a class, is automatically inherited by its subclasses. java.lang.annotation
Using Built-in Annotations
From the usage point of view annotations are categorized as Regular and Meta Annotations. Regular Annotations are applied to Java source code while Meta Annotations are applied to other Java annotations. Meta Annotations are also used for writing custom annotations; we will soon discuss custom annotations.
Regular Java Annotations
@Override Java Annotation
The @Override annotation applies only to methods. At the time of compilation the compiler checks that a method with @Override annotation overrides the superclass's method or not. If yes, it is OK else it reports a compile time error. The retention policy for @Override annotation is SOURCE which means this annotation will be discarded completely after compiling the code and would not be included in.class file or bytecode.
Retention policy for an annotation is the visibility of that annotation and it is of three types: CLASS, RUNTIME, and SOURCE.
Annotations having CLASS level visibility are to be recorded in the class file by the compiler but need not be retained by the VM at run time.
level visibility are to be recorded in the class file by the compiler but need not be retained by the VM at run time. RUNTIME level visibility annotations are to be recorded in the class file by the compiler and retained by the VM at run time, so they may be read reflectively.
level visibility annotations are to be recorded in the class file by the compiler and retained by the VM at run time, so they may be read reflectively. SOURCE level visibility annotations are to be discarded by the compiler.
While compiling the following piece of code the compiler will report you an error because the equals method does not override the equals method of the Object class. Method equals() takes a parameter of type Object, not Human.
class Human { @Override public boolean equals ( Human otherHuman ) { //comparison code here return false ; //mock return statement } }
@Deprecated Java Annotation
While programming in eclipse IDE you may have seen some strikethrough method names. These methods are deprecated and their use is not encouraged any more because they could be dropped in further releases. The @Deprecated Java annotation can be attached to any items whose use is no longer encouraged; it warns the programmer not to use this API or constant or any item that is marked deprecated. This Java annotation has the same role as the @deprecated Javadoc tag. This Java annotation follows the RUNTIME retention policy; therefore it is kept safe in bytecode and available for reflection at run time.
Note that there is a Javadoc tag also with the name @deprecated but the Javadoc tag starts with a lowercase "d" and the Java annotation starts with an uppercase "D". Both @deprecated and @Deprecated are conceptually related.
The following piece of code will successfully compile but with warning deprecatedMethod() in Human has been deprecated.
class DeprecatedDemo { public static void main ( String a [ ] ) { Human h = new Human ( ) ; h. deprecatedMethod ( ) ; //deprecated } } class Human { @Deprecated public void deprecatedMethod ( ) { System. out. println ( "It is deprecated method" ) ; } }
@SuppressWarnings Java Annotation
The @SuppressWarnings Java annotation instructs compiler to suppress the warnings of a particular type that are shown during compilation. Note that the set of warnings suppressed in a given element is a superset of the warnings suppressed in all containing elements. For example, if you annotate a class to suppress one warning and annotate a method to suppress another, both warnings will be suppressed in the method.
As a matter of style, programmers should always use this Java annotation on the most deeply nested element where it is effective. If you want to suppress a warning in a particular method, you should only annotate that method rather than its class.
The retention policy for @SuppressWarnings Java annotation is also SOURCE ; therefore it will be discarded after compiling the code and would not be included in.class file.
Meta Java Annotations
@Target Java Annotation
While defining a custom Java annotation we have to specify which element (class, method, field, constructor etc.) this newly defined annotation would be applicable on. The @Target annotation is used for that purpose to set the target elements on which the custom annotation can be applied.
Table 2 shows possible values of elements for @Target annotation. They belong to the enumerated type ElementType. You can specify any number of element types, enclosed in braces.
Table 2: Element Types for the @Target Annotation Element Type Annotation Applies To ANNOTATION_TYPE Annotation type declarations PACKAGE Packages TYPE Classes (including enum) and interfaces (including annotation types) METHOD Methods CONSTRUCTOR Constructors FIELD Fields (including enum constants) PARAMETER Method or constructor parameters LOCAL_VARIABLE Local variables
The compiler checks if the annotation has been applied to a permitted type only. If not then compile-time error occurs. And so, a Java annotation without @Target restriction can be applied to any item.
@Retention Java Annotation
As name suggets, @Retention meta annotation specifies till what level an annotation will be retained. To decide the scope of the custom annotation we have to specify one of the three values ( SOURCE, CLASS, or RUNTIME ) of RetentionPolicy. The default is RetentionPolicy.CLASS.
RetentionPolicy.SOURCE specifies the scope of custom annotation to the compile time. Annotations having retention policy RetentionPolicy.SOURCE are not included in bytecode.
Annotations those are carrying RetentionPolicy.CLASS policy of retention are included in.class files, but the virtual machine need not to load them.
Annotations having RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME policy are included in class files and loaded by the virtual machine. Java annotations that are given RUNTIME retention policy can be accessed at run time through the reflection API.
@Documented Java Annotation
The @Documented meta annotation hints Javadoc tool to include this annotation in the documentation wherever it is used. Documented Java annotations should be treated just like other modifiers, such as protected or static, for documentation purposes. The use of other annotations is not included in the documentation.
@Inherited Java Annotation
The @Inherited annotation can be applied only to annotations for classes. When a superclass is annotated with an @Inherited Java annotation then all of its subclasses automatically have the same annotation.
Java Custom Annotation Types and Annotation Parsing Using Reflection
As of now we have discussed built-in annotations provided by Java language. Sometimes we may need to design our own customized Java annotations depending upon the nature of requirement and parse them at run time to extract the information supplied by annotations. Java annotations that we design are called custom Java annotations.
Java annotation types are a special kind of interface, declared with the interface keyword preceded by the @ symbol. Java annotation types can be declared anywhere an interface can be declared that is, as a top-level Java annotation type or nested within another type and can have the same modifiers applied as interfaces have. Characterizing Java annotation types as interfaces is a little misleading, however, as aside from borrowing some syntax and some associated usage rules, Java annotation types bear little resemblance to interfaces in normal use.
Each annotation is defined by an annotation interface, no matter it is custom or built-in Java annotation. An annotation definition may or may not have methods, if it has then the methods of interface corresponds to the elements of the annotation. For an example, we can define a simple custom @Author Java annotation as follows.
@Target ( { ElementType. METHOD, ElementType. CONSTRUCTOR, ElementType. TYPE, ElementType. FIELD } ) @Retention ( RetentionPolicy. RUNTIME ) @ interface Author { String author ( ) default "" ; }
annotation Author defined above has one method author() that by default returns a zero length string or the value provided by the programmer at the time of applying this annotation to supported element types. At run time a tool or your own program would call the author() method to retrieve the author element of the Author annotation.
The Target and Retention Java annotations used while declaring Author annotation are meta Java annotations. They annotate the Author annotation, marking it as a Java annotation that can be applied to methods, constructors, classes, enums, and interfaces (including annotation types). Author annotation is retained when the class file is loaded into memory by the virtual machine as its retention policy is RUNTIME.
Let's now see how to use and access the value of author element of @Author Java annotation in a program.
Before everything it must be noted that Java Annotation Retention Policy should be RUNTIME otherwise annotated information will not be accessible at runtime and we won't be able to extract any data from it.
/* AccessAnnotations.java */ import java.lang.annotation.ElementType ; import java.lang.annotation.Retention ; import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy ; import java.lang.annotation.Target ; import java.lang.reflect.Constructor ; import java.lang.reflect.Field ; import java.lang.reflect.Method ; public class AccessAnnotations { public static void main ( String [ ] args ) { Class < AnnotatedClass > ac = AnnotatedClass. class ; try { Field f = ac. getDeclaredField ( "annotatedField" ) ; Method mGetter = ac. getMethod ( "getAnnotatedField" ) ; Method mSetter = ac. getMethod ( "setAnnotatedField", new Class [ ] { int. class } ) ; Constructor < AnnotatedClass > cons = ac. getConstructor ( ) ; System. out. println ( "Class Author: " + ac. getAnnotation ( Author. class ). author ( ) ) ; System. out. println ( "Field Author: " + f. getAnnotation ( Author. class ). author ( ) ) ; System. out. println ( "Constructor Author: " + cons. getAnnotation ( Author. class ). author ( ) ) ; System. out. println ( "Getter Author: " + mGetter. getAnnotation ( Author. class ). author ( ) ) ; System. out. println ( "Setter Author: " + mSetter. getAnnotation ( Author. class ). author ( ) ) ; } catch ( NoSuchMethodException e ) { e. printStackTrace ( ) ; } catch ( SecurityException e ) { e. printStackTrace ( ) ; } catch ( NoSuchFieldException e ) { e. printStackTrace ( ) ; } } } @Author ( author = "Krishan Class" ) class AnnotatedClass { @Author ( author = "Krishan Field" ) private int annotatedField ; @Author ( author = "Krishan Constructor" ) public AnnotatedClass ( ) { System. out. println ( "Object created" ) ; annotatedField = 10 ; } @Author ( author = "Krishan Getter" ) public int getAnnotatedField ( ) { return annotatedField ; } @Author ( author = "Krishan Setter" ) public void setAnnotatedField ( int annotatedField ) { this. annotatedField = annotatedField ; } } @Target ( { ElementType. METHOD, ElementType. CONSTRUCTOR, ElementType. TYPE, ElementType. FIELD } ) @Retention ( RetentionPolicy. RUNTIME ) @ interface Author { String author ( ) default "" ; } OUTPUT ------ Class Author : Krishan Class Field Author : Krishan Field Constructor Author : Krishan Constructor Getter Author : Krishan Getter Setter Author : Krishan Setter
You can think above Java program an annotation parser. While reading the program you may find a few things new if you have not used java.lang.reflect package of Java so far. The main method of AccessAnnotations acts like a Java annotation parsing tool. It accesses the AnnotatedClass members with help of reflection classes such as Field, Constructor, and Method etc and parses the meta information provided along with AnnotatedClass and its members.
For example, in statement Field f = ac.getDeclaredField ("annotatedField"); the class Field belongs to java.lang.reflect package and the object f of type Field provides information about, and access to the private field annotatedField of class AnnotatedClass. Then you can call getAnnotation method on f to access the annotation information attached to annotatedField. There may be more than one Java annotations attached to one field so you need to pass the Annotation type as a parameter to getAnnotation in order to get the specified type annotation if such a Java annotation is present, else null.
Last Word
In this tutorial we discussed how to write and process user defined custom annotations in Java. Java annotations add metadata to Java source code. Java annotations can be accessed at run-time by using reflection. Hope you have enjoyed reading this tutorial, please do write us if you have any suggestion/comment or come across any error on this page. Thanks for reading!
ReferencesJust after I graduated from college in Dublin, I set up house in a studio flat at the top of a ramshackle house in a tiny, one-street town called Granard, County Longford.
I had just turned 20 and I had finally landed a'real' job as a primary school teacher. In that attic flat, there was, of course, no residential telephone. It was the early 1980s, so this was way, way pre-cell phones or internet.
However, I discovered that the town's mildew-y little library was open a few evenings per week. There, I met Mary, the librarian, and I discovered that she and I had almost identical reading tastes. So when certain new books came in, Mary auto-reserved them for me on a hunch that I would like them.
Her hunches were never wrong.
I never told my librarian friend this, but often, as I leaned over that circulation desk chatting, the sound of my own voice startled me. Except for those library visits and my stop at the town supermarket, I was completely alone--unless you count the seven and eight-year-olds in my classroom.
Still, isolation (I see now) had its perks. Without a TV or a record player, with little or no social life, there was much more time for reading. And the longer and denser the library book, the better I liked it.
Now I live three thousand miles away from that town where I tried and failed to launch my adult life. Nowadays, as I balance work and home and writing and a trillion digital distractions, I marvel at what a 20-year-old kid like me managed to read each week.
I devoured most of the works of Heinrich Böll, the German post-World War II novelist. I read fat biographies of Maud Gonne and Agatha Christie. Short story collections. Novellas. Novels galore. I wept when I read "The Well of Loneliness," a heartbreaking and previously banned love story about an illicit and banned lesbian relationship—a topic and a lifestyle that were taboo and illegal in 1980s Ireland.
I'm still an avid reader, but these days, I no longer need to borrow books that other people have read before me, where someone has left light pencil marks in the margins or cookie crumbs in the crevices.
But I still patronize my local library.
Being a library patron is not about money.
It's about being part of a real, flesh-and-blood community of readers. For me, it's about remembering the things and the people who were there for you during the lowest and loneliest times of your life.
I believe that our public libraries might be one of our last bastions of genuine bonum publicum or public good.
So during this year's library week 2018, let's remember and celebrate our libraries and all that they've brought to our lives.Customers coming back to pick up their cars from an auto repair shop, Friday, were met with yellow tape and a strong police presence after a man with a.45 caliber pistol shot and killed an employee. Then the gunman was taken down by an armed citizen.
The man killed one employee at Schlenker Automotive and paralyzed another. Then the other employees fought back, Rockledge, Florida Police Chief Joseph La Sata said.
“The manager, who was a concealed weapons permit holder, came out and engaged in gunfire in the parking lot,” La Sata said. “The manager fled back inside the building, being chased by the gunman. Another Schlenker employee, who also had concealed weapons permit, engaged in gunfire with the suspect.”
Robert Lorenzo Bailey Jr., 28, of Cocoa, is believed to be the shooter. An employee shot Bailey twice, leaving him in critical condition at Health First’s Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne. If he survives, he’ll be facing charges.
“If not for the brave, quick thinking of the employees at Schlenker, this could have been a lot worse,” La Sata said. “Mr. Bailey had multiple magazines on his person. He was intent on doing harm. The employees stepped up.”
A 25-year-old employee was shot in the parking lot. Schlenker employee Roger Lee Smith, 50, heard the gunfire, and left the store to investigate. He met the suspect there, and Bailey shot and killed him.
There’s no known connection between the suspect and either of the victims, or the business. As of yet, the motive remains unclear. The amount of ammunition Bailey was carrying at the time of the shooting suggests he intended to do more harm.
While the incident seems to many as yet another footnote in the epidemic of gun violence, it is also worth noting that the quick action of armed individuals prevented this from becoming much worse.Damnit, I knew this was going to happen. 52 pages into the new pilot and things have slowed to a standstill. With the Dark Matter writers’ room in full swing, my attention is focused elsewhere, however I did manage to write a single new scene this morning. At this rate, I’m going to have to revise my ETD (estimated time of delivery) to end of the month. That’s when my “military advisors” (You know who you are!) can expect to see a first draft for vetting purposes.
Yes, it’s military SF. In addition to input from the experts, I’m also doing a little research – by way of reading six books simultaneously to put me in the proper headspace.
By mid-July, all I’ll need is a proper series title and then it’ll be smoooooth sailing!
Not quite as smooth sailing on the DM third season story front, but progress is being made. As I mentioned in previous blog instalments, I have all the pieces of the puzzle but just need to figure out a way to put them together. Which is where Paul, Ivon, Alison, and Lawren come in.
Me, poised to write down one of Ivon’s brilliant ideas.
Like previous seasons, the goal is to pack as much story as possible into these 13 episodes because – who knows? – it could be the show’s (or my) last. Ideally I’ll get to tell the full five season story I have planned, paying off all those clues (hidden and otherwise) and arcs we’ve set up over these first couple of years. If not, don’t worry – you’ll get your ending whether it’ll be in a movie, a comic book, or write here on this blog.
In preparation for the Dark Matter season 2 premiere comes this awesome –
Season 1 retrospect and season 2 look ahead
by Aimee Hicks over at SpoilerTV.com.
Hey, Aussie fans! Dark Matter and Killjoys return to Syfy Australia July 2nd!
Today’s Dark Matter season 2 sneak peek screen shot. Devastation!
More from the Stargate archives = Stargate: SG-1, “Redemption I and II”. Illustrations and designs by James Robbins…
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Like this: Like Loading...UK Man Arrested After Teaching Dog to Do a Nazi Salute When It Heard, ‘Sieg Heil’
A man was arrested in the U.K. after he taught his dog, a pug, to do the Nazi salute after hearing the words “Sieg Heil.”
Markus Meechan, a 28-year-old call center worker, said he isn’t a racist, but was merely trying to annoy his girlfriend.
“I am not a racist at all, anybody who knows me could tell you that,” he told The Metro. “Honestly, I don’t hate anyone, the whole purpose of this was just to annoy my girlfriend.”
The viral clip “was strictly made to annoy my girlfriend and give my friends something to laugh at.”
“I am so sorry to the Jewish community for any offense I have caused them. This was never my intention and I apologize,” he said.
However, British authorities weren’t pleased.
“The clip is deeply offensive and no reasonable person can possibly find the content acceptable in today’s society,” Detective Inspector David Cockburn told the Telegraph. “This arrest should serve as a warning to anyone posting such material online, or in any other capacity, that such views will not be tolerated.”
“Markus Meechan is arrested over online footage of ‘Nazi’ dog | Daily Mail Online”: https://t.co/K85udOq9zm — AeroLiger (@BloodyGoku) May 9, 2016
Police then went to Meechan’s house in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, and arrested him on suspicion of a hate crime.
“My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute her dog is so I thought I would turn her into the least cute thing you could think of which is a Nazi,” Meechan says in the viral YouTube clip that has been seen hundreds of thousands of times.
The dog is then seen watching the 1938 Nazi propaganda film, “Olympia.”
The clip can be viewed here (WARNING: It might be offensive to some):
—(Photo: Christinlola/Dreamstime)
None of our lives is perfect. All of them are irreplaceable and have worth.
Imagine opening up New York magazine to find an article from your mother writing that she wished you were dead. When he can read, a little boy named Dudley will face that reality.
Jen Gann, the parenting editor of New York, recently wrote a highly promoted cover story about her toddler Dudley, the focus of her wrongful-birth lawsuit. Dudley has cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease that causes damage primarily to the lungs and digestive system. It’s expensive to treat, requires hours of treatment daily, and shortens the lives of its victims. Gann writes openly that if she could have ended her son’s life, knowing what she knows now, she would have.
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“You can’t discuss what happened to me without discussing abortion,” she writes.
Her lawsuit, she claims, is about the betrayal she felt when learning only after Dudley was born that he had CF. She had genetic testing, she explains, but information about the risk of CF was not communicated to her in such a way that she could have pursued more testing to determine whether her son could have the disease. She lost the opportunity to “protect” her son by killing him before he took his first breath out of utero.
At one point Gann muses, “For the pro-lifers who oppose wrongful-birth suits, this paradox — what does it mean to fight for someone when what you’re fighting for is a missed chance at that person’s not existing? — is reason enough to eliminate the legal pathway altogether.”
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So for Gann, losing the “chance” to abort her son was a missed opportunity. Those are grim words to process.
I’ll be honest. I had to read her piece several times, as I had difficulty reading it in one setting. Each time I started again, I was filled with anguish and anger.
How horrifying that Dudley will one day grow to learn that his mother wished he were dead. That she wishes she could have had another kid who was “normal,” instead of living with cystic fibrosis and experiencing each day with her son as a gift.
In the article, which reads like a woe-is-me-my-life-has-been-disrupted-by-CF pity party, she states that she “hates” mothers like me. Mothers like me who didn’t take the risk of prenatal tests and gave birth to a child with cystic fibrosis. I would assume she hates me doubly as after my first son, Gunner, was born with CF, I went on to reproduce (gasp). My fourth child, my only daughter, Gracie, also lives with the disease.
Well, I’m okay with her anger, because I’m angry too. Angry that she would feel that my children should have been eliminated in the womb because of their genetic code. That attitude is eugenics at its finest, and I’m angry that someday soon I’m going to have to explain to my children why 90 percent of those like them are killed in the womb. It is bigotry to say that some lives are worth less than others, and I hope someday we can accept that no life is perfect but that all lives are irreplaceable and have worth.
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Gann writes that “given the choice, if one existed, I would have Dudley another way: healthy.” But, in fact, that could never be the case. The beautiful person of Dudley has been forged by him and his family in the act of facing the adversity that CF brings to them. In walking that path with my own children and husband, I know how powerful, painful, and beautiful that life can be. Eliminating all people who potentially carry disease erases our very humanity and paints a false picture of “perfect.”
We must value every life because it is unique and irreplaceable.
I understand the pain that Gann lives with, as every day cystic fibrosis tries to savages the little bodies of our children. But as mothers, we are called to be strong enough for them to fight, to make sure that they adhere to the two to four breathing treatments needed each day, that the pills get taken and insulin injected, that the calories are consumed, and that every possible surface is wiped down with Clorox wipes.
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I didn’t ask or want to have two children with cystic fibrosis. I know that my eight-year-old, who recently asked me the dreaded question “Will I die?,” would choose in a heartbeat to rid his body of CF. But I also know he would choose to live.
My children sometimes struggle to breathe without coughing and to get the nourishment they need. They may die a premature death. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.
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But my Gunner and Gracie will fight with my husband and me alongside them for a life well lived. No amount of suffering overshadows the value and the wonderfulness of experiencing life with them.
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To Gann I say, “You gave your son his life. His life will be hard but it will be his, filled with joy, happiness, and sadness, like all of ours. Saying he should have been aborted is giving up. You have to be strong to fight for him. Eliminating a child in the womb is not fighting for the child. It’s killing a child.”
People are not born with expiration dates tattooed on their feet. No one knows how long any of us has on this earth. Our society has become prejudiced against people who are perceived as disabled in any way, and they are deemed unworthy of the investment of love and resources. The value of human beings exists not in how much money they have or in their abilities, their physical beauty, or their social standing. We must value every life because it is unique and irreplaceable.
I hope that all children with cystic fibrosis have someone in their lives who lets them know that they are worth the effort. Life is hard enough without being told that you should never have been born.
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A man who fired a shot on an Oakwood Avenue bus last year has received a nine-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to attempted murder in an incident captured with stunning clarity by on-bus security cameras.
“I’m not a gangster. I don’t walk around with a gun,” Richard Haynes, 29, told the court Thursday, according to the Toronto Star. “I tried to take it off the bus. I apologize for that... I’d never hurt anybody.”
Haynes pleaded guilty Monday.
"Once he saw what was on (the tape), he found it difficult to accept that he was someone who was capable of that," said defence lawyer Sean Robichaud.
The Crown and defence supplied a joint submission to Justice Carole Brewer.
The incident occurred on Feb. 23, 2009. The target was a 17-year-old boy, who had been shot in the hip at one point during the attack. He has since recovered.
Haynes, a second man and the victim knew each other. They got into an altercation as Haynes and an accomplice tried to get the teen off the bus. The teen wouldn't budge.
The security footage -- the result of a $17-million upgrade to TTC bus security that began four years ago -- shows Haynes getting off the bus, getting back on, unwrapping a.45-calibre handgun from a red bandana, saying something to the driver -- and then firing a shot.
The bullet ricocheted and then ended up in the lining of a woman's winter coat. She could be seen walking up to the driver to calmly say she thought she'd been shot. However, she suffered no serious injuries.
By then, the teen had been pulled off the bus. His hip wound came from a second bullet fired while the three fighting were outside.
No one else was injured.
Court heard Thursday that the 17-year-old had stabbed Haynes in the midsection earlier in the day. Haynes said he wanted an apology from the teen and that the earlier incident had filled him with rage to the point where he zoned out.
Haynes had no previous criminal record. Upon completing his sentence, he will face deportation to Jamaica.
Marlon Cooper, 22, the second man involved in the attack, pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm for his role and was sentenced to two years less a day. He was given credit for time already spent in custody.
He said nothing after leaving court. Daniel Brown, his lawyer, said all his client did was attempt to push the victim off the bus.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Chris EbyImage via The Frederick News-Post
Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip who was shot by a gunman who attacked a congressional baseball practice on Wednesday, |
ers in readiness for the evening, and then pulled our posters from beneath our coats, with slogans calling for an end to the Means Test and more winter relief for the aged pensioners.
Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the waiters! They stood still in their tracks. Up rushed the management supervisor demanding to know what it was all about. He was politely told by our elected speaker, Wal Hannington, that we would like to be served with some tea and sandwiches because we were very tired and hungry, but he was not to be anxious and could present the bill which would be paid on the spot.
When the supervisor regained his breath he said, in a very cultured, precise Oxford-English voice: “I cannot permit you to be served. You are not our usual type of customer. You know full well that you are not accustomed to dine in an establishment of this quality. If you do not leave I shall have to send for the police.” (This had already been done.) In reply our spokesman informed him that many was the Saturday when wealthy clients of the Ritz would drive down to the East End workmen’s caffs in their Rollses and Daimlers and have a jolly hot saveloy, old Boy7, what! Slumming, they called it, and they too were in unusual attire and frequenting establishments that were not accustomed to such a clientele; nevertheless, said our spokesman, these gentlemen were treated with courtesy and civility and nobody sent for the police. The Ritz, he added, was not a private members’ club but a public restaurant ; he requested the supervisor to give orders to the staff to serve us with the refreshments we had asked for.
The appeal might just as well have ben addressed to the chandelier which hung from the ceiling. The supervisor stood there with a look of scorn, waiting for the police to come and throw us out. We refused to budge, insisting on our right as members of the general public, with legal tender in our pockets, to be served with what we had ordered. Meanwhile Wally had mounted the orchestra platform to address us; waiters and kitchen staff stood around dumbfounded at our temerity. But our speaker was incensed and in good form, and the issue of class privilege was clearly put. I noticed several of the staff members nodding their heads as the speaker touched on salient points. His speech was never finished, however, for the Grill was soon surrounded by the police. A couple of inspectors came over and consulted our organizers; we were ordered to leave, and did so in an orderly manner. As we filed out several of the waiters came up to wish us luck in our campaign, and pressed money into our hands.
‘Jack Dash, The Invasion of the Ritz Hotel (c.1938)’ in Colin Firth and Anthony Arnove, The People Speak: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport (Edinburgh: Canongate 2012) 296-7.
The invasion of the Ritz Hotel was also featured a little while ago in a previous episode of the One Show on BBC 1.
The authors of Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy, Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuburger, and Adam Sharples also note the establishment of centres for unemployed workers in Brmingham, Coventry and Sandwell, as well as the establishment of a Birmingham Trade Union Resource Centre and support given to a Workshop in Coventry to support unions campaigning against the closure of their firms. West Midlands County Council also had an Economic Development Unit had a trade union liaison officer. It also produced a ‘Jobs at Risk’ information pack for workers whose companies were either in difficulties or about to close down. (p. 59).
I’m sure there are organisations like the National Unemployed Workers Union campaigning for the unemployed. Unfortunately, the trade unions have been decimated by Thatcher and successive administrations, while local authorities have found their spending savagely attacked. No doubt part of this was to prevent Left-wing councils spreading such subversion by empowering the hoi polloi. We could, however, do with a few more very visible protests and campaigns to raise the profile of unemployment, and just how savage, degrading and inadequate current welfare provision is. Pointing out that IDS’ reforms are leading to deaths of 38,000 per year, so that no-one can claim ignorance, would also be an immense help. I do wonder if a mass march on Chipping Norton, or invasion of the Carlton Club following the example of Jack Dash and the Ritz wouldn’t do any harm, either.
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Tags: 'Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy', 'The People Speak: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport', Adam Sharples, Anthony Arnove, Birmingham, Carlton Club, Chipping Norton, Colin Firth, Coventry, Diana Gilhespy, Economic Development Unit, Henry Neuburger, Jack Dash, Ken Jones, National Unemployed Workers Union, Picadilly, Ritz Hotel, Sandwell, Tony Manwaring, Trade Union Resource Centre, Unemployed Workers Centres, Wal Hannington, West Midlands County CouncilNia Sioux and Holly Frazier of Dance Moms stopped by J-14 to go through a ton of old dance costumes that were packed up in their garage, and the mother-daughter cuteness of it all hit us right in the feels. Let it be known that this was the first time Nia and Holly saw these costumes in quite some time (we’re talkin’ years, people), and seeing their reactions to the stage ensembles was a pure delight.
While going through the dance costumes, Nia quizzed herself to see if she could match the name of the performance with the outfit – and we gotta say, she did pretty well! Watch the video below to see the blast from the Dance Moms past.
Love J-14? Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for fun, exclusive videos with your favorite stars.But wait, there's more! Love them or hate them, commercials were a huge part of the Saturday morning experience. As expected, Cinefamily decided to include the most hilarious, memorable, and strange advertisements from the 80's and 90's in their collection. I honestly found myself excited when “We’ll be back after these messages” flashed across the screen, and some of the biggest laughs from the crowd came from these commercial breaks. I guess as advertising has evolved, I've started to miss the wacky, insane commercials I saw as a child.
While I loved every minute of the amazing slew of cartoons and commercials, the whole day would have been nothing without Cinefamily's hard work. Their mission, as previously stated, is to put some life-blood back into the movie theater experience. “Like campfires, sporting events and church services, we believe that movies work best as social experiences. They are more meaningful, funnier and scarier when shared with others” says Cinefamily's about page. I wholeheartedly believe that they are living up to that goal. The movie going experience isn't about watching cartoons, it’s about meeting with friends, dressing in your favorite pajamas, sitting on the floor with blankets, and enjoying a bowl of sugary cereal.
In fact, the complementary cereal was my favorite part of the day by far! As an adult, I’ve almost complete forgone breakfast, and I certainly wouldn't spend a ludicrous $3.50 for “part of a well-balanced breakfast.” (As if you’re supposed to have a small bowl of frosted flakes with a side of fruit and a hard boiled egg. Who are they kidding?) I digress. The point is, I don't get to enjoy cereal very often, and I definitely miss it. During intermission, everyone lined up outside to drool over a table stocked full of every type of cereal you have and haven't heard of. Don’t have enough marshmallows in your cereal? That's okay! Just throw in an extra scoop from the marshmallow bowl. Lactose intolerant? Doesn't matter, have some complimentary almond or soy milk. Still need more sugar? Good, because Cinefamily offers peeps, assorted candies, Oreo's, and fruit. The cereal bar was a sweet tooth's fever dream—and it was all included in the entry fee.
Everyone spent the intermission socializing and meeting new people, which was a beautiful thing to witness. And while I can’t complain about the huge plush seats that more and more theaters are adopting, I can’t help but think that they are missing the point. Cinefamily sees the movie going experience like a church or sporting event, not for lounging around at home like we all do on a daily basis. I didn’t know that I loved this extroverted sentiment until I experienced it.
If this is beginning to sound like the best theater ever, which it should, make sure to check out their monthly events calendar! For instance, if animation isn’t your cup of melted celluloid, you'll be happy to find a large number of film classics, obscurities, and events, “which are enhanced with special guests, live music, dance parties, potlucks and other kinds of social fun.”
So whether you have children, or are just a kid at heart (aren’t we all?), be sure to check out Cinefamily’s events as soon as humanly possible. If you’re reading this as it comes out, know that I have my eye on their brand new 4k restoration of the cult classic Donnie Darko presented both in its long director's cut, and it’s original theatrical cut. Maybe we'll see you there!Hannover 96 may have defeated Nürnberg 4-1 on Wednesday, but they may have lost Leon Andreasen for an extended period of time. The midfielder injured his knee at the beginning of the match and was substituted after only 10 minutes.
Andreasen, 29, has been in fine form for Hannover so far this season with six goals in all competitions, and the potential injury would be a major setback to his recovery effort. The Danish international suffered a groin injury in April 2010 and spent the next 28 months trying to comeback. After seven different operations, Andreasen finally returned to the pitch in August of this year. He also made an appearance for Denmark during September's World Cup Qualifiers.
The club has released a statement via their official Twitter account stating that Andreasen would have an MRI completed on Thursday. Speculation is already running rampant that he has suffered a torn ACL.The administration is hailing the economy's strong,
And while many economists are waving caution flags, noting that much of the growth was simply from businesses replenishing threadbare inventories, one leading economist says flat-out that, "The Great Recession is over."
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, does point out that the economy isn't out of the woods yet, but says it appears to have turned the corner.
Zandi admits the recession is history only "in a very technical sense. It's probably in a sense only an economist can really appreciate. Not until we start to see jobs will, I think, people believe that the recession is over."
When will that be?
"I'm hopeful that, in the next few months, certainly by the spring and summer, we'll start to see some job growth," Zandi told "The Early Show Saturday Edition" co-anchor Erica Hill. "If history is any guide, when GDP (gross domestic product) rises... then, a quarter or two down the road, businesses start on add to their payrolls, so they start to hire. So that means, come April, May, June, I'd expect some job growth."
Still, Zandi notes, "We've got a few significant headwinds: a lack of credit, particularly for small business; they need that credit to go out and to hire. The housing crisis continues on. We have lots of foreclosures, and that could drive down housing prices further. Commercial real estate is a problem, and of course, state and local governments all across the country have big budget holes, and if they don't get help from the federal government, they'll be cutting jobs and programs. So, it's good news, but not good enough.
"The coast isn't clear yet.... We do have the risk of sliding backwards. I'd say about a one-in-four probability. Probably, the flash point would be sometime this summer."
Which is why, Zandi asserts, the jobs package President Obama wants is "absolutely" necessary.
"A one-in-four probability is too high a probability, particularly when we already have a 10 percent unemployment rate. We cannot backslide into recession. Otherwise, it's going to be a complete mess, so we have to make insure we don't, and a jobs bill is key to that."By iSeeCars Team
Toyota’s recall rate went from one of the best to last over 10 year periods from 1985 to 2014
WOBURN, Mass. (April 2014)- In most situations one would think an automaker would see the sales and reputation damage done by a recall campaign and make changes to prevent future recalls and act quickly when they do occur. A new study by iSeeCars.com shows that doesn’t always appear to be the case for some automakers, and time hasn’t shown improvement for many of them either.
In this study, iSeeCars.com analyzed and compared automakers’ “recall rates” and “recall timeliness” over 10 year periods from 1985 to 2014 mainly 1985-1994, 1995-2004 and 2005-2014. Recall rate measures the number of recalled vehicles for each vehicle sold – thus a low recall rate is more desirable. Recall timeliness looks specifically at the percentage of an auto maker’s recall campaigns involving vehicles within their first three years; the higher the percentage, the more timely the manufacturer is in detecting problems and issuing the necessary recalls.
Between 1995-2004 and 2005-2014, all manufacturers improved their recall rates with the exception of Subaru, Hyundai, Honda and Toyota. On the other hand, from the time period of 1985-1994 to 1995-2004, only 3 auto makers saw their recall rates improved. In the most recent 10 year period 2005-2014, Mercedes has the best recall rate and Nissan had the best recall timeliness.
Mitsubishi Stands Out As Most Improved Over Past 10 Years
Mitsubishi made major strides in improving recall rates and increasing recall timeliness in recent years. It actually improved recall rates by 49% by going from recalling 177 vehicles for every 100 sold between 1995-2004 to recalling 90 vehicles per 100 sold between 2005-2014. It also increased the timeliness of recall campaigns by 22%. Between 1995-2004, only 62% of Mitsubishi’s recall campaigns included vehicles within their first 3 years. However, in the most recent 10 years, its timeliness improved to 84%.
Toyota’s recall rate went from first to last
While major recalls in 2009-2010 negatively impacted Toyota’s recall rate and timeliness of recalls, the company had a surprisingly strong combination of a low recall rate and high timeliness percentage in the earlier years of this study. It maintained a 0.26 rate of recalled vehicles per unit sold from 1985-1994, and again in 1995-2004. In looking at timeliness it had a fairly positive figure of 89% of recall campaigns involving vehicles within their first three years from 1985-1994, and again in 1995-2004. Fast-forward a few years and the unintended acceleration recalls significantly change Toyota’s rankings. Toyota's recall rate has gone from first to worst in the last 10 years (from 1995-2004 to 2005-2014). Toyota also saw its timeliness slip by 32%, the most of any manufacturer, going from 88.7% to 56.5%.
However, Toyota does appear to be working to improve its numbers from the past 10 years. “In the wake of the 2009-2010 recalls and subsequent fines, Toyota has given a detailed outline of actions the company has taken,” Ly says. “Those include launching a ‘rapid response team’ to address customer issues and lengthening the new vehicle development timeline by four weeks.”
Honda has seen its recall rate slowly rise over 30 years and its timeliness percentage drop. So not only is it recalling more vehicles per unit sold, it is taking progressively longer to do it. Honda has a recall rate/timeliness percentage of 0.42/89% (1985-1994), 0.94/89% (1995-2004) and 1.41/63% (2005-2014).
Manufacturer “Recall Rate” Trends - Number of Recalled Vehicles per Unit Sold
1985-1994 1995-2004 2005-2014 Manufacturer Rate Rank Rate Rank Rate Rank Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC. 0.45 6 0.52 2 0.38 1 Mazda Motors 0.40 4 1.00 8 0.55 2 Kia Motors Corporation 0.54 9 0.96 7 0.68 3 BMW of North America, LLC 1.31 13 0.90 5 0.87 4 Nissan North America, Inc. 0.26 1 1.20 11 0.90 5 Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. 0.84 12 1.77 14 0.90 6 Subaru of America, Inc. 0.68 10 0.84 4 0.92 7 General Motors LLC 0.46 7 1.02 9 0.96 8 Chrysler Group LLC 0.33 3 1.82 15 0.98 9 Volkswagen of America, Inc. 1.64 14 1.18 10 1.08 10 Hyundai Motor Company 1.67 15 0.83 3 1.15 11 Ford Motor Company 0.52 8 1.40 12 1.31 12 Volvo Cars of N.A., LLC 0.73 11 1.49 13 1.32 13 Honda (American Honda Motor Co.) 0.42 5 0.94 6 1.41 14 TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION 0.26 2 0.26 1 1.67 15
Automaker’s “Recall Timeliness” – Percentage of Recall Campaigns Involving Vehicles within their first 3 Years
% of recall campaigns for vehicles within their first 3 years 1985-1994 1995-2004 2005-2014 Manufacturer % Rank % Rank % Rank Nissan North America, Inc. 82.8% 11 83.8% 9 86.5% 1 Chrysler Group LLC 90.7% 3 75.0% 13 84.4% 2 Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. 78.6% 13 62.1% 15 84.4% 3 Volvo Cars of N.A., LLC 88.2% 8 80.6% 11 83.7% 4 BMW of North America, LLC 90.9% 2 93.3% 1 80.7% 5 Volkswagen of America, Inc. 83.1% 10 62.7% 14 76.7% 6 Subaru of America, Inc. 80.0% 12 88.9% 4 76.0% 7 General Motors LLC 89.6% 4 86.6% 7 75.1% 8 Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC. 77.8% 14 90.6% 2 75.0% 9 Mazda Motors 88.9% 5 79.7% 12 74.1% 10 Ford Motor Company 88.1% 9 82.1% 10 70.4% 11 Kia Motors Corporation 100.0% 1 85.7% 8 68.8% 12 Hyundai Motor Company 69.2% 15 90.0% 3 67.3% 13 Honda (American Honda Motor Co.) 88.5% 7 88.5% 6 63.2% 14 TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION 88.7% 6 88.7% 5 56.5% 15
VW, Kia and Nissan Show Fluctuations Through 10-Year Timeframes
At 0.26 vehicles recalled per unit sold, Nissan of North America had the lowest recall rate of the 15 manufacturers analyzed in the 1985-1994 time period. However, it drops significantly to the 11th place ranking in the 1995-2004 timeframe, then it jumps to 5th in 2005-2014. And, while its recall rate fluctuated, its timeliness percentage rose from 83% (1985-1994), to 84% (1995-2004), to 87% (2005-2014). Those figures actually brought Nissan from 11th place ranking for timeliness of recalls in the 1985-1994 time period to 1st place in the 2005-2014 timeframe.
While slowly improving across the three 10-year periods, Volkswagen maintains a fairly high recall rate and ranking of being one of the least timely manufacturers to recall vehicles within the first three years. VW has a recall rate/timeliness percentage of 1.64/83% (1985-1994), 1.18/63% (1995-2004) and 1.08/77% (2005-2014).
Kia, on the other hand, has seen both its recall rate and timeliness percentage drop significantly over 30 years, so while it is recalling less vehicles per unit sold, it is also taking more time to do it.
So what does a manufacturer’s recall rate and recall timeliness tell consumers? “A lower recall rate could be an indication an automaker has relatively better manufacturing and quality control processes,” said Phong Ly, CEO and co-founder of iSeeCars.com. “Recall timeliness could suggest the caliber of the procedure or system an auto maker has in place to detect problems after a vehicle has been produced. Both the recall rate and timeliness could also be an indication of a manufacturer’s risk tolerance or strategy,” Ly explained.
“While the goal of automakers should be as few problems with vehicles as possible, it’s assumed that they’d like to see a trend of a low recall rate and high timeliness percentage,” Ly said. “This allows consumers to trust that the automaker is not only producing safe vehicles, but acting rapidly to protect the public when a potential issue arises.”
Methodology:
For this study, iSeeCars.com analyzed NHTSA recall figures between 1985 and 2014 (March 10) in 10 year periods, and corresponding sales data between 1985 and 2013. Recall rate is calculated as the number of recalls in a given period divided by the number of vehicles sold in that timeframe. Recall timeliness for an auto maker is calculated as the number of recall campaigns that included vehicles within their first 3 years divided by the total number of recall campaigns in a given time period.
About iSeeCars.com:
iSeeCars.com is a car search engine that helps consumers find the best deal by providing key insights and analysis about each used car. The proprietary iSeeCars.com algorithm ranks cars by calculating an overall score based on analysis of the car’s condition, history, negotiability, fairness of the price and the competitiveness of the seller. Based in the Boston area, iSeeCars.com was founded by TripAdvisor and SAP veterans determined to improve the used car shopping experience for consumers.Verizon on Thursday reported quarterly earnings that beat analysts' expectations, but revenue fell short of estimates.
The company posted third-quarter earnings of $1.01 a share on revenue of $30.93 billion. Sales were down 6.7 percent from a year earlier.
Analysts had expected Verizon to report earnings of about 99 cents a share on $31.08 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. Verizon reported profit per share of $1.04 a year earlier.
Shares of Verizon dropped 2.5 in premarket trading immediately after the announcement. The stock was down 2.7 percent at midday.
"Verizon continues to deliver strong financial and operational results in highly competitive markets while positioning itself for future growth," Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement. "While we transform our company in a challenging environment, we have maintained the financial flexibility to invest in our industry-leading networks to better serve customers, add scale to bring innovation to the mobile media and Internet of Things (IoT) markets, and increase dividends for a 10th consecutive year."
The report comes as Verizon prepares to take over Yahoo in a $4.8 billion deal. Last year, Verizon agreed to buy AOL in a bid to build its growth in mobile video and advertising.
The earnings report follows the disclosure of Yahoo's massive data breach, which affected at least 500 million user accounts. Verizon's general counsel said last week the breach could have an impact on the deal.
On a conference call with investors Thursday, CFO Francis Shammo called Yahoo's data breach "extremely large" and said Verizon is still evaluating what the breach means for the deal. He noted that he assumes it will have a "material impact on Yahoo."
A source told CNBC that Verizon is anxious to get more information on the breach so the company knows what asset it's buying. Verizon said it expects to close the deal in the first quarter of 2017, subject to approval by Yahoo shareholders and regulators.
Earlier this week, Yahoo reported earnings that beat analysts' expectations. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in the earnings release that the company is "working hard to retain" users' trust.
Verizon said it launched its LTE Advanced in more than 460 markets in the third quarter. The company said it intends to be the first to launch a 5G fixed wireless broadband solution in the U.S.
In the latest earnings report, the company said growth continued in new markets in part from strong demand from advertisers.
For the quarter, Verizon said it had 442,000 retail postpaid net additions. That includes 357,000 4G smartphones. Its internet service, Fios, grew 4.4 percent.
CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday that pricing wars with phone companies Sprint and T-Mobile could have impacted the company's earnings.
"I see the actions of what Sprint and T-Mobile are doing... they're so aggressive that it looks like it really cut into Verizon this time," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street."
Correction: Verizon launched its LTE Advanced in more than 460 markets in the third quarter. An earlier version misspelled the name.
— CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan and Julia Boorstin contributed to this report.It's been 46 years since Bob Dylan has played London's Royal Albert Hall and the legendary singer-songwriter set about making up for lost time during his show on Tuesday evening (November 26, 2013).
Bob Dylan Performing at London's Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday.
Promoting his critically acclaimed album Tempest, Dylan appears to have returned to form on his current UK tour. It's no secret that the 72-year-old has often been criticized for his live sets, rendering Like A Rolling Stone and others unrecognisable and raising eyebrows with a distinctly gravelly delivery.
There was no danger of the audience suffering bastardisations of Dylan's biggest hits, because, well, he didn't play many of them.
"...at just after half past nine he was gone," wrote The Independent's David Liser, "So ended performance 2,500-plus on the never-ending tour that began in 1988. It was in turns stunning, revelatory and downright perplexing. Like the man himself."
"...the Albert Hall was the perfect venue to witness this grumpy enigma and his musical longevity," said the Evening Standard.
Bob Dylan Performing in London
On Thursday, Dylan will be honoured with a commemorative blue plaque at the venue of his first ever UK performance. The 72-year-old will reportedly attend the event to unveil the plaque at The Water Rats in King's Cross London, according to The Telegraph.
A statement from the venue said: "Bob Dylan & his publicist Tom Cording have been made aware of the ceremony as this coincides with Bob Dylan's last concert of his current run at the Royal Albert Hall."
"We are hoping that Mr Dylan will be arriving at 2:30pm after his sound check to unveil the Plaque and show his continued support for live music in the UK."
Bob Dylan Has Won Strong Reviews for his UK Tour
Dylan played his first UK gig at The Water Rats - which was then known as the Pindar of Wakefield - in December 1962.
Next page: Read our review of Bob Dylan's TempestESPN.com made news back in 2010 when they created a section on their website called The Heat Index, dedicated to coverage of LeBron James and the Miami Heat. That kind of zeroed-in coverage was extreme in details but also a bit overwhelming. Sure the Heat were a huge topic of discussion at the time but even then there’s only so much the general sports fan can deep dive, right?
Well ESPN.com certainly doesn’t think so. They took that same strategy and applied it to Derek Jeter with ESPN New York’s Jeet Index. At least that was located on a site with a local focus. But now they’re putting that single-minded focus on one player directly on ESPN.com with the introduction of ‘Nothing’ But Steph,’ a subsection under their NBA section.
The main menu includes links to Profile (Curry’s player profile page), Stats, Splits, Game Log, Videos, and Photos. It’s a little bit of overkill but then again so is the section itself.
The section went live about a week ago, sparking rumors that it might have just been an April Fool’s joke. But no, ESPN clearly expects to fill it with Steph Curry updates and nothing but Steph Curry updates until such time when it is no longer needed.
Right now it’s mostly a collection of clips and interviews but any story written about Curry is obviously going to end up here as well. With the Golden State Warriors chasing the regular-season wins record and the impending NBA Playoff run, there won’t be any shortage of content.
The move also helps cement ESPN as the go-to source for all-things Steph Curry, at least in the minds of the general sports fan.
Clearly ESPN.com thinks they’ve identified a niche topic that they feel can generate traffic all on its own. If this meets whatever metric marks they’ve set up for themselves, perhaps it will become the new way for major sports media providers to target audiences. Regional sites didn’t stick but perhaps sites and sections focused solely on a major sports figure might. The age of hyper-targeted content may be upon us.
[ESPN]Labour-run Manchester City Council spends over £36 million a year on interest for its £775 million mountain of debt. That means that one pound in every four collected in Council Tax is not spent on local services but on interest payments.
The council's asset register consists of 1,427 items.
There are three pubs and an airport. Half a dozen leisure centres and a golf course.
There are also plenty of items which may or may not be put to good use under council ownership. Land that may be providing use for enjoyable recreation or may be scuzzy bits of waste land. Many caretakers cottages which may or may not be occupied and if the are might or might not provide value for money. There are many community centres and youth centres - some may be fizzing with activity others may be drab and underused.
How much confidence should Manchester's residents have that there is really rigorous asset management to ensure that all are put to good use.
There are several children's homes (Manchester has an above average proportion of children in care in children's homes.)
Manchester City Council is increasing the Council Tax by 3.7%.Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
In America today, more than 60 million people live in multi-generational households. That number is so large that it may seem difficult to believe, but the truth is that vast numbers of young adults have had to move back in with their parents and grandparents in recent years due to the deteriorating economy. Millions of our young people cannot find decent jobs once they leave school, and millions of them are absolutely overwhelmed by debt. Of course some of them are just lazy, but whatever the reason it is undeniable that multi-generational households are on the rise. According to the Pew Research Center, 12 percent of the U.S. population was living in multi-generational households back in 1980. Today, that number is up to 19 percent. That means nearly one out of every five U.S. adults now live with their parents or their grandparents.
One of the big culprits, of course, is student loan debt.
According to CNN, approximately 70 percent of all college graduates will have student loan debt to pay off once they leave school, and the average loan balance for those graduates is about $28,950.
But there are many that run up $50,000 or $100,000 in debt at high end schools. We encourage our young people to apply to the “best schools” that they possibly can, and we tell them that they shouldn’t worry about how much it will cost. We assure them that they will be able to easily pay back any debts once they leave college because of the “good jobs” that they will get upon graduation.
Unfortunately, millions upon millions of our young people have discovered that the good jobs that they were promised simply do not exist.
We are also seeing other forms of debt rise to frightening levels in this nation. The following comes from the New York Times…
Over all, Americans’ use of credit cards has recently been creeping up again: Household debt in the United States increased by $35 billion, to $12.29 trillion, during the second quarter of 2016, a 0.3 percent rise from the previous quarter that was driven by credit cards and auto loans, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
We often criticize the federal government for being 19.4 trillion dollars in debt, and rightly so, but let us not forget that U.S. households are 12.2 trillion dollars in debt.
We are a society that feels entitled to everything, and we are not afraid to go into debt to get it. And unfortunately we have passed on this “entitlement mentality” to the next generation.
In a recent blog post, Jenna Abrams did an amazing job of describing the crisis that we are facing with our young adults today. Here is an excerpt…
Today I asked my followers how would they describe Millennials and this is what I got: “lazy”, “thin-skinned”, “spoiled”, “selfish”, “undisciplined”, “self-absorbed”, ”fragile”, “oblivious”, etc. and I can agree on this. This generation is really what you call it. But there was one description that is the most accurate. “Raised by neglectful, over-compensating for inadequacy, self-serving parents.” You’re in charge. You insisted your children and grandchildren have to get higher education instead of taking a blue-collar job or just entering the workforce after school like your generation did. Most of you pay for that (often unnecessary) higher education. You are overprotective and prevent your children from playing outside and making mistakes you had a chance to make to gain that thick skin. You don’t let your 12-year-old kid stay at home alone because they are too young. And who is wrong when your child has a conflict at school? I bet you always blame the other side, not your “special snowflake”. And how you get surprised that the whole generation gets offended by facing the truth: they are not special. It must hurt, right?
This generation of young adults is the most “educated” in our history, and yet they also appear to be one of the least competent. Just check out these numbers from CBS News…
Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.
In the old days, our institutions of higher learning had exceedingly high standards and they demanded the best from students. Today, our system of higher education is a joke, and many of our best colleges are more focused on political correctness and “safe spaces” than they are on preparing our young people for the harsh realities of the real world…
At Brown University – like Harvard, one of the eight elite Ivy League universities – the New York Times reported students set up a “safe space” that offered calming music, cookies, Play-Doh and a video of frolicking puppies to help students cope with a discussion on how colleges should handle sexual assault. A Harvard student described in the university newspaper attending a “safe space” complete with “massage circles” that was designed to help students have open conversations.
We have raised a generation of overly-coddled, self-absorbed boys and girls that have never learned how to become men and women. They don’t understand how things really work, and they are completely and utterly unprepared for the exceedingly difficult times that are coming.
And since our education system is completely and totally dominated by progressives, our young people have had decades of liberal propaganda pumped into their skulls, and the results are absolutely frightening.
For example, one survey discovered that 62 percent of Millennials say that they are “liberal”, and 42 percent of them say that they are “socialists”.
A different survey discovered that more than half of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 say that they reject capitalism.
If the coming election were to be determined by the Millennials, Hillary Clinton would win by one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history. But of course she wouldn’t have even been the nominee for the Democrats, because Bernie Sanders would have crushed Clinton.
If something is not done, this is what the future of America is going to look like.
I don’t know about you, but to me that is a rather distressing thought.Easy Paleo Hamburger Pie Crust Free and Low Carb-
Easy Paleo Hamburger Pie, Crust Free Low Carb is an easy to prepare, grain free, low carb and crust free |
of Meccano pieces, and computer historian Dr Doran Swade.
But would Charles Babbage have approved?
"I can't decide whether he would be happy or exasperated that it has taken so long," said Mr Graham-Cumming.sold out
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Baritone saxophone shipping prices are determined on an individual basis.On December 17th, President Obama ordered the full restoration of diplomatic relationships with Cuba. “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in a nationally televised statement from the White House.
So what do we really know about our neighbors to the south? Well for starters the Castro regime has limited access to information for the majority of its citizens. According to conversations between Obama and Raul Castro, Cuba will allow more internet access. Although granting more access to information will allow the population to see how the rest of the world lives. Perhaps we may have a front seat to a Caribbean version of an Arab Spring?Michael Mando (born July 13, 1981) is a Canadian film and television actor, writer and director with a background in contemporary and classical theatre. He became known for his role as Vaas Montenegro, one of the main antagonists of the video game Far Cry 3 as well as Victor "Vic" Schmidt in the sci-fi series Orphan Black. He currently plays Ignacio "Nacho" Varga in the AMC series Better Call Saul.
Early life [ edit ]
Mando was born in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. He was raised by his father, and is the middle child of three brothers. Their family frequently travelled, and lived in over 10 cities, across 4 continents, and in over 37 different homes, all before he reached his mid-twenties.[1][2][3] His native language is French, and he also speaks English and Spanish fluently.[1][2][3] His family is of Mexican descent.[4]
Mando was enrolled in many fields, including international relations, at the University of Montreal before discovering the performing arts at The Dome Theatre Program (Dawson College) in 2004.[2] Despite having no prior training, Michael went on to play the male lead in all 5 productions at the program.[2][3] He graduated with excellence in 2007.[1] His Dome credits include, Orlando in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Professor Katz in David Edgar’s Pentecost and Valentine Xavier in Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending.[1][2] Upon graduation, Steven W. Lecky, the Chairman of the program proudly stated Michael to be "one of the finest talents to emerge from the program in the past 25 years."[1][3]
Career [ edit ]
Mando in 2015
After playing the leading character in two award-winning professional theatre productions in Montreal,[1][3] Mando founded Red Barlo Productions.[2][3][5] The company’s first film, Conditional Affection [6] (which Mando starred in, directed and wrote) was released in 2010 and officially selected to Fantasia,[7][8] Bare Bones,[8][9] ACTRA Short Films,[2][8] and the New Hope International Film Festivals.[8][10]
Mando’s television debut simultaneously followed with a wide range of contrasting characters. His credits include guest appearances in the crime series The Bridge,[11] the medical drama mini-series Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures,[12] as an MS-13 gang member in The Border,[13] and as a close friend of the character Kenzi (played by Ksenia Solo) in the sci-fi series Lost Girl.[14]
Mando has had repeated collaborations with directors John Fawcett and Eric Canuel as well as producer David Barlow.[15][16] He had a starring role in the 2010 feature film Territories.[17][18] In 2011, he had a recurring role in Les Bleus de Ramville[17][19] and a guest appearance on the series King.[1][17] In 2012, he featured in Far Cry 3 where he voiced and inspired one of the main villains: Vaas Montenegro,[20] a vicious and twisted antagonist who arguably became the main face of the video game. He also starred in a webseries called "The Far Cry Experience"[21] where he plays Vaas who captures and tortures a celebrity (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who has been challenged to survive the island.
In 2012, Mando was cast in the first season of the science fiction television series Orphan Black, which began airing in 2013.[22] He played Vic, an abusive drug-dealer and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for his work on the series.[23] He reprised his role of Vic in the second season in a recurring role. In 2014, Mando joined the cast of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off, portraying Nacho, a career criminal.[24]
Personal life [ edit ]
Mando grew up wanting to be a writer or an athlete.[25][2] In his mid-twenties he suffered a knee injury and consequently decided to change directions.[2] He then pursued an academic scholarship at the University of Montreal in international relations, but shortly afterward decided to go into acting.[1][2][2]
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Year Title Role Notes 2010 Conditional Affection Jack Short film
Also director, writer and producer 2010 Territories Jalii Adel Kahlid 2011 Abyss of the Mind Johnny H. 2012 The Good Lie Orville 2013 The Colony Cooper 2013 Make Your Move Raphael 2013 Elysium Rico Uncredited 2016 Wake Up Johnny H. / Alter Ego Short film
Also director, writer and producer 2017 Spider-Man: Homecoming Mac Gargan 2018 The Hummingbird Project Mark Vega
Television [ edit ]
Video games [ edit ]
Year Title Role Notes 2010 Shaun White Skateboarding Francisco Crystobal 2012 Far Cry 3 Vaas Montenegro Also motion capture
Web [ edit ]
Year Title Role Notes 2012 Far Cry Experience Vaas Montenegro 5 episodes
Accolades [ edit ]
Year Award Category Work Result 2012 NAVGTR Award Lead Performance, Drama Far Cry 3 Nominated 2014 Canadian Screen Award Best Guest Performance in a Dramatic Series Rookie Blue Nominated 2014 Canadian Screen Award Best Supporting Actor in a Dramatic Program or Series Orphan Black Nominated1 of 2 2 of 2
For many B.C. voters, the Greens or the Conservatives are the second-best option in the upcoming provincial election.
The strongest B.C. Liberal supporters loathe the B.C. NDP, and vice versa.
So why would the governing party or the Official Opposition run candidates in constituencies where they have no chance of winning?
Why not give the Greens or the Conservatives a chance to knock off their primary opponent's candidate?
Like with so many other things related to B.C. politics, you have to follow the money.
Before the writ is dropped, the B.C. Liberals know they'll be slaughtered in the East Side constituencies of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and Vancouver-Hastings.
Similarly, the New Democrats know that they can run candidates for the next century in West Side constituencies like Vancouver-Langara and Vancouver-Quilchena and probably never win these seats.
But if the B.C. Liberals and B.C. NDP field candidates in all 87 constituencies, they can also do fundraising in all 87 constituencies.
Every election, an NDP standard-bearer can hold out the hat in the tony areas south of Oakridge Centre or in Dunbar and panhandle for some money to bring back to the party treasury.
Similarly, the B.C. Liberals can usually find someone from a visible minority to run in safe NDP constituencies to convey the impression that the governing party cares about racial minorities. This, in turn, can yield some new volunteers and extra money for the party.
Over the years, the B.C. Liberals have recruited candidates of Philippine, Vietnamese, Chinese, and indigenous heritage to run where there was zero chance of success.
This has enabled the party leader of the day to be photographed in a sea of multicultural faces, helping the B.C. Liberals' electoral prospects.
The B.C. NDP has been known to play this game, too, running candidates from mainland China where there's absolutely no hope of victory. But it sends a message to new immigrants from this country that the party is keenly interested in their welfare.
In some cases, the losing candidate has been rewarded with a job or a board appointment afterward. Case in point: B.C. Liberal Gabby Kalaw, who lost to New Democrat Mable Elmore in Vancouver-Kensington in 2013.
The reality is that the B.C. Liberals would have a better chance of knocking off NDP stalwart Shane Simpson in Vancouver-Hastings if they sat out this campaign.
This would give the Greens' David Wong a better chance of pulling off an upset. Wong is a decent candidate with an impressive record of community service.
Vancouver-Langara Green candidate Janet Fraser might have a better chance in Vancouver-Langara if the B.C. NDP didn't run a candidate.
Similarly, the B.C. NDP could sit out the race in Vancouver-Langara, which would give former school trustee and Green candidate Janet Fraser a better chance of defeating B.C. Liberal Michael Lee. Instead, the B.C. NDP has recruited Burnaby councillor James Wang to run in the constituency.
This will likely divide the anti-Liberal vote in Vancouver-Langara, which usually has a preponderance of B.C. Liberal supporters.
The B.C. Liberals and the B.C. NDP like to act as though they are mortal enemies. But they will still do whatever they can to preserve the duopoly in provincial politics.
That's because the two major parties already have a decent market share, which means lots of seats and lots of employment for backroom strategists and organizers.
Coke and Pepsi don't want a third cola on grocery-store shelves, so why would things be any different in provincial politics?CLOSE Jayne O'Donnell talks about the Affordable Care Act with Paul Howard, the Director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress.
Daniel Hilferty is CEO of Independence Blue Cross and chairman of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (Photo11: Courtesy of Independence Blue Cross)
More than 1,370 counties now have only one insurer that will sell on the Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, while about 40 have none, an analysis of the latest data by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and USA TODAY shows.
The exodus of insurers is due in large part to the uncertainty created by the Trump administration, industry and other health care experts say. And even some insurers that submitted 2018 plans and proposed rates with state insurance commissioners are publicly wavering about whether or not they will follow through and sell them. They have until at least mid-September to change their minds.
Insurers are increasingly exiting the off-exchange market as well, forcing wealthier people who buy unsubsidized plans to rely on the very Obamacare marketplace the administration and Republicans in Congress have pilloried and worked to undermine. And that's if there are still insurers selling plans at all in some counties.
President Trump has referred often to these people as "Obamacare victims" because of steep premium increases. However, about two-thirds of the rate increases proposed for 2018 are due to the administration's own actions, the consulting firm Oliver Wyman estimated last month.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) replacement bill that could come up for a vote after senators return from their July 4th recess includes funding to pay for subsidies that reduce deductibles and co payments for about 7 million people. Trump has refused to commit to continue funding them and his administration has suggested it might not enforce the mandate that people have health insurance.
Insurers support the mandate because healthier people are less likely to buy plans if there's no penalty and they're needed to offset the cost of covering sicker people.
Rate hikes proposed so far range from 11% in Vermont to 50% in New York. The national range at this point would be far lower if it wasn't for this "Trump Tax" of insurers pricing with the assumption they won't be reimbursed for the subsidies or that the mandate to have insurance won't be enforced, says Charles Gaba, a data expert who runs ACASignups.net.
Medica, Iowa's reluctant only insurer on or off the exchange, just announced requested rate increases of nearly 45%.
Along with steep losses, insurers including Anthem in Ohio and Aetna cited this uncertainty when explaining decisions to depart states' insurance markets. Daniel Hilferty, CEO of Independence Blue Cross and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee are among those publicly saying their filings are not final decisions to stay on the exchanges.
"For the first time, this has to be wait and see," Hilferty said in a recent interview.
If his company left the exchanges in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it would leave several counties around Philadelphia without an insurer for people who need to shop on the exchange. Independence would, however, remain in the off exchange market to retain a presence in individual plan sales.
The most vulnerable exchange counties are in Indiana, Ohio and Missouri, but wealthier small business owners and others could be out of luck in other parts of the country where there are only one or two insurers selling on the exchanges.
"In those places, (insurers) are just entirely throwing up their hands and walking away," says Paul Howard, director health policy at the free market Manhattan Institute.
Due to the uncertainty surrounding the ACA, insurers may be more likely to file and then reconsider the decision this year, says Robert Wood Johnson Foundation senior adviser Katherine Hempstead.
Katherine Hempstead is an insurance coverage expert and senior advisor at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, (Photo11: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)
ACA critics say the law is in a "death spiral" and focus on rising premiums and the number of insurers that have dropped off the federal and state exchanges as evidence. But insurers have been increasingly leaving the "off exchange" insurance market, the new analysis shows.
People earning less than 400% of the federal poverty level — or about $97,000 for a family of four — are eligible for tax credits to help pay their premiums, but have to buy on the exchanges to get them. The tax credits increase with the premiums.
Consumers who don't get financial assistance can buy direct from insurance companies or brokers, but get the full brunt of premium hikes.
Off exchange plans sometimes have better features, such as out-of-network benefits, says Hempstead. Chicago broker Jordan Wishner says buying off the exchange also eliminates the "marketplace headache" of dealing with technical glitches and spotty call center service with Healthcare.gov.
While it may not be necessary to have the government run the exchange, Hempstead says consumers need an unbiased place to shop online to compare products.
“The federal and state exchanges are currently the most important distribution channel for individual coverage," says Hempstead. "They are critical, not just for those needing tax credits, but for the market as a whole."
Markets for wealthier people
Until recently, when insurers dropped off the exchanges, they typically remained in the off-exchange market, where higher-income people who tend to have fewer health problems shop. That was sometimes because they wanted to sell other types of insurance in the state or wanted to be able to go back to selling ACA exchange plans later if the market improved.
Now, several have given up that option. Aetna bucked that trend when it began leaving states altogether for 2017.
"I do think it’s a mess," Charleston, S.C., radiologist Tara Noone says of the individual market.
Noone, who is in private practice with her physician husband, says they pay about $1,600 a month for their family of four for insurance with an $8,000 deductible. There's only one insurer — BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina — selling plans that meet the ACA standards.
She describes "basically just paying all providers for care out-of-pocket myself and paying way too much for catastrophic coverage."
Elisa Urmston is an adjunct professor at several colleges in California. (Photo11: Courtesy of Elisa Urmston)
Competition — and subsidies — can keep insurance more affordable. In California, adjunct college professor Elisa Urmston's subsidized plan went from $150 to $240 with a $5,000 deductible this year and she had 11 insurers to choose from. Before the ACA, she went 10 years without insurance after a cancer battle made plans too pricey, so "I know from terrible. This is not terrible."
The current political debate is making Urmston very nervous: "I’m looking at this and thinking, 'Well it was nice while it lasted, but we’ll see.'"
When there's only one or two insurers left in a state or county, which insurer it is can be as important as the fact they are the only one, says Hempstead.
Big national insurers, such as United Healthcare, Aetna and Cigna are among those that have abandoned the ACA exchanges the most.
Like South Carolina, many southern states have only one insurer, but it's a non-profit Blue Cross company that only does business in that state and is less likely to leave. Most of North Carolina only has the insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, but the insurer did threaten last year to leave the exchange for 2017.
Iowa's predicament makes the opposite point. A much smaller insurer, Medica, was left with the likelihood it would be the only insurer left selling individual politics on or off the ACA exchanges after Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield dropped out.
Fears of Medica's withdrawal prompted Iowa's insurance commissioner to race to get approval for an ACA waiver that would, among other things, allow insurers there to charge older people more and younger people less than the ACA allows.
Approval is still pending and Medica filed to sell in Iowa, although it could still leave the state before mid-September as others across the country can.
Wellmark has said it would remain in the market if the plan is approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Read more:
Insurers' exits from states don't affect people who get their insurance through their employers or government program, such as Medicare or Medicaid.
Insurance companies selling outside of the ACA exchanges tend to be the larger national carriers or Blue Cross Blue Shield, says Hempstead. Smaller carriers including Molina Healthcare and Centene tend to specialize in lower income consumers. Centene said last month that it plans to sell ACA plans in Kansas, Missouri and Nevada and to expand in six other states.
"For people paying out of their own pocket, the risk pool is just bad," says Howard, referring to the number of healthy vs. sicker patients buying insurance. "There's not enough competition between providers to get rates down to a more sustainable level for insurers and their populations."
If all the insurers selling ACA plans left a state or county, there would still be some insurance available to these higher-income consumers; it's just that many experts say isn't "real insurance."
States including Iowa, Virginia and Nebraska allow insurers to sell plans that aren't comprehensive enough to meet the ACA. These include things like short-term plans, coverage for accidents or specific diseases.
This type of insurance, sold by companies including U.S. Health under brands Freedom Life Insurance and National Foundation Life Insurance, can have higher rates depending on a person's medical history and age. The ACA prohibits insurers from charging people more - or rejecting them - based on pre-existing conditions and greatly restricts how much more than can charge older people.
They're "phantom plans," says Gaba. He reported last year that U.S. Health's ACA exchange plans typically only covered one person in the states where its pricey plans were on exchanges.
Contributing: Camille Chrysostom, Erin Barry and Kate Covington
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2tANQnzNot to be confused with Parcels from the Hedge
Postbag from the Hedge was a collection of letters to, and responses from, RuneScape non-player characters, including some who may not exist in the playable game. They are often replied to in a humorous fashion, although some replies (especially those from the Chaos Elemental) hint at future updates. The letters are delivered by Postie Pete. Postbag from the Hedge replaced the old letters from the gods of RuneScape, as the gods have "neither the time nor the inclination to speak with mere mortals".
Starting with postbag 11, some issues included a section known as Wise old tips, where the Wise Old Man provided insight to the readers. Other issues included sections from various other personalities such as the Chaos Elemental, Evil Dave, or Auntie Poyson.
On 12 August 2016, all mentions of Postbag from the Hedge were completely removed from the site. Any previous links to them redirects to the Customer Support section. However, another postbag was announced in December, but it was cancelled.
List of PostbagsWhen elements of the Venezuelan military forced President Hugo Chávez from office in April, the editorial boards of several major U.S. newspapers, following the U.S. government’s lead, greeted the news with enthusiasm.
In an April 13 editorial, the New York Times triumphantly declared that Chávez’s “resignation” meant that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.” Conspicuously avoiding the word “coup,” the Times explained that Chávez “stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader.”
Calling Chávez “a ruinous demagogue,” the Times offered numerous criticisms of his policies and urged speedy new elections, saying “Venezuela urgently needs a leader with a strong democratic mandate.” A casual reader might easily have missed the Times‘ brief acknowledgement that Chávez did actually have a democratic mandate, having been “elected president in 1998.”
The paper’s one nod to the fact that military takeovers are not generally regarded as democratic was to note hopefully that with “continued civic participation,” perhaps “further military involvement” in Venezuelan politics could be kept “to a minimum.”
Three days later, Chávez had returned to power, and the Times ran a second editorial (4/16/02) half-apologizing for having gotten carried away:
In his three years in office, Mr. Chávez has been such a divisive and demagogic leader that his forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington. That reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer.
The Times stood its ground, however, on the value of a timely military coup for teaching a president a lesson, saying, “We hope Mr. Chávez will act as a more responsible and moderate leader now that he seems to realize the anger he stirred.”
The Chicago Tribune‘s editorial board seemed even more excited by the coup than the New York Times‘. An April 14 Tribune editorial called Chávez an “elected strongman” and declared: “It’s not every day that a democracy benefits from the military’s intervention to force out an elected president.”
Hoping that Venezuela could now “move on to better things,” the Tribune expressed relief that Venezuela’s president was “safely out of power and under arrest.” No longer would he be free to pursue his habits of “toasting Fidel Castro, flying to Baghdad to visit Saddam Hussein, or praising Osama bin Laden.”
(FAIR called the Tribune to ask when Chávez had “praised” bin Laden. Columnist and editorial board member Steve Chapman, who wrote the editorial, said that in attempting to locate the reference for FAIR, he discovered that he had “misread” his source, a Freedom House report. Accordingly, the paper ran a correction on April 20 indicating that Chávez had not in fact praised bin Laden.)
The Tribune stuck unapologetically to its pro-coup line even after Chávez had been restored to power. Chávez’s return may have come as “good news to Latin American governments that had condemned his removal as just another military coup,” wrote the Tribune in an April 16 editorial, “but that doesn’t mean it’s good news for democracy.” The paper seemed to suggest that the coup would have been no bad thing if not for “the heavy-handed bungling of [Chávez’s] successors.”
Long Island’s Newsday, another top-circulation paper, greeted the coup with an April 13 editorial headlined “Chávez’s Ouster Is No Great Loss.” Newsday offered a number of reasons why the coup wasn’t so bad, including Chávez’s “confrontational leadership style and left-wing populist rhetoric” and the fact that he “openly flaunted his ideological differences with Washington.” The most important reason, however, was Chávez’s “incompetence as an executive,” specifically, that he was “mismanaging the nation’s vast oil wealth.”
The Washington Post was one of the few major U.S. papers whose initial reaction was to condemn the coup outright. Though heavily critical of Chávez, the paper’s April 14 editorial led with an affirmation that “any interruption of democracy in Latin America is wrong, the more so when it involves the military.”
Curiously, however, the Washington Post took pains to insist that “there’s been no suggestion that the United States had anything to do with this Latin American coup,” even though details from Venezuela were still sketchy at that time. The New York Times, too, made a point of saying in its April 13 editorial that Washington’s hands were clean, affirming that “rightly, [Chávez’s] removal was a purely Venezuelan affair.”
Ironically, news articles in both the Washington Post and the New York Times have since raised serious questions about whether the U.S. may in fact have been involved. Neither paper, however, has returned to the question with a follow-up editorial.Exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden has given a rare interview to the Guardian, discussing—amongst other issues—a shocking culture at the National Security Agency (NSA) of sharing “sexually compromising” images of people.
During the interview, Snowden also opined on the challenges facing journalism today, and the difficulty for ageing legislators trying to understand technology, which he described as “probably the most important factor that explains failures of oversight.”
The 29-year-old former NSA contractor has been in an undisclosed location in Russia for almost a year, having fled the United States after leaking hundreds of thousands of top secret documents detailing state surveillance.
Since the initial revelations about the NSA’s PRISM program in June of last year, the Hawaiian has kept a relatively low profile, not getting directly involved with reporting, and he maintains that he kept no copies of the documents for himself. He has now given an unprecedented interview to the newspaper that led early reporting on the “Snowden Files,” being interviewed by editor Alan Rusbridger and journalist Ewan MacAskill.
Perhaps the most shocking revelation, Snowden asserted that there is a culture of sharing intimate and “sexually compromising” material harvested from unwitting surveilled citizens at the spy agency, and is considered one of the “fringe benefits of surveillance positions.” Describing a situation in which one intelligence operative shows such an image to another, and sends it round the office, Rusbridger pressed him on whether he’s seen this happen personally. “Absolutely,” Snowden responds.
“It’s routine enough … depending on the company you keep, it’s more or less frequent.” Nobody ever finds out about these invasions—which are almost certainly violations of official NSA policy—because the auditing process is “incredibly weak,” said Snowden.
“A 29-year-old walked out of the NSA with all of their private records. What does that say about their auditing?” Snowden joked.
An abridged portion of the interview uploaded to YouTube
Also discussed was the overall response to the revelations, with Snowden arguing that all those who have “an obligation to protect the privacy interests of their clients [are] facing a new and challenging world”—including “lawyers, doctors, investigators, accountants.” He singles out journalists as being put particularly at risk by the NSA’s surveillance programs. “The work of journalism has become immeasurably harder,” he says.
Snowden strongly refuted allegations that he is in the pay of the Russian government or has become an agent of the Kremlin, calling them “not credible.”
“If the government had the tiniest shred of evidence, not even that I was working for the Russian government, that I was associating with the Russian government, it’d be on the front page of the New York Times by lunchtime,” Snowden said.
This is at odds with claims from an ex-KGB spy—who hasn’t been to Russia in over a decade—who alleges that Snowden meets FSB agents twice a week “over plenty of food and drink.”
Snowden also touched upon George Orwell’s 1984 (“an important book, but written a long time ago, and we shouldn’t bound ourselves to the limits of the author’s imagination”), Google (he doesn’t use it), and the problem of legislating technology. “Technical literacy in our society is a rare and precious resource,” and a lack of understanding goes a long way to explain the bloat of the surveillance state, Snowden claims.
It’s unclear when Snowden will ever set foot on American soil again—though U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has offered to fly him home to stand trial. Snowden expressed doubts over whether he could possibly receive a fair trial, though he said he was “not going to presume” what his potential jurors should think. Nonetheless, the whistleblower remained stoic: “If I end up in chains in Guantanamo, I can live with that.”
The full interview will be published in the Guardian on Friday, July 18.
Image remix by Rob PriceCatholic priest: No communion for Obama supporters
COLUMBIA, South Carolina -- A Roman Catholic priest has told parishioners they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina, that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.
"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.
"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil," he said. "Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."
Obama defeated Republican John McCain in the Nov. 4 election to become America's first black president. South Carolina, in the conservative South, was won by McCain.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, many bishops spoke out on abortion more boldly than four years earlier, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back.
A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.
But bishops differ on whether Catholic lawmakers -- and voters -- should refrain from receiving Communion if they diverge from church teaching on abortion. Each bishop sets policy in his own diocese.
In their annual fall meeting, the nation's Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights.
According to national exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics chose Obama, who is Protestant. In South Carolina, voters in Greenville County -- traditionally seen as among the state's most conservative areas -- went 61 percent for the Republican, and 37 percent for Obama.
"It was not an attempt to make a partisan point," Newman said in a telephone interview Thursday. "In fact, in this election, for the sake of argument, if the Republican candidate had been pro-abortion, and the Democratic candidate had been pro-life, everything that I wrote would have been exactly the same."
Conservative Catholics criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 for supporting abortion rights, with a few Catholic bishops saying Kerry, a Catholic, should refrain from receiving Holy Communion because his views were contrary to church teachings.
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she had not heard of other churches taking this position in reaction to Obama's win.
A Boston-based group that supports Catholic Democrats questioned the move, saying it was too extreme.
"Father Newman is off-base," said Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats. "He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did.... Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Senators Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words."
A man who has attended St. Mary's for 18 years said he welcomed Newman's message and anticipated it would inspire further discussion at the church.
"I don't understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who's a pro-abortion candidate," said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. "You're talking about the murder of innocent beings."Anti-Donald Trump forces held a slim hope Sunday 37 Republican members of the Electoral College would revolt and deny the president-elect the White House, but chances of that happening were slim.
The 538 electors meet Monday in their respective state capitals to vote for president, many of them with their hands tied by state law to cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in their states.
State certified popular vote results show Trump leading Democrat Hillary Clinton 306 electoral votes to 232, though she won the popular vote, the result of large margins in California, New York and Illinois where major metropolitan areas overwhelmingly went for the former secretary of state. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to capture the presidency. Otherwise, the election goes to the House — and that’s only happened once, in 1824 when the House voted John Quincy Adams into office, rejecting Andrew Jackson, who had received a plurality of the votes.
Since Clinton conceded Nov. 9, much speculation has swirled around whether electors are bound to follow the popular results or whether they can exercise discretion and choose another candidate. So-called Hamilton Electors — so named after Alexander Hamilton for his treatise on the role of electors in the Federalist Papers — have been urging Republican electors who do not support Trump to stand up and “save this country.”
The Electoral College was set up to prevent “the tyranny of the majority” and to prevent someone “who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications” from taking office. It also was set up to give smaller states a louder voice since each state gets votes for each of its senators as well as the number of members in its House delegation. If the election is thrown into the House, each state gets one vote. Trump won 30 of the 50 states.
The Hamilton Electors are led by a pair of Democrats. Bret Chiafalo of Washington state said the Electoral College should act as an “emergency brake.”
“If only 37 Republican electors change their vote, Donald Trump will not have the 270 electoral votes he needs to be president,” Chiafalo said in a video explaining the purpose of the Electoral College. “Thirty-seven patriots can save this country.”
Among Chiafalo’s arguments is that the Electoral College is obligated to prevent a person with ties to foreign countries from taking office. The argument gains momentum amid an assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia actively tried to interfere with the election on Trump’s behalf. The fact that Trump has refused to release his tax returns and has had nothing but fawning praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin also has lent weight to the movement.
However, intelligence officials have declined to brief the electors on the Russian mischief.
Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor helping to organize the stop-Trump movement, told reporters Thursday at least 20 electors were considering a revolt.
“If it’s clear that it doesn’t make any sense to come out and vote against Donald Trump, I’m sure many of those people won’t,” he said. “If it’s close to 37, or people believe that it is 37, then I think that will give people the courage they need to step up.”
The Associated Press, however, reported the chances are just about nil.
Related ArticlesValve made a post about updating the curator system this fall. The update was posted on October 26th, 2017, discussing why Valve thinks the curator system is important and how it helps with game discovery and giving developers a more pronounced platform on Steam. Well, SJWs became incensed because the post originally had an image of the Techraptor curation page in the background, and so they went and fulminated TechRaptor online for being pro-#GamerGate.
Anti-#GamerGate Journalists from Kotaku, Gamasutra, Rock Paper Shotgun, and Savvy Gamer alerted Valve and their Twitter followers about the image after they saw it on the update. It was a concentrated effort to denigrate Techraptor in the eyes of Valve. Valve did change the image in the background of the post, as spotted by Kotaku in Action.
New curator update coming to Steam, and first thing your see is a grumblegorp curator being featured https://t.co/GJmywf5Z9w — Spewy Docter (@LewieP) October 26, 2017
The image first changed to IGN, as indicated in the follow-up post below, where Valve swapped out the background image showing Techr |
don't know what to do, its been six months. I've never even dated before... for God's sake look at me."
"Uh..."
"See, you can tell. I was married for eighteen years, I have no idea what to do. I can't even cook noodles. Aw, hell, I have no idea what to do. I tried to do the whole single scene thing, but I'm a fish out of water if there ever was one..."
"It takes some time..." I tried to console him cautiously. He motioned me into his office, trying to force a smile. Against my better judgement, I walked in and sat down.
"You, you're a popular guy, right? With the ladies?" he asked. I raised my left hand in response, showing him the wedding ring. He nodded, then looked up to the ceiling, as if searching for what to say.
"But you're used to the partying scene? You can do the whole hippy-hop music stuff, right?"
I nodded slowly, unsure of where this was going. "Hip hop..." I corrected.
He smiled as if I had just unlocked a great secret for him... "I tried all that stuff, I've been to the nightclubs. I'm just doing something wrong." Said the overweight, balding Vice President who I had caught masturbating and drinking what most 14 year-old girls have grown out of, right in his office.
" I want to be able to go out and talk to women. I want to go out and drink beers and dance and have casual relationships, is that an unreasonable request?"
"I guess not..." I squirmed.
"Can you help me?"
My mind raced. I had no idea what he was asking me to do, but then suddenly something clicked in my head. I could turn this thing to my advantage.
"This... stuff tonight," I started, pointing at the computer, "this is all our secret, right?"
He looked shocked, "Of course... why?"
"I'll help you out. But you have to help me out. Have you ever heard of Nosy McInmybidness?"
"Yes, she's up from corporate auditing the facilites."
"Well, she's all over me. You know I've been here for a while, you know I'm a good employee. How about you just tell her that I'm on your budget, in your department. That way she'll get off of my case..."
He raised an eyebrow, smiling with the corner of his mouth, "That may be possible. And if I do?"
"If you do, I'll help you get "˜back on your feet', as far as the social life."
He reached his hand across the table, and said "Deal."
I looked down at his hand, then back up at him, grimacing mildly... he quickly withdrew it, replying "Oh, yeah. Right."
I got up to walk out of the room, then looked back at him. I smiled for a second. "MILFhunter dot com, sir. Username is xxx, password is xxx. Knock yourself out." With that, I walked out of his office, and back into the world of feeling secure with my job.
Come Monday morning, and on all the glorious mornings thereafter, I never again heard another word from the "Recruiter".
Epilogue
It was inevitable. I had been saved by a Vice President who played with himself in his rich Corinthian leather chair at work, I had to hold up my end of the bargain. And I did.
About two weeks after the episode that still haunts my dreams, I convinced the wife and a few of her work friends to join me and Vice President "Midlife crisis" at the bar. The night began poorly, and went downhill from there. When we first walked in, I spotted him, sitting at a corner booth, tearing the label off a bottle of beer. We went over and sat down, and he perked right up - he was a talkative little bastard, I ended up learning his entire life story - except when a female walked by - at which point he would clam up like a four year old boy. I knew that it would be a difficult situation - especially after two hours and about 5 more beers when he handed me a napkin and asked me to "give it to that sugar bunny of a waitress." I nodded and stood up, looking down at the wadded up paper.
"You are a very beautiful woman. What time do you get off of work? Wave at me if interested."
I resolved about two words into the note that I couldn't give it to anybody... so I walked to the waitress, and pretended like I was talking to her at the crowded bar, which seemed to satisfy Paul. As I was doing this, my wife came up to me and gave me the equivalent of "We've got to go...", so I had to think quickly.
"Hey, how does Sandy like Paul?" I asked her. Sandy was a co-worker of my wife, moderately attractive, if you like the 'bleached blonde 80's pop star who got run over by a tractor' look.
She eyed me curiously... "Why?"
"Have her come over here..." I said. My wife waved her over to the bar, and she stumbled half drunkenly towards us. I explained to her that Paul was really lonely, and was only looking for a friend to pay some attention to him for the night. I also mentioned that he was horribly rich (an assumption), and that he was really a fun guy to be around (a lie). She seemed disinterested at the beginning, but then she took a different approach.
"What's in it for me?" she asked.
"What, like money?" I replied. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for pimping, so I was kind of rusty when thrown directly into the situation.
"I want one of your puppies..." she stated matter-of-factly.
I glanced at my wife, who shrugged. A week prior, our hounddog had had a massive litter of pups, and we were having some trouble finding buyers for all of them. Now, Sandy was a nice woman, with kids, but very poor... I didn't see the harm.
"Um, okay." She smiled, then pointed at me, her finger waving drunkenly in my face.
"No sex.." she stated, then proceeded to turn around and walk towards our booth, sliding into the seat next to Paul. My wife and I ended up paying our tab, then sliding out of there for the evening, all the while wondering what the heck was going to happen. The suspense was with us all weekend, until I returned to work the following Monday morning.
The first message on my Inbox was from Paul. It stated simply "Your wife's friend has GREAT hands."
I sat back, smiling. A puppy for a hand job, and the preservation of the American Dream.
All in all, a wonderful trade.
Chapter 5
"Hey, do you work here?"
What a loaded question, I thought with a pause. Now, technically, I "work" here - as in, I get paid by this company, in exchange for reading the forums and drinking Mountain Dew all day (at least, that's what my brain has rationalized). I understand that it is really a buyers market on people with my specific talents (IE, laziness and/or caffeine addiction) - so I better play it cool when questioned. I nodded yes to the man who had asked the question.
"Cool, dog..." he replied, whipping out a clipboard. I glanced around the dark parking lot, wondering why the fuck I had chosen this time in particular to come out for a quick cigarette. It was about 7:30 at night, I was the last person in the office, and I had thought it might be a good idea to sneak out for one last smoke in the cool night air before heading out. I normally don't stay past 4 or 5, but today I was supposed to meet my wife for dinner at a restaurant near my office, so I figured might as well stay at work and fuck around on the forums until the time came.
"What do you need?" I asked the man, pretending to be in a hurry. I'm not horribly happy dealing with... you know... random people in general. Especially when they want something.
"I got this delivery here for you guys..." he replied, thrusting the clipboard in my face. He gestured back towards his very old panel truck, idiling next to the loading dock.
"Shipping and receiving is open until like 5, man. I think you should come back tomorrow morning..."
"Aw, come on man, I'm already running late..." he whined, pushing the clipboard further into my face. I scanned his clothing and the truck, yet was unable to figure out what company he may work for. There was, of course, the chance that he was a spy. I took one last drag off of my cigarette and was about to reply when he cut me off...
"But it's CHRISTMAS, man."
"It's December third..."
"My KIDS don't know the difference..." the man almost pleaded. At this point, I started to get a little uneasy about the situation. I just nodded slowly and took the clipboard. The man smiled and pointed to the line where I had to sign... and I accepted the delivery as "Alexander G. Bell", because I'm not retarded enough to put my name on anything when it comes to this company.
In short order, I was presented with three boxes, ranging from very large to very small. As the man pulled away, I looked at the address labels, which were hastilly attached post-it notes with masking tape. They were intended for a co-worker who had been released back in October over a theft scandal.
I opened the door and started to kick the boxes inside, weighing my options. There was no return address, no shipping label, and no indication of whom the boxes were delivered by (crazy jittery guy driving a shitty truck). Anthrax or diamonds, I was clueless as to the contents - but curiosity ended up getting me in the end, and I manuevered all the boxes into my empty office. The thought of leaving these boxes outside the door of receiving crossed my mind - but they hardly seemed important, and were intended for somebody who nobody had seen in months. I proceeded to tear into the largest of the three boxes. Nothing could prepare me for what lay within...
Globes.
Not just one globe, but four globes. And a note. A cryptic note.
"Hope you HAve a GLOBErious HAliday!"
Yes. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over. Four spherical representations of the planet earth, all sitting on my office floor - accompanied by a note of questionable origin. I slowly moved over to the middle sized box, wondering what the hell could possibly be inside.
More globes. Two to be exact, yet this time without a note. Now, I don't work in any industry that involves High School History teachers, cartographers, or maniacal dictators. The purpose of the gigantic, plastic planets was lost on me at the time, but I continued in my opening process. As I tore into the smallest box, I was greeted with yet another note, this one a bit more lengthy.
"Figured you could use this stuff for a party. We haven't talked in a while, make sure to message me. - Candice"
Inside the box were dozens upon dozens of packets. Packets of... seeds. Wildflower seeds.
And, of course, combs. Fourteen Ace combs.
I stood up and backed slowly away from the loot, plopping down in my chair. A cold winter wind shook the plane of glass behind me as I stared blankly down at the assortment of "party" items on the floor. Globes. Seeds. Combs. Party.
I needed a drink.
But first, I needed some kind of kind reassurance that I was still sane. Just the slightest comforting voice that said to me "Hey, you're OK man. It's the WORLD that is fucked up..." I tried my wife on her cell phone - no luck. Without thinking, I dialed the number to my old office down south.
Now, I don't really work anymore, but there was a time that I was a manager of a very large department at this company. For years I hired, trained, molded, and sometimes fired dozens and dozens of people. Relationships were formed, relationships that carried on to this day. I still get EMails and phone calls from some of my old employees - asking for my advice on certain things. I knew that one of my dearest work friends was on the night shift that evening in our corporate office, so I dialed his direct line.
"Hey, I've got a bit of a problem..." I started, " I've come into possession of a goodly number of, um, random items."
"Like what?" My friend asked.
"Oh, like... um, globes."
There was a bit of laughter on the other end of the phone, then a quick reply "Probably for the management types there. Everybody has a globe."
This made me think. I closed my eyes and thought back to as many offices that I could remember in this company - and a startling revelation was had. EVERYBODY had a globe, but I never realized it until the motherload of earthly scale-modeling was dumped into my lap. I mean, really, how often do you notice a globe? When you see one, do you ever stop and wonder why its there? A decoration of sorts, or something more sinister...
"Hey, I've got a question for you..." I was snapped back to reality by the change of subject. My friend went into a long situation about a problem that he was having with a certain aspect of his job (the job that is done by the department that I used to run). I listened intently, then suggested a course of action that, although somewhat against the norm, would alleviate the problem in a timely and orderly fashion. My friend thanked me and hung up - and I walked out the door, leaving the random items sitting on the floor of my office, vowing to deal with it at a later date.
FIVE DAYS LATER
There's only so much that you can do with a globe, I had come to find out. I had taken one of them out and placed it upon my desk, and had been staring at it off and on for a day and a half. So far, the uses for a globe, as discovered by me through intense testing, were:
Spin real fast. Use your index and middle finger to "run" across the equator. Try to step only on land (for added difficulty points). Play "President of the United States". Spin globe real fast, close your eyes, point to place on globe. Repeat three times, declare the three indicated locations as your own personal "Axis of Evil" (Mine is Spain, Arizona, and the Indian Ocean).
As I sat, slack jawed, staring at the globe... something truly horrible happened. My door swung open, and standing at the entrance to my office, was a Vice President. I knew the man well, and had worked in close conjunction with him numerous times in my old position. I hadn't seen nor heard from him since my move to the remote satellite location in Detroit. I had no idea he was even in the state, let alone the office this morning (I was unaware there was an all-employee management meeting in town). I nearly froze in fear as my right hand subconsciously scrambled for the mouse, minimizing everything on my computer screen.
"Mr. Moonshine", he began, "how's it going? Long time, no see."
"Very well sir," I managed to form the reply. My eyes darted left and right, searching for anything incriminating in my office. Aside from OSHA posters from wall to wall, and a big pile of seeds, combs, and globes in the corner, everything looked almost professional.
"I've got a problem," he began. I gestured towards a chair across from my desk, snapping back as quickly as possible into whatever management mode I still had encoded in my brain. "Well, its everybody's problem. I think you know who I'm referring to."
I shook my head.
"Mr. Dipshit," he continued, and I nodded. Mr. Dipshit was technically my old boss when I worked at the corporate office - but he was the epitome of everything that you would not want in an executive position. He was clueless as to the specifics of the job, poorly groomed, racist, a liar and a crook - who took personal vendettas to the next level. He also despised me from the start, as I was constantly making him look bad - because of my longevity at the company, I was friends with quite a few people in senior management, and this always frightened him. Instead of coming to him, most would go behind his back and come to me - so he had been gunning for me the entire time that we worked together. However, given my current situation, I figured that he had all but forgotten about me. I was quite wrong though.
"Mr. Dipshit calls me yesterday and says that you're going behind his back and trying to purposely sabotage his operation..."
I blinked slightly and asked "he said what?"
Mr. VP smiled and continued "Oh, yeah - he's up in a roar. He swears that you're sitting here running the company from your desk."
I attempted to stifle a giggle. Mr. VP (who hates Mr. Dipshit as much as the next guy), nodded and said "And I told him that I almost guarantee that you run his department from your desk. I've talked to some of his people down there, and they all insist that you're always there to help them out - whereas most of the time they can never find him."
I sensed that the conversation might be taking a bad turn, so I tried to turn it back, "I never try to run anything. If people need help, I give that assistance - we're all on the same team sir. But, if Mr. Dipshit feels like I'm encroaching, I'll back off and let it be."
Mr. VP raised his hand and shook his head, "No, no. I want to make sure that things run right. I know that you're horribly busy up here, but I want to make sure that you're available for consultation, if need be."
I nodded, pretending that - in addition to my tremendous workload of posting on the SA forums - I would sacrifice and answer a couple of EMails a day, then asked, "But what about Dipshit?"
"Don't worry about Dipshit," VP replied, snickering, " He's got a hardon for you, Moonshine. In more ways than one."
I tried not to show any emotion as my brain tried to rationalize that statement. He couldn't have meant what I thought that he meant, right? I mean, there's no way that a troll-like human being who's never been introduced to a Q-Tip or nosehair trimmer could be... no. No. No. Cleanse my thoughts.
"Heh" I replied, my worried eyes betraying my true feelings.
"I knew I could count on you, Moonshine." Mr VP said, as he stood up and walked towards the door. He stopped for a second, looking back at me. "What is your title?"
I snapped back to reality as soon as possible, and tried the soft answer "Still a manager..."
VP nodded, then pointed at my desk, "I'll make sure you get the management globe," he promised, then walked out the door.
Epilogue
My globe with the executive wooden stand appeared a few days later, and now occupies a place of honor in my small office. Every once in a while, when I leave my door open, people will walk by and glance in - and, although nearly imperceptable - I can tell that their posture straightens up a bit when their eyes come across that piece of furniture - that simple little object which says to the world "I am a monster of the corporate world. Within twenty seconds I can tell you the capitol of Madagascar. Now, fetch me some coffee."
The six original globes still sit, stacked up, beside my bookcase. What to do with them remains a mystery - I'm absolutely positive that one is earmarked for my SA Secret Santa, but as for the other 5, perhaps I'll just leave them on random people's desks at work. If the secretary in accounting seems to be having a bad day, she may just come in the next day to a bright, shiny, blue ball of plastic sitting on her desk. And maybe, just maybe, that will be all the motivation needed for her to continue striving on in the corporate jungle.
The seeds and combs have all been distributed by random sampling. In the spirit of the season, I went through our Microsoft Outlook address box and picked the random names of employees all across America, and sent them manilla envelopes filled with either seeds or combs, or a combination thereof - no return address, just little notes like "Merry Christmas, here's a comb", and "SEEDSions Greetings!". The poor man's Kris Kringle, I surely am - spreading wildflowers and well groomed hair companywide.
The phone rang bright and early this monday morning. I finished the paragraph that I was reading on ESPN.COM, and went for the phone.
"Mr. Moonshine!" came the voice from a cell phone.
"Mr. Vice President!" I replied.
"Just checking up on you - anything negative from Mr. Dipshit?"
Now, I had received a grand total of one EMail since the last conversation, and had solved that minor problem in a grand total of five minutes. But, he didn't have to know that...
"Well, there's a lot of stuff, but I'm keeping it in line, sir."
"Very good, continue 'Running the company', Moonshine!" he said with a laugh.
"Will do," I replied, and hung up the phone. I thought for a second, looked down at my cellphone, and proceeded to "run the company" in the most productive fashion that I could think of...
I beat my high score in "Snake".
SourcesImage copyright Hertfordshire Police Image caption The bronze "Curved Neck Grace" sculpture had been stolen from its owner's home in 2009
A sculptor says he is "amazed" one of his works which had been stolen years ago has been recovered after being spotted on television.
John W Mills' bronze horse, "Curved Neck Grace", was taken from a garden in St Ipployts, Hertfordshire, in 2009.
It was spotted by the owner's daughter during a BBC Inside Out East report from a traveller's site in Dunstable.
"I never expected to see it again," Mr Mills said after police brought the horse statue to his studio to identify.
"Normally when a sculpture gets stolen, you suspect it's either gone for scrap, or out of the country or destroyed.
"I was amazed to hear it was so close to home."
Hertfordshire Police said the rightful owner had bought the sculpture in 1983 and had displayed it in her garden for 26 years before it was stolen.
Image caption The sculpture, pictured underneath a tree in the foreground, was recovered from a site in Dunstable
The owner's daughter spotted what she believed to be the statue when watching Inside Out in November, before contacting Mr Mills and the police.
"As soon as we received the report, we quickly began to make inquiries and were delighted to confirm that it was the stolen 'Curved Neck Grace' when we visited the site," said Sgt Jon Vine.
"We hope that the statue will now go to a good home and will be displayed in a safe environment where people can fully appreciate it."
Mr Mills said he would welcome the opportunity to work on the statue again.
"If it goes to auction, I'd like the opportunity to make sure it's in good condition and has new fixings.
"It would be very nice to work on a piece that old."It all started when Reuters published a story about the positive cognitive effects of bad moods. Too bad the "study" doesn't exist and neither does the journal it reportedly comes from, says science blogger Michael Slezak.
This week dozens of news outlets invented a scientific journal and reported on the reporting of the reporting of "a study" that was published (and reported on) at least six months ago. This ridiculous game of Chinese whispers gave us an insight into the way science journalism can (and does) go terribly wrong. It started when Reuters published a story about the positive cognitive effects of bad moods. Reuters reported that the study "was published in the November/December edition of the Australian Science journal". Wow! That makes it sound like it was published in the equivalent of Science, only for Australia. The only thing is, there is no peer-reviewed journal called Australian Science and there was no single relevant study. Rather, it was several conducted over the past five years, none of which were published more recently that six months ago. Indeed, the most recent study was widely reported time. And what about the Australian Science journal? Well, there is a popular magazine called Australasian Science that carried an interesting feature about the various studies published over the past five years. But that is a long way from what the Reuters story communicated. The Reuters piece was eventually (partly) corrected but not before it was syndicated to many news outlets in Australia and around the world. Other news outlets made the matter worse by "reporting" on Reuters’ reporting of the piece. In doing so, the Daily Mail in the UK, notorious for its bad science reporting, changed the name again of the magazine to The Australian Science Journal, thus endowing it with a false air of authority. The result is dozens of articles published around the world giving the false impression that a new study was published in a science journal that doesn’t exist. Good science reporting is essential for the public to make informed choices and it must be better than this. Michael Slezak is a freelance journalist, philosophy teacher and runs the science blog Good, Bad, and BogusThose who reject the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming often invoke Galileo as an example of when the scientific minority overturned the majority view. In reality, climate contrarians have almost nothing in common with Galileo, whose conclusions were based on empirical scientific evidence, supported by many scientific contemporaries, and persecuted by the religious-political establishment. Nevertheless, there’s a slim chance that the 2–3% minority is correct and the 97% climate consensus is wrong.
To evaluate that possibility, a new paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology examines a selection of contrarian climate science research and attempts to replicate their results. The idea is that accurate scientific research should be replicable, and through replication we can also identify any methodological flaws in that research. The study also seeks to answer the question, why do these contrarian papers come to a different conclusion than 97% of the climate science literature?
This new study was authored by Rasmus Benestad, myself (Dana Nuccitelli), Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, and John Cook. Benestad (who did the lion’s share of the work for this paper) created a tool using the R programming language to replicate the results and methods used in a number of frequently-referenced research papers that reject the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. In using this tool, we discovered some common themes among the contrarian research papers.
Cherry picking was the most common characteristic they shared. We found that many contrarian research papers omitted important contextual information or ignored key data that did not fit the research conclusions. For example, in the discussion of a 2011 paper by Humlum et al. in our supplementary material, we note,
The core of the analysis carried out by [Humlum et al.] involved wavelet-based curve-fitting, with a vague idea that the moon and solar cycles somehow can affect the Earth’s climate. The most severe problem with the paper, however, was that it had discarded a large fraction of data for the Holocene which did not fit their claims.
When we tried to reproduce their model of the lunar and solar influence on the climate, we found that the model only simulated their temperature data reasonably accurately for the 4,000-year period they considered. However, for the 6,000 years’ worth of earlier data they threw out, their model couldn’t reproduce the temperature changes. The authors argued that their model could be used to forecast future climate changes, but there’s no reason to trust a model forecast if it can’t accurately reproduce the past.
We found that the ‘curve fitting’ approach also used in the Humlum paper is another common theme in contrarian climate research. ‘Curve fitting’ describes taking several different variables, usually with regular cycles, and stretching them out until the combination fits a given curve (in this case, temperature data). It’s a practice I discuss in my book, about which mathematician John von Neumann once said,
With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
Good modeling will constrain the possible values of the parameters being used so that they reflect known physics, but bad ‘curve fitting’ doesn’t limit itself to physical realities. For example, we discuss research by Nicola Scafetta and Craig Loehle, who often publish papers trying to blame global warming on the orbital cycles of Jupiter and Saturn.
This particular argument also displays a clear lack of plausible physics, which was another common theme we identified among contrarian climate research. In another example, Ferenc Miskolczi argued in 2007 and 2010 papers that the greenhouse effect has become saturated, but as I also discuss in my book, the ‘saturated greenhouse effect’ myth was debunked in the early 20th century. As we note in the supplementary material to our paper, Miskolczi left out some important known physics in order to revive this century-old myth.
This represents just a small sampling of the contrarian studies and flawed methodologies that we identified in our paper; we examined 38 papers in all. As we note, the same replication approach could be applied to papers that are consistent with the expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and undoubtedly some methodological errors would be uncovered. However, these types of flaws were the norm, not the exception, among the contrarian papers that we examined. As lead author Rasmus Benestad wrote,
we specifically chose a targeted selection to find out why they got different answers, and the easiest way to do so was to select the most visible contrarian papers... Our hypothesis was that the chosen contrarian paper was valid, and our approach was to try to falsify this hypothesis by repeating the work with a critical eye. If we could find flaws or weaknesses, then we would be able to explain why the results were different from the mainstream. Otherwise, the differences would be a result of genuine uncertainty.
After all this, the conclusions were surprisingly unsurprising in my mind. The replication revealed a wide range of types of errors, shortcomings, and flaws involving both statistics and physics.
You may have noticed another characteristic of contrarian climate research – there is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming. Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that’s overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.
If any of the contrarians were a modern-day Galileo, he would present a theory that’s supported by the scientific evidence and that’s not based on methodological errors. Such a sound theory would convince scientific experts, and a consensus would begin to form. Instead, as our paper shows, the contrarians have presented a variety of contradictory alternatives based on methodological flaws, which therefore have failed to convince scientific experts.
Human-caused global warming is the only exception. It’s based on overwhelming, consistent scientific evidence and has therefore convinced over 97% of scientific experts that it’s correct.Celebrating the movement of people – Tim Farron Out next month is The Alternative: Towards a new progressive politics edited by Green MP Caroline Lucas, Labour MP Lisa Nandy and Liberal Democrat candidate (and biographer of Nick Clegg) Chris Bowers. Its blurb says, “There is a growing recognition that cross-party cooperation among the progressives could reinvigorate politics and inspire a credible alternative to the Conservatives. Those who want a good society can and must work together – and, by doing so, they can deliver better answers and more inclusive government.” Among the contributors are Norman Lamb (as revealed in LDN #75) and Lib Dem leader Tim Farron. Farron’s chapter looks at immigration and you can read it exclusively below. The book itself is out next month and can be pre-ordered here. Celebrating the movement of people – Tim Farron For hundreds of years, migration has enriched our language, culture and society, and has helped to drive innovation, productivity and economic growth. Over the decades, we’ve seen ebbs and flows in how many people come into the UK, but over the last decade, due in large part to the adoption of free movement of people in the European Union, we have seen sustained higher levels of immigration. Sadly, misreporting and exaggeration by some politicians, pressure groups and sections of the press have turned this debate toxic, with immigrants blamed for all the ills of the country. This culminated in immigration playing a central though bogus and misrepresented role in the EU referendum debate, and following the narrow Leave vote, there is a bigger responsibility than ever for sensible, progressive politicians to frame the arguments in favour of immigration in a way that first acknowledges genuine concerns and then seeks to address them. There are challenges posed by high levels of immigration, and we should address them positively, not ignore them. A quick glance at national polls in the early part of this year – before the referendum debate got into full swing – shows that most people consider immigration to be the biggest challenge facing the country at the moment. However, it is striking that when people are asked what challenges face them and their family, immigration concerns drop out almost completely. Most people are scared of the abstract principle, rather than because they feel the impact of any problems themselves. Some of this has been to do with the pressures behind the EU referendum, but it is very unlikely that it will change. People will still come to the UK from overseas, whether under freedom of movement within the EU (in the short term) or migration from anywhere in the world. We will still face many challenges, and the fact that the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean is expected to be three times bigger in 2016 than it was in 2015 will ensure that the issue will not go quietly away. Too often progressives have resorted to burying their heads in the sand and hoping nobody asks about immigration on the doorstep or in media interviews, or, worse, defaulting to the easy attack of implying that everyone with worries about immigration is stupid or bigoted. It is high time for progressive politicians to take a fresh approach that address the concerns head-on. We need to have positive solutions and a clear vision. Progressives need to be making the positive case for immigration. There are many reasons and arguments for this. Firstly, a very simple view – immigrants are people too. They deserve opportunity and freedoms. This applies especially strongly to those seeking asylum. We know that people driven from their homes as a result of war and persecution deserve our help and support. The British public are at heart fair-minded people, and just as there was mass support for the Kindertransport, to save thousands of innocent children from the horrors of Nazi Germany, so we must muster support for the millions displaced from Syria and elsewhere. Of course we cannot house all of them, but then not all want to be housed – most just want to be able to go and live in their homes in peace. But we can make a difference to many thousands of people who need our help. So there is a clear moral case for immigration – and for many of us that is compelling. But we should also not be afraid to make other, more pragmatic cases – especially to persuade those unmoved by the moral arguments. We should be comfortable highlighting the benefits immigration brings to those of us already here. We should demonstrate that self-interest and generosity are in this case aligned. We need only to look to the National Health Service to see how important immigration is – statistics produced by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) showed that, in 2014, 26 per cent of NHS doctors were non-British, and the British Medical Association have been clear that, without immigrants, ‘many NHS services would struggle to provide effective care to their patients’. With an ageing population placing more pressure on the NHS, immigrants will be instrumental going forward. The challenge for progressive politicians is to formulate and articulate an immigration policy that makes the most of the many benefits of immigration while reassuring British nationals that the overall balance is right. Changes to the current rules will happen as a result of the EU referendum – progressives need to use what influence they have to ensure that the new system is fair to everyone. Sadly, there are those who exploit the rules – we must be robust in tackling labour exploitation and those who abuse the spirit of Britain’s willingness to welcome people from abroad. Migration does not benefit everyone equally A good place to start is to accept that, without certain policies in place, immigration does not benefit everyone equally, all the time. Much like trade, the overall economic benefit of immigration is indisputable, but that does not automatically equate to better circumstances for all. Current policies in the UK combine with immigration to make life harder for some people. The cry ‘immigrants take our jobs’ is crude and reductionist, but, as is the case with the trade of British versus Chinese steel, ultimately capitalism is driven by competition, and immigration introduces more competition into the labour market at the same time as it fills its holes. As the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) highlights, where immigrants do compete with the native work force, it tends to be a very localised problem and very much dependent on the specific industry of the area (MAC, 2015). This is supported by research by Christian Dustmann from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at University College London, which shows that while the majority of workers are either unaffected by migrant labour or positively affected, there is a negative impact on those with the lowest incomes. Often this is not because most migrants are low-skilled themselves, but because educational attainment and work experience do not translate well across borders, meaning many migrants find themselves ‘downskilling’ on arrival in the UK. Thus, when an employer has the choice of a British employee with low level skills or an immigrant with greater skills who is willing to take lower-paid work, the British worker is likely to lose out. So how can we make sure that migrants in the labour market do not undercut local |
23-man rosters. Now that we know the 736 players who will be going to Russia, we can get a better grasp on how things are going to shape up.
Let’s have a look at some of the odds changes at Bovada since our last update.
Bet on the World Cup here!
Brazil is Now Favored to Win
Germany had been favored to win the 2018 World Cup for what seemed like an eternity but after a friendly loss to Austria, Brazil slid into the top spot at +400 with Die Mannschaft slipping to +475.
This does seem like a bit of an overreaction given the Germans’ dominance in qualifying but when you consider that the defending World Cup champs haven’t won a game in 2018, it’s a tough move to argue.
Joachim Low made headlines when he left Manchester City standout Leroy Sane off the squad after a race for the final few spots concluded in what the longtime national team manager referred to as a “photo finish.”
Brazil, meanwhile, has done nothing but pour in results. They scored two spectacular goals against Croatia in a friendly fixture of their own and The Green and Yellow look like justifiable favorites.
The two nations are actually lined up to meet in the World Cup final if they both win their groups as they’re expected to. Yes, they’ll also have to win three knockout games each to make this happen but wouldn’t that be something?
Poland’s Odds Plummet
The Poles were always going to be long shots to win the World Cup but they were gutted recently to find out that their star center back Kamil Glik would have to miss Russia 2018 with a shoulder injury he sustained attempting a bicycle kick in training.
Poland’s odds immediately dropped from +6600 to +8000 and you can likely write them off with the heart of their defense now ripped out of an already thin lineup.
Uruguay on the Rise
A team to watch at the World Cup, Uruguay’s odds to win have been steadily increasing since groups were drawn in November and they reached an all-time high at +2500 when they announced the 23-man squad.
Not as reliant as they once were on star strikers Edinson Cavani and Luis Suarez, the Uruguayans have a solid core of gifted midfielders and one of the strongest backlines in the tournament – just ask Atletico fans.
This team is no joke and should be seriously considered in World Cup futures with a fairly easy path to the knockout round.
Russia Heading in the Wrong Direction
Entering the tournament as the 66th-ranked nation according to FIFA, Russia might be in a spot of trouble despite their hosting privileges.
Opening up at +3300, Russia has tumbled past Colombia, Croatia and Uruguay all the way to +5000. While they have what could be considered an “easy” path out of the group, they’ll likely have to face either Spain or Portugal in the Round of 16.
It’s needless to say the Ruskies would be enormous underdogs in each of those matches and unless we see some funny business, that’s where Putin’s tournament will end.
Here’s a look at the complete 32-team oddsboard with 23-man squads now locked in:
ODDS TO WIN 2018 World Cup Team Odds Brazil +450 Germany +475 Spain +600 France +650 Argentina +950 Belgium +1200 England +1800 Uruguay +2500 Portugal +2800 Croatia +3300 Colombia +4000 Russia +5000 Poland +8000 Mexico +10000 Denmark +10000 Switzerland +10000 Sweden +15000 Senegal +15000 Egypt +15000 Serbia +20000 Iceland +20000 Japan +20000 Nigeria +20000 Peru +20000 Costa Rica +30000 Australia +30000 Iran +50000 Morocco +50000 South Korea +50000 Tunisia +50000 Panama +100000 Saudi Arabia +100000
Odds as of June 5 at Bovada
Archived Articles
We are now a little over one month away from the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia and it’s time to start betting on who will win the World Cup. Domestic leagues are winding down and World Cup 2018 chatter is picking up. If you don’t have your 2018 World Cup futures wager in yet, now is the time!
With that in mind, let’s take a look at a couple of the risers and fallers from Odds to Win the World Cup markets and see what kind of movement we’ve seen in the past month.
Odds are courtesy Bovada.
Bet on the 2018 World Cup here
Risers
Brazil – Was: +500, Now: +450
Not a big move by any stretch, but a significant one nonetheless.
Brazil, now joint favorites with Germany with odds to win the World Cup at +450, has won more World Cups than any other country (five) and fields one of the most talented XIs regardless of the year. The thing about Canarinho this time around is that they’ve got revenge on their minds.
The last time we saw Brazil at the World Cup, they were being systematically dismantled in front of their home crowd by a ruthless and clinical Germany by a score of 7-1. Fast-forward four years and Brazil will want to do their best to make that embarrassment a distant memory.
That four-year window has seen the likes of Neymar, Roberto Firmino, Gabriel Jesus, Willian, Casemiro and Philippe Coutinho blossom into incredible, global superstars that have the potential to beat anyone heading to Russia and do it stylistically and beautifully.
Backing Brazil at an international tournament – especially the World Cup – is never a bad idea, but doing it sooner rather than later is probably a wise move. They should have little to no problem advancing from a group that features Costa Rica, Serbia and Switzerland and value could evaporate.
Croatia – Was: +4000, Now: +3300
I fully understand Croatia’s slow but steady climb up the oddsboard. This is genuinely one of the most talented sides heading to the 2018 FIFA World Cup and may possess one of the best midfields in the tournament.
I could use this space to gush over the world-class players that are featured in this side but you already know the names. OK, fine, but last names only. Modrić, Rakitić, Perišić and Mandžukić – just a few of the names that have been great players on the global stage for this side and names set to make a deep push this summer.
The trouble with this futures bet is the group – it’s a tough one. Group D features a quartet of talented sides including Argentina, Nigeria and Euro 2016 heroes Iceland. It will be no small feat advancing to the Round of 16.
This team was playing some of the most sublime football in the group stage at Euro 2016 (two wins, one draw in a group with Spain, Turkey and the Czechs) before falling flat in a loss to (eventual champions, mind you) Portugal in the Round of 16 two summers ago.
There is always going to be risk if backing the Croats in futures markets, but one thing is for sure: the value is immense for such a talented squad.
Fallers
France - Was: +550, Now: +700
The injury to Laurent Koscielny is a notable blow to France as he provided some experience (51 caps) and stability at the back for what looks to be a young team.
Koscielny suffered an injury to his Achilles in the second leg of Arsenal’s Europa League fixture against Atletico Madrid and reports indicate he will be out of training until December. This means France will potentially lean on Raphaël Varane and Samuel Umtiti as a first-choice centerback pairing at the World Cup. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as the latter has emerged as one of the top CBs in world football since joining Barcelona, but he only has 16 caps at the senior level.
France is loaded with talent from the sticks out with names like Hugo Lloris, Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kanté, Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé peppering the team sheet. Les Bleues were runners-up at Euro 2016 and reached the quarterfinals of the last World Cup but Russia 2018 feels like a bit more of a tournament of growth for the next-gen stars that will see the bulk of the playing time for France.
Colombia – Was: +3300, Now: +4000
Colombia was the darling of the 2014 World Cup scoring golazos and dancing all the way to the quarterfinal before losing 2-1 to hosts Brazil in Fortaleza. Expectations will be – and should be – lofty for this talented and deep side. After all, they feature 2014 Golden Boot winner James Rodriguez, who is just entering his prime.
This is a team that will play quick, counter-attacking football but it does find itself inside a deceptively tough group. Los Cafeteros share Group H with Japan, Poland and Senegal. Japan looks to be the pushover in the group but Poland and Senegal will be extremely tough matches.
Head coach José Pékerman has World Cup history as he helped steer Argentina to the quarterfinals of the 2006 World Cup so the leadership and experience is certainly there to guide this team to another deep run.
Much like Croatia, a little wager on this team at +4000 wouldn’t be the worst thing you’ve done today.
Here’s a look at the futures board with a little under one month until the World Cup:
ODDS TO WIN 2018 World Cup Team Odds Germany +450 Brazil +450 Spain +600 France +700 Argentina +900 Belgium +1100 England +1600 Portugal +2500 Uruguay +3300 Croatia +3300 Russia +3300 Colombia +4000 Poland +6600 Mexico +8000 Denmark +8000 Switzerland +10000 Sweden +10000 Senegal +15000 Serbia +15000 Egypt +15000 Iceland +15000 Japan +20000 Nigeria +20000 Peru +20000 Costa Rica +25000 Morocco +30000 Iran +30000 Australia +30000 South Korea +40000 Tunisia +50000 Panama +100000 Saudi Arabia +100000
Archived Articles
With domestic leagues the world over on hiatus for the international break, it’s time for a closer inspection on the odds to win the 2018 World Cup.
We last updated the World Cup odds in December and not much has changed since then. We have seen Belgium go from +1100 to +1000, no doubt bolstered by some incredible performances from the likes of Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Mousa Dembele and Borussia Dortmund striker Michy Batshuayi.
Belgium is going through its “golden generation” of football and is absolutely stacked with talent but has yet to make a serious run at any international trophies. They sit in Group G with England, Panama and Tunisia and are the -120 favorites to win the group at online shop Bovada.
Belgium’s best result in the World Cup came in 1986 when it finished fourth. Currently ranked fifth in the FIFA rankings, Roberto Martinez’s side has a lot to prove in Russia this summer. There is no shortage of talent from the sticks out and even with the current odds adjustment, the Red Devils are worth backing.
Another team on the move is Portugal, which now sits at +2500 after sitting at +2800 in our last update. This is likely due to the fact that superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has been in beast mode of late with 17 goals in an eight-match scoring streak for Real Madrid in all competitions.
Portugal has a tough group with Iberian neighbors Spain in the mix as well as Morocco and Iran. Spain is currently -190 to win the group with Cristiano and company at +180.
The bulk of this side was vital in the nation’s win at Euro 2016 so the experience and winning mentality is there. Ronaldo is basically superhuman and is perfectly capable of winning matches and tournaments with little to no help so don’t be surprised to see him do just that in Russia.
Here’s a look at the futures board ahead of this week’s World Cup tune-up matches:
2018 World Cup Futures Team Odds Germany +450 Brazil +500 France +550 Spain +700 Argentina +800 Belgium +1000 England +1600 Portugal +2500 Uruguay +2800 Colombia +3300 Russia +3300 Croatia +4000 Poland +5000 Mexico +8000 Switzerland +8000 Denmark +8000 Sweden +10000 Senegal +12500 Serbia +15000 Egypt +15000 Iceland +15000 Japan +20000 Nigeria +20000 Peru +20000 Costa Rica +25000 Morocco +30000 Iran +30000 Australia +30000 South Korea +40000 Tunisia +50000 Panama +100000 Saudi Arabia +100000
Bet on the 2018 World Cup hereOne by one, they slipped away, in those wakeful hours that followed Italian soccer’s darkest day. Gianluigi Buffon, denied his dream of a sixth World Cup, led the way, confirming with tears in his eyes that he would not play for his country again. Daniele De Rossi and Andrea Barzagli soon followed.
Italy lost two World Cups on Monday night: first its chance of appearing in the 2018 edition, and then the three players who represented the final links to 2006, the last men standing from the generation that conquered the world.
As Italy tried, on Tuesday, to digest the idea that it would not be present at a World Cup for the first time in 60 years, the country embarked on that journey that comes as an inevitable consequence of a sporting failure that has the air of a national humiliation.
First, it sought people to blame, soon settling on two candidates: Gian Piero Ventura, the coach, and Carlo Tavecchio, president of the F.I.G.C., the country’s soccer federation. Tavecchio fired Ventura on Wednesday, but ignored growing calls that he resign.Another milestone for 10nm: Cannon Lake on track and we’ve now taped in Ice Lake, our 2nd-generation 10nm product. pic.twitter.com/DUDm3MsBaB — Intel Official News (@intelnews) June 8, 2017
For the second time in less than a week, leaked benchmarks are giving us a glimpse of what to expect from Coffee Lake, which represents the fourth and latest iteration of Intel's 14-nanometer process. The latest leaked benchmarks come courtesy of Geekbench. On display is a 6-core processor with 12 threads clocked at 3.19GHz. It also has 1.5MB of L2 cache and 12MB of L3 cache.Let's talk a bit about this processor before we dive into the Geekbench scores. The chip in question is an engineering sample and not necessarily finalized silicon. Engineering samples get sent out to motherboard makers, OEM partners, and sometimes members of the press ahead of an official launch. Depending on early the engineering sample is, it could be have features disabled or otherwise not be 100 percent representative of the final product.That disclaimer out of the way, the 6-core Coffee Lake chip—incorrectly recognized as a Kaby Lake part in Geekbench—posted a single-core score of 4,619 and multi-core score 20,828. To put that into perspective, we can compare it to AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X, which is also a 6-core processor with 12 threads, but clocked a little higher at 3.6GHz. AMD's chip scored a tad lower—4,574 in single-core performance and 20,769 for the multi-core portion.One thing to note is that the retail chip of whatever Coffee Lake processor is on display here will probably run faster than the engineering sample. Assuming that is the case, the performance gap between it and the Ryzen 5 1600X should widen a bit further. New motherboards, BIOS tweaks, and driver updates could also help boost performance.There is no indication of the Turbo clockspeed, though if this is the same processor that recently landed in SiSoft Sandra's benchmark database, then expect it to be 4.2GHz.Confused about all the different codenames and architectures? That is understandable, given all of the processor updates as of late. The Cliff Notes version is that Coffee Lake will replace Kaby Lake as Intel's mainstream processor line. It will retain the same LGA 1151 socket and should work with motherboards that support Kaby Lake, though a BIOS update will probably be required.Intel also recently introduced new Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors, both of which comprise its Core-X series. These are intended for enthusiasts who want added performance, which Intel delivers in the form of more cores, more threads, more cache, more PCI-Express lanes, and expanded memory support.And of course there is Cannon Lake. That is the big one that everyone is waiting for, as it will Intel's first processor family to be built on a 10nm manufacturing process. Cannon Lake will reportedly deliver a 25 percent performance boost compared to Kaby Lake, while offering a 45 percent reduction in power consumption. Cannon Lake processors are expected to arrive by the end of the year.Miami Hurricanes tight end Michael Irvin Jr. has been suspended indefinitely, coach Mark Richt said on a media teleconference Sunday night. Photo courtesy of Miami Hurricanes Football/Twitter
Miami Hurricanes tight end Michael Irvin Jr. has been suspended indefinitely, coach Mark Richt said on a media teleconference Sunday night.
Irvin, the son of former Hurricanes star receiver and Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, "just hasn't done what's he's supposed to do off the field and until he does, we won't let him play," Richt said.
Irvin Jr. wasn't on the sideline for Miami's home win against Syracuse on Saturday. Previously, he had been suspended for the Russell Athletic Bowl at the end of last season because of an unspecified violation of team rules.
Miami was hoping Irvin would help form a prolific tight end tandem with Christopher Herndon, much like 2017 NFL Draft first-rounder David Njoku and Herndon did last season. But while Herndon has a team-high 28 catches this season, Irvin has three catches for 39 yards.
Redshirt sophomore Scott Patchan, recently converted from defensive end, will back up Herndon.
No. 8 Miami (6-0, 4-0 ACC) plays at North Carolina (1-7, 0-5) on Saturday.Apple ships a patched version of OpenSSL with macOS. If no precautions are taken, their changes rob you of the power to choose your trusted CAs, and break the semantics of a callback that can be used for custom checks and verifications in client software.
Abstract
If OpenSSL’s certificate verification fails while connecting to a server, Apple’s code will intercept that error and attempt to verify the certificate chain itself with system trust settings from the keyring, potentially throwing away your verification results. Therefore:
You can’t limit your trust to certain CAs using SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations. This apparently isn’t news but doesn’t appear to be widely known.
Contrary to documentation, returning 0 from SSL_CTX_set_verify ’s callback does not make the TLS handshake fail. That makes the callback unsuitable for extra verification purposes (such as hostname verification). MITRE has assigned CVE-2014-2234 for this issue.
Apple was not interested in my bug report because they deprecated their OpenSSL years ago. Hence this summary together with work-arounds.
The Verify Callback
OpenSSL’s SSL_CTX_set_verify allows setting a callback function that is called for each certificate in the chain. It is invoked with the result of OpenSSL’s own verification of each certificate ( 1 for success, 0 for failure) and an x509_ctx object that can be used to get the certificate and – if applicable – verification error in question.
As for the return code of this callback, Apple’s own documentation says:
The return value of verify_callback controls the strategy of the further verification process. If verify_callback returns 0, the verification process is immediately stopped with “verification failed” state. If SSL_VERIFY_PEER is set, a verification failure alert is sent to the peer and the TLS/SSL handshake is terminated.
So technically the callback is useful for two things:
Gaining more information about a failure and reacting to it. Additional checks such as hostname verification or a more strict certificate validation. Returning 0 should abort any handshake.
But that’s not the case.
Instead Apple’s OpenSSL aborts the chain verification (i.e. the callback doesn’t get called any further on any remaining certificates in the chain) but does not fail the handshake if it decides that the certificate chain of the peer is trustworthy.
If you rely on the correct behavior and perform important checks within the callback, this behavior exposes you to man-in-the-middle attacks.
You can observe it with the following C code:
#include <errno.h> #include <netdb.h> #include <resolv.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <sys/socket.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <openssl/err.h> #include <openssl/ssl.h> int verify(int ok, X509_STORE_CTX *store) { // Always abort verification with an error. return 0; } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { // Initialize OpenSSL SSL_library_init(); SSL_load_error_strings(); // Create a context SSL_CTX *ctx = SSL_CTX_new(TLSv1_client_method()); if (ctx == NULL) { ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr); abort(); } // Load trusted CAs from default paths. SSL_CTX_set_default_verify_paths(ctx); // Set verify function SSL_CTX_set_verify(ctx, SSL_VERIFY_PEER, verify); // Resolve struct addrinfo hints, *ai; memset(&hints, 0, sizeof hints); hints.ai_family = AF_INET; hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM; hints.ai_protocol = IPPROTO_TCP; int ai_error = getaddrinfo("www.apple.com", "https", &hints, &ai); if(ai_error!= 0) { fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo: %s
", gai_strerror(ai_error)); abort(); } // Connect int sock = socket(ai->ai_family, ai->ai_socktype, ai->ai_protocol); if(connect(sock, ai->ai_addr, ai->ai_addrlen)!= 0) { close(sock); perror("connect"); abort(); } // Wrap connection with TLS SSL *ssl = SSL_new(ctx); if (ssl == NULL) { ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr); abort(); } SSL_set_fd(ssl, sock); if (SSL_connect(ssl) == -1) { ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr); } else { // Should NOT be reached with the verify function from above! printf("Connected with cipher %s
", SSL_get_cipher(ssl)); SSL_shutdown(ssl); } SSL_free(ssl); close(sock); SSL_CTX_free(ctx); return 0; }
Compile it using
cc ssl_client.c -lssl -lcrypto -o ssl_client
and run without arguments.
This program succeeds only when linked against Apple’s patched OpenSSL. Any other fails with an error message like:
SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed:s3_clnt.c:1166:
I have double-checked this back to a vintage 0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 on CentOS 5. It is definitely an Apple-only problem.
Background
The reason for this unexpected behavior is that Apple is trying to be helpful. Certificate validation and especially trust databases are a hassle and OpenSSL’s handling of them is rather user-hostile. So Apple patched a Trust Evaluation Agent (TEA) into their OpenSSL. It gives failed verifications a second chance using the system keyring as trust store.
To follow what happens, it is also necessary to understand that the TLS context that gets passed around carries an error code that is distinct from the return code of the verification callback mentioned before. This error code directly affects TEA’s behavior.
Now, if a client attempts a TLS handshake with a server:
TEA first calls OpenSSL’s original verification function. If OpenSSL’s verification fails (i.e. because OpenSSL can’t verify the certificate chain, or because the callback returns something else than 1 ), TEA checks the current context’s error code for one of the following constants: X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY,
, X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT,
, and X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT. If one of them matches, TEA will attempt to fix the error by verifying the certificate chain itself. If it succeeds, the handshake succeeds too; no matter what happened within OpenSSL and your verification callback.
This is problematic for several reasons:
Unless you explicitly set your trusted root certificates, the initial verification will always fail with the infamous X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY error ( 20 ). As you can see in my example, even telling OpenSSL to use its default CA locations (line 36) doesn’t work because they don’t exist on OS X – they’re well hidden within the keyring. Therefore, unless you explicitly change the error code, TEA will always think it should try to fix the failed verification. So for instance if you discovered a hostname mismatch within the callback and thus return 0, TEA will still just try to verify the certificate chain and ignore your objection if the chain is trustworthy.
If you want to use one of the error codes above for your extra checks (e.g. for blacklisting certain CAs), Apple’s OpenSSL will ignore your failures. This can be a rather unexpected behavior since it works correctly on other platforms.
Any effort to use certificate pinning or limiting your trust to certain CAs is undermined by TEA re-validating the chain for you.
None of this is obvious or documented.
Solutions
My motivation is not to point fingers; I want to warn and offer solutions. So far I’ve come up with three:
Disable TEA
If TEA is disabled, it also can’t overrule your verification decision. You can achieve that by calling
X509_TEA_set_state(0);
as part of your application’s initialization.
However, as far as I can tell, that function is not public. At least I couldn’t find any definition or documentation outside of Apple’s source code of the patch.
Another approach is setting the OPENSSL_X509_TEA_DISABLE if you can’t or don’t want to change any code. You can try it with the example from above:
$ env OPENSSL_X509_TEA_DISABLE=1./ssl_client
The major drawback is that this approach makes Apple’s OpenSSL just another hopelessly outdated OpenSSL installation.
Explicitly Set An Error Code
This is probably the best approach if you have to use the verification callback with Apple’s OpenSSL. Always change the error within the context to something TEA doesn’t consider fixable. X509_V_ERR_APPLICATION_VERIFICATION would be an obvious choice:
int verify(int ok, X509_STORE_CTX *store) { X509_STORE_CTX_set_error(store, X509_V_ERR_APPLICATION_VERIFICATION); return 0; }
There are more to choose from though.
Compile Your Own OpenSSL
In their response to my bug report, Apple suggested to use a self-compiled OpenSSL (…until I’m ready to migrate to their SecureTransport). Generally that’s good advice because their OpenSSL is hopelessly out of date.
A practical way is homebrew which takes some pain out of compiling software and keeping it up to date:
$ brew install openssl
Similar alternatives like MacPorts work just as fine of course.
This approach has at least two drawbacks though:
The software Apple ships is compiled against their OpenSSL (Python, Ruby…). You also have to double-check that your self-compiled software really picks up your custom OpenSSL instead of the system one (for example --with-brewed-openssl within homebrew). Your OpenSSL has no access to the keyring and thus system trust store. Apple’s patches were there to help you with that after all. You’ll have to manage your own set of trusted CAs, probably with the help of Mozilla’s infamous cacert.pem. homebrew helps out a bit by cloning the system keyring into /usr/local/etc/openssl/osx_cert.pem on installation so SSL_CTX_set_default_verify_paths works out of the box. In any case, now you’ll have to cope with two trust stores: your OpensSSL’s one, and the system one. This makes everything a bit crude and adds moving parts.
Ultimately, this is the long-term way to go. Although OpenSSL is not the epitome of great software, it’s not going anywhere. Especially because numerous cross-platform software including but not limited to development platforms like Python, Ruby, or Node.js are all using OpenSSL for their TLS needs.
Impact
Together with Christian Heimes I’ve analyzed multiple high-profile open source projects with TLS support whether they are affected and require prior notice. None of them seemed to perform validations within the verification callback in an exploitable way. So I consider the publication safe.
That doesn’t mean that such software doesn’t exist though. According to the documentation putting verification code into the callback is perfectly legit (for example, Google uses this pattern within Chromium OS and so does PHP) so caution is in order. Most endangered is cross-platform software that assumes that OpenSSL code behaves identically across platforms.
I for one ran into this bug while testing a patch from a bug tracker that worked perfectly fine on Linux.
Q&A
Is this related to the MITM bug I’ve heard about on the news?
No.
The temporal proximity with the bug in SecureTransport that affects both macOS and iOS is coincidental.
I also don’t try to ride the attention wave provided by it: in fact, I had filed a bug for this issue in Apple’s bug database a week before CVE-2014-1266/HT6147 was published.
Does this affect iOS?
No.
iOS doesn’t ship OpenSSL. This is a macOS–only issue.
Does this affect Apple’s software like Safari or Mail?
No.
Generally, Apple’s software – and most Mac desktop software for that matter – is using Apple’s SecureTransport and not OpenSSL.
Credits
I’d like to thank Laurens Van Houtven, Christian Heimes, Jean-Paul Calderone, Glyph, Alex Stapleton, Matthew Iversen, and Matthew Green for their assistance while researching and assessing this bug.
Is my content helpful and/or enjoyable to you? Please consider expressing your gratitude! Every bit helps to motivate me in creating more.A group of heavily-armed militants from a group linked to Isis have reportedly stormed a city in the Philippines and engaged in firefights with the national army.
Residents of Marawi City, in the south of the country, were urged to remain indoors as at least 15 gunmen from a Muslim rebel group called Maute stormed the streets brandishing assault rifles.
The group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Lanao, have reportedly received support from Isis.
Troops and a special police force were deployed to the city after residents in a nearby village raised the alarm and appealed for help.
President Rodrigo Duterte then declared martial law and a state of emergency in the province of Mindano. General Eduardo Ano, the military chief of staff, said at least one police officer was killed and eight soldiers were wounded in the fighting.
“I’m appealing to residents of Marawi City to stay home, drop on the ground if they hear gunshots," Mamintal Adiong Jr, the governor of the Lanao del Sur province told The Philippine Star newspaper. "They have to lock their doors and gates too."
Local reports suggested that the militants had entered a local hospital and raised a black Isis flag above the roof, although this information was officially verified by the army.
Witnesses reported seeing men in attire similar to that worn by Isis militants walking the streets before firing at houses and government buildings.
"There [were] no indications that an attack like this will happen. There are no checkpoints in the city," one resident said. "Everything is in silence. No news about the city government. Everything is vague."
Vice governor Mamintal Adiong Jr, a senior member of the Marawi council, said that local emergency response teams from across the region had been mobilised to help residents trapped in the crossfire.
In March, President Duterte pleaded for help from mayors in Muslim areas of the south of the country to deal with Islamist militants, and threatened to impose martial law there if the problem was not tackled.
Last year the president pledged to ignore human rights if the breakup of Isis in the Middle East worsened the Islamist insurgency in his country.
The Maute is a radical Islamist group composed of former Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerrillas and some foreign fighters.
They are thought to have taken their name from its founder Abdullah Maute.Amazon looked at H-E-B, Whole Foods to break into grocery market, former executive says
A former Amazon employee suggested the Seattle-based e-commerce giant buy San Antonio-based supermarket chain H-E-B for $13 billion, according to an internal memo described to the Express-News. A former Amazon employee suggested the Seattle-based e-commerce giant buy San Antonio-based supermarket chain H-E-B for $13 billion, according to an internal memo described to the Express-News. Photo: Express-News File Photo Photo: Express-News File Photo Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Amazon looked at H-E-B, Whole Foods to break into grocery market, former executive says 1 / 28 Back to Gallery
A former Amazon executive says the retail giant looked at San Antonio-based supermarket chain H-E-B before the online seller, instead, decided to buy Whole Foods as part of its massive push into groceries.
RELATED: Whole payout? Whole Foods officials stand to get $171 million on Amazon deal
Brittain Ladd — a former senior manager of strategy and expansion for Amazon’s Fresh and Pantry operations — suggested buying the 391-store San Antonio chain as an entry point into traditional brick-and-mortar retail in a 2015 internal memo, he said.
While the conversations about H-E-B don’t appear to have gotten very far, Ladd and other industry analysts said it’s an attractive target because of it’s strong regional footprint in Texas and Mexico as well as its strong customer loyalty. Ladd placed a value of $13 billion on the family-run operation. Industry analysts said other retailers probably have H-E-B on their shopping list as well.
RELATED: Did Amazon accidentally spark a bidding war for Whole Foods?
H-E-B’s limited reach would have allowed Amazon.com Inc. to implement a “crawl-walk-run” strategy when entering the food retail space, said Ladd, who now works as an industry consultant. That would have given Amazon time to learn how to operate H-E-B’s physical grocery stores before expanding the company into other states.
The Charles Butt family, the 23rd wealthiest in the U.S., owns the chain. The privately held company sold an estimated $23 billion worth of goods in 2016 and was valued at $10.7 billion by Forbes earlier this year.
It’s unclear how far Ladd’s suggestion went within Amazon. Ladd said he wasn’t privy to discussions within the company’s acquisition team so was unsure whether Amazon executives seriously considered pursuing the San Antonio-based company, or made a formal offer to buy the chain, when the e-commerce giant began perusing for brick-and-mortar grocers.
RELATED: Amazon pushes into physical retail, kale and kombucha with Whole Foods buy
Amazon and H-E-B officials declined to say whether the two companies held any exploratory discussions. Amazon spokesman Aaron Toso confirmed that Ladd previously worked there as a senior manager for the company’s Fresh and Pantry operations.
In a statement, H-E-B spokeswoman Dya Campos said, “H-E-B fully intends on remaining a proud Texas-based, independent and private company focused on serving our customers.”
Click here to read the full article on ExpressNews.com.
jfechter@express-news.net
Twitter: @JFreportsHave we lost the true meaning and purpose of Business Intelligence?
Have we lost the true meaning and purpose of Business Intelligence
Companies in a variety of industries are still data-rich but information-poor and this ratio keeps increasing every day. The rate of data generation is so high that organizations simply cannot keep up with generating insights out of it.
These enterprises lack the kind of actionable information and analytical tools needed to improve profits and performance. Business intelligence (BI) is the next logical step by management to start thinking about how to capitalize on the potential of BI to improve profit and performance.
Many companies have embarked on the journey of data warehouses and yet failed to use them to achieve BI. If you think the purpose of data warehousing (DW) efforts is to simply keep producing more reports then the organization has failed to achieve true BI.
The bottom line for any Business Intelligence is to increase profit and performance and if done wrong it is absolute waste of time and money.
So if your management is hooked on the Big-Data wagon and fantasizing about the hidden gold behind the untapped data sources such as social media, click stream, web logs etc then it is time to keep the focus on the main purpose of "Business Intelligence". All these systems help us to analyze big data or small data but whether they really impact our bottom line is the question that management needs to keep it as the top priority. Every decision should flow and trickle down from this focus point "Show me the money!!"
For e.g Consider the case for Hadoop
Large enterprises have several data platforms such as Oracle, IBM, Teradata, Microsoft SQL server etc and companies literally bleed through their nose whenever they have the need to expand the storage or compute capacity for the Data platforms (think several thousand dollars for each Terabyte of additional storage). So for companies that already pay several million dollars for platforms like Oracle or Teradata, it makes sense to adopt Hadoop just to utilize the cheap storage. This is true bang for the buck!
Now, not every decision is that easy or relatable to the ROI. But with decent amount of due deligence on the management part like
Do we need another BI tool?
Do we need another Data mart
Do we need this report or dashboard?
If you are an organization under 20 or 30 people, you may not have any of the above issues to deal with. A simple excel based dashboard system may just be sufficient and this is all there is in your BI world. But there are several huge companies where every department has their own flavor of BI tool. One department may want a complex business intelligence system like OBIEE or Cognos whereas other department want more Tableau or Qlik like experience. So these huge companies end up having multitudes of data-warehouses, multiple BI tools and it is a complete BI medley that does not bake well.
On top of that there are new dashboard and BI vendors popping every day [due to the excess venture capital investment] and these in turn lead to confusing the management and doubt their existing infrastructure [all the VC money is spent on hiring the best sales agents whose job is to sell their BI tool as a complimentary thing to whatever the customer has].
If you look closer, every big organization has this BI Medley going on that is a serious mess and a big drag on the bottom line.
Is it not the job of the CEO/C |
would be really great, but it was awful because I couldn't talk to anybody. So I started writing songs — that was the only thing I could really think of to do."
Realizing that the new material wasn't in line with Soundgarden's approach, Cornell decided to reach out to Wood's former bandmates in Mother Love Bone, guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, about potentially getting together to record a tribute single.
"The idea was mainly to do a single as opposed to a whole record," he told Reflex in 1991. "And the thing was, the rest of the guys in Temple, they sort of thought maybe we should make it a little bit longer project, like an EP or something. The more we talked about it, the more songs kept flying out, and it ended up being an album. It didn't feel like a morose project. It felt sort of celebratory."
After approaching Gossard and Ament, Cornell enlisted Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron to join the budding project; meanwhile, Gossard and Ament were making plans of their own for life after Mother Love Bone, putting together a band that called itself Mookie Blaylock and included guitarist Mike McCready and singer Eddie Vedder. The Temple of the Dog project, named for a line in the Mother Love Bone song "Man of Golden Words," quickly drew both of the new additions into its orbit.
For McCready, who'd been delivering pizza not long before getting the invitation from Gossard, Temple of the Dog offered a low-pressure way to enter a professional recording environment. Although his four-minute solo on " Reach Down " is one of the record's musical high points, he downplayed his contributions in an interview with Guitar Player, explaining he was set up to succeed because "There was a certain structure laid down for each song, but at the same time there was freedom to just go."
"I think Temple was the first full-length album that McCready ever recorded," Cornell later told Spin. "You almost kind of had to yell at him to get him to realize that in the... solo of 'Reach Down,' that was his time and that he wasn't going to be stepping on anybody else. He started recording what was eventually the solo, halfway through it he got so into it that his headphones flew off, and he played half that solo without even hearing the song."
It also proved a welcoming testing ground for Vedder, who'd been flying in from San Diego during breaks from his day job and didn't have the history with Wood or the other members that everyone else enjoyed. "He was very quiet and very shy and didn't have a lot to say," recalled Cornell. "He was under a lot of pressure, a lonely guy away from home in a room full of people who had a lot of experience in bands. He was by himself, just singing his words and doing his thing."
Listen to Temple of the Dog Perform 'Reach Down'
A turning point emerged in the song "Hunger Strike," which Cornell had written to demand a wide vocal range he was having a hard time pulling off in rehearsals — unwittingly giving Vedder a chance to make his biggest mark on the project.
"I had this feeling it was just kind of gonna be filler, it didn't feel like a real song. Eddie was sitting there kind of waiting for a Mookie Blaylock rehearsal and I was singing parts, and he kind of humbly — but with some balls — walked up to the mic and started singing the low parts for me because he saw it was kind of hard," said Cornell. "We got through a couple choruses of him doing that and suddenly the light bulb came on in my head: 'This guy's voice is amazing for these low parts.'"
"That was the first time I heard myself on a real record," said Vedder in the Pearl Jam Twenty documentary. "It could be one of my favorite songs that I've ever been on — or the most meaningful."
Recorded in a scant 15 days on the band members' dimes, the Temple of the Dog album was ultimately bought by Soundgarden's label A&M, and released to little fanfare on April 16, 1991. Although the record earned mostly positive reviews, there wasn't much of a market for it — yet. That all started to change later in the year: The members of Mookie Blaylock, who had by then rechristened themselves Pearl Jam, released their multiplatinum debut Ten in the fall, alongside Soundgarden's future Top 40 hit Superunknown and a No. 1 Seattle hit in waiting, Nirvana's Nevermind.
By the summer of 1992, the major labels wanted everything they could get out of the Pacific Northwest, and A&M took full advantage, throwing a promotional push behind Temple of the Dog that came complete with a video for "Hunger Strike," which was re-released to radio and turned into a Top Five rock hit on the strength of the vocal interplay between its two now-famous singers. By this time, the band members had all returned their focus to their main bands, and to their credit, no one seemed to give much serious thought to a follow-up even after Temple went platinum. But affection for their time together remained.
"I still listen to it and think that it's the best thing I've ever been involved with," Gossard told Spin in 2001. "Whatever that combination of people was, I'd never been in a situation where it was that easy. I've almost been looking for that ever since. The very first thing we did was a very high water mark, the way that our two bands complemented each other. And it was a bunch of songs that Chris wrote totally from the heart. He wrote these songs without any preconceived notions of where they might end up or what they were going to be. That's where the real gold is. In terms of writing music, being self-conscious is the worst place to be."
For Cornell, the effects were equally long-lasting. "To me, in a sense, it was like another Temple of the Dog," he said in 2011 when asked about his stint in the supergroup Audioslave. "That's why I even entertained the idea of getting into a room with them. Temple of the Dog was the first time I did something like that outside of Soundgarden and I didn't even know I could have a relationship like that with some other guys, and it made me realize that later on in any point of my career I shouldn't just immediately say no to any opportunities like that."
As fans are aware, that brief window around the recording of Temple of the Dog wasn't completely the end for the band, as they've reunited for various one-off gigs over the years. Still, the group represents a painful yet pivotal moment in time, framed by music created with a purity of intent that has characterized many of its members' later works.Male Wrestlers A.J. Styles
A.J. Styles known to his millions of wrestling fans as "The Phenomenal One" if a professional wrestling legend in the making. At a young age he has stolen the show countless times with top tier talents, having often defeated them in combat. Still very young in life, A.J. Is known among his peers to be a legend and hall of famer in our industry when his career is over. The most flowing and impressive high flyer, A.J. also has the ability to take it to the mat as an accomplished collegiate wrestler as well. A list of championships in TNA wrestling alone exceed 29 accolades including their top prize a multi-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion, Tag-Team Champion, and X-Division Champion among other accomplishments. Aaron Aguilera
Aaron Aguilera is a multi-faceted talent. Generating huge popularity in the United States wrestling for the WWE as "Jesus", Aarons 7ft, 300lbs frame launched him to the top of his sport in less than one year. In Japan he is also the most popular and recognizable American pro-wrestler performing as the masked maniac "The Zodiac" Abyss
"The Monster" Abyss is one of the most feared big men in the industry today. With his violent and dangers in-ring style, matched only by his size and strength; the most feared man is also the most intimidating dawning his Hannibal Lecter like mask to hide his true identity from the millions watching him on TV. A successful competitor around the globe, Abyss has earned championship belts everywhere he's been including TNA Impact Wrestling's top prize the TNA World Heavyweight Championship as well as World Tag-Team Championship, and X-Division Championship. Alexander Kozlov
The Russian native Alexander Kozlov is the most legitimate competitor in the pro-wrestling business today. Kozlov is a hybrid fighter who has mastered countless forms of hand to hand combat including freestyle wrestling, sambo, kickboxing, judo, MMA, and pro-wrestling. The former WWE World Tag-Team Champion, Heavyweight Sambo Champion, and International Heavyweight Grappling Champion has earned himself the title of most feared man in sports and entertainment. No one has been able to successfully derail the "Moscow Mauler" on the mat or be it a 4-sided or 8-sided ring. Also an accomplished entertainer and sportsmen, Kozlov has appeared in several Hollywood films as well as competed on a professional level in both American Football and European Rugby. Boogie Man
Boogie Man all though one of the more bizarre characters in pro-wrestling, The Boogieman has proven to be one of the most popular! Famous all over the world and especially to children, The Boogieman is quite the feat of an athlete, standing at 6ft 4in with a huge physique and weighing in at over 240lbs. Boogieman strikes fear into the heart of his opponents and spectators! Brian Kendrick
A high-flying risk taker, Brian Kendrick has carved a career for himself that started out in the shadows of his world famous trainer and coach Shawn Michaels. But as years went out Kendrik stepped out of his mentor's shadow and became his own man earning multiple titles around the globe including becoming a multi-time WWE Tag-Team Champion, as well as TNA X-Division Champion. Carlitos Colon
Carlitos Colon is one of the most popular wrestling personalities in the world today. A second generation superstar, Carlito has grown famous with his marketable catchphrases and trade mark apple. A multi-time Intercontinental, United States, and Tag-Team Champion, Carlito has the ability to back up his charisma. Charlie Haas
Charlie Haas is known as the most legitimate competitor in pro-wrestling. A multiple time World Tag-Team Champion, Charlie competed at a college level at Seaton Hall, and had a very lucrative position in the finance industry on the world famous Wall Street in New York before turning professional. Chris Master
One of the most impressive physiques in the entire sport, known from WWE RAW and SmackDown as "The Masterpiece" Chris Master is a pro-wrestler chiselled out of stone to become a powerhouse competitor and a major force to be reckoned with in the pro-wrestling industry. Standing 6' 6" and weighing a muscle-bound 330lbs without an ounce of fat on his body, Chris has developed himself into not only having the best body in the entire pro-wrestling industry, but also as one of the most technically sound performers in the ring. His patented Masterlock hold is one of the most feared manoeuvres in ANY form of combat sport. Christopher Daniels
"The Fallen Angel" is no stranger to international competition. Earning more titles around the globe than any other active wrestler in TNA today at 39 championships, Daniels offense is as innovative as anything seen today. His finishing manoeuvre dubbed "The Best Moonsault Ever" is a top rope back flip with as much grace as you would see in any Cirque du Soleil performance. Finlay
Finlay is a North Irish competitor, who has earned the title of "The Belfast Bruiser." Knows as the hardest striker, and a technical in-ring technician, Finlay has earned championship gold across every major wrestling promotion in the world spanning 13 countries. The former WWE United States Champion was such a master in the ring, he was put in charge of producing the in-ring content for the other wrestlers and main-event talents on WWE Raw and SmackDown. Funaki
Funaki is instantly one of the most recognizable Japanese wrestling stars in the entire world. A several year tenure in the WWE as well as holding multiple championship belts have made Funaki a globally recognized superstar but also the hottest pro-wrestling commodity in Japan. Heidenreich
Heidenreich known to wrestling fans all over the world, Big Bad John as he is known to his opponents is a former WWE World Tag-Team Champion and has manhandled more top name wrestlers than anyone else in the sports history. Standing in at an impressive 6ft 9in, Heidenreich is another 300+ pound pro-wrestling monster! Hurricane Helms
Hurricane Helms is the resident super hero in professional wrestling. An immensely popular fan favorite Hurricane has garnered numerous titles including the WWE Tag-Team Championship. Known for his trademark green hair and flying off the top rope with his cape, it`s not uncommon to have seen Hurricane`s secret identity, mild-mannered Gregory Helms, compete on SmackDown where he was the longest reigning Cruiserweight Champion in WWE history. Now bringing the superhero suit, cape, and mask back in action; Hurricane Helms will be entertaining the children and adults alike as he brings his super "Huri-Powers" to the WWFX to fight evil do-ers, and amaze everyone in the arenas with his amazing high-flying wrestling ability. Jimmy Yang
Jimmy Yang is one of the most versed high flyers in WWE history. A former World Cruiser-Weight Champion, Jimmy has amazed audiences all over the globe competing for many of the top promotions. The most famous and recognizable Korean wrestler in the world, Jimmy has developed a huge wrestling following all over Asia and in the Pacific as well. America's first and only "Korean Redneck" Jimmy has developed a huge following and popularity in non-Asian regions of the world as well. John Hennigan
Better known to wrestling fans under the WWE RAW and SmackDown alias of "John Morrison," John is one of the most decorated champions in wrestling history. Launching a career as the most successful Tough Enough Champion in the TV programs history, John would then go on to become a multi-time Intercontinental Champion, as well as multi-time Tag-Team Champion with former partner "The Miz," and as part of arguably one of SmackDown's most famous tag-teams "MNM." And avid Parkour performer, John's agility and athletic ability allow him to perform some of the most spectacular and jaw dropping aerial manoeuvres never before seen in professional wrestling. Ken Anderson
Ken Anderson is a former WWE and current TNA wrestling superstar. A former United States Champion, Ken has gone on to compete, and defeat, some of the top named talents in the entire professional wrestling industry. A bona fide star in our business, Ken has broken out to Hollywood where he has stared in the major motion picture, Behind Enemy Lines, Colombia Pictures and is now a competitive actor as well. Kevin Seven
Kevin Seven is an interesting and diverse pro-wrestler and character. Since the huge surge in popularity for Vampires, Kevin's character has been the most requested and popular amongst teens and adults. Standing a massive 6 ft 5 ins and weighing near 300 lbs, Kevin is a power-house of a fighter. Kip James
Kip James is the most pure athlete in the pro-wrestling business today. Standing a towering 6ft 6in in height and weighing in at a trim 265lbs. Billy is one of the most popular performers in WWE history and has held the Intercontinental Tag-Team, European and Hardcore titles, as well as WWE's King of the Ring. Luke Gallow
Competing in the WWE as the corn-fed colossus Festus, Luke quickly became a fan favorite thrilling wrestling fans as one of the largest yet quickest athletes ever to be seen on television. Standing 6' 7 tall and weighing a trim 315lbs. his explosive strength and speed made "big-man" wrestling excitable and enjoyable to watch again. Following a transformation of getting his physique in excellent competitive shape, and adding speed and strength to already one of the strongest and fastest stars in wrestling, Luke Gallow was chosen by CM Punk to become the enforcer of his Straight Edge Society. After some incredible tag-team matches, and even bouts with Punk himself, Luke has feared competitors with his ground and pound fighting style all over the globe and now brings that same fighting style to all the pro-wrestling fans in WWFX. Magnus
Known simply as Magnus, the brash Brit with the sharpest tongue in wrestling is also an accomplished talent both in the ring and out of it. Competing on the smash hit Gladiators on Sky Sports, Magnus then transitioned into wrestling where he became a multi-time TNA Tag-Team Champion, as well as World Heavyweight Champion. With a chiselled frame and Hollywood good looks, Magnus has also performed in UK theatre at Pantomimes as well as been featured in various body building magazines such as Muscle and Fitness. Matt Hardy
Matt Hardy is one of the most accomplished professional wrestlers earning both multi-time world championships as a singles wrestler and an astounding 8x world tag-team champion. Matt is known as the most death-defying wrestler, having perfected and revolutionized the most dangerous match in pro-wrestling, the ladder match. Being an accredited wrestler in both the WWE and TNA, Matt�s international exposure is amongst the highest performing at the largest pay-per-view and box office grossing events across the globe, as well as being seen weekly for over 10 years on international wrestling television programs. Matt Morgan
The industry's "Blueprint" for a big man, Matt Morgan at 7ft tall and near 400lbs is the most athletic giant in the industry today. An accomplished Basketball player Matt transitioned into professional wrestling earning a WWE contract after his appearance on the reality show Tough Enough. Since entering the world of wrestling Matt has earned titles all over the globe including becoming a multi-time TNA Tag-Team Champion as well as the first ever Ring Ka King World Heavyweight Champion in front of a record setting audience of 14 million. Mick Foley
Mick Foley is the world renown �hardcore legend� having competed for every major wrestling organization around the globe, and almost always earning their top prize. A former WWE World Champion, TNA World Heavyweight champion, as well as multi-time tag-team champion, Mick is also known for his presence in the entertainment world. A multi-time bestselling author, Mick has also transitioned into Hollywood where his credits span several films and TV shows. Motor City Machine Guns
The hottest act in tag-team wrestling today is the team of Alex Shelly and Chris Sabin; the Motor City Machine Guns. As popular with the female audience for the handsome and ripped good looks, as they are with the male audience for the amazing bouts of non-stop action and entertainment, the Machine Guns single-handedly draw in over 50% of the extremely valuable teenage demographic alone. They're accomplishments around the globe has earned them more tag-team titles than any other team actively competing today including being the only team to win �Tag-Team of the Year� in both Pro-Wrestling Illustrated Magazine as well as the Pro-Wrestling Report for 2010. MVP
Montel Vontavious Porter, or as he is known to millions of wrestling fans around the world, MVP is the premier athlete in professional wrestling. Having signed the largest contract in pro-wrestling history, MVP has blazed a trail to the top of the industry winning the WWE Tag Team Championship with Matt Hardy & WWE United States Championship (twice) along with countless other championships. Rhino
Rhino is the most powerful wrestler in the industry today. Weighing in at a scale tipping 290lbs of twisted steel, this power-house of a wrestler has been performing on international television every week since 1999. A former TNA world champion and WWE United States Champion, Rhino is feared by all opponents as he has broken wrestlers in half with his signature maneuver the "gore!" Rhino is one of the most idenifiable TV characters in public as this massive man-beast has tree trunk like legs and is as dense with muscle as a motor vehicle. Rob Van Dam
Known to millions as RVD, Rob has a cult following that is an oxymoron given the massive size of this demo. Revered by millions of fans around the globe who are as passionate about their hero as he is in performing for them, RVD is the most spectacular wrestling competing today. With his high flying arsenal which can't be touched by even the most graceful of athletes, RVD's credentials aren't in just spectacle alone. As scientifically sound in mat wrestling as he is in kick-boxing, RVD's championship accomplishments are a laundry list of WWE Tag-Team Championships, Intercontinental Championships, World Heavyweight Championships, and as a TNA World Heavyweight Champion as well. Samoa Joe
One of the strongest and most feared competitors from the Isle of Samoa, Samoa Joe is a record setting World Champion having defended his title for 22 months. The hard hitting striker mixes his background of Muay Thai and traditional pro�wrestling to make him an unstoppable hybrid machine. The massive 280lbs talent has been seen to have as much agility and grace as talents 100lbs lighter than the Samoan King. Samoa Joe's in ring talent have garnered him countless championships from around the world including the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, Tag-Team Championship, and X-Division Championship. Scott Steiner
Scott Steiner is the man with the largest arms in the world. Known as the "Genetic Freak" Scott has been a main-event performer for over a decade, holding all major World titles in EVERY promotion. A former WWE, TNA and WCW World Champion, as well as multi time Tag Team Champ. Scotty 2 Hotty
Scotty 2 Hotty is one of premiere fan-favourites in the professional wrestling industry. Garnering huge popularity in the tag-team Too Cool, Scotty ushered the hip-hop culture and fan base into the world of professional wrestling. A former WWE Tag-Team Champion, Scott is as popular with the fans for his quick paced wrestling ability, as much as for his incorporation of break dancing during and after his matches. Sheik Daivari
Sheik Daivari is the only Persian professional wrestler competing actively in the industry today. Having competed on international television for many years for both WWE and TNA, Daivari has developed a huge Persian following all over the world. A former X-Division Champion standing 5ft 10in and weighing in at 220lbs, fluent in both English and Farsi making him a versatile mouth-piece all over the world. Shelton Benjamin
Shelton Benjamin is known as the most gifted, pure athlete in the professional wrestling industry today. A former World Tag Team Champion, United States Champion, and Intercontinental Champion, Shelton has "wowed" WWE audiences for over 10 years. Known through his championship accomplishments as "The Gold Standard" Shelton is also an educated NCAA National Wrestling Champion. Snitsky
Snitsky is one of the most gruesome and feared combatants in all of wrestling. Standing a towering 6ft 10in and weighing in at a scale topping 300+ pounds, Snitsky has had no problem climbing the top ranks of the pro-wrestling industry. Prior to wrestling Snitsky was a professional American Football player in the NFL for the Philadelphia Eagles. Sylvan
A proud wrestler from Paris, France; Sylvan transitioned into wrestling after a successful career as a male model. His size, strength and ability have earned him on multiple occasions the WWE Tag-Team Championship, and his chiselled good looks have made him a marquee attraction to draw in the female demographic. Tommy Dreamer
Known to wrestling fans around the globe as "The Innovator of Violence" Tommy has established a career and loyal fan base due to the abuse his body has taken over the years. The former ECW World Champion has competed in some of the hardest hitting, most violent matches, has taken the biggest and roughest slams ever seen, and has earned the fans respect by keep getting up and moving forward to win these bouts over the past two decades. Val Venus
Val Venus is a former adult film star who's carved his way into professional wrestling with as much support from the male wrestling fans as the female. Known to his fans as "The Big Valbowski" Val has earned on multiple occasions the WWE Intercontinental Championship as well as the World Tag-Team titles. Also competing in TNA Wrestling, Val has won the hearts of the female fans with his pre-match towel tricks, as well as the laughter of the male audience with his dirty limericks and jokes. X-Pac
X-Pac is one of the largest fan-favourites around the globe, garnering the attention and cheers of the fans as one of the original members of D-Generation X. Competing in every major wrestling organization around the globe, X-Pac has earned the WWE Cruiserweight Championship, Tag-Team Championship, and TNA X-Division Championship all on multiple occasions. Versed in martial arts, X-Pac's kicks are known in the wrestling industry to be lethal.An 18-year-old South Auckland man has been charged after making threats against the Government in an online video.
The threats, posted on YouTube earlier this month, included claims that explosives had been hidden in New Zealand Government buildings.
The video also said Government and media websites would be hacked.
Police say the threats were made in an apparent protest against the new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act.
The man has been charged with Threats of Harm to People/Property.
Acting Detective Inspector Pete Jones of Counties Manukau CIB says police drew on the expertise of the National Cyber Crime Centre and the Electronic Crime Laboratory in locating the man.
"Such threats are taken very seriously by police and this investigation demonstrates police has the expertise and resources to trace those who make such threats on the internet."
The teenager is due to appear in Manukau District court tomorrow.©Getty Images
The 2013/14 UEFA Champions League begins with the draw for the first and second qualifying rounds at UEFA's headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, on 24 June 2013 and ends with the final at the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, Lisbon, on Saturday 24 May 2014.
A country's representation in the UEFA Champions League is determined by its UEFA coefficient ranking, which is calculated over a five-year basis. Twenty-two teams automatically enter this season's competition in the group stage, with a further 54 teams taking part in qualifying.
The list below is provisional, however, and is subject to pending legal proceedings and final confirmation from UEFA.
UEFA Champions League group stage Position Club Coefficient 1 FC Bayern München (GER) – holders 146.922 2 FC Barcelona (ESP) 157.605 3 Chelsea FC (ENG) 137.592 4 Real Madrid CF (ESP) 136.605 5 Manchester United FC (ENG) 130.592 6 Arsenal FC (ENG) 113.592 7 FC Porto (POR) 104.833 8 SL Benfica (POR) 102.833 9 Club Atlético de Madrid (ESP) 99.605 10 FC Shakhtar Donetsk (UKR) 94.951 11 AC Milan (ITA) 93.829 12 FC Schalke 04 (GER) 84.922 13 Olympique de Marseille (FRA) 78.800 14 PFC CSKA Moksva (RUS) 77.766 15 Paris Saint-Germain FC (FRA) 71.800 16 Juventus (ITA) 70.829 17 FC Zenit (RUS) 70.765 18 Manchester City FC (ENG) 70.592 19 AFC Ajax (NED) 64.945 20 Borussia Dortmund (GER) 61.922 21 FC Basel 1893 (SUI) 59.785 22 Olympiacos FC (GRE) 57.800 23 Galatasaray AŞ (TUR) 54.400 24 Bayer 04 Leverkusen (GER) 53.922 25 FC København (DEN) 47.140 26 SSC Napoli (ITA) 46.829 27 RSC Anderlecht (BEL) 44.880 28 Celtic FC (SCO) 37.538 29 FC Steaua Bucureşti (ROU) 35.604 30 FC Viktoria Plzeň (CZE) 28.745 31 Real Sociedad de Fútbol (ESP) 17.605 32 FK Austria Wien (AUT) 16.575
The 32 teams will be split into four seeding pots of eight, and one from each pot will be drawn into eight groups at the group stage draw in Monaco on 29 August.
UEFA Champions League play-off – league route Position Club Coefficient 1 Arsenal FC (ENG)
113.592 2 Olympique Lyonnais (FRA)* 95.800 3 AC Milan (ITA) 93.829 4 FC Schalke 04 (GER) 84.922 5 FC Zenit (RUS) 70.766 6 PSV Eindhoven (NED)* 64.945 7 Fenerbahçe SK (TUR)* 46.400 8 PAOK FC (GRE)* 28.800 9 Real Sociedad de Fútbol (ESP) 17.605 10 FC Paços de Ferreira (POR)* 12.833
UEFA Champions League play-off – champions route
Position Club Coefficient 1 FC Basel 1893 (SUI) 59.785 2 Celtic FC (SCO) 37.538 3 FC Steaua Bucureşti (ROU) 35.604 4 FC Viktoria Plzeň (CZE) 28.745 5 GNK Dinamo Zagreb (CRO)* 25.916 6 FK Austria Wien (AUT) 16.575 7 Legia Warszawa (POL)* 13.650 8 NK Maribor (SVN)* 9.941 9 PFC Ludogorets Razgrad (BUL)* 3.450 10 FC Shakhter Karagandy (KAZ)* 2.941
UEFA Champions League third qualifying round – league route Position Club Coefficient 1 Olympique Lyonnais (FRA) 95.800 2 FC Zenit St Petersburg (RUS) 70.766 3 PSV Eindhoven (NED) 64.945 4 FC Metalist Kharkiv (UKR)* 62.451 5 Fenerbahçe SK (TUR) 46.400 6 PAOK FC (GRE) 28.800 7 FC Salzburg (AUT)* 28.075 8 FC Nordsjælland (DEN)* 12.640 9 Grasshopper Club (SUI)* 7.285 10 SV Zulte Waregem (BEL)* 6.880
UEFA Champions League third qualifying round – champions route Position Club Coefficient 1 FC Basel 1893 (SUI) 59.785 2 Celtic FC (SCO) 37.538 3 FC Steaua Bucureşti (ROU) 35.604 4 APOEL FC (CYP)* 35.366 5 FC Viktoria Plzeň (CZE) 28.745 6 GNK Dinamo Zagreb (CRO) 25.916 7 FK Partizan (SRB)* 17.425 8 FK Austria Wien (AUT)
16.575 9 Legia Warszawa (POL) 13.650 10 FC Sheriff (MDA)*
11.533 11 NK Maribor (SVN) 9.941 12 IF Elfsborg (SWE)* 8.125 13 Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC (ISR)* 8.075 14 Molde FK (NOR)* 7.835 15 FC Dinamo Tbilisi (GEO)* 5.333 16 FH Hafnarfjördur (ISL)* 4.083 17 PFC Ludogorets Razgrad (BUL) 3.450 18 FC Shakhter Karagandy (KAZ) 2.941 19 KS Skënderbeu (ALB)* 2.833 20 JK Nõmme Kalju (EST)* 1.191
UEFA Champions League second qualifying round Position Club Coefficient 1 FC BATE Borisov (BLR)* 39.175 2 Celtic FC (SCO) 37.538 3 FC Steaua Bucureşti (ROU) 35.604 4 FC Viktoria Plzeň (CZE) 28.745 5 GNK Dinamo Zagreb (CRO) 25.916 6 FK Partizan (SRB) 17.425 7 Legia Warszawa (POL) 13.650 8 FC Sheriff (MDA) 11.533 9 NK Maribor (SVN) 9.941 10 ŠK Slovan Bratislava (SVK)* 8.341 11 IF Elfsborg (SWE) 8.125 12 Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC (ISR) 8.075 13 Molde FK (NOR) 7.835 14 HJK Helsinki (FIN)* 6.701 15 FK Ekranas (LTU)* 6.300 16 Neftçi PFK (AZE)* 5.708 17 FC Dinamo Tbilisi (GEO) 5.333 18 FK Željezničar (BIH)* 4.566 19 FH Hafnarfjördur (ISL) 4.083 20 Győri ETO FC (HUN)* 3.850 21 The New Saints FC (WAL)* 3.766 22 PFC Ludogorets Razgrad (BUL) 3.450 23 Sligo Rovers FC (IRL)* 3.225 24 FC Shakhter Karagandy (KAZ) 2.941 25 KS Skënderbeu (ALB) 2.833 26 Birkirkara FC (MLT)* 2.541 27 EB/Streymur (FRO)* 2.316 28 FK Vardar (MKD)* 2.050 29 Cliftonville FC (NIR)* 2.116 30 FC Daugava Daugavpils (LVA)* 1.658 31 FK Sutjeska (MNE)* 1.300 32 JK Nõmme Kalju (EST) 1.191 33 CS Fola Esch (LUX)* 0.925 34 FC Shirak (ARM)* 0.850
UEFA Champions League first qualifying round Position Club Coefficient 1 EB/Streymur (FRO) 2.316 2 SP Tre Penne (SMR)* 1.383 3 FC Lusitans (AND)* 1.100 4 FC Shirak (ARM) 0.850
*EliminatedNoodlecake Studios are responsible for some of the most interesting Android games available to date and after a short stint as an iOS and PC game, they’re publishing Death Road to Canada on Android. It’ll arrive on October 26th with a price tag of $9.99, but don’t let that hefty price fool you, there’s a lot of game to be had here.
The game feels like a 2D version of Dead Rising meets The Oregon Trail, as you manage a group of people who are attempting to survive a zombie apocalypse. You’ll guide your group through ruined cities, fight hordes of up to 500 zombies at once, and meet new people who can help (or hinder) your party on their adventure. Each time you play the locations, events, survivor personalities, and skills are randomly generated, so it’s a new experience when you start over.
Here’s a peek at the trailer.
It’s worth noting that Death Road to Canada has been available on Steam since July of last year and in that time it has garnered Overwhelmingly Positive ratings from PC gamers, so if you’re an Android Gamer you’ll want to keep an eye out and Treat Yo Self come October 26.Illustration by Abro
While on a recent trip to Germany, I had the chance to catch up with the mutual friend of an old buddy of mine.
The buddy’s name was Nasir and we were members of a progressive student outfit at a local college in Karachi in the mid-1980s. Nasir came from a lower-middle-income group and lived with his family in a tiny apartment in the city’s Burns Road area. I remember he used to have a large collection of Urdu translations of the works of Marx, Mao, Lenin and Trotsky.
In those days we were also great admirers of Benazir Bhutto who was in exile.
Just before Benazir Bhutto decided to return from exile in 1986, a group of activists from my college were planning to travel to Lahore, where she was to hold her first public rally after her return.
A case of what goes around, comes around …
Nasir and I journeyed to Lahore with this group and stayed at a rundown apartment of a friend’s cousin in a congested area where our group gathered to plan its bit in making Benazir’s rally a success.
Right behind the apartment building was a mosque with a booming loudspeaker. We were in Lahore for about three weeks, and every Friday, the cleric of the mosque would deliver a fiery sermon in which he would urge mothers to send their sons to take part in the armed struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Most of us would be sleeping at the time of the sermon, thanks to the long nights we used to spend discussing politics. But some parts of the sermon almost always yanked everyone up, before we tried going back to sleep again.
One such Friday, Nasir got up grumbling like a cranky old man and then suddenly announced that he was going to the mosque.
Most of us in the apartment were surprised by this dramatic declaration because he was considered to be the most surkha (Urdu slang for communist) of us urban, wayward Cold War ‘Marxists’. He asked me to accompany him.
“What for?” I protested.
“Abay buss, inn molvi sahib |
They are packing his rallies by the thousands because they like his push for free tuition at public universities and his long record on liberal issues. They like that he doesn’t take money from political action committees. They even dig his rolled-up shirt-sleeves and his grumpy grandpa demeanor.
Most of all, they love the slogan: “Feel the Bern.”
“Bernie gets me stoked,” said Ian Wold, 20, a junior at the University of Iowa who plans to vote for Sanders in the state’s kick-off caucus.
The fight for younger voters harkens back to the 2008 race, when Clinton lost the youth vote to President Barack Obama. While younger voters tend to be less reliable participants, they can make all the difference in a close race. In addition, young enthusiasm helps a candidate project momentum.
Some students at the University of Iowa and at the concert were Clinton fans. Austin Graber, 22, said he thought Clinton was “the most qualified.” And Lauren Ellbogen, 18, said she’d be working at the caucuses for Clinton and said she didn’t think Sanders was “realistic.”
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://dailyre.co/1SMjjcYAs the marijuana movement becomes more mainstream, and especially as the medical marijuana community continues to grow, the clash between the crowd calling for political correctness and those that want to see attractive women has been gaining steam. Anyone who has been to a marijuana event (recreational or medical), especially in Southern California, has no doubt noticed that many of the booths use women who may – or may not – work in the adult entertainment industry. I have heard from many activists that this is bad for the movement, because no one will take us seriously if we have women in G-strings promoting marijuana reform. On the other side of the coin, I have heard many activists say that they don’t know what the big deal is, and that we should be using anything that helps. Those same activists point out that regardless if people think it’s OK or not, almost everyone looks at the girl, who then can highlight the message.
While I have talked to many people in private about this subject, I can’t find too many articles about it on the web to spark discussion. Since I’m a guy who likes to highlight the elephant in the room, I figured I would post this article to get the conversation going. I’m going to forward the link to Mom’s for Marijuana, as well as the NORML Women’s Alliance to see if they would like to have members comment. I would imagine finding people on the pro side won’t be quite as hard, considering the response I get from articles with pictures of attractive women in them!RECIFE, Brazil — So many distraught mothers stream into the infant ward clutching babies with abnormally small heads that the receptionist sends them outside, to see if they can find a chair to wait under the mango tree.
“There’s shade there, at least,” said Maria Helena Lopes, 66, as she greeted one young mother after another. “We’ll call you when we’re ready.”
Roziline Ferreira took three buses to get here, grasping her 3-month-old son, Arthur, all the way. Tears swelled as she looked at him, recalling how the symptoms of the Zika virus had struck her during the second month of her pregnancy. How would she ever be able to care for him, she wondered? What kind of life would he have?
“It gets me angry when someone on the bus looks at Arthur and asks, ‘What’s wrong with his head?’” Ms. Ferreira said. “I tell them, ‘Nothing’s wrong, he’s just different.’ But then I think to myself, ‘Yes, something’s wrong. My son will never be like the other boys.’ ”At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the Yippies (Youth International Party) nominated a pig for president, with the campaign pledge: “They nominate a president and he eats the people. We nominate a president and the people eat him.” This porcine political maneuver was the brainchild of sixties activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
The Yippies had come to Chicago to protest four years of an escalating war in Vietnam, the failure of racial integration and to call for a break from the two war parties, the Republicans and Democrats. What better way to bring home their point than to offer a real pig as an alternative candidate, clearly dramatizing the unwholesome offerings of the likely Democratic nominee, Hubert H. Humphrey, and his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon. Pigasus, the Immortal – Yippie Presidential candidate – was born.
Unfortunately, Pigasus’ candidacy was short-lived. Barely had Jerry Rubin begun the official introductions at Pigasus’ first press conference (at right), when Rubin, Pigasus, folk-singer Phil Ochs, Stew Albert and several others were arrested on the morning of August 23rd, at the Chicago Civic Center. The humans were bailed out later in the day, but Pigasus’ ultimate end remains unknown. He may have been taken to the Humane Society, or he may have ended up as dinner at the home of some Chicago police officers.Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.
The actor: Hal Linden made his Broadway debut in 1957, after he’d been singing and playing music for more than a decade. He became one of the most famous faces on the primetime landscape when he took on the title role in the long-running and critically acclaimed sitcom Barney Miller in 1975. Barney Miller came to a close after eight seasons, but Linden has yet to stop working. He’s tried his hand at a few more TV series (Blacke’s Magic, Jack’s Place) and guest-starred on many others, continued his work in the theater, and toured his nightclub act. He can currently be seen in the indie mob comedy Stevie D.
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Hal Linden: When people used to approach me, having seen me, they’d always mention what they saw me in. Back in the day when most of it was Broadway—before I hit television, I had done a whole bunch of Broadway shows. And it really got to me—in a good way!—when people would say, “I saw you in…” and then mention a play that lasted, like, a week. Because the truth of the matter is, you put the same energy, the same effort, into doing the bombs that you did in doing the success. So if somebody comes up and remembers something that I worked really hard on but that I figured 11 people saw… That, to me, was always the best. So go ahead.
Stevie D (2016)—“Max Levine”
HL: First of all, when you’re playing an agent, already you’re playing the enemy. [Laughs.] But he was a guy who spent his life trying to help people and doing the best he could, and the world just changed around him. When you’re still making phone calls and everybody else is texting, you’re in trouble… and that’s unfortunately my life! Well, not actually my life. I text, I email. But there are still things I don’t know how to do.
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The A.V. Club: Did you get to pick your own bow tie?
HL: [Laughs.] No, but I did pick for it to be a bow tie!
AVC: Were you able to bring any of your own experiences with agents into your performance?
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HL: Well, the truth of the matter is that I’ve had very few agents in my life, considering the amount of time I’ve been in the business. I don’t want to take the time to count them now, but I can say that I could probably count on one hand the number of agents I’ve had. No, seriously! I think I’ve had more managers than I’ve had agents. Because I always figured agents are doing the best they can. What they want to do is get you the work so they can get a percentage. They have the incentive to get you the work. If you’re not salable… A lot of actors blame their agents for the fact that their careers are in the dumps, but usually it’s because your career is in the dumps. It’s not the agent’s fault! [Laughs.] So I never had an adversarial relationship with agents.
Then again, in my case, I’ve really been in two businesses: For most of my career, I’ve been not only an actor, but also a performer, doing concerts, and that’s an entirely different business from the agencies that deal with acting. So I’ve always had a manager to keep the two in line, to make the decisions and to control the two different areas of the business. I’ve gone through a series of very fine, wonderful relationships with managers—most of which, unfortunately, ended through death!—and I now have two managers: one for the concert business and one for the acting business. So I’ve never really had that much personal relationship with the agents, but I always assumed they were doing as good a job as they could.
Producers’ Showcase (1957)—chorus member
AVC: You’d obviously been working for some time on the stage before you got around to stepping in front of a camera. But based on IMDB, it looks like the first time it happened was for a musical production of Ruggles Of Red Gap that aired as an episode of Producers’ Showcase.
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HL: Listen, this could be the longest interview of our lives if you start me on that. [Laughs.] I mean, let’s face it: Now you’re talking [Broadway composer] Jule Styne. Jule Styne was one of the big things in my life. I was the understudy in Bells Are Ringing, which Jule Styne wrote, and he loved my work. I ended up playing the role, and I was Jule Styne’s go-to guy! If he needed a demo record for a song he just wrote, he called me in, and I’d sing it for him—whatever he needed. It was a terrific relationship, particularly for an unemployed actor. So he had written this, and he’d cast me. The one major number we did was a barbershop-quartet number, I think.
It was interesting, though. I don’t know if you’re into musicals, but here’s a little gem for you about self-plagiarism. You probably know the famous story of Richard Rodgers and “Blue Moon.” He tried to write the song 15 times. Every time, he’d put a new lyric to the same song, but it didn’t go anywhere until he got to “Blue Moon,” and then it was a hit! [Laughs.] Well, Jule Styne did this a lot.
Ruggles Of Red Gap had to do with a Fourth Of July celebration, and one of the numbers… I think it was Peter Lawford who sang it, but it was a tune called “I’m In Pursuit Of Happiness.” And even though I think it was actually recorded—in fact, I know it was, because I remember making the record!—he still took the song three or four years later, called it “You’ll Never Get Away from Me,” and put it into Gypsy! [Laughs.]
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He did that a couple of times… that I knew of! He may have done it many, many more times. He did it with a number from Funny Girl. In a show called Subways Are For Sleeping, which I was in as an understudy, it had a song with a section that went, [Singing.] “Go buy her a rose / Twelve of those / Buy her a ring / A simple thing…” And the show was a flop. It closed, and then four years later the melody was in “Don’t Rain On My Parade” in Funny Girl and was a hit for Barbra Streisand. So there you go. Next! [Laughs.]
Car 54, Where Are You? (1963)—“Asst. DA Clark” (uncredited)
Search For Tomorrow (1969)—“Larry Carter”
AVC: Had you been at all interested in transitioning into television?
HL: In 1957? Are you kidding? What was on TV that I cared about? Nothing! [Laughs.] On top of that, they weren’t doing as much TV in New York then as they were in L.A. And I was a New Yorker. I wasn’t about to go to Hollywood to try and be an actor. TV was just something I watched when I was unemployed. Of course, as I eventually got a career going and they started doing some more things in New York, I did… I think it was an episode of Car 54, Where Are You? or something like that. That was shot in New York. But I was concentrating on making a career on Broadway. Definitely. No question about it.
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AVC: It looks like you finally began to ease more toward television when you did an arc on Search For Tomorrow.
HL: My lord. Not an arc. A day! [Laughs.] And not only was it only a day, but it was a flashback, so we shot it separately. It wasn’t shot with the rest of series, because everybody had to get into period costumes and makeup.
When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? (1979)—“Richard Ethridge”
HL: I got to work opposite Lee Grant. I got to have a love scene with Lee Grant! C’mon! [Laughs.] It was an interesting character, and I thought it was a terrific picture, and it lasted three weeks and went away. What can I tell you? Again, your failures are just as much a part of your career as your successes and just as much a part of your memory as your successes. I remember that it was a terrific experience working on that role, though. [Director] Milton [Katselas] was very astute vis-à-vis acting. I don’t know how he was with cameras. I won’t judge him there. But for acting, boy, he really was terrific. And it was a great experience working with Lee Grant.
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I Do! I Do! (1983)—“He (Michael)”
AVC: A few years later, you worked with another Lee—Lee Remick—on I Do! I Do!
HL: A wonderful lady. And she was terrific in that. She was the best in that role that I’d ever seen… and that was played on Broadway by Mary Martin. Ethel Merman, I think, also played it for awhile. But, yeah, Lee Remick was terrific. Boy, this is great! [Laughs.]
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A New Life (1988)—“Mel Arons”
HL: That was terrific. I did an audition for Alan [Alda]. You know, he wrote it. I auditioned in his manager’s office in New York. I was in New York at the time, and I think I just happened to be in the same building, and they said, “Run up and read for it!” And I read, and I did one line in a way that I guess he never anticipated, and he got hysterical laughing over it. [Laughs.] So I suspect that’s what got me the part.
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That was a lot of fun, too, to play a shallow guy. Everything becomes momentary. Everything becomes, “How does it feel at this moment?” No depth to the man at all. A wonderful character. Also three weeks in the theaters and out. One of Alan’s few non-successes. Everything else he’s done turned to gold. I had worked with Alan on Broadway. We did The Apple Tree together, so I knew Alan, and we had a wonderful relationship. We still do to this day. But unfortunately I got the one that didn’t work. [Laughs.] The only Alan Alda picture that wasn’t a major success! What does that tell you about my career?
Jack’s Place (1992-93)—“Jack Evans”
HL: You know, right away, it was written for me. Jack Evans was a bandleader who had kind of retired from the music business and opened a restaurant, and yet he still had a personality that dealt with people as an entertainer, if you will. So there was this big-band background, and I actually wrote a theme song for the show, one for Jack that should’ve been played by his big band. That’s what we talked about, anyway. But we never actually did it on the show. I ended up doing it in my nightclub act, though. [Laughs.] They actually wrote it into an episode, though, one with Allen Garfield guest-starring. The song was called “Meet Me At Jack’s,” and the episode was kind of a reunion—he was a piano player, and he had a story—and part of the episode involved us sitting down and writing the song, and then we recorded it. So it’s lying out there somewhere!
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I’ll give you another wonderful little episode about Jack’s Place. It was actually very imaginative. When I read it originally, I said, “It’s kind of a land-bound Love Boat.” Because, you know, it’s the stories of the people who visit. And, yeah, in a sense it was. But when we shot it, the writers were wonderful. They put in all kinds of whimsy and imaginative stuff. I was really proud of it. It was really good. We originally did six episodes in the summer, and it was a big hit! It was on Tuesday night at 10 o’clock. And then they picked up an order for another half season, we went to Vancouver to shoot it, and we were hoping to get that 10-o’clock Tuesday time slot again, because it was successful there. But between the time when we started shooting and the time they had put us on the air, there was a change in command at ABC. Now, I don’t have to tell you what happens when there’s a change in command. You know, the first thing you’ve got to prove is that the guy before you was an idiot, right? [Laughs.]
So here came this decision: When are they going to put us on the air? Because they had it in the can, and we had contracts, so he had to put us on. And you know when he put us on? Opposite the last 13 weeks of Cheers. That’s when he put us on. You wonder why it only ran for 13 weeks? In fact, I don’t even think it ran 13. But that’s Hollywood. There you go.
Hal Linden With The Jack Evans Orchestra, “Meet Me At Jack’s” (1993)
Herb Jeffries, “Cow Cow Boogie” (1995)
AVC: It looks like the theme song for Jack’s Place did end up getting released on a 45. That’s what it says on Discogs.com, anyway.
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HL: Oh, did it? Well, I wrote it!
AVC: And Tom Scott arranged it, apparently.
HL: Yes! That was a fascinating experience. That was the very beginning for me of arrangers arranging electronically. He put the whole thing together on a computer, and he played it for me! He didn’t even have to have musicians in to play it! [Laughs.] I’m used to the guy writing the number, you stage it for the show, then the arranger comes in, watches it, and writes an arrangement in a hotel room. It’s three guys copying it out, and then when they get musicians, that’s the first time you hear it. So that was my introduction to electronic music arranging. Very interesting.
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AVC: There’s another interesting credit in your discography: You reportedly played clarinet on a version of “Cow Cow Boogie” for Herb Jeffries.
HL: Now, wait a minute. I’m trying to remember if we recorded it or not. I think “Cow Cow Boogie” came before me. But I played it with Herb many times. Herb was a dear friend, and we used to play in golf tournaments together, for instance, and they’d always ask Herb to sing something. And he’d call me up, and we’d do “Cow Cow Boogie” or whatever. I’ve done that for a lot of people, and I know I did some recording for some people, but I’ll bow to your information. I don’t remember.
AVC: Well, in this case, the information seems to have been taken straight from the liner notes of a compilation of Herb’s best stuff, so it’s relatively official info.
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HL: Then that may be. But let me nonetheless warn you about believing everything you read. Somebody said to me, “You’ve got a Wikipedia page!” I said, “Oh, yeah?” And the first thing it said was that I was dead. [Laughs.] So don’t take it too seriously!
AVC: You’ve done a number of one-offs, including an episode of Gilmore Girls.
HL: Yeah, where I danced!
AVC: With Emily Gilmore, no less.
HL: And we did a Lindy. I wasn’t very good, I must say. I was never a good Lindy dancer.
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AVC: When you’re doing one-off episode appearances, do you usually audition, or are you being asked for specifically?
HL: Both. In that case, I don’t think I auditioned for it. I don’t remember. But I love auditioning. My agents hate it. Agents always hate it. They say, [Huffily.] “You don’t have to audition! You’re a star! They know what you can do!” Well, they don’t know what I can do. I love auditioning, because you get to play a scene your way. And if the writer doesn’t agree with it, then you don’t get the gig. [Laughs.] But that’s okay.
Supernatural (2013)—“Rabbi Isaac Bass”
AVC: You also popped up in an episode of Supernatural a few years ago: You played Rabbi Isaac Bass in an episode entitled “Everybody Hates Hitler.”
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HL: [Laughs.] Was it? I didn’t even remember that’s what they called it! Yeah, that was interesting. A lot of people saw that. A lot of people, considering I had never heard of the show when I did it. Which was in, like, its eighth year already by the time I did it. I don’t know how many years it ran.
AVC: It’s still on, believe it or not.
HL: It’s still on! [Laughs.] And I’d never heard of it! But I went up there to Vancouver and did it, and it was… Yeah, it was interesting. That one I get burned up in. How about that? That’s memorable!
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The Drew Carey Show (1999)—“Mr. Van Zandt”
HL: A-ha! That was a tough one, because for some reason he was Dutch, and I don’t do a good Dutch accent. I do a German accent. I couldn’t do a Dutch accent. But Drew Carey had a period where he wanted to be a musical star, and he used to do musical numbers in his show, remember? And that was the point: He brought me in to play Van Zandt, and we did that song from How To Succeed In Business. [Sings.] “There is a brotherhood / Of man!” So it was a big, fully staged number with a chorus and all of them dancing on desks. And every time I see Drew, he reminds me that we did that together, which brings up an interesting function: When you do something creative with people, it’s always a part of your shared history. Even actors you don’t like, if you’ve done something creative with them, you’re kind of co-parents.
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The Hal Linden Special (1979)/Hal Linden’s Big Apple (1980)—himself
AVC: In 1979, you had an honor bestowed upon you that was among the highest that any performer could receive in the ’70s: You had your very own variety special.
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HL: I did two, actually. The first one was just called The Hal Linden Special, I think. Ken and Mitzie Welch wrote it and produced it. They were the writers of all the musicals that Carol Burnett used to do on her show. Remember those mini-musicals she used to do? I did one with her. Well, Ken and Mitzie wrote all of those, and they wrote that special. They wrote it all for me—all original music for an all-original musical based on my life, as it were—and it started a relationship between Ken and Mitzie and myself. I brought them in to look at my act, and they rewrote it about two or three times. And I continued to know them until Mitzie died about two years ago. They were wonderful, imaginative people. Just terrific. Terrific people. And it was a wonderful musical. But—again!—it was put in a terrible time slot, so it never did really big numbers. I did one more special, which was also terrific and was another original musical.
The first one, The Hal Linden Special, was about making it. The fact of the matter is that when I did Barney Miller, I was given the title “Newcomer Of The Year” from many of those fan magazines. [Snorts.] Considering I was in my 40s at the time, it was a strange appellation. And that was the concept of the special: It was about what it took to “make it.” And my guests were three other people who had toiled in the vineyards with me. I’d done some stock with them, I’d done chorus with them, and we all had kind of “made it.” That was Linda Lavin, Bonnie Franklin, and Skipper Damon. Cathryn Damon.
It was all about what we had to go through to make it: being in the chorus, doing industrial shows, doing commercials—whatever it took to make it in the business. And I remember the switch was, there was one number called “It’s About Time,” which was about a train leaving. We were in the chorus. I was the conductor of the train, two other people were the stars, and we were in the back, trying to get seen. And when we finally got to the end of the show, after all the things we’d been through, someone said, “So how do you really feel about it?” I said, “Well, I’ll tell you the truth: It’s about time!” And we did another version of that same number, saying, “What the hell took so long?” [Laughs.] It was unapologetic, and it was just wonderful. If you ever get a chance to see it, catch it.
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And the second one was called Hal Linden’s Big Apple, and it had to do with my going back to New York to receive an award and touring New York, which was where I grew up and where I started. And I just have to say again: all original songs. Ken and Mitzie Welch really were just terrific.
The Saga Of The Dingbat (1964)—cast member
Flush Left, Stagger Right (1966)—cast member
AVC: Since you mentioned industrial shows a moment ago… On your discography, there’s also a listing for the cast recording of a musical called The Saga Of The Dingbat.
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HL: The Saga Of The Dingbat! It was done at the Plaza Hotel. I believe Arte Johnson was in it! Or if he wasn’t in that one, he might’ve been in Stagger Left, Flush Right, which was another industrial musical. [Laughs.] But there were a whole bunch of really talented musical performers in them. I don’t think they made it, so you won’t recognize them. I think Arte’s is the only one you’d recognize. But The Saga Of The Dingbat was about the [New York] Herald Tribune. I guess “dingbat” has some meaning in a press room. I don’t know. But it was about an hour long, and it was a full-fledged original musical about the press and, I guess, what was happening at the time.
Interestingly enough, that’s what got Arte and I together, and we actually sat down and starting talking about doing a nightclub act, the two of us. Arte’s short, I’m tall. He’s a tenor, I’m a baritone. He can sing, I can sing, so we could do duets. I would play straight man to his comedy. That was the idea. In those days, there were Martin and Lewis, Allen and Rossi… It was viable. It was the early ’60s. Basically, the reason we were in a hurry to get it done and get it working was so that we could call the act Linden And Johnson. [Laughs.] That was the hook! It was during his presidency. And it was ready to go. Unfortunately, Arte changed his mind, moved out to Los Angeles, and did a little something called Laugh-In, and I was left behind. It took me another 10 years to get to California!
Blacke’s Magic (1986)—“Alexander Blacke”
HL: [Richard] Levinson and [William] Link, they had done Columbo. They had done Angela Lansbury’s Murder, She Wrote. And Levinson, I believe, was a magic freak. He loved magic. That was his concept: a magician solving crimes. Also mishandled by the network. We did it, and there was a question of the pickup [for the back half of the season], and the reason why they didn’t was because they had one other show that had a woman as the lead, so they went for that because it was politically correct to do. So you get all kinds of reasons why.
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AVC: Well, it looks like you and Harry Morgan had fun, anyway.
HL: Yes! He was a terrific guy. No agenda. Easy. “Let’s do this! What’s the best way to do it?” And that was it. No ego. A terrific guy. That’s not to say that I haven’t worked with actors with egos, but… we’ll leave it at that!
Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land (1983)—“Josh Gilliam”
AVC: We actually just talked to Lee Majors about this film.
HL: Lee gave me a lesson in how to act in TV movies. He did all of his scenes sitting behind the wheel of that plane, and so consequently, the camera was facing him from outside the plane, looking through the windshield. Well, he had all his lines on the instrument panel! So he’d check the instrument panel, read his lines, check the instrumental panel, read his lines. [Laughs.] And I ended up in a coffin in that one, didn’t I?
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AVC: I believe you did, yes.
HL: I thought so. Boy, it’s been a terrific life! I’ve been in some wonderful things, and I’ve already been in a coffin, so I can just skip that part, right? [Laughs.]
HL: Ah! Also fascinating! Donald O’Connor and I played dancing teachers, right? Well, they actually had a dance number, with all the people dancing a cha-cha or something, and they didn’t feature Donald, they featured me! [Laughs.] Can you imagine that? There was one scene in that where we as the dance instructors were teaching the Macarena. Do you remember the Macarena in the ’90s?
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AVC: Oh, yes.
HL: Donald came to me and said, “I don’t know this dance. Do you know it?” I said, “I don’t know it. But they’ll teach it to us. We’ll learn it.” He could never learn it. [Laughs.] Donald O’Connor couldn’t learn the Macarena!
Brent Spiner had a nice role in that. It was interesting. He played the cruise director, so we worked for him. He was the villain to us. [Laughs.] And as the cruise director, he used to close by singing with the band, which some cruise directors do. At the very end of the picture, he gets fired, and they give me his job. So I suggested to the director, “Well, why don’t I sing his song?” And I ended up singing his song, really badly! But it was a lot of fun. Listen, working with [Walter] Matthau and [Jack] Lemmon… What can I tell you? Just watch them.
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AVC: This seems like a nice segue into discussing your role in the first Love Boat TV movie.
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HL: Yeah, it was the pilot! It’s funny what you remember. You know what I remember from that one? The difference between television and films. There was a scene in which I seduced Karen Valentine. That was the point of the scene: I got her to my room, and I was trying to seduce her. Well, the set designer had designed portholes for the room, and outside the portholes you could see a railing. A lot of ships have that. You have a porthole, but they’re not on the outside of the boat. They’re situated so that people can walk past them. So I said, “Excuse me, but if I’m going to seduce the lady, can’t we close the porthole so that people can’t look in?” But the set designer was so in love with the portholes that they wouldn’t do it!
AVC: That’s bizarre.
HL: Of course it’s bizarre! [Laughs.] I said, “Either that, or take out the railing so it looks like it’s the side of the ship, looking out to sea, where nobody can look in, but come on, I can’t…” But they wouldn’t do it. They did the scene with the railing.
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Animals, Animals, Animals (1976-80)—host
AVC: How did you come to host Animals, Animals, Animals?
HL: You know, it wasn’t my idea. [Laughs.] Somebody came up with the concept and looked around for a host, and they asked me to do it. And it was a lovely experience for the many years that we shot that, because I shot the whole season all in a week or so. Because I was never in any of the parts of it. I just introduced the parts. So we would go down to San Diego and shoot my segments at the zoo, in the wild-animal park there, and either I would hold the animal or stand in the cage of the animal we were talking about. In that series, I was scratched, bitten, peed on, mauled, attacked by all kinds of animals. I remember running from a swan! Don’t fool with swans. They’re not friendly. [Laughs.]
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I once held up a jar with a tarantula in it, and I did the dialogue, and while I was doing the dialogue, the tarantula crawled out of the jar and up my arm. And one time I was holding a monkey, and the monkey all of a sudden got mad at something and bit into my arm! Yeah, that was quite an experience, that one. But it was fun. Every June we’d go away for a week or two and shoot the whole season.
Barney Miller (1975-82)—“Capt. Barney Miller”
AVC: The story goes that [series creator] Danny Arnold wanted you for the role because he unexpectedly ended up going to see The Rothchilds on Broadway, saw your performance, and remembered you.
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HL: And he offered me the part! But at the time, I had a musical in one hand and a TV series in the other hand, and I very cavalierly said, “Well, we’ve done Broadway. Let’s try television.” A cavalier decision, but look how it impacted my life. Can you imagine if I’d made the other decision? The show folded in three weeks!
AVC: What was the musical?
HL: It was called Doctor Jazz. I don’t even know anything about it. I just know they had me in it because the lead was a New Orleans jazz musician, so I was going to play the clarinet and everything. But I never got that close. [Laughs.] I just decided, “Let’s try television.”
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AVC: Barney was obviously the straight man far more often than not…
HL: Far more often? Always! [Laughs.] I didn’t have much funny to say in the whole run!
AVC: Did you grow resigned to it at a certain point?
HL: Well, in the beginning, you didn’t know. It was just a script. It was about you, you executed it, and you didn’t know what was next. Or I didn’t know, anyway. But then we got to the hash brownies episode, which is probably the quintessential Barney Miller episode. And if you notice in that, everybody’s got an aria. Everybody’s got a moment to react stoned. Jack Soo sings. Abe Vigoda leaped from building to building. Max [Gail] started to cry. Ron Glass giggled. Everybody had their own little reaction to it… except me. Because I said, “I’m putting on too much weight. I don’t want any brownies.” And at some point, either while we were shooting it or afterwards, I said to Danny, “Everybody gets an aria but me.” And he said—and this is the wisdom, so think about it—“I have to have somebody to compare them to.”
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AVC: There you go.
HL: There you go. Structure. It’s been my mantra ever since. If the play’s got structure, you can do almost anything you want in it. But you’ve got to have a legitimate structure that people will accept. And from there on, I said, “That’s my structure. My place is to be the straight person that everybody who’s doing crazy things can be compared to.” So I came to terms with it. That was, what, second or third year? That’s when it was codified. [Laughs.] Up ’til then, I was just playing it piece by piece. I’d get a script and figure out what my function was and how to best accomplish it. But that’s when it was codified for me: “You’re the straight man.” And I thought I was a pretty good straight man.
AVC: It may not surprise you that clips of Harris from the “Hash” episode went viral in the wake of Ron Glass’ death.
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HL: |
functionality hits stable, you can downgrade with the same process (although a reset will be required).
More Chromebooks should be launching over the coming months with Android app functionality, so Google’s fairly quick turnaround in getting Android apps working on the R13 after launch should give promise that things will get even faster with other new Chromebooks. Of course, other Chromebooks will be getting this functionality over the coming year and you can even enable it now on any Chromebook…Fighters from the Fateh al Sham militant group in Syria. Pic: File
There are concerns about the durability of a nationwide ceasefire in Syria after government forces and their allies clashed with rebels.
The fresh fighting could put the truce - brokered by Russia and Turkey and agreed between President Bashar al Assad's regime and opposition fighters - under pressure.
Helicopter gunships were reportedly used to attack groups, including the Fateh al Sham Front, in Wadi Barada, a rebel-held valley northwest of the capital Damascus.
The government said the al Qaeda affiliate, previously known as al Nusra Front, was excluded from the truce, which came into force at midnight on Thursday.
But the opposition said it believed the ceasefire applied to all of Syria, including areas where Fateh al Sham was present.
A spokesman for Fateh al Sham Front criticised the ceasefire for not declaring the fate of Syria's president Bashar al Assad.
In a statement, the unidentified spokesman said: "The solution is to topple the criminal regime militarily".
Syrian government agrees ceasefire with rebels
Islamic State and the Kurdish YPG militia have also been excluded from the ceasefire deal.
It is not clear which side started the latest clashes in a country where repeated international efforts towards peace have failed.
The army began an offensive last week to retake Wadi Barada, which provides most of Damascus' water supplies.
The military has accused rebels of deliberately targeting the infrastructure there.
Government warplanes have also carried out airstrikes in the central province of Hama, according to monitors.
Meanwhile, Russian fighter jets have hit three IS targets around the northern town of al Bab over the past 24 hours, according to Turkey's military.
Ceasefire agreement is 'fragile' and needs'special attention'
The action could be the first Russian support for Turkish army operations in the area.
The ceasefire, backed by Assad ally Moscow and opposition-supporting Ankara, has appeared to have mostly held elsewhere.
It is designed to pave the way for a political solution to a conflict that has claimed more than 310,000 lives since it began with anti-regime protests in March 2011.
Despite backing opposing sides in the war, Moscow and Ankara are pushing for talks between Damascus and the rebels to begin next month in Kazakhstan.with chef Le Hoai Anh from Ha Noi Daewoo Hotel
This week brings you a special gift from the sea: fried tiger prawns served with red breadcrumbs. This nutritious dish is brought to you by chef Le Van Anh.
Ingredients: serves 2
1kg tiger prawns, peeled
1 tbs parsley, chopped
1 tsp ground oregano
1 tsp basil powder
70-80g breadcrumbs
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/3 cup plain flour
2 beaten eggs
Salt, pepper, oil
1 tsp chili sauce and 1 tsp mayonnaise for the sauce
Method:
To make the fried prawns:
Season the prawns with salt, pepper, oregano and basil powder. Set aside for 15-20 mins.
Mix breadcrumbs, chopped parsley and grated cheddar. Place flour onto a plate and the beaten eggs in a separate bowl.
Dip prawns one at a time into the flour. Shake off excess flour. Dip into eggs, then coat with breadcrumb mixture, pressing crumbs on firmly with your fingers.
Pour oil into a saucepan over medium-high heat. Deep-fry prawns for 2-3 mins. Remove, drain and keep warm.
To make the spicy mayonnaise sauce:
Mix 1 tsp chilli sauce and 1 tsp mayonnaise until combined.
You can sample the dish at Edo Restaurant, Ha Noi Daewoo Hotel, 360 Kim Ma St, Ba Dinh Dist, Ha Noi. Tel: 0438315000 ext 3044.Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region… While on the ground in Haiti, the U.S. military can also interrupt the nightly flights of cocaine to Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter the ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola. This U.S. military presence, which should also include a large contingent of U.S. Coast Guard assets, can also prevent any large-scale movement by Haitians to take to the sea in rickety watercraft to try to enter the U.S. illegally. Meanwhile, the U.S. must be prepared to insist that the Haiti government work closely with the U.S. to insure that corruption does not infect the humanitarian assistance flowing to Haiti. Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.
Why were 60 percent of the buildings in Port-au-Prince shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal circumstances, according to the city's mayor? Why are there no building regulations in a city that sits on a fault line? Why has Port-au-Prince swelled from a small town of 50,000 in the 1950s to a population of 2 million desperately poor people today? Why was the state completely overwhelmed by the disaster?
The Shock Doctrine
You want to hear about chutzpah? You want to hear about sheer gravity-defying audacity? Well, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, prepare to catch your lower jaw. Forget Limbaugh's racist anxieties. Forget about Pat Robertson drooling about Haiti's 'pact with the devil'. He's a senile old bigot, and his sick provocations are familiar by now. This is the Heritage Foundation on the Haiti earthquake, which is estimated to have killed 100,000 people:While you're letting that sink in, let me lay this on you. It is, or ought to be, widely enough understood that the category of 'natural disaster' is increasingly redundant. Whether it's an earthquake, a storm, a flood or a crop failure, the truly shocking and baleful consequences of ecological events are generally caused by their interaction with existing political economies. Ashley Smith therefore asks the right questions:Well, quite. The wretched subjugation of Haiti by the 'international community', particularly since the multilateral anti-Lavalas coup in 2004, is angrily and movingly described by Peter Hallward in today's Guardian, and there is more here (the Tomb's coverage of the coup is here ). The coup was promoted to advance the process of neoliberal capital accumulation, break the left and the unions, and break Famni Lavalas and the civil society organisations sustaining resistance. For years, UN 'peacekeepers' have slaughtered thousands of Haitians, and the residents have been put through rigged election procedures. Lavalas members, priests, and activists have been subject to political imprisonment and murder, some of them characterised as 'gang' members. This is all for the aid of sweatshop bosses such as Andy Apaid, and the multinationals principally based in the US and Canada that benefit enormously from the exploitation of Haitian labour. This process of capital accumulation is what has driven Haitians out of a devastated rural economy and into impoverished slums with a tinpot infrastructure, and left them vulnerable to this extraordinary catastrophe. There are a tremendous number of NGOs operating in Haiti, but there is hardly a public service infrastructure capable of a response. What support systems were available have themselves suffered terribly in the quake. Following from the above, such disasters are generally exploited by states and companies in the vicious and predatory way that Naomi Klein outlines in. Perhaps a lesser known example of this is the way in which in the wake of the tsunami in late 2004, the Indonesian military took the opportunity to ramp up repression in Aceh. A more obvious example is the depraved way in which the Bush administration (and the local Democratic party) effectively ethnically cleansed New Orleans and turned it into a haven for developers and construction firms after Katrina. So, what depraved agenda is going to be more forcefully thrust on Haiti in the middle of this catastrophe? Obviously, there is no danger of Obama allowing any impoverished immigrants into the US on the back of some rickety boats. You might recall that after last year's hurricanes, his administration continued to deport people, even in the middle of urgent legal appeals. So what is the plan? Back to Ashley Smith, who writes
In close collaboration with the new UN Special Envoy to Haiti, former President Bill Clinton, Obama has pushed for an economic program familiar to much of the rest of the Caribbean--tourism, textile sweatshops and weakening of state control of the economy through privatization and deregulation. In particular, Clinton has orchestrated a plan for turning the north of Haiti into a tourist playground, as far away as possible from the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince. Clinton lured Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines into investing $55 million to build a pier along the coastline of Labadee, which it has leased until 2050. From there, Haiti's tourist industry hopes to lead expeditions to the mountaintop fortress Citadelle and the Palace of Sans Souci, both built by Henri Christophe, one of the leaders of Haiti's slave revolution. According to the Miami Herald: The $40 million plan involved transforming the now quaint town of Milot, home to the Citadelle and Palace of Sans Souci ruin, into a vibrant tourist village, with arts and crafts markets, restaurants and stoned streets. Guests would be ferried past a congested Cap-Haïtien to a bay, then transported by bus past peasant plantations. Once in Milot, they would either hike or horseback to the Citadelle...named a world heritage site in 1982... Eco-tourism, archaeological exploration and voyeuristic visits to Vodou rituals are all being touted by Haiti's struggling boutique tourism industry, as Royal Caribbean plans to bring the world largest cruise ship here, sparking the need for excursions. So while Pat Robertson denounces Haiti's great slave revolution as a pact with the devil, Clinton is helping to reduce it to a tourist trap. At the same time, Clinton's plans for Haiti include an expansion of the sweatshop industry to take advantage of cheap labor available from the urban masses. The U.S. granted duty-free treatment for Haitian apparel exports to make it easy for sweatshops to return to Haiti. Clinton celebrated the possibilities of sweatshop development during a whirlwind tour of a textile plant owned and operated by the infamous Cintas Corp. He announced that George Soros had offered $50 million for a new industrial park of sweatshops that could create 25,000 jobs in the garment industry. Clinton explained at a press conference that Haiti's government could create "more jobs by lowering the cost of doing business, including the cost of rent." As TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson told Democracy Now! "That isn't the kind of investment that Haiti needs. It needs capital investment. It needs investment so that it can be self-sufficient. It needs investment so that it can feed itself." One of the reasons why Clinton could be so unabashed in celebrating sweatshops is that the U.S.-backed coup repressed any and all resistance. It got rid of Aristide and his troublesome habit of raising the minimum wage. It banished him from the country, terrorized his remaining allies and barred his political party, Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular in the country, from running for office. The coup regime also attacked union organizers within the sweatshops themselves. As a result, Clinton could state to business leaders: "Your political risk in Haiti is lower than it has ever been in my lifetime."
Would those who sycophantically defended Clinton, particularly over his Haiti policy, care to comment? Do the 'progressives for Obama' have anything to say at this point?
Labels: capitalism, haiti, multilateralism, shock doctrine, united nations, US imperialismBackground: Intubation and mechanical ventilation are commonly performed ED interventions and although patients optimally go to an ICU level of care afterwards, many of them remain in the ED for prolonged periods of time. It is widely accepted that the utilization of lung protective ventilation reduces ventilator-associated complications, including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Additionally, it is believed that ventilatory-associated lung injury can occur early after the initiation of mechanical ventilation thus making ED management vital in preventing this disorder. Despite this, intubated ED patients are not optimally ventilated used lung-protective strategy on a routine basis.
Clinical Question: Can the adoption of an ED lung-protective ventilation protocol decrease the frequency of ventilator associated complications?
Article:
Fuller BM et al. Lung-Protective Ventilation Initiated in the Emergency Department (LOV-ED): A Quasi-Experimental, Before-After Trial. Ann Emerg Med 2017. PMID: 28259481
Population: All adult patients (> 18 years of age) who were mechanically ventilated through an ET tube in the Emergency Department.
Intervention: “After” period with initiation of a new lung-protective protocol (see figure below)
Control: “Before” period with routine ventilation strategies employed in the ED in question.
Outcomes:
Primary: Composite of ARDS and ventilator associated conditions
Secondary: Ventilator-free days, ICU-free days, hospital-free days and mortality
Design: Quasi-experimental before and after study. There was a 4.5 year “before/preintervention” period followed by a 6 month run-in period and a 1.5 year “after/intervention” period.
Excluded: Death or discontinuation of mechanical ventilation within 24 hours of presentation, long-term mechanical ventilation, the presence of a tracheostomy, transfer from another hospital, in ARDS during the ED presentation.
Primary Results:
1705 patients were included in the study Pre-intervention period: n = 1192 Intervention period: n = 513 Propensity score matched analysis was performed on 980 patients (490 in each group)
After the run-in period, lung-protective ventilation increased by 48.4%
Critical Findings:
Secondary Outcomes all improved in intervention group Ventilator-free days: Incr 3.7 days (95% CI 2.3-5.1) ICU-free days: Incr 2.4 days (95% CI 1.0 – 3.7) Hospital-free days: Incr 2.4 days (95% CI 1.2-3.6) Mortality: Decr 14.5% (95% CI 0.35 – 0.63)
Strengths:
Primary outcome clinically important
Adjudicators of ARDS outcome blinded to all clinical information
Propensity score matching performed to account for non-randomized nature of trial
The intervention includes a simple, step-by-step protocol to implement a lung-protective strategy
Treatment variables in the ED accounted for in the propensity score included intravenous fluids, administration of blood products, central venous catheter placement, antibiotics, and vasopressor use.
Limitations:
Before and after design is susceptible to the effects of temporal trends in care that may lead to changes independent of this intervention
The intervention bundle is multifaceted. It’s unclear if any of these pieces are more influential on outcomes than others
Though propensity matching takes into account a number of cofounders, others may have been present that were not accounted for
Patients during both periods may have been treated with either ventilation strategy. It is unclear from the data exact percentages treated with each approach. This may blunt or exaggerate the effect of the intervention
A priori power calculation established 80% power to detect a 5-6% difference if 513 patients were collected. Only 490 patients were collected for the propensity matched analysis giving 80% power to detect a 6.7% difference (this was established after data collection completed)
Ventilator settings were recorded twice daily in the ICU. Changes during the day may not have been captured by this system.
It is unclear how long patients remained in the ED in either phase and how long the ventilator strategies were applied to the patients and if changes were made upon arrival in the ICU.
Lung Protective Strategy Protocol:
Discussion:
Lung-Protective Ventilation Strategy Implications: Starting lung-protective ventilation strategies in the ED is feasible Implementing lung-protective ventilation strategies in the ED influences ventilator practices in the ICU Implementing a lung-protective ventilation strategy in the ED is associated with a reduction in pulmonary complications, hospital mortality, and health care resource usage
Authors Conclusions:
“Implementing a mechanical ventilator protocol in the ED is feasible and is associated with significant improvements in the delivery of safe mechanical ventilation and clinical outcome.”
Our Conclusions:
We agree with the authors conclusions. This simple, inexpensive protocol to increase the use of a lung-protective ventilation strategy was associated with significant improvement in both the primary outcome as well as all secondary outcomes.
Potential to Impact Current Practice:
Although a prospective, randomized controlled trial would be useful in determining causality. In lieu of an RCT, this data should further encourage Emergency Providers to embrace lung-protective ventilation strategies for their intubated patients.
Clinical Bottom Line:
Patients intubated in the ED without reactive airway disease should be ventilated with a lung protect approach. Starting lung protective ventilation in the ED is feasible, it influences ventilator settings in the ICU and reduces pulmonary complications. Implementation includes getting an accurate height to use for the tidal volume, minimal FiO2 to meet an O2 saturation greater than 90%, matching PEEP to the FiO2 according to the ARDSNet protocol, keeping the plateau pressure < 30 mm Hg and keeping the head of the bed at 30 degrees.
References:
Fuller BM et al. Lung-Protective Ventilation Initiated in the Emergency Department (LOV-ED): A Quasi-Experimental, Before-After Trial. Ann Emerg Med 2017. PMID: 28259481
For More on This Topic Checkout:
Josh Farkas at Pulmcrit(EMCrit): MDCalc for the Perfect Tape-Measure Intubation
Post Peer Reviewed By: Salim Rezaie (Twitter: @srrezaie)Miss Wadsworth worked at Lloyds TSB in Golders Green A bank manager has been found not guilty of stealing nearly £1m from her north London branch over five years. Ania Wadsworth, 28, from Archway, north London, had been accused of stealing £921,717 from Lloyds TSB in Golders Green between 2002 and 2007. She admitted taking £870,000 but said she did it under duress from her former boyfriend Keith "Junior" Preddie. Preddie, 30, from Romford, Essex, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of laundering £145,370. Cash bundles The court heard that Miss Wadsworth had been in a relationship with Preddie since she was 16. She said she lived in fear of violence from Preddie, who was addicted to crack cocaine, and believed he would kill her or her family if she did not bring cash home for him. A domestic abuse expert said Miss Wadsworth showed signs of battered woman syndrome and "learned helplessness". The court heard that Miss Wadsworth would walk out of the bank with bundles of £25,000, stolen while she was loading cash machines. But none of the missing money was traced to her and she had been living modestly. If I came home without (the money), I would get hurt. I would die
Ania Wadsworth Miss Wadsworth's own bank accounts were frequently overdrawn and she had taken out two £7,000 loans from the bank. In contrast Preddie made little attempt to hide the money he got from Miss Wadsworth. He put £145,370 of it into his bank accounts, bought two BMWs, a motorcycle and gold jewellery, and replaced his bathroom and kitchen. Preddie also went on holiday to Australia, New York, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic and spent at least £20,000 on trying to set up a music business. Defending, Christopher Sallon QC said Preddie had used her "like a cash cow". 'Sense of relief' Miss Wadsworth said: "If I came home without (the money), I would get hurt. I would die. "He would beat me up and if I didn't bring it, that would be an end of it." Miss Wadsworth said she "felt a sense of relief" when she was arrested coming off a plane from Trinidad at Gatwick Airport in March 2007. She was found out during a nationwide audit while she was on holiday. Preddie was remanded in custody until 5 March for pre-sentence reports. Outside court, Det Sgt Suzanne Ferris said: "We found no evidence in her finances to show she had any gain."
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThere are times when you want to call a javascript function from code behind based on business logic in your ASP.Net applications. This could be because that your business logic needs to talk to database to decide whether javascript function has to be called or not.
When you do a simple Google search for this problem, you would find out that you can use Page.RegisterStartup method or Page.RegisterClientScriptBlock.
The syntax of the RegisterStartupScript method is
Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), "JsFunc", "alert('Hello!')",true);
But this article is about understanding the fundamentals so that you would know ‘How it works’. ASP.Net Web Forms simulates the statefulness and events driven programming like Windows Forms development which is not true. Rob Conrey even calls ASP.Net Web Forms ‘a lie’.
Knowing the fundamentals to see the truth behind the ‘lie’ is necessary if you are working several hours a week on Web Forms. All the below 3 links point to the same article which covers the fundamentals. Please read it – I will wait till you come back.
Read it? OK. Now let us concentrate on solving the problem at our hand. As Charles Kettering said – A problem well stated is a problem half – solved. Let us “half-solve” the problem.
Problem Statement : We want to call javascript from our ASP.Net code-behind.
You may wonder how we can do that – as just now we saw that javascript works on client side and ASP.Net code-behind resides at the server side. But if you are closely following, we also saw that HTML,CSS and Javscript code can be sent to the client from the server side when user is making the request. Yup, you got it. If you want to call javascript function from our ASP.Net code-behind, you should send/calling instructions the javascript code from server side ASP.Net method.
Let us consider a simple web application in which user enters his age. We should tell the user whether he/she is eligible to vote. Of course, you can achieve this functionality at client side itself with HTML and a tiny javascript function – No server side ASP.Net code is required. Now let us assume that this involves very complex business logic where we need to talk to the database to find out whether he is eligible to vote or not 🙂
I have created a simple ASP.Net webform application so that you can user can enter his age.
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="VotingEligibilityChk.aspx.cs" Inherits="CallingJsFromCodeBehind.VotingEligibilityChk" %> <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <table> <tr> <td>Enter you age:</td> <td><asp:TextBox ID="txtAge" runat="server"></asp:TextBox></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"><asp:Button ID="btnValidate" runat="server" Text="Validate" OnClick="btnValidate_Click" /></td> </tr> </table> </div> </form> </body> </html>
I have not written any code-behind code and I just run the application.
Javascript function for our VotingEligibility Check. You can see the generated HTML code by pressing ‘Ctrl U’ in Google chrome or F12 in Internet explorer.
Now let us add some code to check the age and inject the javascript code. I wrote couple of methods – one for finding his eligibility to vote(which simulates complex business logic) and another for injecting the relevant javascript code.
private int ComplexBusinessLogic() { int returnValue =0,age=0; if (Int32.TryParse(txtAge.Text, out age)) returnValue = age>=18? 1 : 0; else returnValue = -1; return returnValue; }
Using the RegisterStartupScript method we can inject the javascript method to the generated page so that it could be called. It has below 4 parameters
Type : This is the type of the startup script to register. In our case when using this.GetType() would return this Page(VotingEligibility.aspx)
Key : The key of the startup script to register. You can give any unique name(of type string) for this.
Script : This is where you should enter your javascript function. In our case, I am just calling alert function to show the message to user
addscriptTags: You can set this parameter to true so that javascript function can be injected.
Here is the completed code.
protected void btnValidate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { int retValue = ComplexBusinessLogic(); if(retValue==1) Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), "VoteJsFunc", "alert('Hey!You are legible to vote!')",true); else if(retValue==0) Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), "VoteJsFunc", "alert('Sorry.You are not legible to vote')", true); else if(retValue==-1) Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), "VoteJsFunc", "alert('Please enter valid age')",true); }
After making the above changes, run the application. Enter the age as 20 and Validate button. An alert button is shown saying that you are eligible to vote.
Don’t stop here. Press ‘Ctrl U’ in your chrome browser, you can see the javascript function that we wrote at the server side at btnValidate event method at the client side.
This is how it works. Thanks for reading this article. You can sign up to my mailing list below so that I can send useful articles straight to your inbox.The Longhorns aren’t back in pads just yet, but as of today they’re back in action.
Thank God.
This season brings a sense of quivery anticipation probably not equaled since Colt McCoy was under center. If July excitement from Longhorn Nation is to translate into November elation, though, this year’s squad has some significant questions to answer - answers that we’ll keep a keen eye on over the next few weeks.
Here are five of the most compelling storylines that figure to play out over the course of camp.
Serving Youth At Safety
Todd Orlando’s scheme demands a ton of its safeties, and demands are mental as well as physical. The Longhorns are tee’d up with a pair of youngsters (relative to their total college snaps played, at least) in DeShon Elliott and Brandon Jones who should have no trouble with the physical component. Both guys have the range to patrol center field, the muscle to punish people over the middle and the feet to at least survive in one on one coverage. A dynamic duo who can handle quarters coverage, disguise who might be dropping down and who’s rolling to center field pre-snap and lock up interior receivers behind P.J. Locke blitzes can key a ton of opponent-frustrating, pre-snap read-busting options for Orlando. The more experienced veterans behind them - jack-of-all-trades John Bonney and box enforcer Jason Hall - could be more limiting if they’re playing heavy snaps.
Per the inside scoop at Inside Texas, Elliott and Jones ran with the 1’s on Day One just as they did in the Spring Game. If their respective light bulbs stay on throughout Fall camp, the Longhorns secondary could start a quintet of future NFL draft picks for the first time since the ‘05 glory days of Ced Griffin, Tarrell Brown, Aaron Ross, Michael Huff and Michael Griffin.
The Shape of the Run Game
We may not get a bunch of detailed X-and-O leakage over the next 30 days as Herman figures to run a pretty tight ship, but some tidbits that could inform what we’ll see this fall may include:
The key run schemes complementing our foundational components like Inside Zone and Power
Which runners seem to be thriving in which roles
Our respective uses of Buechele and Ehlinger in the ground game (with black-jersey caveats, of course)
How frequently and effectively we attach a run-pass option component to our core runs
Our preferred formations between the 20’s as well as for red zone and short yardage work
Not including “which damn back(s) will carry the ball the most” may seem like burying the lede for this topic. Unfortunately, sustained health from our top two RB options is one area where I’m not beer-bonging the Burnt Orange Kool-Aid at this stage. Health questions for Chris Warren and Kirk Johnson may be answered in the negative over the next few weeks, but I’ll exhale on their late-November availability in...late November.
Of course, the shape of the run game will depend on...
The Search For Starters: Right Tackle and Tight End
Provided Zack Shackelford’s ankle feels cooperative this season...hang on a sec.
* Bloodies knuckles knocking on a piece of wood *
Ok, sorry about that. If The Hate Shack gets some love from his ligaments this season, right tackle and tight end feel like the only two spots on the starting roster where Texas could struggle to find a guy who can express league-average physical ability. Tackle looks like a battle between senior Tristan Nickelson (who has the frame but may lack the feet and functional coordination) and sophomore* Denzel Okafor (who’s athletic as all get-out but wants for seasoning). My early guess is that Nickelson holds the job through camp but cedes it some time around the OU game to Okafor, with the ability to keep DE’s from teeing off on Shane Buechele as the deciding factor.
At tight end you’ve got a holdover in Andrew Beck alongside new faces in Syracuse grad transfer Kendall Moore and true freshmen Reese Leitao and Cade Brewer. If Beck can stay healthy while upping his batting average when it comes to hitting moving targets, he’s likely to earn the bulk of the snaps this Fall. If he falters, things get a bit cloudy
D-Line Depth
Everyone outside of OU would swap their front-line D-line starters for the trio of Malcolm Roach, Chris Nelson and the Poonatrator in a New York minute. The demands on big men facing up-tempo attacks over the course of 80+ offensive snaps are cruel and relentless, though, so no position on the field requires more functional depth to avoid a sharp fall-off in production. Charles Omenihu should be ready for 40-50 snaps per game of super-sub duty across both 4i spots at a newly rocked-up 270, but beyond that things get hazy in a hurry.
Can a slimmed-down Gerald Wilbon offer some movement skills while retaining his ability to drop anchor?
Can D’Andre Christmas translate his own summer fitness gains and a clean bill of health into the consistent disruption he showed on his high school tape?
Can Andrew Fitzgerald show improved off-the-ball quickness and functional power?
Can Chris Daniels’ tremendous transformation (340+ to right around 300 as of late July) turn around a trajectory that was headed in the wrong direction throughout his redshirt season?
Texas needs at least one of those guys to answer his question in the affirmative in order to feel good about hanging with the Big XII’s top offenses for four quarters - and the more yeses, the better.
Linebacker Tango
While right tackle and tight end search for league-average athletes, linebacker is awash in junior and senior athleticism that would be the envy of the conference - or just about anyone in the nation - if any of them had shown the slightest inkling of putting it all together. Fall camp could be as much about finding fit as testing instincts and physicality, and Todd Orlando’s ability to mix and match his way to a functional Rover, Mac and B-Backer feels like the biggest open question when it comes to determining this team’s floor and ceiling.
***
What are you looking to learn about the Longhorns’ fortunes as Fall Camp gets underway? And have you done your offseason homework with the best Longhorn preview on the market by your side?
*Courtesy of about ten snaps in 2016 - aaaauuuugggghhh.Minnesota sophomore forward Leon Bristedt has been suspended one game for his actions at the 6:23 mark of the third period in Friday's 4-2 victory against Michigan State.
Bristedt speared MSU captain Michael Ferrantino with the butt end of his stick in retaliation following the faceoff. He was not given a penalty on the play. You can see the play below.
Leon Bristedt suspended by B1G for incident last night, added slo-mo (thx to @Dave_MN @SirStroker) pic.twitter.com/QIytpIpUkT — CJ Fogler (@cjzero) March 5, 2016
S/T @cjzero
Bristedt will miss Saturday's game against the Spartans and be eligible to return March 11th against Wisconsin.
Without Bristedt, who is second on Minnesota with 16 goals, the Gophers have made a couple changes to its forward lines. Ryan Norman gets an opportunity to play on the first line with Justin Kloos while Taylor Cammarata is reunited on the third line with Vinni Lettieri and Brent Gates Jr.
Minnesota lines against Michigan State
Forwards
Ryan Norman (#23) - Justin Kloos (#25) - Tyler Sheehy (#22)
Connor Reilly (#21) - Tommy Novak (#17) - Hudson Fasching (#24)
Brent Gates Jr. (#10) - Vinni Lettieri (#19) - Taylor Cammarata (#13)
A.J. Michaelson (#15) - Darian Romanko (#26) - Jack Ramsey (#16)
Defense
Nick Seeler (#11) - Jack Glover (#3)
Jake Bischoff (#28) - Michael Brodzinski (#20)
Steve Johnson (#4) - Jack Sadek (#2)
Goaltenders
Eric Schierhorn (#37)
Brock Kautz (#1)
Nick Lehr (#34)
-------------------
Nathan Wells is a college hockey columnist for SB Nation mostly covering both the University of Minnesota and Big Ten. You can also follow him on Twitter -- Follow @gopherstateRohit Sharma's last Test for India, before Tuesday, came at the Feroz Shah Kotla in December 2015, against South Africa. In the first innings, batting at No. 6, he was dropped at slip on 1, off Kyle Abbott, and was out to the next ball he faced, trying to hit Dane Piedt over the top when he had a fielder back at long-on. In the second innings, he was promoted to No. 3, and was bowled first ball by a Morne Morkel jaffa.
In those two innings, Rohit had gone from one end of the batting-dismissal spectrum to the other.
On Tuesday at the Darren Sammy Stadium, in his first Test innings in eight months, Rohit did not get out playing an aggressive, aerial shot with the odds stacked against him. He did not get out to an unplayable delivery either. Instead, he got out like a lot of Test batsmen do, nicking a good-length ball in the corridor outside off stump. It was a middle-of-the-spectrum kind of dismissal, with the bowler deserving a certain amount of credit and the batsman a certain amount of blame.
It happens to everyone.
But watching it happen, it was hard not to tell yourself, "M Vijay would have left that ball". Or, "Cheteshwar Pujara would have left that ball".
Neither Vijay nor Pujara was playing this Test match. One of the two was expected to miss out, but not both. Rohit's selection was entirely unexpected.
At the end of the day's play, batting coach Sanjay Bangar confirmed that Vijay was not suffering any residual effects of the sore thumb that had kept him out of the second Test at Sabina Park.
"Murali Vijay was available for selection, but it was the management's decision to stick with Shikhar Dhawan," he said. "KL [Rahul] had a phenomenal last game and the team management felt Shikhar had done enough to keep his place in the team, having scored a very, very good 87 [84] and given us the start in the first innings [in Antigua], negotiating the new ball and giving us a partnership of 90 runs [105 runs, with Kohli]. That was the reason behind Vijay not making it to the playing XI."
Pujara had not been in bad form, as such, but had failed to convert a string of starts. At Sabina Park, he had been run out after scoring 46 off 159 balls. At the toss on Tuesday, Kohli indicated that Pujara's scoring rate may have been the reason for his non-selection.
"Rohit Sharma can change sessions in a Test match. Taking nothing away from Pujara; he has been solid. Everybody needs to get chances."
Kohli has often spoken of the need for giving his bowling attack as much time as possible to get 20 wickets. Scoring runs quicker is clearly one way to achieve this aim. India didn't quite have enough time to bowl West Indies out a second time at Sabina Park, but that had less to do with Pujara's scoring rate, or that of the team as a whole, than with rain washing out close to four sessions of the match.
Perhaps India factored the weather into their calculations here. St Lucia has experienced intermittent showers in the days leading up to the Test, including on the eve of the match, and it rained briefly an hour after stumps on day one as well.
But by |
Lack of progress on the free trade area issue caused the SCO leaders to consider joint projects. By 2009, about 100 projects had been proposed by the SCO Business Council and the national Chambers of Commerce and Industry. When the issue of funding arose, Beijing came up with the idea of establishing an SCO Development Bank.
The project was promoted by then-Chairman of the China Development Bank Chen Yuan, who headed the bank for 15 years (1998-2013), an unprecedentedly long period of time for Chinese state-owned companies. His strong position as head of the main political bank of China, whose assets reached 8.2 trillion yuan (over $1.3 trillion), was largely secured by the fact that his father, Chen Yun (1905-1995), was one of the key Chinese leaders in the 1980s, actually the second most influential person in the Communist Party and the state after Deng Xiaoping. According to Chinese financiers and diplomats, Chen Yuan hoped to head the SCO Development Bank after his planned resignation as Chairman of the China Development Bank. Considering Chen’s great formal and, especially, informal weight in the country’s hierarchy, Chinese leaders began to actively promote this project.
In post-crisis 2009, Chinese President Hu Jintao at an SCO summit in Yekaterinburg promised preferential loans worth $10 billion for member countries. The loans were to be issued by the proposed SCO Development Bank. In addition to providing loans for specific projects, Chinese negotiators proposed setting up an anti-crisis fund, to be managed by the bank, to cover a budget or balance of payments deficit of any member country, if needed. In fact, the SCO Development Bank was seen as a miniature copy of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for the SCO. Chinese negotiators proposed forming the bank’s authorized capital from proportional contributions by each participating country. The size of a contribution would depend on the size of a member country’s economy (valued in nominal GDP or purchasing power parity), which would also determine the parties’ shares in the bank’s capital and the number of votes they would have in decision-making (the IMF has a similar management system). If those rules had been adopted, China would have got a dominant position in the new institution. According to the World Bank’s figures for 2013, China’s nominal GDP stood at $9.24 trillion, whereas the aggregate nominal GDP of Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan was less than $2.4 trillion (of which Russia accounted for about $2 trillion). Under the proposed scenario, Beijing would have had almost 80 percent of votes. Calculating contributions by PPP would not have made much of a difference. As the Chinese economy keeps growing, albeit slower than before (7.4 percent in 2014 compared to 10.5 percent on average in the 2000s), the tendency is clearly not in favor of post-Soviet countries.
Russia found the Chinese proposal unacceptable as it would have given Beijing full control over the new bank (China also suggested that the bank be headquartered in Beijing or Shanghai). As an alternative, Moscow proposed creating the SCO Development Bank on the basis of the existing Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), established in 2006 with the authorized capital of $7 billion (of which $1.5 billion have already been paid). The EDB is dominated by Moscow and Astana, with Russia holding a 65.97 percent stake and Kazakhstan, 32.99 percent. The bank is headquartered in Almaty and its board is chaired by a Russian official. Moscow invited Beijing to acquire a share (to be agreed later) in the bank’s capital, with Russia keeping at least the blocking stake. This official proposal from Moscow still holds. “Russian financial experts believe that creating an SCO Development Bank on the basis of the successfully operating Eurasian Development Bank would be the most effective solution,” Sergei Lavrov said after a meeting of the SCO foreign ministers in Dushanbe on July 31, 2014. However, China rejected the proposal. The formal reason for that decision was that EDB members include Armenia and Belarus which are not SCO members (Belarus has only dialogue partner status in the SCO).
There has been no progress on the SCO Development Bank issue for five years. The SCO passes one resolution after another, pointing to the need for such a bank, but it still remains on paper. The Russian bureaucracy offers two reasons for this situation. First, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the presidential administration and the government believe that in this way they can effectively contain China’s credit expansion in Central Asia, which may otherwise undermine Russia’s position. Another important player, the Russian Ministry of Finance, does not want to reserve funds for a project which it considers political. In any case, the status quo suits Moscow and for a long time suited its partners in Central Asia too. In June 2011, the head of the Kazakhstan Development Bank, Nurlan Kussainov, told the newspaper Kommersant that Astana would not take any position but would prefer to wait until the two largest SCO economies reached agreement. Other SCO members held a similar view until recently. However, starting in 2012, discontent with Russia’s position has been growing, spilling over into public statements. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev has been especially vocal. In informal conversations many officials and bankers from other Central Asian countries, especially Kazakhstan, also express their irritation at Moscow’s “unconstructive position.”
The reason for their concern is understandable: Moscow’s torpedoing the SCO Development Bank idea not only fails to contain Beijing’s credit expansion in Central Asia but also allows it to take a form that is most unpleasant for countries in the region. In the absence of a multilateral institution with clear rules, as the SCO Development Bank could be, Central Asian countries have to turn to China for loans and negotiate with it one-on-one. As China is not bound by any legal commitments in such negotiations, it can easily push through its own terms. This process intensified after the global crisis of 2008-2009. The economic crisis in Russia and the fall of oil prices, which affects all, make the issue of access to Chinese loans increasingly important for the region.
YUAN ON THE MARCH
After the Soviet Union’s breakup, Russia for many years remained the principal economic player in Central Asia. There were several reasons for that: the region’s infrastructure was linked to that of Russia; their industries were interdependent and they had similar business practices and expertise since Soviet times; and world hydrocarbon prices remained low. All this made the region unattractive to foreign investors. By 2001, when the SCO was created, Russia was the largest creditor and trading partner for all countries in the region.
However, in the 2000s the situation began to change. Global prices of raw materials, including hydrocarbons, started to grow, generating stable interest in the region among major consumers, above all China. Whereas previously Russian pipelines provided the only access to the world market for Central Asian hydrocarbons, in the early 2000s Beijing began to lay its own pipelines. An oil pipeline from Kazakhstan was commissioned in 2006, and the first string of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China was put into operation in 2009. Russia watched these developments calmly. It sought to preserve its share in the EU energy market and did not want potential competitors to have any incentives to build pipelines to Europe bypassing Russia. The emergence of the alternative Chinese market for Central Asian countries seemed beneficial at that time. As a result, their trade with China began to grow.
The situation changed drastically in 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis which caused a temporary decline in oil prices. Russia, experiencing a 7.9 percent fall of its GDP and an acute liquidity crisis, was unable to give loans to its partners in Central Asia. The region found help in China, which has been continuously increasing its share in Central Asian countries’ balance of trade and extending more and more loans to the region’s economies ever since. The most typical example is Kazakhstan, the largest economy in Central Asia and the third largest economy in the SCO after China and Russia. China’s share in Kazakhstan’s foreign trade is growing. According to the Kazakh Ministry of Economy, during the last five years China has steadily been the country’s second trading partner after Russia (if we do not consider the EU a single economy). For example, in 2013, Russia accounted for 17.9 percent in Kazakhstan’s foreign trade, and China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), for 17.2 percent (Chinese statistics cite higher figures, making China partner number one for Kazakhstan in 2012).
Beijing is already well ahead of Moscow in terms of lending. “The situation in Kazakhstan was not as critical as in other post-Soviet countries, yet we had difficult times,” Kazakhstan’s then-Minister of Economy Kairat Kelimbetov (now Governor of the National Bank of Kazakhstan) said in an interview with Kommersant in August 2011. “We used the reserve fund and asked Russian and Chinese development institutions for help. Previously, we had had almost no contact with China in borrowing terms. Before 2009, we had had one small project, worth $100 million, with Chinese banks. And now it is $13-15 billion.”
According to the National Bank of Kazakhstan’s report of September 30, 2014, the Kazakh national and corporate debts to China stood at $15.75 billion, and those to Russia at $4.98 (the total foreign debt of Kazakhstan amounted to $155.16 billion). The bulk of this debt was generated by several major oil and gas projects involving China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). Although official statistics may not be completely accurate (the Eurasian Development Bank estimates Russian loans to Kazakhstan at $7 billion), nevertheless, there is a clear tendency towards China’s growing presence in the Kazakh economy, including loans and credits, especially in view of prospects for the Russian and Chinese economies (the former is expected to decline by 4.5 percent of GDP and the latter to grow by more than 7 percent). Moreover, in some cases Chinese loans already replace Russian ones in Kazakhstan. For example, Russia’s Vnesheconombank (VEB) was to extend loans for the construction of the third unit of the Ekibastuz GRES-2 power station. However, in 2013 the bank, which by that time had used up its resources for financing the construction of Olympic facilities in Sochi, reached an agreement with the China Development Bank to use its funds for the project.
The national banks of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan do not publish figures on their debts to specific foreign partners. However, their credit relations with China may follow the Kazakhstan scenario, given the growing volume of their trade with China, planned investment projects with Chinese participation, and the deteriorating state of the economy of their currently largest partner, the Russian Federation.
Chinese loans are becoming an increasingly important factor for the Russian economy as well. The Bank of Russia does not publish statistics on debts to Chinese financial institutions and companies, but judging from public statements about deals between Russia and China, Russian companies owe tens of billions of dollars. As with Central Asian countries, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 served as the catalyst. In 2009, Russia and China concluded a momentous deal, under which the China Development Bank extended $25 billion worth of loans to Rosneft and Transneft. In exchange, the Russian companies will supply 15 million tons of oil a year to China for 20 years. Russia’s dependence on Chinese loans kept growing ever since. This happened even before the crisis in Ukraine and the Western sanctions which denied Russian companies access to their habitual capital markets in the EU and the U.S. For example, in 2013 Rosneft reached an agreement with CNPC for an advance payment of $60 billion in exchange for future Russian oil supplies. Major Russian banks, especially VEB and VTB, also increased borrowing from state-owned Chinese banks. Now, with the sanctions in effect, China is becoming, perhaps, the only possible source of foreign loans for Russia. This refers, above all, to Chinese state banks, given a very cautious position of Chinese and Hong Kong private investors towards Russia.
The previous experience of Russia’s contacts with Chinese lending institutions cannot be described as simple. Russian officials and managers of state-owned companies in private conversations admit that Chinese are very tough negotiators. Now that the sanctions have increased potential risks for lenders and narrowed room for maneuver for Russian borrowers, Beijing can actually dictate any terms. So in the present circumstances Moscow must be interested more than anyone else in creating a transparent mechanism for access to Chinese loans and establishing clear rules of the game. A SCO Development Bank could be such a mechanism.
A BANK TO SUIT ALL
Further steps blocking the creation of a SCO Development Bank by Russia can bring more problems than gains. Beijing’s credit expansion in Central Asia will keep growing. In the absence of a SCO Development Bank, many projects in Central Asia are financed by China directly, and Moscow is not only unable to control this process but also has no information about the details of the loan agreements made.
Clearly, China will never agree to join the Eurasian Development Bank as a junior or even equal partner of Russia. So, when creating the SCO Development Bank, Russia will have to agree to the following key terms: Chinese dominance in the capital, the location of the bank’s management bodies in Beijing or Shanghai and, consequently, a large number of Chinese citizens among bank employees. Russia should focus its diplomatic efforts not on trying to change these parameters, which are fundamental for China (these efforts are bound to fail), but on drafting regulatory documents for the bank to best meet its own interests and those of its partners in Central Asia. This can be done if Russia insists on the inclusion in the bank’s future Regulations and Investment Guide of the best practices used by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the EBRD, and other similar institutions to better meet the interests of loan recipients. The documents may include provisions on preferential rates, mandatory presence of local contractors for projects (and a minimum amount of work to be done by local companies), strict compliance with environmental legislation, the level of technology transfers, and many other details which would allow Russia and Central Asian countries to get maximum benefits from Chinese loans.
The chances that Beijing will agree to jointly set the rules of the game to meet the interests of the partners are quite high. China is now creating many platforms to grant foreign countries access to its loans: these include the BRICS Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Silk Road Fund set up to finance projects within the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt. Beijing has not yet positioned these platforms as alternatives to Bretton Woods institutions, but Chinese officials and experts often say that in these new organizations China will not seek to dictate its terms to its partners as the United States does in the IMF and the World Bank. In this way the Chinese authorities seek to demonstrate the advantages of the Beijing Consensus over the Washington Consensus, and to prove the effectiveness of the “harmonious development” formula proposed by the previous Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
Russia can and should use this attitude of China in creating a SCO Development Bank. China’s position as an “elder brother” in this multi-party club will be even beneficial to other members. The tough and aggressive manner in which Beijing may seek to push through its terms will be seen by all in an international institution, and will mean the loss of its face, calling into question the attractiveness of other multilateral institutions proposed by China. It can be expected that China will be interested in playing by the rules established by all partners, acting like a sage. Russia, in turn, can take in the SCO Development Bank the comfortable position of a mouthpiece for all junior partners, whose opinion must be heeded by the senior partner in line with Confucian philosophy.I think we all know what active sexism looks like. The 2016 election has provided us with many examples. Although I am not known as a feminist, I admit that Donald Trump has said some things in his campaign that are deplorable. Ultimately, I believe Donald Trump is a demagogue using common prejudices of the lower class to incite division and drum up partisan support for his candidacy, and that’s extremely manipulative.
Unfortunately, overt sexism, racism, and other forms of prejudice are not the worst social problems that America’s cultural melting pot faces. As with most social problems, the less obvious ones, left to fester in the dark underbelly of society, are actually worse than the obvious red herrings.
The most obvious examples of overt sexism are the guys who say these sexist things in public, and thus become whipping boys for PC liberals. The weapon liberal society types use against men of this type is social alienation. Regardless of whether his opinions come from ignorance, negative life experience, or being brainwashed by worse bigots, society’s ‘solution’ is to alienate this person.
‘Let him have his stupid opinion in the corner, alone,’ they say, ‘And when he’s ready to start towing the community line, perhaps start including him again (but only at the lowest tier of our social hierarchy).’
The problem? This is meant to set a social example, but ends up setting that community up to be invaded by a lot of ‘false flag’ liberal idealists, which is to say: people who say what they have to in order to get what they want. And so, you end up with these territorial, protectionist White Knights, who espouse feminist ideals, but over time, their behavior, and how it conflicts with their carefully-crafted public image, kind of reveals who they truly are. But by that time, a bunch of beta males have been bullied, and a bunch of women have been sexually exploited, by these wolves in sheeps’ clothing.
So here’s this guy who is a guard dog, his pretentious ego boosted by random sexual encounters generated through schmoozing, and he’s projecting his own sexism onto everyone who challenges the turf of his ever-expanding sexual conquest. And I’ve seen social pressures create a lot of these monsters hiding in human skin.
Many local men in my community have become this through sexual brainwashing. What’s so distressing and disillusioning is how obvious they are to their fellow men, while at the same time fooling naive females. For example, I once worked in an office with several of these types of guys. They were all card-carrying Democrats, many of them outspoken atheists. And in their outward demeanor, they were prone to express very feminist rhetoric.
The flipside of that coin? Most of them went to strip clubs every weekend. They got around a lot more than me. And in private, amongst their male co-workers, there was a lot of what Trump would refer to as ‘male locker-room talk’. One guy gets a blow job from a hot model, he brags to all his friends about it, his elders pat him on the back and say ‘atta boy’. When I talked to the subject of this conversation, which turned my stomach a bit to be included in, she said ‘Oh, I love [your co-worker]. He’s such a gentleman.’ It’s enough to make anyone of social conscience quite jaded, which is exactly what they want. They want to deflate your ego and confidence in society, because that puts you in the corner even more, so there is more for them.
These same people have referred to me as ‘misogynist’ simply for maintaining a male rights advocacy blog, sold me short to women in my community by downplaying my career skills, exaggerating my shortcomings, et cetera… So these people are actually quite sexist. They seek a better sex life at the expense of the have-nots, proving that social capitalists can be equally as ruthless as financial capitalists. And I’m just sitting here, waiting for a woman of my physical and personality type, who is smart enough to see through this bullshit.
The truth is, women can be very sexist in this way, too. In the same way that men rate women by their bra size, women can often rate men by their penis size, how long they last, et cetera. The worst is when they think of the measure of a man as how many or the quality of women that he gets. This is basically reducing the measure of a man to a factor that they control, and they control it not just individually, but via socially engineering groupthink.
Social democrats are bandwagon-jumpers. They won’t feel guilty about something that everyone around them is doing, because they feel validated by the crowd. Public approval is often more important to them than ethical correctness.
Of course, just because some people are better at getting what they want does NOT make them better people. Here we see the wise at odds with the clever, and most of the bystanders are too stupid to root for the right person, because subtlety goes right over their heads.
And ultimately, the effect of chivalry on women is not positive! The social privilege therefrom makes them more dependent and less skilled. This is a modern social problem exacerbated by 3rd Wave ‘Feminists’, who want to have their cake and eat it too: they want equal rights AND their doors held open for them, which is where they cross the line from feminism into female chauvinism, because privilege and equality simply CANNOT co-exist.
As someone who loves strong, independent, educated women, I lament to see the most beautiful and desirable of females get sucked into this kind of ‘model mentality’, where they think the world owes them a living simply for winning a genetic lottery, they are able to coax men into doing/paying everything for them, and when they get older and their looks fade, they don’t have anything to fall back on! I feel sorry for the end-of-the-line guy who ends up marrying these women, often out of desperation, because they tend to be spoiled, and bitter about no longer getting everything they want for free or being ‘sexually exploited’ by so many men. They’re simply bad relationship material.
And that’s why I think it’s so important to judge people by their behavior rather then their speech, because so many these days are merely ‘playing politics’, and there’s nothing socially just about it. Conversely, in the age of misinformation, reputation is often a very malleable thing that manipulative social politicians use to keep people apart, turn some people into whores, and others into spinsters.
AdvertisementsFour families aren't cooperating with the Health Department's investigation, according to a spokesman. View Full Caption Shutterstock
WILLIAMSBURG — A Health Department investigation into who infected four infant boys with herpes during Orthodox Jewish circumcision ceremonies has been thwarted because the community — including the children's parents — refuses to cooperate, the city said.
Only two of six families whose babies contracted herpes since 2015 from metzitzah b'peh, a religious rite that calls for a trained devotee, or mohel, to clean circumcision wounds by oral suction, have provided the names of the practitioner, according to Health Department spokesman Christopher Miller.
"Unfortunately, some in the community are resistant to sharing the name of the mohels," Miller said. "This is a very insular community. This is a very religious ritual."
The city ordered the two mohels who were identified to stop performing metzitzah b'peh in mid-March and they could face civil and criminal fines and punishment if they don't comply, under a revised city policy. They have to test negative for herpes simplex antibodies before the city will rescind the order, Miller said.
The men were asked informally by the Health Department not to perform ritual when the city found out about the infections of two babies in December of 2015 and July of 2016, Miller said.
Health Department officials said they were able to track the herpes infection to the mohels because of the timeline of when and where herpes blisters appear on the newborn. Because they appear in the genital region five to seven days after the baby's eighth day of life, when the bris takes place, health officials pinpoint the mohel as source of the virus.
A herpes infection in an infant can cause brain damage and even death.
Orthodox leaders have said they were cooperating with authorities, but questioned how pervasive the problem is.
Rabbi David Niederman, the head of United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, an umbrella organization for the area's Orthodox community, said in an earlier interview that they were fully cooperating with the city, though he highlighted, "the sheer numbers of metzitzah b’peh which are done annually here in the city and in the Jewish community all over the world,” where no baby boys contract herpes.
“This is a religious practice that has been going on for thousands of years," he said.
“We have been working with different authorities and we are ready…to determine who the cause is. If anybody is the cause, not only will the community actually ban him, that person himself would refrain..to ensure that anybody who infects a child is taken off the practice,” Niederman said in an earlier interview.
He could not be reached for comment Tuesday because of the Passover holiday.
A source privy to discussions about the infection issue, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak about it, said that the community was skeptical that the mohels had caused the infections and believed that Health Department officials just wanted to end metzitzah b'peh.
"That’s why we’re not willing to give out the mohels. We know the city is going to ban them without giving them due process,” the source said. "There is not proof that they actually infected the baby."
“It has to be proven, not blind accusation," the source said. "We believe there is a group of overzealous officials in the Department of Health whose goal is banning the practice entirely. It's just a step for them."
Health experts said they are confident that the mohels are infecting the infants, though they admit definitive proof is elusive.
"The health of infants is our primary concern, which is why [we] recommend against direct oral suction all together," Miller said.
The agency could, theoretically, outsource the genetic sequencing of viral samples to research laboratories, according to Dr. Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.
But, he added, "I think, based on location of the lesions and time, the simplest hypothesis" — in this case, transmission via metzitzah b'peh — "seems to be the most likely."
Whether or not mohels are the definitive source of the infection, if they test positive for herpes simplex, they shouldn't perform the ritual either way, Miller said.
"Anyone infected with [herpes] simply should not be placing his mouth on an infant’s open wound because of the risk of infection,” Miller said.
Since 2000, the controversial practice of metzitzah b’peh has been linked to two deaths and two cases of brain damage and there have been 24 laboratory-confirmed cases of herpes infection, according to Health Department alert sent out to doctors on March 8 following the most recent infection.
There are dozens of well-known mohels within Brooklyn's Orthodox community, often doctors or rabbis, who are trained in the sacred ritual of metzitzah b’peh.
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, the Williamsburg rabbi who faced retaliation and physical attacks for his advocacy on behalf of children who'd been sexually abused by rabbis, worried parents of sick babies were being silenced by community leaders, much the same as they had been in cases of sex abuse.
"The only [reason] why they're not coming forward is because they're being threatened, ostracized," he said. "You don't know what kind of intimation goes on in this community."
Correction: The original version of this article said Dr. Stephen Morse was affiliated with Columbia University Medical Center, not Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.So far, gene therapy has only treated rare disorders. Now, for the first time, it has been used to treat a boy with sickle cell disease, a common genetic disease
Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty
A TEENAGE boy with an inherited disease that affects millions worldwide seems to have been cured using gene therapy. The treatment appears to have stopped the painful symptoms of sickle cell disease, demonstrating the potential for gene therapy to treat common genetic diseases.
“All the blood tests we performed show that the teenager has been cured of sickle cell disease”
The idea of gene therapy – using strands of DNA to compensate for a person’s malfunctioning genes – is almost three decades old. However, the approach has so far mostly been used to treat very rare diseases (see “Long road to success“). In contrast, sickle cell disease affects 100,000 people in the US alone. If the treatment proves successful in larger trials, it could bring gene therapy into widespread use.
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“It could be a game changer,” says Deborah Gill at the University of Oxford. “The fact the team has a patient with real clinical benefit, and biological markers to prove it, is a very big deal.”
People with sickle cell disease make abnormal versions of haemoglobin, the blood protein that carries oxygen around the body. This can be caused by mutations in the gene that makes a subunit of haemoglobin, called beta-globin. The mutations cause haemoglobin to clump together, distorting red blood cells into a sickle-shape that can get stuck in blood vessels around the body.
People with the disorder are given blood transfusions to clear these painful blockages and prevent new ones. Bone marrow transplants can treat the disease, but matching donors can only be found for around 10 per cent of people with the condition.
Now a team in France seems to have developed a treatment that would work for everyone with the disorder. First, the team took bone marrow stem cells from the boy when he was 13, and gave them extra, mutated versions of the gene that codes for beta-globin. These were designed to make beta-globin that would interfere with the boy’s faulty proteins, stopping them from clumping together.
The researchers then put these stem cells back into the boy’s body. After around three months, he began producing large quantities of haemoglobin that behaves normally (New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1609677). “The patient is now 15 years old and free of all previous medication,” says Marina Cavazzana at the Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris, who led the team. “He has been free of pain from blood vessel blockages, and has given up taking opioid painkillers.”
Cavazzana is confident these benefits will last. “All the tests we performed on his blood show that he’s been cured, but more certainty can only come from long-term follow-up.” She says her team has treated seven other patients, who are showing “promising” progress.
“We are all very excited by the work, and this success provides support for this and other genetic strategies targeting this horrible disease,” says John Tisdale at the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Maryland.
David Williams, at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts, suggests that the boy may still occasionally experience blockages, because his own original genes are still able to produce faulty haemoglobin. “It’s important to see what happens over time, and how many other patients see similar benefits.”
However, should the gene therapy prove to be effective in larger trials, its expense may limit its use to richer nations. “We should be realistic in remembering that there are hundreds of thousands of sickle cell patients in less developed countries, and that the therapy is not easily exportable or adaptable to countries with less well-developed health systems,” says Stuart Orkin at Harvard Medical School.
Long road to success Twenty years ago, gene therapy was touted as a cure for everything from cancer to cystic fibrosis. Now it is finally starting to fulfil its promise. In 2012, Glybera became the first gene therapy to be approved, for people with a rare disorder that makes them unable to process dietary fat. Last year, the first commercial gene therapy that alters a person’s DNA was approved for children with a severe immune disorder. Gene therapies for rare forms of blindness are also showing promise. But these conditions all affect very small numbers of people. Research into sickle cell disease (see main story), beta thalassaemia, haemophilia and cystic fibrosis mean gene therapy may not be too far from becoming mainstream medicine for the most common genetic diseases.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Gene therapy breakthrough”The battle for control of the US Senate just got hotter.
Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) of New Hampshire announced Monday that she’s running for Senate, taking on freshman Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R). Governor Hassan was the Democrats’ top choice for the race. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report immediately shifted its ranking of the race to “tossup.”
With Hassan’s long-awaited decision, “Democrats scored perhaps their biggest Senate recruiting success of the cycle,” writes Jennifer Duffy, Senate analyst for Cook.
The Democrats need a net gain of five seats in the 2016 elections to retake control of the Senate – and only four if a Democrat wins the White House. The playing field favors the Democrats, who are defending 10 seats to the Republicans’ 24 seats. Cook’s ratings show only two vulnerable Democratic seats (only one of them a tossup) versus seven vulnerable Republican seats, including four tossups.
“Ayotte's vulnerability can be attributed largely from having to run in a swing state in a presidential year rather than anything she has or hasn't done,” writes Ms. Duffy.
Still, Senator Ayotte is in a tough spot, and both candidates are going to have to run the race of their political lives to succeed. Ayotte has an advantage as the incumbent, albeit a first-termer. Hassan’s advantage comes from the fact that she’s running during a presidential election year, when key Democratic constituencies – single women, young voters, and minorities – turn out in higher numbers than in off years.
The presidential race could play a crucial role in determining who wins the New Hampshire Senate seat. If the Democratic nominee is strong, she or he could inspire turnout that benefits Democrats further down the ballot. The reverse could also be true: A strong Republican nominee could help Ayotte.
In the Hassan-versus-Ayotte smackdown, polls matching them up have shown a tight race. Three polls this year by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP) found them in a tossup, 44 percent for Ayotte, 43 percent for Hassan. But Hassan has a higher job approval rating than Ayotte: Hassan has 48 percent positive, 42 negative. Ayotte has 38 percent positive, 46 percent negative.
But the wider political environment doesn’t always hurt a vulnerable candidate. Last November, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) of New Hampshire won reelection in a bad year for Democrats.
Still, Ayotte’s challenge from Hassan represents one more piece of bad news for the Republicans, forcing them to spend money in a race they hoped wouldn’t be so tough.
Among Democratic-held seats, Cook’s only tossup is the seat held by retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada. In that race, Rep. Joe Heck (R) faces former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto (D).
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On the Republican side, aside from Ayotte’s seat, three others are tossups:
Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who has health issues and is running an uphill battle in a deep blue state. Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D) is his top opponent.
In Florida, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s decision to give up his Senate seat to run for president has unleashed fierce nomination battles on both sides of the aisle for the race to replace him.
Wisconsin’s Senate race probably features the most vulnerable Republican this cycle. Freshman Sen. Ron Johnson (R) faces the man he defeated in 2010, former Sen. Russ Feingold (D).
For Democrats, retaking the Senate is seen as an insurance policy against a potential Republican presidential victory. The Republicans have a strong grip on the House of Representatives, and if they keep the Senate and win the White House, the Democrats’ only hope of checking the Republicans is through filibusters and other procedural actions.
Senate control is also crucial for high-level executive branch nominations, including the US Supreme Court. The next president could nominate as many as three justices.Riley Tufte, center, stands with members of the Dallas Stars management team at the NHL draft in Buffalo, N.Y., Friday June 24, 2016. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Stars
2017 draft: June 23-24, Chicago
The entry draft is one of the most important events on the NHL calendar.
Every team brings its entire front office and coaching staff into one city for about five days, and those groups bond within their team and interact with other teams on a number of subjects.
Dallas will bring 16 members of the scouting staff together with general manager Jim Nill and his front office group beginning Wednesday, June 21, in Chicago. They will gather in several meetings, with both amateur and pro scouts offering opinions as Nill tries to not only assess who he might take in the draft but also if a draft pick is a tradeable asset that can make the team better now.
Because all 31 teams will have entire staffs in the same city, the opportunity to make a trade goes up. With the Vegas Golden Knights announcing their expansion draft selections that week, the trade environment will intensify even more.
On Friday, each team has a big table at the United Center, with the first round starting at 6 p.m. The Stars pick third, so they have an idea who they will take. However, Nill will be calling teams about potential trades -- either for another player or to move down in the draft -- and he will have his scouts on hand to advise him what player might be available at whatever draft slot is being offered.
It's an interesting dance of preparation meeting opportunity.
Owner Tom Gaglardi will also be on hand in case there is a big financial decision to be made.
Saturday will feature rounds 2-7, and picks will be made much more quickly, but you still have a building filled with 31 GMs, so a lot can still go on.By Andy Kirk | May 9, 2016 | Design
This is part of a series of posts about the 'little of visualisation design', respecting the small decisions that make a big difference towards the good and bad of this discipline. In each post I'm going to focus on just one small matter - a singular good or bad design choice - as demonstrated by a sample project. Each project may have many effective and ineffective aspects, but I'm just commenting on one.
The 'little' of this next design concerns a similar theme to two previous LittleVis posts (#10, #14) about squeezing more potential from annotated features. In this case it is about a clever little design choice incorporated into a project's title: the project being 'Where the population of |
to face the consequences of them, that’s what it was about. I’m not against the Roma. It’s just, I’m sort of for the people who’ve — who wake up, and they’re like, what is this? Nobody asked me, you know? And that’s what bugs me. I just think that that is a kind of — that’s a ruling class mindset that’s deeply corrupt, and it’s causing this, all this social drama. And I’m for a stable social strata, you know? And these people are making it impossible.
GG: I think that’s totally legitimate. I guess I just think that in addition to those people that are — I mean, it’s just like if you go into, you know, working class neighborhoods that have been decimated by free trade in rural America, and subsumed by the opiate crisis, and are being ignored, you really empathize with the people and what they’re going through, and the effects that these policies have on them. But the same is true if you go into immigrant communities or people who are fleeing hideous situations and coming to kind of embrace the promise of America that all of our, you know, ancestors and the like were able to take advantage of. I mean, you, you start empathizing with their plight too, and the genuine fears that they have over what’s gonna happen to their kids and to their lives as well. So, I think there’s a way to highlight the plight of rural America and working class America without pitting them against groups that are at least as vulnerable, if not more so, particularly given the makeup of the Fox audience and the dangers that those kind of stories can have.
TC: If you go through New England, which is the region I know best, all the towns along the Merrimack River — Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, up in New Hampshire, Manchester — all those towns, the bottom fell out from them economically, right? And somebody decided these were great places to send a lot of refugees. And what are they gonna do? I mean, how cruel. It’s not actually good for the people who live there, and it’s not good for the people who are being imported to there to be moved to a place with no jobs. Like, the whole thing is insane. And nobody ever says anything about it.
GG: So, this was really interesting for me, and I’m super glad we were able to do this. Tucker, good talking to you.
TC: Me too. Thanks a lot, Glenn.
[Music interlude]
GG: Up next, I speak with the Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen about what she calls the unhinged conspiracy theories about Russia.
[Music interlude]
GG: I’m Glenn Greenwald, filling in this week for Jeremy Scahill, and we’re back here on Intercepted. Joining me now is the Russian-American journalist and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, as well as Donald Trump. Masha Gessen, welcome to Intercepted.
Masha Gessen: Thank you so much, Glenn. I’m so happy to be here.
GG: Yeah, I’m happy you’re here as well. And obviously, one of the things that we’re gonna spend a good amount of time talking about is the debate which has dominated the news in the United States for, I guess I’d say roughly the last year or so, which is the debate about Russia and its relationship, both to the United States and to the Trump campaign first, and now the Trump presidency. And one of the things I find very interesting about talking to you about those topics is that this debate has been incredibly polarizing. People are firmly entrenched on one side of the debate or other because of the stakes that are — the high stakes for all parties, and for people’s political fortunes. And yet, you’ve been, I think, quite nuanced in your commentary and analysis. On the one hand, you are a vehement critic of Vladimir Putin and have been for a long time. You have very, I think, clearly warned of the dangers he poses, not just domestically, but also internationally. And yet, on the other side, you have often been skeptical about claims made by the U.S. government concerning the role played by the Russian government and Putin specifically, in hacking, and in other matters. You’ve called for more evidence. You’ve also warned of some of the kind of extreme conspiracy theories and hysteria that has consumed the debate at times.
And I want to talk to you about the specifics of all of that, but first, I wanted to ask you something that I’ve heard from actually a lot of people who were born in Russia or who were Russian citizens, but have lived in the U.S. for a long time, who have said that the climate in the United States, because of heightened tensions with Russia and the nature of this debate has become kind of oppressive, a little bit intimidating. They feel somewhat like they’re being castigated unfairly as Russians, that everything Russian has become toxic. And I wanted to get your view on that as somebody who was born in Russia, who came — who lived in Russia for a long time recently, and now works in the U.S. What do you see as being the climate here for people who are Russian?
MG: First, I want to say that I’m not alone in trying to offer a nuanced view. And in fact, I think that people’s willingness to latch onto this conspiracy theory that basically says that, “Russia gave us Trump” is inversely proportionate to their expertise on Russia. The more people know about how Russia works and how Putin works, the less likely they are to sort of embrace it wholeheartedly, which is not to say that they’re denying, or that we’re denying, or that I’m denying that there was any Russian interference. But what I’ve taken to saying is that the possible existence of a conspiracy is a poor excuse for conspiracy thinking.
But to answer your question about how Russians are perceived, I mean, I haven’t felt it myself, I don’t think. I’m not aware of my friends feeling it. But at the same time, most of my Russian speaking friends are queer New Yorkers, asylum seekers, or asylees who don’t spend a lot of time in the larger sort of Russian immigrant community, which is actually total Trumpland. And that’s been one of the small tragedies of the Trump election, is the way that families of Russian immigrants here or communities have broken apart along this incredibly polarizing line of whether or not they supported Trump.
For the larger Russian public, it’s been flattering and fabulous to see that their president has appointed the American president. I mean, Putin took a victory lap after — during his annual press conference in December on the subject of the American election. And he very much feels like the most powerful man in the world. But you know, the fact that I haven’t felt it personally is not to say that I haven’t observed it personally. And most recently, you know, there was a tweet out from Donna Brazile. So, there was a Russian tweet demanding that that property be restituted to the Russians. And Donna Brazile tweeted, “Now communists are dictating policy.” And that, to me —
GG: [Laughing] That’s — I mean, that — it’s amazing.
MG: It’s like the apogee of, uh, you know, this completely unselfconsciousness sort of remake of the McCarthy era, but as even more farcical.
GG: Well, I wanted to ask about a specific comment that you made along those lines in an interview that you did with Slate, where you said, “We’re seeing the reemergence of Russia as the ultimate toxic paintbrush you can scare anyone with, and hope that it ends their political career.” What did you mean by that?
MG: Right, yeah. Unfortunately, when we were talking on the phone, what I said was “smear” and not “scare,” but “scare” works as well. But what I mean is that there’s a definite feeling among Democratic Party operatives that as long as you can taint somebody with a Russia connection, that person’s political career is over.
You know, it’s magical thinking on the face of it. In fact, from everything we know, voters don’t particularly care about Russia. Certainly not Trump voters don’t particularly care about the possible Russia connection. But there is this magical idea that if you sort of create a enough of a cloud, a Russia cloud, and get it to attach to the current administration, it will somehow spell the end of this administration.
GG: And why do you think that that’s a — and I mean, I think that word actually — I’m glad that you corrected that, because I think it makes even more sense now, and it’s sort of more — it’s a stronger claim that way. Why do you regard that as kind of a smear tactic, or a toxic paintbrush? I mean, what about the view that, you know, Russia is an adversary of the U.S. government, Russia attacked the U.S. through hacking and through other means, Russia is supporting extremist rightwing parties throughout Europe and here in the U.S. as well, and therefore people who meet in secret with Russians ought to be held at least under a suspicious light, if not a guilty one?
MG: Well, because we live in a world in which Russia is a major player — perhaps not as major as Russia would like to be — but it is still very much sort of a part of world politics. And when it gets to the point where meeting, say, with the Russian ambassador is perceived as somehow suspect, when it’s the ambassador’s job to meet with people. And when we find out that these supposed secret meetings were actual conversations had at cocktail parties during the Republican convention, which is like the purpose of those cocktail parties, is to give people access to one another and to facilitate socializing. That’s what a cocktail party is for, especially at a thing like the Republican convention. And so, when that becomes toxic, then you know, what we see happen is the pathologizing of sort of normal political practices. That breeds paranoia, and that doesn’t actually constitute a response to any real danger. The danger posed by Russia does not reside in conversations with the Russian ambassador.
GG: Obviously, there are differences between the McCarthy era and the climate that is prevailing now among the — which are the fact that Moscow is shaped by a completely different ideology than it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s. But do you think there are similarities in terms of the way in which this kind of, as you call it, a toxic paintbrush is being used as a smear on people to sort of deter them from questioning claims about Russia or from deviating at all from standard orthodoxy within U.S. opinion-making circles?
MG: Well, absolutely. And I wouldn’t even say that there were similarities. What I would say is that there is a legacy, that the reason that this sort of idea has caught on so fast, and the reason that so many people perceive it as such an effective political tactic is because the reflex is still so familiar, and that’s why, you know, I react so strongly to something like the Donna Brazile tweet or the Time magazine cover from a week ago or two weeks ago that had a picture of Don Jr. on the cover and said, “red handed,” right? Those are clear references to the communist period, to the Cold War. And I find it nauseating that people are willing to claim the legacy of the Cold War so readily because it’s politically expedient.
GG: Now, I wanted to ask you about an article that you wrote in the New York Review of Books in March that was headlined, “Russia: the Conspiracy Trap.” Now, that was four months ago. There have been a lot of headlines made about the Trump/Russia connection since then, not necessarily all of them or even any of them substantive in terms of providing additional evidence. But I’m curious to know whether your views on those particular points have changed significantly over the last four months since you wrote it.
MG: I wouldn’t say they’ve changed significantly. I mean, I think that it’s not quite as strongly intelligence leaks-driven anymore as it was four months ago. My basic issue with the Russia story says the same, which is that I think conspiracy thinking is dangerous to politics. The way I would phrase it now would probably be a little bit different. The way I would phrase it is that conspiracy thinking, in a way, it’s a symmetrical response to the rise of Trump. And Trump has succeeded largely on promoting an aggressively simplified view of the world that basically sort of says, look, you know, this modern, complicated world is too scary to live in. Here’s a recipe for making it simple and livable and comfortable, and not quite as frightening. And the rise of that kind of leader almost always calls for all kinds of conspiracy thinking in the opposition as well. And I feel that that’s exactly what’s happened.
GG: Yeah. That happened among Russians who are —
MG: Oh, absolutely.
GG: Opposed to Putin?
MG: It’s happened among Russians who are opposed to Putin. And I think that my basic problem with the Russia conspiracy theory remains the same, which is that it’s like the one size fits all theory that tells us how we got Trump, which is that he’s a Russian agent, and that gets us out of the really frightening and complicated task of understanding how Americans voted for Trump, right? And it also creates this idea of how we’re gonna get rid of Trump, which is that magically — and I keep using the word “magically” quite consciously because there is no straight line from any amount of Russia revelations to an impeachment, not to mention that there’s no straight line from impeachment to actually getting rid of Trump. But magically, people believe that if the Russia collusion or the Russia conspiracy is proven, then that will somehow get rid of Trump, and the national nightmare will be over.
GG: But I want to ask you to zero in for a minute on this specific sentence in your March article from the New York Review of Books, in which you said, “Nor have we yet been given any hard evidence of the act of collusion by Trump officials.” Now, at the time that you wrote that, collusion was used to mean participation by Trump campaign officials in Russian hacking, either before the act itself or working collaboratively with them on how to distribute the fruits of the hacking. The goalposts have kind of been moved about what collusion means ever since the Donald Trump, Jr. emails came out, in which it was proven pretty definitively that Trump officials, including his son, were willing passively to receive dirt about Hillary Clinton from Russian officials, much the way Democrats were willing to receive dirt on Trump from Ukrainian officials or even from Russian officials. But on the question of whether there’s any hard evidence now, four months since you wrote this, showing collusion between Trump officials and the Russian government on criminal actions such as hacking, I personally don’t know of any hard evidence four months later after you wrote this that has been presented publicly. Do you affirm this statement still?
MG: Yes, I absolutely affirm this statement. And furthermore, I would say that what we learned from the Don Jr. email exchange was that he basically said in secret, in a confidential email exchange, exactly the same thing that his father said in public. You know, his father said in public, “Please get the emails addressing the Russians.” You know, it’s actually — this is another hallmark of conspiracy thinking, when we attach more value to something that is said in confidence than to the exact same thing that is said in public.
GG: If we convince ourselves that the reason Trump won was because the Russians engaged in nefarious behavior and dastardly deeds, and kind of implanted this Manchurian candidate and manipulated corruptly the American political process, which used to be pristine and yield positive results, and that’s the only reason why, was because this bad foreign regime gave us Trump, and then we get to believe that it’s — he’s not really an American phenomenon, which I absolutely think is a big part of what’s going on.
But I wonder if you agree with the following theory as well about why this conspiracy thinking has become so attractive, which is there is this underlying collective sentiment that you find in a lot of countries, where people are just extraordinarily furious and disgusted with and angry about the prevailing political order. In order to address those underlying positives, we have to kind of confront a lot of unpleasant questions about ourselves, like did we embrace policies as an elite class that kind of recklessly or indifferently trampled over people’s security, and do we need to change those policies in order to prevent those people from continuing to suffer, and embrace radicalism and extremism. And instead, it’s so much easier to just say, oh, this was the Russians who did it, because it relieves us of that responsibility. And I’m wondering, A, if you agree with that, and then B, whether you share my confusion about this eagerness to get rid of Trump. Because even if you get rid of Trump, the sentiments underlying Trump’s election aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they may actually worsen or become more extreme if there’s a perception that their democratic choice has been reversed. And I’m interested in your view on that component of this conspiracy thinking.
MG: So, I think you’re right. I think that part of the reason that the Russia theory’s so compelling is that it gets us out of considering our — you know, us, sort of the educated class, the wealthy, whatever, the political class — out of considering our own culpability for the rise of misery, right, that fuels the rise of somebody like Trump. But I think it’s even more than that. I think it’s — in a way, it’s again, the mirror of that misery, which is that it’s a fear of complexity. It’s — because if you consider what we need to challenge, what kind of sort of accepted political wisdoms need to be challenged in order to really try to come to terms with why people voted for Trump, then all sorts of things that we hold to be self-evident in the contemporary political world begin to topple, and we suddenly find ourselves — and again, by “we,” I mean people who are comfortable in the current political sort of disposition — we sort of find ourselves as disoriented, as frightened of all the things that start tumbling down as the people who voted for Trump. So, it’s a real fear response. It’s the “don’t drag me down into your abyss” kind of response. Because if I look into your abyss, I will find an abyss of my own.
Another aspect of it, which is related but distinct, is that the longer this goes on, the longer we watch Trump in power being unhinged, the more compelling the Russia conspiracy becomes for another reason, which is that at least somebody’s in charge. If you imagine that Putin is a cunning mastermind who’s really secretly taking over the world, then at least somebody is in charge. You know, maybe an evil grownup, but a grownup, right? I — having met Putin and having written in great detail about him, can tell you that he is actually not that different from the insane clown president that we have here. And nobody’s in charge. Nobody’s driving the bus.
GG: So, I know that there are gonna be a large number of people who listen to this discussion who are going to respond with the following. I’m sure you’ve heard it a zillion times. I certainly have. “Okay, it’s all well and good that you’re warning about certain kind of particularly unhinged people engaging in conspiracy theory, but the fact remains that Russia attacked our democracy. Putin ordered the Democrats hacked in order to help Donald Trump get elected, both to sow chaos in the U.S. and weaken our democracy.”
I want to ask you about that particular claim by asking you about something that you wrote, again in the New York Review of Books, back in January when Homeland Security issued what it called its report about the election year hacking, which was instantly accepted not just as evidence, but as proof, I think, widely through the U.S. media and kind of the chattering class. And it was issued on behalf of three different intelligence agencies. And it essentially concluded that not only did Russia, the Russian government — not only were the behind the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s emails, but that Vladimir Putin himself specifically ordered it with the intention to help the campaign of Donald Trump. And about that report, you wrote, “A close reading of the report shows that it barely supports such a conclusion. And indeed, it barely supports any conclusion.”
Do you still agree that six months later, as of — to this date, that the U.S. government still hasn’t presented any concrete evidence on the kind of original core question of whether not just Russians, but specifically the Russian government, acting under the direction of Vladimir Putin, ordered the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC’s emails? And secondly, do you think that it’s plausible that if America’s top intelligence agencies unite unanimously with high confidence in support of a conclusion, that there’s really any meaningful chance that that’s so fundamentally wrong?
MG: I’m not saying that it’s so fundamentally wrong, right? I’m not in a position to question the claim that John Podesta’s email was hacked on orders of the Russian government. I think the idea that there were personal orders from Putin, you know, at this point, we haven’t seen any evidence. It’s entirely plausible. And it seems reasonable to claim the two email hacks carried out by two different actors were affiliated with the Russian government and possibly carried out on Kremlin orders.
My issue is with the leap from that to influencing the outcome of the election, right? Because this is where the argument gets problematic. Basically, what the intelligence agencies are arguing is that the Russian government hacked the DNC and used the product of those hacks to influence American public opinion out in the open to help Donald Trump. The illegal and problematic part of it is the hacking. But then, with the participation of the New York Times, the Washington Post, a variety of cable channels, the products of those hacks influenced public opinion, which influenced the outcome of the election. Whether or not that kind of influence was actually legitimate journalistic activity on the part of Americans is something that we need to have a conversation about.
Let’s accept the one claim of fact, right? I mean, you can’t argue about facts. So, I can say I’m not willing to accept that claim of fact unless they show evidence, or I can say, okay, fine, let’s assume that that’s true, which is really what I’m saying. Let’s assume that Russians hacked the DNC and gave the products of those hacks to WikiLeaks. Let’s assume that happened. How does it amount to a Russian conspiracy to influence the election to throw to Donald Trump? It doesn’t. That’s the problem.
GG: Well, I want to thank you so much, not just for taking the time to talk to me today, but for your work on all of this over the past year. I think it’s been really invaluable the way you brought your expertise about Russia to this debate, which has been sorely lacking in expertise. So, thanks very much for both of things.
MG: Thank you, Glenn. And thank you for being a voice of sanity.
GG: Masha Gessen is a journalist, and you can follow her on Twitter @MashaGessen.
[Music interlude]
GG: And that does it for this week’s show. If you want to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter @Intercepted. And if you haven’t yet, please subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode. Intercepted is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. We are distributed by Panoply. Our producer is Jack D’Isidoro and our executive producer is Leital Molad. Rick Kwan mixed the show. We had production assistance from Elise Swain. Our music was composed by DJ Spooky. Jeremy Scahill will be back next week. I’m Glenn Greenwald. You can find my reporting at theintercept.com, and you can follow me on Twitter @ggreenwald.Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is determined by her pro-military donors, Bernie Sanders delegate Werner Lange told Sputnik at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
© AP Photo / Evan Vucci DNC Emails Deal Major Blow to Clinton With US Public
PHILADELPHIA (Sputnik), Joanne Stocker — Lange joined other Sanders supporters and delegates in walking out of the convention after Clinton was officially nominated by the Democratic party for the US presidency on Tuesday night.
"[Clinton is] actually an appendage of the military-industrial complex," Lange said on Wednesday. "Her foreign policy is nothing but more and more war."
He explained that Clinton’s advocacy for military intervention was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Libya.
Lange, a delegate from the US state of Ohio, noted that Sanders was the only candidate for either party who advocated reducing the budget of the US military and focusing on domestic priorities.
"We’ve got to get out of the Cold War mentality. We’ve got to get out of being on the brink of nuclear war," Lange explained.
Earlier on Wednesday, Clinton advisor James Rubin said Washington should play a bigger role in Europe and had become too disengaged from world affairs under President Barack Obama’s administration.CLOSE A day before a scheduled alt-right demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, protestors marched with torches at the University of Virginia. According to local reports, several people were injured during the demonstration. USA TODAY
Lebanon native and former Springfield resident Ted Von Nukem, in black, was identified by a former classmate as one of the people in a viral photo from a rally of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and alt-right protesters Aug. 11 in Charlottesville, Va. Fellow protester Peter Cvjetanovic, right, was also outed and identified as a student at the University of Nevada-Reno. (Photo11: Anadolu Agency, Getty Images)
Long before he marched alongside neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Ted Landrum wanted to change his name ahead of his approaching nuptials.
It was 2012 and his friends kept telling him he shared a strong resemblance to action-video-game star Duke Nukem: A cigar-smoking ladies man with guns and muscles.
So he changed his name to Ted Von Nukem. The "Von" an ode to his German heritage and "Nukem" to the video game character. It was a joint-decision with his now-wife of nearly four years, who also carries the last name. His given "Landrum" name, he said, had no importance to him because it borrowed from a past boyfriend of his mom.
Von Nukem appears in one of the more circulated photos of the bloody weekend in Charlottesville, an image of him amid a sea of torch-wielding white supremacists. He said he traveled to Charlottesville to protest the removal of the city's Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee statue.
Landrum, a self-described "Trump Republican," said he's more of a libertarian, but both he and his wife are registered Republicans. He added he doesn't identify with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but won't "counter-signal against them."
After the photo went public, he was identified by a former classmate from his home state of Missouri, who remembered him as "Teddy Landrum."
Von Nukem, 29, fits the age group of a Duke Nukem fan, but said he played the 90's video game just a little bit growing up. Although he does do an impression of one of Nukem's many catchphrases: "Hail to the king, baby."
When asked if he identifies with the character, he said, "In that I'm a badass," before adding, "I need to get more swole so that I can further identify with him. But I style my hair differently than he does and I don't like cigars."
Von Nukem described his family as "more traditional-style." The couple lives in Missouri and has three children ages two months, two and three. He helps train sales people all over the country under his company AnCap, Inc., short for "anarcho-capitalism."
Von Nukem describes his wife as "more hardcore" and "further to the right" than him. But she didn't go to Charlottesville.
"Politics is violence. Period. End of story. And women shouldn't be involved in violence," he said. "They should leave that to the people who do violence best, which are the men."
There were also the children to consider.
"If something were to happen to me, that would be rather bad," he said, "but if something were to happen to both us, that would be catastrophic for our children."
Von Nukem called some coverage of the Charlottesville situation "fake news," including coverage of the car that rammed into a group of protesters, killing one and injuring more than a dozen others. He said James Alex Fields Jr., the 20-year-old accused of being the driver, is not a terrorist. He claimed a group of men were trying to break into Fields' car and "he freaked out and pushed the gas pedal."
The crowd should have already been dispersed by police.
"Any blood that was spilled right there is on (the counter protesters') hands," he said. "We had permits. We just came there to speak our mind and go home."
Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2x8Y6CmA month after the death of one of its firefighters, Prince George’s County officials are reviewing safety procedures for the fire department. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Top Prince George’s County officials are considering bulletproof vests, survival-skill seminars and protocol changes for answering welfare checks as the county reviews firefighter safety in the wake of its most recent line-of-duty death.
A little more than a month after county firefighter John Ulmschneider was fatally shot while answering a 911 call, Fire Chief Marc S. Bashoor announced some possible changes in a department-wide memo. The memo also included a reminder of the department’s general rules on when firefighters should break into a home if there are no police present.
Bashoor has reiterated several times that the firefighters who responded the evening of April 15, when Ulmschneider died, did “everything right” and that there was no “one thing” that would have prompted him to do anything different.
“There is, however, the opportunity to learn and improve from every event, every tragedy, and every call for assistance,” Bashoor said.
Ulmschneider, 37, and fellow firefighter Kevin Swain, 19, were shot as they tried to enter a home in the Temple Hills-Camp Springs area. A man had called 911 asking for help checking on his diabetic brother, who reportedly could not be reached and had recently experienced a blackout or a seizure, county officials said. After knocking and announcing themselves but getting no response, Ulmschneider, Swain, the man’s brother and others forced their way into the house, worried that there was a medical emergency. The 61-year-old resident shot his brother, Ulmschneider and Swain as they entered the house.
Recruit photo of Prince George’s County firefighter John Ulmschneider, who was killed on April 15. (Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department)
[Authorities will not rule out charges in death of firefighter answering 911 call]
The man, who was not charged, was released, and relatives said he had fired in self-defense. Prosecutors are still investigating the case to determine whether charges are appropriate.
Ulmschneider died. Swain and the man’s brother were wounded.
The department had been considering vests for tactical first responders before Ulmschneider’s death and is in the early stages of reviewing whether they should be issued more widely. Bashoor and other top command staff recently tried on ballistic vests from a vendor who offered to donate some gear to the county in the hopes of securing a larger contract if the department buys more, said Mark Brady, a department spokesman.
Fire officials must consider how the vests affect mobility for firefighters and medics as well as their protective value, Brady said.
“If it makes our members safer and we feel they’re required, it is something we would consider in the future,” Brady said.
In the coming weeks, the department also will offer survival skills and training seminars taught by retired Baltimore County Fire Capt. Dennis Krebs.
Krebs, who worked in Baltimore County for 25 years, offered the Prince George’s Fire Department free training after learning of Ulmschneider’s death. Krebs has been teaching such classes since 1982, after he walked up to a car while working in a medic unit and was almost shot in the face by a drunk businessman who thought he was being robbed.
“We took the information police officers use to keep themselves out of trouble and rearranged it to address firefighters and paramedics,” said Krebs, who wrote “When Violence Erupts: A Survival Guide for Emergency Responders.”
Police officers are often taught where to stand, how to walk up to a house or look for other signs to identify a potentially dangerous situation, but firefighters and paramedics don’t always think that way because they’re so focused on trying to render aid, Krebs said.
Jim Brinkley, director of occupational health and safety with the International Association of Fire Fighters, said that, anecdotally, he has noticed an increase in the number of firefighters being shot or shot at while answering calls but that an explanation for that apparent trend hasn’t emerged.
[Emergency crews honor Md. firefighter who died answering 911 call]
“Some are domestic-related, or the perpetrator has mental-health issues,” Brinkley said. “Sometimes we’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Although more and more agencies are considering adopting ballistic vests for their first responders, particularly in an age of active-shooter incidents, it is still “very rare and very new,” Brinkley said.
Andrew K. Pantelis, president of the local firefighters union, said the department is still grieving and trying to “find its way to a new normal,” but he added that he doesn’t want the county to make decisions out of “knee-jerk reactions.”
Pantelis said the pressing safety concern among union members deals with the information firefighters receive when asked to check on someone’s welfare. Those calls, according to officials, often have limited information that can be vague, depending on the details a 911 caller provides.
The union has no indication that those issues arose in the shooting incident that claimed Ulmschneider’s life, “but it really sparked discussion and evaluation about the needs of the fire department to respond to check-on-the-welfare calls when police are not responding or have it low on their list,” Pantelis said.
Charles Walker, president of the 1,500-member Prince George’s County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association, said that the fatal shooting of Ulmschneider has been unsettling but that firefighters have continued to do the work.
“Unfortunately, it is one of those things you always know can happen, but it had never happened to us,” Walker said. “But it happened, and we definitely need to learn from it.”Bribery, Thy Name Is Government
BBC News reports that Alcatel-Lucent, a global powerhouse in the telecommunications industry, “will pay $137m (£88.7m) to settle US charges that it paid bribes to win Latin American and Asian contracts.” The legal strikes were in part based on Securities and Exchange Commission claims that the company “used consultants who performed little or no legitimate work to funnel more than $8m in bribes to government officials.”
The most remarkable feature of the story is how very unremarkable it is — that a giant corporation would bribe a government is in a very real way the definition of politics. Another notable aspect of the story is its identification of structures that funnel money to the powerful through the creation of titles and jobs that actually do nothing at all; this is, of course, exactly how the corporatist economy functions, robbing labor to pour wealth into the tiny tip of the manager-class pyramid.
Stories like this one ought to appall us, to turn us against our “public officials,” but we shouldn’t compartmentalize them from the political process as a general formula. When Big Business lobbies Congress to raise competitors’ costs enough to foreclose participation, it’s fashionable to call it “interest group democracy.”
Well, “interest group democracy” is to “bribery” what “national security” is to “imperialism” or “neocolonialism.” If we’re supposed to distinguish between the legitimate bribes that happen in politics every day and the illegitimate bribes that the Justice Department prosecutes, that distinction is elusive.
Among the things that we, as anarchists, are trying to do is sow the seeds of a society wherein the means of production are — rather than exclusively controlled by a small, idle political class — held by those who, through their labor, should own them.
I deliberately decline to perpetuate the bewildering ambiguity of the idea that we should want “private ownership of the means of production” — or “public” for that matter. As Sheldon Richman and Kevin Carson have pointed out, the purport of either of those approaches is informed by what “private” and “public” signify within our political/legal framework. This is not to suggest a top-down reorganization of society or an argument for dragooning people into accepting some arbitrarily-imposed order.
The egalitarian aspirations of the anarchist would, of themselves, be invalidated if they alone were the cynosure of our vision for society, if we didn’t also consider society’s passage from today’s violent system of theft to Paul Goodman’s “new order” of “free action.” “Equality without freedom,” taught Mikhail Bakunin, “is the despotism of the State. … [T]he most fatal combination that could possibly be formed, would be to unite socialism to absolutism.” It is the process itself, the very operation of nonviolence and trade, that will erode state-capitalism by eliminating privilege.
Libertarians who have rightly fixed themselves on the nonaggression principle as the nucleus of our social theory ought to ponder the implications of that principle; they may find it uncomfortable to learn that today’s corporations have not amassed their power or their domination of resources merely through competition, through “offering something the consumer wants.” The idiosyncratic preference for an economy commanded by oversized companies should not be enough for conscientious libertarians.
We must — at the very least — accept the possibility that the state’s impediments to voluntary relationships are both the origin of this capitalism and a handicap to “smallness” and its potential. That so many libertarians have a predilection for America’s corporate pecking order economy, and for exporting it around the world, is perhaps some attestation of the success the state and its deputies have had in fraudulently stamping their system as “the free market.”
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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O9zRMwXKk8
9 USA 06/10/13 Virginia
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdSzdEWEBuE
race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM16Fb--t5o
10 USA 20/10/13 Road Atlanta
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQdPDEKJAs0
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld1e9BPVZSo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2EciaE4xQ0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpmwo3DfLk8
Thanks to ALMSOfficialVideos
ASIAN LE MANS SERIES 2013
1 KOR 04/08/13 Autopia Inje
Full highlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZzEk33ssqo
2 JPN 22/09/13 Fuji
Full highlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0LGn8B0u94
3 CHN 13/10/13 Zhuhaï
Full highlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmyiY7ckx3s
4 MAS 08/12/13 Sepang
Full highlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAVxnPhIWdg
Thanks to Asian LMS & epmeventmedia
BLANCPAIN ENDURANCE SERIES 2013
thanks to gt1world
DTM DEUTSCHE TOURENWAGEN MASTERS 2013
1 GER 05/05/13 Hockenheim
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Hbtt-0YJw
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gfWU15mjqY
2 GBR 19/05/13 Brands Hatch
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yt61TmbRT8
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llVRzAsnX8k
3 AUT 02/06/13 Spielberg
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2aTTeaUHR4
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63fsw6niUis
4 GER 16/06/13 Lausitzring
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjapAWpBji0
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wYxm2nlbXw
5 GER 07/07/13 Norisring
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-1M_ITU3x4
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JJBPmcjZsw
6 RUS 04/08/13 Moscow
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffzwrOG4NrA
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUW7sW43-Vs
7 GER 18/08/13 Nürburgring
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OefumpvWugk
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S3KFtFXkdk
8 GER 15/09/13 Oschersleben
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Exmm7DELk0
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fyLXK7mOFI
9 HOL 29/09/13 Zandvoort
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsWdheOq_a4
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxTosxlyfAI
10 GER 20/10/13 Hockenheim
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTIoYN30Mec
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXJ9B8bOaD4
Thanks to DTMinternational & DTMde
F3 EUROPE 2013
1 ITA 24/03/13 Monza
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKldE0amK_o
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU24JHSsVk0
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhNhWDgibEc
2 GBR 14/04/13 Silverstone
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYj0AyleKY
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-2u8W2qxPc
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPkWK6H4Y68
3 GER 05/05/13 Hockenheim
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrK3Sf-iIAY
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEZ0dfnfd_U
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBKpwdZY1rM
4 GBR 19/05/13 Brands Hatch Indy
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llc0R3zet6Y
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRzwJS0l6aw
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYUunTw_p1c
5 AUT 02/06/13 Spielberg
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxgxzcclixU
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkQPj877gFo
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbjdEX5FwgU
6 GER 14/07/13 Norisring
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2iwmzdQkng
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSfoKEvPMlE
Race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_z8G7sHkpo
7 GER 18/08/13 Nürburgring
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9rOG2L4xBw
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAaUBdpVB6w
Race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM3o_s_r2dI
8 HOL 29/09/13 Zandvoort
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPMFH2-u92c
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F48GDr2I1o0
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZgdMJ50EQA
9 ITA 13/10/13 Vallelunga
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ena4OAVKHwI
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz3dIDi1-mo
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEPqi1NJxMQ
10 GER 20/10/13 Hockenheim
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXhgzEKsMCw
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XayZSjtZVGQ
race 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMueGk_bkFk
Thanks to FIAF3EUROPE
EURO F3 OPEN 2013
1 FRA 28/04/13 Paul Ricard
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yjHaz-hvRY
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMuRmqFDadA
2 POR 19/05/13 Portimao
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdY8Wh1p1e4
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enpu2aq-KA0
3 GER 02/06/13 Nürburgring
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhEMQ1ThxbU
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30lnSAN7VDI
4 ESP 15/06/13 Jerez
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J57p-9mKw5M
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VAi5hfdVuE
5 GBR 14/07/13 Silverstone
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFKgAlI6c-I
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5GmYKiz7Ns
6 BEL 08/09/13 Spa-Francorchamps
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze0aok08WAM
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKJ-6mA0l5s
7 ITA 06/10/13 Monza
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZUlsEtwJU
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eul2jSbYNLc
8 ESP 10/09/13 Catalunya
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaObDYEji8Q
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY1DAPNSI2c
Thanks to GTOPENseries
FIA GT SERIES 2013
1 FRA 01/04/13 Nogaro
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yZDi4ZrnMI
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzK5ojvdu8Y
2 BEL 21/04/13 Zolder
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPY5seaOAc0
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a398OojN6Qc
3 HOL 07/07/13 Zandvoort
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTnDl4sMRMI
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtZONsbzTwk
4 SVK 18/08/13 Slovakia ring
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kHKvoSRuDM
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESclSocyvHQ
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpOC_4djTvs
5 ESP 29/10/13 Navarra
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c2tNKVQjWg
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMi5p2u2gVY
6 AZE 24/11/13 Baku
Qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSPG8qBfkFY
Race 1&2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NyddP4JvoY
thanks to gt1world
INTERNATIONAL GT OPEN 2013
1 FRA 28/04/13 Paul Ricard
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_09lK70OpU
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_fE9ViIgc
2 POR 19/05/13 Portimao
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWX8LdjNTw
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETk-mqJh9CQ
3 GER 02/06/13 Nürburgring
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cAkCUF4HNw
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2izi6AogC4
4 ESP 16/06/13 Jerez
race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43D73vlp3Ss
race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqIgHZkCxKA
5 GBR 14/07/13 Silverstone
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nuhSruFyz0
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiE3CV-S_UI
6 BEL 08/09/13 Spa-Francorchamps
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSf18jUKxzc
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhduLRFcUr8
7 ITA 06/10/13 Monza
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgegHiQ2M7o
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55LZFtmmLDU
8 ESP 10/11/13 Catalunya
Race 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7mv8NsdzkM
Race 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx3lIatUnMQ
Thanks to GTOPENseries
GRAND-AM ROLEX SERIES 2013
1 USA 27/01/13 Daytona 24h
Saturday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1wzmSFUmMA
Sunday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnIRozMYrCw
2 USA 03/03/13 Circuit of the Americas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRsuMwLVNWk
3 USA 07/04/13 Barber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0nEbk53uI
4 USA 21/04/13 Road Atlanta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekO_4PdEtBM
5 USA 02/06/13 Detroit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9frJQkNFz8
6 USA 16/06/13 Mid-Ohio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zGDt9ceQSc
7 USA 30/06/13 Watlins Glen 6 hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58UDLpnozsI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesmiBpMjy0
8 USA 28/07/13 Indianapolis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0nEbk53uI
9 USA 11/08/13 Elkhart Lake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0GNCT-aKv4
10 USA 18/08/13 Kansas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpysxZFimNA
11 USA 08/09/13 Laguna Seca
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjGQVWaifeI
12 USA 29/09/13 Lime rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhzGeq_3Uw4
Thanks to UnitedSportsCar
SUPER FORMULA 2013
1 JPN 14/04/13 Suzuka
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J_aR0gGfN4
race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRFPXhDR3XY
2 JPN 02/06/13 Autopolis
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBL_kE6krOM
Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE1daBlmWuc
3 JPN 14/07/13 Fuji
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WihjwiXir7Y
race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUzREaCd6Y4
4 JPN 04/08/13 Motegi
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V75UgEJw9f8
race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ousot8Spvgc
5 JPN 29/09/13 Sugo
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkavmWjfKQ
race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7rkFWVo_yU
6 JPN 10/11/13 Suzuka
qualifying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdO8Fy-ZopY
race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5OzZr-r_fc
NC JPN 17/11/13 Fuji
Thanks to superformulavideoYesterday, The CW announced the renewals of their four top-rated shows (all genre entries) Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Arrow, and The Originals as well as the renewal of freshman period drama Reign. The renewal of the first four comes as no surprise as they have performed consistently well for the fifth place network and pair up of The Originals and Supernatural on Tuesdays has allowed that network to get a foothold back on that night which was a disaster for it last year. The pickup of Reign (which follows the early years of Mary Queen of Scotts) was not a foregone conclusion, but also not too surprising considering it was their fifth highest rated show. The relatively early renewal announcement is also no surprise as The CW did the same about this time last year with its best-performing shows.
This leaves struggling series The Tomorrow People hanging, though, and the pickup of Reign (which is only doing slightly better in the ratings) could mean that the former series is getting edged out. The Tomorrow People has dropped to series lows in the ratings since its return from hiatus and the network will be shifting it to Mondays (another disaster night for The CW) next month to allow mid-season sci fi entry The 100 to take up the Arrow lead-out slot on Wednesdays. If The 100 pulls better numbers in that hour than The Tomorrow People, then consider TTP a goner. Also bowing next month is Star-Crossed, and chances are that only one of these three at best survives into the 2014-15 season seeing as the network only programs ten hours a week and they also have some strong pilots in the works such as Flash, iZombie, and the Supernatural spin-off.
If The Tomorrow People continues at its current level of around a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demo based on the overnights, it will probably be sent for a date with the network executioner by season end. The CW renewed Beauty and the Beast after pulling numbers like that last year and that has not worked out well for them (and consider that show a certain goner as well). The fifth place network has shown more of a pulse this year than the last few (with most of their success coming from genre entries, I might add) and I’m sure they have no desire to hold onto ratings slackers if they have better options (which they do). Keep a close eye on The Tomorrow People’s numbers, especially when it moves to Mondays, but short of a ratings surge I do not see this one winning another season.
There have been no new episodes of the broadcast network genre shows the last few days because the networks seem reluctant to counter program against the Olympics (though FOX and CBS did throw Almost Human and Intelligence at them on Monday resulting in ratings dives for those shows). That may continue into next week, so the ratings reports might be sparse until the Sochi games are over. Keep an eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site, though, for any updates as well as breaking news like these CW renewals.I was disappointed not to make it to the Eurogamer Expo at the weekend there. By all accounts it was a great event, and it managed to distract people from the inevitability of death for a few days. I was having to enjoy the event vicariously, by stalking those people who did attend on Twitter and Facebook.
Here's the thing, though. Something kept coming up. And it's a tricky thing to talk about on these pages, because... well, because I appreciate the platform Eurogamer has given me here. I don't want to seem like an ungrateful beast, striking out at those who put food on my daughter's table. But we're going to have to talk about these Booth Babes, right? I mean, I can't not talk about these Booth Babes.
As I did my stalking, I saw a lot of people talk about how disappointed they were that Booth Babes were at the Eurogamer Expo. In case you don't know what a Booth Babe is, the Oxford English Dictionary of Gamer Terms describes them thus:
Booth Babe (Boof Bayb): A woman who is paid to stand for hours in painful high heels and skimpy clothes by a corporate body operating under the dated notion that tech products can't be sold without appealing to the worst elements of a perceived demographic.
USAGE: "Wow, dude, did you see that Booth Babe over by the Virgin Gaming stand?! She's so super hot and she has a QR code on her ass!" "Who uses QR codes?" "Who cares, man?! What an ass!"
I had literally no idea what to use for images on this piece, so here's a shot from Dark Souls.
"Oh God, I'm doing Booth Babe stuff next weekend. The money's okay, but... ugh."
This has got to stop. It just has to stop.
Recently, here in the UK, there's been a campaign to pressure national tabloid newspaper The Sun into dropping its Page 3 models. For those of you outside the UK, I should explain what Page 3 is. Imagine something for me. Imagine you decided to start a newspaper. Now, imagine you are in a brainstorming session with the team who will help you to create this newspaper. Now imagine that someone raises a hand and says - "Hey, I've got an idea. What if we show a big photograph of a 19 year old girl with bare breasts on our third page every single morning?" You'd think that person had some serious issues, right?
Well, The Sun puts that very idea into practice every morning, and has printed those photos for decades. The very concept of Page 3 is a throwback to a time that most of us have left behind. I was a kid in the early 80s, and I can remember the mainstream media portraying women as inconsequential, silly little things. (That's why things like alternative comedy happened - and thankfully I was more influenced by that than by what came before it.) The fight to reverse that behaviour is an ongoing thing, and stamping out things like Page 3 is an essential part of the battle.
But hey - I'm a gamer. So what do we have that we should be stamping out? I've spoken before on this site about the sexism and misogyny in gaming. It's everywhere. We can and should fight those battles one by one, calling out hateful games and hateful developers as we find them. And we will find them. But this Booth Babe business is really our Page 3. It's a tacky, ugly thing that has crept into the standard practice of things, and it's a thing that has plenty of people defending it.
One of the last things I did for Consolevania before we wrapped it up was this little video about the Booth Babe thing. It remains one of my favourite Consolevania bits. I think that in the four years since I did this, things have improved a little bit. So that's something.
Many (guys) say it's harmless. Just some harmless fun. Many (guys) say that these women aren't being exploited, because they're choosing to do it and are getting paid to do it. Many (guys) say that only prudes get annoyed by these things and that we should all just loosen up, because there's nothing wrong with enjoying the female form. It's all pretty much the same kind of defence you hear for The Sun's Page 3 "Stunners", and I expect to see some of it in the comments after this piece.
But it doesn't wash with me. I love to look at beautiful women. And I'm certainly no prude. But I think it's important in life to look not only at what things are, but also at what they do and what they mean. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to work from the standpoint that in a male-dominated society where the oppression of women is constant and real, very little is ever harmless.
What does the concept of the Booth Babe say about women? It says that women's place at any tech-related event can only be as an attractive decoration to sweeten the event for the men. It says that women aren't truly welcome in that world, because the moment you objectify something it isn't part of anything. It's just there. It's just something else to be consumed. Fundamentally, it depicts a woman as a product.
I think we'll just make it a rule. When no screenshots fit the piece, we'll use Dark Souls.
What does the concept of the Booth Babe say about men? It says that we objectify women to such an extent that we will think nothing of attractive women just "being there" while we watch. It says that we are exactly what a corporate entity believes us to be. It makes us a predictable, easily defined and easily manipulated stick-man on a company whiteboard. It cheapens us. It cheapens all of us. It cheapens the event, and everyone at it, male or female.
This stuff isn't trivial. Page 3 and Booth Babes are the same thing - they are the stealthy, smiling progenitors of casual sexual objectification.
Have you ever seen some gamer dude getting his photo taken with a Booth Babe? Some chunky, pale guy, grinning as he puts an arm around the waist of a beautiful young girl. A moment captured forever, of this guy and this girl. The guy is probably a good guy. A good friend, a kind person. A good son. He'll be a good dad one day. But in that moment? When that photo is being taken? He's not posing for a photo beside a person. He's posing for a photo with a thing he's seen. A beautiful, unattainable thing. An object.
These moments are killing us. It has to stop.
Eurogamer, it has to stop.The Liberals’ Alistair Coe has is alarmed by the fruit of his FOI cultivation into point to point cameras.
Information obtained by ACT Shadow Transport Services Minister, Alistair Coe, shows the governments point-to-point speed cameras can be used for car tracking by unmanned aerial vehicles or ‘drones’.
“This shocking revelation from an Australian Federal Police Representative on the Point-to-Point Camera Steering Committee shows the cameras could be used for drones to follow ‘vehicles of interest’ until police interception could be performed,” Mr Coe said.
‘….a specific benefit would derive if the P2P cameras were linked to UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)
which could track vehicles of interest until police interception could be safely performed.'(AFP
Representative, Point-to-Point Camera Steering Committee, 18 June 2010).
“The representative also said the cameras could be used to detect other vehicles of interest:
‘…The use of the P2P cameras to detect unregistered, stolen and other vehicles of interest would
provide ongoing and longer term benefits of the project.'(AFP Representative, Point-to-Point Camera
Steering Committee, 18 June 2010).
“This confirms my concerns about the capacity for point-to-point cameras to be used for mass surveillance, with every single car that passes being tracked in a centralised database.This election has got me plumb tuckered out. My fatigue undoubtedly stems from the fact that I check the polls more than once a day, that I now know how many electoral votes New Mexico has, and that I have developed carpal tunnel syndrome from registering fake voters for Acorn.
Now look, I have said from the very beginning that I’m rooting for the black guy in this thing. Why? Because I find it funny to say, “I’m rooting for the black guy.” It makes me sound both progressive and ignorant in the same breath, a combination I find irresistible. I also happen to find him the better candidate, as well as the only remaining candidate who, to my knowledge, has never called his wife a cunt. Which, in my mind, is a plus.
And the election has been good for my own marriage because it’s given my wife and I something to talk about for the first time in… ever. I tend to goad her on whenever she starts talking about the election because when she’s talking about her dislike for the Republicans, she’s ignoring her own dislike for me. Which is great.
But enough’s enough. I feel like the kid who’s been given free run of the candy shop and ate himself sick. This election has gotten me nauseous. It’s just not fun anymore. The fact that I now even know enough about Acorn to make a joke about them proves it. The fact that any of us is now familiar with the term “first dude” further proves it. I will be so happy on November 5th when I can finally turn my attention away from electing the leader of the free world and return it to the financial apocalypse currently underway. Whoever wins, Barack or Methuselah, is going to find himself in a biblical-sized shit storm upon taking the oath.
Just to put all of this in perspective, not only has our economic meltdown taken a backseat to formerly obscure domestic terrorist/Chicago “citizen of the year” Bill Ayers, but I feel like NOBODY is talking about the fact that Lindsay Lohan totally came out of the closet! What’s the matter with this country??? When did our national priorities get so completely and totally fucked?Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
A bust by Palestinian security forces of a four-man Kalkilya terrorist-cell led to the arrest and indictment of its members by Israel, the Justice Ministry announced on Wednesday.
The Central District Attorney’s Office filed an indictment with the Lod District Court on Wednesday against Khaled Daoud, 21, for his involvement in the cell, including charges of manufacturing and attempting to manufacture weapons as well as conspiracy to commit a felony.
The other three members of the cell, Namir Atta, Abd al-Hak and Abd al-Rahman, will be handled by the West Bank prosecution arm of the IDF legal division.They are presently being interrogated by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and their files have still not been transferred to the IDF legal division.Daoud was indicted in Israel because his mother has an Israeli citizenship.According to the indictment, in July 2013 Atta contacted al-Hak and al-Rahman about forming a terror cell while at a mosque in Kalkilya. Shortly thereafter, the three invited Daoud to join them, whereupon they conspired to manufacture weapons and carry out terror attacks on Israeli Jewish targets.The four debated what kind of attack to undertake, discussing shooting attacks, explosives and rockets. They eventually settled on explosives and appointed Daoud as the cell’s leader, the indictment stated.Al-Hak and Atta allegedly attempted to configure and acquire components for a remote telephone-detonated explosive, but eventually changed their focus to manufacturing grenades.The cell allegedly tried to build remote-control explosives, grenades and other explosives. And had succeeded with at least one home-made grenade, which was tested and successfully detonated, the indictment said.Shortly after successfully setting off one of the grenades in a test explosion in November, Palestinian security forces arrested the cell and they were taken into custody by Israeli security forces.The Shin Bet said it could not confirm whether the Palestinian forces had tipped it off about the details and whereabouts of the cell or whether its own assets had learned of the cell.In the past, Palestinian security forces have released arrested terrorists and then quietly tipped off Israel to mitigate internal public criticism against handing over Palestinians to Israel.The arrest was particularly noteworthy in light of the unity talks between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and the significant low point in relations between the PA and Israel and the unraveling of peace talks.The prosecution requested remanding Daoud to police custody until the end of the proceedings.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>Sacramento an established front runner
The Sacramento Republic, a Rowdies’ USL rival, has long been an established frontrunner in terms of MLS viability. Sitting in a top 20 TV market both in overall and Hispanic households, the club has been one of the few at the lower division level of North American soccer to consistently draw over 10,000 fans per game.
The ownership squabbles that threatened to derail the city’s chances earlier this year have been resolved and now the California city sits as a clear option for MLS expansion.
Nashville has surged and is a “hot” city that MLS has logical interest in
Sometimes timing and fortune play a bigger role in this process than anything else.
Nashville is currently enjoying its day in the sun as an emerging center of culture and of soccer fandom. Supporter-owned Nashville FC was successful in the amateur ranks of American soccer, prompting USL, the co-second division in North America, to award the city a franchise.
But before that team has even kicked a ball in USL, the city could be awarded an MLS team.
This summer’s US Men’s National Team match against Panama in the CONCACAF Gold Cup drew over 40,000 fans and an International Champions Cup match between English giants Manchester City FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC drew over 60,000 fans.
Unfortunately for the Tampa Bay area, comparable attendances aren’t on display. The US Men’s team played a Gold Cup match days later in Tampa which drew only 25,000 fans and the International Champions Cup opted to hold games in Orlando and Miami instead of Tampa. (It should be noted the International Champions Cup is run by a marketing company owned by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross — therefore all but guaranteeing Miami gets high-profile matches.)
The success of FC Cincinnati in attracting fans
The biggest success story in domestic soccer in recent years has been the interest generated by recent start-up FC Cincinnati (FCC).
The Rowdies got the best of FCC on the field this year, eliminating the Ohio-based second year club from the USL Cup Playoffs. However, FCC is averaging close to 20,000 fans a game, a remarkable number for a lower division team.
The Cincinnati market is not one MLS was particularly interested in prior to the team’s marketing success. It would be one of the smallest in MLS and prior to the on-field start of this team in 2016, the market had very little history of success in the sport.
But FCC has surged to the front of the expansion line drawing crowds far bigger than anyone else in the lower divisions.
Questions about stadium plan
One former MLS general manager who had a new stadium built during his tenure told me earlier this past week that he felt the Rowdies stadium plan was “naive” and a “non-starter.”
This former GM who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity praised Rowdies owner Bill Edwards for doing what he could with Al Lang Stadium but felt the ground would simply be too small (a capacity under 19,000) and that the configuration was not “soccer-specific” enough to thwart Tampa Bay’s hopes.
The Rowdies are limited in what they can do in a congested downtown. But it is worth noting the vista provided of Tampa Bay from the stadium would perhaps represent the best TV images of a facility from the league.
St. Pete instead of Tampa
While MLS constantly talks about the need to find its teams playing in or close to downtown, some speculation has begun to surface that playing in a secondary city, which the Rowdies do and would continue to do in MLS, hurts the club’s bid.
While on the surface this might be true, much of the Tampa Bay Area’s media is housed in Pinellas. While St Petersburg is a longer drive than Tampa for many of the fans who’d flock to an MLS team, it is still in market.
Proximity to Orlando and Miami
Orlando has one of the most successful MLS clubs in terms of local interest. Miami remains a market that is being essentially gifted a team outside of the normal expansion process.
But geography didn’t help the Rowdies bid. MLS’ thinking probably should change on this as local rivalries and traveling fans are what make professional soccer around the globe much more like US college sports than North American pro sports.
A Tampa Bay-Orlando rivalry which is a holdover from the lower division days of Orlando City SC would instantly be one of the biggest MLS rivalries and a triangular “derby” including Miami also would be an instant hit.Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan today revealed that he was unaware of changes to the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) outside of the lever-action shotgun alterations.
The 2017 National Firearms Agreement was published on the Attorney-General’s Department website in February without an announcement.
The new document contained dozens of changes, including:
Obtaining a licence for an ‘occupational’ interest has changed from “genuine reason” to “genuine need”.
The removal of Category C and D firearms from occupational/professional shooters would restrict professional pest culling operations or make them ineffective.
In the 1996 Agreement the word ‘must’ is used 15 times and in the 2002 Agreement six times. In the 2017 Agreement the word is used 58 times.
The effect of the change would bring about corresponding mandatory change in the state and territory jurisdictions. In most cases the jurisdictions have addressed the risk or intent of the current sections in slightly different ways.
The release of the new document came after 18 months of hot debate between anti-gun campaigners and responsible firearm owners. The antis’ debate was shrouded in misinformation and emotive rhetoric.
A response to the Sydney Siege Inquiry, the NFA review was supposed to “simplify the regulation of the legal firearms market through an update of the technical elements of the National Firearms Agreement”.
Minister Keenan said the only changes to the NFA would be “those which enabled the re-classification of lever-action shotguns; the consolidation of the 1996 National Firearms Agreement and the 2002 National Handguns Agreement (Consolidated Resolutions) into one document; and changes necessary in the light of technological developments”.
But he told the Firearms Industry Reference Group – which includes SSAA National – that he was unaware of the many other changes.
It appears Minister Keenan has allowed himself to be dictated to by bureaucrats. Now he must make changes to the NFA to ensure he is fulfilling his original commitment.
SSAA Victoria is calling on all members to write to Minister Keenan and remind him of how influential the sports shooting community is. It’s time to again put the pressure on. Remember, be polite, use your own words and remind him of how |
violent behavior may not have much relevance when it comes to making supplements, Mister said. "But I do think when you talk about people with a history of criminal convictions with controlled substances and illicit drugs, and they are making products where they have the opportunity to bring that prior background into their product, that is concerning."
"It is unfortunately a tale of two industries. There's a mainstream, responsible industry," Mister said of the supplement business. "Then there is this sort of shadow industry, the smaller guys playing around the fringes. The problem is how we distinguish between the two."
WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT
Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, known by the acronym DSHEA, the FDA must show that a product is unsafe before it can take any action to restrict its use or seek its removal from the market. Nutritional supplements such as the vitamins, minerals, protein powders and herbal blends used by more than half of Americans are treated like foods and assumed to be all-natural and safe — unless proven otherwise. Although supplements are often sold and used as remedies for various conditions, they aren't required to prove their safety and effectiveness before being put on the market, as is required with medications.
"Supplements are under-regulated by the FDA," said June Rogers, director of drug program and policy at the NFL Players Association, whose members are tested for a variety of performance-enhancing drugs. "Anyone is allowed to go out and make a supplement and basically sell it until the FDA comes knocking at your door. But before that happens, there's a lot of profits to be made."
Loren Israelsen, a top supplement industry association official who is credited as a key architect behind the DSHEA supplement law, said that 20 years ago nobody envisioned the kinds of rogue players, advanced chemistry and drug-spiked products being seen today.
"It is so counterintuitive and opposite to the really fundamental principles of what this industry is about that we probably didn't fully recognize it because it was so not a part of us," Israelsen, president of the United Natural Products Alliance, said in an interview this week.
Israelsen was convicted in 1997 of conspiracy to defraud the United States, for a scheme that involved falsifying documents to import evening primrose oil despite an FDA ban on its importation. The documents falsely declared that the shipments were such things as "Vitamin E" to avoid seizure and sought to conceal that Health Products International was the company importing the material, federal records show.
During the conspiracy, Israelsen was a vice president and general counsel at Health Products International, which he described as the manufacturing arm of Nature's Way, where he also was a top executive. He said his actions should be viewed in the context of a time when the industry felt the FDA was taking overzealous and unjustified actions against natural products.
"I was much younger and breathing more fire," he said. "In retrospect, would we do it that way again? No."
Israelsen said there's a difference between standing up for evening primrose oil and supplement company executives fighting the FDA over substances with questionable chemical origins. He said recent media coverage of supplement makers like Cahill and Geissler and their potentially dangerous products has altered the way the industry views calls for additional regulation.
"It has been fundamental. Things have changed. That's a reality," Israelsen said. "We have to just look at where we are and what needs to be done to best address it — because it's in our best interest to address it."
In what could be considered an important conciliation for his industry, Israelsen said he's open to having discussions about whether new tools are needed to make it easier and faster for the FDA to take action.
In the past, the industry has opposed and defeated legislation that would require supplements to be registered with the FDA, arguing that criminals wouldn't register and that good companies would be overly burdened.
But Israelsen says he now thinks it's possible that requiring registration could give the FDA a "faster, easier way to say they're not in compliance."
A bill reintroduced this summer by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., would require supplement firms to register products with the FDA within 30 days after being marketed, including providing a description of each product, its ingredients and a copy of the label.
Other supplement industry trade groups emphasize that better enforcement would address the industry's bad actors. Under existing laws, any person who markets a supplement that violates the law can be found guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines, notes the Council for Responsible Nutrition.
Such criminal cases appear to be rare, however, and they can take years and can involve more complex felony charges. The FDA has so far not provided data, requested under the Freedom of Information Act, on how often the agency has sought criminal prosecution of supplement makers.
"More executives should be subject to these misdemeanor cases," said Mister, who heads the council. "That would send a very strong message to the industry."
Supplement makers also can be subject to individual and corporate fines of up to $500,000 for a series of violations in a case, Mister noted. "If you don't have a cop watching the speed limit, people will speed."
Daniel Fabricant, director of the FDA's dietary supplements division, said: "We're doing all we can with the tools we have." He noted that limited resources at the agency are a factor, along with competing priorities among the many food and medical products regulated by the agency.
In some recent cases, the FDA has used its authority to detain and seize adulterated or misbranded dietary supplements, as it did this year with supplements made by USPlabs and Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals that contained the controversial stimulant DMAA. The FDA has the authority to order a recall of supplements if a manufacturer refuses to do so, and the agency threatened this in a letter to USPlabs that prompted the company to recall OxyElite Pro last month.
Patrick Arnold, a chemist who helped BALCO President Victor Conte develop the steroid known as "the clear," speaks to reporters after a sentencing hearing in August 2006 in San Francisco. (Photo11: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
But the FDA still should do more, argues Patrick Arnold, who was convicted in 2006 as the Illinois steroid chemist in the "Balco" scandal that involved distributing performance-enhancing drugs to high-profile athletes.
"Obviously, we want to avoid regulatory interference as much as we can because it never ends up being a good thing," Arnold said. But without better FDA oversight, Arnold said, it will become increasingly difficult for supplement makers to compete without spiking their products.
He pointed to the lack of any public action by the FDA to address repeated findings by independent labs — including by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in June 2012, and various teams of international researchers — of undisclosed amphetamine- and methamphetamine-like compounds in Craze. This week, another peer-reviewed journal article reported tests showing similar findings in additional samples of Craze, as well as in Detonate. Driven Sports says the tests are wrong; Gaspari officials have not responded to interview requests.
"When stuff like this happens with Craze and Detonate, that just makes people so pissed off that they're ready for some regulation," Arnold said. "That's so unfair to competitors and it's a public health issue."
Arnold pointed out that there have been people with criminal backgrounds making supplements as long as he's been in the business. "When I first got started in the 1990s, just about every major supplement owner was an ex-steroid dealer," he said. "You make money selling steroids, then start your supplement company."
With the Internet, he said, it doesn't take much to start selling the pills and powders. "It's a very low barrier of entry," Arnold said. "And you don't have to be that smart. You just pretend that you know science."
Arnold says prison time, his notoriety and the increased scrutiny his products have drawn from regulators have changed the way he does business. But his products still have pushed into gray areas. In 2009, two of his products — Ergopharm's 60-OXO Xtreme and 6-OXO — were the subject of a recall after the FDA said they contained substances that should be classified as steroids. In recent years, Arnold has taken credit for being the first supplement maker to put the controversial stimulant DMAA into his products. He says he removed it after the FDA crackdown and after more scientific evidence emerged raising questions about whether it's naturally in geraniums.
Elizabeth Stapleton shakes up a sample of supplements that were sent in for testing at Aegis Sciences Corp. in Nashville. Aegis is among the private groups doing testing for athletes and others seeking to detect spiked supplements that have the potential to damage careers and cause health problems. (Photo11: Larry McCormack, The Tennessean, for USA TODAY)
HIDING DANGEROUS INGREDIENTS IN PLAIN SIGHT
The problem of supplement adulteration is significant, whether it occurs with criminal intent or is the result of lax quality control and insufficient oversight of suppliers.
Just over half of all Class 1 drug recalls in the USA from 2004 to 2012 — those that could cause serious health problems or death — involved supposedly all-natural dietary supplements that were spiked with hidden pharmaceuticals, according to research published this year in the scientific journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Of the 237 supplements recalled for hidden drugs, 40% were sold for sexual enhancement; 31% for bodybuilding and 27% for weight loss, the researchers said.
But hidden drugs have been found in other categories of supplements as well, including diabetes and arthritis remedies. This summer, Purity First Health Products recalled various lots of Vitamin B50 capsules, Vitamin C capsules and multi-mineral capsules after FDA tests indicated the presence of steroids.
With minimal testing being done by the FDA, a growing number of private companies are doing their own tests to identify problems that aren't being detected and addressed by regulators.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency tests and reviews labels of supplements of interest to athletes, and maintains a list of "high-risk" supplements, many of which have not been subject to FDA action.
Sometimes troubling ingredients hide in plain sight on the products' labels under names most consumers would never recognize.
"At least 200 different names are being used for testosterone," said David Black, founder of Aegis Sciences Corp. in Nashville, which has created a database of supplements to help clients at 140 universities, the NFL Players Association and other sports organizations. A mobile Aegis Shield app has recently been made available to the public.
While there are about 2,475 ingredients in the products in the Aegis database, more than 35,000 aliases are used for the ingredients on their labels. For example, there were 167 aliases for marijuana and 82 aliases for methylhexanamine, better known as DMAA.
Aegis also found other ingredients that might make consumers think twice, including "Wu Ling Zhi" — which is flying-squirrel feces, and "Putrescine," which is also known as the foul odor of decomposing flesh.
"In our experience, we've seen so many products out there that are not what they're represented to be," Black said. "If a product has a great claim and actually does what it claims to do, it probably has an ingredient that shouldn't be in there."
And the people who pay the price, ultimately, are those who — knowingly or unknowingly — indulge. U.S. Olympic Committee athlete ombudsman John Ruger noted in an e-mail to USA TODAY this week that "despite our aggressive efforts to educate them on the potential pitfalls, the harsh reality is that we will have athlete(s) who miss the Olympic Games because they take a supplement that includes a banned substance."
To read more articles in USA TODAY's Supplement Shell Game series, go to: supplements.usatoday.com
To report an adverse health event involving a dietary supplement, contact the FDA's MedWatch program online or call 800-332-1088.
Follow USA TODAY investigative reporter Alison Young on Twitter: @alisonannyoung
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1bUq4ihA trip through the HTML time machine that is Warren Buffett's company's website.
You expect some weird things out of Berkshire Hathaway. Helmed by that quirky billionaire Warren Buffett, he of the'Sausage McBuffett'and a deep commitment to value investing, the company has not been afraid to zig when others zagged. They are big on freight rail, for instance, and their sexiest holding is an industrial lubricant maker
All that to say, perhaps we should not be surprised that the company's website was built in the 1990s, and hasn't really entertained a redesign since. The biggest change to its interface came in 1999, when the design switched from a single bulleted list of 11 links to a two-column bulleted list with a teensy bit more white space around its 14 hotlinks.
The header is an enduring feature of the page, in place since 2002. It looked and looks like this, only changing to accomodate a new company headquarters' address.
In case you're wondering, the clever big B and H effect is generated by simply increasing the font size (FONT SIZE=6) on those first letters and then decreasing it for the rest (FONT SIZE=4).
Another fixture on the BH homepage is its footer, which I reproduce in full: "If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can either write us at the address shown above or e-mail us at berkshire@berkshirehathaway.com. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response." That was put into place in the year 2000 and hasn't changed by a single word.
But the most charming of all the web strategy decisions that Berkshire Hathaway has made is its inclusion of advertisements for various BH companies. The web, after all, is just a glorified marketing platform, so you might as well throw up some direct response ads on any page, even the home page for a company with a market cap of over $200 billion.
A nearly identical version of that advertisement appears on the 1997 version of the page. The only thing that's changed, actually, is that the URL for the insurance company's webpage got added in 2005. The other ad that's stayed put for the entire duration of the site's history is for Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, Fechheimer, an activewear company that makes polos, oxfords, t-shirts, jackets, hats, and kids clothes with Berkshire's name printed on them.
As someone who built websites in the mid 1990s for a variety of realtors in southwest Washington State, this WEB page nearly brought me to tears. I can practically see the Geocities template it knocked off, and it made me wish life could be as simple as its <tr><td></td></tr> structure. Or, perhaps life really is simpler in Omaha. If you're the billionaire owner of infrastructure companies.AEG Facilities, a world-renowned sports, entertainment and venue organization that operates more than 100 arenas and stadiums on five continents, will take over management of Pittsburgh’s CONSOL Energy Center on September 1, the Pittsburgh Penguins announced.
AEG Facilities replaces SMG, which managed the Civic Arena/Mellon Arena and CONSOL Energy Center for approximately 20 years.
The list of venues in the AEG Facilities family includes the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, the O2 Arena in London, O2 World in Berlin and the MasterCard Center in Beijing, China.
The two new partners signed a five-year deal.
“We are excited to create this dynamic partnership with AEG Facilities and look forward to building on the success CONSOL Energy Center has enjoyed in its first two years of operation,” said Travis Williams, Chief Operating Officer of the Pittsburgh Penguins. “AEG Facilities brings an outstanding reputation for venue management and will work with us to enhance the overall fan entertainment experience at all CONSOL Energy Center events. We welcome them to Pittsburgh.”
“AEG Facilities is thrilled to partner with the Pittsburgh Penguins and add CONSOL Energy Center to our portfolio of elite global venues,” said AEG Facilities President Bob Newman. “This exceptional new arena has achieved great success in just two years, and together with the Pittsburgh community, we look forward to building upon its stellar foundation, and to many years of continued growth and high-profile event activity.”
AEG Facilities and the Penguins announced that workers at CONSOL Energy Center will retain their jobs. This includes part-time workers such as ushers, ticket-takers and concession vendors as well as full-time electricians, carpenters, utility crew, security workers and SMG office staff.
ARAMARK will continue as the food and beverage provider.
AEG Facilities will evaluate members of SMG’s senior management team in Pittsburgh to determine whether they will continue in their current positions
“We want to thank SMG for its years of dedicated service and contributions to the community,” Williams said.
For more information on AEG, please visit www.aegworldwide.comWith so many new series popping up on streaming services and DVD every day, it gets harder and harder to keep up with new shows, much less the all-time classics. With TV Club 10, we point you toward the 10 episodes that best represent a TV series, classic or modern. If you watch those 10, you’ll have a better idea of what that series was about, without having to watch the whole thing. These are not meant to be the 10 best episodes, but rather the 10 most representative episodes.
In a recent interview, series creator Kurt Sutter gently poked fun at his ambitions for his biker-club drama Sons Of Anarchy, which is about to air its series finale—the final beat of a seven-season crescendo of chaos, disorder, and brutal violence. Speaking on Anarchy Afterword, a Sons post-show, a self-deprecating Sutter referred to his “pretentious Hamlet archetype,” the loose concept for Sons’ overarching mythology. Early on, Sons followed the Hamlet template faithfully: Jackson “Jax” Teller (Charlie Hunnam) is the backbone of Charming, California’s chapter of the Sons Of Anarchy, an outlaw biker gang. At the head of the club, known as SAMCRO—an acronym for Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original—is Clay Morrow (played by Ron Perlman). Morrow is also Jax’s stepfather, having married Jax’s mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal), and the pair are the likely suspects in the mysterious death of John Teller, Jax’s father.
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Sons follows Jax as he struggles to reconcile John’s more peaceful, progressive vision for SAMCRO with the present realities of managing an a gang of outlaws that counts gun sales, drug distribution, and prostitution among its chief business interests. Sadly, Jax starts out believing there’s a way out of this life. He spends most of the series blind to the harsh truths around him, while the audience witnesses all of Clay and Gemma’s various manipulations, many of which include murder. But it’s one thing to know Jax’s path to redemption is hopelessly blocked with obstacles; it’s another thing to watch the slow, bruising process through which Jax gives up and lets his goodness slip away.
Sons has quickly grown beyond its Shakespearean silhouette, but the real issue was never that the Hamlet riff was pretentious; it’s that the Bard only had five acts to fill. Sutter had 13 episodes a year, necessitating a larger universe of characters and a far more circuitous route to the inevitable tragic end. But in the back half of its final season, Sons has started hitting the classic dramatic notes Sutter teased at for years. The show was never known for its consistency or its depth, but with those early hints of Hamlet, Sutter promised to march his tragic hero toward complete disintegration, and he nailed it, though it took some time to get there.
The following 10 episodes feature key moments in Jax’s tragic downfall and are among the heights of Sutter’s Shakespearean ambitions.
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“The Sleep Of Babies” (season one, episode 12)
The earliest catalyst for Jackson’s tragic downfall isn’t a trauma he suffers; it’s one suffered by Opie (Ryan Hurst), the closest thing to a brother Jax has ever known. In “The Sleep Of Babies,” Opie’s wife, Donna (Sprague Grayden), is accidentally killed in a hit job intended for Opie, and one of Jax’s fundamental, grounding relationships goes with her. Never again does Opie command the authority to remind Jax of his goodness or to convince him they still have a chance to right SAMCRO’s course. At first, Jax isn’t perceptibly affected by the shift in his relationship with Opie, but their division widens as Jax burrows deeper into SAMCRO, while Opie straggles along out of habit and inertia. The list of Clay’s offenses against his stepson could fill volumes, but the hit on Donna remains the first and deepest cut because it cost Jax his best friend. At this point in the series, the mythology around John Teller’s mysterious death has barely started to coalesce, making the attempt on Opie’s life the first irreparable fracture in Jax’s relationship with Clay.
“Na Triobloidi” (season two, episode 13)
Revenge isn’t a corrosive act for Jax, it’s a cultural imperative. Slights against the club cannot go unanswered (though they can certainly be placed on hold if an important strategic relationship hinges on the proper care and maintenance of the status quo). So while season-two finale “Na Triobloidi” finds Jax in revenge mode, in pursuit of Ethan Zobelle (Adam Arkin) and the skinhead goons who raped Gemma, the most corrupting moment comes after Jax dispatches some of his foes, when his son Abel is kidnapped and taken to Ireland. Abel’s kidnapping is when Jax discovers he’ll never truly be able to keep his loved ones out of harm’s way. And given his instinctual grasp at retaliation, “Na Triobloidi” is where Jax’s downward spiral becomes inevitable. It’s the moment at which Jax finally begins to grasp the dangers inherent to his lifestyle and view vengeance as his only available recourse given his deep roots in the club and his reluctance to get out and stay out. The episode also leaves Zobelle in the wind, taunting Jax with a lack of closure to which he’s never been accustomed and infecting him with a bloodlust that can never be fully satisfied.
“With An X” (season four, episode six)
The world of SAMCRO is cruel, but often just. The people who create chaos and misery for others also expose themselves to it, so there’s often a rudimentary moral logic to Jax’s most revolting choices. “With An X” is the episode when Jax starts making truly indefensible choices. Ima, a SAMCRO groupie involved in the club’s porn business, winds up pulling a gun on Gemma and Tara after being discovered in an illicit tryst with a remarried Opie. Jax, who also had a fling with Ima, visits Ima’s dressing room and slams her face into a makeup station to let her know she’s not welcome around him, Opie, or the club. Jax commits horrific acts early and often in Sons, but typically in service of some pragmatic goal or to protect his family. Jax believes bloodying Ima’s face is arguably an extension of his role as protective husband and father, but it’s one of the first awful things Jax does that feels mostly gratuitous—he caps off the abuse by blowing a wad of phlegm into Ima’s face, an act so revolting even Jax is conflicted about it, and Hunnam plays that ambivalence beautifully.
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“Laying Pipe” (season five, episode three)
By season five, Opie has long outgrown his narrative utility to Sons, but remains a symbol of a theoretically possible redemption for Jax and the club. While the audience is prepared for Opie’s demise, Jax certainly isn’t, and watching Opie get beaten to death in prison as a sacrifice for the club is the most pivotal point for Jax’s metamorphosis. Opie is the heart and soul of SAMCRO, a symbol of the loyalty, sacrifice, and brotherhood that make the club so alluring for the lost boys it attracts. But Opie reflects both the beautiful and the ugly sides of unwavering devotion to the club, and once Jax sees his best friend clobbered to death with a metal pipe (the episode title is among the show’s cruelest jokes), he’s never able to romanticize the club again. Kudos to Arkin, who directed the episode, and managed to make a nauseating moment out of a character death that felt necessary and overdue. Jax is devastated by the loss, but at this point, Clay still hasn’t been properly dealt with, allowing Jax to continue viewing Clay as the source of the evil that permeates every facet of SAMCRO.
“Ablation” (season five, episode eight)
Jax’s pragmatism condemns him as a person, but it acquits him as a leader. He distinguishes himself as president material early on by always having a novel, if icky solution to the club’s most pressing problems, a quality that takes an especially sinister tone in “Ablation.” Jax and Gemma’s relationship is dysfunctional and incestuous from its inception, but it’s never creepier than when Jax blackmails Gemma into seducing Clay to get proof of his crimes. Jax aims an arrow at Gemma’s softest spot, telling her manipulating Clay is the only way to work her way back into Jax’s good graces after her alcoholism endangers the grandchildren she loves so fiercely. Gemma doesn’t always make herself easy to empathize with, but given that she had already lost a child of her own, it’s easier to empathize with her in “Ablation.” She’s forced back into a romantic relationship with the man who beat her to a pulp, a scenario that would be horrific enough were it not her only son pulling the strings.
“Darthy” (season five, episode 12)
Jax’s chilling actions in the climax of “Darthy” aren’t without precedent because of “With An X,” when Jax makes clear there are no allowances for gender when dealing with threats to his family. It’s still heartbreaking to watch Jax shoot a newly clean and sober Wendy (Drea De Matteo) full of heroin to prevent her from gaining custody of Abel. What makes the scene even more disturbing than the act itself is the lead-up to it: Clay is spared the execution Jax so badly wanted for him, leaving Wendy, Abel’s mother, as the only threat he could neutralize himself, without bylaws, rules, or limitations. The righteous anger Jax feels for Clay is redirected at Wendy, who has her flaws, but is reasonable in having parental aspirations that don’t involve international kidnappings. Worse still, Jax was operating from Gemma’s playbook without even realizing it, forceably reprising Gemma’s use of heroin to hasten Wendy’s death in the pilot.
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“Aon Rud Pearsanta” (season six, episode 11)
Jax’s execution of Clay in “Aon Rud Pearsanta” is a blessing and a curse. It’s a settling of scores years in the making, and Jax, results oriented as always, turns Clay’s reckoning into an opportunity to take out Galen O’Shay (Timothy V. Murphy), one of Jax’s most intransigent foes. But it would prove far less satisfying than Jax expected. Since the show’s earliest episodes, in which he gets embraces some hippie notions from reading his father’s manuscript, Jax has been aware of an institutional sickness within the club. Clay becomes emblematic of the decay instantly, given the discord in John and Clay’s relationship and Clay’s advocacy for the club’s involvement in the gun trade. Clay burnishes that image by being completely amoral and cutting a swath of destruction just to lay claim to a bundle of letters. It’s understandable why Jax would become convinced SAMCRO could rebound with Clay finally out of the picture. But the bitter aftertaste of killing the club’s biggest internal foe comes later, as Jax comes to grips with the hollowness of Clay’s death. Clay was a symbol of the SAMCRO curse, but not the cause of it.
“A Mother’s Work” (season six, episode 13)
The steepest slope in Jax’s decline follows the gruesome death of his wife Tara (Maggie Siff) at Gemma’s hand, the point where a theoretical someday in which Jax gets to live out his days with Tara and his children evaporates once and for all. Jax’s duty to protect his family grows more important to him as the possibility of doing so becomes more remote, so even while Jax has grown accustomed to tragedy, he’s superlatively devastated upon finding Tara forked on the kitchen floor at the end of “A Mother’s Work.” Jax isn’t gutted just because the love of his life has been murdered, but also because his delusion of being able to protect Tara grew stronger as the threats to her became more imminent. The even deeper tragedy is Jax finally gaining an understand of Opie’s grief and dissociation following Donna’s murder in season one, but only after Opie is already dead. After failing to protect Opie and Tara, Jax is officially lost to the dark side. Gemma’s only saving grace comes from Jax’s willful blindness about her potential involvement. Luckily for Gemma, Jax wasn’t ready to lose anyone else just yet.
“The Separation Of Crows” (season seven, episode eight)
It’s easy to forget when “The Separation Of Crows” begins that it’s going to address a piece of the SAMCRO mythology never before dealt with directly. The audience knows about the suspicious circumstances around the death of John Teller from SOA’s earliest episodes, but until “Crows,” Jax has been kept in the dark with little to no evidence to confirm his suspicions. Jury White (Michael Shamus Wiles) knows all too well what happened to John, having known the elder Teller since serving with him in Vietnam. But Jury doesn’t lay out the events as cleanly as Jax might have liked, suggesting that while Clay was responsible for tampering with John’s bike, John would not have unwittingly ridden the bike. He would have done so as an act of sacrifice, well aware it had been tampered with. It was an alternate history for which Jax was not prepared, and Jax’s rage paired with his suspicion of Jury leads him to kill a brother, further narrowing his path forward.
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“Red Rose” (season seven, episode 12)
The Jax of “Red Rose” is practically killing for sport at this stage. At the very least, he’s killing in the same callous, indifferent manner in which Tara was killed. When Jax finally learns that Gemma killed his wife and catches up with her in Oregon, he finds out just how cruelly arbitrary Tara’s death was. “I barely remember what happened that night,” Gemma says. It’s fortunate for Jax he’s been out of redemption mode for months at this point, because at any other time it would have been impossible for him to shoot Unser (Dayton Callies), then Gemma, and comport himself calmly. But in “Red Rose,” he’s accepted his father’s death, Opie’s death, Tara’s death, and even his own, having admitted to killing Jury. Jax understands this is not a story from which the characters are supposed to walk away clean. There are karmic debts to be paid, for him as much as anyone else caught up in SAMCRO’s maelstrom. Sutter might not have hit all the Shakespearean beats he had in mind, but he nailed the tragic hero who accepts his fate.
And if you like those, here are 10 more: “The Revelator” (season one, episode 13), “Gilead” (season two, episode seven), “Bainne” (season three, episode 11), “Hands” (season four, episode 10), “Small World” (season five, episode six), “J’ai Obtenu Cette” (season five, episode 13), “Poenitentia” (season six, episode three), “John 8:32” (season six, episode nine), “Black Widower” (season seven, episode one), “Suits Of Woe” (season seven, episode 11)
Availability: Seasons one through six are available for streaming via Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime. Season seven is available for digital purchase.GETTY Lord Blackwell spoke out about the EU in a House of Lords debate
Lloyds Banking Group chairman Lord Blackwell, speaking in a personal capacity, said the current situation was not "ultimately sustainable". But he said the UK is likely to remain attractive to investment "whatever the outcome" of the in-out referendum, set to be held in 2017. He admitted his comments, made in the House of Lords, will be seized upon by Eurosceptics looking to break away from the union. Lord Blackwell said: "I don't agree that remaining in the European Union without a significant change in the current arrangements is ultimately sustainable from a political and constitutional perspective, nor do I believe that there is a compelling economic argument to overcome those reasons.
"The long-run impact of a change in our position will depend upon whether any attempts to create trade barriers are offset by the potential benefits from being free to develop a less regulated and potentially globally competitive UK economy. "There are voices on both sides of that argument, but in the end our global competitiveness in markets outside the European Union must be a primary concern." He said the simplest solution would be to stay in the single market if changes to keep industry and the City of London competitive were made. But if Britain did leave a trade agreement would still be needed.
PA Lord Rose and Baroness Brady at the launch of the pro-EU campaign
GETTY Boris Johnson has played down the impact of leaving the EU
There are voices on both sides of that argument, but in the end our global competitiveness in markets outside the European Union must be a primary concern Lord Blackwell
He added: "While uncertainty may mean some business investment is held back in the short term, there are many reasons why the UK are likely to remain an attractive global location whatever the outcome." Lord Blackwell's comments came as former Marks & Spencer chairman Lord Rose launched the campaign to stay in the EU. Launching the Britain Stronger in Europe group yesterday he said being in the union brings £450 of benefits to each British household every year.
GETTY David Cameron and Angela Merkel: The pair have been in talks about renegotiating EU membership
London Mayor Boris Jonson, however, played down the impact of leaving Europe. Speaking in Japan he said: "We want, in an ideal world, to stay in a reformed European Union but I think the price of getting out is lower than it's ever been. "It's better for us to stay in, but to stay in a reformed EU. That's where I am."Rand Paul, the newly elected Republican/libertarian/Tea Party candidate from Kentucky just came out and said what no other Republican will dare say — that in order to balance the budget he would be willing to cut military spending.
It is such an obvious thing, really. We currently spend more money on our military than the rest of the world put together. We spend ten times more than any other country. Has this made us any safer? Has it brought peace and stability to the world?
Hardly.
I’m not a pacifist, but our military budget is way beyond out of control and threatens more harm to our country than our enemies could ever do.
The only question is, will any other Republicans figure this out? Or will they shut him up?By Carlos Boogs
BoxingScene.com has been advised by multiple sources that 2016 United States Olympian Carlos Balderas is going to become the first promotional signing of Richard Schaefer's newly formed Ringstar Promotions.
Schaefer, co-founder and former CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, started Ringstar a few months ago and stages the first company event on December 10 USC Galen Center, Los Angeles, California. Balderas is being positioned to make his pro debut on that card, which is headlined by Abner Mares challenging Jesus Cuellar for the WBA'regular' featherweight title.
Balderas, 20-years-old, is coached by his father Xenon and his uncle David.
Balderas represented the USA Knockouts in the World Series of Boxing (WSB). In 2015 he took part in five bouts, defeating Fabio Introvaia of Italy, Dawid Michelus of Poland, Brian Nunez of Argentina and Adrian Javier Martinez Morales of Puerto Rico but losing to Azerbaijan's Albert Selimov. In 2016 he won his first two bouts against Lindolfo Delgado and Moroccan Hamza Rabii.
He qualified for the men's lightweight event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro Brazil via his results in the WSB where he won the gold medal in his elite division and was named Outstanding Boxer of the event. Balderas was given his Olympic allocation by the International Boxing Association (AIBA).
He breezed through the first two fights of the Olympics, beating Berik Abdrakmanov in the first bout and then Japan's Daisuke Narimatsu in the following fight. He lost a decision to two-time Olympic bronze medal winner and three time amateur champion Lazaro Alvarez of Cuba in the quarter-finals.Janosik will be remembered for his stores as well has philanthropic work
Johnny Janosik and his wife, Mary, at their furniture store. He died Friday at the age of 90. (Photo: Courtesy of Janosik Family)
Funeral services are planned Thursday for Johnny Janosik, a World War II veteran who was the force behind Laurel-based Johnny Janosik World of Furniture, one of the 100 largest furniture retailers in the nation.
Janosik died Friday. He was 90.
A native of Hopewell, Virginia, Janosik started his business in 1953 as a television repair shop in downtown Laurel. He grew the operation to include furniture, and eventually made tens of millions of dollars in annual sales.
Today, the company operates two stores in Dover and the original showroom in Laurel, a sprawling 180,000-square-foot space at 11151 Trussum Pond Road billed as the largest furniture store on |
and expose Greiss' glove hand when he gets the start.
The biggest question for Greiss during 11-12 will be whether or not he can lock down a full-time role with the team during the season. We're predicting he makes Niittymaki as the odd man out this year, as the Sharks vastly improved defensive corps should complement Greiss' aggressive style perfectly. If he struggles however, expect him to head to Worcester where he will platoon with a rehabbing Al Stalock.
Overall the Sharks have three legitimate NHL goaltenders at their disposal this season. Niemi is a lock to be the primary netminder throughout the year, but Niittymaki and Greiss are more than capable of handling backup duties and chipping in when called upon. Along with Al Stalock in Worcester, the Sharks vaunted goaltending depth will be a huge benefit to the team this year as well as into the future.It was first a package that was severly damaged and I thought,"Shit I got robbed, like the dude with the money missing." Then I looked a little more and found a small box with a happy penguin, dressed for Christmas. I opened the box, which weighed almost nothing and started to unwrap one, two, three...a lot of tissue paper and inside was a usb thumb drive. Confusion at first but knowing how much smarter everyone else is these days, I ran over and plugged the HP drive into my HP computer. It was like the Genie came out of the bottle. Graphic Novels? Tons of them in PDF format. Science Fiction? Stars Wars up the kazoo, including scripts from the film. Music? This guy is in a band and they sound good. Plus other music, much of it from my favorite guitarists. More music? Oh yeah! Sheet music of standards, tons of standards. Happy? Yeah, after seeing the initial condition of the box, I couldn't have gotten a better Christmas present. Thank you again merlynsberd. I hope to meet you someday.Reid Williams is a senior designer and engineer at IDEO Futures, where he works at the intersection of technology, design, and new venture creation. Alongside Joe Gerber, he is kicking off the Bits + Blocks Lab, a pop-up blockchain startup creation lab hosted at the Harvard Innovation Lab.
This post, which examines how the technology behind bitcoin could make supply chains much more transparent, is part of the Humans + Bits + Blocks series.
Where does stuff come from?
Whether we buy a taco or an iPhone, we’re at the receiving end of a supply chain that often stretches around the globe. Usually we don’t think much about it, and this is a good thing. But sometimes it’s important to know more. Taking a bite out of a taco involves a certain amount of trust: trust that the kitchen that made the taco is sanitary, that the ingredients that went into it are fresh, and that the taco tastes good.
This trust is critical, but there’s so much more we could know. We could create entirely new relationships with the stuff we buy, namely where it came from and how it arrived in our hands. Blockchains offer a way to introduce transparency into supply chains and to create entirely new opportunities for participation.
As a shared, secure record of exchange, blockchains can track what went into a product and who handled it along the way, breaking supply chain data out of silos, and revealing the provenance of a product to everyone involved from originator to end user.
This transparency will impact all sorts of products:
Is this shirt manufactured with child labor? Which of my friends owns the same shirt?
Are there any hazardous materials in this couch? What other pieces of furniture are typically bought with it?
Is this really the car that Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt? Who else has owned it?
Is this bottle of olive oil just olive oil? Where can my sister on the other side of the country buy it?
Inspired by the bitcoin blockchain, Skuchain, and smart contract platforms, let’s see how these technologies might change one particular supply chain: the everyday experience of buying, cooking, and serving dinner to friends.
1. Seeing where your food was grown
It’s Saturday morning and you’re at your favorite bakery, Tantric Flour & Co for a pastry and coffee. A strawberry tart catches your eye and your order one along with a coffee. The tart is amazing, and the strawberries, though baked into the tart, are some of the best you’ve ever tasted.
You’re curious about where they came from and pull out your phone to find out more. The bakery purchases and manages its ingredients inventory using a system that you can use too on your phone. You see all the ingredients that went into the tart and where they originated.
The strawberries came from a small farm about 200 miles away called Straw Hen Farms. Straw Hen records and shares many of the details of how it operates. This lets the farm share good practices with other farms and easily get certifications.
You see that Straw Hen grows strawberries in a field that uses drip irrigation and is certified organic and low water use. You can also see what else they’re growing right now: lettuce, carrots, summer squash, and kale.
From dinner at a restaurant to a bag of potato chips, every ingredient has a history. Blockchains provide a shared and secured record, letting users see where ingredients come from and how they were produced while letting producers see where their ingredients and how they’re incorporated into finished food products.
2. Buying local produce in more flexible ways
While drinking your coffee, you follow a link to Straw Hen’s blog and read that they sell directly to individuals and that you can buy their strawberries. You’re an avid preserve maker and so you buy a smart contract, committing to buying 5 pounds of strawberries if the price goes below $5 a pound. Since the contract is binding and automatically executed, the farm can use it to forecast their revenue for the season.
A few weeks pass, and you get a push notification on your phone. Straw Hen is having a bumper crop of strawberries, and your contract has been executed. You have the option to pick them up in the next week at a few nearby farmer’s markets. You see that your neighborhood farmer’s market in Glen Park isn’t on the list (bummer). If you can get enough orders to be picked up there, the farm will set up a booth. You post a link on Facebook to your friends.
Saturday rolls around and it’s time for you to pick up your strawberries at the Glen Park market. Your Facebook post kinda went viral and enough people committed to orders that Straw Hen set up a booth this weekend. Excitedly, you head to their stall to pick up your strawberries.
Smart contracts built on blockchains create new options for buying goods that include naming your own price or automatic recurring orders.
3. Seeing how your food got from farm or sea to plate
As you wander the stalls, you see one of your favorite fish vendors, Fork & Fish, selling Black Cod. You recall the first time you bought from this stall. It was strange buying fresh fish from an outdoor market but the fishmonger explained how it works.
From boat, to storage, to truck, to cooler at the market, the Fork & Fish tracks inventory and uses equipment that monitors and records the storage temperature. Both you and the vendor can see when and where the fish was caught and how it got from the boat to the market. Inspired by the freshness of the Black Cod, you buy some and start planning a dinner party Sunday night.
Blockchains can create a formal registry to identify individual goods, and track possession of a good through different points in a supply chain.
Internet connected equipment such as fishing boats, shipping trucks, and storage coolers can monitor which objects they’re housing and tag those objects with relevant environmental conditions like temperature or location, providing assurance that a product was safely handled through the entirety of its journey.
4. Rewards programs that cross traditional boundaries
You swing by a wine shop and see that they’ve got a few bottles of red from your favorite winery, Chalk Brain Vineyards. You have a subscription to the winery which means you prepay for a case of their wine (at a discounted price) and can pick it up at any retail location. You pay full price at the checkout but after scanning the wine bottle with your phone, the winery reimburses what you just paid.
You first heard about Chalk Brain through a recommendation from your phone. You keep track of all the beer and wine you buy and get suggestions and discounts on new wines to try. It’s anonymous if you want it to be, but you choose to submit tasting notes using your name.
Blockchains establish a shared place to track the purchase of goods from the manufacturer, through the point of sale, to the end user, creating a way to track purchasing habits that’s independent of any one retailer or manufacturer.
Since identity on a blockchain can be anonymous, users can receive promotions or discounts sent to a bitcoin address without revealing unnecessary personal information.
5. New kinds of markets that create new ways to participate
Fish, check. Wine, check. You still want some beer and a dessert. You head to a new place in your neighborhood called Locavore. Locavore is a small market that sells craft foods like honey, jam, beer, and hummus created by people from around the region.
You drop off two flats of some lemon marmalade that you made recently, scan them into Locavore’s inventory, and pick up a few bottles of beer made by one of your neighbors. When your marmalade sells, you and Locavore share the revenue, which automatically goes into an account you have.
As an inexpensive and open payment system, bitcoin enables new kinds of trading and markets where makers can sell products they make part time.
Beyond payments, blockchains create a way to register and sell goods in a more distributed way, as well as to track the identity and reputation of sellers, thus creating new kinds of sharing economies with open participation.
6. Knowing exactly what went into your food when it really matters
Last stop, dessert. You head over to a supermarket you like that has good desserts. As you walk in you see some brownies that look good. You have to be careful though. One of your friends coming tomorrow night has a serious peanut allergy and you can’t serve anything that has come into contact with peanuts during processing.
You already have an app on your phone that lets you find products with or without certain ingredients and you have a saved filter for peanuts that you’ve used before. The app checks not just the ingredients of the product, but the entire supply chain of ingredients.
You pick out some brownies made in house by the supermarket, but see that the almonds they used were processed by equipment that also processes peanuts. You grab a different kind, brownies made with macadamia nuts and see that they’ll be fine for your friend.
The next day as your friends marvel at the amazing dinner, you tell them how you made it, and you digitally share your recipe too: not just what went into it, but exactly which markets and stalls where you bought each ingredient.
When blockchains track the movement of objects through the supply chain they can also note how individual ingredients combine to form a newly manufactured item.
This ‘provenance tree’ allows an end user to know exactly what went into the product even if it has been through multiple manufacturing steps at different companies.
These moments show how in a future with blockchains, our experience producing and consuming food could be quite different than it is today. At the core of this is the ability to assign identity to people, to organizations, and to goods, to track in a transparent way the provenance of goods as they pass from one organization to the next, and lastly, as goods change hands, to exchange payment between the two organizations.
Food is a compelling supply chain because we’re deeply sensitive to where our meals come from, and how they arrived at our plate, but importantly the human-scale impact of blockchains will be felt throughout the world’s supply chains.
Written by Reid Williams and Joe Gerber. Visual designs by Nicholas Kluskowski & Nick Dupey.Australia's shock gaming news of the week was first Target and then Kmart deciding to stop selling Grand Theft Auto V down under in response to online petitions. But the biggest surprise isn't really that this happened: it's that those big chain stores are still selling games at all. The smart money, and their own announced strategies, suggest that they won't be doing that in a few years' time.
Mark Serrels has already offered a detailed analysis of the complex issues involved in the Grand Theft Auto decisions as they relate to the games community. I've taken a more corporate view.
What struck me when I heard the news was how relatively easy that decision would have been for managers at Kmart and Target — and indeed how easily it could happen at Big W, the other "discount department store" on the Australian scene. Having spent some time looking at their annual reports and strategic plans, it's evident that selling games is not part of their long-term focus in any way.
That's not because of any major moral panic; it's just not an effective way for them to make money. Selling one less title really won't make a big difference to the bottom line in businesses that are pegging their future survival on a constantly changing range of cheap fashions, not brand-name goods.
In considering this from a business perspective, it's first worth remembering that Kmart, Target and Big W are not independent retail entities charting their own destinies. Kmart and Target are owned by Wesfarmers, which also owns Coles and Bunnings and various liquor chains. Big W is owned by Woolworths, which also owns Dan Murphy's and Masters. Woolworths used to own Dick Smith Electronics until it sold it off in November 2012, arguing that electronics weren't profitable within its business structure — a telling point in itself when it comes to games.
Why that matters is that a single product category in a single store is only a drop in the conglomerate ocean for these chains. If the stores can't make money from that category — either directly, or by using the product to attract shoppers to buy other, more profitable products — then it will disappear. And the evidence suggests that games fall increasingly into that bucket.
This is what the Wesfarmers annual report, issued in August, had to say about Kmart and games:
Strong sales growth performance was achieved across the apparel and home categories, partially offset by declines in video games and DVDs in the entertainment category.
Things haven't improved since then. According to Wesfarmer's first-quarter sales figures, Kmart's overall store sales are growing, but entertainment sales continue to decline. Games, therefore, matter less and less. It's about clothes and cheap merchandise.
Target was singled out as the biggest problem child for Wesfarmers in the annual report. Target's official strategy is now described as "first price, right price". What that means is that it doesn't want to get involved in endless price matching — it figures it can do better by stocking the right items (mainly in clothes), aiming to ensure they're not widely replicated in other stores (through exclusive brand partnerships), and selling them at a cheap but profitable price.
Games retailing is not like that. It's a market where the chains have traditionally competed by offering discounts or bundles, because the products are always going to be available elsewhere. For Target, it's already a distraction when it is having trouble making money at the rate demanded by its corporate overlords. Add a controversy, and it's easier to walk away (regardless of the merits of the argument over the title itself).
Target has already reduced the number of stock keeping units (SKUs) in its stores by 22 per cent this year, and plans to cut them by 40 per cent by the end of 2016. Put simply: it wants to sell a smaller range of products. Inevitably, that means it will sell fewer game titles.
That would have happened even without the Grand Theft Auto issue flaring up this week — but when that happened, choosing to dump it would have been a ridiculously easy decision. If you're facing the prospect of trimming your range anyway, a controversial product is not going to survive for long. You might not think that ethical, but big business rarely is.
As I write this, Big W hasn't joined the GTA exodus, but its enthusiasm for gaming is just as lukewarm. It describes entertainment as a "non-core category" and will be "rationalising space" in that area. In other words — less space and fewer titles, again. (The floor space will be used for more shoes, apparently.)
If you grew up in an era where Big W or Kmart or Target happened to be one of the stores you purchased games (perhaps after shopping around for a good deal), this may seem disturbing. But retail changes, and in the era of Internet competition, it changes faster than ever. It's hard to offer a bargain price when you're paying a bricks-and-mortar retail overhead.
The future of gaming retail in Australia is very mixed, and the lurching won't stop for a while. On PC, it's already largely a digital universe, complete with the gigantic patches and hyper-discounted Steam sales that entails. Consoles are also painfully moving in that direction, but for A-list titles on consoles, physical release is still important. But the chances that many of those titles will end up in any physical stores in Australia other than EB Games and JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman seem slimmer than ever.It took almost a month for officials to locate the wreckage of EgyptAir flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea last May. It took a few days more for them to recover the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder that were resting on the sea floor, 3,000 metres down. The devices — colloquially known as black boxes — contain the crucial evidence that investigators will use to piece together the cause of this plane crash.
In the age in which Nasa can monitor and operate a rover on Mars, tens of millions of kilometres from Earth, and smartphones can receive real-time traffic updates, why can't we track the location of commercial airliners in real time, or stream the data black boxes record back to the ground?
The idea that passengers’ families could wait months to find out what happened to their loved ones — or even more than two years, in the case of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, still unrecovered after its crash in March of 2014 — is hard to understand.
Air-travel regulatory bodies, government agencies, and airlines are considering whether changes need to be made — and what kind. In the meantime, however, despite using old technology, the black box remains an effective — and essential — tool.
What are black boxes?
Flight data recorders are about the size of a shoebox, weigh about 10 pounds, and cost close to £15,000 apiece. They are usually located in the tail section of an aircraft to save them from the brunt of a crash impact, and are equipped with a water-activated locator beacon, which can ping for 90 days at depths up to 6,000 metres.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that planes carry two devices — both called black boxes — to help investigators piece together the cause of airline crashes. The first is a flight data recorder that tracks 88 different parameters (metrics like compass heading and altitude and airspeed) over the last 25 hours of its flight history.
" Why can't we track the location of commercial airliners in real time?
The FAA also requires a cockpit voice recorder, which saves the last two hours of crew conversations, as well as ambient sounds like alarms that will go off, for example, if a plane is flying too low.
“The flight data recorder will tell how an accident happened,” says Greg Marshall, vice president of global programmes for the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based nonprofit organisation that provides safety guidance for the aviation and aerospace industries. Meanwhile, "the cockpit voice recorder will tell you why.”
These devices also cause some colour confusion: They’re not black. They’re bright orange. The “black box” moniker could have come from the fact that they’re sometimes exposed to flames, which char them black. It could be that the term references an early version from the 1930s that relied on photographic film, and thus, had to be dark inside.
It could also be a nod to the fact that nothing about the boxes themselves matters — just the data they collect.
Building near-indstructable data treasure troves
Each flight data recorder is packed with information-slurping hardware encased in an armoured body. Sensors throughout the airplane’s fuselage accumulate data and send it along to a middleman device called the flight data acquisition unit, which routes it to the flight data recorder. Once there, the information is stored in stacked arrays of memory chips that can hold terabytes of data.
Cockpit voice recorders work similarly. Microphones in the cockpit — in the pilots’ headsets, and one to pick up those ambient sounds — record audio, then send it along to the cockpit voice recorder, which stores it in the same kind of memory chips. And it’s on those memory chips that the most valuable data about a crashed aircraft’s fate resides.
" [The black box] is designed to withstand... an hour in an 1100-degree Celsius inferno.
Black boxes are engineered to protect their brains — the memory boards that hold the data — so they are encased in aluminium, then an inch-thick layer of insulation that can withstand high temperatures, and finally, an outer casing of titanium or stainless steel. That whole package, known as the crash survivable memory unit, is subjected to rigorous testing.
Because it must be able to survive a violent and fiery plane crash, it is designed to withstand crash impacts of 3,400Gs (or 3,400 times the force of gravity), as well as an hour in an 1,100-degree Celsius inferno. They’re engineered to endure 30 days in salt water, a soaking in jet fuel, and five minutes under 5,000 pounds per square inch of force. And finally, manufacturers load a steel pin with a 500-pound weight behind it ten feet above the box, then drop it to test the resiliency of the metal casing. The rest of the black box — including the power supply and circuit boards — doesn’t have the same protections and may well be destroyed in a crash.
All that protection means that black boxes are recovered and useful much more often than not, which is why the technology has endured for so long.
Black boxes' urgent creation
Nearly six decades ago, a need to collect data and information from flights appeared, as air travel became more common.
“If you go back to the early days before flight recorders, the causes of some accidents could be theorised but not really known,” Marshall says. “Today, the voluminous amount of information they capture is absolutely vital to investigators. It assists them in speeding up investigations, helps them to identify contributing factors, and it allows regulators to very rapidly affect change.”
Flight data recorders have changed quite a bit since the United States first required them in large civilian passenger aircraft in 1958, after a series of accidents involving the de Havilland Comet, the first production commercial jetliner.
Over time, the jetliner’s fuselage couldn’t handle the changes in pressure throughout the cycle of a flight, and the planes broke apart in midair, killing everyone aboard. British authorities were able to determine the cause of the accidents conducting tests on intact jetliner hulls, but the high-profile accidents made it clear that more information was necessary.
" The voluminous amount of information they capture is absolutely vital to investigators.
Early flight recorders took down just five parameters — compass heading, altitude, airspeed, time, and vertical acceleration — via markings on metal foil. By the 1960s, the US government required the addition of cockpit voice recorders, and in that era, both devices captured information on magnetic tape. As digital aviation electronics took over in the 1980s, it became feasible to collect more information than ever before, but storage was an issue. The introduction of the more resilient solid state recorders — the recorders that store data on stacked arrays of memory chips — made it possible to accumulate far more data. They are also much harder to damage, because unlike the recorders that came before them, they have no moving parts.
Thirty years or so later, technology has evolved at warp speed, but we’re still in the solid-state recorder era, and they still have to be located and recovered from crash sites.
What they do well
There are rare cases where black boxes are lost or destroyed. In addition to the still-missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, the recorders belonging to the two planes that struck New York’s World Trade Center on 11 Sept 2001 were never recovered.
“It’s certainly an anomaly for our investigations,” says Sarah McComb, chief of the vehicle recorder division for the National Transportation Safety Board, the US agency that investigates airline crashes. “And it’s rare to find them and not be able to access the data, unless it’s an old type of recorder.”
Sometimes, the information stored on the recorders makes it clear very quickly what happened.
When Germanwings flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps in March 2015, the flight data recorder revealed that the person behind the controls purposefully began to descend and increase speed before impact. Meanwhile, the voice recorder actually picked up audio of the pilot banging on the cockpit door and saying, “For God’s sake, open the door!” as passengers screamed in the background. Investigators had the information they needed to conclude that copilot Andreas Lubitz had locked the pilot out of the cockpit and purposefully crashed the plane.
" Safety advocates are arguing for more.
Still, these recorders are ‘90s-era technology.
And though — much like a smartphone — solid state memory recorders have evolved to be able to store more and more information, there are alternatives to consider.
Some military aircraft use recorders encased in buoyant shells that will physically eject from planes at the moment of impact. Even if the wreckage hits the ocean floor, the recorder will not.
Though airlines are already streaming some maintenance and location data back to the ground, some safety advocates are arguing for more. And, perhaps most controversially, some groups are pushing for the addition of cockpit surveillance video.
“The recorders that we have now have been very effective,” McComb says. “But we continue to make recommendations in areas where we see technology is improving, including image recorders, supplemental flight data, triggered transmission of information or deployable recorders, to supplement the already very valuable data we get from flight recorders.”
Why don't we switch to something more hi-tech?
Massive regulatory changes like these are complicated, expensive, and slow. After all, once a change is made, airlines have to do some combination of retrofitting and replacing their fleet. And though it’s possible to stream some data from planes right now, the sheer amount of data collected by flight recorders is immense, and satellite time and storage are both very expensive.
" Some groups are pushing for the addition of cockpit surveillance video.
There are also concerns about security. Though the NTSB has been recommending the use of video recording in cockpits since the year 2000, pilots' unions have fought against adding video surveillance to flights for privacy reasons. One fear is that pilots’ families might have to endure the public release of video of their loved ones dying.
“We’re still recommending video recording, but we haven’t gotten a lot of movement,” says McComb. “The pilot community has been objecting since we first recommended them.”
For its part, the FAA says it does not have any changes underway for flight data recorders. As for tracking technology, it “continues to work with industry and our international partners on policy and guidance for advanced technologies that may be useful in aircraft accident investigations.”
But even if change is coming slowly, it does appear that it’s coming. The Canada-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an arm of the United Nations, adopted new amendments in March that require flight data recorder information to be quickly and easily retrievable post-crash. At the end of last year, it passed additional amendments, mandating that airlines must be able to track their aircraft at 15-minute intervals during normal operations by 2018, and at 1-minute intervals in distress situations by 2021.
Though ICAO is not a regulatory body, its member governments do develop regulations that comply with their standards and recommended practices.
Some airlines and manufacturers have also started making moves on their own. Qatar Airlines said earlier this year that it plans to implement a system to transmit data to its ground operations, and there are tech companies that offer aftermarket retrofits for existing planes. In 2015, French aircraft manufacturer Airbus said it has been in talks with the European Aviation Safety Agency to push for the approval of ejectable recorders.
Still, it’s a safe bet that the black box will be with us for some time.
As long as they remain durable and findable even in the deepest depths or craggiest mountains — and as long as they keep capturing vital information that gives investigators the clues they need — these tiny, data-filled boxes might not go anywhere.
If you would like to comment on this or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on TwitterHelicopter delivers ransom to Somali pirates
Updated
A helicopter dropped a $4 million ransom payment on to the deck of a Chinese coal ship hijacked by Somali pirates in mid-October, a pirate source on board the vessel said.
The De Xin Hai and its 25 crew were carrying about 76,000 tonnes of coal from South Africa to the Indian port of Mundra when it was seized by gunmen in the Indian Ocean some 1,100 kilometres east of the Horn of Africa.
Sea gangs from Somalia have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms by hijacking commercial shipping in the Indian Ocean and the strategic Gulf of Aden that links Europe to Asia.
Patrols in the area by warships from several nations only appear to have forced the pirates to hunt further from shore.
"A helicopter dropped the ransom money onto the ship. We have received $4 million," Hassan, one of the pirates on the De Xin Hai, told Reuters by telephone to cheers in the background.
"We hope to disembark in a few hours. The crew is safe and -- although they will not have their freedom for a few more days -- they are all happy now."
China sent three warships to Somali waters late last year with great fanfare after a ship carrying oil to China was attacked by pirates.
But Chinese warships, like those from other countries, provide protection mainly in the narrow and dangerous Gulf of Aden, not in the much larger Indian Ocean.
- Reuters
Topics: piracy, law-crime-and-justice, somalia, china
First postedQueen is a British rock band which was formed in England in 1970. Despite coming into existence 40 years ago, the band is a force to be reckoned with and is deeply popular among thousands of music lovers. The band has the privilege of having many of their songs and soundtracks featured in many Hollywood movies. Some of the most famous movies include Chicken Little, Cheaper by the dozen, Happy Feet, Ice Age, Step Mom and many more.
The Queen logo was designed by Freddie Mercury, the lead vocalist of the band, keeping in view the zodiac signs of the band members. The Queen logo is as classical as the rock band itself. Despite the lapse of decades, the band has not shown any sign of ageing and still demonstrates its legendary prowess in the world of rock music.
DESIGN ELEMENTS OF QUEEN LOGO
The Queen logo outline is a depiction of royalty and elegance. The close resemblance with the British Royal coat of arms gives the logo a regal feel while embodying patriotism and classiness.
Shape of the Queen Logo:
The Queen logo’s shape gives it a groundbreaking appeal while highlighting every aspect of the band’s identity. The symbols used in the band logo are a pair of the lions and fairies. On either side are the zodiac signs of the band members i.e. Leo and Virgo.
The Cancer sign of crab sits on top of the letter Q, which of course stands for rock band Queen. The fairies are provided shelter by the lions in the Queen logo where they can be seen standing elevated. A ring of flames hovers above the crab giving an impression of a crown. Finally an eagle is perched on top of everyone with its wings wide open.
Color of the Queen Logo:
The presence of many unique motifs gives the Queen logo a fascinating and colorful look. Yellow and Orange are the principal colors featured in the Queen logo with a blend of red on the ‘Q’ ribbons. The lions are mustard colored whereas the color of the fairies is white. The crab is painted a metallic bronze color.
Font of the Queen Logo:
The impressive use of fonts truly compliment the fanciful layout and design of the Queen logo. The Roman-style font are slightly bold with defined curvatures and appear at the bottom.While VR continues to underwhelm, AR is becoming a larger part of our lives thanks, in part, to Pokémon, Apple's ARKit and Google's Tango. So it's understandable that companies like Aero Glass are trying to put augmented reality everywhere -- including in front of the eyes of drivers. The company's vision is to give anyone behind the wheel access to visual cues to their surroundings. Imagine a heads-up display that's visible no matter where you look. But instead of just your speed, you can see the Starbucks logo off in the distance because you need a caffeine fix. Or maybe you're a sports fan new to San Francisco and can't find the ballpark. No problem, here's a massive spinning Giants logo.
Aero Glass doesn't make the hardware that was sliding down my face. Instead it creates the software that surfaces landmarks and brings navigation to your eyes. But founder Akos Maroy does believe that in two to three years AR glasses will be lighter and (more importantly) more stylish. His company is more interested in how the world looks to people wearing those specs. "We consider ourselves a visualization platform," Maroy said. Aero Glass would grab the geolocation data from other sources like a car's navigation system, Google Maps or from the car's sensors.
It's those sensors and cameras that might yield the most intriguing feature of AR. Maroy says that his company is talking to BMW about his system, which makes sense. Back in 2015, Mini (a subsidiary of BMW) showed off glasses that let you look "through" the car using the car's external cameras to see pedestrians. Sort of like X-ray vision for driving.
While the safety features seem helpful, there is the chance of visual overload. When a system decides that everything is important enough for you to see, it'll be difficult to separate the signal from the noise. Making your brain wade through five Starbucks logos to note that there's a potential hazard up ahead is a concern.
Maroy knows this is an issue "depending on the situation you would want to prioritize." He says that in the next few years his company will be working to figure that out. Plus as we slowly move into the world of autonomy, these glasses could display more data because you're not actually driving anymore. One wrinkle in that plan is that automakers like Audi are researching making displays out of the windshield and windows in you car. It's augmented reality without the need for headgear.
What Aero Glass envisions, though, is hardware you have on all the time. The glasses you would use in the car would be the same ones you use everywhere else. Sort of like when you get in your car with your smartphone and start using Android Auto or CarPlay, the Aero Glass app would kick in when you get behind the wheel. The company's experience building HUD systems for the aviation market makes its foray into the automotive world a logical plan to connect with more users.
The question is: Is that what we want? Audi and BMW are both researching what the autonomous car of the future will be like. Will it be a relaxing oasis or an extension to our already overloaded digital lives. We still have awhile before AR glasses are small and comfortable enough to wear around town, but the last thing we need is another distraction behind the wheel. Even if it'll help you find the nearest Starbucks.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
Activists at Seoul Pride clashed with Christian protesters attempting to stop the event, according to reports.
The Korea Queer Festival, which was held in the South Korean capital yesterday, was targeted by a large group, who chanted anti-gay slogans and hurled abuse.
The protesters also blocked the parade route by lying down in front of the floats, while police made several arrests and attempted to keep the peace between the groups.
The two groups stood off for several hours, while the protesters chanted “gays have no place in this country”.
According to one account: “Seoul Pride was interrupted by a group of Christian extremist protesters.
“Thousands of LGBTQ citizens and their allies attending the parade were halted after walking only half a block, as the protesters laid down in front of the float trucks.”
The festival had last week run into trouble when its official permission with revoked, following a number of complaints.
A city spokesman said the complainants thought the parade was inappropriate after the MV Sewol ferry tragedy, but organisers had claimed Christian groups filed complaints deliberately in order to get it cancelled.
It is not known if the groups which disrupted the parade are the same as those who filed complaints.
A number of events were cancelled across South Korea following the ferry tragedy, where work is still underway to recover bodies from the capsized vessel.
It is legal to be gay in South Korea. However, the country does not offer same-sex marriage or civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Gay couples can not adopt and there is no anti-discrimination legislation to help protect LGBT people.
Efforts to include protection of sexual orientation in the Anti-Discrimination Act are opposed by religious groups and have been thus far unsuccessful.
Watch footage of the clash below:Welcome to week four in the NFL. The Colts have a two game lead over the AFC South. Is it too early to start thinking about earning a division title and possibly a bye? Not in my book. Despite the Colts history of squandering them, I hold byes in very high regard. Remember: Even if the Colts had beaten San Diego last January they still would have had to win two more road games to get out of the AFC. It’s the difference between playing in Indianapolis instead of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, or New England in January.
I have a weekly habit of staring at the standings and the schedule to figure out who to root for that week. I’ll root for anyone if it helps the Colts. That includes the Jacksonville Jaguars (see last week). Here’s how I see week four. Keep in mind that this involves predicting how you see the rest of the season playing out for the teams involved.
1. Jets at Saints. I’ve been rooting for the Jets early and often this season (Houston, New England, Tennessee). I really want them to win the AFC East because of personal animosity towards the Pats, but they need to lose this week. The Jets are the kind of team that could randomly win 13 games, much like Tennessee did last year. I’m |
gomery has shown the ability to handle blitz pickup in pass protection, and he looks natural catching the ball on film. Flip that forward to the NFL screen game, the underneath routes and the quick arrow/option routes. That will allow him to win within the route vs. linebackers and use his movement skills after the catch.
3. Devin Singletary, Florida Atlantic
What stands out: Stop-and-go ability[blockquote cite=”Joseph Simcox” type=”center”]”I don’t know why I want to do what I am doing, except that every time I discover something it’s fuel for the next.” [/blockquote]
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Joseph Simcox: Eating Before the “Invaders”, the American Native Peoples and Their Food Systems Before the Arrival of the Europeans
Nowadays, people associate American native culture with three crops; Corn, Beans and Squash (the three sisters). According to Joe this is only the tip of the iceberg, Indigenous Americans (North of Mexico)used at least 3000 species of plants for food!
Joe will unveil an amazing palette of wild edibles used by the Native Peoples that hold promise for our farms, gardens and kitchens, and show how these “forgotten” foods are legitimate heirs to a new food ecosystem.
Because one of the objectives is to put practical information in the hands of practitioners, Joe will invite participants to apply to be a part of his native food revival efforts which will access and distribute rare native edible propagation stock.
This talk was presented live at PV2 in March 2015.
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Books Mentioned by Joe in this Episode
The Living Fields: Our Agricultural Heritage by Jack Harlan
Plants, Man, and Life by Edgar Anderson
Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert by Wendy Hodgson
Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer
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Connect with Joe Simcox:
simcox2@mac.com
Joe’s webpage: explorewithjoseph.com
CRFG – California Rare Fruit Growers
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Support Permaculture Voices
You can support Permaculture Voices through a one time or reoccurring donation at permaculturevoices.com/support
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[ois skin=”Homepage”]Visually impaired photographer Pranav Lal’s journey of expression Text and Photos by Arun Sharma
Pranav Lal, 32, is blind since birth, and he is an excellent photographer. Using technology, not to mention creativity, he has challenged and broken stereotypes associated with the visually impaired.
Photos shot by Pranav
In 2001, he stumbled upon a software called the ‘Voice’, that claims to give a visual experience to the blind. The software essentially converts images into sound which he hears through the headphones and determines what he is looking at.
Some images shot by Pranav Lal with HT photographer's camera at Lodhi Garden.
The loudness of the sound tells Pranav the brightness of the scene, so, higher the sound the brighter the object. Likewise as the subject moves from left to right, his stereo headphones tell its position. Lastly, the pitch of the sound represents the subject’s height. It is not to be mixed with sonar, as Pranav clarifies.
He particularly enjoys shooting in the Lodhi Gardens of New Delhi. “It is iconic and has everything: greenery, structures, animals and water – adding a lot character to the place,” says Pranav.
While shooting, he does not like to spend time in ‘shape recognition’, but rather determining contrast in sound.
As soon as he hears enough contrast on his device, he quickly captures it.
The software works as an artificial eye, where Pranav can perceive things without having to touch them. It helps him “experience a lot.”
Pranav believes that all obstacles can be tackled – and he never forgets to carry a camera on his trips.
With dedicated support from his parents and loved ones, Pranav has never let his handicap deter him from anything – be it studies, or snapping the shutter. He proudly holds a masters degree in Business Management as well. He works with a corporate firm in New Delhi and attends photography workshops when he gets a chance.
One photographer to another: Pranav Lal captures HT’s Arun Sharma.Meghan King Edmonds will be featured in a full-time role when The Real Housewives of Orange County returns to Bravo TV later this year for its 12th season.
While it was previously claimed that the reality star and new mom would be taking a step back from her television career to focus on her husband, Jim Edmonds, and their baby girl, Aspen King Edmonds, she has reportedly had a change of heart.
According to a report by Radar Online on May 5, Meghan King Edmonds told fans she was moving to her St. Louis with her husband and their newborn daughter, but shortly thereafter, producers reportedly decided to bring her back full-time in hopes of amping up the series’ ratings.
“[Meghan King Edmonds] started off as being a friend or a guest on the show for this upcoming season. She was really wanting to focus on her family,” the insider said.
A post shared by Meghan King Edmonds (@meghankedmonds) on May 2, 2017 at 5:25pm PDT
During The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 11, Meghan King Edmonds steered clear of the intense drama plaguing her co-stars, specifically Tamra Judge and Vicki Gunvalson, but now, the Radar Online report explained, she’s ready to throw herself back into the mix.
“[Meghan King Edmonds] has formed a close bond with Tamra and Shannon [Beador] and it is working out really well so far,” the source explained.
That said, producers had reportedly written Meghan King Edmonds and her family out of the show and coming back might not have been a walk in the park. In fact, the insider noted that the new mom was forced to “really plead” with producers and show them she “wanted to return badly.” Luckily, after the contract of a potential new cast member didn’t pan out, producers were in need of an additional cast member.
“Negotiations fell through with production on with a potential new cast member, so they were able to make room for [Meghan King Edmonds]. She was the last person to get an offer to return to the full time cast,” said the source.
According to the Radar Online report, filming for The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 12 is almost complete.
A post shared by Meghan King Edmonds (@meghankedmonds) on May 3, 2017 at 11:46am PDT
In other Real Housewives of Orange County news, Meghan King Edmonds’ friend and former co-star, Heather Dubrow, announced she would not be returning to the show for Season 12 during an episode of her Podcast series, Heather Dubrow World, earlier this year.
“If you’re wondering why I’ve decided to not come back, it wasn’t an easy decision,” Dubrow explained, according to a report by Entertainment Tonight in January. “You know, it’s hard to walk away from something, first of all, that’s been successful for five years, and truly has given us so much. But I just feel like, right at this particular point in time, a couple of things [changed my mind].”
“First of all, my kids,” she continued. “My oldest kids are now teenagers, and I just felt like they need to make their own decision about being on television and exposing their lives, and for me personally, I have some really cool, interesting opportunities that I want to explore. I don’t know where they’re going to go, but I want the opportunity to explore them.”
Meghan King Edmonds and her co-stars, including Vicki Gunvalson, Tamra Judge, Kelly Dodd, and Shannon Beador, are expected to return to Bravo TV in The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 12 sometime this summer. A premiere date has not yet been announced.
[Featured Image by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images]A Kurdish man holds an Israeli and Kurdish flag during a rally to show support for the independence referendum, Erbil, Iraq, September 16, 2017, and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleged on Saturday that Israel's Mossad spy agency played a role in the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum, AFP reported.
Speaking in eastern Turkey, Erdogan said that the fact Israeli flags were waved during events celebrating the "yes" vote proves Israel's involvement.
"This shows one thing, that this administration [the Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq] has a history with Mossad, they are hand-in-hand together," Erdogan was quoted as saying.
>> Israel endorsed Kurdish independence. Saladin would have been proud >>
With 92 percent voting "yes," Iraq's Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in Monday's referendum, defying neighboring countries which fear the vote could fuel Kurdish separatism within their own borders and lead to fresh conflict.
Speaking directly to Kurdish leaders, Erdogan asked, "Are you aware of what you are doing? Only Israel supports you. Wake up from this dream."
The powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah struck a similar tone on Saturday, with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed group, describing the referendum as part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to carve up the region.
FILE PHOTO: Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, May 25, 2017 HASSAN ABDALLAH/REUTERS
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Nasrallah noted that his group's arch enemy Israel had come out in support of Kurdish statehood and called the independence vote a threat to the whole region, and not just Iraq and neighboring states with Kurdish populations.
>> Explained // Who are the Kurds and why are they seeking independence from Iraq? >>
"It will open the door to partition, partition, partition," Nasrallah said, adding that "partition means taking the region to internal wars whose end and time frame is known only to God."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the only leader to endorse an independent Kurdistan. Ahead of the independence vote, Netanyahu said that Israel "supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve a state of their own."
The United States came out in opposition to the vote, along with major European states and neighboring countries Turkey and Iran. The government of Syria, where Kurdish groups have established autonomous regions, also opposed the referendum.
Nasrallah was speaking to supporters on the eve of Ashura, when Shi'ites commemorate the slaying of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson, Imam Hussein, at Kerbala in 680 AD.
Hezbollah, a political and military movement, is a major player in the Syrian conflict, where it has deployed thousands of fighters in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
Hezbollah fighters are currently fighting along with other Iran-backed militias and the Syrian army against Islamic State militants in eastern Syria.
"Daesh is at its end. It is a matter of time in Iraq and Syria," Nasrallah said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
He said counter attacks mounted by the Islamic State in eastern Syria in the last two days were expected as the group was besieged, adding that it was "incapable of recovering ground."Georgia’s ‘Guerrilla Gardeners’ Defend a City Park — and Introduce People Power
by Jacob Resnek / PRI In the country of Georgia, a small group of self-styled “guerilla gardeners” are all that’s standing between a city park and a luxury hotel development. It is a new kind of protest movement for this former Soviet republic.
Since January, activists have been keeping a 24-hour vigil in frigid weather to keep bulldozers from rolling into Vake Park, one of Tbilisi’s grandest green spaces, adjacent to the city’s leafy university district. It is a peaceful public common, much like New York City’s Central Park, where young people throw Frisbees and grannies walk stout lapdogs.
“The story going on here goes in all of the parks of our city,” says 25-year-old activist Data Lapauri. Pliant public officials, he says, are giving away more and more public spaces to fat-cat developers.
In this case, a company wants to slice off part of this park to build a luxury hotel. Lapauri says if the public loses Vake Park, there’s no telling what’s next. And if they win?
“This is Central Park, so if we win here, we win everywhere,” Lapauri says. “Basically this clash is between parks or concrete.”
A bunch of kids protesting in a park may not seem especially monumental. Georgia did, after all, stage the Rose Revolution in 2003, which swept a corrupt regime from power and put the country on a democratic course.
But that movement was directed by political parties headed by powerful, charismatic leaders — not by a spontaneous groundswell of public sentiment.
The guerrilla gardeners are different. They’ve watched grassroots groups in places like North Africa over the past several years, and figure that if people can bring down dictators, they can protect a park.
“This is probably the first case in the history of Georgian civil society where people are protesting to defend the environment — and this has to do nothing with political parties or any political powers,” says activist Tea Kuchukhidze. “We’re defending the park and, through that, we’re defending our right to live in a healthy environment.”
Unlike with large, politically-motivated demonstrations, Georgian authorities can’t seem to figure out how to deal with the Vake Park group.
They’ve tried to crack down several times. But each time they did, says computer engineer Nick Davitashvili, a few blasts on social media would conjure up around a thousand demonstrators to stare down police and the Earth-moving equipment of demolition crews.
“The younger generation can see that by responding to the tweet and coming and standing here, they are actually changing something,” Davitashvili says. “They can turn away the police just by standing here, not fighting, not screaming at them, maybe playing music or dancing. They can feel that power and that is a deciding factor to make people understand that it’s in their hands. If they come, things will change for the better — if they don’t, they should blame themselves.”
Authorities say the hotel project isn’t actually in the park. These demonstrators say that’s bogus and are taking the city to court. In the meantime, Data Lapauri says he’s optimistic that reason will prevail.
“They know we are right but they also know that it’s not only one case, and if we win here we will not stop here; we will try to bring more positive changes,” he says. “They do try to make us look like we are extreme, that we are treehuggers who cry on every single tree that is cut — which is very far from reality.”
Lapauri and others say this may seem like “just another protest,” but Georgian officials won’t be able to disregard grassroots revolutionaries any more.
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TumblrRepublican presidential nominee Donald Trump is proposing the most generous student loan repayment plan. (Eric Thayer/Reuters)
Donald Trump is promising the most liberal student loan repayment plan since the inception of the federal financial aid program, in a clear effort to court the millions of Americans struggling with the high cost of college.
“We would cap repayment for an affordable portion of the borrower’s income, 12.5 percent, we’d cap it. That gives you a lot to play with and a lot to do,” Trump said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, on Thursday. “And if borrowers work hard and make their full payments for 15 years, we’ll let them get on with their lives. They just go ahead and they get on with their lives.”
[Trump’s win leaves Obama’s higher education reforms in doubt]
The terms proposed by the Republican nominee are more generous than all of the existing government programs that let borrowers cap their monthly student loan payments to a percentage of their earnings. Even the latest income-driven plan, known as Revised Pay as You Earn (REPAYE), forgives remaining debt after 20 years of payment, though it caps borrowers’ monthly bills to 10 percent of their income.
“Students should not be asked to pay more on the debt than they can afford,” Trump said. “And the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives.”
[The Washington Post asked Clinton, Trump for their education vision. Here’s what they said.]
President-elect Donald Trump told reporters on Nov. 10 that his administration's priorities will include immigration, health care and "big league jobs." (The Washington Post)
What’s remarkable about Trump’s proposal is it flies in the face of the fiscal conservatism that’s supposed to define the Republican Party. Republicans have railed against the Obama administration’s expansion of income-driven repayment programs as fiscally irresponsible, yet the party’s nominee wants to lower the period of repayment, which is sure to cost the government quite a bit of money.
[What you need to know about Obama’s latest student loan plan before enrolling]
“They are way off on their numbers,” said Jason Delisle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “If you were going to give loan forgiveness in 15 years, you’re going to forgive a lot more debt than you’re going to make up for in the form of the higher payments they’re proposing, by a lot. I don’t even need to run the numbers. It’s so obvious.”
Trump’s campaign said he would consolidate the existing suite of repayment plans and apply his 15-year income-based plan to federal and private student loans. The candidate is not providing any cost projections, but the campaign said the plan will be paid for by lowering federal spending and the savings from reducing defaults on student loans.
Income-driven plans, which have been around for the past 20 years, have grown in popularity as student debt has soared to $1.3 trillion, but they are the source of much political tension. Conservatives have called the plans a giveaway to doctors and lawyers with six-figure debt from graduate school, while some on the left worry that low-income undergraduates with less debt are missing out on the benefits. The right also has framed the program as a burden on taxpayers.
[Trump tests new message on college affordability, a key issue for Clinton]
“Income-driven repayment is not the ideal solution. It’s been a politically convenient one, but it doesn’t address the underlying issues,” said Amy Laitinen, director for higher education at the New American Foundation. “Given the increasing risk to students in terms of loans and to taxpayers in terms of loan forgiveness, we have to grapple with upfront costs, which means looking at the role of states and the need for incentives to deal with both cost and quality.”
[Congress digs into issue of colleges using endowments to lower students’ costs]
At Thursday’s rally, Trump revisited some previously discussed higher-education proposals, including requiring colleges to spend their endowments to keep tuition low and cut student debt or risk losing federal tax breaks. Congressional Republicans have asked 56 private universities, each with endowments exceeding $1 billion, for information about the use of that money. Wealthy universities have come under fire for not using more of their largesse to cover the cost of college for low-income students.
“Some schools are paying more to hedge funds and private-equity managers than they are spending on tuition, while taxpayers are guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars of student loans to pay for rising tuition,” Trump said. “We want universities to spend their endowments on their students, not themselves.”
[Wealthy universities are doing a poor job helping low-income students, report says]
Universities have argued that their endowments are not savings accounts that can easily be drawn down and that they are raising money to cover the financial need of low-income students. What’s more, they say redirecting more money to grants and scholarships would mean they would have to find other sources of revenue, such as tuition, to cover salaries and operations.
The Republican nominee also promised to reduce federal regulation on colleges, which he said account for up to 15 percent of a school’s budget, so they can pass on the savings to students in the form of lower tuition. Trump said that colleges must be held accountable for reducing “administrative bloat” to keep the cost of attendance down.
“If the federal government is going to subsidize student loans, it has a right to expect that colleges work hard to control costs and invest their resources in their students,” Trump said. “If colleges refuse to take this responsibility seriously, they will be held accountable.”
While the Delta Cost Project has tracked an explosion in the number administrative, managerial and executive positions at universities in the past 25 years, the trend is not evident at all schools and accounts for a marginal increase in costs at public universities.
“There was no recognition of the root causes of the college affordability problem, namely the loss of state funding and stagnation of student grant aid,” Mark Huelsman, senior policy analyst at left-leaning think tank Demos, said of Trump’s plan. “There is a lot of rhetoric around colleges tightening belts, but the fact is that community colleges, minority serving institutions and regional public colleges have gone through far too much belt-tightening already.”
Trump has stepped up his discussion of college affordability in recent weeks, after spending much of the campaign ignoring an issue that has been the centerpiece of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s pitch to millennial voters. Clinton is proposing tuition at public colleges and universities be free for students from households earning up to $125,000 a year. She is also promising to let students and parents refinance education loans to lower their interest rates.
[Not everyone agrees on Hillary Clinton’s big, bold plan for college affordability]
“More than a year after Secretary Clinton released her plan to take on college costs and student debt, we are still waiting for Donald Trump to lay out a detailed plan for addressing these issues,” Clinton campaign spokesman Tyrone Gayle said. “The promises he has made so far are as empty as the promises he made to students at Trump University. There is only one candidate in this race with a real plan to make college debt-free and provide relief for millions of borrowers, and it is not Donald Trump.”
1 of 22 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × What President-elect Donald Trump did on his trip to Washington View Photos Trump arrives at the White House for a meeting with Obama and on Capitol Hill to meet with Republican congressional leaders. Caption Trump arrives at the White House for a meeting with Obama and on Capitol Hill to meet with Republican congressional leaders. Nov. 10, 2016 President Obama talks with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Want to read more on higher education in the presidential election? Check out:
How student debt became a presidential campaign issue
Clinton renews pledge to fund child care on college campuses, as more centers close
Clinton’s college calculator puts a fine point on her higher education planAmerican childhood has taken an authoritarian turn. An array of trends in American society are conspiring to produce unprecedented levels of supervision and control over children’s lives. Tracing the effects of childrearing on broad social outcomes is an exercise in speculation. But if social scientists are correct to posit a connection between childrearing and long-term political outcomes, today’s restrictive childhood norms may portend a broader regression in our country’s democratic consensus.
Since the early 1980s, American childhood has been marked by a turn toward stringent adult control. Support for “free range” childhood has given way to a “flight to safety” characterized by unprecedented dictates over children’s routines.
More so than any other generation, parents and educators have instilled in millennials the idea that, as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt put it, “life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm.” Indeed, strong social pressures have so hardened against parents who believe in the value of a free, unsupervised childhood that psychologist Peter Gray likens them to past Chinese norms on foot binding.
Hard numbers illustrate these trends:
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The amount of free time school-aged children enjoyed plummeted from 40 percent in the early 1980s to 25 percent by the mid 1990s.
The time young children spend in school jumped from 5-6 hours in the early 1980s to almost 7 hours beginning in the early 2000s.
By 2006, some 40 percent of schools had either eliminated recess or were considering doing so.
So too, do more qualitative indicators. Recent studies supported by the Alliance for Childhood found that kindergartens have “changed radically in the last two decades.” Exploration, exercise, and imagination are being deemphasized and play has “dwindled to the vanishing point.” Instead, kindergartens are introducing “lengthy lessons” and “highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests”—curricula often taught by teachers who “must follow scripts from which they may not deviate.”
Even the toys parents are choosing to buy for their kids betray a skepticism of childhood independence. As the National PTA observes, parents since the mid-1980s have purchased fewer multi-purpose, unstructured toys like clay and blocks that “encourage play that children can control and shape to meet their individual needs over time.” Today’s bestselling toys like action figures and video games “promote highly-structured play.”
The irony is that regulatory and disciplinary overkill itself poses a more serious threat to children than such perennial fears as crime, “stranger danger,” and playground safety.
Consider that practically every declining health outcome in children can be traced to the sedentary, indoor, micromanaged lives that now define American childhood. In a 2005 Pediatrics study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that children with mothers fearful of neighborhood safety are more likely to watch over two hours of TV per day, instead of playing outside. When American students are moving for only 18 minutes per day at school, it’s hardly a surprise that we’ve seen since the 1970s a more than threefold increase in the number of overweight 6 to 11 year olds.
Experts meanwhile are linking increasing rates of anger, aggression, and severe behavior problems to a lack of free play. These outcomes are consistent with evolutionary psychology theories that consider play to be a critical part of child development, teaching children to cope with, and ultimately master, fears and phobias.
Myriad explanations—psychological, ideological, and economic—have been proffered to explain this paradigm shift in American childhood. Among them:
Parental fear in reaction to the crime wave of the 1970s, as well as high-profile televised incidents of abducted children.
An “ethos of socialization,” in sociologist Frank Furedi ’s words, that is “increasingly reliant on therapeutic techniques,” and encourages children to interpret everyday problems as psychological in nature—all of which disrupt the process of maturity.
Environmental impacts on serotonin levels which, according to biologist Raymond Peat, are increasing “traits of the authoritarian personality” throughout the population.
Problematic parent-child relationships that are fostering an “anxiety-ridden worldview.”
Commercial development that limits children’s opportunities for unstructured play (the number of sandboxes in New York City, for example, is at an historic low.)
Angst over hypercompetitive college admissions.
The impact on children is concerning in itself, but the stakes for society are particularly high at a moment when American democracy appears vulnerable. In a recent paper in the UCLA Law Review, University of Chicago law professors Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg ask whether the United States is at risk of democratic backsliding. Huq and Ginsburg found that the risk of incremental but ultimately substantial decay in democratic norms has “spiked” and now presents a “clear and present” danger. The authors argue that a “larger shift toward an illiberal democracy” is well within the cards.
Whether or not an authoritarian scenario unfolds in the United States could depend on childrearing trends. Indeed, social scientists have long argued that the origins of authoritarian societies can be discerned in childhood pathologies.
Among the most far-reaching adherents of this view was the late psychologist Alice Miller, a student of authoritarian regimes. Through her study of Nazism and Soviet communism, Miller concluded that dictatorships emerge when an entire generation of children is raised under authoritarian conditions replete with excessive forms of control and discipline. In the case of Nazi Germany, Miller is convinced that Hitler would not have come to power but for turn-of-the-century German childrearing practices that emphasized “unthinking obedience” and discouraged creativity. The millions of Germans who ultimately supported Nazism, in Miller’s views, were coping with the legacy of a “hidden concentration camp of childhood”—one enforced by the “clean, orderly citizens, God-fearing, respectable churchgoers” who comprised the ranks of Germany’s authority figures.
The antidote to authoritarianism, Miller argued, is childhood autonomy. The reason, in Miller’s telling, that young people were able to bring down Soviet communism in the nonviolent revolutions of 1989—and do so without succumbing to the “blind, uncontrolled destructiveness” of 1960s radicals—was that this generation, as children, “were allowed more freedom than the older generation,” which provided them with “a concept of what freedom and respect for life are.”
Miller’s assessment may be reductionist, but her basic argument is supported by the remarkable correlation that more recent scholarship has discovered between attitudes on childrearing and political preferences.
Why, for instance, did Republican primary voters flock to Donald Trump—an event that came as a surprise to the pundit class? More so than any other factor—identity, religiosity, income etc.—it was voters’ attitudes on childrearing that predicted their support for Trump. Those who believe that is more important for children to be respectful rather than independent; obedient over self-reliant; well-behaved more than considerate; and well-mannered versus curious, were more than two and a half times as likely to support Trump than those with the opposite preferences.
The reason is that these preferences are indicative more generally of an authoritarian mindset that finds resonance in a candidate with a penchant for “fascist themes and fascist styles.”
Even before this research on Trump voters came to the fore, the literature on authoritarian personality has been used as a partisan bludgeon by leftists to criticize conservatives and their inclination toward traditionalism and law and order. It was John Dean, through his unflattering portraits of Nixon and George W. Bush administration figures, who popularized the work of Bob Altemeyer, the foremost authority on authoritarian personality.
Altermeyer himself, however, is careful to note that the authoritarian personality does not necessarily gravitate to right or left wing political causes per se.
This shouldn’t be surprising considering that few institutions in American society have embraced authoritarianism as decisively in recent years as academia—the arena where helicoptered millennials increasingly get their first taste of independence. Since 2000, at least 240 campaigns have been launched at universities to prevent appearances by public figures, most of which have occurred since 2009. Behind these authoritarian efforts are an army of “chief diversity officers”—75 of whom have been hired between 2015 and 2016 at colleges and universities. Their mandate: train students against “subtle insults,” “environmental microaggressions,” and “microinvalidations.” In this resurgence of political correctness, New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait sees not simply a “rigorous commitment to social equality” but rather an “undemocratic creed” and a “system of left-wing ideological repression.”
I am not advancing here a simplistic, causal claim that schools are cutting recess and therefore dictatorship is coming to America. But there does seem to be at least anecdotal evidence of an authoritarian paradigm shift in the childhood realm—one that forebodes a broader challenge to the country’s liberal, democratic norms.
Current indicators call for hard thinking on why American adults are finding such resonance in authoritarian childrearing practices, and whether we, as a society, are preparing young people to thrive in a free country.
Pratik Chougule is an executive editor at The American Conservative. Follow him on twitter @pjchougule. He can be reached via email at [email protected] Sign up for his email list here.Added FCVAR_NOT_CONNECTED back to the ConVar fps_max to prevent client cheats
Fixed a bug with playback of SourceTV demos
Fixed a bug where Medics using the Quick-Fix could easily identify disguised Spies
Fixed a bug where healing a Scout while they change class in the spawn room would allow the Medic to keep the Scout speed
Fixed a bug with honorbound weapons allowing themselves to be holstered before getting a kill
Improved matchmaking logic
Fixed a case where players were being matched to full servers
Updated the localization files
Updated Pl_Barnblitz
Reduced Blue respawn time at cap 1
Fixed cart not allowing overtime when it has to stop at the turn table
Fixed players getting stuck in spawn doors when blue captures a point
Fixed spawn doors staying open when points are captured
Various clipping and exploit fixes
Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:EMBED >More News Videos ABC13 EXCLUSIVE: New video shows Eli Bandurovskiy as he was being transfered into CPS custody tonight in Brookshire.
EMBED >More News Videos Eli Bandurovskiy was found safe on Christmas Day in Texas after going missing in Missouri on Friday.
EMBED >More News Videos Investigators are looking for a Missouri man and his abducted 1-year-old son right here in the Houston area.
After being abducted by his biological father on Friday, a 1-year-old Missouri boy will soon be back with his family.Little Eli Bandurovskiy spent much of the day at the Brookshire Police Department after he was found by investigators just west of Katy this afternoon.His father, Viktor Bandurovskiy, is being held in Brookshire for parental kidnapping.Our cameras were there tonight as Eli was placed in the custody of CPS, where he will have a safe and warm place to sleep tonight.The boy's family began Christmas morning wondering if he was safe, even alive. Now they have the answer they have been waiting to hear for days.Viktor and Eli were last seen at a motel in Springfield on Friday.Missouri police issued an Amber Alert for Eli last night after investigators said Viktor's cell phone was pinged in the Houston area.Police were in a race against time to find the missing boy because his father allegedly made a number of threats against Eli. Investigators said his father has a history of domestic abuse and drug use, and that the child was believed to be in grave and immediate danger.Even after the arrest, investigators have not said why Viktor left Missouri with the boy.The good news at least for Eli's family is that he is in safe hands tonight.Are online piracy and copyright infringement hurting the economy? It’s always been hard to find solid evidence on this score. The copyright industry — record companies, movie studios, software makers — is always citing reports suggesting that IP infringement is destroying 750,000 jobs per year or costing U.S. companies $200 billion. But as the Government Accountability Office found last year, most of these claims “cannot be substantiated.”
Not ruining the U.S. economy after all (JOHN VIZCAINO/REUTERS)
Now, there are a couple of ways to look at these figures. Maybe these industries would be growing even faster if Congress cracked down on IP infringement and online piracy. Maybe these industries will soon be hurting unless piracy — especially piracy abroad — gets reined in. But it’s hard to find solid evidence that IP infringement is a pressing problem facing the U.S. economy at the moment.
You wouldn’t know that from watching Congress, though. Cracking down on piracy seems to be one of the few issues both parties can agree on these days. For several years now in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans have been teaming up on bills with stricter penalties for online infringers. (The bills have largely been blocked because Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden keeps putting holds on them.) In the House, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith just released a bill that would allow copyright industries to cut off ad revenue and payment processes from alleged infringers.
Aside from worries that excessive enforcement could fracture the Internet or chill online speech, law professors from diverse ideological corners worry that these bills could be unconstitutional.
Yet whenever the House or Senate holds hearings on the measures, the only thing the invited witnesses seem to disagree on is just how much piracy is hurting America. At Senate Judiciary hearing in February, the bidding started with $58 billion per year, swelled to $100 billion per year, and closed out with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island saying, “I contend that America is on the losing end of the largest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the history of mankind.” It sounds apocalyptic. But even the content industry’s own figures have trouble supporting this contention.I used to be terrified of spiders. I thought if I got one and always knew where it was, it couldn’t frighten me
I can’t remember when my fear of spiders began. My mum would start crying if she saw one, so I thought you were supposed to be scared of them. As I grew up, it developed. I’d have panic attacks and freeze if I saw even a tiny one. It was the thought of all those legs; the way they scuttle along. I’d feel the panic rising, and start sweating, hyperventilating. I had a recurring dream that I was in a dark room surrounded by spiders and I’d wake up screaming. It was awful.
I realised I couldn’t leave the house without being frightened. It had to stop. So I started researching spiders on the internet. I began looking at pictures. It took me a while to be able to do so without flinching. I thought if I got a spider and I always knew where it was, it couldn’t frighten me.
Six years on, I own 58 tarantulas, which are all stored in large plastic boxes stacked on top of each other in my living room. It was a big surprise, even to me, when I decided to get the first one. I said to my husband, Dom, who’s always been very supportive and tolerant of my phobia, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve just bought a tarantula.” He thought I was joking. And so did my mum. She said: |
, whatever. At that point your bottleneck is human development speed, so don’t worry about it.
But continue to develop an understanding of the costs of various things. I remember a particular instance when someone replaced hundreds of <img> tags on a page with <canvas> for some kind of visual effect. Bam, the page became horrifically slow and consumed an enormous amount of memory. Browsers are very smart about minimizing working set in the presence of lots of images (flushing decoded JPEGs from memory until they’re in view is one possible technique), but <canvas> is freeform and consumes at least width*height*4 bytes of pagefile-backed memory.
What about algorithmic complexity?
Algorithmic complexity can be a significant improvement. Especially when you’re Accidentally Quadratic. Reach for those wins first. But once you get into O(n) vs. O(lg n), you’re almost certainly limited by constant factors.
In any context, you should aim for the biggest wins first. Let’s say you’re writing a web service that talks to a database, fetching info for 100 customers. By far the biggest optimization there is to run one query to fetch 100 customers (as a single round-trip can be 1-10 ms) instead of 100 queries of one customer each. Whenever someone says "My new web service is taking 1.5 seconds!" I can almost guarantee this is why. Both approaches are technically O(n), but the query issue overhead is a HUGE constant factor.
In interviews I sometimes ask candidates about the performance difference between two algorithms that have the same algorithmic complexity. There is no precisely correct answer to my question, but "the execution time is the same" is wrong. Constant factors can be very large, and optimizing them can result in multiple-orders-of-magnitude improvements.
But Knuth said…!This article is over 2 years old
Celia Wade-Brown’s request for a tattoo of a forest gecko on her ankle was turned down after her term of office as mayor of Wellington ended
The former mayor of New Zealand’s capital city has been refused ratepayer funding for a gecko tattoo as a leaving gift.
Celia Wade-Brown, the mayor of Wellington for six years from October 2010, requested a tattoo of a forest gecko as her departure gift in September last year.
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union was alerted to her request following a call to its tipline, labelling it “the most perplexing leaving gift ever”.
A subsequent freedom of information request to the council (subject line: “Requests for tattoos paid for by ratepayers”) confirmed that the “request was declined and no further discussion... was entered into”.
Wade-Brown was instead offered a commemorative park bench with a plaque detailing her mayoralty.
She told Guardian Australia that she was asked what she wanted as a leaving gift – “and the gecko tattoo was the first thing I thought of”.
“I’m quite happy that a more conventional park bench was chosen as it will recognise the work I’ve put in for Wellington’s natural environment.”
Jordan Williams, the executive director of the Taxpayers’ Union, said in a statement the organisation applauded Wellington city council for its refusal.
“We found it difficult to believe that an elected official would ask for a tattoo...
“Ratepayer-funded body-art is perhaps the most unusual spending request we have ever come across. Well done to the person in the Council who had the nous to say no!”
After her term ended, Wade-Brown got the tattoo anyway, sharing a photo of it on Facebook in early December.
“Several lovely council staff clubbed together to buy me a voucher,” she said.
Asked by a Facebook friend whether it hurt, Wade-Brown wrote that it was “worse than a foot massage but better than the dentist!!”
Wade-Brown is a former member of the Green party, but stood for mayor as an independent. She served two terms before announcing in August that she would not contest the local body elections.Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla was planning to start pushing its software update to start bringing Autopilot 2.0 cars to parity with the first generation Autopilot today and he sort of stayed true to the commitment. Tesla started pushing the update to the first 1,000 cars in its fleet, but it’s not exactly to parity with Tesla’s first generation Autopilot.
According to Tesla, the update includes the Autopilot’s Traffic Aware Cruise Control feature, Forward Collision Warning, and Autosteer, which is the flagship feature of the Autopilot, but it will only be enabled at “low-speed”, someone familiar with the update told Electrek.
It will only be available on highways with clear markings. The company aims primarily for Tesla owners with Autopilot 2.0 hardware to use the feature in traffic jam conditions under 35 mph.
While the current feature can be enabled on undivided roads and on highways with a top speed of 90 mph, Tesla’s software team has to adapt the safety feature to the company’s new in-house vision system (Tesla Vision), and its machine-learning technology with data collected from its fleet.
It aims for complete parity to happen in “early 2017” as it adapts the technology to the new hardware suit.
From there, Tesla will be able to improve the feature and transition to the ‘Autosteer+’ feature of the second generation Autopilot. The improvements will happen every few months.
HW2 Autopilot software uploading to 1000 cars this eve. Will then hold to verify no field issues and upload to rest of fleet next week. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2016
As Elon Musk commented on Twitter today, the update is only being pushed to the first 1,000 cars today. If everything goes well, more vehicles will receive the update next week.
A source familiar with the update told Electrek that Tesla is being exceptionally cautious with the update and that even though “a small number of vehicles worldwide” are currently using the full Autosteer feature without restriction with the new Autopilot hardware, the company is being careful since it’s using the new hardware suite.
Every owner should get the complete features within the next few weeks.Rep. Steve King (R-IA) speaks to WHO-TV on March 3, 2014.
Rep. Steve King, R-IA, told an audience while introducing GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality ruling means that now people can marry lawnmowers, journalist Matt Taibbi reported.
Iowa Rep. Steve King, introducing Huckabee, said gay marriage ruling now means “you can marry my lawnmower.” — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) July 30, 2015
King apparently made the comment at an Iowa campaign event for Huckabee on Thursday, according to Slate.
King has been stuck on the idea of people marrying his lawnmower since at least July 1, when he first made the comment, which he reiterated Thursday, the Sioux City Journal reports.
“I had a strong, Christian lawyer tell me yesterday that, under this decision that he has read, what it brings about is: It only requires one human being in this relationship — that you could marry your lawnmower with this decision. I think he’s right,” he told the Journal.
King isn’t the only Republican to assert that same-sex marriage will result in marriages between humans and non-humans, though he may be the first to predict human-outdoor appliance unions. Rick Santorum, R-PA, is concerned that same-sex marriage legalization will result on “man-on-dog” relationships.
King most recently made headlines when he tweeted at Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro that he is just as “Hispanic and Latino as he.”
It’s unclear what King was talking about. He had told a columnist in 2002 that his ancestry is Irish, German and Welsh.
After King posted the tweet on July 17, a prankster was briefly able to edit his Wikipedia page, changing his name to its Spanish translation, “Esteban Arnoldo ‘Steba’ Rey.”CyanogenMod ( sy-AN-o-jen-mod; CM) is a discontinued open-source operating system for mobile devices, based on the Android mobile platform. It was developed as free and open-source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code, and based on a rolling release development model. Although only a subset of total CyanogenMod users elected to report their use of the firmware,[8] on 23 March 2015, some reports indicated that over 50 million people ran CyanogenMod on their phones.[9][10] It was also frequently used as a starting point by developers of other ROMs.
In 2013, the founder, Steve Kondik, obtained venture funding under the name Cyanogen Inc. to allow commercialization of the project.[1][11][11] However, the company did not, in his view, capitalize on the project's success, and in 2016 he left or was forced out as part of a corporate restructure, which involved a change of CEO, closure of offices and projects, and cessation of services,[13][14] and therefore left uncertainty over the future of the company. The code itself, being open source, was later forked, and its development continues as a community project under the LineageOS name.[15]
CyanogenMod offered features and options not found in the official firmware distributed by mobile device vendors. Features supported by CyanogenMod included native theme support,[16] FLAC audio codec support, a large Access Point Name list, Privacy Guard (per-application permission management application), support for tethering over common interfaces, CPU overclocking and other performance enhancements, unlockable bootloader and root access, soft buttons, status bar customisation and other "tablet tweaks", toggles in the notification pull-down (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS), and other interface enhancements. CyanogenMod did not contain spyware or bloatware, according to its developers.[17][18] CyanogenMod was also said to increase performance and reliability compared with official firmware releases.[19]
The name CyanogenMod derived from cyanogen (the name of a chemical compound adopted as a nickname by Kondik) + Mod (a term for user-developed modifications, known as modding).
History and development [ edit ]
Soon after the introduction of HTC Dream (named the "T-Mobile G1" in the United States) mobile phone in September 2008, a method was discovered to attain privileged control (termed "root access") within Android's Linux-based subsystem.[20] Having root access, combined with the open-source nature of the Android operating system, allowed the phone's stock firmware to be modified and re-installed onto the phone.
In the following year, modified firmware for the Dream was developed and distributed by Android enthusiasts. One, maintained by a developer named JesusFreke, became popular among Dream owners. In August 2009, JesusFreke stopped work on his firmware and suggested users to switch to a version of his ROM that had been further enhanced by developer Cyanogen (the online name used by Steve Kondik, a Samsung software engineer[21]) called "CyanogenMod" (user adaptations being often known as modding).[22]
CyanogenMod grew in popularity, and a community of developers, called the CyanogenMod Team (and informally "Team Douche"[23]) made contributions. Within a few months, the number of devices and features supported by CyanogenMod blossomed, and CyanogenMod became one of the popular Android firmware distributions.
Similar to many open-source projects, CyanogenMod was developed using a distributed revision control system with the official repositories being hosted on GitHub.[24] Contributors submit new features or bugfix changes using Gerrit.[25] Contributions may be tested by anyone, voted up or down by registered users, and ultimately accepted into the code by one of a handful of CyanogenMod developers.
A version of ADW.Launcher, an alternative launcher (home screen) for the Android operating system, became the default launcher on CyanogenMod 5.0.8. The launcher provides additional features not provided by the default Android launcher, including more customization abilities (including icon themes, effects, and behavior), the ability to backup and restore configuration settings, and other features.[26][27] As of version 9, CyanogenMod's own launcher, Trebuchet, is included with the firmware.
Initially, CyanogenMod releases were provided on a nightly, milestone, and "stable version" schedule; as of CyanogenMod 11 M6, the "stable" label will no longer be used, having been supplanted by "milestone" M-builds that are part of the CyanogenMod's rolling release development model.[28]
Some unofficial builds for supported devices were listed in the CyanogenMod Wiki.[29]
Current CyanogenMod version list:
CyanogenMod 7 [ edit ]
CyanogenMod 7 firmware is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with additional custom code contributed by the CyanogenMod Team. The custom portions of CyanogenMod are primarily written by Cyanogen (Steve Kondik) but include contributions from the xda-developers community (such as an improved launcher tray, dialer, and browser) and code from established open-source projects (such as BusyBox in the shell).[30]
CyanogenMod 7 development began when Google released Android 2.3's source code.[31] On 15 February 2011, the first release candidates of CyanogenMod 7 were rolled out on several of the supported devices.[32][33] The fourth release candidate was released on 30 March 2011 and brought increased support for the Nook Color and similar devices, as well as many bug fixes.[34] On 11 April 2011, the public version of CyanogenMod 7.0 was released, based on Android 2.3.3.[35] CyanogenMod 7.1 was released on 10 October 2011, based on Android 2.3.4.[36] The latest stable version, CyanogenMod 7.2 was released on 16 June 2012, based on Android 2.3.7,[37] bringing a predictive phone dialer, lock-screen updates, ICS animation backports and many bug fixes.[38]
CyanogenMod 8 [ edit ]
CyanogenMod version 8 was planned to be based on Android 3.x Honeycomb. However, as the source code for Honeycomb wasn't provided by Google until it appeared in the source tree history of its successor, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the release schedule advanced from CyanogenMod 7 (Gingerbread) directly to CyanogenMod 9 (Ice Cream Sandwich).[citation needed]
CyanogenMod 9 [ edit ]
CyanogenMod 9 is based on Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and is the first version of CyanogenMod to use the Trebuchet launcher.[39] Steve Kondik and his team have announced that they had begun work on the new release after Google released the source code of Android 4.0.1.[40] Development on this release took longer than with previous releases due to the significance of the changes between Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" and 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich", and the team took this opportunity to clarify their vision for the ROM and rethink any modifications which were no longer necessary due to improvements within Android.[41]
By the last days of November 2011, some alpha versions had been distributed, in particular for the Samsung mobile phones Nexus S and Galaxy S. On 9 August 2012, after various betas and release candidates, CyanogenMod released the finished version of CyanogenMod 9.[42] Given that the next version of Android, 4.1 "Jelly Bean", had already been released by that point, development moved swiftly on to CyanogenMod 10. On 29 August 2012, CyanogenMod released a minor update, version 9.1.0, bringing bugfixes and an app called SimplyTapp for NFC payments.[43]
On 4 April 2012, during development, CyanogenMod unveiled "Cid" (pronounced /sɪd/), the new CyanogenMod mascot, which replaced the previous mascot, Andy the skateboarding "bugdroid". Designed by user Ciao, Cid (C.I.D.) is an abbreviation of "Cyanogenmod ID".[44]
CyanogenMod 10 [ edit ]
CyanogenMod 10.0 In early July 2012, the CyanogenMod team announced, via its Google+ account, that CyanogenMod 10 would be based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.[45] Nightly builds of CyanogenMod 10 were made available for many devices supported by CyanogenMod 9.[46][47] Starting with the September 2012 M1 build, the CyanogenMod team began monthly "M-series" releases. At the beginning of each month, a soft freeze of the CyanogenMod codebase is put into effect; once the team deems a build stable enough for daily use, it is released under the milestone or "M" series.[48] On 13 November 2012, final stable builds were released for several devices.[49]
CyanogenMod 10.1 CyanogenMod 10.1 is based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.[50] Nightly versions are currently being released for an array of devices, along with M Snapshots (Monthly Snapshots) which are being released for select devices. On 24 June 2013, the CyanogenMod 10.1.0 codebase (based on Android version 4.2.2) was moved to "stable" status, with a majority of currently-supported devices receiving stable builds on the same day.[51][52] CyanogenMod's developers have indicated that they will continue the Monthly Snapshot schedule to incorporate new features until the next Cyanogenmod release. Unfortunately, many devices utilizing Samsung Exynos and Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC's were not part of the initial release.
CyanogenMod 10.2 The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 10.2, which is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, began rolling out for a selected number of devices on 14 August 2013.[53] It brings in some new enhancements to the system, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and OpenGL ES 3.0 support, a renewed Phone app, 4K resolution support, as well as many security and stability improvements.
CyanogenMod 11 [ edit ]
CyanogenMod 11
On 6 November 2013 the CyanogenMod team started pushing the code of CyanogenMod 11, based on Android 4.4 KitKat, to GitHub.[54] The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 11.0 began rolling out for a selected number of devices on 5 December 2013.[55] Since then, M-builds have been released every month for supported devices, offering a more stable experience than nightlies. With build M6 it was clarified that CyanogenMod would no longer be releasing final builds specially tagged "stable", but instead would utilize the rolling release model with M-builds representing a stable channel.[28]
The global OnePlus One is shipped with a variant of CyanogenMod 11 M9 known as "CyanogenMod 11S". The latest version of CyanogenMod 11S for the One is 11.0-XNPH05Q, based on CyanogenMod 11 M11 and Android 4.4.4 "KitKat", and was released as an over-the-air (OTA) update in February 2015.[56]
CyanogenMod 12 [ edit ]
The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 12, based on Android 5.0 Lollipop, began rolling out for a selected number of devices on 6 January 2015. A stable snapshot was released on 25 June 2015, and a security patch snapshot was released on 1 September 2015.[57]
Cyanogen OS 12, a variant of CyanogenMod 12 for the OnePlus One and Yu Yureka was released in April 2015. Yu Yuphoria got Cyanogen OS 12 out-of-the-box when it was launched in May 2015.[58]
CyanogenMod 12.1
The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 12.1, based on Android 5.1, was announced on 16 April 2015.[59] A stable snapshot build was released on 1 September 2015, but nightly builds continue to roll out every day.
Lenovo ZUK Z1, Wileyfox Swift and Storm got Cyanogen OS 12.1 out-of-the-box when it was launched in September 2015.[60][61] YU's Yureka, Yureka Plus, and Yuphoria got a Cyanogen OS 12.1 OTA update.[62]
CyanogenMod 13 [ edit ]
The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 13.0, based on Android 6.0, was released on 23 November 2015 for a small number of devices, but was gradually developed for other devices.[63] A few weeks after the first nightly release of CyanogenMod 13.0 for Android 6.0, CyanogenMod was given a minor update and was based on Android 6.0.1. First stable builds were released on 2016-03-15.[64]
CyanogenMod 14.0 [ edit ]
CyanogenMod 14 homescreen (German)
Due to the early release of Android 7.1, CyanogenMod skipped producing nightly builds for CyanogenMod 14.0.[65] Code initially written for CyanogenMod 14 was cherry-picked into the cm-14.1 branch.
CyanogenMod 14.1 [ edit ]
The first experimental build of Cyanogenmod 14.1 based on Android 7.1 was released for Oneplus 3 devices[66] on 4 November 2016. On 8 November 2016, official nightlies began[67] for angler (Huawei Nexus 6P), bullhead (LG Nexus 5X), cancro (Xiaomi Mi3w/Mi4), d855 (LG G3), falcon/peregrine/thea/titan/osprey (Moto G variants), h811/h815 (LG G4), klte/kltedv/kltespr/klteusc/kltevzw (Samsung Galaxy S5), oneplus3 (OnePlus 3), Z00L/Z00T (ZenFone 2). It is missing some of the signature features of CyanogenMod, however, and was considered a "work in progress".[67] This version will add multi-window support.[68]
This was the final release to use the name "CyanogenMod".
Fork to LineageOS [ edit ]
In December 2016 the CyanogenMod developer group forked and re-branded the CyanogenMod code into a new project named LineageOS, which is built on top of CyanogenMod versions 13 and 14.1[69] and uses the name LineageOS for subsequent releases.[70] This project is supported by the community-operated LineageOS Project.[71] LineageOS version 15.1 is the first release fully controlled by the new LineageOS team, although it will continue to include many of the common features previously provided in CyanogenMod.
Cyanogen Inc. [ edit ]
Cyanogen logo from April 2014 Cyanogen logo from March 2015
Cyanogen Inc. was a venture-funded company with offices in Seattle and Palo Alto, California, announced officially in September 2013, which aimed to commercialize CyanogenMod.[1][72] The funding was led by Mitch Lasky of Benchmark and raised $7 million.[73] It began when Kirt McMaster approached Steve Kondik on LinkedIn in 2013, to discuss possible commercialization of the project.[21]
Commercialization controversy [ edit ]
Rumors of plans to commercialize CyanogenMod, as well as the subsequent announcement of Cyanogen Inc., led to a certain level of discord within the CyanogenMod community. Several CyanogenMod developers raised concerns that developers who had provided their work in the past were not being appropriately acknowledged or compensated for their free work on what was now a commercial project, further that the original ethos of the community project was being undermined and that these concerns were not being adequately addressed by Cyanogen Inc.[74] Examples include the "Focal" camera app developer Guillaume Lesniak ("xplodwild") whose app was withdrawn from CyanogenMod allegedly following demands by the new company to adopt closed-source modifications and licensing.[74][75][76]
In response, Steve Kondik affirmed commitment to the community, stating that the majority of CyanogenMod historically did not use GPL but the Apache licence (the same license used by Google for Android), and dual licensing was being proposed in order to offer "a stronger degree of protection for contributors... while still offering CM some of the freedoms that the Apache license offers":[77]
“ Google has gone to great lengths to avoid the GPL by building their own low level components such as Dalvik and Bionic. In CM, the only GPL component that currently comes to mind that we’ve added is our Torch app (originally called Nexus One Torch)... The Apache license specifically ALLOWS precisely what you suggest it doesn't. A dual-license would do the same, but also protect contributors by forcing unaffiliated entities to contribute back if they use the software in a commercial context. It's not so that CM can close the source and still ship it to our users. Again, we don’t have any plans to change licenses. Focal is a special case– it has to be GPL because... Focal uses a number of GPL components under the hood... I proposed the dual-license extension as a way to work around some of the inherent problems with the GPL and give a greater degree of freedom to both him and CM as an organization. This is a very common licensing model in the open-source world. But none of this matters. We’re not closing the source or changing the license of any code that has been contributed to the project. ”
Developer Entropy512 also observed that CyanogenMod was legally bound by its position to make some of the firmware changes, because of the Android license and marketing conditions ("CTS terms"), which specify what apps may and may not do, and these were raised in part by Android developers at Google informally speculatively as a result of perceptions of CyanogenMod's high profile in the market.[78]
In his 2013 blog post on Cyanogen's funding, venture funder Mitch Lasky stated:[73]
“ Benchmark has a long history of supporting open source projects intent on becoming successful enterprises. Our open source history includes Red Hat, MySQL, SpringSource, JBoss, Eucalyptus, Zimbra, Elasticsearch, HortonWorks, and now Cyanogen. We’ve been behind many of the most successful open source software companies in the world. We have a deep respect for the special needs of these businesses, and how to build companies while preserving the transparency and vigor of the open source communities. ”
In January 2015, it was reported that Microsoft had invested in Cyanogen, and that this might be part of a strategy to create an Android version that worked well with Microsoft platforms.[79][80] In April 2015, Cyanogen announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft, to integrate Microsoft apps and services into Cyanogen OS.[81] In January 2016, Cyanogen rolled out an update that started presenting Microsoft applications when a user attempts to open certain file types on Cyanogen OS phones.[82]
Restructure and cessation of services [ edit ]
Despite the popularity of CyanogenMod as a custom ROM, Cyanogen Inc. failed to persuade phone companies to use its version of Android. In July 2016 it fired around 30 of its 136 staff and management, including its product head, and closed their Seattle office (other offices were described as "gutted"), as part of a strategic change by the newly employed Chief Operating Officer Lior Tal.[83][84] CEO Kirt McMaster also stepped down from his role in October 2016 with Tal becoming CEO at that point,[85] and CyanogenMod founder Steve Kondik was believed to have been removed from the board and left a month later in November 2016.[86]
Media analysis focused on dubious management decisions at Cyanogen Inc. as part of the reason for the failure. In 2014 the company abruptly notified its existing partner OnePlus – who used CyanogenMod for its phones and had just launched models in India – that it had reached an exclusive agreement covering India with another supplier, leading to an acrimonious breakup of their relationship, which was described in the media as "practically screwing over" and "betraying" OnePlus and a "surprisingly childish" move; OnePlus was banned from selling in India as a result.[87][88][89] Subsequently, Cyanogen's CEO boasted of their intention to displace Google in controlling the Android operating system.[87] Unable to gain sufficient uptake of its operating system, it then shifted focus and fired its core team and replaced its CEO, before shutting down its core operating system development operations.
A day after leaving, Steve Kondik wrote a blog post in which he stated that in hindsight, he had trusted and hired "the wrong people", who had not shared a common vision, and that he had ended up unable to prevent the failure of the company and the forming of a "new team" in its place. He drew attention to his own part in the failure, the loss of rights to the "CyanogenMod" name by the community, and to the rift in perception among Android developers ("The rest of the ROM community seems to be highly dependent on us, but simultaneously wants us dead. How on earth do you fix this?").[90] He asked the community to consider forking and rebranding the source code, possibly with some form of crowdfunding based on the project's underlying popularity.[90]
On 23 December 2016, Cyanogen Inc. announced that they were shutting down the infrastructure behind CyanogenMod.[91] This was shortly followed by news that the main CyanogenMod project would migrate, renaming itself as "LineageOS".[14] On 24 December 2016, Head of Developer Relations and community forum administrator Abhisek Devkota, a Cyanogen "core team" member,[92] wrote that the community had lost its "last remaining advocate" within the company and its voice in Cyanogen Inc. and its software's future. He stated that while "that this most recent action from [Cyanogen Inc.] is definitely a death blow for CyanogenMod", the community had already begun taking the steps needed to fork the project under a new name and aimed to return to its grassroots origins while retaining professional approaches adopted during the Cyanogen Inc. era.[93] Due to the negative connotations attached to Cyanogen Inc's conduct, as well as the scope for legal dispute, the forked project decided not to use the existing brand names "Cyanogen" or "CyanogenMod", which in any case belonged to the company.[87]
Industry reaction [ edit ]
Early responses of tablet and smartphone manufacturers and mobile carriers were typically unsupportive of third-party firmware development such as CyanogenMod. Manufacturers expressed concern about improper functioning of devices running unofficial software and the related support costs.[94] Moreover, modified firmware such as CyanogenMod sometimes offer features for which carriers would otherwise charge a premium (e.g., tethering). As a result, technical obstacles including locked bootloaders and restricted access to root permissions were common in many devices.
However, as community-developed software has grown more popular[95][96][not in citation given] and following a statement by the U.S. Library of Congress that permits "jailbreaking" mobile devices,[97] manufacturers and carriers have softened their position regarding CyanogenMod and other unofficial firmware distributions, with some, including HTC,[98] Motorola,[99] Samsung[100][101] and Sony Ericsson,[102] providing support and encouraging development. As a result of this, in 2011 the need to circumvent hardware restrictions to install unofficial firmware lessened as an increasing number of devices shipped with unlocked or unlockable bootloaders, similar to the Nexus series of phones. Device manufacturers HTC[94] and Motorola announced that they would support aftermarket software developers by making the bootloaders of all new devices unlockable, although this still violates a device's warranty. Samsung sent several Galaxy S II phones to the CyanogenMod team with the express purpose of bringing CyanogenMod to the device,[101] and mobile carrier T-Mobile US voiced its support for the CyanogenMod project, tweeting "CM7 is great!".[103]
Phone manufacturers have also taken to releasing "developer editions" of phones that are unlocked.[104]
Licensing [ edit ]
Until version 4.1.11.1, CyanogenMod included proprietary software applications provided by Google, such as Gmail, Maps, Android Market (now known as Play Store), Talk (now Hangouts), and YouTube, as well as proprietary hardware drivers. These packages were included with the vendor distributions of Android, but not licensed for free distribution. After Google sent a cease and desist letter to CyanogenMod's chief developer, Steve Kondik, in late September 2009 demanding he stop distributing the aforementioned applications, development ceased for a few days.[105][106][107][108] The reaction from many CyanogenMod users towards Google was hostile, with some claiming that Google's legal threats hurt their own interests, violated their informal corporate motto "Don't be evil" and was a challenge to the open-source community Google claimed to embrace.[109][110][111]
Following a statement from Google clarifying its position[112] and a subsequent negotiation between Google and Cyanogen, it was resolved that the CyanogenMod project would continue, in a form that did not directly bundle in the proprietary "Google Experience" components.[113][114] It was determined that the proprietary Google apps may be backed-up from the Google-supplied firmware on the phone and then re-installed onto CyanogenMod releases without infringing copyright.
On 28 September 2009, Cyanogen warned that while issues no longer remain with Google, there were still potential licensing problems regarding proprietary, closed-source device drivers.[115] On 30 September 2009, Cyanogen posted an update on the matter. Kondik wrote he was rebuilding the source tree, and that he believed the licensing issues with drivers could be worked out. He added that he was also receiving assistance from Google employees.[116] On 16 June 2012, the CyanogenMod 7.2 release announcement stated: "CyanogenMod does still include various hardware-specific code, which is also slowly being open-sourced anyway."[117]
Replicant is a CyanogenMod fork that removes all proprietary software and drivers and thus avoids all aforementioned legal issues. However, Replicant does not support devices that depend on proprietary drivers, which is most phones as of 2016.[118]
Version history [ edit ]
CyanogenMod main version Android version Last or major release Recommended build release date Notable changes[119] 3 Android 1.5
(Cupcake) 3.6.8.1 1 July 2009 [120] 3.6.8 onwards based on Android 1.5r3 3.9.3 22 July 2009 [121] 3.9.3 onwards has FLAC support 4 Android 1.5/1.6
(Cupcake/Donut) 4.1.4 30 August 2009 [122] 4.1.4 onwards based on Android 1.6 (Donut); QuickOffice removed from 4.1.4 onwards; Google proprietary software separated due to cease and desist from 4.1.99 onwards 4.2.15.1 24 October 2009 [123] 4.2.3 onwards has USB tethering support; 4.2.6 onwards based on Android 1.6r2; 4.2.11 onwards added pinch zoom for Browser, pinch zoom and swipe for Gallery. 5 Android 2.0/2.1
(Eclair) 5.0.8 19 July 2010 [27] Introduced ADW.Launcher as the default launcher. 6 Android 2.2
(Froyo) 6.0.0 28 August 2010 [124] Introduced dual camera and ad hoc Wi-Fi support, Just-in-time (JIT) compiler for more performance 6.1.3 6 December 2010 [125] 6.1.0 onwards based on Android 2.2.1. 7 Android 2.3
(Gingerbread) 7.0.3 10 April 2011 [35] 7.0.0 onwards based on Android 2.3.3 7.1.0 10 October 2011 [36] Based on Android 2.3.7[38] 7.2.0 16 June 2012 [126] New devices, updated translations, predictive phone dialer, ability to control haptic feedback in quiet hours, lockscreen updates, ICS animation backports, ability to configure the battery status bar icon, many bug fixes[38] 8 Android 3.x
(Honeycomb) N/A N/A CyanogenMod 8 was never released due to Google not releasing the source code for Android 3.0 Honeycomb. 9 Android 4.0
(Ice Cream Sandwich) 9.1 29 August 2012 [43] Advanced security: deactivated root usage by default.[127] Added support for SimplyTapp.
Introduced Cyanogen's own launcher, Trebuchet. 10 Android 4.1
(Jelly Bean) 10.0.0 13 November 2012 [50] Expandable desktop mode. Built-in, root-enabled file manager. Android 4.2
(Jelly Bean) 10.1.3 24 June 2013 [128] Android 4.3
(Jelly Bean) 10.2.1 31 January 2014 [128] Phone: Blacklist-Feature added. 11 Android 4.4
(KitKat) 11.0 XNG3C 31 August 2015 [129] WhisperPush: Integration of TextSecure's (now Signal's) end-to-end encryption protocol as an opt-in feature. Enabled sending encrypted instant messages to other users of CM and Signal.[130][131] This feature was discontinued in February 2016.[132] CyanogenMod ThemeEngine: new powerful theme engine that let user apply and mix custom themes that can |
actually knows” what it takes to be president.
Obama also released a video on Tuesday in which he labeled Hillary “diligent,” “tireless,” and “loyal.”
The State Department might disagree, but no matter: Obama’s on the stump.
So, the race is now set: President Obama gets to do what he likes best, campaign; Hillary gets to do what she likes best, break the law and get away with it; and Donald Trump gets to do what he likes best, tweeting incessantly and making headlines.
Only the American people lose.While people have hair, dogs have fur. This is why many owners and professional groomers use the best dog clippers money can buy to keep their dog’s coat smooth. If your dog’s coat is thick and heavy, he may spend the entire summer being too uncomfortable. Professional dog clippers allow you to trim your dog’s coat so that he remains comfortable without all that fur getting in the way.
Dogs deserve to look good too, but over than the look, dogs deserve to feel good and comfortable. We’ve split this into two clear sections. First, the buying guide gives you the points to be attentive about when choosing professional dog clippers.
Before clicking any of the below links, read through our buying guide below so you know what actually matters when choosing professional pet clippers. Indeed, the design is what most buyers go by but they could not be any more wrong. Clipper blades, rotations per minute, heat dissipation, noise volume, housing, all these features matter a lot.
Whether you are wondering which dog clippers are the quietest, and which ones are best for poodles, schnauzers, this comprehensive guide will help you choose the best product for you. There is no single best product but there is a bunch of them clearly dominating the market for great reasons we explain in this blog post.
In summary, here are the top 6 best dog clippers for professional and home grooming:
Choosing The Best Dog Clippers For Professionals
A key indicator when comparing quality dog clippers, or pet clippers for that matter, is the Rotary Speed Per Minute. This is what will allow you to smoothly go through coarse coats and difficult knots. Now, most of the best professional dog clippers belong to one of two categories:
Single-Speed Dog Clippers : the best option for novice users, these pet clippers are not heating up as fast as variable-speed ones
: the best option for novice users, these pet clippers are not heating up as fast as variable-speed ones Variable-Speed Dog Clippers: advanced users will love its versatility, it is the best tool to give a perfect-looking finish to dogs’ coats
On top of this crucial first criterium, there are several features and characteristics that should help you pick your new quality dog clipper. And because we’re nice, we’ve listed them just here, below.
Motor's Speed and Power
When cutting through coarse and matted dog coats, your dog clippers should cut through very smoothly. If not, they aren’t powerful enough to clip dense dog coats. Such requirements are usually expressed in Rotations Per Minutes, or RPM. It’s basically how many times in a single minute does the motor fully rotate.
The best professional dog clippers often offer a lot of power and high rotations per minute, but very rotary speed inevitably generates a lot more vibrations and noise. If you are using the clippers for a while at full speed, your dog may even be discomforted by the heat emitted by the clippers. So as a dog owner or groomer, you need to find the best dog clippers offering the right balance between power and speed versus noise, heat, and vibrations.
If you work as a professional groomer, you will most likely by two different products: quiet dog clippers and professional dog clippers. But if you are just a hobby user, you may want to get yourself variable-speed clippers so you can adjust depending on the task at hand. Bulk trimming can be done at high speed while precision work will be done at the lowest speed setting.
Noise, Vibrations & Heat
Dog clippers have a motor that is rotating in order to move the blades so they cut smoothly. Most buyers think that more powerful the better but this is not always correct! The most powerful dog clippers will indeed cut through any coat, even the coarsest, but it comes at a price:
the blade will heat up
the vibrations will drastically increase
the noise level may inconvenience some dogs
So ideally, you want to buy hair clippers adapted to your dog’s coat so you don’t buy into an overkill. They should cut smoothly while remaining quiet and cool for longer, and vibrate as little as possible at low speed.
Size & Weight of the Clippers
Other points to keep in mind are the size and the weight of the clippers as they will both certainly make a huge difference. Most modern clippers and all of the ones listed below have been designed ergonomically so your hand enjoys the hold, for long durations.
A lighter and more compact dog clipper will make maneuvering around the dog a much easier task, and if you are grooming several dogs quite often, this becomes a priority. Lightweight dog clippers allow you to avoid wrist fatigue, for example.
However, the lighter the clippers, the more the dog and yourself will feel the vibrations, especially with powerful dog clippers at the highest speed.
Corded vs. Cordless Dog Clippers
You may naturally lean towards a cordless dog clipper, purely for its convenience and it is indeed easier to work with especially for hard-to-reach spots. But on the flip side, you will have to charge the battery pretty often as they tend to run out after an hour. With intensive use, you may end up charging it constantly and wear out the battery in itself.
Cordless dog clippers are also slower, so your dog’s coat has to be pretty soft and supple. Think about that before opting for a cordless pet clipper.
There is no right and wrong here, it is just a matter of personal preferences and suitability for your situation. The advantage of cordless dog clippers is that you can use them with or without the cord; something you cannot do with corded dog hair trimmers.
Dog Clipper Blades Are Extremely Important
Dog clipper blades have enormously improved over the last decade kudos to new metal alloys and laser technologies. However, it brings up the issue of the compatibility of those clipper blades.
Some brands can use interchangeable blades that are available pretty much everywhere which drives their price down while other clippers will use specifically-designed blades only available from the manufacturer. Most of the truly best dog clippers for professional groomers tend to come with their own proprietary blades.
Note that depending on how often you will use the clipper, blades may require frequent changes to keep a sharp quality of cut.
Ceramic blades are recommended but they also are amongst the most expensive blades on the market. This is because they do not conduct heat much so they are perfect for long grooming sessions.
Only Use Recommended Oils
If your pet hair trimmers are not regularly and properly oiled and regularly maintained, the clippers’ teeth and the blade will lose quality and get dull. The blade will offer an uneven cut, and miss many hairs, or even cut the skin and nip the hair. The dogs won’t jump off the grooming table right away, but it may be uncomfortable for them.
This is why it is extremely important to check what oil is recommended for your precise clipper. This information is commonly available on the manufacturer’s website, or online on forums and Q&A’s.
Combs Matter
Useful to provide an even trim all around the dog’s body, snap-on comb sets are coming in various sizes and materials. They are all pretty good so what will matter is the size of the hair you are going to trim. You will probably find 5 to 10 comb guides in a set, but end up using a couple only.
The width of your blade and clippers’ head must allow the comb/guide to fit in perfectly and snap on securely.
Top 6 Best Dog Clippers for Professional Groomers
So, now, let’s see what are the best dog clippers for professionals! Each trimmer reviewed below has a particular use scenario where it shines: cordless, bulk trimming, finish works, value for money, etc. It’s hard to write a blanket statement about which clippers are the best, but we ranked them in terms of quality, price, versatility, ergonomy, and more.
Here is our unbiased review of the top 6 best dog clippers available!
1. Andis Excel 5-Speed Clippers
— All-Round Best Professional Dog Clippers
A heavy-duty multi-speed corded dog clipper that has been built using the lightest materials to make it become the lightest heavy-use clipper out there. Roughly 6.5in (16cm) from top to bottom, it is not the smallest clipper out there but its light weight compensates its rather bold size.
It features an ergonomic and comfortable shape for an easy hold for long periods of time, and also a nice addition to it is the wrap-around anti-slip rubber gripper.
Speed-wise, it boasts 5 speeds, starting from 2500 strokes per minute and going up to 4500 strokes per minute. The result is a sharp and neat cut, even after hours of use.
The blades used are number #10 ceramic-edge blades but you are definitely able to use other blades from other major manufacturers, such as Oster and Wahl. We recommend keeping ceramic blades as they stay sharper longer and they run at a much lower temperature and avoid excessive heating compared to steel running on steel.
2. Andis Super AGR+ Vet Pak
— Best Heavy-Duty Dog Clippers
This Andis professional dog clipper is for pros who will use it intensively. It excels at staying quiet, powerful and precise. The clipper is ergonomic thanks to a discreet but very welcomed anti-slippery rubber ring.
The Andis Super AGR+ Clipper operates at 3800 strokes per minute and comes with a ceramic-edge blade which makes it perfect for long uses as it remains cool. You can, however, use other universal blades with it. Comb guides and blades are detachable so you can easily swap or replace them.
Although measuring 7.5in (19cm), this clipper compensates thanks to being cordless. You will be able to go through the whole body without any problem. A full charge takes around an hour and a full battery lasts over an hour. You can turn this cordless clipper into a corded clipper very easily, it will, however, require the purchase of an Andis cord pack.
To us and to many specialists, the Andis AGR+ is the best heavy-duty dog clipper available, it is indeed an investment but you are going to live with it for the coming years. We’ve posted a review of the Andis Super AGR+ Clippers, and they simply are the best for true professional groomers.
3. Wahl Bravura Lithium Professional
— Best Cordless Dog Clippers
Wahl’s new Lithium clippers have the most advanced rechargeable battery innovations. Indeed, batteries powered by Lithium provide a lot more power, torque and charge cycles. They also have no more memory effect than other regular batteries. The Bravura’s battery is charged up in 60 minutes and lasts 90 minutes. Yep, amazing stats.
Bravura has a 5 in 1 adjustable snap-on blade which adjusts from 0.7mm to 3mm. Its intelligent motor increases power and blade speed through thicker coats to deliver a smooth and perfect cut. The blade here does not overheat, it makes it ideal for intensive use.
Available in pink, purple, and gunmetal, the Wahl Bravura Lithium clipper is a beautiful tool. It holds itself very well and definitely feels sturdy. It is lightweight and quiet thanks to its low vibration technology. The MiniBrav+ is even more of a silent clipper for anxious dogs.
Each clipper is supplied in a hard case. Coming with it are a charging stand as well as a detachable blade kit. Additionally, snap-on attachment comb for the BravMini, cleaning brush, clipper oil and instructions are to be found in the case.
It was going to be our all-around professional dog clipper winner but it missed it simply because of its single speed.
4. Wahl Motion Lithium Ion Cord/Cordless
— Best Single-Speed Dog Clippers
Such a versatile clipper that allows you to perfectly do all the prep work as well as the clipping. It does come with the now famous Wahl’s ‘5 in 1’ Pro Blade set with 5 adjustable sizes #9, #10, #15, #30 and #40.
The Wahl Motion professional clipper provides a lot more torque than its competitors — a dog’s back and neck tend to grow thicker hair and most clippers will struggle a little but the Wahl Motion will kick in a gear that will make the whole clipping an extremely smooth experience for both the dog and the groomer.
Look-wise, this is perhaps the most eye-catching clipper currently available. It boasts a new slim design with an exceptionally lightweight case. Wahl Motion clipper is amazingly quiet and has no vibration yet is very powerful with up to 5,500 strokes per minute. The Wahl Motion offers a removable handle that is “scissor-grip style”. It allows for great control and ergonomy.
Just like the Bravura listed above, the Motion has a new Lithium Ion battery with the exact same benefits explained above: more power, torque and charge cycles. You can easily do three dogs, full bodies, in one charge while using it as a cordless dog clipper. It is pretty unique and amazing.
All in all, it is a better version of the Bravura but also more expensive. Weirdly, in the United Kingdom, the Motion seems cheaper than the Bravura… So it’s a no-brainer!
5. Oster A5 2-Speed Professional Clippers
— Good Value For Money
The Oster A5 is a corded dog clipper offering decent features, power, and is also pretty durable considering the price. It delivers 3,000 strokes per minute on low speed and 4,000 strokes per minute on high speed.
They are labeled as heavy-duty dog clippers by Oster but we disagree. It is a great dog clippers for occasional groomers or to groom your own pets at home, but it wouldn’t do well on an intensive regime, we think.
World-recognized Oster is a very reliable brand, made in the USA, and their products are definitely great overall. We just think this is a perfect clipper for a one-dog groomer, but for frequent grooming and trimming sessions, the dog clippers described above should do a much better job, for not a big price difference.
6. Wahl U-Clip Pro Home Pet Grooming Kit
— Cheap Pet Clippers
Best-selling thanks to its price and ideal dog clippers for starters who are not after top quality, this is an okay dog clipper in itself although the Wahl U-Clip tends to not last long enough because of its poor adjustable steel blades. It offers 7200 strokes per minute so it generally does well with all types of coats.
It is very noisy and makes earthquake-like vibrations. Definitely to be avoided if you’ve got a scared dog or a small-sized pet or breed.
The upside of the Wahl U-Clip Home Grooming Kit is perhaps the kit over the clipper. It comes with a bonus instructional DVD and grooming apron, but one could argue that with YouTube, grooming video tutorials are pretty easy to find.
As simply put in a customer’s feedback… “These clippers are very heavy and loud. After only a few minutes my hand was tired. They also do a poor job of shaving and I have a Pomeranian that I shave all the time. I had to resort to using my old set because they just didn’t do much of anything…except cut my baby under her arm.”
Questions About Dog Clippers
Because hair trimmers are such an important purchase for any dog owner and dog groomer, we wanted to answer your frequently asked questions. Hopefully, you won’t have to scour the entire web in order to find the right answer!
Are dog clippers different from human clippers?
Dog clippers are designed and engineered very differently from human clippers. Dog clippers are designed with silence and low vibration in mind. Additionally, clipper blades for dogs must remain cooler for longer due to dogs’ more sensitive skin.
If you have mistakenly used human hair clippers on your dog you realized the discomfort, more than anything more serious. Yet, using human clippers for an extended period of time could result in skin burns and severe distress due to the loud noise. Clippers engineered for canines are also using special motors that can adapt to different coats (e.g. matted, thin, undercoat, etc).
Why are my dog clippers not cutting?
Common causes of a lack of clean cut from dog clippers are unsharpened blades, deficient motor, or a near-empty battery. Dog clippers require regular maintenance in order to offer a first day-like clipping.
Dog clipper blades are often the culprit and you can read our guide to pick the right blade for your model. Indeed, most manufacturers use their own proprietary design that requires you to source any replacement blade from them. And usually, these have a higher purchase price but are made by the manufacturer itself which is convenient.
Before clipping your dog’s hair, make sure you properly clean, rinse and dry his coat. That way, you make it smoother and softer for your clippers to cut through.
Do dog clipper blades need to be sharpened?
All dog clipper blades, regardless of their brand, require regular sharpening and oiling. Routine maintenance for blades will extend the lifetime of the blade and help them keep their ideal cutting for longer. Sharpen the blades once your pet clippers start nipping and plucking the hair rather than cutting through.
Blades should be rinsed, dried, and oiled after every session. It takes a few seconds and will save you a fortune by keeping you from buying expensive replacement blades every few months. Blades can be made of various materials, some like ceramic or titanium remain sharp for longer. These tend to be more expensive to buy but have a longer lifespan. On the other hand, we found that steel blades are cheaper but do not stay sharp for as long. Steel blades tend to heat up fast as well which can be a problem considering dogs’ sensitive skin.
How long should dog hair trimmers last?
The lifetime of dog clippers is based on your usage pattern, the model you picked, and how effective the maintenance has been over time. Dog clippers have many parts that can let you down.
On the top of my head, there are the blades, the battery, the charger, the motor, and the housing itself. Some of these pieces are replaceable but considering the price points of spare parts, you are better off buying a brand new product. Additionally, if you are a professional dog groomer using your amazing dog clippers for 3 hours every day, you will need to change them a lot sooner than a breeder using his once a month for a couple of hours.
For cheap models under $50, expect them to last a few months. Premium and professional dog clippers priced anywhere from $150 to $3000 expect a working lifespan of at least two or three years with good care.
Why do dog clippers get hot?
Dog clippers inevitably get hot because motors rotate thousands of times per minute, emitting a lot of heat. Additionally, dog clipper blades touch themselves during each cutting motion which also causes heat to form.
In order to cut through a dog’s coat, grooming clippers need the motor to rotate with enough torque to move the blade fast enough. This is measured in rotations per minute and it is usually counted in thousands. Most of the best dog clippers offer between 5,000 RPMs and 12,000 RPMs. By rotating so much, the motor will emit heat. Doing it for a couple of minutes won’t heat up much, but for longer sessions heat will inevitably increase unless you are using professional grooming clippers that dissipate heat properly.
Dog clipper blades also create a lot of heat and could cause skin burns on sensitive dogs’ skin. This is why manufacturers continuously race to find materials that remain cooler without losing in precision and durability.
What dog clippers do professionals use?
Professional dog groomers own many different dog clippers for various types of grooming works. Low-heat and silent clippers are preferred for sensitive areas while bulkier and heavier-duty models are used for bulk trimming.
If you are wondering what dog clippers do groomers use, know that groomers in a salon receive dogs of different shapes and sizes. You do not clip a Komondor (the dog with dreads) like you groom a Pomeranian show dog. Even in the same dogs, different dog clippers will be used at different stages.
This is perhaps the main difference between grooming your own dog at home and letting a professional handle it. They have a wide range of tools whereas an average dog owner, you would only really own a single trimmer.
What are the most popular brands of professional dog clippers?
The most popular brands and manufacturers of dog clippers are Wahl, Oster, and Andis. All three companies have operated for years in both hair and grooming salons. With such experience, they have iterated over time and currently offer dozens of products each.
There is not one brand that is better than the other, it all depends on your personal preferences (ergonomy, habits) and what exact type of clippers are you after. Some offer amazing silent dog clippers while others favor premium heavy-duty grooming clippers.
Wrap Up
As you can see, there are a few features to focus on when deciding on what best dog clippers to buy, but keep in mind that Andis, Wahl, and Oster are ahead of the competition in terms of quality of professional grooming trimmers. We hope you have found your new favorite professional dog clippers, make sure to always apply the recommended oil to maintain a top quality of cut throughout.
Two brands are very well-respected in grooming salons and human hairstylists so we also decided to compare them in our face to face review Andis Dog Clippers vs Oster Dog Clippers.
If you are after other dog supplies, feel free to check out these other reviews of ours:Scotland's Future — Your Guide to Independent Scotland will answer hundreds of public's questions.
SWNS
The long-awaited blueprint for Scottish independence will be published on Tuesday, with the promise it will answer hundreds of questions about the country's future.
The Scottish Government's official white paper will contain a comprehensive Q&A section and explain the "opportunities" of independence, Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
"The guide and the answers it provides will show clearly and simply the difference that we can make in Scotland if decisions on Scotland's future are taken by those who care most about Scotland — that is the people of Scotland," she said on the eve of the launch.
"Our message to the people of Scotland is simple: read this guide, compare it with any alternative future for Scotland and make up your own mind.
"This guide to an independent Scotland will set out a vision for Scotland's future, the ways in which we can use the powers of independence to build a wealthier and fairer Scotland and ensure that everyone benefits from our natural wealth and talent.
"This guide to independence will move the debate forward from how Scotland can become an independent country to the kind of country we can be."
Ms Sturgeon will unveil the document, called Scotland's Future — Your Guide to an Independent Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond at the Glasgow Science Centre on Tuesday morning.
The blueprint runs to more than 200 pages and provides answers to 650 questions on independence, the Scottish Government said.
The answers, along with downloadable copies, will be available at (www.scotreferendum.com)[www.scotreferendum.com] and live coverage of the launch will be streamed online.
People in Scotland will be asked on September 18 next year whether the country should be independent, ending three centuries of political union with England.
An opinion poll published on Sunday suggested 38% support a Yes vote and 47% back a No vote, meaning a swing of just 5% could lead to Scotland leaving the UK.
The Scottish Government has already set March 24, 2016, as "independence day".
Pro-union campaigners have long argued that the Scottish National Party (SNP) has no firm answers to the toughest questions — including on issues such as how Scotland would keep the pound sterling as its currency and get through technical negotiations in just 18 months.
Better Together chairman Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor, said: "The white paper will try to force Scots into a risky choice that we don't need to make. We can have the best things about being a successful country and the best things about being part of something bigger.
"We simply don't have to choose between having a strong Scottish Parliament and the strength and security of being part of the United Kingdom. We can have both."
The white paper must be a credible and costed plan, he said.
"If they ignore the cost of independence or claim that a vote by Scotland can force other countries into doing what Alex Salmond wants, it will be a work of fiction," he argued.
The day could be historic, Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont said.
"For nearly two years, I have been asking Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon basic questions about what a Yes vote would mean for the people of Scotland," she said.
"On currency, on pensions and on the finances of an independent Scotland, we have been left with bluster and assertion.
"This week offers an opportunity to open a new phase in this debate where the questions that the people of Scotland are asking are answered. Unless the white paper does this, the SNP will have failed the credibility test."
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said: "It doesn't matter how many pages the white paper has, it must contain hard facts so people can make an informed decision on September 18.
"Anything less than this and Alex Salmond and the SNP will have failed voters desperately looking for answers on how they and their families will be affected by the break-up of the UK.
"Only by renewing our place in the UK in 2014 can Scotland thrive and not merely survive."
Meanwhile, the UK Government stepped in with claims people in Scotland will face higher taxes in the event of independence, basing the calculation on recent research by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander, a Liberal Democrat MP in Scotland, said the average basic rate taxpayer could face a £1000 a year tax increase by the end of the decade.
Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie, said: "The independence referendum is an opportunity to reaffirm our vows with the UK partnership of nations. A No vote can be a positive vote."
Scotland is likely to be the focus of worldwide interest, with more than 200 journalists from as far afield as Japan, Australia and Russia registered to attend the launch of the paper.
There will be a formal meeting of the First Minister's Cabinet at the science centre before the launch and ministers will later return to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh for a statement to MSPs.KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR After seeing the Rams scrimmage the Cowboys in Oxnard last summer, Carl Downs and other Rams fans will have their team come to the city again for their OTAs and mini camp starting in April.
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By Bob Buttitta of the Ventura County Star
Oxnard no longer belongs exclusively to the Dallas Cowboys.
The city of Oxnard and the Los Angeles Rams came to a tentative agreement Thursday for the recently transplanted Rams to hold their organized team activities and mini camp practices on the same practice fields used by the Cowboys for their training camp.
Terms of the deal, which must be approved by the Oxnard City Council on Tuesday to become official, have the Rams renting the River Ridge fields and the adjoining locker room starting on April 18 and staying through June 17.
According to Oxnard Assistant City Manager Scott Whitney, the deal will generate a net income of $86,000 for the city. Whitney said those funds are unrestricted and can be used in any capacity.
The Cowboys have not officially told Oxnard the date they will arrive in Oxnard for their 2016 training camp. Based on their previous history, the team will probably open camp in late July.
River Ridge Golf Course superintendent Kyle Kanny and his grounds crew take care of the fields and get them prepped for the Cowboys camp each year. Whitney said the Rams would like the fields in the same type of condition.
In addition to negotiating with the city for the use of the fields and locker room, the Rams are working on a deal with the Marriott Residence Inn, which is located next to the fields and would provide housing and meeting space for Rams personnel.
A National Football League team's offseason organized team activities, called OTAs, are separate from training camp. They are practice sessions that concentrate on technique, basic personnel packages and repetition.
Under normal circumstances, players commute from their homes to the team facility for these practices. Because the Rams are moving from St. Louis and most players don't have homes here yet, the Marriott would provide housing and meeting space.
It would likely be very similar to the structure used by the Cowboys when they hold training camp in Oxnard. The Cowboys use the River Ridge fields, the locker room and hotel facilities. The Cowboys bring several large trailers to the site to hold equipment and put up tents for weight room facilities and the media.Super Mario Adventures, the graphic novel series that originally ran in Nintendo Power magazine, will be re-released for the first time in more than 20 years.
Viz Media, the publisher behind many successful manga series, announced today that it had acquired the rights to re-print the graphic novel as one, complete-edition. The comic follows Mario and Luigi as they try to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. The comic has been out-of-print for more than two decades and while Viz Media didn't specify why it was interested in bringing it back, it's not the only video game-inspired graphic novel that the publisher will carry.
Viz Media also announced today that the next installment in its Legend of Zelda manga series, Twilight Princess, will debut in 2017. The series, based on the game of the same name, will return to the Sacred Realm of Hyrule and follow the main protagonist Link as he tries to prevent the kingdom from being overtaken by a parallel dimension known as the Twilight Realm. The series will take place hundreds of years after the events of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
While Twilight Princess won't debut until next year, those looking to get their hands on the Super Mario Adventures collected edition can do so this October.Exactly six months after the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress released its first secretly recorded video accusing Planned Parenthood of trafficking in fetal tissue, the women’s health provider has filed suit in a San Francisco federal district court.
The suit alleges that the Center for Medical Progress and its contributors and advisers, who are individually named, broke federal and state laws, including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, as well as invasion of privacy and recording laws. It asks for extensive monetary damages, saying Planned Parenthood providers have faced death threats, been forced to move or go into hiding and been picketed at their homes.
“We are filing this lawsuit to hold accountable the people behind this reckless smear campaign,” said Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, on a call with reporters.
RELATED: The year’s biggest battles over abortion rights
For three years, anti-abortion activists led by David Daleiden posed as agents of a tissue procurement agency, allegedly using fake drivers’ licenses to attend closed conferences of abortion providers and try to catch them on video breaking the law. The videos, released in a series beginning in July, show Planned Parenthood staff, including doctors, casually discussing the mechanisms of donating fetal tissue after abortion for medical research purposes. The Center for Medical Progress claims the videos show Planned Parenthood is “selling baby parts” because they feature discussion of nominal fees, which Planned Parenthood maintains are legal reimbursements for costs and which it has since ceased charging. Planned Parenthood has also pointed out that none of its staffers signed the fake contracts offered by Daleiden and his associates.
No criminal charges have been brought against any party. At least eight state investigations have turned up no impropriety from Planned Parenthood, and though California state Attorney General Kamala Harris said she would look at whether the Center for Medical Progress has broken state law, no charges have been announced. But under law, Planned Parenthood has the right to bring its own case.
“The content of these videos was wrongfully and illegally obtained,” the complaint says. “Moreover, according to expert forensic analysis, Defendants’ heavily edited short videos and transcripts do not present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict. Rather, the heavily edited short videos “significantly distort and misrepresent the conversations depicted.”
The lawsuit also says that in the months of July and August alone, there were 849 reported incidents of vandalism at Planed Parenthood centers, a nine-fold increase compared to the month before. It points to attempted arsons at Planned Parenthood centers in Illinois and New Orleans, as well as the November 27, 2015, shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs that killed three people and injured nine. Robert Lewis Dear, who took credit for the killings, told a Denver TV station this week, “I picked Planned Parenthood because it’s murdering little babies.”
RELATED: Federal appeals court halts Utah defunding of Planned Parenthood branchI am getting ready to take my first trip on Southwest Airlines in a long time. They’ve recently changed their policy for fat flyers and I want to give them another chance. I typically fit in a single seat but I’m traveling with my partner who needs a second seat and this gives me an opportunity to give their new policy a try. Their new policy is that they would prefer people who need two seats purchase both of them in advance and then they will refund the extra seat after travel, but that “Customers of size who prefer not to purchase an additional seat in advance have the option of purchasing just one seat and then discussing their seating needs with the Customer Service Agent at their departure gate. If it is determined that a second (or third) seat is needed, they will be accommodated with a complimentary additional seat(s).”
My partner and I will be traveling to Austin in April and we’re planning to avail ourselves of the second option (not buying an extra ticket) and, if necessary, use it as an opportunity for activism. I asked in a number of conversations and communities with people of size if others had tried this and how it went. I was a bit surprised by many of the responses I received from other fat people. I was called an irresponsible trouble-maker, I was told that I shouldn’t be traveling if I can’t afford a second ticket, that I’m going to ruin it for everybody, that I should be bumped from my flight, that the policy is much better than it was, that I shouldn’t rock the boat, and many people told me that they are very happy to pay for the extra ticket since it gets refunded and I should be happy to do that as well.
Well, I’m not.
I simply don’t believe that fat people should be kept from air travel unless they have twice the money as thin people at the time of ticket purchase- I think that limits the opportunities of many fat people both personally and professionally because of their size and I consider that to be a form of size oppression that I choose to fight.
I think it’s nice that some people can pay for 2 seats every time they fly and wait for the refund with no problem and are happy to do it, but I don’t think that is everyone’s situation and I try not to be an activist only insofar as my needs are met. I agree that the policy is better than it was, but I also try to be careful not to let better be the enemy of the equal.
Even if one is happy to pay double what a thin person pays at the time of ticketing, there are still issues with this. The fat person who is being flown to a job interview and has to tell their potential employer that their ticket will be twice as much up front as candidates who are thin. The professional speaker/consultant who has to tell their clients that it’s going to be twice as much for their flight upfront than for a thin speaker/consultant. The singer/comic/entertainer whose travel fees are twice as expensive up front as those against whom they compete for gigs. The fat person who wants a job that requires travel by air and has to tell prospective employers that they will have to spend double the fees up front of a thin person competing for the same job, and that they will have to pay someone to deal with processing refunds, as they will be loaning the airline thousands of dollars every year.
Then of course there’s the simple fact that not every person who needs two seats can afford to pay double what other passengers pay and then wait around for a refund. This is problematic both for the person who wants to book their travel well in advance and can’t afford to give the airline a long-term interest-free loan, and for the person who has to fly because of an emergency and can barely scrape together enough for one seat let alone two in the middle of an incredibly difficult time.
Also, let’s remember that this policy isn’t applied across the board. First of all, the airline says that the armrests are the definitive border, but there are four armrests for 6 arms and so the airline has already created some issues with common space. If someone takes up more than two seats because they have very broad shoulders or very long legs, they are not asked to buy a second seat, we’re all just supposed to be okay squishing in with them. At this time, I don’t take up two seats (it’s sheer luck – my fat goes front to back rather than side to side and I happen to have have narrower shoulders and hips) but I am constantly seated next to people whose arms, shoulders, or legs are in my space and I often wonder what would happen if I insisted that they needed to pay for a second seat based on the policy.
I have not yet found information on how Southwest handles bumps on overfull flights, but in general I believe that passengers should have the same experience regardless of body size. So if the flight is overfull, the policy to deal with that should have nothing to do with passenger size. Their policy should not be to bump fat passengers without compensation unless we give them an interest free loan of hundreds of dollars, while simultaneously giving compensation to thin passengers who they have to bump. It also shouldn’t be bumping passengers first due to physical appearance, rather than a fair and transparent system (volunteers, time of check in etc.)
I think it’s also important to note that it is the habit of airlines to overbook flights, so their policy is to sell more product than they have to begin with, and fat passengers should not bear the brunt of that. They should develop a system to let them know how many seats they need that does not require one group of people to |
many formerly individual cells. That turns out to be advantageous, because this collective can move more efficiently, and go about foraging for food. In the course of this foraging, the organism leaves behind a trail of slime.
In the course of studying the slime mold, some researchers noticed that the slime mold would avoid any areas covered in slime. So they decided to quantify that. They set up two equal food sources at both ends of a Y-shaped container, and put some slime mold at the base. One of the arms had plain media for the organism to crawl across; the other coated the surface of the media with slime. The results were dramatic: in 39 of the 40 tests they ran, the slime mold avoided the arm that was pre-slimed.
Based on this finding, the authors hypothesized that the mold "uses its [the slime's] presence as an externalized spatial memory system to recognize and avoid areas it has already explored." So, they came up with a test that, in their words, "challenged our slime mold."
They created a three-sided box, and placed it with the open end facing a slime mold. Behind the box, the authors placed a tasty treat of glucose, which could slowly diffuse through the box. But the slime mold was unable to pass through the walls of the box, and thus couldn't take a straight path towards the food source. To find it, it would have to explore the interior of the box, give up, and start looking for a way around it.
Within a few days, 96 percent of them had. But, when the authors covered the entire setup in slime so the mold had no way of telling what areas it had already visited, only about a third of the organisms succeeded in making their way to the food.
So, the authors conclude, the slime isn't just the mold's calling card. Instead, it's a way of marking the environment so that the organism can sense where it's been, and not expend effort on searches that won't pay off.
Although the situation isn't an exact parallel, the authors make a comparison to the pheromone trails used by ants. (This comparison may have come about because two of the authors work in the Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Laboratory at the University of Sydney.) No individual ants have to remember where a food source is. Instead, by laying down a trail of scent molecules, workers that find food leave a trail in the environment the ants can collectively use. In effect, the colony has a memory that's stored in the environment.
In this case, the slime mold does the opposite, in that it avoids the areas of its environment that are chemically marked. The other big difference, of course—the slime mold doesn't have a brain at all. Still, the general principles of placing a memory in the environment are the same.
PNAS, 2012. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1215037109 (About DOIs).An anonymous reader writes with a report about programs revealed in the Department of Justice's 2010 budget request, which includes $233.9 million in funding for an "Advanced Electronic Surveillance" project, and $97.6 million to establish the Biometric Technology Center. The surveillance project is designed to help the FBI "deal with changing technology and ways to intercept phone calls such as those used by VOIP phones or technology such as Skype. The program is also conducting research on ways to conduct automated analysis to look for links between subjects of surveillance and other investigative suspects." The Center for Democracy and Technology's Jim Dempsey warns, "It is appropriate for the FBI to develop more and more powerful interception tools, but the privacy laws that are supposed to guide and limit the use of those tools have not kept pace." The biometrics plan lays groundwork for a "vast database of personal data including fingerprints, iris scans and DNA which the FBI calls the Next Generation Identification," a system we have discussed in the past.RRD: Starting Aug. 1 you must show your tickets/passes before boarding Center City trains from 3-6:30PM | https://t.co/UEHGnVrQZO — SEPTA (@SEPTA) July 31, 2016
Doylestown: Starting Mon., Aug. 1 a new train will depart 30th Street at 5:30 p.m. with express service from Temple University to Glenside. — SEPTA (@SEPTA) July 31, 2016
Warminster: Starting Monday, Aug. 1 a new train will depart Warminster Station at 6:58 a.m. with local service to Center City. — SEPTA (@SEPTA) July 31, 2016
Trenton: Starting Monday, Aug. 1 train #7204 will originate from Trenton departing at 6:35 a.m. — SEPTA (@SEPTA) July 31, 2016
SEPTA is no longer allowing Regional Rail riders to buy tickets on trains if they're leaving Philadelphia during the evening rush.As of Monday, Regional Rail passengers must show their tickets or passes before boarding any afternoon train from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.All fares will be collected or validated before customers go to the platform area at Temple, Jefferson, Suburban, 30th and University City Regional Rail Stations.SEPTA officials say the change was spurred by scheduling issues created by the loss of more than a 100 rail cars due to a structural defect.SEPTA said riders complained that some fellow passengers were receiving free rides because conductors didn't have time to check all tickets on overcrowded trains.In addition, a number of new Regional Rail trains were added to the schedule on Monday.On the Lansdale, Doylestown line, a new train will depart 30th Street at 5:30 p.m. with express service from Temple University to Glenside.On the Warminster line, a new train will depart Warminster Station at 6:58 a.m. with local service to Center City.On the Trenton line, train #7204 will originate from Trenton departing at 6:35 a.m.Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt seems like he's a really interesting guy. At the very least, he seems like he's brutally honest in every interview he gives and always seems to have a sense of humor about things. He recently spoke to Music Business Facts about the business side of the band and had a few interesting tidbits of information to spill about the band from a financial perspective.
He talks about not having to have a day job because Opeth pays the bills, but the difficulties and possible downfalls of having that be his "job."
"It's so hard being an artist and a creative person. You put out a product and people easily throw the whole'sellout' thing at you, because you depend on some type of income for doing this. It's, like, 'Oh, you're lucky to be in this position. You shouldn't complain. Get a proper job, just like the rest of us.' Which, I guess, is fair enough, but I think people underestimate how much they need music, and once it's gone… I mean, it's really difficult for new bands starting out today to get their names out there. I think the filter that was provided by a record label back in the day was ultimately good… I mean, it sounds crass, but I think, to a certain extent, somebody had the good taste of signing Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and Kiss, and whatever have you. So I think it was, like I said, a good filter. And today, you don't really… Bands today, they put something out… They start their own YouTube channel and put out their record on YouTube, but they're fighting, they're rubbing elbows with millions of bands, and, quite frankly, many of them [are] shit. Not everybody is cut out to write great music. I'm not saying I'm the greatest at all, but, I mean, we have something, obviously, that people like. And for a starting band who also have something, starting out today, it would be very difficult to make themselves heard, because they would be caught in that stream of just shitloads of bands."
Then there's the bit where he talks about never wanting to sell out. I know, some of you right now are crying that the band sold out with whatever record you think they sold out with because you don't like it or whatever, but that's just artistic decision making for you- Opeth doesn't want to do the same thing over and over again.
"Yeah, that's a very valid question, because I'm not yet in that position. I can say, like, we do whatever we want and fuck you — we put out the records that we wanna hear — but if the sales would go down completely and if we wouldn't have an income, maybe I would actually sell out — who knows?! But I'm hoping that's never gonna happen. I think that people will see right through me anyway, if I try to cater to the needs and the wishes of the fans, which we don't really do now — we just do music that we wanna hear, and we're fortunate enough to have people around who are also interested in our music. But if we would end up in that position, I think I would have to reconsider my life and maybe change it around completely. I would not want something that I love so much, as I love music, I wouldn't want that to become a way for me to put food on the table without having the passion and love in the music that I put out. That would be disastrous for me. So I would probably move away from music if that happened. I'd still write music, of course, but I wouldn't want Opeth to end up in that position where we just put out music to pay the bills."
Then there's an interesting answer on how the band gets paid, which I've always wondered myself given I've never been in the position of "artist."
"Yes, we have a limited company in England, we have a partnership in England, and we also have a merchandise company in England. We have an Inc. in the U.S., but that's purely for tax reasons there on tour, and then we have our own companies in Sweden, which we take out a wage from the partnership, basically — a monthly wage. But that's not really… I had to change, because I got a massive tax bill, so I had to change, and I'm starting the equivalent of a limited company in Sweden now as well. We call it 'AB,' so I'm just in the process of starting that now. And I'm hoping it's gonna be better for me, purely on a tax level."
Interesting! I like that he initially claims not to know much about business and then gives these answers… like he knows about business. Oh Mikael Åkerfeldt, what can't you do?
[via Blabbermouth]
Related PostsMONTREAL — Grocery store chain Metro Inc. says the construction of its first automated distribution centres are unrelated to its efforts to offset added costs from Ontario’s rising minimum wage.
The Montreal-based company said it will eliminate about 280 jobs starting in 2021 as part of a $400-million overhaul of its Ontario distribution network.
The company said the move to modernize and automate its network will mean the loss of about 180 full-time and 100 part-time positions.
“In our industry we’re always looking at ways to become more efficient to lower pricing, but we have been talking about this for three years since I joined the company and well before anybody said anything about minimum wage,” Carmen Fortino, division head at Metro Ontario, said.
The announcement follows comments by Metro in August that it would study automation as it looked to cut costs in the face of the Ontario government’s plan to raise the minimum wage next year.
Metro has six distribution centres in Ontario including four in Toronto and two in Ottawa that employ a total of more than 1,500 workers.
It said the existing Ontario distribution network dates back to the 1960s and no longer meets the needs of its business.
“We see a lot of opportunities in the province and we wanted to make sure that we were going to be in a position to be able to grow but support our stores in a cost-efficient manner and add some flexibility to the way that we service our stores,” Fortino said.
The company plans to modernize the operations in Toronto between 2018 and 2023 by building a new fresh distribution facility and a new frozen distribution centre. The old fresh food warehouse will close and be dismantled while the frozen space will be used for non-perishable groceries.
Metro has no immediate plans to automate its six distribution centres in Quebec, including the latest built five years ago in Laval.
However, further upgrades in other Ontario centres are eventually possible, said Fortino.
“Technology changes so quickly I think you have to keep an open mind to everything.”
He said the existing Ontario network built up through a series of acquisitions no longer has the capacity and technology to meet the needs from a proliferation of products, including ones that serve ethnic communities.
Fortino said the goal is to supply stores with better on-time deliveries, offer more different types of products and use systems that keep produce fresher, while also reducing costs that hopefully can be passed on to customers.
“The whole experience for a customer should improve,” he added.
Metro looked at automated systems around the world, including the latest technology in Europe, before settling on a system supplied by Witron, a German-based company described as a worldwide leader in order-picking systems for retail and industry.
Although Metro faces competitors with automated distribution centres, Metro is just entering the field.
With technology changing so rapidly, Fortino said he’s happy that the company has taken the time to study its options.
Before the new facilities are built, however, the company will acquire a modern automated facility in Varennes, Que., with the closure of its purchase of pharmacy chain Jean Coutu Group.
Irene Nattel of RBC Capital Markets said the modernization of Metro’s distribution network is consistent with the company’s “measured and methodical approach to improving efficiencies in the business.”Flanked by drywall and cedar planks at a family-owned lumber company, House Republicans on Thursday released a long-promised governing agenda, laced with 'tea party' slogans, that aims to create jobs by shrinking the size and scope of government.
Call it the un-stimulus. The heart of the Republican plan is that you create jobs by cutting government spending and reducing the uncertainty so that small businessmen, like the Tart Lumber Company in Sterling, Va., can invest and hire.
The plan would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts, repeal and replace health-care reform, zero-out unspent stimulus funds, and roll back government spending to 2008 levels – before President George W. Bush bailed out banks or President Barack Obama signed a $789 billion stimulus package.
IN PICTURES: Tea parties
The plan also aims to restore trust in Congress, now near historic lows, and boost national and border security, including fully funding missile defense, enforcing sanctions against Iran, and reaffirming the authority of state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of all federal immigration laws – a slap at the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona.
What the plan does not include is a call for a balanced budget amendment, privatization of Social Security, or an outright ban on earmarks or projects targeted to member districts – all GOP conservative talking points in recent years. It also did not detail specific programs to be cut or signal how the increases in defense and homeland security spending squared with getting the nation back onto a path toward a balanced budget.
Missing also, either in the text or response to questions about it, is any hint that Republicans are open to compromise on a partial or incomplete extension of expiring tax cuts, ideas floated as recently as this month by House Republican leader John Boehner.
“I’ve made clear over the last 20 months, when Republicans were in control of Congress we made our share of mistakes,” Representative Boehner said, responding to questions at a press briefing in Sterling.
But Republicans have demonstrated by their votes that they are serious about cutting back government, he added.
“All of us opposed their stimulus bill twice, all of our members voted against their budget twice, nearly all of our members voted against their energy tax, and all of our members voted against health care. We are very serious about implementing our pledge.”
After decades in the minority, Republicans took back the House in 1994 on a promised Contract with America. Now in reach of taking back the House again, Republicans are defending their record of spending during their last 12 years in power, especially to the tea party activists that have roiled primary contests for incumbents. House Republicans are calling this plan a “pledge.”
"We had a contract. This is new,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R) of Indiana. “I hope people understand it means a commitment.”
The two-page pledge introducing the policy document is anchored in the language of the tea party movement and the nation’s founding texts, notably government’s powers derived from the consent of the governed and [inalienable] rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. “Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course,” the document states.
But the economic policy proposals are focused on issues faced by small businesses, frozen by what Republicans describe as uncertainties of a job-killing government agenda. “Where are the jobs?” – a theme in GOP campaign stump speeches – is the subtext of the new governing agenda. In addition to extending the Bush tax cuts, now set to expire on Dec. 31, Republicans propose giving small business owners a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their business income.
Any “economically significant” new federal regulation – that is, costing businesses $100 million or more annually – would require congressional approval. Controversial government mandates, such as a provision in this year’s health-care reform that requires small businesses to report to the Internal Revenue Service any purchases that run more than $600, would be repealed.
The GOP critique of health-care reform also reduces to a concern about the economy and jobs. The reform, which phases in over a decade, is not yet creating jobs or cutting costs, as promised: It raises taxes on the middle class and will force millions of seniors off their current Medicare coverage, Republicans say.
The plan repeals the new, “unconstitutional” government mandate requiring individuals to obtain health insurance. Republicans would replace the 2010 reform with measures to reduce costs, such as medical liability reforms to rein in costly junk lawsuits, allow Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines, and expand health savings accounts.
“On the same day that Americans will start to benefit from these protections, Republicans are unveiling an agenda that names taking those benefits away a top priority – under Republicans, insurance companies will once again be in charge of Americans’ health care,” said House majority leader Steny Hoyer (D) of Maryland in a statement.
New foreign policy proposals require tough enforcement of sanctions against Iran and full funding for missile defense as a protection from Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In a reversal of the Obama administration’s legal challenge to Arizona on border enforcement, the plan pledges to “reaffirm the authority of state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of all federal immigration laws” and to work to ensure that foreign terrorists, such as the 9/11 conspirators, are tried in military, not civilian courts.
Like the 1994 Contract with America, the new GOP plan also proposes ensuring minority party rights, including a more open amendment process. Expanding on a campaign pledge by Democrats when they took back the House in 2006, Republicans also promised more time for members and the public to read bills before they reach the floor for a vote. The plan requires publishing the text of bills online for at least three days before a vote. Any lawmakers would be able to offer amendments to reduce spending.
Craig Fritsche, president of the Tart Lumber Company in Sterling, says his greatest concern, as a small businessman, is whether the Bush tax cuts will be extended. "Based on what happened the last time Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and presidency, I didn't see the change," he said. "I just hope they can follow through on these promises."
IN PICTURES: Tea partiesThis post was contributed by a community member.
A squirrel was the cause of Wednesday's power outage on Metro-North, delaying thousands of commuters during the morning rush hour.
According to a Metro-North statement released shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday, "The delays of up to 45 minutes that you experienced during your morning commute resulted from the loss of catenary power from Greenwich to Harrison shortly before 7 AM.
"This power loss was caused by a ground to the electrical feed at the substation in Cos Cob. This was caused when a squirrel entered the area and shorted a transformer.
"We immediately dispatched an emergency crew to the substation where they reset the relays for power protection. Once this was done, our Power Control Center personnel in Grand Central were able to restore power to the area by 7:25 AM.
"We quickly devised a plan to operate a limited number of available trains between New Rochelle and Grand Central, however, because this occurred at the height of our rush hour, a backlog of trains began to build, causing further delays."
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Editor's note: This is not the first occasion when a Fairfield County squirrel has caused major electricity disruption. Some history, here and elsewhere:
Last October, in that town.
In 1987, NASDAQ's facility in Trumbull was victimized by a squirrel, shutting down that stock exchange.
In 1994, NASDAQ was hit again.
This 2007 article in Daily Kos website memorializes other incidents of havoc wrecked by these arboreal rodents.Miles Plumlee feels it when he tries to box out. Goran Dragic and the rest of the Suns guards see it when they drive to the rim.
We’re talking about the 7-foot-1 presence of Alex Len, who is just relieved that health has finally allowed him to play without restrictions.
His teammates have noticed. They see a different Len than the smaller, less assertive rookie version from a season ago. P.J. Tucker, who relishes competition at any level, tabbed the back-and-forth action between Len and Plumlee as the most note-worthy battle early on.
“I like Alex,” Tucker said. “Alex has just been going at it with Miles and Shav[lik Randolph] and all our bigs. He’s been really competitive and getting after it.”
Plumlee, who has improved in his own right after a productive offseason, appreciates Len’s progress. He had his own rookie struggles that resulted in just 55 total minutes in 2012-13. The following summer gave him the chance to improve in the most key areas, enabling him to become an impact player far sooner than many predicted.
He says the same thing is happening with Len, who didn’t allow a broken finger to deter offseason conditioning. The second-year big man now weighs in at 263 pounds.
“We’ve been playing every day in pickup. [Len] looked great. He’s definitely bulked up, a lot stronger. I think it’s the same thing that happened to me. He’s just a little more decisive.” — Miles Plumlee
The extra muscle mass is evenly distributed. Core, chest and legs are all significantly stronger, which better enables him to bang down low without causing too much stress on the lower bones. Speaking of which, Len’s feet are completely healed, something easily noticeable when he rises for swift and powerful finishes during half-court set drills.
Plumlee saw Len’s dramatic improvement up close even before training camp commenced.
“We’ve been playing every day in pickup,” he said. “[Len] looked great. He’s definitely bulked up, a lot stronger. I think it’s the same thing that happened to me. He’s just a little more decisive.”
Len’s decisions are preceded by patience. He poured over tape of himself – good and bad – and saw one thing jump out above everything else: he was too eager. After coming back from injuries in the middle of last season, he was desperate to make an impact, to prove he had been worth waiting for long after being drafted fifth overall.
So he rushed his shots, tried to rebound without establishing position, and committed unnecessary fouls.
Much as Plumlee did last summer, Len spent the offseason in informal big man school run by assistant coaches Mark West and Kenny Gattison. Read the defense, they told him. Do your work early, get position, then act.
“This year I just got a little more poise,” Len said.
When it comes to big men, success is largely dictated by the talent and opportunities presented by his point guard. Len is fortunate in that he is almost always on the floor with a starting-caliber floor general in Goran Dragic, Eric Bledsoe or Isaiah Thomas.
“They always talk to me, tell me where they want me to be, what spot they want me to be at,” Len said. “Every time they drive, I’m going to be open. It’s going to be easy.”
That isn’t to say Len is taking it easy. Hornacek labeled Len – in tandem with fellow second-year man Archie Goodwin – as the hardest-working player on the team. General Manager Ryan McDonough dubbed Len and Plumlee as the most-improved guys since the end of last season.
.@moe_charara "Good question. It's a tie between Miles Plumlee and Alex Len." - McDonough — Phoenix Suns (@Suns) September 29, 2014
Len’s improvement couldn’t be more timely. Last season, Channing Frye would start at power forward before sliding over to center. With him gone and none of the other power forwards boasting Frye’s height, Len realizes the role and opportunity that are his to take.
“There will be more playing time for me, but I feel you have to earn it,” he said. “Training camp is the place to do that. I’m going to work my butt off. We’ll see what comes. I’m just excited to be healthy, you know what I’m saying? I’m ready to play.”Now, I’m not confirming or denying whether anything mentioned in this post is going to happen or not…I’m just saying “what if…?” I mean, you can’t really understand something until you’ve seen the other side of it, so WHAT IF?
The Maya character has inspired a LOT of hate for what happened between her and Lucas in S2. There are people who absolutely vilify her for it, as if Maya was actively trying to “steal” Lucas away from Riley (as if Maya would EVER!) Plenty of people understand that it was no one’s fault, not really, but there are others who absolutely demonize Maya for it. They want her to PAY.
So what if she did? What if she “paid?” What if Maya were to experience exactly what Riley went through in S2, except more explicitly and intensely?
What if—and mind you I’m just saying what IF—Maya were to enter into some kind of explicitly stated agreement with someone that they were going to absolutely definitely wait for each other? An “unofficial thing” which is explicitly discussed and agreed to onscreen as opposed to just kinda…stumbled into with no real discussion. And what if Maya were far more committed to said “unofficial thing” than the person she’s in it with? Like, what if she were to come across him “living his life” out on dates with another girl and he didn’t even bother to reassure her of his feelings/their agreement? What if he really, truly falls for someone who is…a better fit, more appropriate, say, even though he didn’t mean to and didn’t plan on it…and he calls an explicit end to the “unofficial thing,” even though he still really likes Maya and cares about her?
And let’s say Maya has this friend, a guy who she’s flat out said “isn’t her type” and isn’t what she wants, but they’re close, ya know? She trusts him. He’s the one who helps her through it, maybe with intense and private “just friends” talks in the Topanga’s courtyard or something…but it seems pretty clear that they’re really more than friends?
“But hey,” you might ask, “why the guy friend instead of Riley?”
Well…
What if Riley was busy experiencing what MAYA experienced in S2?
What if Riley began to have moment after moment, higher and higher key, with someone she shouldn’t be having those moments with? What if Riley were to struggle to manage those feelings as they grew too hard to ignore? What if Riley was worried about the havoc her feelings could wreak on other people if they got out…but then of course they get out anyway. What if Riley has a near kiss with that person she shouldn’t have feelings for, but instead of saying nothing about it…they flat out admit that they WANTED to kiss, but it’s explicitly stated that the only reason she/he/they held back is because of their obligations to other people they care about…or are involved with?
What if Riley also experiences what Maya went through with Farkle in S2, but dialed way, way up? Let’s say that instead of a pretend marriage, she embarks on an official relationship with all the trappings, something sugary and wrapped up all pretty, say. What if it ultimately culminates in a no sparks moment like the Markle high five, but again, it’s more explicit this time—like say maybe a no sparks kiss where they both acknowledge the lack of whoa? But then it’s revealed that the friendship is still deep and solid underneath?
And how would Riley even know it’s no sparks? Because she’s also had a near kiss with that person she wasn’t supposed to catch feelings for. She’ll be able to spot the difference.
Wouldn’t that all be very interesting?
And what if we applied this to the boys? What if Lucas were to find himself in Farkle’s S2 shoes?
What if, after spending some time honestly torn between two girls, Lucas committed himself (after being pushed and given a blessing by one girl) to a girl who makes sense to him, who he really likes and cares about? But then at the same time he’s still got this girl—the one who pushed him and gave her blessing—a friend, who we know he had (or maybe even still has) feelings for, but she’s in an agreed-to “unofficial thing” with another guy. What if other guy is just not playing and it’s hurting her? Let’s say that this is the girl Lucas would be with if he thought he could, but he thinks she’ll never be interested because she’s in a Thing with a guy he thinks he can’t compete with, and besides—he’s got his own reasons for being with the other girl, the one who “makes sense.” Maybe he even comes up with a nickname for the dude he can’t compete with, the Lucas equivalent of “freakface.” But most of all, he just wants his friend—his “just friend,” honest!—to be happy no matter what. So he helps her through it.
Anyway, what if he were to be there for this “just friend” through her drama with the “unofficial thing” but unlike with Riley and Farkle in S2, it was UNDENIABLE there are feelings between them that are much more than friendly? Even though he’s got a girlfriend, a nice girl who we all like, who makes sense? Or hey, maybe him and the girlfriend who makes sense will already have had a no sparks moment and ended things by the time Lucas is busy being there for his “just friend” through her drama…
And on the flip side, what if Farkle found himself in Lucas’s S2 shoes, caught between two girls: the one he’s supposed to be committed to and the one he’s not supposed to even have a shot with? What if he almost kisses the one he’s not supposed to have a shot with?
And what if, at the same time, Smackle were to find herself attracted to the last person you’d expect her to be attracted to, a goofball jock with a history of D’s and F’s?
What if all of the core four (by extension clique six) were to find themselves on the other side of the equation from where they were in S2, only with everything dialed up and more “real"—and the Rilaya friendship not quite as at stake because there are more variables this time? What if the same kind of stuff that happened in S2 happens again, but with the characters in different roles and with feelings and thoughts being explicitly stated this time around instead of left ambiguous and vague?
I’m just saying…what if?
In a square dance, you repeat the same steps with different partners.
You need eight people for a REAL square dance.
As of right now, we’ve got Riley, Maya, and Lucas “officially” square dancing (3), with Farkle included but not “officially” (4). (“He’s not even with us,” lol).
If we include Farkle we have to include Smackle, which brings us to (5). If they bring in Zay and Josh (and Jacobs said they’d bring everybody in…), that’s (6) and (7). All we need is an eighth partner…and, well…I think I know exactly what that eighth partner is gonna be. You can probably guess…
Then the square dance can begin for REAL, and maybe it’ll take until the end of the series to finish up, but either way? Seasons one and two were just practice. Getting everything into place. The real lesson begins…now.
Can y'all imagine the parade of parallel gif sets if this "what if?” scenario ends up playing out on the show? I mean, daaaaaang. But again, I’m only asking “what if?” 😏Back in March, we reported on a new study that found algae blooms concentrating in ocean eddies off Africa were generating mobile dead zones threatening sea life in the Tropical Atlantic. Based on recent satellite imagery analysis, such phenomena may not just be isolated to regions off the Ivory Coast and Gibraltar. It instead appears that mobile and potentially oxygen-depleting algae blooms may also be cropping up in the far North Atlantic.
(Is the North Atlantic starting to see eddies which host ocean dead zones? The image above appears to show just such a feature. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)
Ever since mid-June, a strange feature has been visible in the satellite shot of an ocean region bracketed by Iceland, Svalbard, and the center of the Scandinavian Coastline. The area appears to include a major algae bloom which has been swept up into an ocean eddy. Measuring about 30 miles in diameter, the bloom displays visible aspects similar to its more southerly cousins. As with the mobile Tropical Atlantic Dead Zones off Africa, this swirl appears to have concentrated surface water nutrients — generating a region of more intensified microbial growth. A growth that now shows the tell-tale neon blue contrast of an algae bloom capable of tanking surface ocean oxygen levels.
High Latitude algae blooms are a prevalent occurrence during Spring and Summer as Ocean surface waters warm. And during recent years, rapidly warming waters and retreating sea ice has enabled more prolific algae blooms in northern seas. Though these waters contain more oxygen due to overall cooler temperatures, both the increased warmth and the large algae blooms generate a mechanism for loss of oxygen content in the vital surface zone.
(Strange algae bloom with characteristics similar to mobile Tropical Atlantic Dead Zones is visible as the blue dot at center frame in this July 2 LANCE MODIS satellite image.)
In addition to human forced warming of the ocean system reducing overall ocean oxygen levels, human fossil fuel burning, fertilizer runoff and deluges increasing run-off volume (due to global warming’s impact on the hydrological cycle) adds nutrients to surface waters. The nutrients come primarily in the form of nitrogen which rains down as fossil fuel fallout or is flushed in ever greater volumes down river systems as frequency of extreme rainfall events increase. As a result, the oceans are being loaded up with food for algae blooms.
A similar mechanism (usually triggered through enhanced volcanism) is thought to have lead to mass ocean die-offs in at least four of the five major mass extinction events. A mechanism which was likely most lethal when it started to enable anoxic ocean environments hosting microbes capable of producing massive volumes of hydrogen sulfide gas — which in the worst cases filled the oceans and vented into the atmosphere.
Ocean eddies further concentrate the nutrient run-off and fall-out through their churning action. So algae blooms have tended to intensify in these swirls of ocean currents. In the Tropical Atlantic, algae production in the eddies has been enough to generate large microbial die-offs and related depletion of oxygen — generating moving dead zones. If the newly identified algae blooms in these satellite photos are prolific enough to consume all the available nutrients in surface waters, they will also die off and, decaying, rob these waters of vital oxygen. Such an action could promote dead zone environments in northern waters in addition to those already documented in the Tropical Atlantic.
Links:
Ocean Dead Zones Swirl Off Africa
LANCE MODIS
Awakening the Horrors of the Ancient Hothouse — Hydrogen Sulfide in the World’s Warming Oceans
Anoxic Event
Hat Tip to Griffin (Who was the first to spot this particular algae bloom eddy in the MODIS shot)
AdvertisementsIowa newspapers have largely failed to explain the components of a new strict voter ID law aiming to restrict voting rights that Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, is expected to sign this week. By neglecting to mention these provisions in a majority of their news stories, Iowa outlets are omitting information about how the law could disenfranchise an estimated 260,000 voters in Iowa in upcoming elections and add to the state’s ongoing budget problems.
Branstad is expected to sign a bill that would require Iowans to present specific types of government-issued photo ID to vote. Additionally, the bill includes provisions to cut down early voting, eliminate straight-ticket voting, and reduce the number of days for absentee voting. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate's office estimates that the law “would cost about $1 million to fully implement” even as the “lawmakers already had to make budget cuts” as the state faces “a roughly $110 million shortfall.”
The top three Iowa newspapers, however, largely failed to include these details in their reporting on the bill between February 1 and April 14. A Media Matters analysis found:
Only 11 out of 30 news articles included information about changes to absentee voting.
Only 6 out of 30 news articles included information about changes to early voting.
Only 12 out of 30 news articles included information about the elimination of straight-ticket voting.
Only 11 out of 30 news articles included information about the cost of the bill.
Only 9 out of 30 news articles included information about the possible widespread voter disenfranchisement the law could cause.
The results did vary from paper to paper. For example, |
as Batman could be released towards the end of February, and now another source has come forward with more information. Forbes blogger and Batman on Film BFFL Mark Hughes is hearing that the first look at Batman and Wonder Woman in Batman vs. Superman is coming in the next 10 to 12 days.
Okay, fans, get ready, a bat-suit & WW reveal seems to be imminent, as in possibly days away! — Mark Hughes (@markhughesfilms) February 11, 2014
The delay in start of filming might push it back a tad, but I'm hearing it may drop as originally planned in next 10 to 12 days or so. — Mark Hughes (@markhughesfilms) February 11, 2014
Hughes sent those tweets earlier today, which means that day #12 would be next Sunday. Here’s hoping the rumors are true, and Warner Bros. really does plan on releasing the first photos of Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman next week!The ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States stressed Friday that his country is different from Chechnya, the region with which one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects has close ties.
“As many, I was deeply shocked by the tragedy that occurred in Boston earlier this month. It was a stark reminder of the fact that any of us could be a victim of senseless violence anywhere at any moment,” Czech ambassador Petr Gandalovič said in a statement Friday.
Gandalovič cautioned people, largely on social media, that the Czech Republic and Chechnya are not the same thing.
“As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation,” he said.
“As the President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman noted in his message to President Obama, the Czech Republic is an active and reliable partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism. We are determined to stand side by side with our allies in this respect, there is no doubt about that,” Gandalovič concluded.February 26, 2013 9:00 PM | John Polson
The Cat that Got the Milk creators Ollie Clark, Helana Santos, Chris Randle, and Jon Mann return with another ultra stylish freeware title, The Button Affair. It's part auto-runner, part platformer staged in the 1950s-60s Jet-Set era and features a classic heist story line that begs for a full-featured expansion.
The Button Affair: now with 100% more buttons! (Feel free to use that one later.) Whereas The Cat was a two-button game, players must use all four arrows here. Players can press the right arrow key to walk forward in stealthy areas and to run faster in others. Players must also jump or duck with the up and down keys. Finally, to activate the save spots, players will use all four arrows to mimic the code.
Messing up anywhere prompts a slick death scene that doesn't last too long to get stale. The action may not be too intense for seasoned Canabalt-ers, but the hand-crafted levels and gorgeous visuals will hook you to the end.
The developers are running a special campaign for its release, too. Fans can donate £1 to Special Effect either by via this JustGiving page or by texting enzo50£1 to 70070 to donate £1 for building gadgets for disabled gamers.
If the team raises £250, it will buy a specially modified joystick that can be loaned out to disabled people who have difficulty using their hands to master a standard games controller. £1000 will buy the complex mounting and switching equipment needed for a severely disabled person with very little body movement to enjoy the benefits of computer games.
These developers impress once again with a great game to play for free and an added cause. Windows and Mac users can download The Button Affair here.On the occasion of CERN’s 60th anniversary this year, the laboratory launched a competition entitled “Beam line for schools.” According to the initiative high-school students had to run an experiment in the same way that CERN’s researchers do.
“When we first had the idea of offering a beam line to schools, I never expected such a fantastic range of proposals from around the world,” said Christoph Rembser, coordinator of the initiative.
The participants, with fewer than 1,000 words, had to explain why they wanted to visit CERN, what they hoped to learn from their experience and make proposals on how they would use the particle beam for their experiment. They also had to present their written proposal in a creative and entertaining video.
The winners of the competition were the 12 “Odysseus’ Comrades” from Varvakios Pilot school in Athens, Greece. The Greek students‘ proposal was to look at the decay of charged pions (particles containing a quark and an antiquark) in order to investigate the weak force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature.
Andreas Valadakis, teacher of the Greek team said: “At first it was very hard to find an experiment to propose for the competition. But if there is an obstacle, it is always a good start to look at history. So we studied the history of CERN, and that lead us to the proposal of studying a peculiar property of weak force.”Fighters loyal to Jathran at Zueitina, one of the occupied ports. Photos by Wil Crisp unless otherwise stated.
On Tuesday, Libyan rebels orchestrated the sailing of a tanker loaded with millions of dollars' worth of crude oil from the port of al-Sidra. It marked the end of an era for post-revolutionary Libya. Now, the country is entering a new period of uncertainty.
Rebel leader Ibrahim Jathran's victory over the incumbent government turned out to be a final humiliation for Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote later that day before fleeing to Germany.
His departure after 18 months as Prime Minister has been greeted with celebrations from rival political groups – and anxiety from the international community who fear a descent into widespread tribal fighting.
On Tuesday, the UN warned that Libya risked “embarking on a new trajectory of unprecedented violence”. North Africa risk analyst Geoff Porter warned that “coming insurgency, terrorism and violence" would "rent Libya asunder”.
Some of these fears have already been realised, with clashes taking place near the towns of Sirte and al-Sidra.
Former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan (photo via Anadolu Agency)
While in office, Zeidan was criticised for failing to be a strong leader, failing to build a proper army and failing to push through a constitution. In private, foreign journalists would accuse him of lacking charisma and skill as an orator. Islamists would criticise him for pandering to Western governments and separatists from eastern Libya accused his government of both corruption and collaboration with Islamist militias.
His leadership style could be described as vague bumbling, punctuated with occasional moments of bold rhetoric and dark humour.
When asked by journalists whether Libya was a failing state, Zeidan's stock answer was that Libya could not be a failing state as Libya wasn't really a “state”.
Speaking in September to CNN he said, “We are trying to create a state, and we are not ashamed of that …. the outside world believes that Libya is failing, but Libya was destroyed by Gaddafi for 42 years and was destroyed by a full year of civil war.”
Though Zeidan was widely viewed as ineffective by the Libyan public, he wasn't obviously corrupt or power mad – something that set him apart from a number of possible replacements. He had a track record of opposing the Gaddafi regime that stretches back to 1981, when he helped to found the National Front For The Salvation of Libya, a militant organisation that produced anti-Gaddafi propaganda and organised a number of assassination attempts. And as Prime Minister he could never be accused of lacking tenacity.
Zeidan proved adept at navigating Libya's strange and dangerous political scene from the beginning of his time in office – successfully negotiating tribal disputes and putting together a cabinet where his predecessor, elected Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur, had failed.
Rebel leader Ibrahim Jathran
From the first few weeks of his term as Prime Minister, Zeidan faced calls to stand down – and as his term continued he survived ordeals that most Western political leaders would never imagine enduring, including machine gun attacks, armed sieges and a militia kidnapping.
His resilience frustrated his rivals, who said his tenacity was driven by his hunger for power – but Zeidan maintained that he had the country's best interests at heart.
In January he said he would be willing to step aside to appease his critics – but only if a viable replacement was found. Speaking in a live interview on Qatar-based television he described himself as a “struggler” and warned of the dangerous possibility of a power vacuum opening up if he was removed prematurely.
Since January, attempts by Islamist political parties to dislodge Zeidan have intensified – though there was no agreement on who should replace him. The last few months saw repeated attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice And Construction Party to organise a no-confidence vote but until Tuesday they failed to gain the 120 votes they needed in Libya's General National Congress (GNC).
Fighters loyal to Jathran at Zueitina, one of the occupied ports
Eventually, it was Zeidan's failure to maintain a grip on events in Libya's east that tipped the balance against him. His government has been engaged in a stand-off with Ibrahim Jathran's rebels since they seized control of some of Libya's biggest oil terminals last summer – demanding autonomy for the country's oil rich eastern region, Cyrenaica.
During the standoff, Zeidan twice managed to prevent renegade oil tankers from docking at the rebel-occupied ports. But on Tuesday Jathran's rebels managed to evade the Libyan navy and sail a loaded tanker from the occupied port of al-Sidra – dealing a final, authority-sapping blow to Zeidan's career as PM.
According to the head of the GNC Energy Committee, the tanker sailed during a period of bad weather – making it difficult for Libya's navy vessels to intercept it.
There are already signs that, amid the chaos of Libya's deteriorating security and daily attacks, Zeidan's presence provided a degree of stability – which is now gone. The most obvious of these signs is the fighting between Islamist militias from Misrata and Cyrenaican forces that are loyal to Jathran that erupted around the town of Sirte on Tuesday, in the wake of the tanker's sailing.
There could soon be worse to come, as the government attempts to crack down on Jathran's rebels. Speaking on Wednesday, the head of Libya's GNC gave Jathran just two weeks to end his occupation of the oil ports.
For Libya's Islamist parties and Ibrahim Jathran's rebels though, the turmoil of Zeidan's departure remains a golden opportunity.
Defence Minister Abdullah al-Thanni, who is known to be sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, has already been named as interim Prime Minister – and the successful tanker sailing could see the Cyrenaican rebels receive an injection of funds in the region of $40 million. Jathran has already said some of this money will be spent on bolstering his army.
@bilgribsReal-time strategy games like StarCraft might not only increase a person's perceptual abilities, but also enhance their cognitive abilities.
In a study of 72 non-gaming female University of Texas students, playing StarCraft for an hour a day was found to significantly increase their cognitive flexibility, a trait linked to a person's ability to find creative solutions to problems and juggle different concepts simultaneously. "[Playing a real-time strategy game] is training so many different aspects of cognition at once," says Brian Glass of Queen Mary University, lead author of the paper published in PLOS One. "[As a result] the brain is getting used to this rigorous mental exercise," allowing it to better perform in cognitive tasks.
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The effects of gaming on the brain has been studied before, with research showing that first-person shooters like Call of Duty have a positive impact on a person's visual abilities.
However, this study looked at whether real-time strategy games, which require a great deal of task management and strategising, have an impact on a person's ability to think quickly and accurately about different tasks. Put crudely, it measured whether playing a game like StarCraft could make a person more clever.
Read next Why it's hard to pin the UK's oddly warm February on climate change Why it's hard to pin the UK's oddly warm February on climate change
The participants were separated into three groups: one played a version of StarCraft in which they only had one base; another played a more difficult version in which they had two bases in separate locations to manage; and a third simply played the Sims 2.
They were asked to play for about an hour a day, and 40 hours in total. Their cognitive flexibility was tested using psychological tests before and after the 40 hours of gaming, with the group that played StarCraft showing a marked increase in test scores, above and beyond the expected improvement from doing the same twice test.
While it could be argued that a comparison between the Sims 2 and StarCraft is not an appropriate one, the study also found that the group who had to manage two bases on
StarCraft performed even better than the group who had to manage only one. "They were able to solve the tasks in a faster and more accurate way," says Glass. "They didn't have to make the tradeoff between speed and accuracy [as much as the other groups]."
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Importantly, the results of the study suggest that cognitive flexibility can be improved through training, which Glass admits is a controversial theory. He says that more research will be needed to replicate the results.
In the meantime, he reports that by the end of the study, the participants were winning, on average, almost 50 percent of their
StarCraft games. Which isn't bad considering they were complete novices to begin with, but I don't think Starcraft 2 World Champion STX_INnoVation will be worrying just yet.[Faber & Faber; 2014]
Ben Lerner’s latest novel, 10:04, is an elegant, confounding meditation on the role of literature in a postmodern age. The plot, if you can call it that, depicts the basic events and relationships of a year in the life of an author trying to fulfill his contract by expanding a short story into a novel. The book is set in New York City, between 2011’s Hurricane Irene and 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, during which time the narrator is diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome (and its attendant risk of aortic rupture); agrees to be the sperm donor for his closest platonic friend; dates a thrilling but dispassionate young artist; attempts to tutor an Hispanic boy from his friend’s elementary school class; and attends a writers’ residency in Marfa, Texas (no relation). Despite these narrative trappings, the book is primarily concerned with more conceptual matters: what is the place of art in an age of monetization? Why do we tell stories, and does reality change just a little when they aren’t true? How stable is this thing we call the self?
More than anything else, the book is preoccupied with its own genesis. The structure and premises of the book, as well as much of its content, work actively to confuse the distinction between author and narrator, fiction and autobiography. This is far from a unique concern, and to varying extents may be fundamental to the medium of fiction — how much of Woolf is in Clarissa Dalloway? to what extent is Stephen Daedalus fictionalized? — but here it is taken to the extreme. Whereas typically this concern is subtext, in 10:04, this blurred division becomes the primary subject of the novel.
On the most basic level, Lerner goes out of his way to equate himself with the narrator. The narrator’s name, mentioned in passing, is Ben; he is 33 years old, the same age Lerner was in 2012. In a significant plot point, he has edited a “small and now-defunct but influential” literary journal which published, among others, Robert Creeley. (That would be NO: A Journal of the Arts.) He goes on a writer’s residency to Marfa, Texas (home of the Lannan Foundation residency that Lerner held). He is the literary executor of the estate of his mentors, a married couple named Bernard and Natali, who teach “in Providence.” (Lerner is the literary executor for Keith and Rosemary Waldrop, whom he studied with at Brown.) Lest you think I am playing detective, these things are public knowledge, basic background for anyone researching Lerner’s biography.
And all that is merely premise, scene setting. The primary plot arc of the book involves Ben (which I’ll use to refer to the narrator, with “Lerner” indicating the real-life author) writing a book, a fact which we learn in the second paragraph:
[My] agent had emailed me that she believed I could get a ‘strong six-figure’ advance based on a story of mine that had appeared in The New Yorker; all I had to do was promise to turn it into a novel. I managed to draft an earnest if indefinite proposal and soon there was a competitive auction among the major New York houses and we were eating cephalopods in what would become the opening scene.
If there were any doubt that this referred to “The Golden Vanity,” Lerner’s superb 2012 short story, it is gone by the second chapter, which consists of that story in its entirety, title intact. And this fact, that the book the narrator is attempting to write is the very book you are in the process of reading, is repeated a number of times, in ever-more-explicit ways. Near the end, Lerner writes:
Later we would learn it was Goldman Sachs, see photographs in which one of the few illuminated buildings in the skyline was the investment banking firm, an image I’d use for the cover of my book — not the one I was contracted to write about fraudulence, but the one I’ve written in its place for you, to you, on the very edge of fiction.
(The book’s cover can be seen at the top of this page.) But what does Lerner mean by “the very edge of fiction”? It would be plausible to read this as “the frontier of fiction,” as 10:04 is a distinctly non-traditional novel, but given its preoccupations I suspect this is better read as “barely fiction.”
Barely, perhaps. But despite the aggressive posturing of fiction as autobiography, Lerner is not content with a clear-cut interpretation. While he uses his own short story for Ben’s, he reminds us that crafting even autobiographical fiction necessarily involves distortion, conflation, and fabrication. At the end of the first chapter, Ben describes the process of writing “The Golden Vanity”:
The story would involve a series of transpositions: I would shift my medical problem to another part of the body; replace asterognosis with another disorder, displace Alex’s oral surgery. I would change names: Alex would become Liza, which she’d told me once had been her mother’s second choice; Alena would become Hannah; Sharon I’d change to Mary, Jon to Josh; Dr. Andrews to Dr. Roberts, etc. Instead of becoming a literary executor, and so confronting the tension between biological and textual mortality through that obligation, the protagonist — a version of myself; I’d call him ‘the author’ — would be approached by a university about selling his papers.
The implication in this passage is that since Ben is Lerner, this is Lerner’s method of writing autobiographically. Just as Alex is renamed Liza, her name is not really Alex. Though we are repeatedly encouraged to read 10:04 as autobiography, we are simultaneously reminded that we can trust no individual aspect to be autobiographical. The equivalence is assured, but the focus is blurred. Furthermore, Lerner’s concept of “autobiography” is broader than most. In an interview with The Believer about his first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, he describes the ways in which that book is autobiographical: “Part of what impoverishes discussions about fact and fiction is that they tend to forget the degree to which what doesn’t happen is also caught up in our experience — is the negative element of experience. I think you can write autobiographically from experiences you didn’t have, because the experiences you don’t have are experienced negatively in the experiences you do.”
This outlook further blurs the parallels he’s drawn, but it also can’t be applied wholesale to 10:04. Leaving the Atocha Station toyed with the postures that are here an organizing principle. There are a number of examples, but the simplest is this: the narrator of Leaving the Atocha Station was an American poet on a fellowship in Madrid, like Lerner had been, but was named Adam Gordon. This concept of the “negative element of experience” is certainly valuable context for thinking about 10:04, but the project here is much more extreme, much more literal.
* * *
Ben’s girlfriend, Alena, is an upcoming young artist whose paintings are distressed and damaged in order to comment, somehow, on the art object as historical monument. So she is thrilled to learn of the existence of “totaled art” — insured artworks which, due to damage, incompleteness, or other invalidating process, have been declared valueless and their insurance claims paid out. They are kept in a warehouse by the insurer, destined to languish there, never to re-enter the art market. She strikes a deal with the insurance company in which they give her a number of these voided artworks so that she may exhibit them in a show focusing on this little-known process. She sets it up in her loft studio, and calls it “The Institute for Totaled Art.” Ben, the first visitor to the Institute, is astounded by the experience. While examining a Cartier-Bresson print that, so far as they can tell, is completely undamaged, he muses on the implications of its voided monetary worth:
It had transitioned from being a repository of immense financial value to being declared of zero value without undergoing what was to me any perceptible material transformation — it was the same, only totally different. This was a reversal of the kind of recontextualization associated with Marcel Duchamp... the opposite of the “readymade” whereby an object of utility — a urinal, a shovel — was transformed into an object of art and an art commodity by the artist’s fiat, by his signature. It was the reversal of that process and I found it much more powerful than what it reversed because, like everyone else, I was familiar with material things that seemed to have taken on a kind of magical power as a result of a monetizable signature: that’s how branding works in the gallery system and beyond, whether for Damien Hirst or Louis Vuitton. But it was incredibly rare — I remembered the jar of instant coffee the night of the storm — to encounter an object liberated from that logic. What was the word for that liberation? Apocalypse? Utopia?
This is a profound moment for Ben, who is perpetually concerned about the monetization of art, and I believe it provides an insight into Lerner’s methodology, the reason that he has Ben “work [his] way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city.” Aware that by selling a proposal rather than a manuscript he is “trading on [his] future,” he sees his book as troublingly equivalent to its monetary value.
Imitative desire for my virtual novel was going to fund artificial insemination and its associated costs. My actual novel everyone would thrash. After my agent’s percentage and taxes (including New York City taxes, she had reminded me), I would clear something like two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Or fifty-four IUIs. Or around four Hummer H2 SUVs. Or the two first editions on the market of Leaves of Grass. Or about twenty-five years of a Mexican migrant’s labor, seven of Alex’s in her current job. Or my rent, if I had rent control, for eleven years. Or thirty-six hundred flights of bluefin, assuming the species held.
As with the Cartier-Bresson before it was totaled, his reputation, his “signature” has transformed his artwork into a specific monetary value. He must somehow find a way to rob the work of this process. This, I believe, helps explain the ferocity with which Lerner draws the novel into the realm of the literal world. He cannot remove his signature from the work. Instead, he chooses sincerity over irony; rather than transform his “object of utility,” his life, into an artwork, he transforms the artwork into his life.
Perhaps inevitably, this conceptual gambit ends up doing some small but fundamental damage to the novel. Because the story Ben Lerner proposed to write, in which a writer falsifies an archive of email correspondence with prominent literary figures and attempts to sell the archive to a university in order to fund fertility treatments — or, as Ben thinks of it, “another novel about fraudulence, no matter the bruised idealism at its core” — sounds like a story I’d love to read, a novel full of pathos, about beautifully flawed human beings. And I know that Lerner would be up to the task; despite what I’ve focused on here, there are moments of beautiful writing and emotional resonance in 10:04, and they all seem to center around characterization, around the stories and personal histories that bring the characters to the moment of our encounter with them. 10:04 is worth reading, flaws and all: for the story that Noor tells Ben about her paternity, for the scene at Alex’s mother’s house where death and life are wound together — for the countless brief moments when two people truly meet each other, and come away slightly changed, “the same, only a little different.”Two videos were posted on YouTube showing the aftermath of a group of Ajax fans being attacked by Legia Warsaw supporters in a bar in Warsaw, Poland. The Amsterdam club is playing against the Warsaw club in the Europa League on Thursday.
According to the Telegraaf, a group of 50 Ajax fans were in a bar called Chmury today when it was suddenly stormed by about 50 masked Legia Warsaw supporters. They first threw stones at the bar and then forced their way in. Once inside they threw tables and chairs. Surprisingly, no one was injured.
"They had gasoline and torches with them, the whole pub is destroyed. They had serious bows and arrows with them!" an Ajax supporter told AT5 after the attack.
A number of Ajax supporters claim that ADO Den Haag supporters were also part of the attack. According to the Telegraaf, ADO Den Haag fans are known to be friendly with the fans of several foreign clubs including Legia Warsaw, Juventus, Swansea City and Club Brugge. Website Groengee;hart.nl states that the relationship between ADO Den Haag and Legia Warsaw started 30 years ago.
Soccernews.nl reports that there were recently rumors about ADO Den Haag hooligans traveling to Poland to join a hardcore group of Legia Warsaw supporters in their hunt for Ajax fans.
The YouTube videos show a lot of damage was inflicted, including broken windows and destroyed furniture.
The Warsaw police are looking for the rioters, but so far no arrests were made.
About 700 Ajax fans will be watching the Europa League match in Warsaw on Thursday. According to the Telegraaf, a number of Ajax fans did not dare go to Warsaw for the match out of fear of disturbances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3PmhF7hNhw&feature=youtu.beCrucially, Barry Gardiner had local businesses on his side, building economic credibility from the ground up
In the two weeks before polling day, I travelled to marginal constituencies all over the UK to try and help push Labour over the line in what most people thought was going to be the closest General Election result ever.
We were told by everyone that the result would come down to a few hundred votes in a few dozen constituencies. In reality, the Tories won two million more votes than Labour nationally and a majority for the first time since 1992. On 7 May 2015, Labour wasn’t just beaten – it was recoiled from.
So far, so gloomy. Yet whilst there is cause for a serious enquiry about this excruciating defeat, Labour’s failure was not uniform. Although many activists understandably spent the campaign in one part of the UK, I was able to see at first-hand how Labour’s messaging was being received in many different places.
Basically, wherever I went outside of London or Lib Dem-held seats, I saw that the election was slipping away from us. Doubts about Ed Miliband’s suitability for office, the ‘threat’ of the SNP and the question of economic credibility did not reassure me that we were on track for victory. Indeed, Labour has now revealed that its own private polling forecast defeat long ago.
But rather than being wise after the event, allow me to propose how Labour got its messaging pretty much spot on in the London Borough of Brent. After the Local Elections last year, I wrote of how Labour had driven the Lib Dems out of our corner of North West London.
Therefore our result in Lib Dem-held Brent Central, though a seismic shift towards Labour, did not surprise me. A swing of 20.9 per cent from the Lib Dems to Labour should not be sniffed at, but nor should the fact that the Lib Dems collapsed pretty much everywhere against Labour.
More interesting and hopeful for the Labour Party in England were our results in Brent North and Hampstead and Kilburn (H&K), where our nearest rivals were the Tories. Despite the Tories increasing their majorities and taking seats off Labour in many parts of England, and even in London marginals like Harrow East, in Brent North and H&K, we actually increased our majorities.
In Brent North, Barry Gardiner did follow the national campaigning theme of defending the NHS, speaking out against the closure of A&E at Central Middlesex Hospital. But crucially, Barry had local businesses on his side. Not because he’s a right-wing MP (he’s not), but because he has always stood up for small businesses, understanding that they are the backbone of our community.
It’s no surprise that Barry is a regular guest of the British Asian Business Awards. Walk through the streets of Wembley with him and you will see local business owners come up and thank him for everything he’s done for them AND their employees. Seriously. An increased majority of over 10,000 followed.
In H&K, where I spent polling day, our candidate Tulip Siddiq had done so much to impress local business that we were ferried around by an enthusiastic company of Labour-supporting cabbies. The central Tory argument that they were the only party who could help businesses succeed simply didn’t cut through here and we increased a majority of 42 to over 1,000.
So the lesson is that while Labour is right to define itself against the excesses of neoliberalism, we also have to be for businesses that give their employees a stake in their enterprise. This is simply the Co-Operative ideal in practice. In this way we can build our economic credibility from the ground up, through local government and good local MPs.
Our parliamentary candidates in Brent understood this. I hope that the next Labour manifesto has its message at its centre. Because unless we convince employers and employees alike that we offer the best route to their success, I am afraid this defeat will not be a nadir, but a signpost to perennial opposition.
Sam Stopp is a Labour councillor for Wembley Central
URGENT APPEAL: We need to raise £10,000 in the next few weeks to keep holding the right to account. Help us build a better media and back the crowdfunder to keep Left Foot Forward's progressive journalism alive.There has been a great deal of chin-scratching of late about how the current political situation is anathema to “reform” and how recent elections here and overseas signify a turn against the wonderful economic glories of the 1980s and 1990s, and towards a more protectionist trade policy.
Perhaps politicians and some in the media just need to remember one important thing: trade is essential, but it’s not a one way street.
As with productivity, economists view trade as a requirement for improved living standards.
Under the Abbott and Turnbull governments, free trade agreements have been come to be viewed as economic catnip that will somehow create jobs and spur growth.
As I have noted a few times, while the productivity commission is in favour of more open trade it is rather skeptical of the many benefits politicians suggest come via our free-trade agreements. Most of the claims are complete bollocks – like Turnbull suggesting the China Free-trade agreement is the reason why Chinese tourism will hit record numbers this year.
Why isn't the government being held to account on the China free trade deal? Read more
The problem with trade is when economists talk of it improving our living standards, they are mostly talking about imports.
And yet when talking about the benefits of free trade, politicians like to mostly talk about exports. The Abbott government realised this, and rather ham-fistedly started calling the China free-trade agreement the “China free trade export deal”.
The reason that imports are a big driver of our standard of living improvements is that standard of living looks at how much you can buy with what you earn. If the cost of what you buy falls then your standard of living rises (unless your income falls by more).
Free trade allows us to import goods at a cheaper price because someone somewhere else either makes them more efficiently than we do, or for a cheaper cost.
Take the cost of cars. In the 1970s and ‘80s the price of cars rose mostly in line with full-time earnings. But as the tariffs on the imports of the cars fell, so too did the price of cars:
Cars now cost roughly what they did in the late 1980s.
An article in The Canberra Times from December 1989 refers to a limited edition Holden Commodore with a price of $43,140. You can pick up a 2016 Holden Commodore for $43,120.
In December 1989 the average annual full-time earnings were $26,850, compared to the current average of $80,932.
Now that is a standard of living improvement.
And if you don’t think trade improves your own standard of living, best consider where the device you’re reading this on came from, the big arse flat TV you have in your lounge room, your kids’ toys, probably even your furniture you’re sitting on.
Trade generally looks a lot better when you just think about people as consumers.
But it does come at a cost. There are now actually fewer people working in manufacturing now than in 1989:
And a comparison of exports for manufacturing and the services sector over the past 30 years gives an indication of winners and losers from trade:
At the start of the century, trade in the services sector was about 1.3 times that of manufacturing, now it is nearly twice the size.
But while manufacturing employment may have fallen, overall employment has of course increased, and young workers who would have gone into manufacturing in the 1980s now go elsewhere – construction perhaps.
But it is easy to understand why workers in some areas of the country get a bit eye-rolly when they hear talk of the wonders of free-trade agreements. Celebrating the cheap price of cars is not so great when you’ve just lost your job making cars – as is happening to 320 more workers in the Adelaide Holden plant.
It a situation not only difficult for those pursuing a more open trade agenda. Progressives who believe there needs to be a price on carbon might be able to point to the benefits to the environment, and the greater investment into renewable energy, but – as Hillary Clinton pointed out to much controversy – that will also lead the loss of a lot of jobs in coal reliant industries.
Growth in spending is the slowest in two years – not a great sign for the economy | Greg Jericho Read more
There are economic benefits from having open trade, but that does not necessarily mean more of it is better for all.
It’s no surprise that there are winners and losers in any economic “reform,” but neither should it be a surprise that those who stand to lose are making their voice heard via the ballot box.
That doesn’t mean we should bring back tariffs – they’re actually just a consumption tax by proxy. But it does mean that perhaps political leaders need to focus more on people’s concerns. Selling trade is much easier when the standard of living improvements are both rising income and lower prices from imports. And for the past five years we’ve been seeing falling exports prices, and Australia’s overall national income has been stagnant.
In such a situation you can’t just assume people will agree the benefits are obvious – either to the nation’s standard of living, or their own.Welcome to Company of Heroes: Eastern Front!
Eastern Front is a free mod for Company of Heroes. Following the ethos of mimicking a Relic Entertainment expansion pack, Eastern Front has succeeded in adding a full Soviet faction packed with unique and exciting units to the existing armie as well as the rugged Ostheer - a unique new Axis faction who was designed from the ground up to counter the Soviets s - a feat never before achieved in the Company of Heroes world.
We are constantly working to improve Eastern Front; our dedicated and experienced development team has worked on the mod for three years, and we don't intend to stop yet. The future will bring new campaigns, new reward units, further game mechanics and an overall better experience.
Special thanks to everybody who made this mod possible, including our supporters.
Extra Special Thanks to Christian Werner von Schlippenbach and Loran Dennis Kornis, much admired fellow modders who contributed so much. May you Rest in Peace friends.
DOWNLOADING EASTERN FRONT
Before downloading Eastern Front, please ensure that you have Company of Heroes patched to 2.700, this is vital as the mod relies on certain features from this latest patch. All future updates will be applied automatically through the Launcher.
-Does NOT require an existing Eastern Front install-
-Requires Company of Heroes ver. 2.700.2.42-
NOTE #1: Relic integrated Steamworks on Company of Heroes and turned off
the old servers since May 7th, 2013, this means the retail version is no
longer officially supported by them, so from now on, Eastern Front
can be played only with the new Steam version of CoH which
appears listed as "Company of Heroes (New Steam Version)"
in your Steam library. You can add your old CoH key in
Steam, for more information please read this.
NOTE #2: Eastern Front mod can be played in any CoH game
that is updated up to version 2.602. But you need |
receives 2 delegates and the candidate receiving the next highest number of votes receives 1 delegate. [Rule 38. Section 8.b.]
If no candidate receives 20% of the vote then the top 3 vote getters each receive 1 delegate. [Rule 38. Section 8.c.]
47 at-large delegates (10 base at-large delegates plus 34 bonus delegates plus 3 RNC delegates) are to be allocated to the presidential contenders based on the primary results statewide. These delegates are allocated to the presidential contenders as follows:
If a candidate receives a majority of the vote (more than 50%) that candidate is allocated all 47 at-large delegates. [Rule 38. Section 9.a. and 9.b.]
If no candidate receives a majority of the vote and at least 2 candidates receive 20% or more of the vote, the 47 at-large delegates are allocated proportionally among those candidates receiving 20% or more of the vote. Rounding rules: Beginning with the candidate receiving the largest number of votes, round any fraction to the next whole number of delegates. Continue this process with the next highest vote getter and repeat until all the delegates are allocated. [Rule 38. Section 9.b.]
If no candidate receives a majority of the vote and only 1 candidate receives 20% or more of the vote, the 47 at-large delegates are allocated proportionally between the candidate receiving 20% or more of the vote and the candidate receiving the next highest number of votes. Rounding rules: Beginning with the candidate receiving the largest number of votes, round any fraction to the next whole number of delegates. Continue this process with the next highest vote getter and repeat until all the delegates are allocated. [Rule 38. Section 9.b.]
If no candidate receives 20% of the vote, allocate the 47 at-large delegates proportionally. Rounding rules: Beginning with the candidate receiving the largest number of votes, round any fraction to the next whole number of delegates. Continue this process with the next highest vote getter and repeat until all the delegates are allocated. [Rule 38. Section 9.c.]
Primary
Source: Texas Secretary of State.
Status: Official. Retrieved: Thursday 21 April 2016. Contest Cruz Trump Rubio Pop
Vote Qual
Vote Del Pop
Vote % Del Pop
Vote % Del Pop
Vote % Del CD1 126,004 126,004 3 64,987 51.575% 3 31,852 25.279% 15,393 12.216% CD2 91,417 91,417 3 41,862 45.792% 2 22,207 24.292% 1 17,320 18.946% CD3 103,787 103,787 3 39,841 38.387% 2 26,492 25.525% 1 25,098 24.182% CD4 128,392 128,392 3 57,707 44.946% 2 38,730 30.165% 1 16,581 12.914% CD5 91,051 91,051 3 41,066 45.102% 2 26,929 29.576% 1 13,140 14.431% CD6 90,916 90,916 3 40,063 44.066% 2 24,037 26.439% 1 16,405 18.044% CD7 85,168 85,168 3 32,834 38.552% 2 19,980 23.460% 20,936 24.582% 1 CD8 130,136 130,136 3 62,847 48.293% 2 36,108 27.746% 1 18,006 13.836% CD9 18,550 18,550 3 7,853 42.334% 2 5,035 27.143% 1 3,494 18.836% CD10 100,246 100,246 3 46,560 46.446% 2 26,002 25.938% 1 17,349 17.306% CD11 127,910 127,910 3 58,504 45.738% 2 35,363 27.647% 1 17,643 13.793% CD12 107,550 107,550 3 46,720 43.440% 2 29,595 27.517% 1 19,148 17.804% CD13 117,523 117,523 3 56,754 48.292% 2 31,381 26.702% 1 14,725 12.529% CD14 79,037 79,037 3 37,098 46.938% 2 23,464 29.687% 1 11,031 13.957% CD15 34,844 34,844 3 15,195 43.609% 2 10,059 28.869% 1 6,297 18.072% CD16 27,535 27,535 3 10,408 37.799% 2 7,016 25.480% 7,074 25.691% 1 CD17 90,116 90,116 3 41,195 45.713% 2 22,537 25.009% 1 13,990 15.524% CD18 23,715 23,715 3 10,118 42.665% 2 5,848 24.659% 1 5,041 21.257% CD19 111,493 111,493 3 51,950 46.595% 2 26,650 23.903% 1 17,306 15.522% CD20 38,676 38,676 3 16,559 42.815% 2 9,305 24.059% 1 8,742 22.603% CD21 126,936 126,936 3 49,519 39.011% 2 32,351 25.486% 1 28,015 22.070% CD22 90,518 90,518 3 43,021 47.528% 2 22,047 24.356% 1 16,719 18.470% CD23 55,418 55,418 3 23,837 43.013% 2 14,814 26.731% 1 10,889 19.649% CD24 92,757 92,757 3 34,005 36.660% 2 23,994 25.868% 1 22,453 24.206% CD25 112,164 112,164 3 45,259 40.351% 2 31,858 28.403% 1 20,619 18.383% CD26 108,584 108,584 3 45,678 42.067% 2 27,692 25.503% 1 23,115 21.288% CD27 81,697 81,697 3 35,293 43.200% 2 25,212 30.860% 1 12,108 14.821% CD28 32,666 32,666 3 14,341 43.902% 2 9,819 30.059% 1 5,616 17.192% CD29 16,326 16,326 3 8,189 50.159% 3 4,054 24.832% 2,736 16.759% CD30 23,004 23,004 3 9,546 41.497% 2 5,757 25.026% 1 5,104 22.187% CD31 98,094 98,094 3 37,584 38.314% 2 25,213 25.703% 1 19,468 19.846% CD32 90,439 90,439 3 30,115 33.299% 2 21,345 23.602% 25,849 28.582% 1 CD33 16,827 16,827 3 7,300 43.383% 2 4,841 28.769% 1 3,019 17.941% CD34 30,249 30,249 3 12,571 41.558% 2 9,630 31.836% 1 5,130 16.959% CD35 32,118 32,118 3 13,254 41.267% 2 8,823 27.471% 1 6,359 19.799% CD36 103,834 103,834 3 51,144 49.256% 2 32,508 31.308% 1 10,968 10.563% Statewide 2,835,697 1,999,325 47 1,240,777 62.060% 30 758,548 37.940% 17 502,886 25.153% Total
Delegates 155 104 48 3
Statewide proportional of candidates 20% or more.
Cruz: 47 × 1,240,777 ÷ 1,999,325 = 29.168 rounds up to 30 delegates.
Trump: 47 × 758,548 ÷ 1,999,325 = 17.832 truncates to 17 delegates.
In addition to the ballot listing of the names of the qualifying Presidential candidates, there shall appear at the bottom of such listing... a place designated "Uncommitted"... [Rule 38. Section 3.b]
A Presidential candidate may withdraw from participation in the Presidential Primary... by filing with the Secretary of the SREC a signed and acknowledged request... votes cast for that candidate shall be deemed votes for uncommitted [Rule 38. Section 2.d and 2.e]
Once the polls are closed, Precinct Conventions may be convened. While most Precinct Conventions occur on primary election day, they can occur at different dates including the Saturday following the primary, the Friday evening prior to or, the morning of the County and Senatorial District Conventions. The Precinct Conventions elect delegates to the County and Senatorial District Conventions.24 Hours With The New, Longer Range 2017 BMW i3 (CleanTechnica Exclusive)
July 20th, 2017 by Kyle Field
This review summarizes my early learnings in my first day with the new longer range BMW i3. A comprehensive review will follow, but I have found that some of the most important and impactful learnings about a vehicle arise very early on in vehicle use, as that is generally the time in which prospective buyers will make their decisions.
My comments include the background of time I’ve spent with the vast majority of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles available in the United States (including owning at various times the Nissan LEAF, Tesla Model S, and Mercedes B250e).
Related: Is The BMW i3 A Good Buy With Tesla Model 3 On The Way? (#Electrifying Webinar)
Key Specs
Power: 125 kW (168 bhp) electric motor
125 kW (168 bhp) electric motor Torque: 184 lb-ft
184 lb-ft Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Single-speed automatic Configuration: Rear-wheel drive
Rear-wheel drive 0-100 km/hr (0-62 mph): 8.1 seconds
First Impression
The BMW i3, released in 2014, was one of the first purpose-built production electric vehicles in the current generation of electric vehicles. BMW poured billions of dollars into electric powertrain technology, with the BMW i3 one of its first resulting products. The German company also invested heavily in a complete transformation of the core of its vehicle bodies, funneling factories worth of cash into the development of CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic).
We spent a week with the most recent iteration of the i3, which cranks up the capacity of the battery to an impressive 114 miles of all-electric range.
With the i3, BMW masterfully wove its passion for sporty luxury vehicles together with the torquey acceleration of electric vehicles. BMW took a leap into the future with the i3, which maps out the aesthetics of a vehicle that comes from the future, as if it travelled back in time from 2030 to today. The futuristic exterior leaves only the signature kidney grill and bold BMW logos, but upgraded seemingly everything else. The future of BMW shines inside the cabin as well, with the threads of carbon fiber exposed along the frames of its split doors.
Driving Experience
A gentle tap on the start button brings the vehicle to life — though, you wouldn’t know it, as no engine revs up to shake the driver awake. Easing onto the accelerator reveals a finely tuned electric powertrain that beautifully rounds off the sharp edges of the poor traction control and jerky acceleration that plagues many EVs. Instead, BMW replaces such shortcomings with a dreamlike, silent, yet sporty grace.
Following the seamless integration of classic BMW themes and the future of the brand, the interior has been leveled up thanks to the electric drivetrain — as a result, it is quieter than any BMW I have had the pleasure of riding in to date. The combination of the classic build quality of a luxury BMW and the electric powertrain make for an extremely peaceful experience in the cabin.
Don’t let all this talk of peace and quiet leave you under the impression that the i3 is a spineless economy box. If anything, it is quite the opposite. The accelerator pedal, while controlled, packs more than enough torque with its 184 ft/lb. The power behind the pedal all but guarantees an exhilarating ride around town when the time comes for a bit of speed. Its 168 bhp is further magnified by the lightweight build of the vehicle, which allows for quick moves that defy more traditional builds.
A New Breed of BMW
BMW invested heavily into its BMW i program with the design for the i3 similarly starting from a blank sheet of paper. Doing away with legacy combustion engines, transmissions, drive shafts and emission control equipment allowed for new design options like building in a crumple zone in the front of the vehicle and opening up the passenger cabin with the elimination of the transmission and drive shaft.
The BMW i team took the design to the next level with the introduction of lightweight carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). The wonder material is just as strong as steel at half the weight. CFRP can also be crafted into completely new form factors without the need for structurally compromised welds to hold it together.
Price
Due to the relatively high price of lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles have historically commanded premium pricing for relatively spartan offerings. Tesla turned that game on its head with a luxury vehicle that boasted sufficient margins to absorb the incremental cost of the batteries with a ground-up design that reimagined the luxury sedan, and later, the luxury sport utility vehicle.
The i3 design similarly started with a blank sheet of paper and resulted in a vehicle that is years ahead of its oil-powered peers. It too relies on pricey lithium-ion batteries and rolls them into a luxury design flush with carbon fiber, sporty handling, and a high-tech driving experience that naturally comes at a cost. It retails for $42,400, with options that take the price all the way up to $52,600 for a fully optioned vehicle with custom paint and an integrated range extender (REx) that brings the total range up to 190 miles. Regional rebates can bring the price back down considerably, resulting in a luxury electric vehicle that costs about the same as a standard luxury internal combustion vehicle.
Rebates
The fully electric BMW i3 is eligible for the full $7,500 federal tax credit as well as the $2,500 California EV rebate, bringing the cost down a full $10,000. Certain California air districts, counties, and even electric utilities are now offering incremental rebates that stack on top, like the recently launched $450 Southern California Edison (SCE) rebate that brings the cost down even further. At a time when electric vehicles are taking off with longer ranges, faster charging times, and lower MSRP prices, they are now more affordable than ever.
For a full list of rebates in your area, head over to the Plug In America incentives page or the EV incentives page at Energy.gov — they have all the juicy details. I also highly encourage you to dig into what may be available in your local region, as these rebates tend to get less publicity and last for shorter periods of time.
The Ultimate Driving Machine, Redefined
The bottom-up design of the i3 is evident in just a single glance. The exterior screams loud and proud that it is the teenage rebel of the BMW family, intent charting a new course forward for the BMW family while still undeniably one of the family. It sports the signature kidney-shaped grill, bold BMW logos in all the right places, and the same classic climate control design queues as its ancestors.
BMW is not shy about its bold vision for the future of the brand, with dramatic and beautiful carbon fiber left exposed around the interior of each door.
Charging
The i3 comes standard with DC fast charging (DCFC) capability via its integrated CCS charging port. This allows for charging on the existing network of CCS chargers around the world. While the average driver will primarily charge at home, with fast charging reserved for the rare road trip, there are many drivers around Southern California who put DCFC capability to heavy use, as evidenced by the comments on charging station mapping service PlugShare. I mention this service in nearly every review I write not because we’re paid for it (we’re not) but because I use it so much in my day-to-day life.
The DCFC network is currently very minimally deployed as potential investors wait to see how the battle between charging standards plays out. As more and more EVs hit the roads around Southern California, the network will be hit hard — as is already being seen in some areas. Norway should be looked to as an example of what a robust public charging network should look like, as many innovative solutions and business models have already surfaced there that the rest of the world can learn from and reapply.
Supercharging speeds are still out of reach for the i3. Though, this is true of every other non-Tesla EV out there today. Look for capability to charge at 150 kW and faster as a key indicator for which EV manufacturers truly understand what a fully capable EV looks like.
The i3 makes very efficient use of every kWh that comes in, with a rating of 124 MPGe for the 60Ah model, 118 MPGe for the 94Ah model, or 111 MPGe for the 94Ah model with the gasoline range extender. Adding more weight to gain the extra range clearly comes at a penalty for all miles driven.
The i3’s high rating is largely attributable to its lightweight design and results in a lower cost to drive than its peers, and more effective mileage per hour charging than less efficient competitors.
Charging my wife’s Mercedes B-Class Electric Drive for 3 hours on a Level 2 charger (@6.6kW) with an efficiency of 2.9 miles per kWh, we would be able to drive about 57 miles. At the same charging rate and duration, the i3 would be able to travel an impressive 81 miles. That means less charge time to go the same distance … not to mention a lower cost.
Summary
The BMW i3 remains an impressive vehicle and the incremental boost in range makes it that much more formidable for commuters and families looking to go electric in stylish luxury.
With all its allure, though, the i3 will struggle to remain competitive when pitted up against EVs with double the range and with capability to charge up in half the time (like the Chevy Bolt and the Tesla Model 3).
I’ll share further details and commentary in a more in-depth review article (3–4 times as long) in the coming days.Former North Carolina Commerce Secretary and businessman Keith Crisco, who challenged former "American Idol" star Clay Aiken for the Democratic nomination in North Carolina's 2nd Congressional District, was reportedly found dead Monday.
The Asheboro Courier-Tribune reported that Crisco, 71, apparently suffered injuries from a fall Monday afternoon at his home in Asheboro, N.C. He was dead when emergency services arrived, according to the paper.
An employee with the Asheboro Elastics Corp., which Crisco co-founded, also confirmed his death.
The race between Aiken and Crisco was considered too close to call, with Aiken leading Crisco by just 369 votes. Both candidates were awaiting confirmation from election authorities before deciding how to proceed in the race to unseat Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) in November.
Crisco said in a statement Wednesday that he wasn't ready to concede.
UPDATE: 5:39 p.m. -- In a statement Monday, Ellmers said she was "deeply saddened" to hear of Crisco's death.
"I am deeply saddened by this sudden and painful tragedy and wish God's blessings for Keith's family through the coming days," Ellmers said. "His kindness and dedication to his principles were models we should all strive toward, and he will be dearly missed. My thoughts and prayers are with Keith's family, friends and loved ones during this difficult time."
UPDATE: 5:44 p.m. -- Aiken said in a Monday statement that he would suspend his campaign in the wake of Crisco's death:
I am stunned and deeply saddened by Keith Crisco’s death. Keith came from humble beginnings. No matter how high he rose — to Harvard, to the white House and to the Governor’s Cabinet — he never forgot where he came from.
He was a gentleman, a good and honorable man and an extraordinary public servant. I was honored to know him.
I am suspending all campaign activities as we pray for his family and friends.Ben Carson speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
Ben Carson, the secretary of the Housing and Urban Development, is reportedly obsessed with making sure low-income residents living in government-sponsored housing aren’t enjoying themselves too much.
A new report from the New York Times reveals that Carson this week visited a homeless shelter in Ohio and was “plainly happy” after he saw that it had “stacked dozens of bunk beds inside” and
“purposefully did not provide televisions” so that residents there wouldn’t get too comfortable.
Elsewhere, Carson expressed consternation that an apartment complex for veterans was so well heeled, as he remarked that it lacked “only pool tables.”
Carson obsessively makes sure that poor people who get government assistance don’t have things too good, the Times notes, because he believes that making life too comfortable for them would create a sense of dependence.
“A comfortable setting… would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me,'” Carson explained.
However, many residents and housing officials in the buildings that Carson toured this week dismissed his appearance there as a dog-and-pony show.
Alzene Munnerlyn, an 87-year-old woman who lives in senior housing, told the Times that she felt used after Carson stopped by her apartment, took a photo with her, and then left after about 10 minutes.
“It was staged,” she said. “It was so fast.”There are a number of problems with science journalism today, and they tend to feed on each other. Decades ago, when the newspaper industry had advertising-driven profit margins in the 10-25% range, newspaper companies were bought by conglomerates that wanted those sky-high profits. Advertising revenues have since plummeted largely as a result of web advertising, especially sites like Craig’s List. But those same conglomerates continue to expect sky high margins even though revenues have fallen. Because the conglomerates are unwilling to accept lower short-term profits, corporate managers instead force editors to lay off journalists.
In every business, the first people laid off are those who just plain suck at their job, cost the most, and are the least flexible. In the case of newspapers, the most expensive and least flexible people tend to be the oldest journalists and editors with the highest salaries, the specialists who produce little day-to-day volume but cost a lot, and those who are unwilling or unable to transition from one beat to another.
Generally speaking, the older journalists are the ones who have the most contacts and experience. When the older, more expensive journalists are laid off, the newspaper loses the access that journalist had to people in positions of power and people who can be counted on for good information. The newspaper also loses both professional and institutional experience as the older journalists disappear, and as a result younger journalists have less mentoring in their craft and produce less honed stories that are based on superficial information instead of deep sourcing. In addition, older journalists develop keen intuition about when someone is feeding them a line of bologna and so they are less easily manipulated by political operatives and corporate PR mavens than are younger journalists.
One type of specialist journalist, the investigative journalist, produces a good series maybe every few months but costs a the newspaper a great deal in the interim. Furthermore, the occasional series tend not to bring in the big advertisers and may in fact drive away some advertisers if the investigation was focused on some aspect of business or industry. Environmental journalists are even less friendly to the bottom line because they tend to target advertisers and can earn the newspaper more enemies than friends in the process of their reporting.
In the process of learning their specialization, science journalists tend to make themselves less skilled (mostly through disuse) at some forms of journalism just as they become more skilled at science journalism – some can make the transition back, but many cannot. This means that not only are science journalists more expensive as specialists, they’re also often less flexible too, making them newsroom targets.
All of these factors mean that the quality and variety of articles produced by the newspaper drops, and as they drop the newspaper’s distribution shrinks as people lose interest. And with fewer subscribers, the newspaper reaches fewer potential customers and advertising revenue shrinks ever further. This creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop that eats newspapers alive.
And while the focus has been on newspapers, the same basic dynamic is also occurring in broadcast news.
There are other issues as well, but they’re not necessarily as obvious as what I described above. The US is no longer as well educated as we used to be, and as our collective educational level has sagged over the last 30+ years so too has interest in science. This understandably leads to news outlets placing a lower priority on subjects of low interest, and as a result many news outlets have abandoned science sections in favor of wider sports and technology coverage. And specialist journalists who cover low-interest areas are even more likely to be considered expendable when the layoffs inevitably come.
Similarly, there is some public perception that environmentalism “won,” and that the big problems of environmentalism have been solved (CFCs, acid rain, deforestation in the US). So there’s less interest in environmental issues if they’re not specifically local to the community.
There are a huge number of science and environmental journalists blogging who used to be professionals on staff at major newspapers and broadcast news outlets (CNN, ABC, etc.) because of all the reasons I described above. And nearly every one of them I’ve talked to or listened to has complained about how their profession (science or environmental journalism) was dying because of the things I mentioned above.
Personal note: Thanks to all the discussions on the Society of Environmental Journalists email groups about how and why environmental journalism is shrinking, and to S&R’s own Dr. Denny who has written more about the changing media landscape than anyone else here. Click on Denny’s name to read all his articles.
Image Credit: Science ProgressCHEYENNE, Wyo. — Three companies expect within weeks to submit a plan to vastly increase the number of gas wells in central Wyoming.
The targeted area now has about 500 producing gas wells.
Encana Oil and Gas, Noble Energy and ConocoPhillips are talking about adding some 4,200 deep gas wells in the remote sagebrush country about 30 miles east of Riverton.
Encana spokesman Randy Teeuwen says his company is taking the lead on the project and will turn in a plan of development to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management within a few weeks.
The project would cover 400 square miles of mostly BLM land. The companies would tap deep, tight sand formations over 15 years of drilling.
The gas field would be among Wyoming’s largest if fully developed.Jeremy Corbyn is expected to seek the direct backing of grassroots Labour members and the party’s ruling body as he tries to persuade his MPs not to support David Cameron’s case for bombing Islamic State in Syria.
The Labour leader is facing a revolt from within his shadow cabinet over whether to back the government in a Commons vote next week, with most leaning in favour of military action, including Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, and Tom Watson, the deputy party leader.
However, Corbyn is prepared for a fight with the MPs who are in favour of the current proposals for military action by attempting to show they are out of step with wider opinion in the party, especially at grassroots level.
He has already written directly to MPs, saying: “I do not believe the prime minister’s current proposal for airstrikes in Syria will protect our security and therefore cannot support it.” The Labour whips were ringing round MPs for their opinions on Friday night about this statement.
Corbyn is expected to go over the heads of MPs who disagree by seeking the backing of the national executive committee for his position and has begun canvassing members for support, sending them an email on Friday night that read: “I am writing to consult you on what you think Britain should do. Should parliament vote to authorise the bombing of Syria?”
On top of that, Momentum, the grassroots group of Corbyn backers, has signed up more than 7,500 people in the last 24 hours to lobby their MP to vote against military action. Thousands of people are also expected to take part in a Stop the War demo over the weekend.
Corbyn’s position was further cemented by his two biggest union backers, Unite and Unison. Len McCluskey, the Unite leader, said the case had not been made by Cameron and the government proposals were a “knee-jerk reaction”, while Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, urged politicians “to take a step back and think twice about the implications of UK bombing raids over Syria”.
Amid signs that Labour MPs will be put under intense pressure to retreat from support of airstrikes, it is understood Downing Street will approach them individually offering briefings over the weekend to set out their thinking.
The French president, François Hollande, also made a direct appeal to British MPs to back the proposals, saying: “We want to destroy terrorism … I hope that the House of Commons will be able to meet the request of prime minister Cameron.”
His intervention appeared to be carefully choreographed with Downing Street at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Malta. A No 10 official was in the room and it came just a day after Cameron urged MPs to support his 36-page case for the UK to take part in airstrikes.
On the other side, Corbyn is seeking to bring MPs round to his position by the time of a shadow cabinet meeting on Monday, followed by a meeting of the parliamentary party, after they have time to reflect on their views and consult constituents over the weekend.
It is understood that if he does not win them round, it is possible Corbyn could allow a free vote but that decision has not yet been taken. It is not an option for the shadow cabinet to overrule him in favour of collectively supporting the proposal for military action because this would lead to them being sacked.
Labour sources said it was Watson, the deputy leader, who was trying to broker a deal for a free vote between Corbyn and the camp in favour of military action. Those who spoke up on Thursday in support of military action were Benn, Watson, Lucy Powell, the shadow education secretary, Michael Dugher, the shadow culture secretary, and Lord Falconer, the shadow lord chancellor, among others.
Those against Cameron’s plan include Jon Trickett, the shadow communities secretary, Diane Abbott, the shadow international development secretary, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, Nia Griffith, the shadow Welsh secretary, and John Cryer, the chair of the parliamentary party.
Corbyn’s leadership publicly came under pressure on Thursday from two former Labour ministers, Fiona Mactaggart and John Spellar, who became the first to suggest he should think about quitting over his handling of the vote.
Asked about the possibility of a mass shadow cabinet walkout, Spellar, a former defence minister, said: “They should not resign. They should hold on to those places … If anyone should resign after this incident, it should be Jeremy Corbyn.”
There were reports last night that rebel Labour MPs have got legal advice saying they have a chance of keeping Corbyn off the ballot paper if there were to be a challenge to his leadership.
However, a senior Labour aide, who is not in Corbyn’s camp, said there were signs that the leader was “piling on pressure quite successfully” for MPs not to vote in favour of the action.
Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, revealed the pressure that some Labour MPs were facing in a statement on his Facebook page. He said it was very likely he would vote against extending military action in Syria, after weighing the evidence, but claimed that “a number of Labour colleagues are experiencing tactics that can only be described as bullying and intimidating: hostile resolutions, abusive messages and threats of deselection”.
“This is no way to conduct debate on such an important issue – or indeed any issue,” he said.
There was also evidence on Friday night that Labour MPs were anxious for more reassurances from Cameron before they are willing to vote for his proposals. In particular, they want an explanation from Cameron about his claim that around 75,000 moderate rebel troops could be ready to secure the territory if Isis is defeated, and an explicit promise that there will be no boots on the ground.
Benn, who insists he will not resign over the matter, said he believed it was important the UK was “playing our full part” in military action to defeat Isis.
In clear contrast to Corbyn’s position, he told the BBC: “We have heard compelling arguments both because of the threat to the United Kingdom and also because we are right to have been taking the action that we have in Iraq to support the Iraqi government in trying to repel the invasion” from Isis.
But Labour sources also said he wants Cameron to “fix” the confusion about this figure and post-conflict plans.
Chris Bryant, the shadow leader of the Commons, who is a member of the shadow cabinet, also made clear Cameron needed to answer some outstanding questions that have been raised by Labour and Tory MPs alike after the government’s case was presented on Thursday.
“We don’t want to give Isis a free pass but we also don’t want to give Cameron carte blanche for this,” he said.
Two former leadership candidates, Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, and Yvette Cooper are both understood to be undecided about how to vote.
Cooper wrote to the prime minister on Friday, saying she belived the government had made a “strong moral and legal case for the UK joining military airstrikes to defeat the totalitarianism of Isis” but practical questions remained about ground troops, a strategy to stop the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, being strengthened and how to safeguard those at risk of becoming refugees.
She also requested “direct briefings, including security briefings for privy counsellors, to be held as swiftly as possibly”, expressing concern that very few MPs have been given detailed briefings by the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.
A number of shadow cabinet ministers are known to be seeking private briefings with security chiefs, which Downing Street has said it is happy to provide, although Corbyn’s office is meant to be the main conduit for such discussions.
The text of a possible motion has not been published but Cameron’s official spokesman said the prime minister had been clear that MPs would have to decide whether to back extension of airstrikes in Syria based on the case set out in his 36-page document on Thursday.
Downing Street is refusing to confirm a date for the vote but it is thought most likely to happen on Wednesday. No 10 sources stressed that they were still prepared not to hold one at all if it looks like the government does not have a clear majority for extension of military action. He is expected to have the backing of the vast majority of Conservative MPs but wants a decisive number of opposition MPs to back him as well, after the humiliation of losing a vote on airstrikes against the Syrian regime in 2013.Noah Graham/Getty Images
James Michael McAdoo will be an unrestricted free agent on July 1 after the Golden State Warriors chose not to tender him a qualifying offer, per Chris Haynes of ESPN.
The three-year veteran would have been a restricted free agent, but he will now be free to sign with any team.
The forward averaged 2.8 points in 52 regular-season games this past year.
McAdoo played 457 total minutes this season, which was more than his first two years in the league combined. The 6'9" forward was especially useful on defense, as he produced a 2.4 defensive box plus/minus, which ranked sixth on the team, per Basketball Reference. That mark placed him ahead of noted quality defenders Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala.
However, the Warriors needed to carve out as much cap space as possible for other key contributors, starting with Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant. Much of Golden State's bench is also headed into free agency, including Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and David West, among others.
Once the Warriors relinquish McAdoo's rights, he'll be cleared from their books. He'll now have a chance to find more playing time on another team after winning two rings in the last three years.Check out this exclusive stream of Alesana's A Place Where The Sun Is Silent, out Oct. 18 via Epitaph. All of the band's forthcoming tour dates are below!
Motel 6 “Rock Yourself To Sleep” Tour Dates:
10/13/11 Worcester, MA, The Palladium
10/14/11 Philadelphia, PA, Theatre of the Living Arts
10/15/11 |
remains of Pithecanthropus erectus (now known as Homo erectus). Finally, in 1895, he died of a heart attack (after contracting influenza and pneumonia), and was buried in North London at St Marylebone. This small family plot had been purchased upon the death of his beloved youngest son Noel, who died of scarlet fever in 1860; Huxley's wife Henrietta Anne née Heathorn and son Noel are also buried there. No invitations were sent out, but two hundred people turned up for the ceremony; they included Joseph Dalton Hooker, William Henry Flower, Mulford B. Foster, Edwin Lankester, Joseph Lister and, apparently, Henry James.[26]
Huxley and his wife had five daughters and three sons:
Noel Huxley (1856–1860), died aged 4. Jessie Oriana Huxley (1856–1927), married architect Fred Waller in 1877. Marian Huxley (1859–1887), married artist John Collier in 1879. Leonard Huxley (1860–1933), married Julia Arnold. Rachel Huxley (1862–1934), married civil engineer Alfred Eckersley in 1884. Henrietta (Nettie) Huxley (1863–1940), married Harold Roller, travelled Europe as a singer. Henry Huxley (1865–1946), became a fashionable general practitioner in London. Ethel Huxley (1866–1941) married artist John Collier (widower of sister) in 1889.
Public duties and awards [ edit ]
From 1870 onwards, Huxley was to some extent drawn away from scientific research by the claims of public duty. He served on eight Royal Commissions, from 1862 to 1884. From 1871 to 1880 he was a Secretary of the Royal Society and from 1883 to 1885 he was president. He was president of the Geological Society from 1868 to 1870. In 1870, he was president of the British Association at Liverpool and, in the same year was elected a member of the newly constituted London School Board. He was president of the Quekett Microscopical Club from 1877 to 1879. He was the leading person amongst those who reformed the Royal Society, persuaded government about science, and established scientific education in British schools and universities.[27] Before him, science was mostly a gentleman's occupation; after him, science was a profession.[28]
He was awarded the highest honours then open to British men of science. The Royal Society, who had elected him as Fellow when he was 25 (1851), awarded him the Royal Medal the next year (1852), a year before Charles Darwin got the same award. He was the youngest biologist to receive such recognition. Then later in life came the Copley Medal in 1888 and the Darwin Medal in 1894; the Geological Society awarded him the Wollaston Medal in 1876; the Linnean Society awarded him the Linnean Medal in 1890. There were many other elections and appointments to eminent scientific bodies; these and his many academic awards are listed in the Life and Letters. He turned down many other appointments, notably the Linacre chair in zoology at Oxford and the Mastership of University College, Oxford.[29]
Huxley
by Bassano c1883
In 1873 the King of Sweden made Huxley, Hooker and Tyndall Knights of the Order of the Polar Star: they could wear the insignia but not use the title in Britain.[30] Huxley collected many honorary memberships of foreign societies, academic awards and honorary doctorates from Britain and Germany. He also became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892.[31]
As recognition of his many public services he was given a pension by the state, and was appointed Privy Councillor in 1892.
Despite his many achievements he was given no award by the British state until late in life. In this he did better than Darwin, who got no award of any kind from the state. (Darwin's proposed knighthood was vetoed by ecclesiastical advisers, including Wilberforce)[32] Perhaps Huxley had commented too often on his dislike of honours, or perhaps his many assaults on the traditional beliefs of organised religion made enemies in the establishment—he had vigorous debates in print with Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone and Arthur Balfour, and his relationship with Lord Salisbury was less than tranquil.[14][33]
Huxley was for about thirty years evolution's most effective advocate, and for some Huxley was "the premier advocate of science in the nineteenth century [for] the whole English-speaking world".[34]
Though he had many admirers and disciples, his retirement and later death left British zoology somewhat bereft of leadership. He had, directly or indirectly, guided the careers and appointments of the next generation, but none were of his stature. The loss of Francis Balfour in 1882, climbing the Alps just after he was appointed to a chair at Cambridge, was a tragedy. Huxley thought he was "the only man who can carry out my work": the deaths of Balfour and W. K. Clifford were "the greatest losses to science in our time".[14]
Vertebrate palaeontology [ edit ]
The first half of Huxley's career as a palaeontologist is marked by a rather strange predilection for 'persistent types', in which he seemed to argue that evolutionary advancement (in the sense of major new groups of animals and plants) was rare or absent in the Phanerozoic. In the same vein, he tended to push the origin of major groups such as birds and mammals back into the Palaeozoic era, and to claim that no order of plants had ever gone extinct.[citation needed]
Much paper has been consumed by historians of science ruminating on this strange and somewhat unclear idea.[35] Huxley was wrong to pitch the loss of orders in the Phanerozoic as low as 7%, and he did not estimate the number of new orders which evolved. Persistent types sat rather uncomfortably next to Darwin's more fluid ideas; despite his intelligence, it took Huxley a surprisingly long time to appreciate some of the implications of evolution. However, gradually Huxley moved away from this conservative style of thinking as his understanding of palaeontology, and the discipline itself, developed.[citation needed]
Huxley's detailed anatomical work was, as always, first-rate and productive. His work on fossil fish shows his distinctive approach: whereas pre-Darwinian naturalists collected, identified and classified, Huxley worked mainly to reveal the evolutionary relationships between groups.[citation needed]
Huxley by Wirgman
a drawing in pencil, 1882
The lobed-finned fish (such as coelacanths and lung fish) have paired appendages whose internal skeleton is attached to the shoulder or pelvis by a single bone, the humerus or femur. His interest in these fish brought him close to the origin of tetrapods, one of the most important areas of vertebrate palaeontology.[36][37][38]
The study of fossil reptiles led to his demonstrating the fundamental affinity of birds and reptiles, which he united under the title of Sauropsida. His papers on Archaeopteryx and the origin of birds were of great interest then and still are.[23][39][40]
Apart from his interest in persuading the world that man was a primate, and had descended from the same stock as the apes, Huxley did little work on mammals, with one exception. On his tour of America Huxley was shown the remarkable series of fossil horses, discovered by O. C. Marsh, in Yale's Peabody Museum.[41][42] Marsh was part palaeontologist, part robber baron, a man who had hunted buffalo and met Red Cloud (in 1874). Funded by his uncle George Peabody, Marsh had made some remarkable discoveries: the huge Cretaceous aquatic bird Hesperornis, and the dinosaur footprints along the Connecticut River were worth the trip by themselves, but the horse fossils were really special.[according to whom?]
Eohippus being ridden by "Eohomo" Huxley's sketch of then hypothetical five-toedbeing ridden by "Eohomo"
The collection at that time went from the small four-toed forest-dwelling Orohippus from the Eocene through three-toed species such as Miohippus to species more like the modern horse. By looking at their teeth he could see that, as the size grew larger and the toes reduced, the teeth changed from those of a browser to those of a grazer. All such changes could be explained by a general alteration in habitat from forest to grassland.[citation needed] And, it is now known, that is what did happen over large areas of North America from the Eocene to the Pleistocene: the ultimate causative agent was global temperature reduction (see Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum). The modern account of the evolution of the horse has many other members, and the overall appearance of the tree of descent is more like a bush than a straight line.
The horse series also strongly suggested that the process was gradual, and that the origin of the modern horse lay in North America, not in Eurasia. If so, then something must have happened to horses in North America, since none were there when Europeans arrived. The experience was enough for Huxley to give credence to Darwin's gradualism, and to introduce the story of the horse into his lecture series.[citation needed]
Darwin's bulldog [ edit ]
Huxley was originally not persuaded of "development theory", as evolution was once called. This can be seen in his savage review[43] of Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a book which contained some quite pertinent arguments in favour of evolution. Huxley had also rejected Lamarck's theory of transmutation, on the basis that there was insufficient evidence to support it. All this scepticism was brought together in a lecture to the Royal Institution,[44] which made Darwin anxious enough to set about an effort to change young Huxley's mind. It was the kind of thing Darwin did with his closest scientific friends, but he must have had some particular intuition about Huxley, who was from all accounts a most impressive person even as a young man.[45][46]
Huxley was therefore one of the small group who knew about Darwin's ideas before they were published (the group included Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Lyell). The first publication by Darwin of his ideas came when Wallace sent Darwin his famous paper on natural selection, which was presented by Lyell and Hooker to the Linnean Society in 1858 alongside excerpts from Darwin's notebook and a Darwin letter to Asa Gray.[47][48] Huxley's famous response to the idea of natural selection was "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"[49] However, he never conclusively made up his mind about whether natural selection was the main method for evolution, though he did admit it was a hypothesis which was a good working basis.
Logically speaking, the prior question was whether evolution had taken place at all. It is to this question that much of Darwin's On the Origin of Species was devoted. Its publication in 1859 completely convinced Huxley of evolution and it was this and no doubt his admiration of Darwin's way of amassing and using evidence that formed the basis of his support for Darwin in the debates that followed the book's publication.
Huxley's support started with his anonymous favourable review of the Origin in the Times for 26 December 1859,[50] and continued with articles in several periodicals, and in a lecture at the Royal Institution in February 1860.[51] At the same time, Richard Owen, whilst writing an extremely hostile anonymous review of the Origin in the Edinburgh Review,[52] also primed Samuel Wilberforce who wrote one in the Quarterly Review, running to 17,000 words.[53] The authorship of this latter review was not known for sure until Wilberforce's son wrote his biography. So it can be said that, just as Darwin groomed Huxley, so Owen groomed Wilberforce; and both the proxies fought public battles on behalf of their principals as much as themselves. Though we do not know the exact words of the Oxford debate, we do know what Huxley thought of the review in the Quarterly:
Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the Origin of Species to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...[54][55]
Huxley said "I am Darwin's bulldog". While the second half of Darwin's life was lived mainly within his family, the younger combative Huxley operated mainly out in the world at large. A letter from Huxley to Ernst Haeckel (2 November 1871) states: "The dogs have been snapping at [Darwin's] heels too much of late." At Oxford and Cambridge Universities, "Bulldog" was and still is student slang for a university policeman, whose job was to corral errant students and maintain their moral rectitude.
Debate with Wilberforce [ edit ]
Famously, Huxley responded to Wilberforce in the debate at the British Association meeting, on Saturday 30 June 1860 at the Oxford University Museum. Huxley's presence there had been encouraged on the previous evening when he met Robert Chambers, the Scottish publisher and author of "Vestiges", who was walking the streets of Oxford in a dispirited state, and begged for assistance. The debate followed the presentation of a paper by John William Draper, and was chaired by Darwins's former botany tutor John Stevens Henslow. Darwin's theory was opposed by the Lord Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and those supporting Darwin included Huxley and their mutual friends Hooker and Lubbock. The platform featured Brodie and Professor Beale, and Robert FitzRoy, who had been captain of HMS Beagle during Darwin's voyage, spoke against Darwin.[56]
Wilberforce had a track record against evolution as far back as the previous Oxford B.A. meeting in 1847 when he attacked Chambers' Vestiges. For the more challenging task of opposing the Origin, and the implication that man descended from apes, he had been assiduously coached by Richard Owen – Owen stayed with him the night before the debate.[57] On the day Wilberforce repeated some of the arguments from his Quarterly Review article (written but not yet published), then ventured onto slippery ground. His famous jibe at Huxley (as to whether Huxley was descended from an ape on his mother's side or his father's side) was probably unplanned, and certainly unwise. Huxley's reply to the effect that he would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his great talents to suppress debate—the exact wording is not certain—was widely recounted in pamphlets and a spoof play.
The letters of Alfred Newton include one to his brother giving an eyewitness account of the debate, and written less than a month afterwards.[58] Other eyewitnesses, with one or two exceptions (Hooker especially thought he had made the best points), give similar accounts, at varying dates after the event.[59] The general view was and still is that Huxley got much the better of the exchange though Wilberforce himself thought he had done quite well. In the absence of a verbatim report differing perceptions are difficult to judge fairly; Huxley wrote a detailed account for Darwin, a letter which does not survive; however, a letter to his friend Frederick Daniel Dyster does survive with an account just three months after the event.[60][61][62][63][64][65]
One effect of the debate was to increase hugely Huxley's visibility amongst educated people, through the accounts in newspapers and periodicals. Another consequence was to alert him to the importance of public debate: a lesson he never forgot. A third effect was to serve notice that Darwinian ideas could not be easily dismissed: on the contrary, they would be vigorously defended against orthodox authority.[66][67] A fourth effect was to promote professionalism in science, with its implied need for scientific education. A fifth consequence was indirect: as Wilberforce had feared, a defence of evolution did undermine literal belief in the Old Testament, especially the Book of Genesis. Many of the liberal clergy at the meeting were quite pleased with the outcome of the debate; they were supporters, perhaps, of the controversial Essays and Reviews. Thus both on the side of science, and on the side of religion, the debate was important, and its outcome significant.[68] (see also below)
That Huxley and Wilberforce remained on courteous terms after the debate (and able to work together on projects such as the Metropolitan Board of Education) says something about both men, whereas Huxley and Owen were never reconciled.
Man's place in nature [ edit ]
For nearly a decade his work was directed mainly to the relationship of man to the apes. This led him directly into a clash with Richard Owen, a man widely disliked for his behaviour whilst also being admired for his capability. The struggle was to culminate in some severe defeats for Owen. Huxley's Croonian Lecture, delivered before the Royal Society in 1858 on The Theory of the Vertebrate Skull was the start. In this, he rejected Owen's theory that the bones of the skull and the spine were homologous, an opinion previously held by Goethe and Lorenz Oken.[69]
Huxley at 32
From 1860–63 Huxley developed his ideas, presenting them in lectures to working men, students and the general public, followed by publication. Also in 1862 a series of talks to working men was printed lecture by lecture as pamphlets, later bound up as a little green book; the first copies went on sale in December.[70] Other lectures grew into Huxley's most famous work Evidence as to Man's place in Nature (1863) where he addressed the key issues long before Charles Darwin published his Descent of Man in 1871.
Although Darwin did not publish his Descent of Man until 1871, the general debate on this topic had started years before (there was even a precursor debate in the 18th century between Monboddo and Buffon). Darwin had dropped a hint when, in the conclusion to the Origin, he wrote: "In the distant future... light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history".[71] Not so distant, as it turned out. A key event had already occurred in 1857 when Richard Owen presented (to the Linnean Society) his theory that man was marked off from all other mammals by possessing features of the brain peculiar to the genus Homo. Having reached this opinion, Owen separated man from all other mammals in a subclass of its own.[72] No other biologist held such an extreme view. Darwin reacted "Man...as distinct from a chimpanzee [as] an ape from a platypus... I cannot swallow that!"[73] Neither could Huxley, who was able to demonstrate that Owen's idea was completely wrong.
Huxley with sketch
of a gorilla skull (c1870)
The subject was raised at the 1860 BA Oxford meeting, when Huxley flatly contradicted Owen, and promised a later demonstration of the facts. In fact, a number of demonstrations were held in London and the provinces. In 1862 at the Cambridge meeting of the B.A. Huxley's friend William Flower gave a public dissection to show that the same structures (the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and hippocampus minor) were indeed present in apes. The debate was widely publicised, and parodied as the Great Hippocampus Question. It was seen as one of Owen's greatest blunders, revealing Huxley as not only dangerous in debate, but also a better anatomist.
Owen conceded that there was something that could be called a hippocampus minor in the apes, but stated that it was much less developed and that such a presence did not detract from the overall distinction of simple brain size.[74]
Huxley's ideas on this topic were summed up in January 1861 in the first issue (new series) of his own journal, the Natural History Review: "the most violent scientific paper he had ever composed".[47] This paper was reprinted in 1863 as chapter 2 of Man's Place in Nature, with an addendum giving his account of the Owen/Huxley controversy about the ape brain.[75] In his Collected Essays this addendum was removed.
The extended argument on the ape brain, partly in debate and partly in print, backed by dissections and demonstrations, was a landmark in Huxley's career. It was highly important in asserting his dominance of comparative anatomy, and in the long run more influential in establishing evolution amongst biologists than was the debate with Wilberforce. It also marked the start of Owen's decline in the esteem of his fellow biologists.
The following was written by Huxley to Rolleston before the BA meeting in 1861:
"My dear Rolleston... The obstinate reiteration of erroneous assertions can only be nullified by as persistent an appeal to facts; and I greatly regret that my engagements do not permit me to be present at the British Association in order to assist personally at what, I believe, will be the seventh public demonstration during the past twelve months of the untruth of the three assertions, that the posterior lobe of the cerebrum, the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor, are peculiar to man and do not exist in the apes. I shall be obliged if you will read this letter to the Section" Yours faithfully, Thos. H. Huxley.[76]
During those years there was also work on human fossil anatomy and anthropology. In 1862 he examined the Neanderthal skull-cap, which had been discovered in 1857. It was the first pre-sapiens discovery of a fossil man, and it was immediately clear to him that the brain case was surprisingly large.[77]
Perhaps less productive was his work on physical anthropology, a topic which fascinated the Victorians. Huxley classified the human races into nine categories, and discussed them under four headings as: Australoid, Negroid, Xanthocroic and Mongoloid types. Such classifications depended mainly on appearance and anatomical characteristics.[78][79]
Natural selection [ edit ]
Huxley was certainly not slavish in his dealings with Darwin. As shown in every biography, they had quite different and rather complementary characters. Important also, Darwin was a field naturalist, but Huxley was an anatomist, so there was a difference in their experience of nature. Lastly, Darwin's views on science were different from Huxley's views. For Darwin, natural selection was the best way to explain evolution because it explained a huge range of natural history facts and observations: it solved problems. Huxley, on the other hand, was an empiricist who trusted what he could see, and some things are not easily seen. With this in mind, one can appreciate the debate between them, Darwin writing his letters, Huxley never going quite so far as to say he thought Darwin was right.
Huxley's reservations on natural selection were of the type "until selection and breeding can be seen to give rise to varieties which are infertile with each other, natural selection cannot be proved".[80][81] Huxley's position on selection was agnostic; yet he gave no credence to any other theory. Despite this concern about evidence, Huxley saw that if evolution came about through variation, reproduction and selection then other things would also be subject to the same pressures. This included ideas because they are invented, imitated and selected by humans: ‘The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.’[82] This is the same idea as meme theory put forward by Richard Dawkins in 1976.[83]
Darwin's part in the discussion came mostly in letters, as was his wont, along the lines: "The empirical evidence you call for is both impossible in practical terms, and in any event unnecessary. It's the same as asking to see every step in the transformation (or the splitting) of one species into another. My way so many issues are clarified and problems solved; no other theory does nearly so well".[84]
Huxley's reservation, as Helena Cronin has so aptly remarked, was contagious: "it spread itself for years among all kinds of doubters of Darwinism".[85] One reason for this doubt was that comparative anatomy could address the question of descent, but not the question of mechanism.[86]
Pallbearer [ edit ]
Huxley was a pallbearer at the funeral of Charles Darwin on 26 April 1882.[87]
The X Club [ edit ]
In November 1864, Huxley succeeded in launching a dining club, the X Club, composed of like-minded people working to advance the cause of science; not surprisingly, the club consisted of most of his closest friends. There were nine members, who decided at their first meeting that there should be no more. The members were: Huxley, John Tyndall, J. D. Hooker, John Lubbock (banker, biologist and neighbour of Darwin), Herbert Spencer (social philosopher and sub-editor of the Economist), William Spottiswoode (mathematician and the Queen's Printer), Thomas Hirst (Professor of Physics at University College London), Edward Frankland (the new Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution) and George Busk, zoologist and palaeontologist (formerly surgeon for HMS Dreadnought). All except Spencer were Fellows of the Royal Society. Tyndall was a particularly close friend; for many years they met regularly and discussed issues of the day. On more than one occasion Huxley joined Tyndall in the latter's trips into the Alps and helped with his investigations in glaciology.[88][89][90]
From the portrait of A. Legros.
There were also some quite significant X-Club satellites such as William Flower and George Rolleston, (Huxley protegés), and liberal clergyman Arthur Stanley, the Dean of Westminster. Guests such as Charles Darwin and Hermann von Helmholtz were entertained from time to time.[91]
They would dine early on first Thursdays at a hotel, planning what to do; high on the agenda was to change the way the Royal Society Council did business. It was no coincidence that the Council met later that same evening. First item for the Xs was to get the Copley Medal for Darwin, which they managed after quite a struggle.
The next step was to acquire a journal to spread their ideas. This was the weekly Reader, which they bought, revamped and redirected. Huxley had already become part-owner of the Natural History Review[92] bolstered by the support of Lubbock, Rolleston, Busk and Carpenter (X-clubbers and satellites). The journal was switched to pro-Darwinian lines and relaunched in January 1861. After a stream of good articles the NHR failed after four years; but it had helped at a critical time for the establishment of evolution. The Reader also failed, despite its broader appeal which included art and literature as well as science. The periodical market was quite crowded at the time, but most probably the critical factor was Huxley's time; he was simply over-committed, and could not afford to hire full-time editors. This occurred often in his life: Huxley took on too many ventures, and was not so astute as Darwin at getting others to do work for him.
However, the experience gained with the Reader was put to good use when the X Club put their weight behind the founding of Nature in 1869. This time no mistakes were made: above all there was a permanent editor (though not full-time), Norman Lockyer, who served until 1919, a year before his death. In 1925, to celebrate his centenary, Nature issued a supplement devoted to Huxley.[93]
The peak of the X Club's influence was from 1873 to 1885 as Hooker, Spottiswoode and Huxley were Presidents of the Royal Society in succession. Spencer resigned in 1889 after a dispute with Huxley over state support for science.[94] After 1892 it was just an excuse for the surviving members to meet. Hooker died in 1911, and Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) was the last surviving member.
Huxley was also an active member of the Metaphysical Society, which ran from 1869 to 1880.[95] It was formed around a nucleus of clergy and expanded to include all kinds of opinions. Tyndall and Huxley later joined The Club (founded by Dr. Johnson) when they could be sure that Owen would not turn up.[96]
Educational influence [ edit ]
When Huxley himself was young there were virtually no degrees in British universities in the biological sciences and few courses. Most biologists of his day were either self-taught, or took medical degrees. When he retired there were established chairs in biological disciplines in most universities, and a broad consensus on the curricula to be followed. Huxley was the single most influential person in this transformation.
School of Mines and Zoology [ edit ]
In the early 1870s the Royal School of Mines moved to new quarters in South Kensington; ultimately it would become one of the constituent parts of Imperial College London. The move gave Huxley the chance to give more prominence to laboratory work in biology teaching, an idea suggested by practice in German universities.[27] In the main, the method was based on the use of carefully chosen types, and depended on the dissection of anatomy, supplemented by microscopy, museum specimens and some elementary physiology at the hands of Foster.
The typical day would start with Huxley lecturing at 9am, followed by a program of laboratory work supervised by his demonstrators.[97] Huxley's demonstrators were picked men—all became leaders of biology in Britain in later life, spreading Huxley's ideas as well as their own. Michael Foster became Professor of Physiology at Cambridge; E. Ray Lankester became Jodrell Professor of Zoology at University College London (1875–91), Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford (1891–98) and Director of the Natural History Museum (1898–1907); S.H. Vines became Professor of Botany at Cambridge; W.T. Thiselton-Dyer became Hooker's successor at Kew (he was already Hooker's son-in-law!); T. Jeffery Parker became Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College, Cardiff; and William Rutherford[98] became the Professor of Physiology at Edinburgh. William Flower, Conservator to the Hunterian Museum, and THH's assistant in many dissections, became Sir William Flower, Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and, later, Director of the Natural History Museum.[33] It's a remarkable list of disciples, especially when contrasted with Owen who, in a longer professional life than Huxley, left no disciples at all. "No one fact tells so strongly against Owen... as that he has never reared one pupil or follower".[99]
Photograph of Huxley (c. 1890)
Huxley's courses for students were so much narrower than the man himself that many were bewildered by the contrast: "The teaching of zoology by use of selected animal types has come in for much criticism";[100] Looking back in 1914 to his time as a student, Sir Arthur Shipley said "Darwin's later works all dealt with living organisms, yet our obsession was with the dead, with bodies preserved, and cut into the most refined slices".[101] E.W MacBride said "Huxley... would persist in looking at animals as material structures and not as living, active beings; in a word... he was a necrologist.[102] To put it simply, Huxley preferred to teach what he had actually seen with his own eyes.
This largely morphological program of comparative anatomy remained at the core of most biological education for a hundred years until the advent of cell and molecular biology and interest in evolutionary ecology forced a fundamental rethink. It is an interesting fact that the methods of the field naturalists who led the way in developing the theory of evolution (Darwin, Wallace, Fritz Müller, Henry Bates) were scarcely represented at all in Huxley's program. Ecological investigation of life in its environment was virtually non-existent, and theory, evolutionary or otherwise, was at a discount. Michael Ruse finds no mention of evolution or Darwinism in any of the exams set by Huxley, and confirms the lecture content based on two complete sets of lecture notes.[103]
Since Darwin, Wallace and Bates did not hold teaching posts at any stage of their adult careers (and Műller never returned from Brazil) the imbalance in Huxley's program went uncorrected. It is surely strange that Huxley's courses did not contain an account of the evidence collected by those naturalists of life in the tropics; evidence which they had found so convincing, and which caused their views on evolution by natural selection to be so similar. Desmond suggests that "[biology] had to be simple, synthetic and assimilable [because] it was to train teachers and had no other heuristic function".[104] That must be part of the reason; indeed it does help to explain the stultifying nature of much school biology. But zoology as taught at all levels became far too much the product of one man.
Huxley was comfortable with comparative anatomy, at which he was the greatest master of the day. He was not an all-round naturalist like Darwin, who had shown clearly enough how to weave together detailed factual information and subtle arguments across the vast web of life. Huxley chose, in his teaching (and to some extent in his research) to take a more straightforward course, concentrating on his personal strengths.
Schools and the Bible [ edit ]
Huxley was also a major influence in the direction taken by British schools: in November 1870 he was voted onto the London School Board.[105] In primary schooling, he advocated a wide range of disciplines, similar to what is taught today: reading, writing, arithmetic, art, science, music, etc. In secondary education he recommended two years of basic liberal studies followed by two years of some upper-division work, focusing on a more specific area of study. A practical example of the latter is his famous 1868 lecture On a Piece of Chalk which was first published as an essay in Macmillan's Magazine in London later that year.[106] The piece reconstructs the geological history of Britain from a simple piece of chalk and demonstrates science as "organized common sense".
Huxley supported the reading of the Bible in schools. This may seem out of step with his agnostic convictions, but he believed that the Bible's significant moral teachings and superb use of language were relevant to English life. "I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches".[107] However, what Huxley proposed was to create an edited version of the Bible, shorn of "shortcomings and errors... statements to which men of science absolutely and entirely demur... These tender children [should] not be taught that which you do not yourselves believe".[108][109] The Board voted against his idea, but it also voted against the idea that public money should be used to support students attending church schools. Vigorous debate took place on such points, and the debates were minuted in detail. Huxley said "I will never be a party to enabling the State to sweep the children of this country into denominational schools".[110][111] The Act of Parliament which founded board schools permitted the reading of the Bible, but did not permit any denominational doctrine to be taught.
It may be right to see Huxley's life and work as contributing to the secularisation of British society which gradually occurred over the following century. Ernst Mayr said "It can hardly be doubted that [biology] has helped to undermine traditional beliefs and value systems"[112] — and Huxley more than anyone else was responsible for this trend in Britain. Some modern Christian apologists consider Huxley the father of antitheism, though he himself maintained that he was an agnostic, not an atheist. He was, however, a lifelong and determined opponent of almost all organised religion throughout his life, especially the "Roman Church... carefully calculated for the destruction of all that is highest in the moral nature, in the intellectual freedom, and in the political freedom of mankind".[111][113] In the same line of thought, in an article in Popular Science, Huxley used the expression "the so-called Christianity of Catholicism," explaining: "I say'so-called' not by way of offense, but as a protest against the monstruous assumption that Catholic Christianity is explicitly or implicitly contained in any trust-worthy record of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth."[114]
In 1893, during preparation for the second Romanes Lecture, Huxley expressed his disappointment at the shortcomings of 'liberal' theology, describing its doctrines as 'popular illusions', and the teachings they replaced 'faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth'.[115]
Vladimir Lenin remarked (in Materialism and empirio-criticism) "In Huxley's case... agnosticism serves as a fig-leaf for materialism" (see also the Debate with Wilberforce above).
Adult education [ edit ]
Huxley's interest in education went still further than school and university classrooms; he made a great effort to reach interested adults of all kinds: after all, he himself was largely self-educated. There were his lecture courses for working men, many of which were published afterwards, and there was |
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“I thought it went very well,” Shea said. “In four weeks that we’ve been together, I’ve never seen him favor that knee or anything. So I’m really excited that he’s healthy.”
In fact, Murray is apparently ahead of schedule in his recovery. Trevor Moawad, vice president at the EXOS/Athletes’ Performance facilities where Murray conducted his offseason workouts, said the training staff followed a similar rehab schedule as they did with Bradford, who was also coming off an injury when preparing for the 2010 draft.
“I think he’s ahead of probably where he should be at this time and I think come May 8 after the draft, I think he’s going to be able to show up at a team and be right where he needs to be,” Moawad said.
Murray was the featured attraction at Wednesday’s sparsely attended pro day, which represented a significant change from last year, when the Bulldogs had eight players drafted -- four in the first 85 picks -- and three more who made NFL rosters as undrafted free agents.
Murray (No. 129) is the only Bulldog listed among ESPN’s top 150 draft prospects, and only he and tight end Arthur Lynch received invitations to the NFL combine. Nonetheless, 15 former Bulldogs worked out Wednesday before the 23 NFL teams that had representatives on hand -- many of whom still harbor hopes of becoming late-round selections or undrafted free agents.
That group included offensive guards Chris Burnette and Dallas Lee, both of whom snapped to the quarterbacks during passing drills, showing off what they hope teams will view as positional versatility.
“I feel like you get to the next level, they want to have a guy who’s a swingman, who can play multiple positions,” said Burnette, rated by ESPN as the draft’s No. 19 guard prospect. “I don’t want to limit myself to guard. I’ve had a little bit of experience playing center, so I tried to focus on my snaps and stuff like that during this time off. I think it was good for me to be able to do that.”
Another player hoping to catch an NFL club’s eye was defensive lineman Garrison Smith, who ranked fourth on the team with 63 tackles and added six sacks and 10 tackles for a loss. Smith is hardly a flashy player, but said scouts who pay close attention to his performances on film will see an NFL-caliber player.
“I can do it all. I can look good in a T-shirt, I can look good in the birthday suit, it don’t matter. But I’m a football player,” joked Smith, rated by ESPN as the No. 34 defensive tackle prospect. “When them pads get on, it gets real serious. In them trenches, ask about me down there. I’ve got a lot of respect down there and I made a lot of plays.
“Look at game film, look at my stats. I had good games against good teams this year. I didn’t have no amazing games against teams that they say were less of opponents. I had good games against Florida, LSU, Tennessee. They’re supposed to have one of the best offensive lines in the country. Watch the film. That’s all I want people to see: I’m a good player.”
Bulldogs coach Mark Richt agreed with his former player’s assessment, noting that he would not be surprised to see Smith find a way to stick on an NFL roster like the three undrafted Bulldogs -- receiver Marlon Brown and defensive linemen Kwame Geathers and Abry Jones -- did a year ago.
“People will see his film. They’ll see his productivity,” Richt said. “From what I’m hearing, if he doesn’t get drafted, he’s going to get into a camp and get a chance to make it. We had Geathers last year didn’t get drafted and made a team. We had Abry Jones, I don’t think he was drafted [and] he made a team. I’m hoping he gets drafted, but if he doesn’t, he’ll get in camp and I think he’ll find a way to stick.”Rob Cesternino speaks to the Latest Evicted Big Brother Houseguest[/caption]
Rob Cesternino talks to the fifth player evicted from Big Brother 15, Howard Overby on his official Rob Has a Podcast exit interview.
Rob starts off by asking Howard about what went wrong in his game. Going back to the week that Nick was voted out of the house, the moving company was in a pretty decent position until McCrae defected. Does Howard regret pushing for Amanda to go out that early in the game? Howard ended up on the wrong side of the numbers on the Nick vote and then got caught in a bad lie with Helen.
Turning specifically to Amanda, Rob wants to know about Howards feelings towards her and why he thinks that she was so threatened by him.
Howard became very close in the house with Candice, Rob asks Howard if this was just two people becoming friendly in the house or if was a true showmance.
Howard and Candice both dealt with a lot of ugly racially charged behavior in the house, specifically from Aaryn, Rob asks Howard how much of what Aaryn or others said he directly heard.
This week, when Howard sent Candice to go and talk to Aaryn, he used the phrase “go get your bed back”. Howard said that to Candice as she was leaving the house as well. Rob wants to know what was meant by that phrase.
Rob brings up a controversy from this week where Howard alledgedy whispered something innapropriate to Amanda in the Kitchen. Rob asks Howard if he remembers whispering to Amanda and if so what did he say.
Watch Thursday’s Post Show Recap with Ian TerryA week ago, we first blogged on the fact that the state of Iowa had a very odd tax treatment of pumpkins whereby if they were used for consumption (i.e. pumpkin pie), you paid no tax; but if they were used for decorations or other non-food purposes, you paid the state sales tax on the item.
Well it turns out that the blogosphere response to our initial post has led Iowa officials to reconsider this policy.
Here’s the full story courtesy of the Des Moines Register:
Here’s a Halloween riddle: What happened when Iowa Department of Revenue officials tried to tax pumpkins? They got squashed. Administrators announced Wednesday that they were backing off a policy of charging sales tax on pumpkins intended for use as jack-o’-lanterns. The decision came after The Des Moines Register reported the state’s claim that the big orange gourds did not qualify for the food exemption because they generally are used for decoration. The department said it announced the policy last year, but it acknowledged that many people didn’t notice until Wednesday, when the story whipsawed around the Internet and drew scads of derisive comments. Even as it rescinded the policy, the department issued a news release defending its original reasoning. “Food and food ingredients are defined as substances that are sold for ingestion or chewing by humans and are consumed for their taste or nutritional value,” the release said. The statement didn’t say why the department changed its policy, but the controversy apparently spooked Gov. Chet Culver. He issued his own statement after administrators went public with their reversal. “It has come to my attention that a policy change made in December of 2006 – before I took office – is resulting in this ridiculous pumpkin tax,” Culver said. “I have directed the Department of Revenue to do the common-sense thing and suspend collection of this tax and offer refunds to consumers or retailers who have been affected.”Heavy rains on Wednesday afternoon resulted in some commuters getting wet while on the train.
According to a Shin Min Daily News report yesterday, commuters on the East-West line were surprised when train doors opened at Tanah Merah station at around 1.50pm.
Rain fell from the top of the carriage into the gap between the carriage and the platform, soaking commuters alighting and boarding the train. Some resorted to opening their umbrellas in an attempt to avoid getting wet.
WET: Rainwater flowed into train cabins, wetting the floors. PHOTO: SHIN MIN DAILY NEWS
The floors of the carriages were also wet with rainwater that had flowed into the cabins.
Train service reportedly continued to run despite the damp situation, even as it was said by commuters to have been the same at Queenstown station, some 15 stops away.
WET: Rainwater flowed into train cabins, wetting the floors. PHOTO: SHIN MIN DAILY NEWSToast of London, Matt Berry’s Channel 4 comedy in which he plays pompous actor Stephen Toast, is returning for a second series, producers have confirmed.
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The critically acclaimed comedy, penned by The IT Crowd’s Berry and Father Ted scriptwriter Arthur Mathews, will return to the channel, possibly next year.
The show sees Berry as the flamboyant actor appearing in every scene, with Doon Mackichan as his eccentric agent and Robert Bathurst as his genial housemate.
It was a hit on Twitter, even if fewer than half a million viewers turned into for its 10:40pm Sunday slot.
The quickfire, surreal nature of the comedy was one of the reasons for its success – alongside the popular fascination with Berry’s trademark moustache.
“It looked f**king awful and I had it for six weeks and was embarrassed to go out or do anything normal because blokes don’t have big taches. It just looks weird,” he told RadioTimes.com.
Welcoming the news, Channel 4’s head of Comedy Phil Clarke said: “I’m delighted that Toast of London is returning for a second series. It is everything a Channel 4 comedy should be. Unapologetically original funny writing, driven by bold and hilarious performances from Matt Berry and the cast. It’s a unique comedy show, there’s nothing else like it.”
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Follow @RadioTimesGetty Images Who knows, maybe Kevin Garnett will pull a Willis Reed in Game 7. Who knows, maybe Kevin Garnett will pull a Willis Reed in Game 7.
I measure excruciating losses by the amount of time I walk my dog afterward. That's my ritual. My team gets crushed, I walk it off. The walks usually last for 15-20 minutes. The walk after Game 6 lasted for hours. I think I ended up in Compton.
At one point, Rufus just stopped. He had enough. It was like 9:45 at night. We were in the middle of nowhere. We were like 250 blocks from my house. I think we were on the same street where Ricky Baker got gunned down in "Boyz n the Hood." Rufus planted his furry butt on a sidewalk and stared me down.
"I'm not going back until you explain to me why Doc put Tony Allen in the game," I told him.
He kept staring at me.
"We were up by five," I said. "We had scored on like 10 straight possessions. We were humming. They couldn't stop us. The series was over."
More staring.
"Two and a half minutes left and we have the ball. Again, they can't stop us. So Doc brings in our worst player -- our least intelligent player, our most ineffective player, the master of the fantastic drive/missed layup -- and takes out Big Baby when he was our second-best player tonight? And all because Chicago went small? SO WE'RE REACTING TO A DESPERATION COACHING MOVE BY VINNY DEL NEGRO!!!!! REALLY, THAT'S WHAT WE DID?????????"
More staring, coupled with some panting.
INBOX OVERLOAD From Tony Allen to Ray Allen to everyone else, Game 6 between Boston and Chicago made Bill Simmons' inbox explode.
• Game 6: The readers have spoken
"And then, Tony ends up missing back-to-back shots and Chicago ties the game???? And it goes three overtimes and we lose because we make two straight 3-pointers with our toes on the line, then a WNBA player dunked on Paul Pierce, then we went to a guy shooting 4-for-47 on the deciding play when we have the best clutch shooter in the league and he had 51 points?"
At this point, I honestly expected Rufus to say something. Everything was in play, even talking dogs. We are watching a first-round series in which five of the first six games have come down to the final play. Four of those games went into overtime. One went into double OT. One went into triple OT. It's the wildest first-round series ever played. Whatever happens in Game 7, we will remember it as one of the most incredible matchup in NBA playoff history.
Derrick Rose took the superstar training wheels off. Rajon Rondo turned into Isiah Thomas, The Sequel: Just as talented, just as hated, just as nasty. Ben Gordon and Kendrick Perkins turned into Andrew Toney and Robert Parish. The great Ray Allen became a minus-130 favorite in the "Reggie Miller versus Ray Allen" argument and might have to change his name to "The Great Ray Allen." Paul Pierce added to his legacy and sullied it a little at the same time. Brad Miller made the Faces Hall of Fame and the Dorkiest White Guy Celebrations Hall of Fame. John Salmons and Glen Davis put themselves on the map as bona-fide NBA players. Kirk Hinrich redeemed his career. Stephon Marbury destroyed what was left of his career. Doc Rivers and Vinny Del Negro inspired their players and undermined them at the same time.
There were so many great plays and shots and moments that they have all blurred together. I've watched every second of this series and cannot remember how many clutch shots Ray Allen nailed over the past five games. The number might be nine. The number might be 15. The number might be 23. I couldn't tell you. They have all morphed into one super-duper clutch Ray Allen shot: The man flying off a screen, lulling his defender to sleep, then springing for his shot with perfect form. He is the greatest pure shooter I have ever seen. Ever. Not since Bird has anyone given me the feeling, "We might be down three, but we are absolutely tying this game."
I watched every moment of this series and can't remember how many times Derrick Rose wheeled into the lane, spun one way or the other and either scooped in a layup or a floating one-hander. He does it again and again and again. He does it whenever he wants. Thank God, Vinny hasn't noticed. I have never seen a better athlete play point guard. It wasn't that he blocked Rajon Rondo's game-winning shot in Game 6 as much as how beautiful the play itself was: Rose sniffing out the move, mirroring everything Rondo did, then jumping like a frog and swatting the shot as cleanly as you can swat a shot. A perfect basketball play. That's what it was.
There are many great things about sports, but here's one of the best: You never know when two teams will click. I used a boxing analogy in my column after Game 2, and it still stands. Styles make fights and styles make playoff series. Has to be a constant tug between young and old, unstoppable and stoppable, physical and finesse, experience and inexperience, fast and slow, big and small, stupid and smart. You need guys continually rising to the occasion and pushing themselves to a level they didn't know they had. You need two teams (or fighters) hugging each other afterward and thinking to themselves, "Thank you. You brought out the best of me. Thank you."
We love sports for the simple reason that we never know when this will happen. It rarely does. We watch a lot of crummy games. We watch sporting events that had potential to be great and weren't. We watch sporting events that almost made it, but one dumb thing happened to screw it up: A foul at the wrong time, a penalty, a two-base error, whatever. We keep watching. We keep hoping. And when everything clicks, it's blissful. I am hearing from people who haven't e-mailed me in years. Readers are sending me 700-word e-mails. The thing that keeps jumping out: Even fans without rooting interests have gotten swept up in this series. How can you not?
Think of all the crap we deal with as fans. "Bulls-Celtics 2009" explains why we put up with every story about Clemens and Bonds and Michael Vick and Terrell Owens and everyone else who conspires to make sports less fun. On the same day of Game 6, a story broke that Alex Rodriguez was allegedly seen with human growth hormone. The story was digested and consumed in the same predictably brief cycle: Mainstream Web sites and blogs and message boards and sports radio first, then "PTI" and "Around the Horn," then "SportsCenter," then newspapers and magazines. You can either throw yourself into that cycle or look the other way. I am getting older. I just want to watch sports. I have trained myself to look the other way. This stuff clutters my brain, and not in a good way. I just want to watch sports. I just want to watch sports.
So yeah, that's why Celtics-Bulls meant something to me -- just like Warriors-Mavs meant something two years ago. My team won the title last year. I'm only one year into a five-year grace period. I thought I was playing with house money. I never imagined a Celtics series in 2009 would matter this much to me. I never imagined being that crestfallen after a Round 1 defeat. When Noah stole the ball from Pierce and dunked on him, I threw a tantrum like a little kid. I screamed out a slew of F-bombs. I ran outside my house and screamed some more. How could the 2008 Finals MVP commit such a dumb foul? He had five! Didn't he know he had five???? And what's worse than a Jo-No celebration at the expense of your own team? I screamed and screamed and screamed. That play ripped my heart out.
At the same time, I'm glad I still care. I'm glad it still matters. I will always appreciate this Bulls team because they did the impossible: They made a fan base that just won a title care even MORE about their own team. Last season barely matters right now. All that matters is winning the most incredible playoff series ever played. I don't even care what happens after Game 7; we can't beat the LeBrons anyway. This is our NBA Finals. Right here. The Celtics fans feel that way, and so do the Bulls fans. I can promise you.
I thought about all of these things during my marathon walk. And this, too: When I was 6, my father took me to the greatest basketball game ever played: Game 5 of the 1976 Finals. I slept through the second half, the first overtime and most of the second overtime before waking up for Havlicek's running banker. I can still see it. Happened right in front of us. The Celtics won that one in three overtimes. Thirty-three years later (ironic number), they played another three-OT classic and lost. I was a little boy for the first one; for the second one, I watched most of it with my little boy. He had no idea what was going on. When he's older, I'm going to tell him that he did.
Sports keeps moving. You get older. You pass the love down to your kids. You think you will care less... and you don't. The Tony Allen sub killed me. The Pierce foul killed me. The Rose block killed me. Two toe-on-the-line 3-pointers... I can't stop thinking about them. Add everything up and that's how I ended up 500 blocks from my house fretting about Game 7 and rehashing everything that happened in the other six.
By the time we returned home, Rufus was dragging like Ray Allen at the end of that third overtime. I felt bad for him. He looked at me like he was thinking, "Please Lord, never again." He demolished his first bowl of water in 2.34 seconds. He demolished the second one in 5.67 seconds. Then he passed out. He might not wake up until tomorrow.
I don't have the heart to tell him that another marathon walk might be looming on Saturday night. My best-case scenario would be the Celtics winning in quintuple-OT, followed by Ray Allen and Ben Gordon collapsing into each other's arms like Apollo and Rocky as Allen says, "Ain't gonna be no rematch." My worst-case scenario would be grabbing Rufus' leash with a frown and rubbery legs. Either way, I am prepared for anything: KG pulling a Willis Reed, Jordan and Bird showing up, Rondo hitting John Salmons with a chair, Doc running the series-deciding play for Tony Allen, Kevin Harlan's head flying off his body, Tim Thomas experiencing a human emotion, you name it. That's the best thing about this series: Anything is possible. The ceiling hasn't just been removed, it's been obliterated.
Call it Game 7, call it Round 15, call it whatever you want. Just remember to call it the greatest first-round series ever played. I hope and pray it doesn't end with me taking a walk.
Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. For every Simmons column, as well as podcasts, videos, favorite links and more, check out the revamped Sports Guy's World.This is Tommy, calling from the engine room! Were you affected by the Aberdeen Cloud incident that happened on the 28-06-2016? We weren't, but I'd call that partly luck and partly proactivity. We were actually prepared for this.
TL;DR
We were already prepared for a scenario like the Aberdeen Cloud breakdown, owing to our disaster recovery plan. Fortunately we didn't have to set it in motion. Each night we have a simple script which takes off-site backups of all of our hosted sites. We've made the source code available on github, so hopefully this will help others prepare for the likes of the Aberdeen Cloud implosion, and perhaps we can share ideas on how to improve each other's disaster recovery plans.
Our experience with the Aberdeen Cloud incident
We have a large number of sites hosted by various cloud services. Since autumn 2013, we'd mainly used Aberdeen Cloud, and in autumn 2015 we started to explore other options to see what else the market had to offer. Platform.sh was the one that we decided to give a serious test for new clients.
Soon after that, Aberdeen Cloud began to seem a bit flaky. Longer response times on support tickets. Solr services started to fail, along with random outages of various other services. We accepted that for a while, but after having lost and regained SSH access to all of our sites (including git and rsync), we eventually decided that enough was enough and we couldn't put our trust in them anymore.
We had to migrate everything to alternative hosting platforms. Given the similar price points and the fact that they seem well funded and offer excellent support, we decided on Platform.sh. And so began Project Exodus.
Over the next three weeks we migrated over 20 sites to Platform.sh in a staged approach. I wouldn't say that it was a straight-forward process. Lots of clients had specific quirks to their setup. For example, some needed a PHPBB forum, others had FTP access for uploading files, some integrated with external systems that required firewall changes, etc, while others had custom.htaccess redirection rules that needed to be rewritten for Nginx. However, we were very lucky and had completed Project Exodus nearly a month before Aberdeen Cloud finally came tumbling down.
So what if you were not as fortunate as us, and still have sites whose assets are no longer accessible? Stuck in cyberspace, or maybe just plain deleted?
Well, I'm not sure there is a lot you can do. Maybe read Code Engima's blog post about the different things they've tried. However, to put it bluntly, it sucks! Enough said about the matter.
Now it's time to ensure you're never caught out again.
But what can we do to prevent this from happening again?
All companies probably have their own way to deal with this kind of scenario, but I'll tell you about how Annertech deals with backups and recoveries.
We have two sets of backups. A backup from each day, for each production/live/master environment, which is hosted by the cloud service. Then there is an off-site backup (again, daily) used for disaster recovery. The latter one is the important one in this scenario.
The idea is that even if Amazon (which hosts Aberdeen Cloud services) pulled the plug, we would still have access to our clients' data.
We have a server, hosted by a different company, that:
Pulls down a copy of the database, from every cloud-hosted site, every night, and saves it for four days, before it deletes it again. Runs `rsync` on every cloud-hosted site, to get an up-to-date version of the files folder, every night.
Sounds simple? It is. All it requires is that your hosting partner supports running Drush on your remote sites and you're good. If you run Drupal sites, and your hosting partner doesn't support running Drush on the remote sites, find somebody else who does. It's that important!
Regarding the code for the sites; we keep our source code repositories on dedicated git services. And, more than likely, we'll also have a copy or two on developers machines.
I'd like to show you the two backup scripts that I made, one for Aberdeen Cloud and one for Platform.sh.
The code is meant to work in our setup only, and is not (yet) generic enough to just work out of the box elsewhere. The release of the scripts is meant to give you a leg up and some inspiration. This is by no means the final end point for these scripts - we are continually evaluating and improving our system, and I look forward to hearing what ideas you have on where we could take it from here too.
The entire repository of code can "stolen" from github.
When you have a disaster recovery plan you also need to make sure that it actually works. You can do this by downloading the latest backup from each of your sites once a month, installing and then testing them. I've tested a site, where the DB file was corrupt, but only for that site, so make sure that you test all of them. The setup of test sites can also be automated by a script so you don't have to setup 10, 50, or 300 sites and test each manually. Scripts are your friends. Make good use of them and have them do all the hard work.
Now, if you really want to push this further, you should implement a "Smoke test" in all of your installation profiles, so that you can trigger that to see if the site is alive; or perhaps tie it in with a Jenkins server.
If something is unclear, feel free to put a comment below. If you feel like this could be improved, feel free to contribute with a pull request. We are all ears.
Want to talk to us about hosting your Drupal site? Great - just get in touch with us on 01 524 0312 or email hello@annertech.com and we'll see what we can do to help.Plotted by series writer & producer Daniel T. Thomsen, co-written by Corinna Bechko (Planet of The Apes), this landmark release fits into the official continuity of Once Upon a Time and features the lush art of Nimit Malavia, Vasilis Lolos, Mike Del Mundo, Mike Henderson and Michael Kaluta.
The Evil Queen has, quite literally, captured the Huntsman's heart -- and now he's her slave. This is the never-before-told tale behind their twisted relationship -- and what happens when a good man is forced to do bad.
When Regina cooks up yet another devious plan to capture Snow White -- this time by allying with a pack of power-hungry werewolves -- the Huntsman comes face-to-face with his past -- and an independent spirit in Red Riding Hood that just may match his own. Can these two break free of the forces that bind them and save Snow White? When put to the test, where will the Huntsman's loyalties lie? Has the Evil Queen stolen his heart in more ways than one?LISTEN HERE! [And if that doesn't work, try here.]
It's a Thursday edition of Marek vs. Wyshynski beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, and we're talking about the following and more:
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Question of the Day: Give us your favorite non-Teemu Finnish player. Email at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or hit us on Twitter with the hashtag #MvsW to @wyshynski or @jeffmarek. Click here for the Sportsnet live stream or click the play button above!
Click here to download podcasts from the show each day. Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Feedburner.Carl Van Vechten shaped and burnished the legend of Gertrude Stein.
Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein’s collection of experimental still-life word portraits split into the categories of objects, food, and rooms, and which—excluding a vanity publication in 1909, which she paid for herself—was the first of Stein’s work to be published in the United States. Stein had hoped that this enigmatic little book would be her big break, the thing to convince the American people of her genius. That was not to be. Tender Buttons left critics bemused and made barely a dent on the consciousness of the wider reading public. There was no great clamor for more of her writing; Stein would have to wait another twenty years to become a household name. Nevertheless, the publication of Tender Buttons is now widely regarded as a landmark in American literary modernism, the moment when one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century first unfurled her avant-garde sensibilities before the American public.
That moment would never have arrived had it not been for the work of Stein’s most important champion, Carl Van Vechten, the man who arranged for the book’s publication. Little remembered today, Van Vechten was a pioneering arts critic, a popular author of tart, brittle novels about Manhattan’s Jazz-Age excesses, an acclaimed photographer, and a flamboyant socialite whose daring interracial cocktail parties were a defining part of Prohibition-era New York’s social scene. But his greatest legacy is as a promoter of many underappreciated American writers, artists, and performers who went on to gain canonical status. Names as diverse as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Herman Melville all felt the effects of Van Vechten’s boost. His first great cause was Gertrude Stein. He did more than anyone else to carve her legend into the edifice of the American Century, arranging publishing deals for her, photographing her, and publicizing her work, a task he continued long after her death.
Stein knew how crucial Van Vechten was to her career—not merely in the practical aspects of getting her work into print, read, and discussed, but in helping create and disseminate the mythology that surrounds her name. “I always wanted to be historical, almost from a baby on,” Stein freely admitted toward the end of her life. “Carl was one of the earliest ones that made me be certain that I was going to be.” Van Vechten and Stein were strikingly different, led wildly different lives. Hers was rooted in the domestic stability she enjoyed with her partner Alice B. Toklas; his was an exhausting whirl of binges, parties, and pansexual escapades. But they had two crucial things in common: the conviction that Gertrude Stein was an irrefutable genius and a love of mythmaking, an obsession with re-scripting reality until they became the central actors in the fantastical scenes that unfolded in their heads. When Stein played fast and loose with the facts in her memoirs, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, many were furious over her distortions. But Van Vechten understood that telling the literal truth about her life—or anybody else’s—was never Stein’s concern.
Indeed, one of those fabrications originated from an essay Van Vechten himself had written, about his experience of the remarkable Paris premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps two years earlier. That first performance of Stravinsky’s taboo-busting ballet was a defining moment in the emergence of modernism as an artistic force, and Van Vechten’s ecstatic review of it has been cited over the last century as a key eyewitness account of the event. But he never attended the first night: he had failed to get tickets and had to content himself with the second performance instead. Still, Van Vechten immediately understood the epochal significance of the occasion. He decided he would not allow such a trifling matter as the truth to prevent him from finding a place at the center of events. Gertrude Stein happened to be in the audience with Van Vechten for that second performance, and when he wrote her about his deception, he breezily reassured her that writers such as they “must only be accurate about such details in a work of fiction … I am not a bit muddled about the facts.” Stein could not have agreed more. In fact, she so approved of Van Vechten’s fiction that she embellished the story further in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, suggesting that the first night of Le Sacre du Printemps was also the occasion of their first meeting, and that after the performance she rushed home to write a portrait of her new acquaintance.
Van Vechten and Stein had actually met in that summer of 1913 at the Parisian townhouse Stein shared with Toklas. Over the previous several months, Van Vechten, at this point a critic for the New York Times, had developed a fascination with Stein and her burgeoning legend—his friend, the shamanic Fifth Avenue salon hostess Mabel Dodge, had given him a copy of the prose poem that Stein had recently written about her, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia. Van Vechten, always drawn to novelty and exoticism, was immediately captivated by the thoroughgoing oddness of the writing, as well as the tales he had heard about the deeply unconventional woman responsible for it: a middle-aged Jewish lesbian in self-exile in France. On meeting Stein for the first time he was thrilled to discover that she was every bit as strange and marvelous as he had hoped she would be. He wrote his lover back in New York about Stein’s charisma and intelligence, as well as the delicious male nudes by Picasso that hung on her walls, some with “erect Tom-Tom’s much bigger than mine.”
* * *
After that first meeting Van Vechten’s interest in Stein swiftly morphed into an obsession. Back in New York he set himself the task of hauling her from obscurity and into the mainstream. Van Vechten’s encounter with this “cubist of letters,” as she was described in a New York Times article he wrote about her, came at a perfect moment for both of them. In the early months of 1913, many Americans got their first glimpse of artists such as Kandinsky, Matisse, Picasso, and Duchamp when the Armory Show exhibition of modern art hit New York with incendiary force. Stein’s links to these European radicals—“freaks,” as at least one American newspaper labeled them—generated much curiosity about her. Van Vechten, for his part, was at the beginning of his journey as a Manhattan tastemaker, loudly extolling the virtues of African-American theater, ragtime, and modern dancers such as Isadora Duncan. In Stein he found the perfect cause to champion: a unique artist whose mercurial work pulsated with the spirit of the age, but also one whose public image he could shape and bind himself to.
Early in February 1914, Van Vechten urged his friend and New York Times colleague Donald Evans to publish the manuscript of Tender Buttons through his new publishing house, the Claire Marie Press. A thousand copies were printed, but Evans suggested he did not expect them all to sell: “There are in America seven hundred civilized people only” Claire Marie’s brochure claimed, and it was “civilized people only” that the company said it was interested in reaching, which begs the question of whom exactly the remaining three hundred books in Tender Buttons’s print run were intended for. Of Stein’s work, Evans said that “the effect produced on the first reading is something like terror.” It was an unconventional means of promotion—but one that ensured Stein remained the very image of the aloof literary genius.
Van Vechten did a better job of bringing Stein’s writing to public attention with an article, “How to Read Gertrude Stein,” published in the fashionable arts magazine The Trend in August 1914. As the double meaning of the title suggests, it was intended to be an insider’s guide to understanding Stein’s work as well as her personality, framing Van Vechten as the man with an all-access pass to the great enigmatic genius of the age. Always a more assured critic of music than of literature, Van Vechten turned to musical referents for his most effective explanations of Stein’s writing, a tactic that countless others have followed in the intervening century. “She has really turned language into music,” he asserted; “Miss Stein drops repeated words upon your brain with the effect of Chopin’s B Minor Prelude.” The article also helped to develop and solidify Stein’s image as a guru-like figure, the sort of character Jo Davison would capture in his famous sculpture of Stein as Buddha some years later. “As a personality Gertrude Stein is unique,” Van Vechten wrote. “She is massive in physique, a Rabelaisian woman with a splendid thoughtful face; mind dominating her matter.” Stein wrote her charge to let him know that she was “very well pleased with your article about me.”
Considering Van Vechten’s hero-worshipping of Stein, it was more than a little strange for them both that over the next dozen years she remained a cult figure while his fame and importance soared—as a critic and a novelist, but most crucially as a trendsetter and the premier white promoter of the Harlem Renaissance. Success and celebrity never dampened his ardor for Stein, though, and he worked tirelessly on her behalf. In 1922 he came close to convincing Alfred A. Knopf to publish Stein’s Making of Americans, and references to her writing suffused his own literary efforts, which always attempted to frame Stein as the most important author of her generation |
in this violence. The first figure arrested in Durham was picked up after a press conference of the World Workers Party, a Marxist melange that stuck with the Soviets through Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Lately they’ve been on the barricades defending — wait for it — North Korea.
It takes a lot of Communist commitment to believe Trump is worse than Kim Jong Un. There’s no reason to imagine that the left is going to settle for a few statues of Lee.
The left wants to attack the very legitimacy of America, of which Washington is the real symbol. And going after statues and other cultural icons is part of the Marxist playbook.
It was written about by George Orwell in his dystopian novel “1984,” a quote from which is making the rounds this week.
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In it, one of Orwell’s characters warns of how “every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”
“And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute,” adds Orwell’s character. “History has stopped.”
Is that what we want?
Orwell’s wisdom suggests Trump was smart to raise the question of where all this is going. And to say: “You are changing history, you’re changing culture.”
Trump did so, it happens, as the federal government itself is getting ready to reopen, after some work, its memorial to Robert E. Lee. Known as Arlington House, the mansion was the Lees’ home for 30 years. It overlooks Arlington Cemetery and the Capitol.
“It exists,” the National Park Service says, “as a place of study and contemplation of the meaning of some of the most difficult aspects of American History: military service; sacrifice; citizenship; duty; loyalty; slavery and freedom.”
The nation that George Washington fathered could use some of that.
Related Video 0:57 These 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy are under siege in the USADVERTISEMENT
On Tuesday, fresh from a week of getting hammered over his belief that when neo-Nazis march into town and there's a terrorist attack you have to look for the nuance of "both sides," President Trump is going to Phoenix for what will surely be a lively rally. Whenever he feels beleaguered and put-upon, Trump heads for the warm embrace of his most ardent supporters, who reliably demand that he play all the old hits and know they won't be disappointed. "Lock her up! Lock her up!" they shout, like the crowd at a Billy Joel concert singing along to the words of "Piano Man."
Phoenix is a good place for this rally, since the state of Arizona has been on Trump's mind of late. One of the state's Republican senators, Jeff Flake, recently published a book critical of the president, which led the president to call Flake "toxic" and all but endorse one of his primary challengers. Trump is also considering a pardon for Joe Arpaio, the authoritarian goon who ruled over Maricopa County as sheriff for two decades. Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt after a federal court ordered him to stop his relentless racial profiling and he went on TV to proudly proclaim he'd ignore the order, which makes him a natural for Trump's first pardon.
And when the president goes to Phoenix, he'll surely have to talk about that big, beautiful, 2,000-mile wall he was going to build along our southern border.
Remember that?
There was no single promise that was more important to Donald Trump's candidacy than the wall. It wasn't just about stopping undocumented immigration; instead, it was a symbolic vessel for everything Trump was about and would bring to his supporters. It would keep out the foreigners whom he said were stealing their jobs, killing their children, and transforming their communities. It would make America great again, like it was before all this multiculturalism that makes you feel alienated from your own home. It would hold back a threatening, unsettling, changing world.
And the masterstroke was his promise to make Mexico pay for it. The money didn't matter; the point was domination. He would make Mexico kneel before us, then dip into their own pockets to pay for their humiliation. Everyone would know who was standing tall and who had been defeated. The man who spoke endlessly about how other countries are getting the better of us and laughing at us would finally allow us to hold our heads up high and feel like victors again.
For people who felt like the world was beating them down, this idea was intoxicating. The only trouble was, the whole thing was a joke. Nobody who knows anything about the border thought that you could build a wall all the way across it — in many sections the terrain makes it extraordinarily difficult, and to do it you'd have to use eminent domain (which anti-government Republicans hate) to seize land from large numbers of Americans. And of course, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto made clear many times that Mexico would never, ever pay for the wall.
Then earlier this month, we got a window into how Trump sees the whole thing as a scam, when transcripts of a conversation he had early in his term with Peña Nieto were released. When Peña Nieto reiterated that they'd never pay for a wall, Trump responded, "But you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that." He asked Peña Nieto to just say something vague when the question came up ("we should both say, 'we will work it out'"), but Peña Nieto refused, noting that "for Mexico, it is also an issue that goes beyond the economic situation because this is an issue related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country." Exactly — robbing them of their dignity is the whole point, but the Mexicans are understandably not interested in playing their part in the show.
Not only that, Trump is having trouble getting his own Congress to agree to funding the wall. Because of disagreements within the GOP, Republicans may need Democratic votes to pass a budget bill, which has to take place before the end of September to avoid a government shutdown. But Democrats have made clear that they won't sign on to any bill that includes funding for a wall. Which makes it far more likely that Congress will pass a stopgap measure (known as a continuing resolution) to keep all funding at current levels while they put these kinds of tough decisions off for another day.
In the end, what will probably happen is that by the end of Trump's time in office there will be some beefed-up fencing in certain areas along the border, and some more border patrol agents, and lots more deportations. But what he promised from the moment he became a candidate — "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words," he said in the speech announcing his presidential bid — that isn't going to happen.
So what is Trump going to say at that rally in Phoenix? Is he going to pretend that the wall is on track, and then do the old call-and-response that so thrilled his crowds during the campaign? When he says, "And who's going to pay for it?", will they shout back "Mexico!" with all the joy they did a year ago? Or has it begun to occur to them that maybe the whole thing was a lie, and they got suckered?Facebook and Google compete intensely for your time online and for the ad dollars of corporations. But now the two companies are collaborating on efforts to use balloons and drone aircraft to expand Internet access to the four billion people that don’t have it.
Rich DeVaul of Google and Yael Maguire of Facebook talk with moderator David Kirkpatrick at the Solve conference about their efforts to widen Internet access.
Documents filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission show that both companies are pushing for international law to be modified to make it easier to use aircraft around 20 kilometers above the earth, in the stratosphere, to provide Internet access.
Google has been working for several years on balloons that float in the stratosphere and function as aerial cell towers to provide Internet access in areas with poor infrastructure (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2015: Project Loon”). Facebook is developing solar-powered drones the size of airliners for the same purpose, although they would link to ground stations, not directly to mobile devices (see “Meet Facebook’s Stratospheric Internet Drone”).
At the Solve conference at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Monday, representatives of the competing projects said they are now working together, although they wouldn’t say exactly how.
In a session dedicated to the question of how to give everyone on earth access to the Internet, the companies were asked why they didn’t collaborate instead of running parallel efforts to achieve the same thing. “You shouldn’t presume that we’re not already working together,” said Yael Maguire, who leads Facebook’s Connectivity Lab working on Internet access. Rich DeVaul, who was leader of Google’s balloon project when it first began in 2011, confirmed that the leaders of the two projects are talking. “I’m looking forward to collaborative possibilities as well as some friendly competition,” he said.
Maguire later declined to tell MIT Technology Review what exactly the two companies are combining forces on. “We are collaborating on certain things,” he said.
Facebook and Google’s projects overlap in many ways, not just their end goals. For example, both companies are working on using lasers to transfer data rapidly, whether between stratospheric balloons, in the case of Google, or between drones and from drones to the ground, in the case of Facebook. Google also has a project of its own investigating drones for Internet access, although it, like Facebook’s project, is at a much earlier stage than the balloon effort.
The two companies also face the same policy challenges. Using stratospheric drones or balloons at large scale will require changes to rules governing the use of airspace and wireless communications.
On June 11, Facebook and Google both filed letters with the FCC urging it to back an International Telecommunication Union motion concerned with making specific radio spectrum available to encourage deployment of “high altitude platform stations”—i.e. balloons and drones—for Internet access. If that idea gets enough support it will be discussed at the ITU’s World Radio Communication Conference in November this year. The event, held every three or four years, is a forum for revision of the international treaty that governs use of radio spectrum and communications satellite orbits.
However, even if Google and Facebook work together, corporations alone cannot truly spread Internet access as widely as is needed to promote equitable access to education and other necessities, says Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at MIT’s Media Lab and founder of the One Laptop Per Child Project.
“I think that connectivity will become a human right,” said Negroponte, opening the session at which Facebook and Google’s Maguire and DeVaul spoke. Ensuring that everyone gets that right requires the Internet to be operated similar to public roads, and provided by governments, he said.
Google and Facebook’s projects so far appear to be focused on working with existing telecommunications companies, not governments. Google plans to lease access to its balloons to existing wireless carriers, and is already running trials with several in the Southern Hemisphere. Facebook’s drone system is not yet ready for full-scale tests, but it has said it plans to release details of some of its technology for free.
Negroponte said that corporate projects like those may help drive down the cost of the infrastructure needed to widen access. But for billions more people to be brought online, it needs to be deployed by the public sector, he said. “The UN should launch and operate a low Earth orbit satellite,” he told MIT Technology Review.What does “software” mean in SDN?
SDN is a nonsense term. Let me ask you this question, if you have a computer with no software loaded on it, what does that computer do other than suck up power? Nothing. “Nothing” is the correct answer. The idea of software is somewhat fuzzy these days as it can be code loaded on some kind of ROM that is pushed onto an FPGA or some other thing at boot. Some people decided to call this kind of thing “firmware.” Its not. Its just software stored on something other than a traditional disk.
Without software (be it “firmware” or not) your network node does nothing useful. It sits there. This is a fundamental concept in Computer “Science” and it goes all the way back to when software was contained on punch cards. A network node is really just a computer with specialized hardware. It needs software to tell the hardware to do something useful. Thats what IOS or JUNOS does. As it turns out, IOS and JUNOS are quite large these days. I have never considered IOS or JUNOS to be “firmware.” It is clearly software.
The difference between IOS and JUNOS and what is referred to as SDN is that intelligence isn’t distributed across some number of nodes cooperating to form a network. With SDN the intelligence is centralized and from this central entity network state is created and communicated to network nodes or even hosts. As has been pointed out numerous times, there is already a fairly long list of network technologies that have done this in the past and do this now. Are all those things considered SDN then?
What is SDN with respect to OpenFlow?
Consider the ONF’s definition of SDN: SDN consists of the ability to program the forwarding-plane of the network through an open interface. OpenFlow could be such an interface.
The OpenFlow pipeline is modeled somewhat after how traditional forwarding works. Borrowing from “Network Processors: Architecture, Programming, and Implementation” a forwarding path pipeline has the following stages: (1) Framing, (2) Parsing/Classification, (3) Search/Lookup, (4) Modification, (5) Compression/Encryption, (6) Queueing and then ultimately transmission. OpenFlow, loosely speaking, covers Steps 2 through 4 and then 6.
As it turns out, Openflow v1.1 through the current candidate version v1.3 have challenges being fully implemented in existing forwarding hardware. One could argue that Openflow adoption beyond v1.0 (and even this is not fully supported everywhere by all vendors) is, for the time being, hindered by this fact. Isn’t it strange that OpenFlow, which is thought of by many as the cornerstone of Software Defined Networking, is having adoption issues due to hardware limitations?
We could just run OpenFlow to a host running OVS right? There are hardware limitations there as well. If you want meaningful performance, apparently, you need a “TOE.” TOE’s do not currently support anything but a single VLAN tag in the frame header. So forget about MPLS or Q-in-Q. In fact, forget about any kind of overlay or tunneling except ones that are TCP based.
It seems its not possible to separate software from hardware.
What, then, is SDN and why will it fail?
More hype-bubbles have grown and popped in Silicon Valley than anywhere. The next big thing rarely sees mass adoption. SDN is a Silicon Valley hype-bubble. OpenFlow covers a narrow slice of what networking is. Central control of network functionality and networking on general-purpose hosts are old hat and, again, cover a narrow slice of what networking is. In short, SDN concepts are not sufficient to really be a revolution in networking. They’re just more pieces.
Delivering applications through the infrastructure is already immensely complex. Encapsulating that complexity and selling a product that manages it for the user ultimately means less flexibility. Networks need to be flexible. This is why networking has evolved the way it has. We have many smaller abstractions to work with, lego blocks if you will, to build the infinite variety of networks that exist today in support of the infinite variety of applications, and built in accordance with an infinite variety of business and security policies and budgets.
Certain highly repeatable patterns in networking could be automated with network programmability such as service-insertion, networking in support of virtual-compute, and even real-time management of QoS. In this case, network engineers will not be writing their own software: They will buy third-party products that solve specific problems on top of existing network deployments. What network engineers need to build and operate their networks are clearly defined and tested mechanisms for dealing with specific problems.
Its not clear at all what SDN is or what makes it “software defined.” Networking has always been software defined because hardware does nothing without software. In turn, software does nothing without the hardware to run it on. I’m not trying to be sophistic here at all. What I’m driving towards is that maybe SDN is just networking. Thats all it is. Do we care if there is a TCAM, or if the software runs on an x86 host? Whichever algorithms and hardware are used and how state is communicated to nodes doesn’t matter: the end-state is that we have achieved networking.
SDN can not sustain distinguishing itself from just “networking,” and without an identity of its own how can it be anything other than another tech hype bubble? What will come of SDN, ultimately, is twofold: (a) Improved programmatic control of the network for third-party applications that solve specific problems and (b) increased network functionality of hosts. What we are really witnessing in this and the DC fabric wars is the inevitable reconciliation of virtual-compute and networking.
As networking adapts and these concepts evolve and become clearly defined, SDN will fade. The apocalypse is not coming.Throughout Florida, Hurricane Irma – touted as a “once in a generation” storm – is causing widespread panic. More than 600,000 people have been ordered to evacuate amid concerns about the potential damage to buildings and infrastructure the Category 4 storm could cause. Though many coastal structures are certainly in danger, with Irma’s center expected to pass right over Miami, another grave danger posed by the storm is being ignored.
The Turkey Point nuclear power plant, located just 25 miles south of Miami, is in the direct path of Hurricane Irma, prompting the plant’s operator – Florida Power and Light (FPL) – to announce the temporary shutdown of the site on Thursday. FPL declined to specify the timing of the shutdown, according to local reports. FPL chief communications officer, Rob Gould, told reporters on Thursday that the Turkey Point site is “one of the safest and most robust structures in the state, if not the country” and that its reactors “are designed to withstand heavy wind and storm surge.”
However, Gould’s characterization of Turkey Point’s safety is at odds with the facts: as will be detailed, the threat of contamination persists in spite of the plant-wide shutdown.
A history of leaks and storm damage
While Turkey Point was originally built to withstand up to 235 mph winds, that was in 1974, over 40 years ago. Since it was built, the site has been damaged by major hurricanes such as Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused $90 million in damages to the site. This included significant damage to systems that were allegedly “hurricane-proof,” such as the site’s main water tank – which was completely destroyed – and the site’s water treatment plant. Turkey Point was left running on backup generators for a week to cool the shut-down reactors.
IRMA MAY KNOCK OUT POWER FOR WEEKS, FPL SPOKESMAN SAYS — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 7, 2017
Irma, by comparison, is expected to be significantly stronger than Andrew. Florida governor Rick Scott recently stated that Irma, compared to Andrew, is “much worse and more devastating on its current path.” Indeed, Irma is believed to have flattened 90% of all structures on the island of Barbuda and snapped every steel cell tower in half.
Unbelievable. #Irma has snapped all the cell towers on #Barbuda. That's reinforced steel – photo: ABS pic.twitter.com/NF5v698XJa — Jonny Hallam (@Jonny_Hallam) September 6, 2017
Worse still, Turkey Point is considered one of the most hazardous nuclear power plants in the entire country, leaving aside its location in a hurricane-prone area. Turkey Point’s infrastructure, in the 25 years since Hurricane Andrew, has been caught failing on several occasions — particularly after its license renewal was “rubber-stamped” by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012, when its operating license expired.
The most recent failure was exposed last year when a government-sponsored University of Miami study found that Turkey Point had been leaking radioactive materials into the protected waters of Biscayne Bay for years. The study found high levels of radioactive isotopes present in the bay and the isotopes were found to have originated in the plant’s cooling canals. The leaks had raised the bay’s radioactivity levels to 215 times higher than normally found in seawater. Not only that, but the leaked radioactivity was found to be making its way towards wells that supply drinking water to millions of Florida residents. These leaks, of course, occurred in the course of normal operations and in the absence of any major hurricane.
In addition, the plant’s cooling canals have been a danger since 2013, when the plant sought to increase power output, causing dangerous increases in water temperatures inside the canals. Despite that, official nuclear regulators gave the plant permission to let cooling-canal temperatures reach 104 degrees – the highest allowed in any nuclear facility in the country.
According to Thomas Saporito, a former FPL employee who was fired for “blowing the whistle” on safety concerns at the plant, Turkey Point – more now than ever – is susceptible to a meltdown caused by a natural disaster like Irma. With regional power unavailable due to the shutdown, the plant will be relying on emergency diesel generators to pump the 650,000 gallons of water per minute needed to cool the reactors. Saporito has argued that those generators would “certainly” become inundated with water from the high waves caused by a storm like Irma, which would cause them to drown and fail.
Eyewall from historic hurricane very near Turkey Point nuclear plant on 12z GFS depiction. 60 foot waves. pic.twitter.com/WNKIwgJx7h — Rob Soltysik (@soltysik_rob) September 5, 2017
Other workers at Turkey Point — and at FPL’s St. Lucie nuclear plant, also on Florida’s Atlantic coast — anonymously complained 160 times between 2005 and 2011, far higher than at plants in other areas of the country during that period. However, Saporito told the Miami New Times, FPL’s policy of retaliation against whistleblowers has prevented even more concerned workers from coming forward publicly.
Media quiet on Turkey Point dangers
By far the most troubling aspect of this situation is the lack of media coverage on the dangers posed by the Turkey Point plant in light of Irma’s anticipated path. Local news outlets have taken FPL at its word regarding the plant’s safety, despite FPL’s history of dishonesty and environmental violations at Turkey Point and elsewhere in Florida. Local reporting has also failed to mention Turkey Point’s history of leaks, including last year’s study about the dramatic increase in Biscayne Bay radioactivity caused by the plant’s faulty infrastructure.
This media mumness may be related to FPL’s pervasive influence in state politics. FPL is a major player, having contributed more than $7.5 million to state candidates, political parties and committees between the 2004 and 2012 election cycles, and spent another $4.7 million lobbying between 2007 and 2013, according to Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan research institute.
FPL, electricity monopoly Miami consumers forced to pay, has dodged federal income tax for 8 yrs https://t.co/kiwfDlg1Vt h/t @asktheduchess — Miles Grant (@MilesGrant) April 26, 2017
Top photo | The Turkey Point nuclear power plant, is shown in an aerial photo, Wednesday, March 8, 2017, in Homestead, Fla. (AP/Wilfredo Lee)Plans to cap housing benefit for thousands of mentally ill, elderly and other vulnerable people in supported housing are to be re-examined after protests by MPs and charities.
The rethink, expected within weeks, also follows evidence from the National Housing Federation, which found that 85% of schemes to build new supported and sheltered homes for vulnerable people have been shelved by housing associations because of fears that the new funding system will make them unsustainable.
More than 700,000 people in supported housing usually have the accommodation element of their costs met entirely through housing benefit. But under plans announced by the government in 2015, and due to be introduced from next year, these payments would be capped in the same way as for people renting in the private sector.
As accommodation costs are higher in supported housing, because of the extra services and communal spaces provided, charities and others critics say the proposed system would leave residents facing big potential shortfalls. This is despite ministers saying that they could get help from special funds run by local authorities.
The plans have caused an outcry, with charities warning the system would be bureaucratic, unworkable and would leave people facing uncertainty and worry about whether they could afford to remain.
Supported housing provides a secure, safe place for the most vulnerable, the majority of whom are older people or those with long-term disabilities, as well as the mentally ill, people with disabilities, those at risk of homelessness and women fleeing domestic violence. An inquiry by the communities and local government and work and pension committees in parliament, called for an urgent rethink, saying: “In particular, we have been concerned by reports of providers choosing to postpone or cancel investment decisions, as well as increased levels of anxiety among vulnerable tenants who fear they may no longer have the guarantee of a home for life.”
The communities secretary, Sajid Javid, told a recent session of the communities and local government committee the report had been “very helpful” and he expected to announce a decision soon that would show ministers had listened. Pressure for a climbdown is mounting before an opposition day debate on supported housing that will take place on Wednesday.
On Monday the charity Rethink Mental Illness will publish a report showing people with the highest needs, and the highest costs, are likely to suffer the biggest shortfalls in rent.
The charity says this will be most evident in parts of the country where rents are cheapest and therefore housing benefit payments will be lowest. Research has shown the cap will mean housing benefit will only cover about two thirds of accommodation costs in some parts of the country.
Gillian Connor, head of policy partnerships at the charity, said: “We are hopeful the government has listened to the consensus of the sector: that a one-size-fits-all approach to supported housing will not work and will leave some of the most vulnerable people in society at risk. It is looking increasingly like the government has heeded these warnings and may be about to take a different approach to reforming this vital support.
“We would absolutely welcome a rethink and a chance to shape reforms that ensure everyone is able to get the support they need.”
Caroline Abrahams, a director of Age UK, said: “We would be pleased and relieved if the government has decided to rethink its proposed policy. With an ageing population, we need more supported housing for older people in this country, not less, but the proposals threatened a postcode lottery, with many providers having to withdraw services or close schemes altogether. The consequences for older people of pressing ahead would have been disastrous, so it’s very good news if the decision has been taken to adopt a different policy approach.”
Housing benefit cuts leave poor vulnerable to rent rises, says report Read more
Labour’s shadow secretary of state, John Healey, said: “These plans remain a sword of Damocles hanging over homeless hostels, women’s refuges and sheltered housing for the frail elderly. The chaos caused by the Conservative plans has already halted 85% of new supported housing. Ministers must use this week’s Labour-led Commons debate to drop their flawed plans for good, and guarantee long-term funding building on the recent cross-party select committee report.”Story highlights Conservative Republicans revisiting core policies in search to redefine message
GOP struggles to clarify its direction during the Conservative Political Action Conference
Some political experts feel party needs major overhaul
The most conservative Republicans are embracing some of the same campaign strategies -- decreased federal spending, lower tax rates and repealing Obamacare -- that many say led to the party's defeat in November.
It may be a telling glimpse of the GOP leadership's ongoing gut check. The message: We may have lost the presidential battle but we can still win the war of principles.
"First, the Republican Party needs to be a conservative party with no apologies," Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said on Thursday to audience applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
CPAC is an annual event which also serves as a way to check the pulse of the political right. This year's conference is being held along the banks of the Potomac River just outside Washington in Maryland.
It is the same type of message House Budget Committee chairman and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan echoed earlier in the week.
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"The election didn't go our way," said the Wisconsin Republican, who is slated to make an appearance at the conference this week. "Believe me, I know what that feels like. That means we surrender our principles? That means we stop believing in what we believe in?"
For the most conservative wing of the party's faithful, the answer is a resounding "no."
Such emotions are a deep undercurrent in the GOP's search for identity.
That soul-searching is unfolding as party leadership braces itself for the next round of contentious budget battles and takes tentative steps toward working with a president whose very name is still a rallying cry for many in the base.
Agenda topics include "Reversing Obamacare and Reaching Minority Voters: The Language That Works" and "Has Atlas Shrugged? Business in Obama's America."
Flying in the face of the old-time religion fervor, Republicans face the task of wading through internal divisions as they await the Republican National Committee's expected release of a post-mortem "Growth and Opportunity" report that dissects why the party lost the 2012 presidential election.
The autopsy is expected to highlight issues like beefing up RNC technology, voting by mail, fundraising and other campaign mechanics, as well as outreach to specific demographic groups in hopes of identifying more effective ways to attract minority and younger voters.
The report will deal with things that can be fixed, some Republican strategists say.
The core message, they say, is solid. It just needs better packaging. In this, some party faithful see Ryan and his budget as an indication that the party is on the right path.
Ryan's budget shows "the Republican Party is sticking to its principles of fiscal responsibility," said Ron Bonjean, a veteran GOP strategist for several congressional leaders and partner at the communications firm Singer Bonjean Strategies.
The lessons the overall party "learned were more about the presidential candidate" and less about the broader party, he said.
White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, essentially accused Ryan of misreading last November's election in releasing a spending plan on Tuesday that seeks to unravel much of the Obama domestic agenda.
Ryan said repealing the president's health care law is critical to efforts to balance the budget.
"We will never be able to balance the budget if you keep 'Obamacare' going because 'Obamacare' is a fiscal train wreck," Ryan said on Tuesday.
Ryan's budget and a Democratic plan by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray of Washington, which will likely include a tax increase for the wealthy and business and some spending cuts, are seen as partisan efforts unlikely to win congressional approval.
And that's the problem, some Republicans say. Conservative positions — like those championed by Ryan on issues like trimming entitlement spending as a way of cutting the deficit -- are lost in messaging that reminds voters too much of a failed presidential platform.
"They should have learned from the 2012 elections, and stand by the issue that the debt is the main problem. But the language has to be different," said Maricruz Magowan, an economist and conservative political commentator.
"The Republican Party has problems in communication on a number of levels. The way he is communicating in a 'take it or leave it' way is not going to resonate with the American people," Magowan said.
But the Republican Party needs more than a message makeover, political experts say. It needs a major overhaul.
"Now we know the messaging was bad. And we are getting to the second stage: the recalibration," CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger wrote recently. "'Think of it as a reappraisal,' one senior GOP strategist told me. I prefer to think of it as a matter of survival."Portugal probably isn’t the first country that springs to mind when thinking about startup scenes. Hit hard by 2008 financial crash, Portugal – and in particular its capital, Lisbon – struggled to keep its head above water in the years soon after. Its economy contracted by 3.2 percent in 2012 and unemployment hit 18 percent during the crisis.
But the country of 10.3 million people has since made a remarkable turnaround.
Today, the IMF forecasts a 2.5 percent growth rate, and unemployment dropped to below 10 percent this year for the first time in nearly a decade. And while some 500,000 graduates left the country during the crisis, 60 percent have now returned reinvigorated and inspired by the country’s now growing economy.
For an economy which exited a €78 billion international bailout program three years ago, it has come a long way. And startups are latching onto this growth. Here are three reasons why having a startup in this booming ecosystem is good thing right now:
Funding and government initiatives are spurring on startups
“Portugal is rich in talent and diversity,” said João Vasconcelos, State Secretary for Industry and former director of local incubator Startup Lisboa, to Europe’s StartUs Magazine. “It has currently one of the most vibrant startup ecosystem in Europe, being the perfect place to create, test, fail and try again.”
And to entice entrepreneurs, the country is providing plenty of benefits. Most notably in a bold move at the 2016 Web Summit, Vasconcelos unveiled a €200 million fund to co-invest alongside VCs in startups and foreign companies that relocate to Portugal. Over the next three years, Portugal will also dish out €10 million-worth of vouchers for incubation and businesses. And for those that aren’t in the EU, the Portuguese government announced a ‘startup visa’ at the start of this year, essentially urging entrepreneurs to come and set up shop with the promise of a resident visa.
Portugal’s putting a huge focus on young entrepreneurs, too. In 2016, the country launched Startup Portugal – a public strategy to nurture new businesses. The scheme includes a startup voucher for people aged 18 to 35 with good business ideas. The voucher gives budding entrepreneurs monthly funding, mentoring and technical support in their first year. Even more, Startup Portugal offers a Momentum program – giving graduates the set of tools to help them develop their business ideas – monthly funding, free housing and incubation are part of a the one year support program.
By providing financial incentives – such as matching funds with angel investors and venture capital funds – the government is showing just how keen they are on putting their money where their mouth is.
There’s also a startup mega campus is in the works in the capital, thanks to its incubator Startup Lisboa. The Hub Criativo do Beato will be a 35,000 square metre startup powerhouse born from a former army complex in the east of the city. There, the 20-building incubator hopes to rival Paris’ Station F.
Benfica also partnered this year with KickUP Sports Innovation, led by Joao Goncalo, to launch the first European Sports accelerator that emerged within a major sports club.
Major events are being held here, and big players are coming to the capital
Irish entrepreneur and Web Summit co-founder Paddy Cosgrove once said, “Lisbon is like Berlin 5 years ago, but with southern European weather.” And well, he’s right. That’s part of the reason why in 2016, the Web Summit was moved from Dublin to Lisbon. It will run in the city annually through to 2018.
The fact that it has moved to the capital demonstrates just how important the city is in the tech and startup scene right now. Some 53,000 people came to event in 2016 – and this year, it was closer to 60,000.
The prestigious summit saw professor Stephen Hawking talk about AI; environmentalist Al Gore warn attendees about the climate crisis; and U2 frontman Bono urge private and public sectors to come together to help women and girls in the least-developed countries get connected to the internet. Netflix founder Reed Hastings, actress Eva Longoria, and Tinder’s co-founder, Sean Rad all made appearances, too.
Some major players in the global startup scene are also flocking to the Portuguese capital.
London-based Workspace innovator Second Home announced they would be investing heavily in a second, bigger base in Lisbon, due to open in 2019. They hope to cater to local and foreign companies hoping to make Portugal their home. Their London-base is used by VICE, Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz. And Factory, who provide space to fast growing startups in Berlin, are opening a massive venue in Lisbon next year as part of the Hub Criativo do Beato.
Lower cost and a high quality of living
With costs below its European neighbors, Portugal is an attractive choice for budding businessmen and women. In fact, the European Digital City Index lists the top features in Lisbon as the low-cost of living and the high quality of life.
Last year, Lisbon was rated as the fourth cheapest city break in Europe, and the cheapest in Western Europe. That’s not taking into account rent costs, either. With a 900-square foot apartment going for roughly €778, office space can be found at a fraction of the price of major startup cities like London or Berlin. And with great weather, countless cultural things to see and do and a superb nightlife and food, Portugal may just be the one.
Ana Filipa de Almeida, Ray Chan, Rafael Pires, Inês Santos Silva and Daniela Monteiro.
Living in a city where the Estoril coast is on your doorstep; where a stroll through the glorious Avenida da Liberdade will be the best way to unwind after a day at work; or a Friday night in Barrio Alto to celebrate, it’s no wonder startups are drawn here.
A renewed spirit of innovation has led to an explosion of startups, helped by the country’s impressive bilingual education system and local support network – such as Startup |
Built in the early 1300’s by the St Michaels, it formed part of the defensive line of castles built along the Pale by the Normans to defend their newly acquired lands and keep the native Irish out. The original Castle would have been wooden, and later replaced by the stone tower house which remains today. Sadly unlike its neighbour White Castle it had not been cared for and like so many other castles has fallen into ruin. The tower itself is still partially standing and it is believed that the inner walls were removed many years ago to build the local town hall.
I converted this to mono in Photoshop and the tone of the image using Silver Effex Pro which has become a personal favourite of mine lately. Aside from the castle which as many of you will know are one of my favourite places to explore I really like the sky in this image.You can see the original shot and read more about its history by clicking HERE. I hope you like it as much as I do. As always any thoughts or comments you may have would be greatly appreciated.
To see more of these images, why not visit my Website or join me on Facebook or Twitter.What does it mean for working fathers?
AP Images
I had dinner recently with a group of Princeton undergraduates. The student who introduced me announced that I would be prepared to talk about anything that was on their minds: the presidential debates, foreign policy, work and family. A number of students asked foreign policy questions, and then a young woman asked me about the responses I have received to my Atlantic cover story from this past summer, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." I answered, and several other young women followed up. After ten minutes or so, I saw that the roughly 50 percent guys in the room had gone completely silent. When I commented on the suddenly one-sided nature of the conversation, one young man volunteered that he "had been raised in a strong feminist household" and considered himself to be fully supportive of male-female equality, but he was reluctant to say anything for fear he would be misunderstood. A number of the other guys around the table nodded in agreement.
That male silence is widespread, at least in public. Roughly 15 to 20 percent of the responses to my article that I have personally received have been from men. Many are from fathers who are very unhappy with the choices their daughters face. Others are from young men who want to be able to spend more time with their children and be fully equal parenting partners with their working wives but feel they don't have those options either. Indeed, a number of men have written to bemoan the strong gender stereotyping that they encounter, whereby a guy who wants to take paternity leave, flex-time, defer a promotion because the job up has too much travel, or simply needs to leave at 6 every night to pick up his kid from daycare, is regarded as insufficiently committed to his work or else just "not one of the guys." As Joan Williams and I wrote in a Labor Day op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, men are beginning to sue over this type of gender discrimination. Another man, a former member of the Special Forces, wrote me asking if my husband would write about his experience over the course of our marriage, to "prove that he is both a caregiver and an alpha male." I am more convinced than ever that the only way to make the kind of change we need to allow workers to build, provide, and care for strong families is to change conditions and cultural mores for men as well as women. But men have to join the conversation—publicly, candidly, and loudly.
A few men have ventured forth to have their say; their contributions have been illuminating. Just last week Ken Gordon wrote a great piece asking why he is not identified as a "working dad," even though he works from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. juggling the responsibilities of parenthood and work in the same way his wife does. He sees the label "working mom" and he says, rightly, that working dads deserve the same recognition. I found his position fascinating because I have been mulling from a different perspective why we don't talk about "working fathers" the way we talk about "working mothers." As I see it, we need the adjective "working" when we talk about mothers because our deep assumption is still that "mothers" are in the home. If they are not in the home we need a special adjective to make that clear. Conversely, as Gordon recognizes, "fathers" are by definition in the workplace, so adding "working" would be superfluous.Question: Since you expanded the Shield TV with all these new features, do you have a border with the Nintendo Switch? Is there anything youre not going to do, like more tablet work? Is there some way that the Switch fits in with the Shield TV ecosystem?
Huang: Nintendo Switch is a game console. Its very Nintendo. That entire experience is going to be very Nintendo. The beauty of that company, the craft of that company, the philosophy of that companytheyre myopically, singularly focused on making sure that the gaming experience is amazing, surprising, and safe for young people, for children. Their dedication to their craft, that singular dedication, is quite admirable. When you guys all see Switch, I believe people are going to be blown away, quite frankly. Its really delightful. But it has nothing to do with AI.In 2004, the Bills hired Mike Mularkey. He went 14-18 in two years.
In 2005, the Dolphins hired Belichick affiliate Nick Saban. He went 15-17 in two years.
In 2006, the Jets got in on the act, and hired a Belichick disciple, Eric Mangini. He went 23-25 in three years. That same year, Buffalo moved on from Mularkey and hired Dick Jauron, who went 24-33.
In 2007, the Dolphins hired Cam Cameron as the answer to the team’s offensive woes, who went… 1-15.
In 2008, Miami went with Tony Sparano as the answer to the team’s offensive woes. Sparano did get to pants Belichick on one incredible Sunday but otherwise went 29-32.
In 2009, the Jets hired Rex Ryan, who went 46-50 in six years in New York, the longest tenure of any non-Belichick coach in the AFC East since 2000.
In 2010, the Bills were back in the market, and hired Chan Gailey. In three years with Buffalo, Gailey went 16-32.
In 2011…. no AFC East team made a coaching change! The Jets were in the middle of the peak of the Ryan era, Buffalo just had Gailey, and the Dolphins had not yet given up on Sparano. Of course, before the end of the season, Miami had moved on, and Todd Bowles finished the season as interim head coach.
In 2012, the Dolphins hired Joe Philbin as the answer to the team’s offensive woes. He went 24-28 in Miami.
In 2013, the Bills hired Doug Marrone. He went 15-17 in two seasons in Buffalo.
In 2014, the Jets still had somehow not given up on Ryan, the Bills were only a year into the Marrone era, and Miami was still optimistic about Philbin. Along with 2011, this was the only other season with no offseason coaching changes.
In 2015, the Jets moved on from Ryan and hired Todd Bowles, who went 10-6. The Bills then hired Rex Ryan, who went 8-8 last year.
In 2016, Miami hired Adam Gase as the team’s answer to its offensive woes.
Bill Belichick has made life difficult on the rest of the AFC East for the last 15 years. In 2001, he won his first Super Bowl with the Patriots, and then won another two years later. Since then, the AFC East has had almost constant turnover, with each other franchise trying to find its own Belichick.
Putting aside the three current coaches, that’s 10 coaches from ’04 to ’13 that were hired by the other three AFC East teams, and all ten exited the division with losing records. In the last 13 years, Belichick’s Patriots have won the AFC East 12 times, with Sparano being the only other man to win an AFC East title. Before Sparano, the last four head coaches to win the AFC East other than Belichick are ….
Yikes. And now for your trivia of the day: the last head coach to leave the AFC East with a winning record was Wannstedt (42-31).As businesses continue to shed jobs, and consumers abstain from spending, household income drops by the highest rate on record in June 2009:
Household income in the U.S. is weakening as the influence of the government’s stimulus plan wanes, prompting economists, Federal Reserve officials and a Nobel laureate to warn that consumer spending may struggle.
“Consumers have started to change their behavior and they are going to save more,” said Richard Berner, co-head of global economics at Morgan Stanley in New York and a former researcher at the Fed. “You have pressure on wages, you have employment still declining.”
Wages and salaries, which drive recoveries in spending, fell 4.7 percent in the 12 months through June, the biggest drop since records began in 1960, according to Commerce Department figures released yesterday. The Obama administration’s tax cuts, extended jobless benefits and a one-time Social Security bonus have helped mask the damage done by the worst employment slump since the Great Depression.
Personal incomes, which include interest income, dividends, rents and other payments as well as wages, tumbled 1.3 percent in June, more than forecast and the biggest drop in four years, yesterday’s Commerce report showed. Excluding the effects of the stimulus plan, June incomes would have dropped 0.1 percent after no change in May, according to the report. In May, one-time additional payments to Social Security recipients boosted incomes 1.3 percent.
One of every 10 American workers will be without a job by early 2010, economists project, shaking the confidence of those still on payrolls and discouraging spending. It may take as long as 15 years for consumers to fully repair finances battered by the decline in home values, stocks and employment, said Edmund Phelps, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2006.
Shrinking Net Worth
Decreasing pay is not the only hurdle for consumers. Plunging home prices and stocks reduced household net worth by a record $13.9 trillion from the third quarter of 2007 through this year’s first quarter, according to figures from the Fed.
“Households are going to have to do an awful lot of rebuilding of their wealth,” Phelps, a professor at Columbia University in New York, said this week in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Even if that rebuilding goes on at a pretty good clip, it will take 12 or 15 years for households to get to the wealth level that they had several years ago. Consumer demand is going to take a long time to rebuild to normal levels.”
In the second half, incomes and spending will be hurt by the loss of transitory factors such as lower fuel prices, decreased tax rates and the one-time payment to retirees, William Dudley, president of the Fed Bank of New York, said in a speech last week.
Save More
“Consumer spending is unlikely to rise much faster than income” because of the need to boost savings, he said. “Weak income growth will be an effective constraint on the pace of consumer spending.”
Companies continue to trim expenses, threatening further cuts in pay and benefits. Tenneco Inc., the world’s largest maker of vehicle-exhaust systems, temporarily lowered pay and hours worked to reduce labor costs by 10 percent. Earlier this year, the Lake Forest, Illinois-based company suspended contributions to employees’ 401(k) retirement accounts and cut pay for the top 50 executives.
Government assistance such as the “cash-for-clunkers” program will help postpone the inevitable increase in savings and slowdown in spending as more baby boomers approach retirement, said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto.
“Spending is in desperate need of gimmicks like cash-for- clunkers in order to grow on a short-term basis,” he said.
Lifting Auto Sales
The program, which offers as much as $4,500 for trading in older, less fuel-efficient cars, ran through its $1 billion fund in about a week, and Congress is considering adding $2 billion. Auto industry data this week showed sales jumped to an 11.3 million annual pace last month, the highest level since September.
Mounting joblessness is among reasons that economists such as Rosenberg say will prompt Americans to save more. Unemployment, already at a 26-year high of 9.5 percent in June, may top 10 percent by early next year, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg last month.
Economists estimate that a Labor Department report at the end of the week will show employers cut an additional 328,000 workers from payrolls in July. That would bring the total loss of jobs since the recession began in December 2007 to 6.8 million.
The savings rate in June fell to 4.6 percent as incomes dropped, yesterday’s Commerce Department report showed. The rate, which reached a 14-year high of 6.2 percent the previous month, is likely to keep climbing, Rosenberg said. A rate as high as 15 percent can’t be ruled out, he said.
“This is a different consumer than we had in the past 20 years,” Rosenberg said. “People are going to increasingly be putting more money into cookie jars, rather than into buying more cookie jars.”Rather than finish out his full final term in Congress, House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor will resign from Congress effective August 18, the Republican congressman said Thursday.
Cantor, whose term in office would have extended through a lame duck session until January of next year, asked Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to schedule a special election to be held on Election Day, November 4, to pick his replacement. With Cantor stepping down early, the winner of that special election will take Cantor’s old seat immediately rather than having to wait until the next Congress convenes to begin the new term.
“I want to make sure that the constituents in the Seventh District will have a voice in what will be a very consequential lame-duck session,” Cantor said in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “That way he will also have seniority, and that will help the interests of my constituents (because) he can be there in that consequential lame-duck session,” Cantor said.
A once-rising star in the GOP and likely next in line for Speaker of the House, Cantor’s political fortunes were reversed after his stunning defeat in a June GOP primary.
In the contest to take over Cantor’s seat, economics professor Dave Brat—who defeated Cantor for the GOP nomination in June—will square off against Democrat Jack Trammell. Both men are professors at the same school, Randolph-Macon College.
[Richmond Times-Dispatch]
Contact us at editors@time.com.The 2014 New Japan Cup kicked off in a sold out Korakuen Hall, with all eight first round singles bouts and a six man match featuring long time rivals Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada on opposing sides.
The hook to this year’s NJC is that the winner is awarded title shot, and gets to choose which of the two top singles titles he gets to challenge for (either Tanahashi’s Intercontinental title, or Okada’s IWGP Heavyweight). The overwhelming favorite coming into the tournament was Katsuyori Shibata, who went nose to nose with Okada after Okada defeated his tag team partner, Hirooki Goto, at New Beginning Osaka last month. Okada vs Shibata would not only be a fresh match, but also a bout fans are salivating to see.
There is talk that the runner up will face the champion that the winner of the tournament declines. I’ve not been able to confirm this, although a Tanahashi promo strongly hinted at this direction. There were many people who felt this stipulation essentially eliminated Nakamura as a finalist, since he just lost two matches to Tanahashi, and it feels like it’s too soon to do Nakamura vs Okada.
1. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Yujiro Takahashi vs. Shelton Benjamin – Coin flip match coming in, with the returning Benjamin (who missed some time after a minor surgery on his arm) taking on Yujiro, who has been middling without much of a push. Shelton went for an ankle lock very early, and Yujiro scurried to the outside upon escaping. He ate a huge superkick after making his way back in, for an early near fall. Shelton kept control with good counters, and they went into a bodylock/chinlock rest hold. Transition was a fisherman’s buster out of the corner by Yujiro after a missed corner splash. Shelton reversed a rana attempt into a sit out powerbomb for another near fall, then hit the Paydirt out of nowhere for the win. Short but decent. **1/4
2. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Toru Yano vs. Minoru Suzuki – The story here was Suzuki being one step ahead of Yano’s tricks at every turn. And he should be, since they seem to face each other on every major show. The finish was Suzuki jumping out of the way of Yano’s reverse mule kick to the nuts, delivering a nut shot of his own, and using a clutch roll up for the pin. **1/2
3. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Katsuyori Shibata vs. Karl Anderson – Bullet Club had a 25% chance of winning the tournament with four entries, but Anderson was facing the heavy tournament favorite. Shibata went for the corner dropkick pretty early, and Anderson pulled off a great reversal.
Anderson took control, but missed a senton splash, allowing Shibata to set up another corner dropkick and this time hit it. Some good back and forth action from here, with a highlight being Shibata reversing a Gun Stun into a choke, which looked great. Shibata hit a series of kicks, with Anderson desperately protecting his skull. Anderson hit a Bernard Driver and got a really, really close 2.9 count that the fans bought as the finish. He also used a big sit out powerbomb as well. This was really coming together and could have been great with more time. Shibata won when Anderson tapped to an Octopus Hold. ***1/4
4. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Hirooki Goto vs. Doc Gallows – On our podcast, I picked Gallows to score a big upset in his first New Japan singles bout. He had a lot to prove here, as his run has been a bit underwhelming since a good World Tag League debut tour. Well, so much for the upset, as Goto & Shibata swept their matches with Guns & Gallows, further setting up their eventual IWGP Tag title shot. Gallows looked okay, but this was not the breakout performance he needed. Goto won with his Goto Shiki Cradle. **1/2
5. Special 6 Man Tag Match: Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi & El Desperado vs. Kazuchika Okada, Jado & Gedo – The only question here, was whether Jado or Gedo would take the High Fly Flow. Jado did his Ric Flair routine early. Jado & Ibushi were in from the start for what felt like forever, until a double hot tag to Okada & Tanahashi. It was the usual magic with these two. The chemistry between these two men is just phenomenal, and unmatched in wrestling today (and maybe ever). They went through a mini-closing stretch of their singles matches, worked to a stalemate, and tagged in Gedo & Desperado. Things broke down and got crazy with bodies flying everywhere. Desperado finished off Gedo with a sit out powerbomb variation (there were a ton of these on this show), instead of his usual dangerous (as in, legit dangerous) looking finish. So the HFF didn’t finish it, but Gedo did take the fall. Fun match. ***
Intermission
6. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Lance Archer vs. Prince Devitt – This match was wild. Devitt snuck in through the crowd and attacked Archer with a chair. He tossed him to the outside and continued the assault, including setting him up in a chair and hitting a running dropkick. Devitt ran towards Archer for another chairshot, but Archer punched the chair into Devitt’s head. Then came one of the best visuals you’ll ever see. Archer grabbed Devitt and flung him over the guard rail right into the commentary table, wiping out Yuji Nagata. This looked incredible. Devitt cleared the rail by about ten feet. Archer was going nuts, pounding the apron and screaming. Crowd was super into all of it. Back in the ring, they exchanged a bunch of cool big man/little man spots. Devitt went for a double stomp off the top, but Archer caught him by the throat. They went though some wild reversals before Archer eventually hit the chokeslam. Devitt escaped a Dark Days attempt, and later avoided a moonsault. He then hit his double stomp, followed by an amazing looking high angle Bloody Sunday that Archer took like a million bucks. This was better than their G1 match, which was also pretty good. Really enjoyed this. ***1/2
7. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Togi Makabe vs. Bad Luck Fale – This was a wild brawl, but couldn’t match the previous bout. Makabe hit a larait with his arm wrapped in his chain, but Fale kicked out. Makabe survived the thumb to the throat, but Fale hit the Bad Luck Fall for the win. I wasn’t into this. *3/4
8. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Tetsuya Naito vs. Tomohiro Ishii – Ishii had been pinning Naito left and right, so Naito figured to get a win back here. A real buzz for this at the start, as Korakuen always loves Ishii, plus now he’s being pushed. This was like a condensed version of their ***** match from Februray’s New Beginning. Ishii took the meat of it, sort of tipping off the expected finish. Every time Naito would charge up for some fighting spirit, Ishii would kill him with a lariat or big move. That was a nice touch. Finishing sequence had a ton of cool shit, including Ishii kicking out of a great dragon suplex & Naito reversing a brainbuster attempt into one of his own, until Naito won it with the Stardust Press. I can watch these guys wrestle a billion times and won’t ever get tired of it. Great stuff. ****1/4
9. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr. – Some chain wrestling to start. Davey took control and worked Nak over on the outside. He tossed him back in, used a camel clutch, and made funny faces. Nak fought it off but was grounded by a side headlock as Davey kept wearing him down. I’m not a fan of long matwork that goes nowhere, but Davey’s stuff always holds my attention. Nak used his knee attacks to take control. Davey used a bunch of Billy Robinson spots like the double underhook suplex and one arm backbreaker, but couldn’t put him away. Crowd was behind Davey but weren’t buying the near falls enough to put this over the top. Nak won with a Boma Ye. Good, but a bit underwhelming. Never got to the next level. ***
This was a solid show from top to bottom, and I can recommend a purchase or watch. The semi-finals are 3/22 with the finals on 3/23.
Special thanks as always to @SenorLARIATO for the cool gifs!Given that the phenomenon of Facebook and social media are relatively new, it's somewhat excusable for courts of law to be unsure how to proceed with regard to matters involving human interaction on the site. That said, there are few supporting an Indonesian court's latest act: A 30-year-old man was sentenced to 30 months of prison and a $10,600 fine for posting pro-atheist and anti-Islam comments on Facebook.
Alexander Aan was charged with posting cartoons of the prophet Mohammed to an atheist Facebook group and for making statements including, "If God exists, then why do bad things happen?" The comments Aan made wound up inciting an angry mob to seek him out and severely beat him. Aan was arrested by police for his own protection.
Since then, Aan has been charged and convincted of "disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility." Amnesty International is calling for Aan's release, branding his conviction "a serious setback for freedom of expression in Indonesia, and [a violation of] Indonesia's obligations under international law."
(Source)
This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca
More from Tecca:An Argentine man who thought he bought a pair of poodles at an outdoor market in Buenos Aires brought them home to the vet only to be told they were actually ferrets on steroids, reports the Daily Mail.
The man, a retiree from Catamarca, purchased the animals at La Salada, Argentina's largest bazaar.
The veterinarian informed him the ferrets "had been given steroids at birth to increase their size and then had some extra grooming to make their coats resemble a fluffy toy poodle," the paper says, translating a report from a local Argentine TV station. He paid $150 per poodle.
Another woman interviewed by the station said she was tricked into thinking she had purchased a chihuahua at the same market.
It's unclear what the duped pet owners did with their faux poodles. But if you're thinking about buying a poodle at an Argentine market, the Daily Mail has a handy guide on how to tell whether the pooch you're purchasing is actually a ferret:
• Ferrets typically have brown, white or mixed fur and are around 51 cm in length—which includes a 13 cm tail.
• They weigh around three pounds and have a lifespan of 7 to 10 years.
• When happy, ferrets may perform a routine known as the weasel war dance—which is characterized by a series of hops and frenzied attempts to bump into things.
• This is often accompanied by a soft clucking noise called dooking. When upset, ferrets make a hissing noise.
• Toy poodles are known for their intelligence and are around 25 cm tall and weigh around nine pounds.
• If a toy poodle exceeds 25 cm height, it cannot compete in any dog show as a toy poodle.
• Toy poodles have been known to live as long as 20 years.
• Toy poodles are described as sweet, cheerful, perky and lively, and they love to be around people.
Check out this video of a poodle and a horse jumping:The number of Arab volunteers to National Service in Israel has increased six-fold in the past five years, its directorate announced on Monday. Of the volunteers, 92% are young women.
Culture Clash MK Zoabi slams minister over 'cultural superiority' Yair Altman Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch says prevention of honor killings is achieved through change in culture, sparks outrage of Balad Knesset member MK Zoabi slams minister over 'cultural superiority'
The volunteers are generally allocated to Arab populations, where they assist with matters of health, education, welfare, social projects, helping the elderly, technology, and computers.
Jarbi explained that there were a number of factors contributing to the rise, one of them being that volunteers get to help members of their own sector.
"There is, in the Arab sector as in every other sector, the will to give and receive. There has been an increase in awareness. Youths see their friends serving and receiving benefits and their neighbors receiving tools and being incorporated into the workforce, and they want this for themselves," he said.
The directorate has struggled to make room for everyone who wants to enlist, with the state supplying more available spots. In addition, and in answer to complaints, the directorate now issues its own letter of discharge instead of the one formerly supplied by the Defense Ministry, attracting Arabs who would not like to see themselves as working for this authority.
Still, Israeli-Arabs are constantly running up against objections at home, with Arab leaders counseling youths to refrain from performing services to the state.
"For years the Arab leadership has demanded, justifiably, benefits for Arab youths similar to those received by discharged soldiers. Now, when this opportunity is available, it is precisely these leaders who reject the state's call to come and do the service, and receive these benefits," said Jarbi.
And the Arabs are not alone – Jarbi says the trend has leaked into the ultra-Orthodox sector as well. "A year ago there were only 870 volunteers from this sector, and today there are 1,370. All of them are young
The haredi volunteers serve in areas of welfare, health, environment, immigrant absorption, rescue, and national security. Jarbi predicts at least 1,500 more will join next year, after a campaign is launched in the haredi public. "We are planning a huge revolution," he said optimistically.You're Good to Go!
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EVO 2012 in Las Vegas, July 6-8, will feature the top fighting game players from around the world competing in such titles as Super Street Fight IV AE, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Soul Calibur V, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters XIII, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Watch both the Main stream as well as the Gameplay 2 stream for all the intense fighting game action this weekend. Also, check out GameSpot's coverage over the weekend with player interviews and reactions.
EVO 2012 Interviews and Recaps
EVO 2012 Grand Finals Matches
EVO 2012 Main Stream Schedule
Friday 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Super Street Fighter IV AE Pools
6:00 p.m. PlayStation All-Stars Exhibition
6:30 p.m. Super Street Fighter IV AE Quarterfinal Bracket
8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Super Street Fighter IV AE Semifinal Bracket
Saturday 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 pool play
6:00 p.m. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Quarterfinal Bracket
8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Semifinal Bracket
12:00 a.m. Super Street Fighter II Turbo Tournament of LegendsAbout The Author Siobhan McKeown is a big fan of words, and of WordPress, which works out pretty well since she runs Words for WP, the only copywriting service dedicated to … More about Siobhan…
Smashing Special: WordPress Theme Trends For 2012
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2011 was a great year for WordPress, with some excellent new updates that saw the introduction of a drag-and-drop uploader, distraction-free writing, the HTML5 Twenty Eleven theme, and movement towards a fully responsive dashboard. As well as changes to WordPress core, theme development continued to evolve, as whispers of responsive design spread like wildfire across the WordPress community.
This special is the first in our series of Smashing Specials — extended articles and studies dedicated to a specific topic. The special features current WordPress theme trends for 2012, covering past trends, new developments in theme design and trends in the theme development.
2011 was a great year for WordPress, with some excellent new updates that saw the introduction of a drag-and-drop uploader, distraction-free writing, the HTML5 Twenty Eleven theme, and movement towards a fully responsive dashboard. As well as changes to WordPress core, theme development continued to evolve, as whispers of responsive design spread like wildfire across the WordPress community.
(image credit: Bowe Frankema)
Over the next year, some recent developments will become standards. Others, now just remote flickerings in the eyes of a few theme designers and developers, will start to take hold. Now that 2012 has properly started, let’s look at some trends that have emerged and are emerging.
Meet Smashing Book 6 — our brand new book focused on real challenges and real front-end solutions in the real world: from design systems and accessible single-page apps to CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, Service Workers, performance, AR/VR and responsive art direction. With Marcy Sutton, Yoav Weiss, Lyza D. Gardner, Laura Elizabeth and many others. Table of Contents →
Due to the length of this special, it was split into three parts:
Past Predictions
When thinking about future trends, it’s fun to look back and see what people predicted before to see whether any of their predictions came to fruition. Thankfully, with the power of Internet, combined with Ian Stewart’s “Future of WordPress Themes” posts (as well as WPCandy), doing this is very easy.
So, just what were people predicting when WordPress was growing up?
The Demise of the WordPress Premium Theme Market
At the start of 2008, when creating a premium WordPress theme was frowned upon, Ian Stewart wrote this in a post:
It’s prediction time: The premium WordPress theme phenomenon has approximately one year left before collapsing entirely, leaving a rather large hole between completely free WordPress themes and custom themes $1500 and up. If you’ve got a “premium” WordPress theme waiting in the wings, I advise releasing it sooner rather than later. As in, now.
We don’t really need to add a comment to that one.
“Cluttered and Pimped Out”
Here’s what Robert Ellis said about the future of WordPress themes in 2008:
The vast majority of themes will still be garish mutations of Kubrick, but more cluttered, more pimped out with widgets, scripts and effects. There will still be premium themes that push the envelope in terms of built-in options and quality, but the market will become saturated, setting off even more accusations of copying (as we’ve seen with magazine themes; though personally, I think most of them look like they were “inspired” by CNN).
This was more on the money, and we have seen amateur designers cram in a lot of different scripts and effects. This has diminished over time. Hopefully, our direction now is more Zen.
Early Niche Predictions
Justin Tadlock had this to say in 2008:
I do hear some talk of moving into designs for specific niches, so theme developers could cater to particular users. I think this is a great idea, which could be a nice trend as we’ve seen with magazine-styled themes. Users want something that works for them before unwrapping the packaging.
Justin was definitely prescient then, as niche themes became more popular in 2011. And we’ll see much more of them in 2012.
Everyone Loved Theme Options
In 2009, themes that allowed you to customize the layout and design started to appear. Here’s what Dougal Campbell had to say:
The main change I see happening here is with themes which provide some sort of customizing feature on the back end which lets you choose options like: header graphics; one, two or three sidebars, along with their positions; color schemes; They will also be pre-bundled with several plugins which allow you to pull in your content from other sources such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. These kinds of themes already exist, but I think we’ll see the ease of customization rise to a new level.
By 2012, this trend towards adding options and customizations reached its zenith, and it will hopefully decline over the coming year.
Want to have fun reading past WordPress theme predictions. Check them out here:
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Let’s look at how theme design has changed over the past few years.
Free Themes: The WordPress Repository
Below are the most popular themes downloaded from the WordPress theme directory since 2009 (thanks to Otto for getting this information). You can see how WordPress themes have moved away from looking like blogs to a more professional appearance.
2009
iNove was the most popular theme in 2009, followed by Atahualpa and then Pixeled.
2010
Mystique was the most popular theme in 2010, followed by Atahualpa and then TwentyTen.
2011
Delicate was the most popular theme in 2011, followed by TwentyEleven and then Platform.
The Most Popular Themes in the Forest
To see how things have fared on the commercial theme front, we scoured the archive of ThemeForest. Below are the best-selling themes from the last quarter of each year.
Here were the top themes:
2008
Sharp was the top theme for the end of 2008.
2009
Twicet topped downloads for the last quarter of 2009.
2010
Striking was the most popular theme in the last quarter of 2010.
2011
The multi-optioned uDesign was the most downloaded theme in the last quarter of 2011.
What Happened In 2011?
Before getting to our predictions for what will take hold in WordPress themes this year, let’s quickly look at what has happened over the past year:
Theme frameworks. Theme frameworks were everywhere in 2011. As someone who blogs regularly about WordPress, I found myself announcing the launch of three different frameworks in one week. WordPress staples such as Thematic, Thesis and Genesis continued to grow in popularity, but more and more frameworks appeared on the scene, including the likes of Wonderflux, Bones and Roots. Perhaps in 2011 we’ll see fewer new frameworks and more themes for existing ones.
. Theme frameworks were everywhere in 2011. As someone who blogs regularly about WordPress, I found myself announcing the launch of three different frameworks in one week. WordPress staples such as Thematic, Thesis and Genesis continued to grow in popularity, but more and more frameworks appeared on the scene, including the likes of Wonderflux, Bones and Roots. Perhaps in 2011 we’ll see fewer new frameworks and more themes for existing ones. Child themes. Child themes took off in a big way in 2011. Once people grasped the concept that creating |
league games since 2013. He says the Union first targeted him in November to join the team. “El Colorado,” as he is known, says he is happy to come to the U.S. and hopes to make his move to Philadelphia permanent.
Greg and Eli also talk about the other new signing, local product goalkeeper John McCarthy. The La Salle University grad will likely see playing time this year, with the other keepers Andre Blake and Rais Mbholi both expected to be away from the team on national team duty this season.
Listen to the full Philly Soccer Show podcast (runs 35:29)…
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———-Snapshots are taken per node using the nodetool snapshot command. To take a global snapshot, run the nodetool snapshot command using a parallel ssh utility, such as pssh. A snapshot first flushes all in-memory writes to disk, then makes a hard link of the SSTable files for each keyspace. You must have enough free disk space on the node to accommodate making snapshots of your data files. A single snapshot requires little disk space. However, snapshots can cause your disk usage to grow more quickly over time because a snapshot prevents old obsolete data files from being deleted. After the snapshot is complete, you can move the backup files to another location if needed, or you can leave them in place. Note: Cassandra can only restore data from a snapshot when the table schema exists. It is recommended that you also backup the schema.
Procedure
Run the nodetool snapshot command, specifying the hostname, JMX port, and keyspace. For example: $ nodetool -h localhost -p 7199 snapshot mykeyspace
Results The snapshot is created in data_directory_location / keyspace_name / table_name – UUID /snapshots/ snapshot_name directory. Each snapshot directory contains numerous.db files that contain the data at the time of the snapshot. For example: Package installations: / var /lib/cassandra/data /mykeyspace/users- 081 a1500136111e482d09318a3b15cc2/snapshots/ 1406227071618 /mykeyspace-users-ka- 1 -Data.db Tarball installations: install_location /data/data/mykeyspace/users-081a1500136111e482d09318a3b15cc2/snapshots/1406227071618/mykeyspace-users-ka-1-Data.db Taking a Global Snapshot: As stated earlier, global snapshot can be taken using the pssh tool. So let us configure this tool first, Steps for configuring the pssh are: Install the pssh tool using the following command sudo apt-get install python-pip sudo pip install pssh Create a hosts file that contains all the ip’s of the nodes present in that cluster and name it something like pssh-hosts It should look something like this : 192.168.2.123 192.168.2.125 192.168.2.120 Now run the following command so that the snapshots get created on each and every node : pssh -h pssh-hosts -P "/root/cassandra/bin/nodetool -h localhost -p 7199 snapshot "
Now youv’e taken the dump of data on each node which is present on each node, you can dowload it using secure copy and then restore it accordingly.
I am still working on automating the process of downloading the dump! Will update you all as soon as it is done!
I hope youve enjoyed the blog!
If youv’e any query ping me here or on twitter :shiv4nsh!
Will be Happy to help you out!
Till then enjoy someone’s else’s blog! 😉
Refrences:
DataStax Documentation! Some hack! 😀Has any F1 team made a breakthrough with the new 2017 rules, using a clever loophole? Will it change the competitive landscape?
Success in Formula 1 more-often-than-not comes through having a faster car than the competition and there have been numerous examples of teams interpreting the rules in clever ways to gain an advantage throughout the championship’s history. But Williams' Rob Smedley has warned that the way F1's rules are formed has made it more difficult for teams to find these advantages.
In 2017, F1 will introduce its biggest aerodynamic rules shake-up since the 2009 season and the cars will look visually more aggressive. Wider tyres return and the cars will feature wider bodywork and front wings, and wider and lower rear wings.
The teams that started working earliest on their 2017 challenges will be in a stronger position, as they will be the first to test what does and doesn’t work in simulations and wind tunnel work.
But some squads may find a loophole in the rules to gain a significant advantage over their rivals. Brawn GP – along with Williams and Toyota – famously ran an innovative double diffuser in 2009 and got such a large benefit the Brackley-based team was able to rack up enough points to claim both world titles despite eventually being caught in performance terms by the other outfits who were forced to develop their own system later in the season.
Smedley, Williams’ head of performance engineering, does not rule out that there are loopholes to be found in the 2017 regulations but he explained that such opportunities were becoming harder to find in modern F1 as the teams themselves have a say in shaping the rules.
Speaking to Autosport, he said: "Every time there has been a new set of regulations, at least through my time in F1, those openings have become smaller and smaller. The reason for that is that the technical regulations are pretty much written by senior technical people within the teams. The senior technical people in the teams are of the mind that we're all looking for a loophole, we are all trying to get the start on our competitors.
"But as these rules get written and because it's a collaborative process and it's written by people who are looking for loopholes, then the loopholes are pretty much closed off in the regulations.
"This set of regulations has been very much at the forefront of that. We've tried to close down the loopholes as and when. Do loopholes or areas of high exploitation still exist? Of course. Have we or other people found them? It remains to be seen."
Five of the best F1 loopholes
F1 designers have produced some amazing innovations and radical cars over the years. Some historical examples were the ground effect cars of the 1960s and 1970s, the six-wheeled Tyrrell in 1976, and the Brabham fan car in 1978.
But here are five examples from recent memory of cars that featured novel devices to take the most benefit from the regulations at the time.
Mass damper
Renault developed its mass damper system – a weight suspended between two springs – to help with the vibration and tyre bouncing of its double championship-winning R25 car in 2005.
But the device, which Renault also used on its R26 and was copied by other teams, was controversially banned by the FIA after the French Grand Prix in 2006.
Outboard mirrors
Ferrari was the first team to move mirrors onto the sidepods of its 248 F1 back in 2006 and several other teams – including Renault and Red Bull – made a similar move to find an aerodynamic gain in the years that followed.
But after complaints about poor visibility from drivers, the FIA ruled that mirrors had to be fitted on the cockpit sides on safety grounds following the 2010 Chinese Grand Prix.
Double diffuser
As outlined above, Brawn GP, Williams and Toyota, started the 2009 season with a double diffuser fitted to the rear of their cars after spotting a loophole in the regulations. The devices generated massive amounts of downforce in the season when F1 had moved to greatly reduce the number of aerodynamic parts teams could run on their cars.
Several squads lodged an official complaint but the FIA ruled the double diffuser was legal and the teans without the device had to quickly implement their own versions.
F-duct
McLaren arrived at the start of the 2010 season with its F-duct fitted to its MP4-25. The system provided an aerodynamic speed advantage, as its drivers were able to alter the air flowing from the front of the car and down the shark fin engine cover to help stall the rear wing.
The device was quickly copied by rival teams but after some variations forced drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel to activate the F-duct it was banned for 2011.
Hidden cameras
In 2014, Red Bull attempted to incorporate F1’s mandatory onboard cameras inside the nose of the RB10 to minimise their impact on the air moving over the front of the car.
Whilst such an approach was technically allowed by the regulations, the team was forced to fit the cameras more prominently after the FIA stepped in ahead of that season’s Monaco Grand Prix.These Two Firms Will Monitor Permissionless Blockchains
Two tech firms are joining forces to improve cryptocurrency security and curb cyber crime. Skry and Terbium Labs announced their partnership to monitor public key transactions over the dark web.
Also read: Satoshi Forest Permit Application Denied by Government Officials Again
Skry & Terbium Labs Partner To Analyze Permissionless Blockchain Activity
Back in April, blockchain analytics firm Coinalytics rebranded to Skry, Inc. The name Skry means “foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective surface.”
On October 12, the company announced a partnership with intelligence company Terbium Labs to help fight cyber crime. The companies say they will help financial institutions, Bitcoin companies and law enforcement investigate criminal activities.
While announcing the collaborative effort, the companies also released a detailed case study on the darknet. In essence, they explained Bitcoin and blockchain technology are “under attack” from criminal elements. The data firms also mentioned unlawful activities including extortion, hacked exchanges, and financing drug trafficking.
Skry and Terbium said, “permissionless blockchains and the nature of digital and decentralized currencies have opened the door to a wide variety of illicit actors.”
Furthermore, mixing applications such as CoinJoin, Confidential Transactions and Mimblewimble provide privacy and anonymity. The report explained that even though these platforms enhance user privacy, they “impede investigators trying to trace transactions back to a real-world entity.”
Skry and Terbium believe it’s necessary to be able to manage threat intelligence and risk solutions over the clear and dark web. Skry CEO Fabio Federici said Terbium Lab’s attributes will benefit the objective, stating:
We are excited to work with Terbium Labs and enrich our platform with data from the dark web.— Making Terbium Labs’ exceptional technology part of Skry’s blockchain intelligence platform will unlock unprecedented insights and provide critical information to our customers.
The Case Study
The company’s case study explains how the firms are countering criminal activity. Skry says they use data feeds from Terbium’s Matchlight system to monitor Bitcoin public keys.
As a result, Matchlight can index all public keys used on Tor, protected forums, darknet marketplaces (DNM), i2p, and more. Following this procedure, the feeds are siphoned into Skry’s analytics platform which delves further into the analysis.
The report said the firm’s tested 3,697,408 distinct URLs extracted. Large amounts of appearances were found on sites like Pastebin, DNMs, code repositories, and more. According to Skry, these “appearances can provide crucial data needed to advance an investigation.”
The analysis revealed roughly 11,000 different URLs tethered to DNMs, with 22,000 public key sightings. Out of that data, Skry said it managed to identify 798 unique Bitcoin public keys. According to the report, the biggest DNM’s are Dream and AlphaBay, followed by a psychedelic forum called The Majestic Garden.
The Firms’ Mission to Monitor Illegal Cryptocurrency Usage
Skry and Terbium said combining big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain gives their software significant advantages. Skry added that collaboration provides the forensic tools to investigate suspicious activity. The company says their clients will benefit from the new dark web data intelligence system.
Terbium’s Matchlight is specifically designed to scan for illicit activity through data analysis. In this case, it will monitor Bitcoin public keys and alert Skry’s analytic platform. Terbium Labs COO Tyler Carbone believes the software will enhance the industry.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Skry in their efforts to safeguard digital currencies and preserve the demand for enhanced privacy in public ledgers,” said Carbone. “Terbium’s unique approach to dark web monitoring gives Skry customers the crucial data needed to advance an investigation, mitigate risk, and combat fraudulent or criminal activity quickly.”
The rise in blockchain monitoring continues to grow, and firms using these tools believe they have the right. Basically, as a public ledger, Bitcoin opens the doorways to these surveillance techniques.
However, new privacy-enhancing methods are regularly conceived, and the report shows the firms are concerned. At Scaling Bitcoin Milan, fungibility was a huge part of the discussion — and this is pretty much why privacy considerations remain important.
What do you think about Skry and Terbium Labs new analysis tools? Do you think these companies are helping the industry? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: MarketWire, and Skry Report.
Images via Shutterstock, and aformentioned company websites.
Do you want to talk about bitcoin in a comfortable (and censorship-free) environment? Check out the Bitcoin.com Forums — all the big players in Bitcoin have posted there, and we welcome all opinions.Secretary of State John F. Kerry, left, speaks with Joseph W. Westphal, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on his arrival at the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia on Sept. 11, 2014. (Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski via Associated Press)
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry was in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, meeting delegations of Arab diplomats as the Obama administration attempts to cobble together a coalition of allies to confront the threat of the Islamic State. There are no illusions that the task ahead will be easy, and President Obama stressed in his Wednesday night speech the vital role Arab states have to play in breaking the terror organization's insurgency.
The active cooperation of Saudi Arabia, with its vast oil wealth, its well-equipped military and its broader influence among the Middle East's Sunni states, is key to any extended U.S. war effort in Iraq and Syria, as The Post's Anne Gearan reports from Jiddah. Though long an incubator of the Salafist ideology that now inflames the Islamic State and militant groups of its ilk, the kingdom has grown increasingly concerned with the destabilizing chaos the Islamic State has wrought in the region.
But that doesn't mean its state ideology is necessarily changing. The country is notorious for its draconian laws, which are derived from a strict Wahhabist interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In the space of two weeks last month, according to the rights group Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia executed as many as 22 people. At least eight of those executed were beheaded, U.N. observers say.
It appears that the majority of those executed in August were guilty of nonlethal crimes, including drug trafficking, adultery, apostasy and "sorcery." Four members of one family, Amnesty reports, were beheaded for "receiving drugs."
Saudi Arabia is conspicuous in being the sole country to regularly carry out beheadings; last year, a reported shortage of trained swordsmen led to some hope that the practice could wane, but recent evidence suggests otherwise. It's an uncomfortable irony given that the United States' current military mobilization was triggered after the Islamic State beheaded two American journalists.
"Beheading as a form of execution is cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and prohibited under international law under all circumstances," said Juan Méndez, a U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, at a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday.
Beyond the grisliness of the method of punishment, observers also point to the unjust ways in which those who face death penalties are found guilty.
"The execution of people accused of petty crimes and on the basis of ‘confessions’ extracted through torture has become shamefully common in Saudi Arabia. It is absolutely shocking to witness the Kingdom’s authorities' callous disregard to fundamental human rights," Amnesty's Said Boumedouha said in a statement circulated last week.
In violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia executed at least one person under the age of 18 this year, according to Amnesty International. At least half of all executions in Saudi Arabia since 1985 have involved foreign nationals, including domestic workers, whose harsh treatment under Saudi law has riled rights groups in the past.
"Despite several calls by human rights bodies, Saudi Arabia continues to execute individuals with appalling regularity and in flagrant disregard of international law standards," said Christof Heyns, another U.N. rapporteur. In July, the United Nations also condemned Saudi Arabia's "continuing trend of harassment" of human rights advocates in the country.
U.S. politicians, including the outspoken Sen. John McCain, routinely hector over the state of human rights in Iran — Saudi Arabia's main geopolitical rival in the Middle East and a country with a far more democratic political system than that of the Saudis. But they are more quiet about the many abuses carried out in the kingdom.Michel Gondry's Animated Noam Chomsky Doc + 'The We & The I'
As we wait for The Green Hornet to hit screens in January, it seems director Michel Gondry is already looking to the future. Time Out London (via The Playlist) recently spoke with the filmmaker who elaborated on the previously reported project The We & The I and revealed a new project in the form of an animated documentary about American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist, Noam Chomsky. The doc will feature a series of interviews with Chomsky but the audio will be placed over an animated backdrop similar to "Shorties Watchin' Shorties" or TV Funhouse's "Fun with Real Audio".
Gondry jests about the challenge, which may in fact be a benefit, of not being a master of the English language himself and how it's affecting his work on the film. Gondry says, "I hear my questions back on the tapes and have no idea how he can make any sense of them. He doesn’t actually mind it. I think he prefers someone who can barely speak than someone who’s coming at him with lots of philosophical baggage.” Gondry can talk a mile a minute though given the right subject matter, and having these two creative minds in one setting with an animated backdrop bringing it to life sounds pretty damn cool.
Chomsky is considered one of fathers of modern linguistics with work spanning into concepts that my years in college never even touched upon. His studies and teachings range from the method and pace at which children learn languages to the use of linguistics in cognitive psychology. Aside from his work with language, he also uses his words to be a strong advocate for anarchism. Despite his desire for less institutionalism, he has been praised by various universities and scholars for his contributions to linguistics and more. Animating the thoughts and concepts Chomsky will likely speak on in the interviews has limitless possibilities with Gondry involved.
As for The We & The I, Gondry has previously said, "I am working on a new drama which we’re going to shoot next summer, which follows 35 kids going to school on a bus. It's about how the group affects the individual. I’d written 25 versions of the screenplay and then we found this after-school activity center in the South Bronx and did a workshop there. Basically we talked to the kids and used their stories." This goes hand-in-hand with what Gondry revealed back in March when he said, " It's about the group effect, how people in groups transform when the group is dislocated, because everyone jumps out of the bus at different times, there is a smaller group and how the relationships evolve."
If there's one thing that's intriguing about Michel Gondry getting involved with any project, it's his childlike wonder and sensibilities that allow him to approach any given material with a fresh mind. Gondry simplified some of the most iconic films in history with Be Kind Rewind's infamous "sweded" versions of films, uses great visual tricks and production design to craft a surreal yet strangely realistic world with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and continues to be at the forefront of creativity in cinema.
With a free mind like Michel Gondry, I'm always looking forward to his next project. The man is a cinematic tour de force full of off-the-wall ideas, amazing visual tricks and techniques and most importantly, a love for the art of film. I'm extremely excited to see what he brings to The Green Hornet after seeing "Kato-vision" come to life in the most recent trailer for the January release and hearing some early Twitter buzz after a screening took place yesterday. As for Gondry's interesting future in film, we'll continue to keep you posted.
1 Sanka on Dec 8, 2010
2 Hattori Hanzo on Dec 8, 2010
3 The great amendment master on Dec 8, 2010
4 DuirMan on Dec 8, 2010
Sorry, no commenting is allowed at this time.Colby Cosh’s recent National Post column on White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and the American Civil War is an unfortunate example of Canadian virtue signalling, rooted in a selective interpretation of facts. Cosh’s suggestion that no people of good faith existed in the South because of the sin of slavery ignores the fact that state by state referendums on secession were close. In Georgia, the vote was 50,243 in favour and 37,123 against. Hardly a ringing endorsement for war.
Slavery was an American sin long before it was a Southern one. When slavery proved uneconomic in the North, slaves were sold south where the cotton gin allowed the institution to be marginally profitable. The beneficiaries of slave-grown cotton were not just plantation owners but powerful textile manufacturers in New England, as well as shipping firms and banks in New York. Northern banks and insurance companies, some still operating, were among the chief beneficiaries of slavery and the cotton trade. Even Canada’s own business legend William C. Macdonald used tobacco from slave states like Kentucky. His profits helped build McGill University.
New York, not New Orleans, was the centre of the global slave trade at the start of the Civil War. The banking and shipping behind the triangular cotton trade was all centred in New York. In 1860, the global slave trade between Africa and South and Central America was booming. The outfitting of slave ships and financing for this trade was centred in New York City.
Slavery was an American sin long before it was a Southern one
Cosh points to the presence of Confederates in Canada, but neglects to mention these Confederates operated with the tacit approval—if not outright encouragement—of Canadian authorities who saw a permanently divided United States as being in the best interests of British North America. Cosh talks of American historical myths, but what about Canadian myths? A prime example is the misconception that Canada supported old Abe and his war. In fact, Canadian authorities were alarmed by the runaway militarization of the U.S. and the evolution of a nascent military dictatorship centred in Washington. Secretary of State William Seward bragged to British ambassador Lord Lyons that he could have anyone in the United States arrested and held without trial simply by ringing a small bell on his desk. It was a shameful boast but essentially true.
Meanwhile, Lincoln shut down or intimidated into silence newspapers across the country that opposed the war. He arrested or disbanded whole state legislatures, while border states were militarily occupied and forcibly kept in the Union.
Another cherished Canadian myth centres on the Underground Railroad. Abolitionist sentiment among religious communities in Southern Ontario was indeed strong, and this is where the bulk of runaway slaves crossed into Canada. But the numbers were modest. Estimates place the figure at between 30,000 and 50,000. Support for runaway slaves tended to weaken as you moved east across Canada, with Montreal and Halifax being pronounced in their pro-Confederate sympathies. One thing is certain: had runaway slaves skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands, Canada would have quickly closed its borders.
Another cherished Canadian myth centres on the Underground Railroad
The South’s decision to secede was certainly influenced by the institution of slavery, which was considered an important state right. In the North, where Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, slavery was not a priority. The key issues for Lincoln were preservation of the Union and the collection of revenue. Don’t take my word for it; just read Lincoln’s First Inaugural. He goes out of his way to state, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery… where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Even when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation he was careful to free only those slaves not under his control. Slaves in border states loyal to the Union were excluded.
The truth is the Civil War was as much about money as principles. By 1864, the Union war effort had become utterly corrupt with large banks, arms suppliers and food providers making money from all sides; Canada was the venue for much of this illicit activity and Canadian institutions gleefully participated.
Barry Sheehy is a Canadian author of, or contributing author to, seven books (three dealing with the Civil War) and multiple papers and articles. (See barrysheehy.com)Just when many of us were already asking “WTF is going on in Fukushima?” along comes venerated Canadian scientist David Suzuki with the most ominous warning yet.
“Fukushima is the most terrifying situation I can imagine,” the environmental broadcaster told a University of Alberta audience one day before Halloween. “You have a government that is in total collusion with TEPCO, the energy company. They're lying through their teeth.”
Adding to this year's revelations of massive radioactive leaks from the melted reactors to the sea—roughly 300 tons daily—Suzuki cited Tokyo University research pegging the chance of another 7+ magnitude earthquake by 2016 at 70 percent.
“If, in fact, the fourth plant goes under an earthquake, and those rods are exposed, it's bye-bye Japan,” he prophesied, “and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate. Now if that isn't terrifying, I don't know what is.”
Coming from a man voted one of the “Greatest Canadians,” it's no surprise the eco-guru's warning spread like a nuclear meltdown on social media. But given his background is in genetics, not nuclear physics or radiobiology, how alarmed should we actually be?
I wanted to get to the bottom of what's rumor and what's fact, so I went to the top. I spoke with Malcolm Crick, secretary of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). He called me a few hours before dawn recently from Geneva.
“My perception is that the effects of leaks, flushing, and getting to the sea is somehow being mixed up and probably being miscommunicated,” the radiation scientist told me. “This has led to people then fearing the situation perhaps more than they should in view of the radiation health effects, though definitely there are some things that we want to keep an eye on.
“Though such on-site problems need to be taken seriously and resolved, they do not increase the doses or associated health risks much as they are well monitored.”
Suzuki isn't the only one sounding the alarm, however. Australian physician Dr. Helen Caldicott has long-crusaded against the nuclear industry, which she believes has friends in high places and a vested interest in distorting the facts.
“I don't care if they criticize us,” she told me. “David (Suzuki) has hesitated to get into the whole nuclear debate, but he's a careful scientist.
“Pro-nuclear advocates [...] make guesses about radiation exposure using old data, not the newest scientific information we have. They underestimate it grossly to keep their industry going [...] The predictions are so dire that no one wants to face them. They want to practice psychic numbing.”
I also called a number of nuclear physicists to evaluate the fears. All of them raised their sciency eyebrows at the Greatest Canadian's disturbing claims. Most agreed: the reality at Fukushima is worrying enough.
“It's really hard to have a rational public discussion based on the known facts of radiation,” said University of British Columbia physicist Marcello Pavan, “when it is so ingrained in the culture that radiation at any level is a bad and terrible thing [...] It is a risk like any other, like chemicals.”
Let's break Suzuki's statements down one-by-one.
A mural of David Suzuki in B.C.
1. “Fukushima is the most terrifying situation I can imagine.” - Suzuki
David Measday, nuclear and particle physicist (University of British Columbia)
“People are really exaggerating this. I mean, over 20,000 people were killed in the tsunami. As far as we know, no one was killed by radiation.”
Marcello Pavan
“As scientists talking around the lunchroom, we are more or less of a unanimous opinion that the hysteria around Fukushima is grossly overblown [...] With the supersensitive detectors we have at our disposal, [radiation] levels are way below anything that anybody has to worry about. We're subjected to background radiation from the moment we're born. I mean, every banana you've ever eaten has radioactive potassium in it.”
2. “They're lying through their teeth.” - Suzuki
Marcello Pavan
“That is absolutely correct, at least from what I see. TEPCO has been minimizing the effects of what is happening. But here we have a large industrial concern lying to the government about an accident related to its business—is that news?”
David Measday
“It's very difficult to find exact information, because of course they don't tell you everything. I've talked to a few Japanese physicists, but they don't know either. But now they have no reason to lie about the amount of radiation there is [...] The critical thing is, what is the level and how bad is it for humans?”
3. “...if there's another earthquake of 7 or above, that building will go and all hell breaks loose.” - Suzuki
David Measday
“Chernobyl actually exploded half the reactor into the atmosphere. That's as bad as you can get. At Fukushima, there was nowhere near that level [...] I don't deny there could be a small chance that things could go wrong. An earthquake or tsunami would probably be the worst, but if it's of that magnitude the radiation would be a much lesser concern.”
4. “Thirteen-hundred rods of spent fuel [...] They're pouring water in but water's leaking out.” - Suzuki
Malcolm Crick
“Radioactive isotopes are migrating into that groundwater and then towards the sea [...] The level of radionuclides in the harbor right there by the damaged plant seem to be increasing recently. But to give perspective, they're below the levels that WHO uses for determining the quality of drinking water.”
Marcello Pavan
“There's clearly issues with radioactivity in the water. Cooling water is leaking into the groundwater and into the ocean. But the ocean's a big place; the levels of radiation are dispersed. It's completely negligible.”
5. “They don't know what to do [...] The Japanese government has too much pride to admit that.” - Suzuki
Helen Caldicott
“TEPCO is trying to move those damaged rods by crane manually, which has never, ever been done before; usually fuel rods are moved by computer control. If two fuel rods happened to touch, there could be a fission reaction releasing huge amounts of radioactive gases. This would be a catastrophe. The radiation would circle the Northern Hemisphere.”
David Measday
“The Japanese were very careful, they built all their reactors to very high levels. I don't think it would breach... They probably have done as well as you possibly could with their existing reactors. What they failed to do was to estimate the size of the [2011] tsunami. But if there were another tsunami, they still haven't totally prepared for it. They could be in trouble again.”
6. “It's bye-bye Japan—and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate.” - Suzuki
David Measday
“I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. It's totally impossible! I can't believe he would say that. When he's in his own field, he's usually reasonable. But this is just crazy.”
Marcello Pavan
“It doesn't in any remote sense seem plausible. It's contaminated material, yes, but certainly not on a scale that would devastate Japan, nor travel all way across the Pacific and cause an evacuation."
More nuclear stuff:
Berlin's Suicide-Proof Nuclear Fallout Shelters
Inside the Abandoned Radioactive Towns of Japan
Takashi Murakami on Nuclear Monsters and Buddhist DamnationEvery so often an idea comes along that rings with such clarity and purpose that it ignites the imaginations of millions of people. That spark of excitement becomes hope, hope becomes action, action becomes community, and that community grows to become a movement. Marine biologist, author, fisherma’am, and Exxon Valdez survivor, Dr. Riki Ott has such an idea.
Exxon’s recently reported record profits marks a new height of American corporate corruption and influence over our federal government—corporations find more protection under the law than American citizens, health and safety regulations are stripped away to serve profits ahead of people, politicians serve only their corporate backers, and our environment is falling victim to the lustful greed of this disaster capitalism.
How did it come to this?
Dr. Riki Ott is launching the movement for the 28th Amendment to the Constitution: Separation of Corporation and State. In the video below, she explains what a 28th Amendment will accomplish, how it is possible, why it is necessary for our democracy.
In Riki’s own words:
In my book, Not One Drop, I answer the question I frequently heard on the streets in Cordova. (It’s a small town where people often visit in groups on Main Street or at the post office.) How did corporations get so big where they could manipulate our legal system? As survivors of the Exxon Valdez spill and 20-year lawsuit, practically everyone in town has first-hand experience with a legal system that failed to deliver justice and Exxon’s promise to make us whole. In researching our nation’s legal history, I found the answer. In this 4-minute video, I explain the solution—passing the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution: separation of corporation and state. Please listen. Then ask others to listen. In Not One Drop, I explain this idea more fully. Together we can build a movement to restore government of, for, and by the people.
Please help Riki spread the word. Post this video to your blogs, web sites, emails lists, news sites, twitter feeds, facebook profiles, refrigerators, rusty truck bumpers, and anywhere else. Digg!
UPDATE 11/11/08: Check out the Facebook Group: One Million Strong for the Separation of Corporation and State
[bliptv=Ad3daoaxCA]
UPDATE 11/13/08:
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO:
I am a survivor and witness of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It happened in my backyard, Prince William Sound, Alaska.
We have been in a lawsuit now for nearly two decades, and Exxon has managed to drag this out while it has managed to increase its profits to, basically, obscene levels: over $40 billion in net profits now. How did things get this bad?
The conclusion that I came to in Not One Drop is that we need the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: the separation of corporation and state.
Starting in 1886, judges started recognizing corporations had rights accorded to people. The first one was the 14th Amendment. And nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in the Bill of Rights, do we find the word “corporation.” This is totally judicial fiat. What this has done is allow a consolidation of wealth and power to the corporations that now threatens to destroy the republic. We want separated church and state—we now need to separate corporation and state.
On March 24, 1989—which is when [the] Exxon [Valdez] grounded and spilled 11–38 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound, I was commercial fishing. I held a commercial fishing permit, and I fished salmon. I also held a Masters and a PhD in marine toxicology. Exxon came to Cordova, Alaska, stood in our high school gym, and promised us, “We will make you whole.” Instead, Exxon worked behind the scenes to eliminate thousands of business claims. Exxon threw an army of attorneys at this case. And it’s not just the Exxons of the world, it’s any of these big transnational corporations have the ability, because of their wealth and power, to completely overwhelm small communities that get in their way.
If we had had the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, Exxon would not have been able to use the 5th Amendment and the 7th Amendment.
The 7th Amendment is that facts tried by a jury cannot be undermined or revisited by higher courts. So in this case, a jury of peers, ordinary people, determined that the price that Exxon had to pay was one year’s net profit. Exxon challenged the amount, and also that punitive damages should be held at all.
Exxon also used, in a related lawsuit, the 5th Amendment. The 5th Amendment is a takings—takings of property. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, there was a federal law passed (the Oil Pollution Act of 1990) that essentially banned the Exxon Valdez from Prince William Sound. It banned any tanker that has spilled over a million gallons from transporting oil in Prince William Sound. Exxon said, that is a takings of our future profit: that’s illegal under the 5th Amendment. If Exxon was not a person, Exxon would not have been able to apply the 5th Amendment.
Five years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground, we had our hearing, and the jury awarded us—the fishermen, the natives—$5 billion in punitive damages and $287 million in compensatory damages. Exxon appealed that $5 billion for over fourteen years, and ultimately, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finally threw its hands in the air and cut the 5 billion in half. The Supreme Court, in June of 2008, slashed the |
pretty good job on that.”
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, which King has long been critical of, also came in for a drubbing in the Deadline interview. “I think The Shining is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it … I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much,” said King.
“The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and you know then he’s crazy as a shithouse rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that’s a tragedy. In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change.”
Boone, speaking to Deadline about his planned adaptation of Revival, said that what the novelist “does so well is, he invests you in these characters with all their mundane lives and all the things people think about and worry about. Only then does he introduce a supernatural element, and those characters are so beautifully built that you are willing to go with it.
11.22.63 review – sumptuous Stephen King adaptation bodes well for Hulu Read more
“The movies based on King’s books that don’t work so well are the ones that don’t take the heart of the characters that beat in the books,” said Boone, who recently directed the adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. “I’m a huge John Carpenter fan, but on Christine, there’s an aching sadness and deep character development in the book that’s just not in that movie. What I’d like to do is Anthony Minghella-depth adaptations of King’s books, if that ambition makes sense.”The Ministry of Health has written to district health boards telling them not to pay their mental health workers the same as aged-care and disability support staff.
The letter is a blow to those left out of the recent $2 billion pay equity settlement boosting the wages of 55,000 aged-care and disability workers.
The document, leaked to Checkpoint with John Campbell, tells DHB chief executives any top-up payments to mental health support providers would risk breaching the Public Finance Act.
It seeks confirmation that DHBs "do not intend to provide such funding, or will cease if any initial payment has been made".
Neither Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman nor the Public Service Association were aware of the letter.
The pay equity settlement - announced by Prime Minister Bill English in April - increased wages for workers providing aged and residential care, but not for workers in mental health support.
Since then, the mental health sector has been reporting a loss of existing workers and difficulty attracting new ones.
One DHB told Checkpoint that the sector faced catastrophe if workers could not be retained.
Public Service Association (PSA) assistant national secretary Kerry Davies called the ministry's letter "outrageous".
"I'm totally shocked at that. I just cannot understand why the MOH [Ministry of Health] would do that," she said.
"Why they would put a limit on what DHBs can fund and also what NGOs can actually pay mental health support workers."
Platform Trust chief executive Marion Blake said mental health support workers currently earned $16-19 an hour, while those working in aged and residential care now received $19-23.50 an hour - or about 20 percent more.
The pay gap was beginning to have a serious impact, Ms Blake said.
"They're losing staff at a time when we need mental health and addiction [support providers] to be as strong as they possibly can," she said.
"Not only are people leaving the mental health services or have indicated that they will be leaving, it's also becoming increasingly difficult to recruit people, because people can be paid a higher wage - sometimes as much as $6 an hour difference - by going to work in the disability services."
The Ministry of Health declined to be interviewed. In a statement, it said:
"While the Ministry has appreciated well intentioned and equitable consideration by some DHBs, it was necessary to make it clear that all funding paid to DHBs through the Ministry had been specifically appropriated by Parliament for a purpose.
"It was clear that no pay equity funds could be used for mental health workers nor could general funds be used for the purpose of a top-up to contracted providers for their mental health workers.
"Additionally, since the legislation came into force, a claim has been lodged by E Tū and the PSA seeking pay parity for mental health workers," the statement said.Sales tax increase, marijuana decriminalization on ballot for May 5 election
A statewide proposal to increase the sales and use tax from six to seven percent was added to the ballot to dedicate a higher portion of taxpayer money to the School Aid Fund.
The East Lansing City Council unanimously voted to propose an amendment to the Charter of the City of East Lansing regarding the sale of public land. The change involved the required three-fifths majority to sell certain real land becoming a simple majority vote.
However, it was recently revealed by the attorney general’s office that the designated charter requirement of a three-fifths voter approval for the sale of park land and cemeteries had been automatically amended to a simple majority vote when the Home Rule City Act was changed in 1966.
City Manager George Lahanas said that because the city has never sold park land since 1966, this change was not obvious. In fact, due to the changes it is currently easier for the city to sell park land than any other type of land.
The May 5 proposal will still have an effect on the sale of other properties that currently require a three-fifths majority voter approval.
The second proposed charter amendment would prohibit local laws regarding the use, possession and transfer of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults over 21 on private property.
According to the Coalition for a Safer East Lansing, the city would join at least 23 other Michigan cities that have enacted similar legislation if it passes. Lansing passed the same proposal in 2013 with a 63 percent majority. The Coalition for a Safer East Lansing noted that in all of the other cities where similar reforms have been put in effect, cannabis-related crimes has not increased.
Recent polling has shown that 61 percent of voters support the decriminalization of marijuana, and several East Lansing City Council members have voiced their support as well.
One important reason for this proposal is to free up police resources related to enforcing cannabis restrictions.The two leading Democratic presidential candidates are pandering to their liberal base on private prisons and mass incarceration.
Over the past year, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton vowed to do away with private prisons: Sanders released a plan to ban them, and Clinton reportedly told Black Lives Matter activists that she wanted to do the same.
This is smart politics: Among liberals, there's a widely held belief that private prisons created a for-profit incentive to lock up as many people as possible, and, as a result, private prison companies have pushed for policies that led to mass incarceration to keep their big profits flowing.
This plays into the more antagonistic worldview liberals have toward corporations, money, and politics — that the wealthy are playing the political system to their own means. So under this view, if you get rid of private prisons, you can begin to undo mass incarceration.
But this focus on privatization overestimates the effect of private prison companies, which make up a tiny portion of America's vast prison system. There's also a much simpler explanation for why mass incarceration began: It was a response — however wrongheaded — to real crises in America back in the 1970s and '80s.
Private prisons are a small portion of the prison system
For-profit companies are responsible for confining about 6 percent of state prisoners — which make up more than 86 percent of the prison system — and 16 percent of federal prisoners, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. So private companies really hold very little sway in America's enormous prison system.
Private prisons are also a response to mass incarceration, not a cause of it.
In 2011, for example, Ohio became the first state to sell a state prison to a private company. The state pursued this as a cost-cutting measure — it figured that the expense of running the Lake Erie Correctional Institution was so high that it would be better if a private company bore the costs. But this cost-cutting measure only became necessary for Ohio as mass incarceration consumed a big portion of its budget, forcing the state to look for new ways to save money.
A similar story has played out in other states, from California to Virginia, as private prisons have been touted as a way to reduce spending as incarceration continued to grow. The Sentencing Project, which advocates for reduced incarceration, explained this in 2004, noting that a new era of privatization came after mass incarceration began:
The 1980s, though, ushered in a new era of prison privatization. With a burgeoning prison population resulting from the "war on drugs" and increased use of incarceration, prison overcrowding and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. In response to this expanding criminal justice system, private business interests saw an opportunity for expansion, and consequently, private-sector involvement in prisons moved from the simple contracting of services to contracting for the complete management and operation of entire prisons.
None of this is to say private prisons aren't fraught with problems. States are typically required to pay for a minimum number of inmates even if they can't fill a prison, so they have an incentive to fill up private prisons to an extent to get bang for their buck. And more inmates mean more money for prison companies, while stronger rehabilitation programs and security may be seen as too costly.
But as criminal justice expert John Pfaff pointed out, public prisons have some of these problems, too: States have to pay for keeping public prisons open even if they don't have enough inmates for full occupation, and that may create an incentive to fill up public prisons, as well.
2B. The public sector union keeps prisons open to keep guards paid. How is that different than paying CCA for unused beds? — John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) February 4, 2016
Moreover, there's no sign private prisons have even perpetuated mass incarceration.
Consider the push for criminal justice reform: If private prisons really hold a lot of sway over prison policies, why have bipartisan coalitions in most states — from California to Georgia — pushed criminal justice reform and reduced their incarcerated populations over the past several years? And why are bipartisan groups in the US Senate and House proposing reform that would cut down on the federal prison population?
The reality is that criminal justice policies are driven by much broader concerns: the crime rate, and how lawmakers think they should work to reduce it without straining budgets.
High crime rates and drug use led to mass incarceration
In the 1970s and '80s, crime rates and drug use were historically high. This created a political crisis in America, as the public, media, and politicians bought into the idea that punitive measures were necessary to combat the breakdown of society's moral fabric.
Take, for instance, the murder rate over the past several decades, which was unusually high from the 1970s through the early '90s:
Drug use was similarly high during the late 1970s and early '80s, based on Monitoring the Future data for high school seniors:
The media went into a frenzy over these types of numbers, widely covering gang and gun violence, drug use among children, and the crack cocaine epidemic. This drove the public to demand that lawmakers do something about these problems. And policymakers responded with mass incarceration.
The idea was that more arrests, more prosecutions, and longer prison sentences would deter crime and drug use. Facing a crisis, US lawmakers pursued these policies with little concern for the costs — not just the financial burden, but the racial disparities and erosion of civil liberties they produced as well.
Mass incarceration was an ineffective way to fight crime and drug use
It's now easy to look back at these ideas with scorn. Criminal justice experts point out, for example, that incarceration reached the point of diminishing returns by the 1990s — there are only so many serious criminals out there, and by then the people getting put in prison weren't people who'd be committing crime after crime on the street. So mass incarceration was an ineffective way to fight crime and drug use.
But these policies were desperate responses to real crises at the time. Policymakers didn't need private prison companies lobbying them to pursue mass incarceration. They just had to look at the country's problems with crime and drugs — and the media and public's demands that something be done — to realize they had to act.
All of this is crucial to understanding why mass incarceration is now widely regarded by people of both political parties as unnecessary: Just as historically high crime rates and drug use encouraged America to increase its prison population, plummeting crime rates and reduced drug use suggest punitive measures are no longer needed.
But it will take criminal justice reform far beyond banning private prisons to end mass incarceration.Given the endless recent discussion of newspapers’ demise—a five percent circulation drop since March was just announced—comparatively little mind has been paid to the death of the comic strip. This may be because the comics have been rotting away for years, as useless as classifieds. With a few exceptions, characters are stale, situations dull, and jokes hopelessly flaccid. Once the playground of McCay, Gross, and Kelly, the funny pages aren’t much fun, or all that interesting. If this form of humor leaves us, conventional wisdom says, it’s been plodding towards the exit for years. And anything that kills The Lockhorns might not be so bad.
Though I love the comics deeply, I’ve come to accept their fate. Or, rather, I did—until I began to follow the work of cartoonist Richard Thompson. If one strip might serve as an argument against the decline, it’s his terrific Cul de Sac—recently collected in Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: A Keepsake Garland of Classics. The comic is vibrant, warm, and beautifully drawn; unlike its staggering peers, it’s outrageously alive. Cul de Sac is proof that the medium has juice, even as it dwindles. This unintended subtext adds a layer of poignancy: this wonderful creation was born at a terrible time.
In 2007, Cul de Sac spread to the dailies from the Washington Post Magazine. I’m not sure how I found it—my city’s paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, reserves its space for Hägar the Horrible and Rex Morgan, M.D.—but I’ve come to read it each day on the Web. The story is simple enough: a group of children plays games, attends preschool, and finds adults confusing. Their parents are baffled and thwarted; a teenager stews in his room. There’s an eccentric teacher and a pompous guinea pig. And that is pretty much it.
Yet like the great kids’ titles—Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, even Little Orphan Annie—Cul de Sac draws strength from realism, facing its characters’ fears. In one early strip, the four-year-old Alice Otterloop spends Thanksgiving at her grandmother’s house. When a friend inquires about it, she describes a gravy spill which led her “to take a bath in Grandma’s scary bathtub. I still smell like her crabapple-lye shampoo.” Her friend’s response as the two walk away: “My grandma smells like the bingo hall.”
It is sad and bewildering and true. And as with Peanuts, such dialogue seems funnier in retrospect—we glean the cuter parts and toss away the rest. It’s only upon reading these strips that we recall their characters’ troubles—and those of our younger selves. This underpinning adds heft, and makes sweeter episodes—Snoopy cavorting with Woodstock; Calvin and Hobbes sipping cocoa; Alice talking to bees—feel earned, not saccharine.
In a more recent Cul de Sac, Alice sits in bed, grumpy as all hell: “Ooh, I can feel it. I’m going to have a major tantrum today. I can feel the pressure building.” Her mother bursts in, oblivious, telling her to come for breakfast—waffles with whipped cream and strawberries! In a lesser comic—Hi and Lois or Blondie—the kicker is obvious: “Maybe today won’t be so rotten after all!” Instead, we get this: Alice, teeth clenched, seething, “Oh, it’s going to be a bad day …”
A friend of mine dismisses Cul de Sac’s humor as deriving from “kids saying grown-up things.” I don’t know that he’s wrong. But when a writer presents his characters in all of their dimensions, such concerns seem secondary. In a 2008 interview with The Comics Reporter, Thompson said, “I didn’t want the strip to be about the zany antics of those little dickens, Alice and Petey. I wanted it to be about the kinda gently surreal parts of childhood, where the kids don’t know what’s going on or how things work, and maybe the adults don’t either. The mom and dad are good parents but not great parents.” Being able to “get it right” this way is rare, regardless of genre or form. That alone makes Cul de Sac worthy. We can only hope that, as there once was for Watterson, Schulz, and the rest, there will be a medium to support Thompson’s gift long into the future.Among the 5,000 grave markers for Confederate soldiers in the Soldier’s Rest section of Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg, Mississippi, one pays tribute to Old Douglas, the camel of the 43rd Mississippi infantry, Company A, nicknamed “The Camel Regiment.”
It is not known how Douglas, a dromedary (one hump) camel, came to serve with the 43rd Mississippi infantry during the Civil War. He was a gift to Colonel W. H. Moore, who assigned him to carry the instruments and knapsacks for the regimental band. Douglas participated in the Battles of Iuka and Corinth under Major Generals Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn, respectively, before being shot by a union sharpshooter on June 27th, 1863, during the siege of Vicksburg.
Douglas was well loved by the humans of his regiment, less so by the horses. On one occasion, Douglas is said to have spooked one of the horses into stampeding through a camp near Iuka, injuring horses and soldiers, possibly killing some of the former. Soldiers climbed trees to get out of the path of destruction.
Douglas routinely broke free of his tether, but usually used his freedom to graze, never wandering too far from the regiment. On that fateful day in 1863, though, he wandered into no man’s land between the Union and Confederate armies, and paid the ultimate price.
The Union army responded to the camel’s death, according to legend, by eating him, since food was scarce, and making war souvenirs out of his bones. The Confederates responded by making a point of severely wounding the sharpshooter who had killed their beloved camel.
Douglas was not the only camel in the United States during the Civil War. Before he became president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis was the U.S. Secretary of War, and implemented the Texas Camel Experiment in the 1850s to see how useful camels would be in the American Southwest where horses were beginning to have trouble on long trips. Camels can carry immensely heavy loads for long distances with little water. They are also not nearly as tamable as horses, though Douglas was called “faithful” and “patient” by those who knew him best.
Camels were brought over from the Mediterranean and North Africa, and used for exploring the Southwest. The Civil War took the steam out of the experiment, and the camels eventually dispensed. Many were sold at auctions in 1864 and 1866 to work in circuses and mines, as postal carriers and pack animals and racing camels. Some even escaped or were set free, and feral camels were occasionally spotted roaming the American Southwest for years after.
Lest the contributions of camels in the Civil War be forgotten, the Texas Camel Corps promotes their stories with reenactments and hosts camel rides. Two of the camels are descendants of Old Douglas.It appears that Kid Rock’s run for the Senate in 2018 is officially happening.
Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, tweeted out kidrockforsenate.com around noon Monday.
“I Believe if you work your butt off and pay your taxes, you should be able to easily understand and navigate the laws, tax codes, health care and anything else the government puts in place that affects us all,” Rock said in the attached image on the tweet.
Kid Rock raised eyebrows when he hinted at a run for public office last week, and some denounced it as a hoax. However, he also shot down the rumors it was a hoax on his Facebook page.
He released the following statement regarding the rumors:
Once again the press is wrong. First of all, I’ve got 15 days from my announcement to file paperwork with the FEC! Second, I’m not signed to Warner Bros!!! – which simple fact-checking would have revealed. I have recently worked out a unique deal with BMG, Broken Bow, CAA and Live Nation to release music ON MY TERMS. Like politicians write books during their campaigns, I’m planning on putting out music during mine and IT ALL STARTS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT. It’s not a hoax, it’s a strategy and marketing 101! No plans for an album or anything else that has been the usual norm in the music business OR politics…..and…..
Senator Stabenow and I do share a love of music, although probably not the same kind. I concede she is better at playing politics than I am so I’ll keep doing what I do best, which is being a voice for tax paying, hardworking AMERICANS and letting politicians like her know that We the People are sick and tired of their bullshit!
“I am the captain now.”
#fakenews #kidrockforsenate #kidrock #podunk #greatestshowonearth
Buckle up America because this is about to get awesome.
Follow David on TwitterThe smartphone makers have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement that ends their conflict
Apple and Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC have settled all of their outstanding patent disputes.
The settlement includes a 10-year agreement under which the companies will license current and future patents from each other, they said in a brief statement. The terms of the settlement are confidential and were not disclosed.
The patent dispute between the companies, one of many being fought in the mobile device industry, began in March 2010 when Apple filed suits at the International Trade Commission and US District Court for Delaware accusing HTC of patent infringement.
HTC hit back with its own lawsuit and the fight escalated.
The top executives from each company provided much the same commentary in the joint statement.
Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, said, "HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation," while Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC. We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation."
Apple was the world's number two smartphone maker in the second quarter, accounting for 16.7 percent of shipments, according to research from IDC. HTC was in fourth place with a share of 5.8 percent, IDC said.
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.comThe chief of staff of Unite’s leader, Len McCluskey, has left the Communist party to become a Labour member.
Andrew Murray, who last year said communism represented “a society worth working towards”, joined Labour’s ranks recently, a Unite spokesman said.
Murray, a former Morning Star journalist and longtime chair of Stop the War, said in a Guardian interview last year that his adherence to communism prevented him from joining Labour.
“All my children are in the Labour party,” he said. “One has been in the Labour party a long time; the other three are all there as a result of Jeremy’s surge. But no, I’m a member of the Communist party. That’s where I am. Communism still represents, in my view, a society worth working towards – albeit not by the methods of the 20th century, which failed.”
He added: “But you can be sure of one thing. If I joined the Labour party, what do you think would appear in the Mail or the Telegraph or the Times … or even the Guardian?”
Last week Murray’s daughter, Laura, claimed that members of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and other Troyskyist groups were seeking to take control of Momentum, the grassroots organisation that supports the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, from its founder, Jon Lansman.
“Jeremy Corbyn will inevitably make one compromise or concession that isn’t ideologically pure enough for them, and they will abandon him and Labour altogether to turn Momentum into a rival leftwing party,” she wrote.
In her blog she further claimed that a row over the form of an internal voting structure at a meeting of Momentum’s national committee had ended in bullying and intimidation. She accused AWL members of bullying those whom they suspected of being “rightwing” or “alt-Stalinist” members.
Richard Angell, director of Progress, the centre-left pressure group, said that with or without the AWL, Momentum – due to its intention to move Labour from the mainstream and deselect current MPs – remained a threat to Labour’s election hopes.
“The argument that is being propagated by Lansman – and his media supporters Owen Jones and Paul Mason – is that Momentum minus the AWL would be totally fine. This is not true,” he wrote on his blog.
Angell added of Murray Sr’s conversion: “It’s more than regretful that Labour’s ability to attract previously staunch communists has not been able to counterbalance the loss of support in Sleaford, Richmond and national opinion polls.”(Newser) – There are a lot of cats in the United States. Perhaps close to 95 million live with us as pets, reports the Times-Picayune. But does our affection for these feline friends move in just one direction? New research in the journal PLoS One suggests that domesticated cats are more independent than dogs because they have less "secure attachment" to their owners. In this case, attachment "is not simply an affectionate bond," the researchers write, but relates to "the carer being perceived as a focus of safety and security in otherwise threatening environments." Past research has indicated that some cats whose owners leave them alone display signs of separation anxiety, as dogs do. "But the results of our study show that they are in fact much more independent than canine companions," says lead researcher Daniel Mills. "It seems that what we interpret as separation anxiety might actually be signs of frustration."
Behavioral scientists at the University of Lincoln in the UK tested this by observing cats in unfamiliar environments with their owners, with strangers, and alone. They were looking for three distinct characteristics of attachment: the amount of contact a cat sought, its level of passive behavior, and its distress when the owner was absent. Cats were, it turns out, more vocal when their owners left them than when strangers did, but they demonstrated no other signs of attachment, hence the possibility that the vocalization was not one of longing; the researchers posit it could indicate frustration or just be a "learned response." "Our findings don’t disagree with the notion that cats develop social preferences or close relationships," says Mills, "but they do show that these relationships do not appear to be typically based on a need for safety and security." (One woman's attempt to rescue her cat from a cliff didn't go so well.)HONG KONG, Nov. 20 (UPI) — China has arrested suspects for illegal foreign-exchange transactions totaling $64 billion – in Beijing’s campaign against widespread corruption.
The crackdown took place in eastern Zhejiang province, where more than, face lawsuits or some other penalty, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Underground banking and money-laundering activities totaled $125.4 billion since April, according to state-owned People’s Daily. Michael Bloomberg: Deadbeat New York Senator Charles Schumer: Covers For Deadbeat New York Mayor Bloomberg’s Expatriated Millions To Oversea Banks!
Organized crime was heavily involved, and among those arrested, 100 suspects from eight gangs were detained, CNN Money reported. The gang’s ringleader allegedly runs several shell companies in Hong Kong that were dealing in money laundering and foreign exchange transactions.
The investigations began in September 2014 and in the past year Chinese police sifted through more than 1.3 million shady transactions, according to Xinhua. Authorities subsequently froze about 3,000 bank accounts.
The transactions circumvented China’s official limit on capital outflows, restricted to $50,000 per year for Chinese citizens. Those who seek to send capital abroad have sometimes resorted to money laundering ranging from fine art purchases to real estate investments in cities like Vancouver, Canada and Sydney, Australia.
In many cases, Chinese citizens used a tactic called “smurfing,” where large sums of money are sent abroad in small increments.
UPI
In one illegal money-transfer case – the biggest discovered in China so far – Chinese funds worth about 410 billion yuan (HK$500 million) had been transferred overseas using non-resident accounts, exploiting regulatory loopholes and by-passing oversight, it said.
The People’s Bank of China has given verbal guidance to onshore lenders to stop offering cross-border financing to offshore banks, people familiar with the matter said this week. The companies were reportedly involved in foreign exchange transactions and money laundering.
They worry such networks are used by corrupt officials, criminals and terrorists to launder money, and say massive unofficial outflows wreak havoc with China’s financial management. Although the crackdown, launched jointly by China’s police, foreign exchange regulator and the People’s Bank of China, had made a few progress, illegal activities of China’s underground banks were spreading and the situation was still serious, the article said. United States Gold And The Reverse Goldfinger Effect! From Rothschild With Love!
Bills Insider
Related Articles:AUSTIN — A judge has tentatively approved a settlement between Farmers Insurance and the state that would resolve a long-running lawsuit alleging massive overcharges by the company in its homeowners policies more than a dozen years ago.
State District Judge Scott Jenkins of Travis County said Thursday that he would sign an order approving the settlement, which calls for refunds to Farmers customers of $84.4 million.
That comes on top of a 6.8 percent reduction in homeowners rates already implemented, for a total settlement of $127.5 million.
“I would like to get this done,” Jenkins said of the case, which has been in the courts since late 2002. That’s when Farmers and the Texas Department of Insurance first negotiated a settlement to state allegations against one of the largest property insurers.
Texas Insurance Commissioner David Mattax called the agreement “a significant step toward returning funds to deserving Farmers customers.” But consumer groups attacked the proposal as a giveaway to Farmers.
“This deal lets Farmers pocket millions of dollars in overcharges without paying interest on its wrongfully collected premiums,” said Alex Winslow of Texas Watch, which closely follows insurance issues. “The bottom line is that Farmers customers are left holding the bag.”
Winslow said the agreement “lets Farmers off the hook for millions in excessive premiums.” Testimony during two days of hearings that concluded Thursday indicated that while Farmers overcharged policyholders by 12 percent to 18 percent, the settlement required it to return only 6.8 percent.
Mattax said during the hearing that he was unable to secure a larger refund from Farmers during the negotiations.
Farmers does not admit wrongdoing under the settlement, and company officials indicated they wanted to resolve the case after several years in court.
As many as 1.8 million current and former Farmers policyholders could be affected by the settlement, but no refund checks or premium credits will be issued before a “final fairness” hearing in the class action case on Feb. 1. Three intervenors in the case are opposed to the settlement and indicated they will raise objections during that hearing.
Policyholders who are affected were given less comprehensive policies in the wake of the mold crisis that rocked the Texas home insurance market more than a decade ago. Premiums on those policies were not decreased to reflect the reduced coverage, according to the state.
Other affected customers were not given premium reductions for discounts they were entitled to. Still other policyholders paid excessive premiums for auto and home insurance because of inaccurate credit reports used by the company.
Credit reports are used by most insurers in determining premiums their customers pay.
The case was the first class action insurance lawsuit ever filed by the attorney general’s office. Farmers countersued, insisting it did nothing wrong.
However, late in 2002, Farmers conceded and agreed to a package of refunds, rate reductions and premium credits that was similar to what Judge Jenkins approved Thursday.
Follow Terrence Stutz on Twitter at @t_stutz.Boy inspires'mean lookin' guys to flock to Sugar Land for My Little Pony tattoos
Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Boy inspires'mean lookin' guys to flock to Sugar Land for My Little Pony tattoos 1 / 20 Back to Gallery
A Sugar Land tattoo artist is offering discount "My Little Pony" tattoos after an 11-year-old was bullied so badly for liking them that he tried to hang himself.
News of Michael Morones' suicide attempt in North Carolina last month quickly spread around the world. His mother appeared on TV to say he had told her he couldn't take the bullying anymore.
Tiffany Morones-Suttle told ABC her son had said, "Mum, I'm tired of people being mean to me, I'm tired of people calling me gay, I'm tired of people telling me I'm ugly, that I'm stupid."
Now Imperial Tattoo in Sugar Land is pledging its support by offering $20 My Little Pony tattoos to raise money for Michael. They say they have been overwhelmed.
"We've done 25-30 of them since last week and more are booked this week," said store owner Tony Wayne. "They're regular guys, tattooed mean lookin' guys."
Wayne says as soon as he saw Michael Morones' story, he knew he had to help.
"Tattoos are about freedom of expression. Michael should have been free to like My Little Pony if he wanted to," Wayne said. "I knew other kids would be being bullied and this was the only way I could think to help."
Christy Van Kannon, 34, from Katy got a blue My Little Pony with a red mohawk on the inside of her left arm. She said she felt compelled to do it because one of her 12 year old daughter's school friends also committed suicide because of bullying.
"I have three kids," said Van Kannon, "For me this was an incredible opportunity to show people how important it is to stop bullying, We have to stand up for others that cant stand up for themselves"
Michael Morones is still hospitalized in critical condition. Dctors say he may have suffered permanent brain damage. An online fund to support his recovery has already raised more than $68,000.
Wayne said the money from his store's tattoos will go in part to the recovery fund and also to the anti-bullying group Stomp out Bullying. He said Michael Morones' stepfather has called him to say thank you for the support.
The appeal of My Little Pony has reached cult status, with the show typically marketed toward girls, but growing a huge male fan base across the globe.
"Bronies," as they are known, hold conventions and meet-ups in the United States and around the world.
Tony Wayne was unaware of the market he might be tapping into.
"I didn't even realize this was going on, but things should not be gender specific. I'm getting (a My Little Pony Tattoo) myself now. You don't have to be a girl to like My Little Pony," Wayne said.When a white horse is not a horse (Chinese: 白馬非馬; pinyin: báimǎ fēi mǎ; Wade–Giles: pai-ma fei ma; literally: 'white horse is not horse') is a famous paradox in Chinese philosophy. Around 300 BC, Gongsun Long wrote this dialectic analysis of the question "Can one legitimately assert 'white horse is not horse'?", in a work now named for him, Gongsun Longzi, in a segment called the "White Horse Dialogue" (Chinese: 白馬論; pinyin: Báimǎ Lùn; Wade–Giles: Pai-ma Lun; literally: 'White Horse Discourse').
The original text [ edit ]
Is it a horse?
The White Horse Dialogue (Baima Lun) constitutes chapter 2 of the eponymous Gongsun Longzi. The purported author, also known as Master Gongsun Long, was counted among the School of Names ( AKA the Logicians or the Dialecticians) in the Hundred Schools of Thought. Most of Gongsun's writings have been lost and the received Gongsun Longzi text only contains six of the supposedly 14 original chapters. Parts of the text are dislocated and some commentators and translators rearrange them for clarity. The dialogue is between two unnamed speakers:
Is "Chinese: 白馬非馬; pinyin: Báimǎ fēi mǎ; literally: 'white horse is not horse'" assertible? Advocate: It is. Objector: How? Advocate: "Horse" is that by means of which one names the shape. "White" is that by means of which one names the color. What names the color is not what names the shape. Hence, one may say "white horse is not horse." Objector: If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are no horses. If one cannot say that there are no horses, doesn't that mean that there are horses? For there to be white horses is for there to be horses. How could it be that the white ones are not horses?
Advocate: If one wants horses, that extends to yellow or black horses. But if one wants white horses, that does not extend to a yellow or black horses. Suppose that white horses were horses. Then what one wants [in the two cases] would be the same. If what one wants were the same, then 'white' would not differ from 'horse.' If what one wants does not differ, then how is it that yellow or black horses are acceptable in one case and unacceptable in the other case? It is clear that acceptable and unacceptable are mutually contrary. Hence, yellow and black horses are the same, one can respond that there are horses, but one cannot respond that there are white horses. Thus, it is evident that white horses are not horses.
This dialogue continues with deliberations over colored and colorless horses and whether |
another suggested “house equipment” was “leeching on to devices” to steal email addresses. Someone also wrote, “Oohhh a mystery, we have to figure out what we all have in common.”
Then about after a half an hour later, people started to lighten up and take in the hilarity behind this randomness seeping into their lives.
Naturally, several memes were born.
As was this fetching T-shirt.
And of course, the potluck.
That same night, after about 100 emails were sent out over a four-hour period, a Facebook group was started for everyone on the chain with about 200 members initially signed up.
Guest was alerted the next day about the overnight storm he had created and sent out an email apologizing to everyone in the group, along with an important direction: “PLEASE DON’T HIT ‘REPLY TO ALL'”.
Regardless, some people continued to “reply all” asking to be removed from the list while others requested to join.
The whole fiasco culminated in a Facebook-planned event “CNA Survivor Picnic” at Ohlone Park in North Berkeley Sunday. The invite read:
“Hey strangers! (lol)
Let’s have a picnic this Sunday at Ohlone Park. There is a grassy area with plenty of space for 50-100 people. Please let us know below what you’re bringing (be it booze, snacks, etc).
…Emailing during the picnic is highly encouraged ;)”
About 70 people attended the Sunday picnic, Berkeleyside said. The group said they want to continue meeting on a monthly basis to volunteer together and build on the community Guest accidentally created. Guest even attended the picnic and received a can of Spam as a thank you gift.
“It’s really, really awesome, I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Ben Bartlett told Berkeleyside. “Unlike social media, this was your email. It was like someone knocking on your door.”Select Page 1 - Introduction 2 - Graphics Settings 3 - 4K Performance 4 - 1440p Performance 5 - 1080p Performance Part 1 6 - 1080p Performance Part 2 7 - VRAM Capacity Usage 8 - Conclusion
Date: Friday, December 02, 2016 Author: Brent Justice
Watch Dogs 2 Video Card Performance Review Part 1 Watch Dogs 2 has been released on the PC. We will have a three part evaluation of performance and image quality starting today with performance comparisons. We will also find the highest playable settings for each graphics card and the gameplay experience delivered. Finally, a graphically demanding game.
Introduction
Watch Dogs 2 has finally been released on the PC following a delay. The game was first released on console. Watch Dogs 2 is developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and published by Ubisoft. It was first released to PlayStation 4 and XBOX One on November 15th. The PC version was released on November 29th. This is an action-adventure third-person shooter type game.
Watch Dogs 2 follows the first game, Watch Dogs 1 which was released in 2014. We used the first Watch Dogs game quite a bit in our video card testing back in the day. You can read our Watch Dogs Performance and Image Quality Review from back then for some nostalgia, and to compare Watch Dogs 2 to the previous version. Nobody will ever forget, or forgive, the E3 debacle that the first game generated. You can read about it in our article linked above.
Watch Dogs 2 is poised to fix or improve upon many of the gameplay issues gamer’s complained about from the first game. The developers have supposedly taken notes and feedback to make this game’s actual gameplay superior to the previous game. In essence, Watch Dogs 2 is what Watch Dogs 1 should have been.
Our Goals
While gameplay has improved, we are concerned with the graphics, we want to know how it performs, how it looks, and if it drives video gaming forward on the PC. We will test these things in a multi-part evaluation of this game. We are breaking up our evaluation into three articles so that we can thoroughly cover all aspects of the game. What is not covered here today in this article, will be covered in the remaining two parts. There is a lot to cover.
In Part 1 today we will focus on how the video card line-up compares against each other in the game. We will compare by apples-to-apples and find the highest playable settings for each video card. We have also taken VRAM readings to report our findings. This will allow us to generate a baseline of performance in the game and know how each video card stands up in this game.
Second, in Part 2 we will cover a more in-depth analysis of performance of individual graphics features turned on, or off. For example we will dive into the performance difference of the High Resolution Texture Pack being used, or not. We will find out how graphically intensive the Shadow options are, how graphically intensive all the AA options are, Ambient Occlusion, the Detail slider, and other settings.
Finally, in Part 3 we will dive into image quality. We will look at screenshots comparing the High Resolution Texture pack to the default game’s textures. We will compare the shadow settings visually, Ambient Occlusion, Details, AA, and other effects to see the actual benefits.
Watch Dogs 2 Graphics
Before we begin, NVIDIA has put together its own Graphics and Performance Guide for this game. NVIDIA’s article goes in-depth on explaining and showing what each graphics option does in this game. If you want a detailed explanation of each setting, and visual comparisons, hit up that article to learn more.
The Watch Dogs 2 game engine and graphics are improved following the first game. However, this game does not support DX12, it is DX11. There is no word or rumor if the game will ever be updated to DX12. It should be noted that game development did start on the PlayStation 4 and XBOX One first, in this game, and the PC came second. However, at least it was created on the next gen consoles so it does support current 3D effects. We hope it gets patched to DX12. This is certainly the type of game DX12 could help with.
The engine is an evolved version from the first game that allows for long view distances with high-detail and atmospheric effects. The lighting effects are more realistic and the world is more much detailed and dynamic. Unlike Watch Dogs 1 where you had to climb towers to unlock new areas in the map Watch Dogs 2 is completely open from the start, the entire city is at your fingertips and can be traveled within so you can explore at will.
Similar to Watch Dogs 1 the developers have embraced NVIDIA technologies to improve graphics image quality in this game for the PC. In the first game it primarily supported NVIDIA’s HBAO+ and TXAA. This time around the developers have added even more NVIDIA technology features to further improve image quality that the first game did not have.
Ambient Occlusion - There are actually a few different methods of Ambient Occlusion in this game. SSBC gives you better performance but with a lesser quality, this is the fastest method. Then there is a unique HMSSAO method created by the developers. This provides better quality and a bigger performance impact. Then on top of that lies NVIDIA’s HBAO+ which uses physically-based ambient occlusion.
Shadows - There are also several shadow options present in this game. You have the standard "Low", "High", "Ultra" settings which are the developer created shadow settings in this game. Beyond that there are two distinct NVIDIA technologies. There is PCSS shadows which changes the softness and sharpness based on distance. This one does take a big performance hit. Then above that lies HFTS shadows, these shadows by far are the best looking shadows but they consume a lot of performance. These shadow options help to give this game a big bump in shadow image quality compared to other games.
AA - There are of course many AA options as well in this game, ranging from FXAA, to SMAA to MSAA to Temporal Filtering. The NVIDIA technology also incorporated is TXAA. Temporal AA combines MSAA, post process and custom designed temporal filters to improve image quality. It can be demanding.
In addition, NVIDIA’s Ansel capture technology will be incorporated as well.TRIPOLI (Reuters) - At least one soldier was killed in overnight fighting in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, a security official said on Monday, in violence that has surged since last week’s killing of an anti-Islamist political activist.
The clashes erupted in the western Gwesha district between an armed group and military special forces, hours after explosions that targeted buildings used by the judiciary.
“Clashes broke out between special forces and an unknown armed group,” Mohammed al-Hijazy, a spokesman for Benghazi security operations, said by telephone. “At least one soldier was killed. The special forces have now retaken control.”
The cradle of the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, Benghazi has witnessed explosions, assassinations, violent demonstrations and a mass jail break in the last three days.
Violence and lawlessness, much of it involving former rebel groups, has hobbled governance in swathes of the oil-producing North African state since the war that toppled Gaddafi.
Forty-three people were wounded in Sunday’s blasts, state news agency LANA said, citing the health minister. Demonstrators later took to the streets to denounce the violence.
Hundreds of protesters had attacked the Benghazi and Tripoli offices of Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood and the headquarters of a liberal coalition in the capital after demonstrations turned violent late on Friday.
Those protests were prompted by the killing of prominent Brotherhood critic Abdelsalam al-Mosmary, who was shot after leaving a Benghazi mosque. Two military officers were also killed in the city on Friday.
Slideshow (3 Images)
On Saturday, 1,117 inmates escaped during a riot in Kuafiya prison on the outskirts of Benghazi. Officials said on Sunday that about 100 prisoners had been recaptured.
Violence has plagued Benghazi since last year with attacks on security forces as well as foreign targets, including an assault on the U.S. mission in September in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has said he will reorganize the government to cope with the “urgent” situation in Libya.President Obama’s upcoming visit to Israel is expected to include the usual hectoring on attacking Iran and some pro-forma US threats to actually do so, but likely no real policy change. Rather, Israeli officials insist, the real focus will be on talking Obama into attacking Syria.
Israel already attacked Syria once in late January, and almost immediately thereafter it was revealed that President Obama “green-lit” the attack, as well as any other attacks Israel might want to launch on Syria.
Of course giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to attack almost anyone is bound to please him in the near term, but now, his aides say, he feels “left alone” by the green light, since it didn’t include any specific US offers to help with the war they’ve been planning.
Israel’s government is keen to move from the air strikes against Syria to a more full-scale offensive, with the possibility to seizing more Syrian territory as a “buffer zone” being raised, even though Israel already took a buffer zone in 1973 and never gave it back.
The hope among Israeli officials is that any Israeli offensive can include “joint operations” with the US, which would launch rounds of air strikes against the Syrian government’s missile caches. President Obama’s position on Syria has come into question in recent days, but if attacking Syria can be sold as a way for his administration to quiet Israeli officials (temporarily) about attacking Iran, it seems entirely possible they will do so.
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Letting Agent Fees: Massive Variations, And Not Even Meeting Legal Standards
They'd probably charge you more for having a pet, too. Photo by Vibrant Walthamstow from the Londonist Flickr pool
Renters in Waltham Forest have researched one of the primary bugbears of tenants' lives: letting agent fees. They found a huge variation in the range of fees charged — and also that some agents in the borough are breaking the law by not listing said fees online.
Fees for a two bedroom flat, rented by two people with a guarantor, started at £150 for Eastbank Studios (who only let their own properties) and went up to an eyewatering £792 for Spencers in Walthamstow. Even without a guarantor, two people renting with Spencers would still pay £732. We also did an initial 'what the hell?!' on noting Primeview Estates in Leyton's £120 inventory charge, but on calling discovered they do a video inventory which has apparently slashed deposit disputes to almost zero. They will do a cheaper, written inventory on request. It's a lot of money though — but is it worth it for the peace of mind?
There's absolutely no protection in law for tenants covering what agents can charge, only that fees have to be clearly laid out. And some agents are even failing on that. The Consumer Rights Act (PDF) came into force on 27 May, and requires agents to
publicise prominently in their office and on their website: a full list of their fees; whether or not they are a member of a client money protection scheme; and which redress scheme they have joined.
Twenty one agents in the borough aren't listing their fees online and three still don't say which redress scheme they're a member of, despite the latter being law since 1 October 2014 and non-compliance carrying the risk of a £5,000 fine. The group has passed details of their findings onto the council for further investigation.
Richard Duxbury, spokesperson for Waltham Forest Renters, said:
"Flat hunters in Waltham Forest face paying hundreds of pounds extra if they pick the wrong letting agent. With 21 local agents flouting the law by hiding their fees, it is even harder to make an informed choice. We hope this research will help local renters avoid the worst agents the next time they move, but we need Waltham Forest Council to crack down urgently on those operators who are acting illegally."
Waltham Forest Council commented:
"The Consumer Rights Act 2015, part of which came into effect on 27 May, places a legal obligation on letting agents to display their fees at their office and on their website. We encourage prospective tenants to report any letting agent who fails to display their fees to Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer service on 03454 04 05 06 as we may be able to carry out enforcement action. "We are currently looking into the letting agents that were reported by Waltham Forest Renters in light of this change. Prior to 27 May the issue was much more complicated as you had to prove that a consumer had been misled or important information had been withheld which affected their decision."
If you'd like to research the state of your local letting agents then get in touch with Generation Rent, who helped Waltham Forest Renters with this project.
We have asked the other agents mentioned in this article for comment, but at the time of publication have had no response.Abortion is highly politicized in the U.S. (more so than in many other countries) and the fight between those who are in favor of and against available abortion occurs on two fronts. One is familiar to just about everyone: the effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, the legislation Supreme Court decision that established the legality of abortion in 1973.
The second front, though, is less familiar. It involves reducing the ease of access to legal abortion. Efforts to increase barriers to accessing legal abortion include passing laws that require minors to notify their parents of an abortion or get their consent, requiring mandatory counseling for abortion-seekers, instituting waiting periods, and discouraging medical schools from teaching abortion procedures. Some of the issues of diminishing access are non-movement related; others are the direct result of pro-life activism.
I bring this up in order to focus on an additional barrier to access: a reduction in the number of clinics and hospitals that provide abortions. The map below, based on data from the Guttmacher Institute and compiled by ANSIRH, shows how availability varies by state. In the darkest states, up to 20% of women live in a county with no abortion provider; in the lightest states, between 81 and 100% percent do.
Living far from the nearest abortion provider is a problem especially for low-income women. Such women are less likely to have an employer who will give her a day off to travel to the clinic, less likely to get a paid sick day, and less likely to be able to afford to lose even a single day’s wages. She is also less likely to have a car, making it more difficult to get to a distant location, and less likely to have reliable day care for any existing children. If the state requires in-person counseling and has a waiting period, it means that the woman must take two days off, travel to and from the clinic twice, and arrange for child care on multiple days.
Reduction in the availability of abortion does not necessarily reduce the number of abortions. We recently posted global data showing that less liberal abortion laws actually correlate with higher rates of abortion. The data below, also from Guttmacher, show that were abortion laws are less liberal (largely in developing countries), the rate of abortion is 34/1,000 women oer year, compared to 39/1,000 in developed countries (the difference may look significant here, but imagine how trivial it would look if the horizontal axis went all the way to it’s true maximum of 1,000):
Guttmacher explains that the relevant variable isn’t availability of abortion, but the unintended pregnancy rate (which is surprisingly high in the U.S.).
Barriers to accessing abortion, then, don’t lower the abortion rate. They do, however, increase the likelihood that an abortion procedure will occur later in pregnancy and guarantee a greater logistic burden on the pregnant woman.This article is from the archive of our partner.
Anthony Mangione, Immigration and Customs Enforcement in South Florida, pleaded not guilty to child porn charges in federal court Wednesday, the Associated Press reports. He was indicted for "charges of transportation, receipt and possession of child pornography," which would carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Mangione, who has headed ICE's Miami office since 2007, has been on paid administrative leave since the spring, the Associated Press reports. The New York Times' Lizette Alvarez reports that Mangione was "aggressive" in fighting peddlers of child porn, saying in 2009, "Too many children are victimized by predators that target the most vulnerable among us -- our children." Interestingly, the FBI's press release on Mangione's arrest does not mention that Mangione worked for the government.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.Journalists tell stories so it’s not surprising we think in terms of ‘narratives’ with even the most complex issues. For me narrative has become an almost redundant cliche over used by politicians and marketeers. But it’s still useful to describe how stories – incidents, issues, organisations, individuals etc – can be woven into a developing thread. And then sometimes that narrative changes.
I remember back in the early 2000s seeing some video on a newswire of a farm protest in China. It was all a bit out of context – just images of villagers attacking Chinese police. Perhaps someone died but it hardly made the papers. Something made me take it to our diplomatic editor, who also sensed that this was more than a one-off. We led the bulletin on it that night as a part of a new narrative about how the Chinese monolith might be cracking. Now these kinds of grassroots protests catalysed by social media are recognised as a vital part of the emerging new dispensation in state capitalist China.
So it is with Mali and the sectarian attacks on Shia Muslims in Pakistan. I am not an expert, but it feels like we’ve moved on again from the delusory simplicities of the so-called War on Terror and the Clash of Civilisations. I realise that this is hardly news, but with Iraq now a bitter memory and Afghanistan a tattered retreat, it’s a good time to seek out the new narratives.
One could well be the ideological battle(s) for Africa. Not just Muslim extremism but also the role of China and the search for a post-post-colonialist politics from Tunisia to South Africa.
The other will be the divisions within Islam itself. Christianity did a good job for at least a thousand years in using religion as proxy, catalyst or cause for conflict amongst itself. Perhaps Muslims might, too.
How can we understand these forces – some novel, some merely ancient factors surfacing in different ways – without narrative?
Some people feel that narrative itself is in crisis. This piece by a creative writing academic argues that the Internet is a ‘hive of distraction’ and appears to blame Modernism or perhaps Post-Modernism, though it’s fair enough to say that historically each generation thinks storytelling is broken.
I think there is truth in this. You only have to look at the complexity – not just of the issues that surround us – but the way that they reach you. Think of the multiple sources that avail themselves through the different screens or surfaces that offer mediation of your world.
Yet, I feel it’s also an age where superficially, at least, there is more coherence around certain narratives. Think of how the media swarmed around Haiti’s earthquake or how Twitter orders itself by ‘trending topics’.
Of course, that’s the mechanics rather than the meaning. We still look for seers. Books that offer metaphors to capture complexity such as Taleb’s Black Swan are popular for precisely this reason. The world is a complicated, changing mess of issues but the appetite for serious narrative is still there – and growing. Journalism should take note.
I’d be really interested in any journalists or outlets that you think are helping to find and tell these new narratives.
Here are a couple of ideas sent in to me via email:
On Pakistan: Touristani
On media development for diversity: the MDI is doing interesting work
You can access a paper I wrote on Globalisation, Media and UK Communities here. It explores how to tell stories in ways that connect people in different countries and the opportunities and limitations provided by new media.
And you can access another paper I wrote on Connecting The World on how international campaigners can connect to the public through understanding how media has changed and how online advocacy is changing political communications.The international inter-lull has finally moved along after overstaying its welcome and the real football we all appreciate returns this weekend. The highs of the North London derby victory over Tottenham and the ground breaking, record signing of German Mesut Ozil have tailed off in the midst of the World Cup qualifying campaign. In fairness the name of Mesut Ozil has not been far from the lips of Arsenal fans on a daily basis since September the 2nd and if anything the excitement factor has steadily grown as his impending debut for the Gunners draws ever closer.
The players returned to training yesterday following the international break and the opportunity was taken by the club to promote Ozil’s first training session with his teammates. His welcome to the club may not be of Real Madrid proportions with the filled stadiums and go-go dancers but it is quite clear his acquisition is appreciated by all associated with the club. Ozil was able to provide his first proper Arsenal interview from within the club and he did not disappoint, he took the opportunity to state his desire to play for Arsenal. He stated his admiration for the way the club has improved the careers of players to become some of the best players in the world, the names of Henry and Fabregas were mentioned as he exhibited his ambition to be even better than the world class level he is already at.
It is exciting to think of how good he is and the potential he has to be even better. His age is one of the major plus points when acknowledging what a coup his signing is. He has so many years ahead of him and to think he was pinched from Real Madrid at such a stage in his career is still something that cannot be overlooked.
Arsene was full of praise for his latest acquisition and also reiterated the potential Ozil has to become even better. He said:
“He’s at a good age. He is 25 in October and he’s already a great player. There’s room now between 25 and 30 for him to become a dominant player and to make a step up from that”
which is so true and a clear indication that the Arsenal team will be built around the German, the exciting thing about this is if teams decide to focus on nullifying the attacking threat of the German it will only free up space for the other attacking talent in the team. Cazorla, Wilshere, Ramsey, Podolski to name a few are all dangerous in and around the box, to focus on just Ozil will just be the opposing team’s funeral.
There may have been a slight chuckle from the press when Ozil was asked if Arsenal could challenge for the league title, but Ozil was totally valid with his response. He didn’t guarantee it could happen but he did not rule out the possibility either. He is accepting of the football philosophy at the club and will do all he can to help the club achieve success. He said:
“We want to play attractive football to improve but of course also successful football. I can’t promise to win trophies but I can promise as a team we can give our all to in trophies.”
I’m pretty sure the club will do all it can and the boost the German has brought to the club is like having a twelfth man on the pitch. The fans will sing louder, the players will raise their game and the opposing teams will feel that little bit of fear going into games.
In other news Phil Jones has spoken out against Stuart Pearce who was overly critical of Jones and our very own Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain when discussing the England U-21 team. Pearce’s comments were ones of bitterness and he was quite disrespectful in naming Oxlade-Chamberlain as a player that refused to represent England at the European U-21 championships.
That Phil Jones spoke out and clarified that Roy Hodgson actually had the final say on who from the seniors could play in the tournament only helped showcase Pearce’s pathetic excuse making for the poor showing in the summer. It would be nice if Oxlade-Chamberlain would also come out and back up Phil Jones words just to put Pearce firmly in his place. Additionally the F.A made a statement regarding Pearce’s rant expressing their disappointment in his need to criticize individuals. I for one would like this non-story to filter away and not be a topic that reoccurs and fulfills the former England manager’s intention of destabilizing and affecting the players he mentioned.
Stuart Pearce’s time has come and gone, the club’s focus is now firmly on Sunderland away and obtaining three points. Away to Sunderland is not an easy game and has been quite an eventful fixture over the past few seasons for Arsenal which would make it a tricky betting accumulator.
All in all with the injury picked up by Tomas Rosicky in midweek, the opportunity to see Mesut Ozil grace the pitch in Arsenal colours is heightened. Nonetheless exciting times ahead, roll on Saturday; we have waited too long for the real football to return.
Enjoy your day people.
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AdvertisementsBike Boxes, Slip Lane Removal, and a Fat Crosswalk Come to Wicker Park Six-Way
The Chicago Department of Transportation’s complete streets project on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, including a fairly dramatic makeover of the North/Damen/Milwaukee intersection, is nearly finished. (See a full rundown of planned improvements here.) The six-way junction recently got four bike boxes and an extra-wide crosswalk, and tan paint and flexible posts were used to shorten pedestrian crossing distances and close the slip lane at the southeast corner.
The bike boxes, which provide a place for cyclists to wait at stoplights in front of motor vehicles, were installed on the northwest, north, southeast, and south legs, which involved the removal of two somewhat redundant CTA bus stops. In the near future CDOT will install bike symbols on the green boxes to make their purpose more obvious.
The department has used the paint and posts to remove the slip lane, which previously facilitated dangerously fast right turns by motorists, and shorten crossing distances at the southeast and north intersection legs. The changes to the north leg also included the banning of right turns by southbound drivers on Damen.
On the south leg of the intersection, CDOT has moved the stop bar for motorists several feet south, which makes room for the bike box, as well as greatly expanding the crosswalk into a large, triangular pedestrian zone, a rarity in Chicago. This better accommodates the heavy pedestrian traffic at the intersection, and provides a shortcut for people walking to the Blue Line station just south of the intersection.
Overall, the changes make this hectic six-way safer, better organized, and more pleasant for the many people who pass through on foot and bike each day, without causing any undue inconvenience for drivers. The intersection will get even more people-friendly next year, when CDOT plans to add two new crosswalks between the Flat Iron Building and Flash Taco, and between Starbucks and Walgreens.
Elsewhere along the Milwaukee corridor, the plastic posts have been added to complete the slip lane removal at the northwest corner of the Division/Ashland/Milwaukee junction. Several other paint-and-post bumpouts have been completed between Division and North.
How do you think the latest changes are working out? Let us know in the comments.
Correction and update 9/13/17 10:45 AM:
The installation of the bike box at the north leg of North/Damen/Milwaukeee did not involve the banning of right turns for southbound motorists but only the removal of the right turn lane for drivers. The post has been edited accordingly — sorry for the error. As was the case before the redesign, rights on red by motorists are prohibited.
Readers have commented that, with the removal of the slip lane at the intersection, right turns for drivers from northbound Damen on southeast-bound Milwaukee look dangerously sharp. According to CDOT transportation planner Mike Amsden, signage will be added shortly to indicate that this move is now banned, but right turns onto North are still legal (which is why the right-turn lane will remain in place.)
Amsden added that all the tan paint in the new paint-and-post sidewalk bumpouts along the Milwaukee has been installed, bike symbols will be added to the N/D/M bike boxes today.
This post is made possible by a grant from Freeman Kevenides, a Chicago, Illinois personal injury law firm representing and advocating for bicyclists, pedestrians and vulnerable road users. The content belongs to Streetsblog Chicago, and Freeman Kevenides Law Firm neither endorses nor exercises editorial control over the content.This past week has been a political whirlwind. One the equality front civil liberties are winning, but on the economic front, the nation took a blow. The New York Times has covered the Trans-Pacific Partnership quite well. You can read about it here
This week has been more positive than negative, and I would rather write about that.
This week the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) has issued two rulings that change the face of America. The first was upholding the Affordable Care Act's subsidies which allow millions of Americans to keep their health care. This is also the final hurdle (I think) for the Affordable Care Act. Now it joins the ranks of Social Security and Medicare, political suicide for those who try to repeal them. The Washington Post has a great article on it here
The biggest predictor for success in school, and life as well, is the socioeconomic background of a student. Part of the reason is that the poor often have poor nutrition and poor health care. SNAP benefits help, but go nowhere near eliminating, the nutrition aspect. Proper health care goes a step further. This ruling levels the health playing field between the rich and the poor. Or rather the children of the rich and the poor.
Secondly, marriage is now recognized as a basic right. Today, Friday June 26th, 2015 SCOTUS has ruled same-sex marriage cannot be denied by the States, they have to honor and allow gay marriage. The last paragraph of the Majority Opinion is below. It is not only a powerful statement on equal rights, but it is also a masterpiece of prose.
restricting others in practicing what the believe. Of course the religious right is up in arms over the ruling. Everything from the ruling opening the doors to polygamy and bestiality, to God judging America (according to Franklin Graham ) and bringing about the Apocalypse. Naturally, many Christians regard this as " Christian persecution ", which is a claim that's always good for a laugh. You cannot claim persecution when the only thing you are restricted from is
Being beheaded by ISIS because you wear a cross and mumble to the sky is persecution. Not allowing you to force others to mumble to the sky, or allowing you to display your symbols and only your symbols on public property is not persecution. It is keeping the political sphere neutral to personal beliefs. Sure we can bring those beliefs to the table, but they are no better than their adherence to reason. Which is no different than anyone else.
The Dukes of Hazzard was one of my favorite shoes growing up. Yes, I remember when it was on prime time. I still have a fond place for the General Lee, the name of the Duke boys' orange 1969 Dodge Charger. Yes, it had the Confederate Flag on the roof, but this car would freaking FLY at least once per episode. This ties in with the third bit of good news: we may be seeing less of the American version of the swastika, the "Confederate" flag. I have to admit that it is a little hard for me to write about this. Only becausewas one of my favorite shoes growing up. Yes, I remember when it was on prime time. I still have a fond place for the, the name of the Duke boys' orange 1969 Dodge Charger. Yes, it had the Confederate Flag on the roof, but this car would freaking FLY at least once per episode.
But I digress. I didn't want to write about nostalgia, but about a blow for social equal rights. The story of the "Confederate" flag flown today begins decades before the Civil War. Slavery was a dividing issue between the States since the Articles of Confederation. However, the national government had no basis for abolition under the Articles. When the Constitution was written, Slavery was such a hot issue, it was tabled for twenty years so the rest of the document could be hammered out. However, the call for abolition was on the rise after the signing of the Constitution. At that time, Christianity had to contend with not only Freethinkers, but Deists as well. Both groups tended to be rabid abolitionists, and influential. Then the second Great Awakening happened. America had a religious revival and with it, opposition to abolition grew. In fact the Southern Baptist Church grew out of a pro-slavery movement in the South.
Richard Furman was a highly influential Baptist in the early and mid 1800s. His essay, stealing slaves, not owning them.
It would be adopted by a Christian organization forty years after the Civil War.
During the Civil War, the "Confederate Flag" was just the battle flag for Northern Virginia. It fell into obscurity until the 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan took it up as their flag. At that moment, the "Confederate" flag went from a forgotten battle flag of a small region of the country, to the banner of Jim Crow. And this is why the flag must be taken down.
Now the movement to remove it has begun. Like the Cross, it is a symbol of oppression. The flag will be removed, and furthermore religious symbols will follow the flag's demise from the public sphere. Why? The World Wide Web.
The Reverend Dr. Exposition of the Views of the Baptists, Relative to the Coloured Population is a letter to the then Governor of South Carolina on the importance of slavery to the State, and the divine-created inferiority of blacks. The Holy Bible was the inspiration for the Willie Lynch Letter which expanded on the Bible's treatment of slaves. Of course the Bible was also used to fight for abolition, but the passages used were taken out of context. For instance, Exodus 21:16 "And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." sounds like an anti-slavery verse, but the context is that the stolen man is in this case property, not a person. In other words, the bible prohibitedslaves, not owning them. What does this have to do with the Stars and Bars?It would be adopted by a Christian organization forty years after the Civil War.During the Civil War, the "Confederate Flag" was just the battle flag for Northern Virginia. It fell into obscurity until the 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan took it up as their flag. At that moment, the "Confederate" flag went from a forgotten battle flag of a small region of the country, to the banner of Jim Crow. And this is why the flag must be taken down.Now the movement to remove it has begun. Like the Cross, it is a symbol of oppression. The flag will be removed, and furthermore religious symbols will follow the flag's demise from the public sphere. Why? The World Wide Web.
Now your average stay-at-home parent, liberal arts major, or plumber is a philosopher with a highly attuned bullshit detector.
Religion is the highest form of bullshit.
That is why religion is out.
Reason is in.Story highlights One tweet and 24 hours later, a cargo plane full of food and $1 million dollars had been arranged for Somali hunger victims
CNN's Casey Neistat: "This is the story of what can happen when the power of social media is leveraged for something good"
(CNN) Actor Ben Stiller, the NFL's Colin Kaepernick and social media stars including CNN's Casey Neistat and Jérôme Jarre of Vine and Snapchat fame have helped raise $1 million in just 19 hours to help those facing starvation in Somalia, they announced.
"This is the story of what can happen when the power of social media is leveraged for something good," Neistat explains in a YouTube video that documents the extraordinary sequence of events that led to the fund-raising juggernaut.
INTERNET!! WE HAVE A PLANE!!
THIS IS HISTORY!!
NOW LET'S GET THE FOOD!!! 💪
➡️ https://t.co/kxHgDzvNxY#LoveArmyForSomalia 🚨 pic.twitter.com/6XBy5IWb9e — JÉRÔME JARRE (@jeromejarre) March 17, 201 |
quickly the expenses can add up, says Amy Eisinger, associate editor of WeddingChannel.com.
"From the moment they announce the engagement, to the day your friend walks down the aisle, if that's a year and a half, you don't realize that you've spent $1,600," she said.
As the economy struggles out of a slump, the price of weddings -- and the cost of being a bridesmaid -- is starting to rise.
"We saw the cost go down during the recession because brides were incredibly cost conscious in what they were asking their friends to do," Eisinger said.
Now, brides are asking for more formal weddings with larger price tags.
While women want to be in their best friend's wedding, some just can't spend all their savings on the big day. So how do you break it to the bride that you can't be her bridesmaid?
"Be honest up front," says Jodi R.R. Smith, author of "The Etiquette Book," which includes advice on everything from the proper music selection to the wording on wedding invitations.
"If you try to be able to do it, then you end up maxing out your credit cards and going into debt," Smith said. "You should never be going into debt for a friend's wedding."
Smith advises women to turn down bridesmaid offers in person, but never during a wedding-related event like the bridal shower. Instead, grab coffee or find a time to talk outside of work.
Don't "throw a fit" about the expenses, but just tell the truth, Eisinger says.
"You are allowed to say, 'Look, I'm just not going to be able to afford the $200 wedding dress and the trip to Mexico for the bachelorette party and the fact that it's a destination wedding in Key West,' " she said.
Destination weddings and honeymoons
Brides who want their friends to walk down the aisle with them will probably offer to pay for expenses like the dress or plane ticket to the wedding, Smith said.
"If it's a choice between having somebody be in your wedding party or having them all wear designer bridesmaid dresses, I would choose the people and the cheaper bridesmaid dress," Smith said.
Bridesmaid Christina Barkel was allowed to pick her own dress for a wedding as long as it was royal blue. After months of scouring sale racks and thrift stores, she found the perfect dress for only $40.
Barkel, an AmeriCorps member who earns a small stipend, is paying for only the dress and $450 plane ticket from Michigan to California to be in her friend's wedding in San Diego. Barkel said the bride offered to pay for three of her four nights in a hotel because she understands Barkel can't afford the expense.
Knowing what bridesmaids can and can't afford can be a tricky situation for brides. It's not polite to ask directly, so Smith advises brides to give a spreadsheet with an estimated cost of expenses to their bridesmaids. That way, women can see if their bank accounts can handle the final total.
More "Bridesmaids" coming down the aisles?
But like in the movie "Bridesmaids," unexpected surprises like a bachelorette party in Las Vegas do happen. In these cases, bridesmaids shouldn't be shy to offer alternatives.
"Instead of the bachelorette party in Vegas, [if] you're all East Coast people, have it in Atlantic City," Smith says.
University of Michigan graduate student Katie Okonowski, 23, will be a bridesmaid in her younger sister's wedding next spring. Okonowski said she was thrilled to hear that her sister chose a venue in their hometown of Dearborn, Michigan.
"The fact that it's not out of town, and I don't have to pay for a hotel or travel cost, is really a big cost saver," she said.
Travel is the biggest expense, but bridesmaids shell out an average of $75 for shoes and another $60 for jewelry, according to the Wedding Channel study. Tack on $100 for manicures, hair and makeup.
Celebrity wedding gowns through the decades
Katie Tobin, a 26-year-old student at Loyola University's Law School, is attending nine weddings this summer and is a bridesmaid for two of them. She's having a relative do her hair for her friend's wedding after the previous hair salon bill was twice as much as expected.
Tobin said she feels "a little overwhelmed" with wedding costs because there are so many at once, and she estimates that she'll spend close to $1,300 as a bridesmaid.
While she's using her savings to pay for the dresses and bachelorette parties, she can afford only inexpensive kitchen accessories as wedding gifts.
"I'm still in law school, so luckily, my friends understand I can't do anything too extravagant giftwise," she said.
Bricker, whose friends compare her to the main character in"27 Dresses," says she has had second thoughts about being in some of the weddings in which she wasn't as close to the bride.
"I think you underestimate how much it's going to cost," she said with a knowing laugh. "To be honest, it's probably some of the reason that I'm as poor as I am."
Being a bridesmaid drained my bank account
Tips for bridesmaids on a budget
1) The dress: If the bride picks a dress that costs $300, don't feel like you don't have any right to speak up. Do a little research, and see if you can find a similar dress that costs less, Eisinger suggests. Or suggest to the bride that she choose a color and you pick your own dress. That way, you can find something more affordable.
2) Party planning: Hold the bridal shower and bachelorette party on the same weekend so you don't have to fly somewhere two separate weekends.
3) Gifts: Consider group gifting when it comes time to buy the gift for the bridal shower and for the wedding.
4) Lodging: If you're going to stay in a hotel room, find out who the other single girls are in the bridal party or ask the bride if she has any other single friends who will be coming. Then find out if you can split a hotel room with another girl so you're cutting back on hotel costs.
5) Balancing the budget: At the very beginning, come up with a total number of how much you want to spend on the wedding, and then keep a running tab somewhere on your computer or your iPhone of how much you're really spending. If the wedding is spread out over the course of a year and a half, that will help you keep your spending more in check.Gwen Carr (left,) mother of Eric Garner, who died during an arrest by New York City police officers, attends a rally in front of NYPD headquarters in Manhattan on Oct. 6, 2015. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)
Attorney General Loretta Lynch will step down without the Justice Department having charged or cleared police officers in the death of Eric Garner, whose videotaped takedown by New York City officers sparked national outrage, people familiar with the matter said.
Lynch authorized the department to move forward with the case, but made that decision so late in her tenure that lawyers and investigators could not take all the necessary steps to procure an indictment. That would entail assembling the evidence in the case and presenting it to a grand jury in order to convince the panel to return criminal charges.
The controversial case will now pass to the administration of Donald Trump and likely leave expected future attorney general Jeff Sessions with ultimate decision making authority. Sessions has said publicly he is wary of police being judged unfairly, and he is viewed as less likely to press for charges against officers involved in Garner’s death.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal case.
[Even the feds can’t agree whether an officer should face charges in Eric Garner’s death]
Garner died in 2014 after he was taken to the ground by New York City police officers and put in what appeared to be a chokehold. The incident, which was caught on tape, ignited protests across the country, and Garner’s gasping “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry for those angered by the treatment of African Americans by police.
Exactly why the nearly two-and-a-half year old case could not be resolved before Lynch will leave remains unclear. The matter was initially left to state authorities — with the Justice Department watching behind them — but in late 2014, a Staten Island grand jury declined to bring charges.
Early in 2016, federal authorities began presenting the case to a grand jury, but the matter soon languished in part because of a dispute inside the Justice Department. It is possible that grand jury has now expired, and a new one would have needed to be empaneled. At least some prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York felt that civil rights charges were not appropriate, while attorneys in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department in D.C. thought they were, according to people familiar with the case.
The Justice Department then removed New York FBI agents from the team of investigators, though others pressed forward, people familiar with the matter said.
Lynch made police reform a centerpiece of her tenure, and in the waning days of her administration, she seemed to push to cement her legacy. On Thursday, she traveled to Baltimore to announce a court-enforceable agreement that would mandate broad changes at the police department in that city, where the 2015 death of another black man sparked riots. The next day, she flew to Chicago, making public a scathing report about the police department’s pattern or practice of using excessive force on suspects and revealing that city leaders had agreed in principle to a set of improvements.
The lack of a resolution in the Garner case, though, is a glaring omission, particularly given the time Lynch had to resolve it.
[Federal grand jury begins hearing evidence in Eric Garner’s death]
Garner initially drew the attention of police for selling loose cigarettes, and the city of New York reached a civil settlement with his family last year for $5.9 million. Though the matter was caught on videotape, convicting officers on federal charges in the matter would not necessarily be easy. Substantiating civil rights charges requires prosecutors to meet a heavy burden of proof and present evidence that might speak to an officer’s intent at the time of the incident.
In the high-profile case of Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, the Justice Department found there was “no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety.” Prosecutors came to a similar conclusion in the 2015 shooting of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis, describing in a lengthy news release the exacting standard they would have had to meet.
“It is not enough to show that the officer made a mistake, acted negligently, acted by accident or mistake or even exercised bad judgment,” the Justice Department wrote in the release. “Although Clark’s death is undeniably tragic, the evidence is insufficient to meet these substantial evidentiary requirements.”
Sessions is a former U.S. Attorney who at his confirmation hearing this week insisted he will follow the law, and his political views will have no impact on his decision making. But he also presented himself a friend to local police, wary of actions that paint them unfairly with a broad brush.
“In the last several years, law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the unacceptable actions of a few of their bad actors,” he said. “They believe the political leadership of this country abandoned them.”
Lawyer Jonathan C. Moore, who represents Garner’s family, said in an interview earlier Friday that he had sent an email to Vanita Gupta, the head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, on Jan. 6, asking for a status update in the case, and she had not responded. He said his last conversation with Justice Department officials came in early December, and they told him they were still investigating.
“Our position is that whether it’s now, next week, two weeks, or four months from now, that there should be an indictment,” he said. “When that happens, obviously the sooner the better.”
Stuart London, who is representing the officer who on the video seems to be putting Garner in a chokehold, said he, too, had not heard anything from the Justice Department.
“I’ve always said from the beginning that the standard needed to indict my client under a federal statute is even greater than under a state statute, and he was exonerated by a state grand jury,” London said.
London said his client, Officer Daniel Pantaleo, remains a police officer on desk duty.If you follow comedy or pop-culture accounts on Instagram, chances are you've come across one of FuckJerry's memes or funny jokes while scrolling through your feed.
Since launching a Tumblr account in 2011 to aggregate his collection of pictures he found on the internet, Elliot Tebele has turned the popular FuckJerry account into a full-blown franchise, with 40 million followers across multiple social channels, a clothing line, a card game, a late-night TV show pilot with MTV and a small social media shop called Jerry Media.
In addition to the FuckJerry Instagram account, which has 10.5 million followers, Tebele and his team also own a handful of other accounts including @pizza, @sneakers, @beigecardigan and @kanyedoingthings.
: @scottafters #EEEEEATS #DailyPizza A photo posted by #DailyPizza (@pizza) on Dec 5, 2016 at 5:56pm PST
"Instagram came out, and early on, I was doing the same model that I was with Tumblr—just posting curated images," Tebele said. "I would post some funny stuff here and there, and engagement went higher so [it] slowly shifted into pure comedy. From then, it was just all organic growth."
Now, Trebele and his team are working to try and score more brand deals to create sponsored posts for marketers as it has for Burger King, Paramount Pictures, Tinder and Warner Bros. But despite its massive reach, getting brands on board with a controversial name like FuckJerry can be a tough sell.
"You can't ignore that there are some clients that are so brand-sensitive that they're not able to get approval from legal to work with a company that has a swear word in its name," said Ben Kaplan, director of business development for FuckJerry. "That said, we're finding more and more folks are willing to be a little bit more experimental."
FuckJerry is armed with data for its pitch to advertisers. Kaplan said that on average, posts receive 6 to 7 million impressions at a cost per 1,000 impressions, or CPM, of $5. That means marketers can expect to pay at least $30,000 for a piece of sponsored content. Rates for other Instagram stars fluctuate significantly. Style blogger Danielle Bernstein told Harper's Bazaar last year that she makes $5,000 to $15,000 from sponsored Instagram posts. And in May, Digiday reported that deals with big YouTube personalities like Casey Neistat can cost $300,000 to $500,000.
According to FuckJerry, the average post generates 30,000 comments, and when Instagram's algorithm kicked in earlier this year—it favors posts with high engagement—the team claims its engagement stats went up 20 percent to 25 percent per post.
Lately, the team has seen particular success on Facebook, which has 2.1 million followers and recently reached 600 million people in 28 days.
On any given day, FuckJerry posts 10 to 20 pieces of content on Facebook and a few posts for each Instagram account. The team creates 20 pieces of branded content per month, equivalent to less than 5 percent of the total content.
"Due to the nature of sharing on Facebook and the frequency of which it is more acceptable to post, you're able to reach hundreds of millions of people," Kaplan said. "Instagram is more about quality than quantity, so we're posting two to four times a day per account."
FuckJerry also runs a 15-person social media agency called Jerry Media that works with brands including DirecTV and Jack in the Box to manage and grow social media accounts for brands in addition to running influencer programs.
For Burger King, FuckJerry posted a picture of the chain's Halloween stunt to dress up as a McDonald's ghost. Through Instagram Insights, the team saw that the post generated 7.5 million impressions and more than 340,000 engagements, and reached 5.5 million users.
this is next level @burgerking #bkpdpartner A photo posted by Elliot Tebele (@fuckjerry) on Oct 25, 2016 at 8:59am PDT
For Paramount Pictures' new film Office Christmas Party, FuckJerry worked with MEC to create a few sponsored posts in the style of the account's popular memes.
This week's gonna be a blur. Make sure you skip work on Friday and go see @officexmasparty. All the cool kids are doing it #StaffSkipDay #OfficeXmasParty #spon A photo posted by Elliot Tebele (@fuckjerry) on Dec 5, 2016 at 9:05am PST
Everyone's got that annoying aunt who always asks why you're still single. Be sure to check out @officexmasparty in theaters December 9th #OfficeXmasParty #spon A photo posted by Elliot Tebele (@fuckjerry) on Nov 23, 2016 at 9:00am PST
FuckJerry has also made use of Instagram's 4-month-old Instagram Stories feature for branded content. The team created a series of videos for Walgreens using the feature.
Some brands might find the content inappropriate, but that's the point, argued Tebele. "We won't do anything that's not funny," he said. "If the brand isn't open to getting creative through our voice, then we usually turn that down."
When asked about reports from comedians who are mad that FuckJerry steals and reposts jokes, Tebele said his team is working on creating more original content. "At first, I would say it was 80 percent curated and 20 percent original. Now I would say it's 60-40," he said.
Even as more brands invest in influencer marketing, the name FuckJerry is still a difficult one for brands to get around, said Amy Tunick, president of Grey Activation and PR.
Last year, Grey hosted an event with FuckJerry and talked to a couple of its clients about working with him on branded content deals, particularly for long-term partnerships.
"We did have some conversations with a couple of our clients about him specifically. A lot of people were like, 'Eh, no.' It didn't matter about the power of his audience," Tunick said. "Brands have to really be comfortable. Maybe smaller or edgier brands are willing to go there, but I do think it's a handicap at least for that kind of specific, flagship brand."Nigam Arora is an engineer, nuclear physicist, author, and entrepreneur and the founder of two Inc. 500 fastest growing companies. He is also the developer of the ZYX Change Method to profit from change by investing. The premise is that most money is made by predicting change before the crowd. Arora is the chief investment officer at The Arora Report and the editor of four newsletters that track the ZYX Change Method. Nigam can be reached at Nigam@TheAroraReport.com.
The momentum crowd has been running up gold and silver based on superficial beliefs about QE3. This group of investors is not known for deep study or paying heed to rigorous analysis. Now a major player in the metals business is sending a signal loud and clear that gold and silver prices are not about to skyrocket.
Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. FCX, -0.60% is spending $9 billion not to buy another metal company, but to diversify into energy.
Proven reserves of Freeport include 33.9 million ounces of gold, 330.3 million ounces of silver, 119.7 billion pounds of copper, 3.42 billion pounds of molybdenum, and 0.86 billion pounds of cobalt. It stands to reason that if Freeport believed that QE will cause gold and silver prices to skyrocket, it would have made acquisitions of gold and silver miners. Instead, Freeport is buying Plains Exploration & Production US:PXP for about $6.9 billion and McMoRan Exploration for about $2.1 billion.
It is worth examining market caps of some precious-metal miners to see what Freeport could have bought in the precious metals space for nine billion dollars. Here are a few examples:
Pan American Silver with a market cap of $2.75 billion.
Coeur d'Alene with a market cap of 1.99 billion.
Hecla Mining with a market cap of $1.60 billion.
Kinross Gold with a market cap of $10.84 billion.
Eldorado Gold with a market cap of $9.52 billion.
In the meantime, the SPDR Gold Trust ETF GLD, +0.17% and the iShares Silver Trust ETF SLV, +0.27% fell below technical supports. Market Vectors ETF Trust Market Vectors Gold Miners EFT GDX, -0.18% and Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF GDXJ, +0.81% also lost ground.
It did not help that Goldman Sachs downgraded its projection for gold prices. Goldman's new target for gold over the next 12 months is $1800. Interestingly, Goldman forecasted gold price of $1750 for 2014.
In my opinion, based on their actions, Freeport, a company with a long history in the metals business, does not believe that gold and silver prices will skyrocket because of QE3, and neither should you.
Every astute investor should understand the true nature of QE3, which isn't the same as the popular belief. History shows many examples of astute investors making a killing when they were able to carefully study a phenomenon and conclude that the popular beliefs were wrong.
The subject is of such utmost importance to investors that we are making available to the readers of this article an online seminar titled 'Gold and Silver Post QE3' at no charge.San Francisco High-School Teachers Approve Contract, Amid Ongoing Tensions
Re Local Catholic leaders applaud the contract vote and public debate surrounding the issue as a step forward for Archbishop Cordileone, though the teachers' union secured key concessions.
JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND
SAN FRANCISCO — After months of tense, high-profile negotiations — centering on resistance to an archdiocesan effort to reinforce Catholic identity — teachers at four Catholic high schools approved the collective-bargaining agreement Church officials negotiated with American Federation of Teachers Local 2240.
On Aug. 19, union leaders announced that members had ratified the contract. It incorporates concessions won from Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco during months of talks that drew national headlines, as well as a preamble that reflects his focus on the schools' religious mission.
The contract preamble states, “Teachers are expected to support the purpose of our Catholic schools in such a way that their personal conduct will not adversely impact their ability to teach in our Catholic high schools.”
Teachers who might face disciplinary action or termination will be “subject to the grievance procedure.”
In a statement released after the vote was announced, Archbishop Cordileone thanked the negotiators for their work and praised the 236 full-time teachers at the four archdiocesan high schools: Archbishop Riordan, Marin Catholic, Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep and Junipero Serra, marking the talks as an important milestone for the local Church.
“I want to thank the union and the administration negotiating team for their hard work over the past few months in coming to this agreement,” said Archbishop Cordileone.
“They have negotiated just wages and benefits for our high-school teachers, who are among the finest teachers in northern California.
“I also very much appreciate that the negotiations included a rich discussion about the mission and purpose of Catholic education and vital role that our high-school teachers play in carrying out that mission.”
Gina Jaeger, the union president, singled out union negotiators "for standing tall in support of dignity and fairness. Now it is time to heal after a tumultuous year.”
In its Aug. 20 press release, the union local noted: "The close vote, 90-80, reflected divisions among faculty and the broader community."
San Francisco Catholic leaders who publicly backed the archbishop’s efforts to bolster the religious character of the Catholic high schools view the contract vote and public debate surrounding the issue as an important step forward.
“Now people applying for positions will know what the clear expectations are, both for teaching and for their public lives,” Father Joseph Fessio, the founder of San Francisco-based Ignatius Press, told the Register.
“The contract is good for the teachers we have, good for future applicants and good for the Church.”
Mary Anne Cresalia, the mother of nine children who have all attended Marin Catholic in Kentfield, said she had been “shocked” by the protests against the archbishop’s efforts and had hoped to see the contract highlight the schools’ religious character and the teachers’ obligations to uphold it.
“The reason why my husband and I sent our children to Marin Catholic is because it is thoroughly Catholic,” Cresalia told the Register. “We would not make the sacrifices to pay the tuition if it wasn’t.”
Tim Navone, the president of Marin Catholic, acknowledged that “there were major concessions on both sides. When people have a strong difference of opinion that is why we have negotiation.”
Navone signaled his intent to set the debate aside as the community began a new school year.
“What I am most happy about is that our campus feels unified and excited going into the school year,” Navone told the Register, noting that the teachers will finally receive wage increases after waiting four years.
Meanwhile, Cathedral Prep chaplain Father Mark Doherty said he would seek to ease tensions at his school by “initiating one-on-one relationships with teachers, staff and students.”
“I see my role as a summons to rebuild trust,” the chaplain told the Register.
Hard-Fought Agreement
The explosive, politicized dispute between Archbishop Cordileone and his critics within the high schools erupted into public view in February.
Teachers, parents and students openly attacked contract language proposed by the archdiocese that directed members of the faculty to avoid public statements and actions that violated Church teaching and would undermine their role in the classroom.
Opponents claimed the “morality clauses” and new language in the faculty handbook, which asked teachers to affirm Catholic doctrine on sensitive matters like homosexual relations, would undermine the schools’ culture of acceptance and provoke a witch hunt against persons with same-sex attraction.
Hundreds of people joined public protests and launched a petition drive. State legislators and local city officials also weighed into the dispute, and prominent self-identified Catholic leaders signed a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle that called on Pope Francis to remove the archbishop.
In February, Archbishop Cordileone wrote a letter to the high-school teachers that sought to reassure them that he did not intend to drive anyone out of the schools, but critics were not appeased.
“There is a lot of misunderstanding of what constitutes an authentic Catholic school,” Archbishop Cordileone told the Register during an Aug. 17 interview in advance of the Aug. 19 contract vote.
Referencing claims that his proposed contract language would result in “targeting people who are not in agreement with our sexual morality,” he said that such predictions reflected “a distorted understanding of our teaching.”
The Church asks believers to “love the sinner and hate the sin,” he said. The pushback against his attempts to clarify Catholic doctrine failed to recognize that all the teachings of the faith are part of an integrated vision of human flourishing, in which specific moral values complement rather than contradict one another.
To emphasize this point, he cited Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Laudato Si, which presents the human and natural world as a unified expression of the love of the Holy Trinity and warns against “the notion that there are no indisputable truths to guide our lives.”
Legal Landscape
While critics challenged references to moral teachings in the contract as an attack on local community values, they also rejected proposed language that described teachers as “ministers.” The reference to ministers was removed and does not appear in the final contract.
However, the initial designation of teachers as ministers stirred concern that the archdiocese sought to leverage the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 decision in Hosanna Tabor to strengthen its power to discipline or remove teachers who opposed Church teaching outside of the classroom.
In Hosanna Tabor, a landmark religious-liberty case, the high court affirmed the right of faith-based schools to hire and fire teachers without interference from the courts.
“The entire nation is watching this,” Sal Curcio, a teacher and union representative, told San Francisco magazine in its August 2015 issue, in a reference to broad media coverage of the contract dispute.
“If the archbishop can break a union in San Francisco — or render it useless by pushing an agenda that takes away the rights of teachers and also hurts the students — then they can do this everywhere.”
Yet union representatives also acknowledged that case law supports the rights of all employers, secular and religious, to make employment decisions that preserve and promote their mission.
In a letter to the union membership after the final contract was approved on July 31, union leader Lisa Dole made clear that “if personal conduct becomes public and is viewed as adversely impacting the school, the teacher can be disciplined or terminated. That is established case law.”
Dole did not respond to the Register's request for comment following the Aug.19 vote.
Legal experts say that the “ministerial exception,” unanimously affirmed in Hosanna Tabor, applies to school principals, chaplains and teachers of religion, but it may not shield schools when they remove a teacher in another academic department. For that reason, employment contracts, job descriptions and performance evaluations in religious schools also reference the fact that the teacher is engaged in the ministry of education.
“It is a fundamental freedom that any religious society ought to have control over the inculcation of the faith in the children, both by instruction and by modeling the behavior,” Martin Nussbaum, a lawyer who advises Catholic dioceses, told the Register.
“This is fundamental under Church doctrine and under the ministerial exception, which is a subset of first-amendment doctrine of church autonomy.”
The Contract Language
The final language in the contract, approved July 31, states “that the purpose of Catholic schools is to affirm Catholic values through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Further, “teachers are expected to support the purpose of our Catholic schools in such a way that their personal conduct will not adversely impact their ability to teach in our Catholic high schools.”
The contract states that “disputes about teacher conduct on and off the job are subject to the grievance procedure to determine whether such conduct has adversely impacted the teacher’s ability to teach in our Catholic high schools.”
Another passage directs union members to “recognize the unique nature of the archdiocesan high-school system, in that it is Roman Catholic, committed to provide education within the framework of Catholic principles; that Catholic teachings and precepts shall remain paramount throughout the term of this agreement; and that nothing in the agreement shall be construed as interfering in any way with the superintendent's functions and duties, insofar as they are canonical.”
In contrast, the initial iteration of contract language asked the teachers to “acknowledge that all faculty and staff are ministers engaged in this religious mission and that they teach and educate, and thus serve their ministry of Catholic education, not only by the performance of their job duties, but also by their word and example, inside and outside the classroom, on and off campus.”
‘The Right to Protect Its Mission’
During his interview with the Register, Archbishop Cordileone defended his ongoing efforts to strengthen the Catholic identity of the four high schools, while accommodating teachers’ concerns regarding the contract language he had initially proposed.
“The teachers have the right to pursue the usual grievance procedures when they feel they have been wrongfully treated. The contract reflects that.
“But the school also has the right to protect its mission and to contract with teachers who will support the mission of the school.”
“Whatever wording works that we can agree upon that respects those two principles is fine with me,” he explained.
While portions of the contract have been heavily rewritten to modify or remove language that highlighted the religious mission of the school, and the faculty handbook is still under review, Archbishop Cordileone is content with the final contract.
“It was important to make clear the teachers should not give a public counter-witness to the mission of schools,” he said, noting language in the final contract that “speaks about the responsibility of the teachers, in their personal conduct, to not adversely impact their ability” to serve as credible role models.
Archbishop Cordileone also made clear that he would continue with his plans to revitalize Catholic education and place teachers at the forefront of the New Evangelization.
“The U.S. bishops have said explicitly that the schools are an integral part of the evangelizing mission of the Church, and the contract language now says that the purpose of Catholic schools is to affirm Catholic values through the Gospel,” he noted.
Lessons Learned
Asked whether in hindsight he might have taken a different path to advance his education initiative — one that might have provoked less resistance — Archbishop Cordileone acknowledged that there were lessons to be learned.
It is important, he said, to “speak with the school leadership in the diocese, to devise a program of deeper faith formation of the teachers, to offer incentives for the teachers to do that and then engage them in dialogue.”
Reflecting on the past nine months, he also recalled the fresh insights he garnered during conversations with teachers, who shared their struggles to present the faith to students formed by a secular culture.
But the hostile critics, who painted the archbishop as an outlier, also highlight the challenge that confronts every Church leader as the Catholic faith and mainstream culture move further apart.
“There is already talk about removing the tax-exempt status of faith-based organizations,” the archbishop noted, in a reference to U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s remarks during the 2015 oral arguments for the four cases that led to the civil legalization of same-sex marriage.
But Archbishop Cordileone said he would continue to stand his ground on the fundamental issues.
“I will not accept that the schools have to renounce their right to hire and fire for the sake of their mission,” he stated.
“Every organization has that right. There is no reason our schools should have to give up that right.”
Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.President Trump got a royal, red-carpet welcome to Saudi Arabia on Saturday, where he was greeted at the airport by King Salman.
Trump shook hands with the Saudi king—a stark contrast to former President Obama, who bowed to Salman in 2009.
Saudi Arabia is the first stop on Trump’s whirlwind nine-day foreign tour, which will include stops in Israel, the Vatican, Belgium and the G7 summit in Italy.
The president literally got the red-carpet treatment at the Riyadh airport, where the tarmac was lined with plush red carpets despite the 107-degree heat.
Gorgeous Ivanka and Melania Trump praised by Arab press: ‘Classy, conservative and elegant’
President Trump kicks off his trip abroad in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/K16nWegr31 — USA Association 🇺🇸 (@USAAssociation) May 20, 2017
Trump tweeted Saturday morning, saying he was looking forward to his stay.
Great to be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Looking forward to the afternoon and evening ahead. #POTUSAbroad pic.twitter.com/JJOra0KfyR — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2017
Watch President Trump’s arrival to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the first stop on his first foreign trip as president https://t.co/5AGV9ypwUG pic.twitter.com/YV1R97LxSG — CBS News (@CBSNews) May 20, 2017
Melania and Ivanka Trump accompanied the president, and made a statement by not covering their hair—which is almost unheard of in oppressive Saudi Arabia, where women must cover their heads in a hijab or niqab.
Hillary Clinton wore a headscarf during her visits to Saudi Arabia as secretary of state, where she bowed to a Saudi prince.
https://twitter.com/CitizenAnalyst/status/865881386670010368
https://twitter.com/CitizenAnalyst/status/865878716160892928
How Trump greeted Saudi Arabia’s fake king versus how Obama/Hillary did. Also, Melania Trump has no Hijab👋#Riyadh @POTUS #FlashbackFriday pic.twitter.com/5uRwZHVumM — Trump vs. Globalism (@chrisk2000) May 20, 2017
Despite the mainstream media narrative that President Trump has alienated our Muslim allies with his tough stance on Islamic terrorism, he was treated like a king all around Riyadh, where photos of Trump and the American flag were prominently displayed.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel projected a stunning five-story portrait of Trump on the side of its building.
looks like promotion for a prize fight
[Trump’s Riyadh hotel tonight, via @JenniferJJacobs] pic.twitter.com/PxiqYRSLYB — Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) May 19, 2017
These signs are omnipresent along the highways in Riyadh pic.twitter.com/cDuFY6xKr0 — Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) May 19, 2017
Trump flashed me a thumbs up as he rode the gold escalator up to his first overseas adventure. pic.twitter.com/3H9QZben7n — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) May 20, 2017
On Sunday, President Trump spoke before the leaders of 50 Muslim-majority nations and urged them to do more to fight radical Islamic terrorism. Trump also called on leaders in the Middle East to “drive out terrorists from your places of worship.”
Sexy Melania gets the ‘side-eye’ as she outshines fellow NATO first ladies – she can’t help it!
After Saudi Arabia, the president will make a stop in Israel, followed by a visit with Pope Francis at the Vatican, culminating with his first appearance at the G7 Summit in Italy next week.Much of the public has unquestioningly embraced the mantra “Diversity is Strength.” Then again, in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, much of the public also blindly accepted oxymoronic slogans such as “WAR IS PEACE” and “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.” Throughout history, the general public has been little more than a giant hardware store full of tools.
A Google Images search of the word “diversity” shows an uninterrupted syrupy stream of rainbows and smiling faces and clasped hands, a |
the NFL didn't want, choosing the latter British pop band as the headline act for Super Bowl 50 on Sunday afternoon at Levi's Stadium. But Metallica made a good argument that the local band deserved the bid, and not just because members built their fame in clubs a bike ride away from Super Bowl City.
Like punk rock and rap, heavy metal works best when the artists have an edge, and the Super Bowl snub, real or imagined, seemed to provide one. The band offered two heartfelt speeches on the subject, by the two longest-tenured members - singer/guitarist James Hetfield at the beginning of the night, and drummer Lars Ulrich at the end.
"I think it all works out for a reason," Hetfield said, two songs into the concert. "We got to play a whole show... and one more thing I'd like to say is GIMME FUEL GIMME FIRE GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE!"
It was an awkward segue, but it seemed sincere, which has always been Metallica's secret weapon. Whether they're performing, going through group therapy on film, or trying an ill-advised new direction, the band remains earnest. The pyrotechnics and lasers are all part of the illusion. But the gratitude is real. Metallica, like few other acts, can make a 50,000-seat stadium show feel intimate.
Musically, fans had little to complain about. With a few forgivable exceptions, the band was remarkably tight for a 34-year-old outfit. The set list seemed made for the widest audience, leaning on crowd-pleasers and the more melodic corners of their catalogue, starting with the Reagan-era face melter "Creeping Death" and ending with "Enter Sandman" at the close of a three-song encore.
The highlight of the night was a menacing "Master of Puppets," played with an urgency that made everyone forget for nine minutes that the song was recorded three decades earlier. "Seek and Destroy" was equally blistering and a victory lap of sorts; the song was played during Metallica's earliest appearances at San Francisco venues including the Old Waldorf on Battery Street and The Stone on Broadway.
The band played nothing from their newer albums - including the solid "Death Magnetic" from 2008. Only 1980s and 1990s songs were chosen, with all the well-known slower tracks ("Nothing Else Matters," "The Unforgiven") represented. There was just one cover: Thin Lizzy's "Whiskey in the Jar."
Billed as "CBS Radio's The Night Before," the concert was also the debut for a new stage production, which will travel in a yet-to-be-solidified tour. (The band is also working on a new album, which was referenced twice, but no new songs were played.) More than the band itself, the stage show could use some fine-tuning. The enormous big-screen backdrop, split in five segments, often showed the same image five times - making the audience feel as if they were watching the proceedings from the perspective of a house fly.
Animations, quick edits, extreme close-ups and effects including dripping blood and broken glass effects further served to distance Metallica members from the fans. With views so horrible in a stadium show, the producers should default to a panoramic view, so the crowd in the cheap seats can actually see the band. (To be fair, the lasers and fire blasts were in mid-tour form.)
Metallica hasn't mellowed, as much as their once-outlaw brand of musical badass-ery has caught up to the mainstream. There were plenty of children at the show. And while a Metallica concert still isn't a high percentage place to meet your future wife, the male/female ratio has reached the point that we might see a line at the women's bathroom before the band's 40th anniversary.
In other words, they probably should have been playing on Sunday as well.
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle's pop culture critic. E-mail: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub.On June 15th, the Senate passed the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act (S. 722) by a vote of 98-2 (Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voted NO). Attached to the sanctions bill against Iran, the Senate added a second part that dealt with sanctions on Russia.
Before leaving office and in reaction to evidence of Russian interference in the US Presidential election, Obama expelled 35 Russians, sanctioned others, and seized two properties. Fearing that Trump would rescind or roll back sanctions against Russia, S. 722 was passed on a bipartisan basis. The law basically requires that the President notify Congress of any change or waiver and that Congress must approve or disapprove those changes or waivers.
The House has yet to act on the bill. Because it raises revenue (through civil fines), some in the House have claimed it violates the Origination Clause. That is a technicality easily corrected. The bigger constitutional question is how it allows Congress a greater say in the formulation and execution of foreign policy, an area usually reserved for the Executive branch.
The Constitution is somewhat vague by design when it comes to foreign policy. While Congress has the power to regulate international commerce, the Executive mainly carries out foreign policy almost unimpeded. Taking all the pertinent clauses in the Constitution together, Congress basically is a check on Presidential power. Over the years, Congress has ceded certain powers to the Executive (example, the War Powers Act).
In this case, Congress is placing a serious check on presidential power by codifying existing sanctions on Russia, issuing more, and then requiring the President to seek Congressional approval to weaken, waive or rescind sanctions. Most sanctions were established by Executive Order with directions to the executive branch departments to follow through on implementation.
The main constitutional argument against this action is that it unnecessarily ties the hand of the President in dealing with Russia. The purpose of sanctions is to punish a country for behaviors, or to pressure them to change behaviors. The Magnitsky Act addresses human rights abusers in Russia while the next two set of sanctions addressed the Crimea and then Ukraine. The new sanctions address Russian interference in the US election.
One needs to question the efficacy of sanctions in achieving their goals. There are obviously still human rights abuses in Russia, they remain in the Crimea, and their stealth war in eastern Ukraine is still a reality. And no one doubts that they will continue their cyber-attacks in the electoral processes here and abroad. The truth is that the original round of sanctions were effective only because of the drop in oil prices on the international market. That plus the sanctions plunged Russia into a recession, but two years later they are struggling out of it and their economy is forecast to grow 1.7% next year.
In reality, the US sanctions had very little effect on Russia. They are not a major trading partner with us. However, the European Union (EU) is and the US sanctions coordinated with those of Europe had an effect. Putin sort of lessened the effect by blocking EU exports of agricultural products to Russia which (1) hurt Europe’s agricultural sector and (2) helped the Russian agricultural sector. Where US sanctions hurt Russia is in the financial sector since they need access to Western capital to fund debt and major infrastructure projects, especially in the energy sector. For example, Novatek, Russia’s second largest gas producer, is targeted by US sanctions. In order to secure funding for a massive Arctic project, they secured a loan from several European banks in euros since they cannot raise loans in dollars.
The Trump administration has sent some signals that they have problems with the existing legislation because it ties their hands in dealing with Russia. The bill was attached to one that originally targeted just Iran. Further, language was slipped in that stresses American jobs and energy exports. In short, it was designed to force Trump to sign it into law. Passing 98-2 in the Senate, one can safely say it is veto-proof.
Leaving aside the separation of powers issue, there is a collateral defect in the bill that has gone largely unnoticed by the media in their zeal to portray Trump as everything pro-Russia. Simply, Europe has let their displeasure be known. First, the US and Europe are in agreement when it comes to next generation energy production in Russia. That includes Arctic exploration and shale extraction. Europe singles out oil only while US sanctions address oil and natural gas. Under the sanctions, the export of technology is forbidden.
The only Russian company sanctioned thus far in this area by both Europe and the US is Rosneft. The proposed new US sanctions leave open the door to target Russia’s largest producer- Gazprom. Gazprom is currently attempting to build the Nordstream 2 pipeline that would move Russian natural gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea, thus bypassing eastern Europe. Both the Ukraine and Belarus derive transit fees from Gazprom for existing pipelines to Europe.
European investors in Nordstream 2 include five major European companies: French ENGIE, German Uniper and Wintershall, the Anglo-Dutch Shell, and Austrian OMV. The bill would authorize this and any future president to sanction those companies for dealing with Gazprom. It is unlikely that Trump would pull that trigger, but by linking the language to American jobs, it lures Trump into agreement with the principle. In effect, it creates an energy trade advantage in the European market by freezing out Russia and steering Europe towards the US.
The US currently has the ability to be a player in the European market but for the fact the export of liquefied natural gas is not cost-effective…as long as Russian sources are around. European leaders see this not as an attempt to change Russian behaviors, but more as an attempt for the US to gain an unfair advantage in that market. Furthermore, this is in retaliation for Russian interference in the US election. Although Putin has certainly interfered in European elections, his success rate has been hit and miss with more misses of late in France, Holland, and Austria. In other words, European leaders see themselves as potential collateral damage in US sanctions for something that affected only the United States.
The fact that European companies can potentially be fined by the US if they bought securities in or dealt with Russian energy companies has led leaders in Germany and Austria to take the lead in denouncing S. 722. This rift in US-European relations barely is covered in the US media, but it is big news in Europe. In a joint statement between German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, they expressed concern about the new sanctions ensnaring European companies. A spokesman for Germany’s Angela Merkel said she shares those sentiments. Her spokesman described it as a “peculiar move by the U.S. Senate.”
More recently, Germany threatened possible retaliatory actions against American firms if German companies are, in fact, ensnared in the sanctions regime. The German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries told Reuters: “If he does (Trump signs the bill), we’ll have to consider what we are going to to do against it.” Those are the strongest words to date that Germany intends to pass retaliatory legislation against US companies.
What made previous sanctions against Russia work was coordination of them between Europe and the United States. There is clearly no such coordination in this case. Europe sees this as a veiled threat against existing investments by European companies as a way for the United States to gain an advantage in the European energy market. One unnamed German source said that Europe alone should make the decision of where to get their energy.
This bill obviously exemplifies the law of unintended consequences. Meant to punish or change Russian behavior, it stands to further strain US relations with Europe at the very time there should be a united front against Russian interference in national elections. It is not so much a check on Russia than it is a check on this particular US President in dealing with Russia. Before the House agrees to its passage, it needs to think long and hard lest they be responsible for the deepening rift between Europe and the United States, not Donald Trump.Elder Divination is here: a batch of high-level Divination content following on from Fate of the Gods. Re-enter the Elder Halls and train at a new wisp colony from level 75 to 85, with woven items up to 99. Create new items, and summon the player-voted nightmare muspah familiar.
There are some cool updates separate from the quest too: we've made collecting chronicles much more rewarding, and you can transmute unwanted summoning charms to ones more useful to you.
Read on for more information, or log into RuneScape now and get stuck in!
Scry Hard
Once you've completed Fate of the Gods, use the World Gate south of the Eagles' Peak lodestone to return to Freneskae. Travel back across the dangerous landscape, down through Zaros's Sanctum and deep into the Elder Halls. Alternatively, use the new shortcut option on the World Gate to jump right to the Elder Halls themselves.
There, you'll find a new wisp colony, which is great for training from 75 to 85. No need to bring the Measure - once the quest is complete, the wisps will be permanently visible.
Using the elder energy harvested there, you'll weave powerful portents, signs, locations up to level 99, and imbue mighty muspah summoning pouches:
Portents of degradation automatically heal you and damage your opponent when you're damaged to under half life - they can also be made into more powerful 'attuned' varieties. Portents and signs of death will return a percentage of your life points upon death, preventing your demise and damaging your opponent for a corresponding amount. Portents and signs of life revive you with more health, without the damage to your enemy. Note that life and death items share the same one-hour cooldown.
There's a new type of divine location to make, too: the divine simulacrum. It can be woven from 75 Divination up, is harvestable at 65 Divination, and grants energy appropriate to your level.
Fresh from a recent Power to the Players poll comes the nightmare muspah familiar. This beast of burden can only hold memories and energy, but has a better capacity than a pack yak. If you have one with you while you're converting at a rift, it'll automatically empty and fill its inventory, and it gives a small, passive chance to quadruple energy when harvesting from springs. Nightmare muspah pouches are made using elder energy in the place of spirit shards, as well as elder charms and muspah spines - dropped only by muspah killed on Freneskae.
While divining in Freneskae, you'll also uncover ten snippets of ancient lore from elder chronicles, which also grant you XP in any skill of your choice when handed in at the divination camp or at the Guthixian shrine (which still gives its XP boost).
Full details of how the above items work can be found in the Divination Skill Advance Guide in game, or on the wiki.
There are new divine implings to be caught around Gielinor and in Impetuous Impulses. They require 79 Hunter to catch, and yield energy, portents, signs, and - if you're lucky - completed muspah summoning pouches.
Simply Divine
Even if you haven't completed the quest, today's update brings you some nifty new Divination features.
It's now possible to transmute summoning charms into other types. You'll need several lower-tier charms plus some divination energy to produce the charm of your choice. See the wiki for more information.
Chronicles have been reworked. You can gather more at once, they give far more XP than they used to, and their spawn rate has been greatly increased. Note that while you can now carry up to 30 at once, the spawn rate starts to decrease once you're holding more than ten, so it's a good idea to hand them in whenever you can.
Have Fun!
If you haven't already, set your sights on completing Fate of the Gods. It's a heck of an experience, and - with today's updates - it's never been more rewarding.
To cap it off, we're offering an Early Bird Bonus for the next two weeks: triple divine impling spawns, double Hunter XP and energy from catching divine implings, and double Divination XP and energy when gathering from divine simulacrums.
Enjoy, and let us know what you think over on the forums.
The RuneScape Team
In Other News
Unlocking all ten pieces of lore from the elder chronicles is now a requirement for the trimmed completionist cape.
Take a look at the patch notes for other updates released today.Cosplay is nothing short of an art-form. Each year, enthusiasts spend months of their time and multiple paycheques to bring their favourite characters to life. But what is the reward of working so hard on these costumes, year after year?
For one, these knights of imagination become the centre of attention at any convention, showing off their incredible skill in crafting costumes as well as their passion for their favourite shows, movies, video games, and comics.
On top of that, these cosplayers all get to be under one roof, which in turn becomes the greatest cross-over event of the year. Only at conventions like Toronto Comicon will you see Master Chief from Halo hanging out with a Star Wars Jedi, casually talking about the weather.
This photo essay is a celebration of all things cosplay; our way of honouring these dedicated fans by highlighting their hard work and passion. These are the faces of Toronto Comicon 2014.
These were just some of the many elaborate costumes present this weekend at Toronto Comicon. Cosplayers from all walks of life, all genres, and all passions came out to show off their work and the results were out of this world! We can’t wait to see what kind of costumes people will come up with next year, and if you have the chance this August, FanExpo 2014 in Toronto promises to be the biggest convention yet!A family of 17 suspected Uighur Muslims at the centre of a diplomatic tug-of-war between Turkey and China will remain in custody until their nationalities are proven after a Thai court has rejected their argument that their prolonged detention was illegal.
The court ruled on Friday that Thai immigration had the right to detain the group but made no ruling on their nationality.
Turkey and China both claim the detainees as nationals in a dispute with potential implications for hundreds of other suspected Uighur detainees and to where they should be repatriated.
"There are more than 300 Uighurs here in detention for illegally entering Thailand. So for the time being all of them are now caught in this diplomatic tug-of-war," said Al Jazeera's Scott Heidler, reporting from the Thai capital Bangkok.
The group, who use the name Teklimakan, has been in detention for a year. The group plans to appeal against the decision, their lawyer Worasit Piriyawiboon said.
"I don't agree with the court decision and I'm ready to fight," Worasit said on Friday.
Turkish passports
Thai police detained the group, all from the same family, in March 2014 after they illegally entered Thailand overland from Cambodia. Two of the 13 children in the group were born in custody.
The family claimed to be Turkish and, while still in detention, were issued with passports by the Turkish embassy and granted permission to travel to Turkey.
China insists the 17 detainees are Chinese Uighurs who should be returned to the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang, according to court documents seen by the Reuters news agency.
Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the past two years, prompting a crackdown by Chinese authorities, and small numbers of Uighurs have tried to flee.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, have travelled clandestinely through Southeast Asia to Turkey.
The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking people officially regarded as "brothers" in Turkey, which already hosts large Uighur populations.Each week, Big Issues focuses on a newly released comic-book issue of significance. This week, it’s Archie #1. Written by Mark Waid (Daredevil, S.H.I.E.L.D.) with art by Fiona Staples (Saga, Mystery Society) and colors by Andre Szymanowicz (Hell Yeah, Elephantmen) with Jen Vaughn (Adventure Time, Avery Fatbottom: Renaissance Fair Detective), this issue propels Archie Andrews and the town of Riverdale into the present with a dramatic new art style, but never loses the spirit of classic Archie Comics. (Warning: this review reveals major plot points.)
Over the past six years, Archie Comics has gone from a paragon of traditionalism to one of the biggest risk-takers in mainstream comics, pushing character diversity in its main titles and shifting away from its all-ages roots with the Archie Horror and Dark Circle lines. It’s seen remarkable growth under publisher and co-CEO Jon Goldwater, who joined the company in 2009, a decade after the death of his father, Archie co-founder John L. Goldwater. Jon Goldwater has worked vigorously to update the publisher’s output and make its product more relevant to modern audiences. New characters like Kevin Keller and Harper Lodge brought different perspectives to Riverdale, while series like Life With Archie and Afterlife With Archie reimagined familiar faces in exciting new contexts. These big changes often garnered exceptional creative results.
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Goldwater’s tenure has been building up to this week’s release of Archie #1, a high-profile relaunch featuring two Eisner Award-winning creators in writer Mark Waid and artist Fiona Staples. Canceling the main Archie title with #666 was the final nail in the coffin of the old Archie Comics; this new first issue is the birth of something truly fresh and exciting for the publisher. Fiona Staples’ sleek digital artwork is far removed from the classic Archie house style, but the added realism in her art makes the world feel more concrete than the more cartoonish Riverdale of Archie’s past. Waid writes a charming script that works as a very accessible introduction to Archie and his hometown, but the star of this book is Staples, who is the key to modernizing the characters and environment.
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From the very first page, Staples brings a dynamic energy that immediately pulls the reader into the story. The issue opens with a splash page of Archie introducing himself and Riverdale to the reader, with so much vitality and style in just that one shot. Waid doesn’t have to do much to make the story contemporary because Staples does most of the heavy lifting in her costume design, immediately establishing a modern Riverdale in just one splash page. A lot of that comes from the specificity of Staples’ costuming, as she brings a huge array of different ensembles to the page to show the range of current teen fashions.
Much of the book’s modernity stems from Staples’ style, which means Waid doesn’t have to go overboard with contemporary references or incorporating technology, two of the most common ways writers make their stories look hipper. That doesn’t mean those elements aren’t there—Josie And The Pussycats are former American Idol winners and characters occasionally communicate by texting because that’s what teenagers do—but they aren’t a priority. That’s because Waid understands that the central conceit of Archie’s story is timeless. It’s a story about a teenage boy discovering the complications that romance brings into his life, and that doesn’t need much updating at all. It just needs a little polish.
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The most aggressive attempt to cater to a younger audience comes at the very end of the issue. Archie tells readers that they can give him suggestions on how to get over Betty by reaching out to @ArchieComics on Twitter using the hashtag #lipstickincident; this is also a clever way of taking advantage of the publicity that comes with social media. And it’s worked. People are reaching out to Archie on Twitter, and while #lipstickincident isn’t trending around the world, those tweets prove that there are people eager to engage with entertainment on this level.
This week, Mark Waid also sees the release of The Fox #4, which he co-wrote with Dean Haspiel for Archie’s Dark Circle Comics, and the debut of his Strange Fruit #1 with artist J.G. Jones at Boom! Studios. Of the three, Archie is the strongest showcase of Waid’s talent as a writer. Strange Fruit features some gorgeous art, but it reinforces unfortunate racial stereotypes with its story about a silent, superpowered alien that takes the shape of a black man when he crash lands in the early-20th century South. The book is intended to be provocative, but the discussion it’s provoking is largely about how tone-deaf the story is when it comes to the actual struggle of blacks in America.
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Archie shows a completely different side of Waid than Strange Fruit: the fun-loving side that has made his runs on The Flash, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil so memorable. Waid can do effective work when tackling mature subject matter in books like Kingdom Come and Empire (and those aforementioned superhero titles), but he has the highest success rate when he embraces a more light-hearted tone in his work. It doesn’t get much lighter than Archie, and Waid captures that classic Archie tone in his script, which focuses on Archie dealing with the aftermath of his recent break-up with Betty Cooper. Putting Archie and Betty’s relationship at the center of this issue is a wise move, and establishing a strong connection for the couple will intensify the conflict when Veronica Lodge eventually arrives to form the all-important Archie-Betty-Veronica love triangle.
Kevin Keller, Sheila Wu, and Maria Rodriguez scheme to bring Archie and Betty back together by campaigning to get them elected as homecoming king and queen, and giving ample attention to these supporting characters kicks off the relaunched Archie with a more diverse Riverdale. It would have been great to see Archie, Betty, or Veronica as a person of color, but it’s also understandable why Waid wouldn’t racebend those characters for the relaunch. Instead, he gives the non-white, non-straight characters more pronounced roles in the narrative, and ideally Kevin, Sheila, and Maria will get just as much spotlight in future issues as Archie, Betty, and Veronica.
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Fiona Staples colors her own artwork on Saga, but the grind of two monthly comics meant that she wouldn’t be able to color Archie. (It’s also why she’s only attached to the first three issues of Archie.) The best thing that can be said about colorists Andre Szymanowicz and Jen Vaughn is that it looks as if Staples colored the book herself, and they have a strong understanding of how to highlight Staples’ linework to get the most dimension and depth. They keep the book’s visuals rooted in Archie tradition by embracing a vibrant color palette, and incorporating lots of bright pastels gives the art an especially playful look. The visual highlight of this issue is the homecoming dance, a scene covered in romantic pinks and purples that tease a reunion for Archie and Betty, and the combination of Szymanowicz and Vaughn’s rich coloring with Staples’ vivacious linework and layouts makes Archie especially dreamy when he takes to the stage for an impromptu jam session with the band.
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The new Archie Comics is taking a lot of risks, but not all of them have been successful. In May, it launched a Kickstarter to crowdfund $350,000 for the launch of three new series—Jughead by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Erica Henderson, Betty And Veronica by writer-artist Adam Hughes, and the Kevin Keller-centric Life With Kevin by writer Dan Parent and artist J. Bone—a campaign that received heavy criticism from the comics community for its lofty goal, lackluster rewards, and the fact that it was a mainstream publisher relying on fans to fund its future. It was canceled after reaching just over 10 percent of its goal, but Archie Comics made the right decision in abandoning what was quickly turning into a PR disaster.
Not every risk is going to reap rewards, but the Kickstarter did a lot to raise awareness of those upcoming Archie titles, which are still seeing release, but now at later dates than originally planned. Those announcements didn’t appear in the best context, but they got people talking about upcoming titles, and that’s what Jon Goldwater’s Archie Comics has done best. It gets people talking, whether it’s by having Archie die by taking a bullet for a gay president, overrunning Riverdale with zombies, or giving the Archie universe a stylish modern makeover. After decades of tradition, Archie Comics is firmly in its next stage of evolution, and Archie #1 is a rock-hard foundation to build on as the publisher continues to grow.Donald Trump has offered Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn a key economic post, which would add to the administration another veteran of the powerful firm he bashed during his campaign, sources close to Cohn told NBC News.
Cohn, Goldman's 56-year-old president and chief operating officer, has been offered the directorship of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy, the sources said. It is unclear if Cohn will accept the post, but he reportedly had discussions late last month about leaving Goldman.
Cohn has been at Goldman for 25 years and previously worked in commodities. The National Economic Council, which Cohn would lead, is meant to "coordinate policy-making for domestic and international issues, to coordinate economic policy advice for the president, to ensure that policy decisions and programs are consistent with the president's economic goals, and to monitor implementation of the president's economic policy agenda," according to the office's website.At what point do Republicans in Congress start looking out for their political future and go after President Trump’s ties to Russia?
Even before the president’s national security advisor Michael Flynn was forced out, Gallup had President Trump with the worst ratings of his presidency so far — 55 percent disapproval to 40 percent approval.
At that point, the top Republican in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (Ky.), began talking like a man concerned about keeping his majority.
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He complained to the conservative Weekly Standard that the president’s approval numbers would be “10 to 15 points higher if he allowed himself to stay on message.”
“What [Trump’s] saying makes everything harder,” McConnell said — and that was before Trump’s epic Thursday press conference in which the president claimed stories about Russian involvement in the election amounted to “fake news.”
Flynn was forced to resign, apparently for misleading Vice President Mike Pence Michael (Mike) Richard PenceVenezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump 'And the award for best political commentary by an Oscar nominee goes to...' UN nuclear watchdog: Iran maintains compliance with 2015 pact MORE about a phone call he held with the Russian ambassador during which U.S. sanctions were discussed. That was followed by a New York Times report of regular contact between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence agents in the year leading up to last November’s election.
McConnell’s tone took on a sharp edge as he began separating himself from Trump.
“You know, everybody looks at last year’s election,” he said on MSNBC, “and says it was a change election. Well, it was in the presidential race, but in the Senate races, it was not a change election.”
If a White House scandal begins to damage the GOP brand, the political dynamic will shift. The 2018 midterm elections defined by Trump scandals will threaten Republican control of the Senate — not the Trump White House.
If Republicans in Congress look to be covering up a national scandal, they open the door to a “change election” that pushes them out of power.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has already pledged to investigate the Russian controversy. But that is not enough for Sen. Claire McCaskill Claire Conner McCaskillCORRECTED: Hawley used a state-owned car for campaign travel as AG: report Poll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell McCaskill: Lindsey Graham 'has lost his mind' MORE (D-Mo.), who argues that the GOP majority on that panel could lead to a cover-up.
“Republicans need to look in the mirror and do a gut check,” she told the New York Times. She wants an open, public investigation in the form of a select committee.
Top Senate Republicans are resisting a select committee so far.
But the counter-threat for Republicans is the prospect of a catastrophic 2018 election.
Sen. Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrady gun control group gets rebranding Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-N.Y.), the Senate Minority Leader, is not ramping up the calls for a select committee. He only asked that McConnell and Sen. Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrFive things to watch as Michael Cohen testifies Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators MORE (R-N.C.), the head of the Intelligence Committee, promise to “making their findings as public as possible,” including open testimony from Trump campaign and transition officials.
Burr pledged there would be no political limits on the probe, promising his committee will “go anywhere the intelligence leads.”
Already, Senate Republicans are open to writing a law requiring Congress to sign off on any changes in the current sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration.
It is a different story in the House, where fear of blowback from Trump supporters has the leadership playing defense for the president.
The House Intelligence Committee is chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who served with Gen. Flynn on Trump’s presidential transition team at a time when some of the illicit communication between Trump’s team and Russia apparently was going on.
Does this mean that Nunes is investigating himself, along with his House colleagues who also served on the transition team?
In addition, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz Jason ChaffetzTop Utah paper knocks Chaffetz as he mulls run for governor: ‘His political career should be over’ Boehner working on memoir: report Former GOP lawmaker on death of 7-year-old migrant girl: Message should be ‘don't make this journey, it will kill you' MORE (R-Utah) said last week his committee would not be investigating the Flynn scandal.
"I think that situation has taken care of itself,” Chaffetz said. “I know that the Intel committee is looking into the hacking issue.”
Chaffetz had no problem asserting his committee’s broad jurisdiction over matters of national security when they were looking into Benghazi.
Chaffetz did call for an investigation by the Department of Justice on the Russian issue — but not into Flynn, only into who leaked the transcripts to reporters.
That is consistent with Trump’s complaint that the real story is media bias against him, as well as leaks from the intelligence agencies intended to do political damage.
Senate Republicans have fully accepted that there needs to be some form of investigation.
“I don’t think we need to go through setting up a special committee,” McConnell said. “But we are going to look at Russian involvement in the U.S. elections. It’s a significant issue.”
The contrast between how Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE’s (R-Wis.) House Republicans and McConnell’s Senate Republications handle Flynn is instructive.
Just as Ryan mishandled Trump’s candidacy during the campaign, he is mishandling Trump’s presidency. Ryan did chide Trump over the Muslim ban and his slander of Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s integrity on the basis of his ethnicity. But Ryan still backed him on the basis of party unity.
McConnell, on the other hand, kept his mouth shut and never took the bait when asked to respond to a Trump tweet or rude remark, instead focusing on preserving his Senate majority.
As last week showed, McConnell is a much shrewder political operator than his party colleagues in the House.
He is putting daylight between Trump and the fate of the Senate GOP majority.
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
The views expressed by contributors are their own, and are not the views of The Hill.This article is about the rugby union event. For the rugby league event, see 1995 Rugby League World Cup
The 1995 Rugby World Cup was the third Rugby World Cup. It was hosted and won by South Africa, and was the first Rugby World Cup in which every match was held in one country.
The World Cup was the first major sporting event to take place in South Africa following the end of apartheid. It was also the first World Cup in which South Africa was allowed to compete; the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB, now World Rugby) had only readmitted South Africa to international rugby in 1992, following negotiations to end apartheid. The World Cup would also be the last major event of rugby union's amateur era; two months after the tournament, the IRFB opened the sport to professionalism.
In the final, held at Ellis Park in Johannesburg on 24 June, South Africa defeated New Zealand 15–12, with Joel Stransky scoring a drop goal in extra time to win the match. Following South Africa's victory, Nelson Mandela, the President of South Africa, wearing a Springboks rugby shirt and cap, presented the Webb Ellis Cup to the South African captain François Pienaar.
Qualifying [ edit ]
The eight quarter-finalists from the 1991 Rugby World Cup all received automatic entry, as did South Africa, as hosts. The remaining seven of the 16 positions available in the tournament were filled by regional qualifiers. The qualifying tournaments were broken up into regional associations: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Côte d'Ivoire qualified through Africa, Japan through Asia, Argentina through the Americas, Italy, Romania and Wales through Europe, Tonga through Oceania.
Squads [ edit ]
Venues [ edit ]
The 1995 tournament was the first Rugby World Cup to be hosted by just one country, and thus, all the venues are within the one country. In total, nine stadiums were used for the World Cup, most being owned by local municipalities, and the majority of the venues were upgraded prior to the tournament. Six of the nine stadiums were South African Test grounds. The four largest stadiums were used for the finals, with the final taking place at Johannesburg's Ellis Park.
There were games originally scheduled to have been played in Brakpan, Germiston, Pietermaritzburg and Witbank, but these games were reallocated to other venues. This reduced the number of venues from 14 to 9. The reasons cited for this change had to do with facilities for both the press and spectators, as well as the security. The change in the itinerary occurred in January 1994. Further changes occurred in April, so that evening games were played at stadiums with good floodlighting. It is also thought that Potchefstroom was an original venue.
Venues were paired:
Pool 1: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Stellenbosch
Pool 2: Durban and East London
Pool 3: Johannesburg and Blo |
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HyperDeck Studio records SD/HD 10-bit 4:2:2 uncompressed video for perfect broadcast quality. With uncompressed video you can create the sharpest VFX plates for match moving, compositing and more. You get deep dynamic color range for color correction and perfect keying without jagged edges. You can also use industry standard compressed video formats that maintain incredible HD quality at reduced files sizes. With HyperDeck Studio 12G and HyperDeck Studio Pro you can now push quality to new heights, with additional support for Ultra HD using multiple high quality ProRes file formats.
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HyperDeck Studio records the widest compatible QuickTime files in 10-bit uncompressed or compressed formats. Depending on your format and frame rate, you can choose to record uncompressed QuickTime, ProRes or DNxHD files. That means you can instantly record files that will work with the most popular software packages such as DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Media Composer and more. HyperDeck Studio gives you compatible files so you’re free to choose the editing, color correction and finishing tools that are best for your clients and their jobs.Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Lawrence Thomas's custom-built tiny home. (GoFundMe)
Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Lawrence Thomas's custom-built tiny home. (GoFundMe)
The Associated Press - HERMISTON, Ore. (AP) - A Las Vegas man is getting his home back after the tiny structure was stolen from an eastern Oregon truck stop in December.
The East Oregonian reported Thursday that Lawrence Thomas's custom-built tiny home was found about a half a mile from where it was stolen in Hermiston in late December. He says the home lost its tires and door, but the rest of the home appears salvageable.
Thomas was moving his 95-square-foot home from Seattle to Las Vegas when he stopped in Hermiston to avoid bad weather. He unhitched the structure at a truck stop and decided to come back for it when weather cleared but instead found the tiny home was stolen.
Thomas says he hopes to leave Las Vegas and pick up the structure this weekend.REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov On Tuesday, Twitter cofounder Ev Williams neatly pointed out how big Facebook's fake-news problem is with one screenshot.
Williams was reading Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's November 18 Facebook post, which updated the world on Facebook's progress and goals in tackling the spreading of fake news, when he noticed some suspicious posts on the side. Both turned out to be fake news.
Here's the screenshot (with our added annotations in red) that Williams posted on Medium, the publishing platform where he is CEO:
Ev Williams/Business Insider
"Despite appearances, the first one doesn't point to espn.com," Williams wrote in a Medium post. "It goes to espn.com-magazine.online and attempts to sell a muscle-building supplement using ESPN branding and a fake news story. The CNN-branded ad goes to less work. It just takes you to a site called Fine the Racers with an exclusive offer for a 12-week program to strengthen your toes (?)."
Though Facebook has already pledged to ban fake-news sites from its ad network, both of the posts that Williams highlighted were ads (note: "sponsored").
"We do not integrate or display ads in apps or sites containing content that is illegal, misleading or deceptive, which includes fake news," Facebook said in a statement to Reuters on November 15.
The spread of fake news on Facebook became a focal point of discussion after Donald Trump was elected president, drawing comments from the likes of President Obama. A recent study by BuzzFeed showed that in the lead-up to the election, the top fake-news stories on Facebook outperformed legitimate news stories shared by some of the most popular media companies. One fake-news writer even said he thought he might have helped Trump win the election.
Facebook has said it's working on fixing the problem. Zuckerberg wrote on Friday (in the post cited by Williams) a few things that Facebook was working on to try to combat fake news. Here's a summary:
Stronger detection: better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.
Making it much easier for people to report stories as fake to catch more misinformation faster.
Third-party verification via "respected fact-checking organizations."
Warnings: labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties and the Facebook community, and showing warnings when people read or share them.
Working with journalists and others in the news industry to get input and better understand their fact-checking systems and learn from them.Foo Fighters' new album Sonic Highways arrives November 10. It was recorded in eight studios in eight different American cities, and is currently being showcased in a HBO documentary series directed by Dave Grohl, called "Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways"; the second episode airs tonight. After sharing "Something From Nothing", the band have unveiled "The Feast and the Famine", a cut they laid down in Arlington, Virginia's Inner Ear Studio. You can listen to it below.
In this week's episode of "Sonic Highways", Grohl visits our nation's capital, as well as his former stomping grounds in northern Virginia. In addition to chatting with Inner Ear Studio owner Don Zientara, the Foos frontman spends time with Trouble Funk's Big Tony Fisher, Ian MacKaye, and legendary D.C. punks Bad Brains.
Here's the trailer for the TV series:David Leitch better get an appetite for chimichangas.
Leitch, one half of the directing and stunt team behind the John Wick movies, has closed a deal to helm Fox’s Deadpool 2.
The development occurs just weeks after Fox lost Tim Miller as the director to the X-Men spinoff sequel. Miller, who was an integral part of the first Deadpool, which opened in February, exited the project over "creative differences" with star Ryan Reynolds.
Leitch's name surfaced just days after Miller's exit, although the producers and studio had other filmmakers such as Rupert Sanders, Drew Goddard and Magnus Martens on their to-meet list. Leitch met with Reynolds in New York and was offered the gig soon after.
At the same time, Fox and the producers are also putting into motion Deadpool 3 and will be searching for a separate filmmaker to tackle that installment.
Leitch is well versed in action-movie parlance. He made his directorial debut in 2014 co-helming Wick, the Keanu Reeves revenge thriller, with Chad Stahelski. Before that, however, he and Stahelski spent years as stunt coordinators and second unit directors, creating a stunt company named 87eleven.
Leitch recently wrapped filming on his second feature, The Coldest City, a Cold War thriller starring Charlize Theron.
He is repped by WME, Kelly McCormick and Gang Tyre.CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter caught the journalism bug in grammar school, but he feared (wrongly) that his lack of lush locks would prevent him from becoming a television star. (Jesse Dittmar/For The Washington Post)
On March 3, the day Brian Stelter was scheduled to take part in a Columbia Journalism School panel discussion on Trump and the media, he sent his first tweet at 6:04 a.m.
By the time he sat down for the 10:30 a.m. talk, the CNN senior media correspondent had published 20 tweets. He tweeted while waiting for the conversation to begin. He tweeted when it was over. He tweeted as it was happening.
Stelter, who at 31 is in his third year of hosting a Sunday morning show on CNN after a 6½ -year stint at the New York Times, which followed the sale of a remarkably successful blog he started in college, is capable of a great deal. But there is one thing, it seems, that he struggles to do: turn it off.
Especially now, when he has become a ubiquitous presence on the cable network, when more viewers than ever are tuning in to his show, “Reliable Sources,” and when 477,000 followers stand ready to receive his daily onslaught of tweets. Now, when the topics at hand are fake news, freedom of the press and the role of journalism in a democracy.
At Columbia, Stelter told the audience that his whole career was preparation for this moment.
“I feel like everything up until Election Day was rehearsal,” he said. “I was just practicing. It was just warm-up for this act.”
But that was an understatement. His whole life has been a warm-up for this act.
As a kid in Damascus, Md., Stelter waited at the door every afternoon for his dad to get home. Then he would breathlessly relay the day’s news. Sometimes, he’d set up an anchor desk in the basement and read Associated Press wire copy into a camcorder.
When a blizzard hit, he’d take a measuring stick out into the yard and call in to WUSA 9 with his snow totals. “I’d get the biggest thrill when they would say ‘Brian in Damascus reports a foot on the ground,’ ” he says. “And I always felt like I was getting away with something, because they didn’t know I was 8 years old.”
In the mid-1990s, he taught himself how to code and set up a fan page for the children’s author R.L. Stine, of “Goosebumps” fame. Soon the website had tens of thousands of visitors a month, and Stelter was spending so many hours posting about the books that he no longer had time to enjoy them.
In middle school, he moved on to Nintendo games, often staying up late and racking up huge phone bills trying to call game developers in Tokyo about their latest releases. “My parents were very forgiving,” he says.
But Stelter’s life hit a breaking point during his sophomore year at Damascus High School. His dad, an appliance repairman, suffered a massive heart attack in the fall of 2000. He recovered enough to fulfill Stelter’s wish to go to the inauguration of George W. Bush but seven days later had a second heart attack that proved fatal.
Stelter knows that it sounds strange, but in many ways, he thinks of his career success as a result of his father’s death. “I feel like the [high] school collectively took a little more care of me after he died,” he says.
He threw himself into the school newspaper and TV club. Even then his appetite and ambition were outpaced only by his productivity. “He was just on fire,” says his school newspaper adviser, Cynthia Reilly. The summer before his senior year, she recalls, he independently wrote an exhaustive guidebook laying out the paper’s standards and style rules. “I said, ‘It’s fabulous, but you realize this is overwhelming for the other kids.’ ” They edited it down to a few key points.
After receiving a rejection from New York University, Stelter enrolled as a mass communications major at Towson University. He loved TV but thought it a safer bet to focus on print journalism. There were more jobs — and they didn’t require a full head of hair.
“This is exactly what I thought — that I didn’t have enough hair,” says Stelter, who was balding by the time he got to college. “Peter Jennings. Tom Brokaw. Dan Rather. Beautiful locks, beautiful heads of hair.”
In his freshman year, Stelter channeled his cable news obsession into a blog that tracked the industry’s ratings wars and personnel changes. Without revealing his name — or age — he made TVNewser into a must-read site for television professionals. Six months after it launched, he had an acquisition offer: Mediabistro bought the site in 2004 for $500. And, he says, paid him “beer money” to keep writing it.
After graduating in 2007, Stelter landed at the New York Times, which had written about his site. He floundered for a few months before finding his footing — and a mentor. In the 2011 documentary “Page One: Inside the New York Times,” veteran media correspondent David Carr refers to Stelter as “a robot created by the New York Times to destroy me.”
They were great friends and collaborators. “It was so important that David brought me under his wing and took me seriously as a reporter,” Stelter says of Carr, who died in 2015.
And when Stelter got the call for a CNN tryout, Carr knew that his protege would go if he got an offer. A kid who calls in snow totals doesn’t pass up a chance to be on the national news.
Stelter in CNN’s New York studios. In February, viewership for “Reliable Sources” grew 50 percent over the previous year. (Jesse Dittmar/For The Washington Post)
T he panel discussion at Columbia left Stelter running late for a staff meeting. The subway would be faster than a cab, he calculated, so he headed underground and walked to a specific spot in the middle of the platform that would maximize the efficiency of his exit. “I’m a nerd about these things,” he said.
After being approached by a middle-aged woman who asked if he was Michael Smerconish — “Close. Close. That’s a compliment,” he said of CNN’s other bald weekend host — Stelter started scrolling through Twitter.
The app, he says, is “the second most important relationship of my life.” And it led to the first. He met his wife, NY1 Traffic reporter Jamie (Shupak) Stelter, on the site. After following Jamie’s tweets during a blizzard in December 2010, he wrote a private message to Pat Kiernan, anchor of her morning show: “two innocent and unrelated questions: does jamie shupak have a boyfriend? and how often is she asked out by viewers?”
Stelter started using Twitter in 2008, and it quickly became integral to both his personal and his professional life. When he wanted to lose weight in 2010, he turned to Twitter to keep himself accountable — and shed 75 pounds.
It was also a fount of story ideas, leads and sources. That constant input is key when producing an output as large as Stelter’s. To his mind, he gets to be the host of “Reliable Sources” because he is CNN’s senior media correspondent. “I walked through a side door, as opposed to the front door — through reporting,” he explains. Which means that he needs to earn his job each week with original reporting.
Last year, he wrote 439 articles for CNN.com — a number he had at his fingertips because he compiles a list at the end of each year.
But writing stories, tweeting incessantly and hosting a weekly show didn’t feel like enough, so in November 2015, he started a nightly newsletter. Six days a week, after his wife goes to bed, he spends two to three hours drafting an exhaustive roundup of that day’s media news.
“He’s kind of a force of nature,” says Rich Barbieri, Stelter’s editor at CNNMoney.com. “There are reporters out there who just cannot turn their curiosity off. That’s Brian.”
During his first years at CNN, Stelter’s big stories were the Sony hack and network news coverage of a missing plane. Then came the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump, a largely media creation who is now framing the media as the enemy.
“The stakes feel very high,” Stelter says.
He sees it as his job to explain to viewers how journalism works — why, for instance, a reporter might quote an anonymous source and how that source’s information is vetted. In granting “Reliable Sources” a Cronkite award this year, judges at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism referred to Stelter as a “one-man media literacy course.”
And apparently there is appetite for that course: The show’s February viewership grew by 50 percent compared with last year.
Barbieri thinks that’s because Stelter brings “so much knowledge and context and sophistication to the beat.” Stelter phrases it differently. Yes, he’s a journalist covering journalism. But at heart, he’s a fanboy, geeking out on his greatest obsession — and wanting to protect it from shoddy work or unwarranted attacks. “I think people can tell that I love this stuff,” he says.
But a disruption to Stelter’s focus is at hand. After a fertility struggle that included multiple miscarriages, he and his wife are expecting their first child in May.
“There is definitely something to his pace that will have to give,” says Jamie Stelter, chatting on the couch in their Manhattan condo, conveniently located within a five-minute walk of the CNN newsroom.
Sitting at the dining room table with his laptop, Stelter chimes in: “I think that having a baby is going to change my mind in so many ways. I have no idea how, but I’m looking forward to finding out.”
He looks up from the screen to add that after the baby arrives, “I know I’ll take a break.”
And then, as if pulled by a force as strong as gravity, his gaze returns to the computer.Shia LaBeouf: 'To be a star, you must become an enslaved body'
Shia LaBeouf has attacked celebrity culture for enslaving him, in an interview with Variety.
The 28-year-old actor has been promoting a new film called LoveTrue, which he has executive produced, at the Tribeca film festival. In an email exchange to promote the fiction/documentary hybrid, he spoke about how being in the public eye makes him uncomfortable.
“As a celebrity/star I am not an individual – I am a spectacular representation of a living human being, the opposite of an individual,” he wrote. “The enemy of the individual, in myself as well as in others. The celebrity/star is the object of identification, with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specialisations that are actually lived.”
I believe Shia LaBeouf – a person doesn’t have to be likable to be a victim | Lindy West Read more
LaBeouf, who claimed that he was retiring from all public life at the start of last year, has since been in the second world war thriller Fury and the controversial Sia music video for Elastic Heart. He now refers to himself as a performer who is more interested in performance art.
“The craft of acting for film is terribly exclusive and comes with the baggage of celebrity, which robs you of your individuality and separates you,” he wrote. “The performance work is democratised and far more inclusive.”
He went onto describe himself and other stars as slaves, and the entire concept of celebrity as old-fashioned.
“The requirements to being a star/celebrity are namely, you must become an enslaved body,” he wrote. “Just flesh – a commodity, and renounce all autonomous qualities in order to identify with the general law of obedience to the course of things. The star is a byproduct of the machine age, a relic of modernist ideals. It’s outmoded.”
LaBeouf can next be seen in post-apocalyptic thriller Man Down with Kate Mara and Gary Oldman, and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey.NEW YORK/SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Donald Trump agreed on Friday to pay $25 million to settle fraud lawsuits over his Trump University real estate seminars, in what New York’s attorney general called a “stunning reversal” for the U.S. president-elect.
Trump University DVDs are displayed at The Trump Museum near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., July 19, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo
The lawsuits had dogged Trump, who denied any wrongdoing, throughout his campaign. They led to one of the more controversial moments of his run when he claimed the judge overseeing two of the cases was biased because he was of Mexican ancestry.
The settlement was announced by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who said it followed repeated refusals by Trump “to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims of his phony university.”
Lawyers for Trump had argued against students, who claimed they were they were lured by false promises into paying up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors.
Three lawsuits relating to Trump University will be covered by the deal: two class actions suits in California and a New York case brought by Schneiderman. The agreement must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego.
Trump will not admit any wrongdoing under the agreement. His attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, acknowledged Trump had previously vowed to fight the case.
The settlement demonstrated Trump’s desire to set his personal feelings aside in order to work on issues facing the county, Petrocelli said.
“President-elect Trump has laser focus on moving forward. It’s time to move on,” Petrocelli told reporters on Friday.
Schneiderman and attorneys for the students praised the deal.
“Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university,” Schneiderman said in a statement.
At a court hearing on Friday, students’ attorney Jason Forge said that out of the $25 million proposed settlement, $4 million will be earmarked for students represented by Schneiderman who were not part of the California class actions, as well as administrative costs.
Class action lawyers for the students will not seek attorneys fees, but reimbursement for costs, he said.
Curiel, who is presiding over the two California cases, had urged both sides to settle. Trump said during his election campaign that Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents, could not be impartial because of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to control illegal immigration.
In court on Friday, Trump lawyer Petrocelli praised Curiel for his hard work on the case.
Curiel said he hoped the settlement could be part of a healing process after the U.S. election “that this country very sorely needs.”Metrics related to the general Session usage, such as number of open sessions, retrieved JDBC connections, etc.
Metrics related to the entities, collections, queries, and caches as a whole (aka global metrics).
Detailed metrics related to a particular entity, collection, query or cache region.
<property name="hibernate.generate_statistics" value="true"/>
Create the EntityManager to use. Register the Statistics Mbean we need. Initialize the Jolokia Server to expose JMX via JSON for Hawtio Does something with the entities.
The magic starts in step two which is in the registerHibernateMBeans(EntityManager manager) method. It get's hand on the PlatformMBeanServer, registers the relevant Hibernate JMX Mbean, set's the Session Factory in which we're interested in to it and enables the statistics. That is easy. Now you have a JMX MBean "Hibernate" with the attribute "statistics" registered. If you have access to the server via JConsole or Mission Control or VisualVM you can simply connect to the process and browse through the statistics:
Hibernate MBean in JConsole
In production environments this typically isn't possible at all. So you would need to find a way to access this via http/https. This is where I found it handy to try out Hawtio as a a modular web console for managing your Java stuff. Burned down to the basics it is a web-console with plugins. It has a ton of plugins and can be customized and extended to fit your needs. Today we're looking at a very simple plugin, the JMX plugin. It gives you a raw view of the underlying JMX metric data, allowing access to the entire JMX domain tree of MBeans. But in order to make this happen, we first need to find a way to expose the JMX features to Hawtio. This is where Jolokia comes in. There is a JVM agent in it who can expose JMX MBeans via JSON. All you have to do is to init and start the server like this:
JolokiaServerConfig config = new JolokiaServerConfig(new HashMap<String, String>()); JolokiaServer jolokiaServer = new JolokiaServer(config, true); jolokiaServer.start();
Hawtio Extension in Chrome
Browsing JMX MBeans with Hawtio
A huge part of enterprise Java deals with data. Among all the different ways of working with data in enterprise settings, there is still the proven and widely taught approach to use O/R mapping of any kind. The JPA standard makes this comparably easy to use for everybody and it should also be portable. But let's not talk about migration details. The biggest drawback of O/R mapping is, that a developer tend to lose contact with what's happening on the database or even to which exact SQL statements get issued against it. This is the number one reason that those projects run into performance issues. If you're there, you need to analyze the root causes and drill down to the problems. I recently found a nice feature of Hibernate which makes this comparably easy.Hibernate up to 4.2 ships with a statistics and metrics API that allows you to figure out a lot about what is happening under the covers. All available counters are described in the Statistics interface API, in three categories:For example, you can check the cache hit, miss, and put ratio of entities, collections and queries, and the average time a query needs. Be aware that the number of milliseconds is subject to approximation in Java. Hibernate is tied to the JVM precision and on some platforms this might only be accurate to 10 seconds.Simple getters are used to access the global metrics (i.e. not tied to a particular entity, collection, cache region, etc.). You can access the metrics of a particular entity, collection or cache region through its name, and through its HQL or SQL representation for queries. Please refer to the Statistics, EntityStatistics SecondLevelCacheStatistics, and QueryStatistics API Javadoc for more information.All you have to do is enable statistics for the session factory you're interested in and retrieve the statistics to analyze them. There are plenty of examples out there how to use this feature with Spring. The reason is pretty simple: Spring comes with a legendary MBeanExporter which exposes JMX MBeans as Java Objects. And guess what: Hibernate Statistics provides an easy way of exposing them through JMX. But there is no need to use Spring if you just put together some more RedHat magic :)You basically have two different ways of enabling the statistics in your configured setting. The easiest way is to add a property to your persistence-unit configuration:But it is also possible to enable them manually. More details on how to do that can be found on the community wiki and in the performance-monitoring section in the Hibernate documentation I created a little example standalone Hibernate application with two entities and a main class which is working with hibernate and initializing everything you need to know. Get your hands on it instantly by forking it on GitHub. Here is the little walk-through:There are the two mandatory entities (Department and Employee) and the META-INF/persistence.xml. This is the basic setting. There is not much magic in here. You can see where to enable the statistics (potentially) in the persistence.xml. The example enables them in the main class JpaTest. But let's start at the beginning. The main method performs the following steps in order:Now you're ready to try out the Hawtio console. Have a look at the quickstart to see what is possible. For this example I just use the Google Chrome Extension which you just have to download and drag into your extensions page in Chrome. This looks like:If you configure "localhost", "8778" and path "jolokia" you're all set to start browsing your results. After you click "connect" you can look through the dashboard or switch to the JMX view and navigate to the Hibernate MBean:There is a more comprehensive introduction to Hawtio by Stan Lewis from DevNation 2014 waiting for you to watch it:That was the short example. Go ahead and look at the GitHub source-code and feel free to look into Hawtio a bit more:The energy from cremation can be harnessed for use in public buildings or houses. But what are the moral questions?
Recycling the excess heat from cremation might not sound like the most obvious way to honour your loved ones, but for the environmentally aware, it could be a more efficient way to create energy.
Dr John Troyer, deputy director of Bath University's Centre for Death and Society (CDAS), is currently grappling with some of the moral issues – such as whether the process is respectful to the dead – surrounding the process, which is known as heat capture.
He has become a familiar presence at funeral services held at the city's Haycombe Crematorium. A sombre job, perhaps, yet crucial to his one-year research project, which is funded by the South West Regional Development Agency and European Regional Development Fund.
Haycombe was among the first crematoria in the country to install expensive equipment that prevents mercury emissions from the cremation process escaping into the atmosphere. Heat capture could, in time, be a possibility there, but it's sensitive territory and Troyer is at pains to tread carefully, steering clear, for instance, of canvassing the bereaved for their views. "My father was a funeral director," he says. "I'm very conscious of not being cavalier – projects can be torpedoed if you don't keep in mind exactly what you are dealing with."
Besides exploring moral questions around heat capture, he is also learning about developments in technology. As other crematoria install new equipment to comply with rules on reducing mercury emissions, some are making profitable use of excess heat that otherwise would be wasted.
But Troyer's work is concerned as much with the ethics of heat capture as with the process. "This research isn't about trying to design a system per se, but asking how you design for the future and create facilities that are used more efficiently – current crematoria designs are late 19th century," he says. "It's about the relationship between death, the body and technology."
The onus is on UK crematoria to halve mercury emissions, which come mainly from tooth fillings, by 2012 and eliminate them altogether by 2020. Many will need to install new equipment. Those that have already invested in heat-capture technology usually divert the excess heat to other crematorium buildings.
Some crematoria in Sweden and Denmark have gone further, selling surplus heat for use in houses. Many see this as entirely sensible, avoiding the need for crematoria to have expensive and energy-hungry cooling towers. But others wonder if it breaches an ethical code drawn up the International Cremation Federation, a body set up in 1937 to promote and provide information on cremation practice. This states that "the products or residue of a cremation shall not be used for any commercial purpose".
The issue is so sensitive that the Danish Council of Ethics, a group including scientists, clergy and philosophers that advises parliament, was summoned to give its opinion. After much deliberation, it found no ethical reason to oppose recycling heat despite the ICF code. Several crematoria now export energy to local companies.
The UK has a long way to go in comparison, although a new system at Redditch, Worcestershire, will pipe water to heat a swimming pool and save local council taxpayers around £14,500 a year. Councillors sought to forestall an outcry by consulting the public beforehand and 80% to 90% of responses were in favour, it says. Nevertheless, there were instances of what Troyer describes as "moral outrage". At the time, a spokesman for the public sector union Unison described the scheme as "sick and an insult to local residents".
Troyer believes such knee-jerk reactions are triggered by ignorance about what is involved. After cremation, water is used to cool gases in the crematorium chimney. Mercury is filtered out, and water heated by the cooling process then piped away. Surplus heat harnessed in this fashion is now being used in chapels and offices at Dukinfield, Cheshire, Warwickshire and Sandwell Valley, West Midlands.
"Most of it comes from the gas used to get the fire burning – a negligible amount from the bodies themselves," says Troyer. "But you are entering an area of public concern. There are questions that need to be sorted out and taken up with local and national authorities. You have to get policy-makers thinking about it. That isn't a simple thing to do."
For those UK crematoria that hold lots of daily services, the amount of excess heat generated could open up the possibility of selling energy to the National Grid.
The economic argument for heat capture would appear compelling in countries such as Japan, where over 95% of the dead are cremated (in Britain the figure is 72%). But Troyer thinks it unlikely every culture would take the same liberal view as Denmark over selling energy to a network. Here, the Federation of Cremation and Burial Authorities (FCBA) is quite relaxed about this use of technology. "There's been a fair bit of hype – talk of family members heating the swimming pool," says its secretary, Richard Powell. "But we don't see any ethical issues."
Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, supports "any innovative approach with environmental benefits". He says plans to install heat-capture equipment at a crematorium in Cardiff provoked no hostility after staff took to the streets and explained how it works.
Troyer says he is not trying to court controversy. Rather he is using Haycombe as a base to look more broadly at possible future designs, while studying all aspects of the ethical debate. "Some grieving families like the idea of their loved ones 'giving back something'," he says. "I see that becoming predominant, and this research as an opportunity to do something innovative and respectful to the funeral mourning process."No wonder Bernie Sanders is such a flaming advocate for DACA recipients: his former press secretary is one!
Erika Andiola has been arrested and is currently on a hunger strike. She may face deportation after holding a sit-in protest at the offices of Senator Church Schumer and Congressman Carlos Curbel0.
Dangerous reports that she was among seven “Dreamers” who were arrested for “unlawful entry” when they would not leave as the building closed for the night.
take our poll - story continues below Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story?
Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who?
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Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to Eagle Rising updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Trending: ACLU Prepping for MASSIVE Lawsuit in Case Trump Gets Elected The protesters are calling themselves the #Dream7, and are demanding a Clean DREAM Act be passed on December 22. They are refusing to comply with law enforcement in an attempt to prolong their time in jail. According to Jezebel, the Dreamers are prepared to remain in custody until Senator Schumer and Representative Curbelo “publicly confirm they have the votes to block any spending bill without a Clean DREAM Act.”
Andiola tweeted on Sunday, “If you’re reading this, I’m still in police custody after being arrested last night at @SenSchumer office demanding he prove claim to support Dreamers by organizing his caucus to block any spending deal w/out a clean #DreamAct. Will remain until he does. #OurDream #NoDreamNoDeal”
If you're reading this, I'm still in police custody after being arrested last night at @SenSchumer office demanding he prove claim to support Dreamers by organizing his caucus to block any spending deal w/out a clean #DreamAct. Will remain until he does. #OurDream #NoDreamNoDeal pic.twitter.com/BXkkXw6haI — Erika Andiola (@ErikaAndiola) December 16, 2017
Andiola’s boyfriend, Democratic political operative Kai Newkirk, used his girlfriend’s Twitter account to post an update on the situation. Newkirk believes the “DC Court Pre-Trial Services took initiative to contact ICE about Erika.”
“I spoke with Erika via phone from jail at 3:45a last night and confirmed to share this. Every day they are in police custody the danger of additional ICE engagement and then deportation grows,” Newkirk said, “as it grows for all undocumented youth with each day that goes by without passage of the Dream Act.”
“We have confirmed that Erika and the others are all on hunger strike and have been since they were arrested,” he continued, “They are committed to remaining in jail until Senator Chuck Schumer & Rep. Carlos Curbelo publicly confirm they have the votes to block any spending bill without a clean Dream Act.”
UPDATE: Erika & |
of The Big Bang Theory gang on the 24-episode 10th season, which airs Thursdays on CBS.
Meanwhile, Lloyd - soon to star in Syfy's 12 Monkeys - will next appear at FanExpo Vancouver this Friday through Sunday.
The I Am Not a Serial Killer star will soon walk down the aisle for the fifth time with much younger Sotheby's realtor and mother-of-one Lisa Loiacono (M) from Santa Barbara.
Greeting convention fans: Meanwhile, Lloyd - soon to star in Syfy's 12 Monkeys - will next appear at FanExpo Vancouver this Friday through SundayTry this for a thought experiment. Pretend Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t born in White Plains, New York. Pretend, instead, he was born in Smolensk, Russia. His Facebook is not headquartered in Menlo Park, Silicon Valley. Instead, its global nerve centre is in Moscow. And he isn’t a freckled, fresh-faced young man with a nice-looking family and a cute dog. This Zuckerberg likes hunting, poses with guns and owns a bull mastiff.
What do you think of this less cuddly Mark Zuckerberg? This Facebook? The company that in its last quarter earned $8.8bn and counts half of the world’s internet users – 1.86 billion people – as its customers. The company that harvests your data, owns your baby photos, controls your news feed and goes to ever further lengths to capture your attention. What do you make of this Zuckerberg – let’s call him Misha – and his 5,000-word letter to the world, published on Thursday?
Because last week, Mark Zuckerberg – the actual one – set out a new mission for the company he has created. “In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us,” he says. A global community that “prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards”.
A role that might be more accurately described as this: government. Because that’s what this letter is, a template for Facebook’s role in a new world order. A supranational power that exists above and beyond the nation state. A digital interface between you and everything else: your friends, the news, the world.
The actual Zuckerberg does not pose with guns and own a bull mastiff. He is a thoughtful, reflective man who, in the 13 years since he first created Facebook, has built an extraordinary company, in no small part because he has undergone his own transformation from gauche 19 year old to cool-headed CEO. A man who dreamed up a multi-billion-dollar company while still a teenager and yet – and this is an important point – is not an arrogant fool.
And one response to his letter is to think it’s inspiring, touching, even, that there’s a billionaire out there who wants to build an “infrastructure”, a word he uses 24 times, that “prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards”.
But here’s another response: where does that power end? Who holds it to account? What are the limits on it? Because the answer is there are none. Facebook’s power and dominance, its knowledge of every aspect of its users’ intimate lives, its ability to manipulate their – our – world view, its limitless ability to generate cash, is already beyond the reach of any government.
Because what Zuckerberg’s letter to the world shows is that he’s making a considered, personal attempt to answer… the wrong question. He is wrestling with the question of how Facebook can change the world. Whereas the question is: do we actually want Facebook to change the world? Do we want any corporation to have so much unchecked power?
What’s more, Facebook is not just any corporation. It is a surveillance machine. In 2012, researchers from Cambridge University showed that knowing just 10 “likes” a Facebook user had clicked gave you more information on someone than a colleague might know; 150 and you’d know more than their partner. With 300, you’d know more about them than they knew about themselves.
We haven’t even started to think about what that means. It’s only just starting to come to light how the Trump campaign and the Leave campaign may have used that information to microtarget swing voters with highly personalised messages via Facebook ads. Or what it will mean in the future.
“In recent campaigns – from India across Europe to the United States – we’ve seen the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook usually wins,” Zuckerberg writes. Is that a good thing? is a question he doesn’t ask, though Marine Le Pen with her 1.2 million Facebook followers may have an answer. And, here he is, cheerfully envisioning a world in which Facebook is the intermediary between people and their governments. “We can help establish direct dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders.”
But what Mark Zuckerberg wants to believe is true is very different from what is actually true. “History has had many moments like today,” he writes. “As we’ve made our great leaps from tribes to cities to nations... we learned how to come together to solve our challenges and accomplish greater things that we could alone.”
Which – note to Zuck – is not actually how history works. If the present moment shows us nothing else, it’s that we are not on a travelator of unending upward progress. Empires rise, empires fall. Civilisations perish. And good intentions don’t necessarily make for good outcomes. Just glance back at Zuckerberg’s last mission statement from 2012.
“We hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information,” he said. Well, mission accomplished. Facebook has rewired the way people spread and consume information. Congratulations. What next?
One answer: artificial intelligence. “The long term promise of AI,” he wrote in a paragraph that was subsequently deleted, is that “it may also identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all, including terrorists planning attacks using private channels, people bullying someone too afraid to report it themselves.”
Or to put it another way: a company with no oversight and accountability that uses an algorithm that it allows no one to see is developing an AI that will decide if you are or aren’t a terrorist. What could possibly go wrong? Zuckerberg’s letter is a big deal. And yet, in the current news cycle, you may well have missed it. He released it on Thursday, coincidentally the same day on which Donald Trump denounced the press as the enemy of the people. A press whose financial model has been undermined by Google and Facebook. Which, we all have to hope, finds another financial model – and fast.
Because good intentions are not enough. It is not enough that Mark Zuckerberg is not an arrogant fool. Facebook is a corporation doing what corporations do: making money, grabbing market share, maximising profit. Think of Russian Mark Zuckerberg _ Misha, as I think of him – plotting all this from his headquarters in a business park outside Moscow, a bull mastiff at his side, his relationship to Putin still to play out. Still want that? Da?If you’ve been thinking about trying out Surface for the first time, you may have been put off by the initial outlay that is involved. Well this obstacle has just disappeared! We’ve seen various deals on Surface devices over the months, but a current deal on eBay is hard to turn down. At the moment it is possible to pick up a 32GB first generation Surface for just $179.
What’s the catch? These are refurbished devices and there is a limited number available, but if you’re quick you could save yourself a massive 40 percent off the usual price of $299. This is a great deal, but all the better when you think about the fact that Surface cost $499 on the day of launch.
It’s not clear just how many units are available, but it is listed as “limited” and over 500 have been sold so far today. The $179 price tag buys you not just the Surface, but also a one year warranty. If you like the idea of a little extra security, $43.99 gets you a two year warranty.
Shipping is limited to the US, but this is a great deal that’s not to be missed. Let us know if you decide to take the plunge!
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Further reading: MicrosoftUS singer Taylor Swift performs during New Year’s Eve celebrations at the Times Square in New York on December 31, 2014 (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)
House Speaker John Boehner’s team took a page out of the Buzzfeed playbook to shake off one of President Obama’s new plans.
Twelve GIFs featuring pop star Taylor Swift were posted to the Republican leader’s official website Friday, challenging Obama’s proposal to make the first two years of community college free for all Americans.
“Free?! Is he using magic money? Nothing is free. So we did a little math,” the blog post reads.
Boehner workers Caleb Smith and Mike Ricci, who put together the collection of GIFs, cited a Bloomberg report saying that Obama’s plan would cost $60 billion over 10 years.
“Not even all the Taylor Swift album sales in the world would cover that bill,” the duo write.
They argue that the president knows there is no blank space in the taxpayers’ checkbook and that it would be irresponsible to increase taxes on millions of Americans or dump more debt on the young people this proposal is intended to help.
Then they offer their solution.
“Wait, wouldn’t it be better if we just worked together to lower costs for folks across the board and improve our children’s education?”
To do so, Boehner’s team suggests five key points for resetting the nation’s economic foundation: reform the tax code, solve the spending problem, reform the legal system, reform the regulatory system and improve the education system.
Obama announced the new plan in a video recorded aboard Air Force One on his way from Detroit to Phoenix on Jan. 8.
He said everyone understands that education is the key to success for our kids in the 21st century and that everyone should be able to train themselves for improved jobs, wages and benefits.
“Put simply, what I’d like to do is see the first two years of community college free for everyone who’s willing to work for it.”
Related video:Hatred in Jerusalem:
Two Palestinians narrowly escaped a lynching attempt in Jerusalem Tuesday evening after they were assaulted by dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The two Arabs were wounded, while a Jewish resident who protected them with his body was stabbed.
"Blood was boiling, and these crazy people almost killed me," the Jewish man told Ynet. The police are looking into the incident and searching for the attackers.
According to eyewitness testimonies, an angry mob stormed the backyard of a home located near a Jerusalem yeshiva. The family at the home was sitting shiva at the time after a relative died.
Jewish man 'nearly murdered' (Photo: Dudi Vaaknin)
"Suddenly, while we were sitting shiva because my father-in-law passed away, two Palestinians stormed into the house bleeding and bruised, following by an angry mob," the Jewish man, who asked that his name not be published, told Ynet. "Dozens of ultra-Orthodox from the nearby yeshiva entered the backyard and severely beat up the two Palestinians, while we, still shocked, were trying to break it up and protect the Palestinians."
'Murder the Jews who protect Arabs'
The man and his relatives stopped the mob with their bodies and pushed them out of their backyard, while keeping the two Arabs at home until the anger subsided.
"Two ultra-Orthodox guys from the yeshiva's balcony yelled: 'Murder the Jews who protect Arabs,'" the man said. "The two Arabs told us that they had a dispute with the Orthodox owner of a nearby store. After they argued, the masses arrived and started beating them up. We waited a few minutes for things to relax, and then my son and I took them out to a nearby alley, so they can go home."
However, a mob then again came out of the yeshiva and started chasing the two Palestinians.
"They caught them and beat them up terribly," the Jewish man said. "My son and I were quick to protect them with our bodies…then, two Orthodox men arrived and one told us: 'You're saving Arabs?' they pulled out knives. I managed to grab the arm of one of them, yet the second one cut my stomach."
The man said that at this point the mob began dispersing in panic. Large police forces were meanwhile called to the scene.
"It was a mad scuffle…crazy people who are calling themselves'religious' almost killed the two Palestinians and me. I was unwilling to see anyone being killed – I was educated against violence and to protect any person. Fortunately I'm a strong man, but had I been stabbed one centimeter higher or lower, this would have ended in murder."
'Instead of helping us, he helped them'
A student in a nearby yeshiva told Ynet: "We saw the incident and some of the people chanted against the Jewish guy, who instead of helping the Jews being beaten up helped the Arabs, and even beat up Jews…instead of helping us, he helped them."
"As far as we know, one of the Arabs had a dispute with the store owner and started beating up people," the yeshiva student said. "When people who arrived at the site stared fighting him, more Arabs joined in and assaulted Jews."
The rabbi also proceeded to harshly condemn the Jewish attackers.
"This is a very grave incident. No man must hurt innocents, either Arabs or Jews," he said. "This is against Jewish law. I really hope that they find those who took part in the brawl and bring the attackers to justice."
Efrat Weiss contributed to the storyUpdate: ‘Star Wars’ Standalone Character Movies Not So Official Yet, Just Early-Stage Ideas
This has been a week of Star Wars rumors as multiple stories have lit the ‘net on fire in relation to the standalone movies Disney plans to make apart from the numbered sequels.
It began with whispers of a possible standalone movie focusing on the popular character Yoda. Disney CEO Bob Iger then confirmed that they would be making standalone movies based on various Star Wars characters, with none being named specifically. Finally came word of potential movies following a both Boba Fett and a younger Han Solo.
Now Disney is taking a big step back and wants said ‘net to take a nice deep breath while they clarify a bit on what’s really going on.
So, just to quickly update you, all of this madness is not happening for a long, long time, to put it simply. Disney is exploring standalone movies to release along with the numbered movies, as we’ve known all along, but whether a movie about Yoda is on the way is not known by anyone. The status right now is that they’re in the early stages of brainstorming some ideas and seeing what they like. That’s it. Nothing more. The primary focus is and has been Star Wars Episode VII, which is being written by Michael Arndt and directed by J.J. Abrams.
A source told Deadline:
“Nobody knows when these movies are even coming out. Right now, people are just kicking around ideas. Which is why you hear it’s Yoda one day and a young Han Solo another. It’s all in early development right now.”
At least this is what they’re now telling us. It’s also likely a way for them to toss the ol’ bait and hook out to see if we the fishies are interested in and nibbling on these ideas, or if we turn into monstrous, ultra-violent fishies mutated by Ninja Turtle ooze.
As we at Geeks of Doom have warned you, this is the way of things when dealing with a juggernaut like Star Wars. There’s going to be rumors, always. We’ve heard plenty, and many more will follow. Some will end up evolving into a reality, and most will dissipate into an infinite abyss of lost rumors.
Tune in tomorrow for the next big rumor!Some 200 people gathered Sunday evening in front of Defense Minister Ehud Barak's residence in Tel Aviv, to protest against an Israeli strike in Iran.
The demonstrators called out: "No to war" and "No to a strike in Iran."
Participants included left wing politicians and activists MK Dov Khenin ( Hadash ), Eldad Yaniv and director Doron Tsabari, as well as many others.
Related stories:
'No to Iran strike' (Photo: Moti Kimhi)
A man carrying a picture of Barak wearing Nazi uniform was forced to lower the sign and asked to leave by the other protesters. "We will not have swastikas here," the demonstrators exclaimed.
The man was later arrested by the police and interrogated on suspicion of incitement.
'We will not have swastikas here.' (Photo: Moti Kimhi)
Tsabari, who is among the protest organizers, said he was "shocked" after reading all the Friday newspapers. "What I read was that a decision to go to war has been made against the position of the entire security echelon. We are approaching an abyss. This will be a crazed war. I can't predict the future and I don't know whether (Prime Minister) Netanyahu plans to attack or not, but if he says he is going to war I believe him. That's why I am here, because I'm concerned."
Protester Shachar Cotani added: "It doesn’t matter if the threat is serious or not, it is an existential threat for all of us. It may mean the dismantling of democracy. It's important to come and protest against it."
Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and TwitterFERAL pigs could have met their match with a new “sleeping pill” heading their way.
The toxin, Hog-Gone, is being hailed as a breakthrough in defeating the pest in a humane way, essentially putting the wild animal “to sleep”.
“There is no evidence of struggling or pain at all,” Animal Control Technologies’ Linton Staples said.
“There’s no collateral damage to other species, and no impacts to the environment... we’re quite excited about this being a major breakthrough.”
The toxin has been seven years in the making, with Prof Staples now finalising an application to the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority for the toxin’s use in Australia.
Currently there are few methods for controlling feral pigs — whose numbers in Australia can reach 25 million, depending on the season — beyond trapping and shooting, or using 1080 poison.
But Prof Staples said that given the pigs’ size, 1080 was not ideal because large amounts were needed for it to work.
Hog-Gone, in contrast, uses sodium nitrite, a food preservative that wild pigs can’t tolerate, and generally avoid.
Researchers have found a way to hide the sodium nitrite in a palatable bait which, once eaten, stops oxygen circulating in the bloodstream, similar to carbon monoxide poisoning. “The pigs don’t know anything about it,” Prof Staples said.
“It’s painless — they’re dead within an hour and there is no residue in the carcass,” he said.
In-pen trials show a success rate greater than 90 per cent, while in-field it’s about 80 per cent.
Feral pigs are a growing problem across Australia, their damage costing agriculture at least $100 million a year.
With no natural predators, the pigs can rampage unchecked, predating on young livestock, damaging fencing and destroying hectares of land in a night.
But the biggest threat is their potential to carry and spread a swath of diseases to livestock, particularly should their ever be an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.
Prof Staples said the toxin’s development was a “good example of teamwork”, with up to 40 people from different agencies and different countries working on the research.With 492 votes, the winner is "Twin Solar Spacecraft Take First Complete Image of Far Side of Sun" referring to an image captured by NASA's two Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. The STEREO satellites are currently in orbit around the sun and separated such that each has a view of the opposite sides of our closest star. Together the two observatories captured the first simultaneous images of the entire sun in June of 2011.
The STEREO spacecraft reached opposition (180° separation) on February 6 but part of the sun was inaccessible to their combined view until June 1. This image represents the first day when the entire far side could be seen.
The image is aligned so that solar north is directly up. The seam between the two images is inclined because the plane of Earth's -- and STEREO's -- orbit, known as the "ecliptic", is inclined with respect to the sun's axis of rotation. The data was collected by STEREO's Extreme Ultraviolet Imagers in the SECCHI instrument suites.
STEREO was built and is operated for NASA by the Applied Physical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University; the spacecraft were launched on October 25, 2006 aboard a Delta II. The SECCHI instrument suite is a collaboration led by the Naval Research Laboratory, and the EUVI instruments were built by the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory.
Source: NASAThe refrain is the same after every natural disaster: market conditions have changed dramatically, and evil, possibly sub-human "price gougers" are taking advantage of storm victims in their time of need. Politicians threaten those who raise prices after storms with vigorous prosecution. The general public howls with outrage. A lot of people think laws against "price gouging" are necessary to keep people from being exploited after natural disasters. Sadly, these people are wrong. I got to make these points on Thursday's episode of Stossel.
Laws against price gouging create shortages. In the aftermath of a disaster like Hurricane Sandy, people want a lot more gasoline, flashlights, bread, and water at any given price. For sellers, costs have risen. It may come as a surprise to some commentators, but gas station owners and other sellers of disaster relief supplies probably have their own shattered lives to attend to. A high price offers them an inducement to go into the market and provide disaster relief supplies instead of closing up shop. Higher prices are also like signal flares that attract entry from suppliers outside the affected market.
Higher prices also transmit valuable information to consumers who aren't affected by the disaster. Birmingham, Alabama (where I live) wasn't directly affected by the storm, but if prices were allowed to fluctuate freely, I would see gas prices in Birmingham rise. Why? Higher prices in New Jersey would attract gas supplies to New Jersey, and the higher price in Birmingham would tell me I need to consume gas more carefully than I normally would.
Laws against price gouging change how people pay, but they don't really change what people pay (here's an excellent explanation from Mike Munger). To say that price gouging laws "keep prices low" is misleading. Price gouging laws keep money prices low, but there are lots of other ways to pay for gas. Indeed, you've probably seen stories about people paying for gas through non-monetary means: they "pay" by waiting in line. Here's an example that's similar to Munger's: if the price of gas would be $14 per gallon after a disaster but is controlled at $4 per gallon by government fiat, someone who values his or her time at $10 per hour would be willing to wait in line for an hour to get a gallon of gas. What he or she pays doesn't really change. How he or she pays does change.
As textbook authors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok point out, this is pure social waste. When people can pay with money, both buyers and sellers benefit. When people pay by waiting in line, a very valuable resource--the time and energy of those who are waiting in hours-long lines--is simply wasted.
One of the most basic lessons in an introductory economics course is that price ceilings create shortages. Storms can break windows, but they can't break economic laws. Politicians ignore this not to their peril but to ours. Political leaders see themselves as the compassionate friends of helpless storm victims, but the victims are positively harmed by policies like laws against price gouging that create shortages and delay recovery. People suffer during and after natural disasters, and politicians' meddling only makes it worse. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Inspired by this entry by fellow Forbes contributor Panos Mourdoukatas.The results do not, however, run contrary to existing theories on life's journey from anaerobic to aerobic organisms. The results quantify the nature of gas molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur in the earliest atmosphere, but they shed no light on the much later rise of free oxygen in the air. There was still a significant amount of time for oxygen to build up in the atmosphere through biologic mechanisms.
Several factors need to coincide in order for nucleotides or amino acids to form from purely naturalistic circumstances (chance and chemistry). The specific conditions required already made purely naturalist origin-of-life scenarios highly unlikely. Drastically reducing the amount of time available, adding that to the other conditions needing to be fulfilled, makes the RNA world hypothesis or a Miller-Urey-like synthesis of amino acids simply impossible.
Over at the always unintentionally hilariousblog (which, contrary to its name, is a site for Intelligent Design creationism) there's an article about some new research which has supposedly undermined naturalistic explanations for the origin of life – aka abiogenesis.Oh, but don't get too excited – the IDer's still haven't done any original research. They're reporting on a study published in the journalwhich suggests that as soon as 500 million years after its formation, Earth's atmosphere may have had abundant oxygen. Here's where the conundrum supposedly arises: scientists (real ones, not IDers) have long though that an anaerobic environment – that is, a low-oxygen or "reduced" atmosphere – would be best for the formation of the amino acids that would eventually form RNA. This new research, according to IDers anyway, suggests that the time was far too short for RNA to have formed by "chance".Well, not according to one of the authors of the study. In an article that is ironically linked to and even quoted in the article on, the authors clarify:Huh. I guess the ID guys didn't read the whole article. Of course, that hasn't stopped the them from saying that the study is a problem for "naturalistic" explanations for the origin of life... ergoThere are several reasons why thearticle deserves a major facepalm. Firstly, it's only one study, and there shouldn't be too many hasty assumptions based on it. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be researched by lots of people over a long period of time, with results confirmed and replicated by independent researchers. And the study doesn't even do what the IDer's say it does, at least according to the actual researchers who conducted the study.But the biggest facepalm is in the glaringat work here. Intelligent Design is supposed to be a bona fide scientific theory. If that's the case, then these'scientists' ought to know that your theory doesn't become magically confirmed by default just because another theory has to be reformulated or discarded. It's painfully obvious that the 'theory' of Intelligent Design really just relies on purported failures of natural sciences, so that God – or wait, I'm sorry; an "intelligent designer" – can be plugged into the gaps. After all, isn't it telling that a blog supposedly devoted to the theory of Intelligent Design is called "Evolution News and Views"?Well, sorry IDer's, that's not how actual science works. If you're going to demonstrate, you have to present falsifiable evidence of the specific actions of a supernatural being – y'know, theof. What mechanisms are at work? What falsifiable predictions can be made? "A miracle happened!" is not science.Your pet theory has to stand wholly on its own ground, not just in the shadows of natural sciences. Real science has a tremendous track record of filling in those 'gaps', so placing God in them just ensures that divine explanations will become even more irrelevant than they already are.I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not that I keep choosing debut albums to review honestly. As I mentioned in my previous review, I love a great debut album, but it’s rare to see a debut that is hailed as the greatest thing an artist has done/will do. Lorde is a rare case. “Well, does Lorde happen to disappoint with her debut?” You may ask. I’m gonna have give that a strong “no”.
(Note: above is the cover for the Japanese edition of the album. I wanted to put it here because Lorde is very pretty)
Pure Heroine is one of the most impressive debut albums of all time. I am extremely convinced that a debut of this caliber only happens every so often, especially in modern pop music. New Zealand native Lorde (who’s real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor), at the ripe age of 16, manages to nail every single element that goes into a successful debut, and then some. The young Ella sounds years older on the album than she actually is, this is definitely a positive seeing as most of the subject matter handled on the album can be considered fairly mature. This is one of those albums that the public hears and immediately asks, “where can this sound be taken?”. That is an hugely difficult question to answer. I think whatever musical road Ella chooses will be the right choice for her voice and for her music; she’s a smart girl and I have nothing but faith that she will choose to progress her sound in a way that is beneficial to her and her fans. As it stands right now there is heavy speculation that points to a Pure Heroine follow-up being released sometime this year.
Pure Heroine, throughout the three years its been on shelves, has proven itself to have immense staying power. Years before I was a Lorde fan, she was a household name. Believe it or not, the music industry doesn’t just hand out heaps of attention to artists who don’t deserve it. Lorde’s debut album is a unique experience. The stripped down soundscapes created throughout the album’s 37 minute run-time (56 with the bonus tracks, I will touch briefly on the album’s length shortly) are the perfect match for Ella’s smoky vocal presence. On tracks like 400 Lux and Still Sane, there’s some interesting contrasts created by her voice and the instrumentals. These back drops of dreamlike instrumentals and beats are both intensified and lessened by Ella’s ethereal vocals. She has certain qualities, like the somewhat coarse texture of her voice and her unique pronunciation of words, that really give Pure Heroine this exotic, unusual flavor. Again, her vocal presence is intense and lends heaps to album’s energy.
Ella’s vocal performance carries the record. Her vocals progress throughout the release, but the base traits stay the same. The base traits of Ella’s voice are such things like her unwillingness to leave the mid-range of her voice. She doesn’t sound monotone (in fact, quite the opposite), though she never attempts any vocal gymnastics she’s not comfortable with. The texture, and accent, of her voice also largely stays the same. Now, she does go from smoky cool on tracks like Tennis Court to having a cocky arrogance on songs here like Glory and Gore; she changes up her attitude and her approach to delivering the lyrics, but never will I mistake the voice behind the songs as being none other than Lorde. I like that aspect. Her voice has room to grow throughout the entire album (which she does utilize that space effectively) but her vocals are so strong and captivating to begin with that she doesn’t feel the need to experiment heavily with styles in her voice. I appreciate the fact that she takes control of her vocals and remains the dominant force on the album.
The run-time of the album and also the pacing is something I want to touch briefly on. The pacing of any album can be a deciding factor on how the whole listening experience plays out. Pure Heroine, to no surprise, is paced beautifully. The album is 37 minutes, and feels like just that, a 37 minute album. Not a minute shorter or longer. It hits the sweet spot of not flying by all too quickly and also never dragging itself down. The pacing wouldn’t flow as well as it does without competent songwriting. Ella, and her producer Joel Little, wrote and composed all of the tracks on the extended edition of the album save for the cover of Swingin Party by The Replacements (which, the extended edition adds 6 songs to the standard edition’s 10). Ella’s talents lie in her rich voice, but also in her songwriting abilities. Each track here flows wonderfully into one another and creates a magically cohesive sound. One of my favorite transitions on the entire album is from confessional White Teeth Teens to the anthem A World Alone. You go from the brilliantly composed lyrics of White Teeth Teens:
“I won’t be smiling but the notes from my admirers
Fill my dashboard just the same, ah-ahah!”
To the melodic demands laid forth in A World Alone, it’s wonderful:
“Raise a glass cause I’m not done saying it!
They all wanna get rough, get away with it.
Let them talk cause we’re dancing in this world alone.”
On the subject of the songwriting, Pure Heroine can flex a dense atmosphere that most artists only dream about having on their debut. This rich atmosphere can partly be attributed to the memorably somber songwriting. Many components of Lorde’s sound come together at all the right times that create the thick atmosphere heard on Pure Heroine. The easiest one to observe is of course Ella’s gloomy voice combined with the bare bones beats of the album. I’ve touched on it quite a bit throughout this review, but having Ella’s defiantly characteristic voice against these deep, bassy sonic landscapes is simply electric. There’s an unadulterated energy that’s emitted from that meeting of the album’s two driving forces. I’d even go as far to say that is what makes this album, hearing Ella’s vocals over those beats creates quite a unique concoction. I don’t want to call the atmosphere heard on Pure Heroine downtrodden, maybe dark would work a little bit better. The atmosphere has a unique sort of antisocial/outcast vibe to it that really helps to deliver a touch more authenticity to some of Lorde’s deeper tracks here (see: A World Alone and Ribs).
I believe there are two main elements that equally construct good songwriting: recognizable lyrics and competent instrumentals. Here and there, there are odd cases where that is not always true, but that idea has held for close to all of the albums I’ve listened to. The lyrics on Pure Heroine are unparalleled for a debut album. My favorite here may as well be the line from White Teeth Teens that I showcased above, but there are plenty of others that are simply genius. Even the bonus tracks from the extended version of the album add quite a few outstanding moments to Pure Heroine’s already eventful lineup of songs. I’ve always loved this line from Bravado (a song originally from her Love Club EP back in 2012) where at first she compares finding her bravado to a quick process, but then she redacts the statement and says it’s something that happens more naturally. She comes to contradict herself again in the song too, it’s an extremely interesting listen:
“It’s a switch flipped,
It’s a pill tipped back, it’s a moon eclipsed the world,
And I can tell you that when the lights come on I’ll be ready for this.
It’s in your bloodstream,
A collision of atoms that happens before your eyes.
It’s a marathon run or a mountain you scale without thinking of size.
The subject matter of Pure Heroine is surprising mature and thought out given a lot of things. Ella must be extremely smart to want to have written about these topics at such a young age (atleast, smarter than I); a lot of the songs here like Tennis Court and Royals deal with class differences and have this underlying theme of aristocracy. In fact, Lorde’s name was inspired by her overwhelming interest in class structure and hierarchy. Other songs here like Team and Still Sane deal with these subjects too, but not to the extent that they’re covered in the opening track, Tennis Court, and Royals. Teeth surprising serve as another reoccurring lyrical topic. The most obvious examples are in White Teeth Teens and No Better. In White Teeth Teens, she equates having pure white teeth to being of nobler birth and of a higher class; while in No Better, she states having all of your front teeth is simply bliss. The one overarching theme in all of Pure Heroine is growing up in a modern, digital world, where things aren’t always as they seem. This is expressed best in Ribs when she states:
“This dream isn’t feeling sweet.
We’re reeling through the midnight streets,
And I’ve never felt more alone,
It feels so scary getting old.”
All of the bonus tracks here are extremely good listens, but my favorites have to be No Better and Million Dollars Bills (Million Dollar Bills is actually my favorite Lorde song); all of the bonus tracks also happen to have loads of great lyrics too. I’ve already looked at Bravado, but I want to take a look at Love Club (another song originally from the Love Club EP. To my knowledge, No Better and Swingin Party were the only two recorded simply for the extended edition). Love Club features pillow like beats and trance inducing backing vocals. Lorde finds a unique flow throughout the song. Her voice dances and skips above the beats at a rapid pace until it finds the chorus. The timing of her voice in the chorus is more laid back than it was in the first verse, but there’s something a little off about the timing. Her voice syncopates extremely well with the beats in the song. It also features some of my favorite Lorde lyrics:
“There’s something about hanging out with the wicked kids.
Take the pill make it too real,
The other day I forgot my old address.
I’m sitting pretty on the throne
There’s nothing more I want
Except to be alone.”
I wish I could go through the entire album and show you all my favorite lyrics from each track, but I’d end up spending way too much time on each song, making this review way longer than it needs to be. Hands down, Pure Heroine has the best lyrics I’ve ever seen for a debut album. I can say this, if you liked the lyrics above, then check out Glory and Gore, Team, 400 Lux, and her breakthrough single, Royals (which is a phenomenal song). If and when Lorde releases the follow-up to Pure Heroine (it is inevitable), she is going to be faced with the monumental task of living up to this album’s glory. Ella gives off this vibe the entire album that she’s been writing and recording songs like this for decades, even though she was only 16 when this album was produced. Not only is she gifted with a unique voice, but she also comes off as just smart enough |
50% 19. Mike Evans 2/5 40% 20. Calvin Johnson 3/8 38% 21. Jordy Nelson 3/8 38% 22. Julian Edelman 3/10 30% Analytical Analysis through NFL.com
Only receivers with at least four qualifying snaps against Rhodes were included on this chart.
Weekly Breakdown
Rhodes' success rate for the season was unimpressive. He finished the season with a 62.7 percent rating.
For most of the year, Rhodes simply lined up at right cornerback and covered whoever came his way. He lined up at right cornerback on 176 of his 181 qualifying snaps over the first 13 games of the year, only moving into the slot on rare occasions.
After Week 13, he followed specific receivers around the field most of the time: Calvin Johnson, Mike Wallace and Alshon Jeffery. His success rate over these games dropped to 56.4 percent, after standing at 64.1 percent up until that point of the season.
Opponent Qualifying Snaps In Position Failed Coverages St. Louis Rams 7 5 2 New England Patriots 16 7 9 New Orleans Saints 13 11 2 Atlanta Falcons 14 9 5 Green Bay Packers 15 9 6 Detroit Lions 10 6 4 Buffalo Bills 21 11 10 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 14 8 6 Washington 12 9 3 Chicago Bears 11 8 3 Green Bay Packers 11 7 4 Carolina Panthers 17 12 5 New York Jets 20 14 6 Detroit Lions 9 4 5 Miami Dolphins 16 9 7 Chicago Bears 14 9 5 Total: 220 138 82 Analytical Analysis through NFL.com
Compared to other cornerbacks across the league, Rhodes struggled in coverage. Other young cornerbacks in the NFL were significantly more effective. Desmond Trufant finished the 2014 season with a 76.6 percent success rate. Stephon Gilmore finished with a 80.6 percent success rate, and Jimmy Smith had a 76.8 percent success rate.
Young cornerbacks typically struggle in the NFL. Some of them are simply poor players, but others take time to adjust to the complexity and athleticism of the professional level.
What the Vikings must wonder with Rhodes is if he has showcased enough of his talent to suggest that he is simply still adjusting to the NFL or if this is the type of player he is. To get a better understanding of that, you must look past his success rate and analyze his tape.
The Tape
At 6'1", it's no surprise that Rhodes plays a lot of press coverage.
Like with any cornerback playing press coverage, being effective at the line of scrimmage is crucial for success. This was one of the most notable issues with Rhodes' ability to cover his assignments in man coverage.
Too often receivers were able to threaten in breaking routes at the snap, such as slants or seam routes to create huge separation down the sideline. Rhodes' heavy feet and inability to keep his hips and shoulders square to the receiver threw him off balance on a regular basis.
Credit: NFL.com
On this play against the New England Patriots, Rhodes is on top of Julian Edelman at the line of scrimmage. Edelman runs directly into his inside shoulder at the snap. Rhodes attempts to put his hands on Edelman at this point, but he lets his weight draw him forward more than he should.
Edelman uses this mistake from Rhodes to knock him further infield as he turns back toward the sideline outside.
From there, Edelman stumbles to give Rhodes a chance to recover. Rhodes had drifted so far infield that he couldn't recover immediately, but he could use his athleticism to catch up to Edelman further down the sideline.
If Tom Brady had thrown the ball ahead of Edelman further downfield, Rhodes may have had a chance to recover. Instead, the quarterback threw a back-shoulder throw that Rhodes couldn't see, allowing Edelman to make the reception and continue downfield for a big play.
Credit: NFL.com
On this play against the Carolina Panthers, Rhodes is lined up against undrafted receiver Corey Brown. Brown is on the line of scrimmage, but Rhodes allows for a pocket of space between the two by not lining up as close as possible.
Rhodes drops back at the snap with Brown as he releases slightly toward the outside.
As Brown enters his route, Rhodes is turning his shoulders to usher him toward the sideline. Brown makes one sharp movement toward Rhodes, which causes the cornerback to drop his backside and stop his feet. As soon as Rhodes does that, Brown accelerates toward the space down the sideline.
For a couple of yards, it appeared that Rhodes was going to be able to recover and run with the receiver. However, the receiver quickly began to pull away from the cornerback after that initial acceleration. Pressure upfront forced Cam Newton to scramble, saving Rhodes' blushes.
Credit: NFL.com
On this play against the Green Bay Packers, Rhodes begins the play on the line of scrimmage, but Jordy Nelson creates a pocket of space by lining up further behind the line of scrimmage. Nelson releases inside, angled past Rhodes' inside shoulder, before immediately breaking back outside.
Rhodes was so aggressive in trying to cover Nelson inside that the receiver was able to use his outside hand to punch the defensive backs upper arm/shoulder to push him further infield.
Nelson was able to run wide-open down the left sideline for what would have been an easy, long touchdown reception. Aaron Rodgers was late to recognize that Nelson was open, and when he did throw the ball, he underthrew it, giving Rhodes a chance to recover.
The ball still arrived in a spot for Nelson to catch it, but the receiver had to stop and deal with Rhodes' presence. He ultimately dropped the ball.
Rhodes clearly wants to be an aggressive cornerback. He gave up the sideline on a number of occasions trying to overplay in-breaking routes, but he also did the opposite on occasion. This play occurred against the Buffalo Bills' Sammy Watkins.
Credit: NFL.com
It's important to note that Rhodes is going to attempt to trail Watkins, overplaying underneath routes with a safety over the top, by design. Watkins lines up tight to the formation instead of wide outside the numbers, and Rhodes shades to his outside at the beginning of the play.
To release up the seam, Watkins makes one hard step outside. Rhodes immediately bites on it and jumps forward.
Credit: NFL.com
Watkins is running a deep out route. He comes wide-open because Rhodes was too far away from him after initially biting on the false step in his release. Kyle Orton's pass was too far inside of Watkins, though, meaning the receiver couldn't make take advantage of his successful route.
This image perfectly highlights the difference between Rhodes' coverage and what Rhodes' coverage should have been. The other cornerback to the top of the screen is much tighter to his assignment than Rhodes is.
A lack of initial discipline is something that permeates through everything Rhodes does in coverage. When responsible for zones, Rhodes is often late passing off the first receiver he sees if two run through his zone. This also becomes an issue when the offense throws off of play action.
One of the other most notable aspects of Rhodes' season was how teams went after him at decisive moments.
Credit: NFL.com
This play comes from the Vikings' game against Washington. There is just 01:09 left in the fourth quarter, with the Vikings leading by three points, 29-26. It's 4th-and-6 close to midfield. Rhodes is lined up against Pierre Garcon to the top of the screen.
As soon as the ball is snapped, the defense rotates into Cover 2 man, meaning Rhodes is in aggressive man coverage against Garcon.
Credit: NFL.com
With the safety help in place over the top, Rhodes smartly shows Garcon the sideline. His shoulders are square to the line of scrimmage by the time Garcon advances downfield to reach him. Garcon doesn't want to run where Rhodes is showing him, though.
Instead, Garcon wants to run an in-breaking route—a route that would go right through Rhodes coverage, giving Rhodes a chance to hold his position and redirect/turn with the receiver.
Credit: NFL.com
Despite his favorable positioning, Rhodes bounces off Garcon as he advances in his route. He doesn't show off the footwork to swivel and run with the receiver, and he did not show off the strength to hold his position and force the receiver to work around him rather than through him.
Garcon was wide-open over the middle of the field with space to run into. He would have had a first down with an accurate pass, but Robert Griffin III threw the ball into the ground.
This lack of strength showed up repeatedly through the 2014 season for Rhodes. It's a major concern because if he is going to become one of the better cornerbacks in the NFL, he will likely need to do it primarily as a boundary cornerback. He doesn't have the feet to be more versatile than that.
Other young cornerbacks such as Jimmy Smith and Stephon Gilmore, as well as veterans such as Brandon Browner and Antonio Cromartie, show off the strength to lean on receivers and hold their established positions. When working near the sideline, those become very valuable traits.
Without them, it's hard to be effective as a slow-footed cornerback in the NFL.
That missed pass allowed the Vikings to take over possession against Washington and ultimately win the game. Similar fortune didn't shine on the defensive back against the Miami Dolphins later in the season, though.
On that occasion, Rhodes was playing off coverage against Mike Wallace on 3rd-and-long deep in Vikings territory. The Vikings had a seven-point lead with roughly one minute left in the game. That lead disappeared soon after Rhodes was called for pass interference in his own end zone.
The disappointing part of that play was how Rhodes approached Wallace. He turned into the receiver, extending his arms toward him and aligning his shoulders to him, even though he was looking up for the ball.
Rhodes doesn't need to approach receivers in this way because he has impressive length and athleticism to adjust to the ball in the air.
Credit: NFL.com
The NFL officially assigned 18 pass deflections to Rhodes for last season. That is a large number, but it doesn't account for the disruption he was able to cause with his length when he didn't touch the ball. On this play, Rhodes was beaten down the sideline by Devin Hester.
Hester caught the ball with both hands extended away from his body. Rhodes wasn't able to get to the ball, but he hit Hester's wrists, and that caused the ball to come loose.
Credit: NFL.com
These traits don't just stand out against lesser receivers either. From that same game, Rhodes was able to show off his athleticism and length against one of the most athletic receivers in the NFL, Julio Jones. It's these kinds of plays that excite analysts and fans alike.
If Rhodes can figure out his feet and show better strength against receivers through their routes, he could become one of the best boundary cornerbacks in the NFL.
However, flashing talent every so often isn't what makes players great at this level. It's especially not very valuable when you play a position that builds success on the idea of not giving up yards and touchdowns. As he is right now, Rhodes is still a solid starter in the right situation.
With Zimmer and the Vikings' defensive front, the right situation appears to be in Minnesota.
Conclusion
Rhodes is an average starter with the potential to become much more.
Average is a term that has become a negative over recent years. Because of the widespread league coverage and the extreme opinions that sell ad spaces, calling any player average is received as a slight. Yet, being an average starter in the NFL at any position is a great achievement.
Being average means that you are better than half of the players starting at the position across all 32 rosters. An average starter is a valuable player. Rhodes is a valuable player. He is entering a crucial stage of his career as the next two or three years are going to determine just how valuable he can ultimately be.
There is still work to do.The Galaxy has reached a broadcast agreement to jump from Fox Sports West to Time Warner Cable's fledgling regional sports channels — one in English, one in Spanish — beginning in 2012.
The 10-year deal is valued at $55 million for an undetermined number of games, an official close to the talks confirmed. Time Warner Cable, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment Tuesday as did the Galaxy.
The value of the regional contract, $5.1 million per season, dwarfs the three-year $30-million national deal between Major League Soccer and NBC and will provide a welcome financial boost for the Galaxy. The team has said it will lose money this season despite advancing to Sunday's championship game with the league's best record.
Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, the entertainment group that owns the Galaxy and hockey's Kings, hinted last week that a lucrative TV deal was coming and credited that to midfielder David Beckham, who might be making his last appearance for the Galaxy on Sunday.CLOSE SportsPulse: USA TODAY's NFL insider Jarrett Bell explains why no one should be surprised by Michael Bennett's encounter with police, and that should embolden players and the league to take a stand. USA TODAY Sports
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots owner Robert Kraft will meet Thursday night at the Pats-Chiefs opener. (Photo11: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Welcome back, Roger.
Well, sort of.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will make his first appearance at Gillette Stadium for a meaningful game since the Deflategate saga commenced in 2015, when the new season kicks off with another Super Bowl celebration for the New England Patriots before their opener against the Kansas City Chiefs.
The guess here is that the sight of Goodell will spark jeers from rabid Patriots fans, reflecting the bad blood sparked after the NFL spanked the team – and star quarterback Tom Brady – for allegedly deflating footballs.
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Yet Patriots owner Robert Kraft -- who pledged before Super Bowl LI in February that he would formally invite Goodell to the opener if the Patriots won another crown -- sounds like a gracious host.
“He has the right to come to any game he wants,” Kraft told USA TODAY Sports. “I hope he enjoys the game as much as I plan to enjoy the game.”
While it’s traditional for the commissioner to attend the showcase kickoff game, Goodell skipped New England’s opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2015. That went over with Patriots fans like a serious snub – a week after Brady received a legal stay of the four-game suspension that he ultimately served last year after a nasty legal battle with the NFL.
Now Goodell will be on hand to witness the pregame celebration that will mark New England’s fifth Super Bowl crown with coach Bill Belichick and Brady.
Bad blood?
When Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski was asked this week for his reaction to Goodell’s impending presence at the game, he offered a succinct response: “Ask Tom.”
Except for a preseason game last month, Goodell hasn’t attended a contest at Gillette Stadium since the AFC title game between the Patriots and Indianapolis Colts that marked the start of the Deflategate saga.
Although Kraft publicly blasted the NFL on numerous occasions for its handling of the case – which included $1 million in fines and the loss of a first-round pick in addition to Brady’s suspension – the team owner insists that his relationship with Goodell is now “solid."
Before Deflategate, Kraft was arguably Goodell’s most supportive team owner and a trusted resource to tap on a variety of league issues. In getting beyond Deflategate, Kraft contends that he has been able to “compartmentalize” when considering the league matters that he addresses with Goodell.
“We have a professional relationship,” Kraft said Wednesday, before speaking at a community-service event at Gillette Stadium. “I think it’s very solid. We’ve worked together with the broadcast committee for 15 years, which generates 60% of league revenues.”
Speaking of broadcasting, Kraft, chairman of the NFL’s broadcast committee, expects that the NFL’s TV ratings will rebound this year after taking a dip in 2016. Overall, ratings for NFL games were down 8% last season from the previous year.
“It wasn’t just the Trump factor,” Kraft said. “We came back with a 2% increase after the election. You know what the other difference was last year? The fantasy players. They spent a lot of money, Draft Kings and Fan Duel. Their business was huge. I bet our ratings will be rising.”
The daily fantasy game sites, huge advertisers in 2015, sat out last season amid regulatory and other assorted legal battles. Those companies will re-launch their popular games this season.
(Kraft, incidentally, personally invests in the fantasy gaming industry).
I’m wondering, though, whether various forms of off-the-field drama attached to the NFL – including the national anthem protests that began with now-unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick, on the heels of Deflategate – have factored into sagging ratings.
Kraft: “I’m concerned that we get our messaging out better. Guys in our locker room, those are some of the most outstanding young men. It’s just sad to me that we don’t talk about all the wonderful things that they are doing.”
Kraft refused to address deeper issues, including social matters behind the protests and his relationship with President Donald Trump, who was given a Super Bowl ring.
“It’s something I’d talk to you about in more detail at another time,” he maintained.
No, at the moment, his big message revolves around another Super Bowl celebration and with Goodell as a witness, trying to top the last one.
As Kraft put it, “That’s high-class problems.”EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Before the Los Angeles Kings had goaltenders falling out of their pockets, captain Dustin Brown remembers the dark days.
From 2006-08, Los Angeles started 11 goalies, from the four-game Yutaka Fukufuji era to veteran Sean Burke. Not to disparage those players, but Brown recalls the instability before Jonathan Quick arrived.
"I think I've always said that was our biggest change," Brown said. "With Quickie coming in and the level he's played at kind of speaks for itself, but I also think a byproduct of that is the mentality around the team, because when you have a solidified No. 1 goalie, that goes a long way, [and] the uncertainty of not knowing who's going to be in net for you every night can have a negative effect on the team, and the morale, and how you play in front of a guy.
"It has an effect on your team when you go to a pregame meal or you go to the rink and you ask, 'Who's starting?' and they don't know."
Brown, Quick and Anze Kopitar are the only Kings remaining from those mid-2000s seasons, and they can speak to how much it has changed, because Los Angeles has so much depth in goal it can lose Quick to injury and not miss a beat.
Since Quick went out with a Grade 2 groin strain Nov. 12, Ben Scrivens and Martin Jones have combined to go 12-2-3. Jones on Tuesday became the first Kings goalie to start his career 6-0-0, and he has an 0.82-goals against average and.972 save percentage.
Scrivens went 6-1-3 in place of Quick but now has a spot on the bench watching Jones. The Kings were previously deep with Quick and former backup Jonathan Bernier, but reaching this far into the bag is new for the franchise.
Much of it can be explained by the defense in front of Scrivens and Jones. The 200-foot game the Kings are playing equals and might even one-up that of the 2012 Stanley Cup championship team. Los Angeles has allowed two or fewer goals in 19 of its past 20 games and allowed a first-period goal once in that span.
So how much of it is defense, and how much of it is goaltending?
"It's a combination of both," goaltending coach Bill Ranford said. "You need your goalie to make the big saves at the right time, and you have to play solid defense. I think this group here, going back to the [former coach] Terry Murray days, has taken a lot of pride in their defense, and that hasn't changed."
Ben Scrivens Goalie - LAK RECORD: 7-3-4
GAA: 1.66 | SVP: 0.941
Scrivens was a low-key acquisition from the Toronto Maple Leafs whose arrival didn't stop Los Angeles from giving Mathieu Garon a look in training camp.
Jones has since grabbed the spotlight with statistics that can't be ignored and a sudden-success story that was years in the making. In his 2007-08 draft year, Jones was the backup to Daniel Spence for the Calgary Hitmen of the Western Hockey League and was not selected despite an 18-8-1 record and 2.12 GAA.
"The biggest thing you hear [with undrafted players] … they just don't get the views," Ranford said. "If you're scouting staff doesn't luck out and catch them enough times, it's hard to draft a guy in limited viewings. That was kind of our scenario.
"[We were] just seeing a guy that already had a real strong technical package and potential, and we were in a situation where we had a hole to fill, and we weren't able to get anybody in the draft that year, so we looked at him and brought him to camp."
Signed by Los Angeles as a free agent in October 2008, Jones went 45-5-4 with seven shutouts and a 2.08 GAA for the Hitmen. He spent the next three seasons with the Manchester Monarchs of the American Hockey League and served as Jake Allen's backup for Canada at the 2010 World Junior Championship.
Kings coach Darryl Sutter also puts stock into the time Jones spent on the practice squad with Los Angeles during the past few Stanley Cup Playoffs.
"It's not like he's a guy that just showed up," Sutter said. "He's just a guy that didn't come into it until he was 19 or 20, so he didn't get the recognition as a high [draft] pick or a recognizable goalie."
Jones, 23, has been unflappable on and off the ice. He grew up around an NHL rink because his father, Harvey, is an executive with the Vancouver Canucks.
"He's been on quality ice his whole life," teammate Willie Mitchell said.
Martin Jones Goalie - LAK RECORD: 6-0-0
GAA: 0.82 | SVP: 0.972
Like Quick, Jones reveals little emotion, at least in his media interactions. Even after a win in his NHL debut against the Anaheim Ducks, Jones was understated and professional.
"That's his demeanor," Mitchell said. "Inside, I'm sure there’s a lot of it there. We're all different people. We show it in different ways. [But] he definitely cracked more of a smile than he normally has on his face."
Kings general manager Dean Lombardi is likely smiling inside because they've brought Jones along in time for him to be Quick's backup next season. Scrivens is set to become an unrestricted free agent and can ask a high salary that won't fit in Los Angeles' financial plans.
For Jones, who signed a two-year extension in September, it's a small sample-size of games. But it's built trust with his teammates.
"I hope so," Jones said. "That's my job. I don't want to come in and be a liability. I want to come in and help these guys win hockey games."
With a 3-0 victory Tuesday against the Edmonton Oilers, Jones became the third goaltender in NHL history to record three shutouts in his first six starts, according to Elias Sports Bureau. The others were Flat Walsh in 1928-29 for the New York Americans and Frank Brimsek in 1938-39 for the Boston Bruins.
Quick. Bernier. Scrivens. Jones. Even former Kings prospect Jeff Zatkoff is 5-2-0 with the Pittsburgh Penguins in his rookie season. Ranford admits he's had it good with Kim Dillabaugh, who oversees goalie development for Los Angeles.
"Kim and I have been very fortunate to work with a lot of good kids," Ranford said. "When you see them go on to the next level and do well, you're excited for them. Except when they play us."Image: BiteYourBum/Flickr
Climate change is wreaking havoc on all walks of life—or wings, if you're a bird.
The National Audubon society, in partnership with BirdLife International, released a wide-ranging report this week detailing the effects of climate change on bird populations worldwide. This probably won't come as a surprise, but climate change is already having a drastic effect on some species of birds, and forward-looking case studies predict things will only get worse.
For instance, the balance of European bird communities is rapidly shifting in favour of species better equipped to handle warmer temperatures, and according to another case study, "substantially" more birds regularly found in Mexico have already been lost than gained.
In other words, there are a hell of a lot of ways that our changing climate is going to kill birds.
Gains and losses of native bird species in Mexico. Green indicates low values, while red indicates high. Image: Peterson et al/Science Advances DOI: 10.1126 DOI: 10.1126
Local climates are changing. While some bird species have actually benefitted from climate change, and birds that thrive in warmer climates have increased in abundance, according to one case study "there are three times more birds that are negatively impacted by climate change than are positively affected."
The model is based on the projected change in range that birds are expected to have by the end of the century. The model suggests that "climatic change could dramatically alter species composition across Europe" and, to date, over 400 bird species globally "have undergone range shifts that follow the predicted trajectory associated with climate change," according to unpublished BirdLife data.
There is also "compelling evidence" that climate change is sending birds towards the poles, but birds aren't moving north as fast as the climate is changing.
Simulated present and potential future ranges of the Grasshopper Warbler in Europe. Image: Huntley et al/PLOS ONE DOI: 10.1371
Sea levels are rising—and given the number of species that live just mere meters above sea level, a rise in sea levels is expected to severely impact various species of birds living in low-lying coastal and intertidal habitats. Rising tides cause flooding and erosion, and push high water marks further inland, making small islands, reefs and atolls most vulnerable to sea level rise.
The Australian Department of the Environment and Water Resources, for example, singled out the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot (Neophema chrysogaster), "for which more than 40 percent of their breeding range is in coastal areas beneath 10m elevation."
The cause: warming temperatures cause water to expand—a process known as thermal expansion—and this expansion is "exacerbated by an influx of meltwater from glaciers and polar ice fields" according to one of the case studies in the report. Worse, the rate of sea level rise is accelerating, and current research pegs sea level rise at 0.003m per year, up from an average of 0.002m a century prior.
"A sea level rise of 2m is predicted to flood 10-100 percent of Laysan Albatross nests," according to BirdLife International. Image: Greg Schechter/Flickr
Food shortages. In the high Arctic, "climate change has caused mismatches between timing of breeding and peak food availability," according to BirdLife International. In other words, temperature changes could mean that food is not most available when young birds need it most. Meanwhile, a reduction in sea ice is thought to have caused declines in krill density of up to 80 percent—a food on which Adélie and Chinstrap penguins both rely.
More predators. In the Czech Republic, higher temperatures have pushed egg laying dates for some species further into the spring, when there are higher populations of edible dormouse than earlier in the season. That's great for the mice, who feed on the nests of local woodland birds, but obviously not so great for the birds.
An Adélie Penguin on Antarctica's Coronation Island, whose food source is affected by sea ice melt. Image: Liam Quinn/Flickr
Extreme weather events. Climate models predict more unpredictable and extreme weather events in future, which will naturally wreak havoc on human and bird populations alike. These rare but high magnitude events "are thought to particularly impact seabirds, through changes in frequency and severity of rainfall, onshore wind and snow storms," and make nests in rocky outcrops more vulnerable to destruction.
Disease. We already know a temperature rise of 2º celsius puts us on the road to a certifiable doomsday scenario for Earth's climate, but here's yet another example of why. Higher temperatures in the Hawaiian Islands will increase the number of low lying mosquitos that transmit avian pox and malaria, a chief killer of native birds. "For example, a temperature increase of 2ºC will almost eliminate low malaria-risk forest in the Hakalau Wildlife Refuge on Hawaii (an important area for five threatened bird species)," one case study reads.
Sure, some of the Hawaiian Islands' 18 threatened bird species could just move higher, but there's only so high they can go; in some areas, higher elevation forests have already been cleared for pasture, limiting upward shifts.
A green honeycreeper. Honeycreepers on the Hawaiian Islands have been greatly affected by malaria and avian pox. Image: Alastair Rae/Flickr
People. Climate change is already having a demonstrable impact on bird populations and habitat ranges. Add in ongoing large-scale deforestation, and you amplify the loss of area and population. "As deforestation is expected to continue," reads one case study, "the ability of endemic birds to adapt to the added pressure of climate change will diminish.
Meanwhile, the production of biofuels—fuels derived from plants such as sugarcane, rapeseed, soya bean and palm oil—is rapidly expanding, but that expansion comes at the cost of forest ecosystems and bird habitats. One cited study found that a newly established oil palm plantation reduced the diversity of bird species by 77 percent.
It's not all doom and gloom, however. A portion of the Audubon Society's report is dedicated to potential solutions that might mitigate some of these problems. It's a start—but there's only so much we can do to reverse the damage that's already been done.Scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute and the California Institute of Technology are studying how transparent roundworms communicate. In a new study, they report that these worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, have a highly evolved language in which they combine chemical fragments to create molecular messages that control social behavior. By learning how nematodes communicate, the researchers hope to open new possibilities for nematode prevention and control.
A species of small, transparent roundworms have a highly evolved language in which they combine chemical fragments to create precise molecular messages that control social behavior, reports a new study from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) at Cornell and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The research, published in the January issue of PLoS Biology (10:1), holds promise in helping to develop new treatments for the more than 20 percent of the world’s population infected with nematodes and for agricultural producers whose crops are destroyed by the pests.
“Learning about how nematodes communicate opens up new possibilities for prevention of nematode infection in humans and nematode control in agricultural settings,” said co-author Frank Schroeder, a Cornell adjunct assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology and a scientist at BTI, an independent affiliate of Cornell. BTI postdoctoral researcher Stephan von Reuss, one of the two lead authors of the study, added that “using the worms’ own language, we may be able to disrupt their development and reproduction or attract them to lethal environments.”
The worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, is a lab-friendly model species for research on how chemical signals affect development and behavior. In 2008, Schroeder and colleagues had discovered that nematodes use chemical signals as sexual attractants, which provided the first hint that nematodes use chemistry to communicate.
“What we understand now is that nematodes use complex messages that consist of molecules put together in a modular fashion,” said Schroeder. “They put together different chemical fragments depending on what they want to say.”
For example, the researchers found several molecules that tell nematodes to scatter and disperse. These molecules consist of only two building blocks. But adding a third building block called an indole changes the meaning completely: instead of “go away” the message becomes “everybody come here.” Nematode messages get even more complex by combining two or more different molecules, just like combining different words in a sentence makes for more complex meaning.
Schroeder and his team used a new analytical method called comparative metabolomics to analyze the chemicals made by worms. By comparing the body chemistry of normal, wild-type worms with the chemistry of worms that have a signaling defect, i.e., “worms that can’t talk,” the researchers detected molecules that were only present in wild-type worms, but not in “silent” worms. These molecules then turned out to form the “language of the worm.”
These results show that by combining molecules that include different types of chemical building blocks, worms have developed a sophisticated chemical language that they use to organize their communities. The discovery provides a new window into the chemistry of life and suggests that many other animal species including vertebrates may produce similar signaling molecules to control behavior and other biological functions.
As a next step, the researchers will explore how the worms’ nervous system senses and deciphers the different chemical messages. “Understanding the worm’s language is just a first step — we now need to figure out how the worm decodes and makes these molecules,” Schroeder said.
Image: Frank Schroeder, BTI/CornellDonald Trump’s first one hundred days in office have been clouded by an unprecedented obfuscation campaign by Democrats, some Republicans, the establishment news media and a coalition of outside agitators attempting to disrupt the billionaire’s presidential agenda, smear top administration officials, sow seeds of chaos, and delegitimize his already historic presidency.
Pre-Inauguration
A review of events is instructive. Even before Trump took office, the attempts to delegitimize the billionaire kicked into high gear when Hillary Clinton’s campaign joined the improbable recount efforts led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
When those efforts failed miserably, the Clinton campaign turned to an outlandish attempt to usurp Trump’s Electoral College victory. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s top political adviser who served as chairman of her presidential campaign, expressed his support in December for a petition calling for Electoral College voters to receive an intelligence briefing on claims of Russian intervention in the presidential election.
Around the same time, a Democratic presidential elector from California filed a lawsuit aiming to overturn a California statute that requires him and the states’ other electors to support the winner of the popular vote in the state. The lawsuit was clearly part of an effort to set a legal precedent to free any rogue Republican electors in other states to cast their ballots for someone other than Trump.
In addition, Harvard law professor and progressive activist Larry Lessig announced that he was teaming up with a California-based law firm to offer “free and confidential” legal services to any members of the Electoral College who would vote against Trump in violation of state law.
Trump’s inauguration was marred by threats of mass protest by a movement dubbed DisruptJ20, which Breitbart News exposed as being made up of professional left-wing activists with ties to groups financed by George Soros.
And as Michael Goodwin correctly noted in the New York Post on Wednesday, Trump’s inauguration was followed 24-hours later by a so-called Women’s March seeking to taint the newly installed president. That protest group was a coalition that reportedly consisted of more than 50 “partners” tied to Soros. This journalist first reported on the march leaders’ own close associations with Soros.
Trump was also welcomed to office by Soros-financed advocacy groups openly working for the new president’s impeachment.
Treason claims, Russia smears
Some of the basis for the many attempts to delegitimize Trump center on unsubstantiated Russian intervention claims that began after Trump was elected and have since been repeatedly utilized to delegitimize the president.
Only last week, it was revealed that the controversial, partially discredited 35-page dossier on Trump compiled by a former British intelligence officer served as the FBI’s justification for seeking court approval to clandestinely monitor Carter Page, who has been identified as a foreign policy adviser to Trump.
This is not the FBI’s only use of the dossier. Last month, the BBC reported the document served as a “roadmap” for the FBI’s investigation into claims of coordination between Moscow and members of Trump’s presidential campaign.
The dossier, which contains wild and unproven claims about Trump and sordid sexual acts, including the widely-mocked claim that Trump hired prostitutes and had them urinate on a hotel room bed, was compiled by former intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who was reportedly paid by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to investigate Trump. The credibility of the document has been called into question by current and former U.S officials.
Even before he took office, Trump’s future presidency was mired in multiple attempts to smear his incoming administration with numerous trumped up charges, from falsified claims of anti-Semitism to comparisons to murderous leader Adolf Hitler to questions surrounding his emotional health.
Breitbart News reported on the talking point theme in which numerous Democratic Party operatives and establishment pundits began to increasingly use the word “treason” in a seeming attempt to smear Trump over the unproven Russia collusion claims. Many of the arguments mirrored each other in specific ways.
In February, another establishment echo-chamber trend emerged in which news media outlets featured articles quoting health care professionals who questioned the billionaire’s mental stability.
Following those reports, some Democratic politicians – and at least one Republican – called for Trump to be subjected to a psychiatric examination to determine whether he was fit for office. Some commentators have even suggested invoking the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which allows for the commander-in-chief’s removal from office if the “president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
The health care professionals quoted in recent months attempting to diagnose Trump seem to |
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