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ISEX bathrooms would be installed in Victorian high schools under a proposal from the state's peak student body.
The "non-gendered" bathrooms would cater for students who don't identify with the gender they were born as.
The Victorian Student Representative Council plans to raise its idea during meetings with Education Minister Martin Dixon and school officials.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Should Victorian high schools have unisex toilets?
It follows a high-profile case in Queensland where a nine-year-old transgender student was initially denied access to the girls' toilets after identifying as female.
Representative council spokeswoman Krista Seddon said students who didn't identify as a "binary" gender needed to feel accepted and safe.
Single-sex toilets would remain under the proposal.
"We believe that school is a place for students to develop and explore their own identity, and this should be allowed to happen without having to be confined by labels,'' Ms Seddon said.
"Students of all ages have struggled with the issue of gendered bathrooms; it is a very real issue for students all over Victoria."
The council, made up of secondary school students and run under the auspices of the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria, resolved to lobby for having both single-sex and non-gendered bathrooms.
It is now seeking stories from students who have been bullied or felt unsafe because their school hasn't provided a gender-neutral bathroom.
"The motion was brought to the attention of the congress because anecdotal evidence about this issue was already emerging within the state of Victoria,'' Ms Seddon said.
"VicSRC is seeking this change because, as students, we want to feel safe and respected in school.''
Parents Victoria executive officer Gail McHardy said schools needed to be respectful of individual student needs, noting family and aircraft bathrooms were unisex.
"It seems quite a reasonable request by students,'' she said.
"We need to be confident that all students feel safe at all times".
Education Department spokesman Stuart Teather said it supported diversity and had guidelines to help schools support students with transgender or intersex status.
"Schools develop a plan with students and their parents, which includes an agreement on the use of toilet and shower facilities appropriate to the gender the student identifies with,'' he said.
"Students get the most out of their time at school when their schools are safe, supportive and inclusive environments."
wes.hosking@news.com.auThe U.S. women’s national team notched a World Cup-opening 3-1 win over Australia on Monday to climb to the top of Group D, but the victory wasn’t enough to earn the respect of the Australia Women’s Soccer website.
The site, which is sponsored by Football Federation Australia, posted a scathing review of U.S. Soccer in its recap called "Australia v USA: 4 things we learnt."
Scroll to continue with content Ad
1: The USA, well, they just aren’t that good
The US certainly like to talk a good game. The reality is they play a fairly rudimentary, bog-standard 4-4-2, were short of ideas going forward and outmanoeuvred tactically. ‘Play it long and look for the head of Wambach’ seems the default game-plan for a team stuck in the past.
World football has moved, in case Jill Ellis hasn’t noticed. US were outplayed by a better, smarter footballing side – who were also without two certain starters in Polkinghorne and keeper Williams – before the Aussies ran out of gas.
US relied on the individual brilliance of Megan Rapinoe to win them this game. And Hope Solo in the US goal saved the Americans on numerous occasions in front of a vocal ‘home’ crowd in Canada. If it wasn’t for this world-class keeper, this could’ve been a different result.
Um, wow.
No one is going to dispute that the Americans' World Cup opener was not their best effort. The players even said as much during the postgame press conferences.
Rapinoe: "You could tell we were a bit nervous... I don't think we played that well today." (obvious, but wait for the next tweet) — Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) June 9, 2015
Story continues
Rapinoe: "I think that we can be a lot better in possession, and just a lot more confident on the ball" — Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) June 9, 2015
Rapinoe: "I think we're better than we played today, and got caught kind of going long when we needed to settle it down." — Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) June 9, 2015
But to say they were outplayed would be incorrect.
The first half was a little dicey, but in the second half, the U.S. dominated. Say what you want about the U.S. women’s style of play — many people have during the past four years — but it was enough to get the job done.
Australia is a skilled squad, but it’s young and was bested by a more experienced, fitter side. All the talent in the world isn’t going to make up for being fatigued in the 65th minute.
Sure, Australia has to find some way to put a good face on a 3-1 defeat, but calling out the United States on a website sponsored by the Australian Football Federation is just poor form and sour grapes.
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Follow Graham Watson on TwitterVOA’s Edward Yeranian in Cairo contributed to this report. Some information was provided by AP, Reuters and AFP.
Libya's army chief ordered the deployment of Islamist-led militias to the capital Tripoli on Monday in response to the storming of parliament by forces loyal to a renegade ex-general. The move paves the way for a possible showdown between rival militia fighters.Meanwhile, the revolt against Islamists who dominate Libyan politics threatened to spiral into an outright battle for power after an elite army unit, the Special Forces, joined the uprising Monday.The commander of the Special Forces has announced his support for retired General Khalifa Haftar and his National Libyan Army. His forces have been fighting militants for months in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city.Forces apparently loyal to former Army Chief of Staff Khalifa Haftar said they suspended parliament Sunday after earlier leading a military assault against lawmakers, directly challenging the legitimacy of the country's weak central government three years after the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gadhafi.Libya's interim government condemned the attack on parliament and largely ignored the declaration by the general's group.For hours after the attack on Sunday, fighting took place around the road to Tripoli's airport and its southern outskirts between Haftar’s forces and Islamist militiamen.By Monday morning, the gunfire died down and a tentative calm returned to the city. Each side claimed to have the support of the Libyan people, VOA's Edward Yeranian reported from Cairo, and demanded the other back down.The revolt by Haftar threatens to detonate the long volatile divisions among the multiple militias that dominate Libya amid the weakness of the central government and military.Haftar said he aims to crush Islamists he accuses of seizing control of the country and he appears to have the support of some militias from the eastern half of the country and the western Zintan region.In the other camp, parliament chief Nouri Abu Sahmein - an Islamist-leaning politician - ordered a powerful umbrella group of mainly Islamist militias known as “Libya's Central Shield'' to mobilize on Monday to defend against Haftar's forces. The umbrella group is dominated by a militia from Libya's third largest city, Misrata.Further raising the potential for chaos, one of Libya's many al-Qaida-inspired extremist groups on Monday vowed to fight Haftar's forces, AP reported.Also on Monday, Libya's outgoing government demanded that parliament suspend its work until the next general election after an impending vote on the 2014 budget, andre-run the controversial election of a new premier, a cabinet statement said, according to Reuters.The cabinet of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni submitted its proposal to parliament as a solution to Libya's political chaos and violence, the statement said.The confrontations over the weekend further deepens the chaos Libya has endured since 2011. With militias running rampant, the central government has little power, and the army and police remain shattered since the civil war that ousted Gadhafi.Parliament is divided between Islamist parties - which hold a majority - and their opponents, each of which are backed by rival militias.The legal mandate for Libya's parliament ran out several months ago and caretaker Thani's government resigned several weeks ago.Thani's successor, businessman Ahmed Maitiq, who is supported by Islamist parties including the Muslim Brotherhood, has been unable to form a government and opponents dispute his legitimacy, the VOA reported.Haftar, a former rebel in the fight against Gadhafi, appears to be trying to harness widespread public frustration with the government's impotence, vowing to get rid of extremists and impose an effective authority.On Sunday, militiamen loyal to him stormed the parliament building in Tripoli, ransacking the building. Two people were reportedly killed and more than 50 wounded.Haftar sent his fighters into Benghazi last Friday against Islamist militants based there. Authorities said at least 70 people were killed, according to AP.Video obtained by Reuters showed armed gunmen from Haftar's brigade engaged in the firefight in Benghazi. Gunshots could be heard and a car is seen burning.Worried by the threat of more fighting, both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia closed their embassies in Tripoli on Monday. Turkey closed its consulate in Benghazi and evacuated its employees to a local airport. Algeria withdrew its ambassador last week.Algeria also closed off land borders with Libya over security concerns on Monday, Reuters reported.The European Union said Monday it is "deeply concerned" by developments in Libya after armed groups attacked parliament in Tripoli and an air base in the east.A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton said the EU was concerned about the "continuing deterioration," the French news agency AFP reported."The EU renews its commitment to support the Libyan people... and calls on all parties to build consensus so as to ensure a transition to a stable democracy," spokesman Michael Mann said.EU member states, especially former colonial power Italy and its southern neighbors, are also worried by a sharp increase in the influx of refugees from Libya this year, in part due to the deteriorating security situation in the country.Elsewhere Monday, a Libyan air force base in the eastern city of Tobruk announced that it had decided to join forces with Haftar, Reuters reported.“The Torbuk air force base will join... the army under the command of General Khalifa Qassim Haftar,'' said the statement posted on social media websites. Staff at the air base confirmed its authenticity, Reuters reported.Libya also extended the closure of the airport in the main eastern city of Benghazi until May 25 because of the unrest, the airport director said. It was attacked overnight with Grad rockets.Since the toppling of Gadhafi in 2011, successive Libyan governments have struggled to impose order as heavily armed former rebels have carved out their own fiefdoms.Militia brigades in armored trucks mounted with anti-aircraft canons have often stormed parliament, occupied ministries and even kidnapped the prime minister last year in a show of military muscle to make political demands.But Sunday's attack on parliament was the most serious violence in the capital for months, and appeared to expand Haftar's campaign against hardline Islamists, who emerged as a force in North Africa since the Arab Spring revolts of 2011.There is Hollywood, the city. And then there is Hollywood, the film industry in the abstract–the “place” where Sunset Boulevard evokes the shattered dreams of Norma Desmond and not the street on which to shatter dreams with $5 well drinks and an ill-fated ride on the mechanical bull at Saddle Ranch.
That Hollywood of the mind is the subject of this exhaustive cartographic experiment by British designers Dorothy, who yanked assorted avenues and parks and rivers off the silver screen and plotted them out on paper to create a fictional map of the movies–a fantasy world of the ultimate fantasy world.
The map, a followup to the designers’ comprehensive atlas of song names, is loosely based on a vintage street map of Los Angeles and features more than 900 places in films, including Sunset Boulevard, Mean Streets, Nightmare on Elm Street, Valley of the Dolls, and Chinatown. There are film-famous bars (Rick’s Cafe Americain, the Slaughtered Lamb, Nat’s Bar), and film-famous landmarks (Cape Fear, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, National Lampoon’s Animal House). There are highways (the Human Highway, the Lost Highway); spans (Bridge to Terabithia, The Bridge on the River Kwai); and what might be the world’s most terrifying public park: The Temple of Doom, Pan’s Labyrinth, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Murders in the Zoo all fall within the perimeter of Jurassic Park.
“It took us months of research to pull this map together,” Dorothy’s Ali Johnson tells Co.Design. “It was much harder than the Song Map, but that was partly our fault because we ended up using 900 titles, as opposed to the 400 titles for the Song Map.”
The designers started off with three core movies they wanted to include: Nightmare on Elm Street, Jurassic Park, and Mean Streets. “Then we built on this,” Johnson says. For research, they perused their own DVD collections, consulted the bible-like Halliwell’s Film Guide, and scoured the web for film titles with names like park, avenue, lane, road, and street in the title. “Where possible we tried to group streets based on themes or genres, but this sounds a lot easier than it actually was,” Johnson says. “We did pay our own personal tribute with a district dedicated to Hitchcock and also Cult British Horror films. And we also included a Red Light District–that was [my colleague] Phil’s idea not mine!”
Open-edition prints of the film map can be purchased for 25 pounds (about $40), plus shipping and handling. Limited-edition signed and stamped prints cost 100 pounds (about $155), plus S&H. Buy them here.(images removed by request)
Several photos showing children’s items branded with art from The Force Awakens leaked online. The main characters in the series as expected are Kylo Ren, Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron in addition to the three droids (C-3PO, R2-D2 and BB-8) and Chewbacca.
The images leaked from the catalogue of the the European company JNH, licensed in the children’s furniture category.
The most interesting detail from the photos is Finn’s new blaster rifle which looks really menacing. It doesn’t look like the regular E-11 Stormtrooper blaster rifle:
We’ve already seen the Kylo Ren art below, which leaked just a few days before Celebration:
You probably noticed C-3PO’s dark arm. That’s something that one of our Cantina members revealed almost 2 months ago together with the name of the desert planet Jakku (mentioned HERE). Now in the next image the left arm is no longer dark. It’s the other one. So either they flipped the image or the arm looks that way because of the shadows. You be the judge.
And more higher-res images:AC/DC, who finally hopped on the iTunes bandwagon in 2012 after years of disdain, have finally joined music streaming services Spotify and Rdio, and will also be available on newcomer Apple Music.
Previous to 2012, the band had expressed concern over the effect that breaking an album up into individual tracks might have on listener experience. “We always were a band that if you heard something on the radio, well, that’s only three minutes. Usually the best tracks were on the albums,” AC/DC guitarist Angus Young reportedly told Britain’s Sky News in 2011.
Still, digital music has been kind to AC/DC. The band’s newest album, “Rock or Bust,” was released in November and was its first new record to be offered digitally. It has since sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen.
Artists Who Have Never Won A Grammy John Rodgers—Redferns/Getty Images Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Ray Burmiston—Photoshot/Getty Images Kevin Mazur—WireImage/Getty Images Mark Horton—WireImage/Getty Images ShowBizIreland/Getty Images Denise Truscello—WireImage/Getty Images Evening Standard/Getty Images Dick Barnatt—Redferns/Getty Images Gabriel Olsen—FilmMagic/Getty Images David Redfern—Redferns/Getty Images The Visualeyes Archive/Redferns/Getty Images Gunter Zint—Redferns/Getty Images Chris Walter—WireImage/Getty Images David Corio—Redferns/Getty Images Michael Putland—Getty Images Michael Putland—Getty Images Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Roberta Bayley—Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images KMazur—WireImage/Getty Images Merrick Ales—FilmMagic/Getty Images Frans Schellekens—Redferns/Getty Images Scott Legato—Getty Images 1 of 23 Advertisement
Contact us at editors@time.com.I don’t play videogames and generally think that online activism is a giant waste of time. Both of these factors make me a rather unlikely prospective ally to #GamerGate, but I do have a coffee mug that says “Certified Media Manipulator” so I guess it made sense that we’d cross paths at some point.
Which is how a little over a week ago, I found myself in the middle of an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) in #GamerGate’s infamous subreddit “KotakuInAction.” I’d been trying to assign an unbiased explainer piece on the controversy for weeks and found that several writers were intimidated and reluctant to participate. So when I saw that someone who had read my book and columns here at Off the Media, put up an AMA request, I figured I’d wade in, answer some questions, and see what I couldn’t find out about this infamous movement.
For those of you unaware, at this point about #GamerGate, I’ll provide a brief summary:
In August, game developer Zoe Quinn was accused in a post by an ex-boyfriend (described by The New York Times as a “strange, rambling attack”) of having a romantic relationship with a game journalist who wrote for the game site Kotaku. Rallying under the hashtag #GamerGate, supporters of the movement aimed to position themselves as standing for “ethics in journalism,” “rooting out corruption” and other complaints about the videogame industry. Some who claiming to be associated with the group subjected Quinn and various “social justice warriors” who’ve run afoul of the movement’s rather fluid scope to a litany of violent threats. It’s since become a major, controversial media story—appearing on the week’s cover of Bloomberg Businessweek for example—which seems to reach new hyperbolic heights with each report.
In some ways, #GamerGate is similar to the Tea Party in the sense that it was founded over a rather embarrassing and ridiculous random event—in that case, Rick Santelli flipping out during a live CNBC broadcast—but somehow has gone on to have very real (or distracting might be a better word) political and cultural ramifications. Of course, to the people genuinely involved in the issue do view their origin story in this light and are in fact deadly serious about it all.
And let’s get something straight—and I realize it won’t be a popular opinion to outsiders—#GamerGate is largely correct in their descriptions about the state of online journalism. It is corrupt. It is conflicted. It is lazy, sensationalistic, schizophrenic, dishonest and exploitative. Not just videogame journalism—which honestly, I don’t follow—but all online journalism.
In that sense, I would like to be encouraged by this clearly passionate and zealous movement to expose and clean up today’s media. It’s almost exactly what I have been writing about for the last few years. Initially, I found it relieving that most of the people I spoke to during the AMA were earnest, articulate and seemingly nothing like the impression one might have from reading press coverage.
I straight up asked them: Guys, what’s with all the doxing and personal attacks? What is this supposed to accomplish exactly? Where is all the rage coming from? The response was overwhelming and immediate. They want nothing to do with such actions and don’t condone them. In their eyes, they actively police and report anyone who engage in such activities. They claim not to be angry, just fed up.
Certainly, this is good to hear. But I’ll tell you, one of my greatest fears in the world is the mob rule that the internet seems to advocate without consideration. Whether it’s the outrage and sanctimony-driven shaming of the left, or the “law of the gang” that emanates from the manosphere. Both are not only self-absorbed and selfish, they are completely ignorant and absolved of the real world consequences of their influence. It pretends to want to have a conversation but actually destroys any chance at progress.
This was something I tried to communicate to #GamerGate. Just because you don’t personally condone the threats and attacks doesn’t mean your group isn’t responsible. In fact, one of the basic tenets of our legal system is essentially “in for a penny, in for a pound” when it comes to gangs, groups and conspiracies. This is especially true, I said, “with movements with vague, amorphous goals and little centralized leadership. It makes it hard (or rather easy) to say the good stuff is us, the bad stuff is not us. Conversely, it allows opponents to paint you as the opposite. It also creates an environment in which a lot of people are riled up and members who are loosely associated can do things that reflect poorly on everyone else.”
It is one thing to say you stand for ethics or stand against “conflicts of interest” but the problem is actually defining what these things mean and what to do about them. No one is accusing the Poynter Institute of bullying or terrorism because their strategy and tactics are clear and traditional. The problem is when an unstructured, unorganized group appoints themselves the enforcer of these ideals and goes about pursuing it anonymously over the internet. Bad stuff is going to happen.
In short: you don’t get to agitate and intimidate—which I saw signs of pop up several times in my AMA alone—and then when someone acts on it, dismiss them as lone wolves. You can’t claim to be a force for good when most of what’s been “done” in your name is bad. It’s too convenient to claim that you’re all good, but are marginalized by your opponents and can’t get a fair shake.
Fundamentally, I got the sense that many of the followers have trouble understanding the basic economics of today’s media. One redditor wrote in that “We are consumers. We hold all the cards and it is we who decide what is acceptable and what is not. Not some gender ideologue who writes opinions for a blog. This happened because the major publications forgot who they work for…”
Of course, this is fundamentally untrue. You, and the rest of us, have no cards. As I’ve written about here before, in a world of entirely free journalism, readers are not “consumers”—at least not in the “customer” sense. While they might literally be the ones who consume it, in reality they are the product being sold. It’s their combined pageviews that are turned around and sold to advertisers. It is those advertisers who control the strings, not the readers who, ironically, are clicking the very articles they are so mad about. This is something that can be changed, again not by complaining but by building.
I disliked a lot of the self-congratulation about the “changes” they’ve made in the industry. -Getting a couple big companies to pull their ads from a site is nothing. Getting some writer to leave Valleywag—when that was probably going to happen anyway—is not an accomplishment. Getting a couple sites to post disclosures? Ok that’s nice, but was that really worth getting this upset about? And was this the only way to get it?
I was also shocked at the naivete and the amount of pushback and disagreement I got over things that I was specifically requested to speak about as an expert on this topic (Ok guys, sure you know better than I do). I was surprised by the paranoia too—I was forced to “verify” my account despite this being the third AMA I’ve done under the same name and one person seriously suggested that I’d been solicited to speak out against #GamerGate on Reddit by media insiders in order to discouraged the movement. In other words, that I’d been “turned.”
This to me is emblematic of the systemic problems of the group. It was easier to believe in a literal conspiracy theory then to accept that someone might have a legitimate disagreement with the group and its methods. This inability to empathize or relate to people who are confused by, cynical about, suspicious of, or angry about #GamerGate, let alone speak to them without sounding insane, is a major problem.
It’s what’s always kept fringe groups—deservedly or not—on the fringe, and deprives them of traditional channels of communication and change, excepting intimidation and disruption. In a way, it is a vicious cycle. A group feels impotent and comes together, and because of their approach finds themselves to be collectively impotent and emerges only more angry and disaffected. Their own intelligence when mixed with emotion, becomes an all-consuming but ultimately blinding force that creates and occupies its own reality.
In this way, I expect a similar reaction to the column. My response has been far more generous to the group than anyone this side of Breitbart, but since I criticized and refused to accept some of the basic premises the group holds dear, I’m likely to become a target. I hope that doesn’t happen, but it is what it is.
There are better ways to make change that don’t involve 20,000 people talking exclusively to themselves on Reddit and in comment sections. The brainpower of this collective group is likely immense, and again, they are correct with some of their criticisms of the appalling state of journalism. But it’s never been easier to create alternative media outlets that could stand for the issues there is supposedly a large, latent audience for.
So let’s see that. Even if people disagree with it, we’d still be impressed by the results.
Ryan Holiday is the editor at large of Betabeat and the author of The Obstacle is the Way.Want to get just a little bit better at electronically produced percussion? Try one of these techniques.
Alternating/Varying Volume Level
Most MIDI drum sets will have sounds like shakers, high-hats, and other sounds that are often played in quick succession, such as once every 16th note when composing in 4/4. It sounds just fine when you listen to a human being moving a shaker up and down, but if you set a MIDI drum loop to play your shaker sound every 16th note, you end up with a harsh continuous noise instead of a soft backing to your other percussion sounds.
The fix for this is fairly simple. A live shaker, played with a simple “up, down” rhythm, will have two volumes: A distinct “shake” sound when the percussionist moves his hand down, and a lighter “shake” at approximately half the volume when he brings his hand back up. Simply keep the “shake” sound at its default level for the downbeat, then alternate every other 16th note “shake” with somewhere in the neighborhood of half the volume. Don’t worry about getting it exactly half, or even anywhere close to half if you like the way it sounds louder or quieter. Also, don’t worry about having each lower volume alternate be at exactly the same level, since the idea is to make it sound more organic and natural.
You can do similar things to any other pieces of your percussion set that play in quick succession. For example, if you have a 16th note high-hat in your loop, that is sounding far too artificial for your liking, reduce the levels on every other 16th note, and slap a modest amount of reverb on to tie it together. A live drummer isn’t a robot, and wouldn’t play each hit at exactly the same level, so why should your loop?
Resetting the Panning
A drum loop sample recorded in stereo will oftentimes already have certain drums panned to a certain place in the mix. It’s rare that each drum sound will be mixed dead center. Drum set MIDI instruments are the same way. Only a few sounds like the kick and snare are centered, and the toms and cymbals will all have a different panning position pre-assigned. Generally, this saves you a lot of time and effort. You don’t have to try to set up a panoramic position for every last percussion sound that enters your mix.
Unfortunately, every once in a while, this is a headache. It’s all preset, and sometimes you listen to what you have and it’s just wrong. That tom is just too far left and that ride cymbal needs to be over there, but a sampled loop is a sampled loop, and far too often, the pan position of a midi drum can’t be modified. So, what do you do now? You could set the drum track to Mono and call it a day, or try to patch together a few sounds on separate tracks that you think should or shouldn’t be panned, but can I suggest a different technique?
Instead of setting your drum track to Mono, duplicate it. Make two identical drum tracks. Now take your copy, and flip the stereo, using whatever technique your software offers. Switch the Right stereo track with the Left stereo track on your duplicate, and play the original and the duplicate together. Your drum sounds should all be coming from dead center now. With every sound playing at the same level out of both left and right speakers, it’s now playing as if it was a single Mono track.
But why go through all that trouble? Because now, you can pick and choose what parts of your drum loop should keep their preset panning positions. On a MIDI drum set, remove any sounds from the duplicate that you want to end up panned like their producer intended. All other sounds will stay Mono. On a sampled drum loop, you can experiment with cutting out pieces on your duplicate that you want to preserve the panning on.
Two things to keep in mind when using this method: The first, don’t mistake inverting the stereo position with inverting the phase. Inverting the stereo will make left become right and right become left, inverting the phase will make your entire drum section play as silence, if both the original and the duplicate are played at once. Secondly, having every drum sound doubled will make your percussion track very loud, so be sure to adjust the levels to compensate for this and avoid peaking.
Now Go Be Amazing
Both of these techniques were tested with Audacity, a simple freeware audio workstation, to ensure that anyone could take advantage of these tips regardless of budget or experience.
AdvertisementIslam is the fastest-growing major religion in Europe, primarily due to immigration.[1][2]
0.0%-0.9% 1%-1.9% 2%-4.9% 5%-9.9% 10%-19.9% 20% and more Muslim population in England (2011)
Since the 1960s, immigrants from Muslim countries started to appear in numbers in Western Europe, especially in Germany, France and Belgium. Although large Muslim communities have existed on the continent since Ottoman conquests in the late Middle Ages, especially in the Balkans, this was the first major wave of immigration of Muslims to northwestern Europe.[3]
Muslims in Europe are not a homogeneous group. They are of various national, ethnic and racial identities. The top regions of origin of Muslims in Western Europe are Turkey, the Maghreb (including Morocco and Algeria), and South Asia (including Pakistan and Afghanistan).[4]
In Western Europe, Muslims generally live in major urban areas, often concentrated in poor neighborhoods of large cities.[5]
According to the Pew Forum, the total number of Muslims in Europe in 2010 was about 44 million (6%).[6] The total number of Muslims in the European Union in 2010 was about 19 million (3.8%).[6] The French capital of Paris and its metropolitan area has the largest number (up to 1.7 million according to The Economist)[7] of Muslims out of any city in the European Union. London also has a substantial community of Muslim origin, numbering about 1 million within the limits of Greater London and exceeding this figure when the entire metropolitan area is taken into account.
By 2030, people of Muslim faith or origin are predicted to form about 10% of the population of France[6] and 8% of the population of Europe. [6]
The table below lists large cities of the European Union with significant Muslim populations, some estimating the percentage of Muslims by using the percentage of Asians in those cities.
See also [ edit ]365 DAY CHALLENGE
I am currently trying to beat XCOM in the hardest difficulty: Ironman Impossible. So far these jerks have destroyed me every time I've gone against them. If you have ever played Xcom then you are probably more than familiar with these dapper fellows. A mix between a reptile, a lawyer and Satan this bastard is the second enemy to show up and he will ruin your day quicker than you can say "he can't hit me from there". They have miraculous aim, extreme movement and a snappy fashion sense. In Xcom is it common to miss a shot that has 90% plus chance to hit and yet these guys will happily land a critical hit across the map into full heavy cover through several walls. They are literally a pencil mustache away from Space Hitler.Over the course of this year, Google has been working on a Reader Mode in Chrome for Android. The feature strips unwanted content from a web page in the browser, making it easier to just read articles and see relevant pictures. Safari for iOS has this mode and Microsoft added it to Windows Phone a few months back as well.
Now, it’s here for Chrome on Android, although it’s still in an experimental mode. Here’s what it looks like, along with the icon (in blue) to use it:
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I was nosing around the Stable version of Chrome — v. 39.0.2171.59 on a Verizon Moto X 2014 running Android 5.0 — and noticed the setting. I also double-checked for it and found the setting on recently updated Nexus 5. I’ve heard reports that it works on Android KitKat as well. That means it appears to be generally available for Android devices, even without installing or using the Beta Chrome app.
Since it’s experimental, you still have to find the setting manually; there’s no easy-to-spot checkbox for this yet. Instead, type chrome://flags in Chrome for Android 5.0 and scroll down to the Enable Reader Mode Tool Icon option. Click the Enable button underneath this choice and tap the Relaunch button.
From there, going forward, you should see a new icon when browsing most websites. Look to the left of the address bar to find it, tap it and you’ll get a clean edition of the page you want to read.
This post was updated at 12:40pm adding that the feature works on Android KitKat as well as Lollipop.In my introduction to monads in JavaScript we saw a couple of monads and examined the commonality between them to expose an underlying design pattern. Before I get on to how that applies to asynchronous programming we need to take one final diversion and discuss polymorphism.
Consider the list monad that we implemented before:
var compose = function ( f, g ) { return function ( x ) { return f ( g ( x )) }; }; // unit :: a -> [a] var unit = function ( x ) { return [ x ] }; // bind :: (a -> [a]) -> ([a] -> [a]) var bind = function ( f ) { return function ( list ) { var output = []; for ( var i = 0, n = list. length ; i < n ; i ++ ) { output = output. concat ( f ( list [ i ])); } return output ; }; };
In our previous example, we just had functions that accepted an HTMLElement and returned a list of HTMLElement s. Notice the type signature of bind above: (a -> [a]) -> ([a] -> [a]). That ‘ a ’ just means we can put any type in its place, but the signature a -> [a] implies that the functions must return a list of things of the same type as the input. This is actually not the case, and the correct signature is:
bind :: ( a -> [ b ]) -> ([ a ] -> [ b ])
For example, bind may take a function that maps a single String to a list of HTMLElement s, and return a function that maps a list of String s to a list of HTMLElement s. Consider these two functions: the first takes a string and returns a list of nodes with that tag name, and the second takes a node and returns a list of all the class names it has.
// byTagName :: String -> [HTMLElement] var byTagName = function ( name ) { var nodes = document. getElementsByTagName ( name ); return Array. prototype. slice. call ( nodes ); }; // classNames :: HTMLElement -> [String] var classNames = function ( node ) { return node. className. split ( / \s +/ ); };
If we ignore the ‘returns a list of’ aspect, we’d expect to be able to compose these to get all the class names of all the links in a document:
var classNamesByTag = compose ( classNames, byTagName );
Of course, we do have lists to contend with, but because the monad just cares about the lists, not what’s in the lists, we can use it to compose the functions:
// classNamesByTag :: [String] -> [String] var classNamesByTag = compose ( bind ( classNames ), bind ( byTagName )); classNamesByTag ( unit ( 'a' )) // -> ['profile-links','signout-button',...]
The monad just cares about the ‘list of’ part, not the contents of the list. Just as a reminder, let’s recast this using the pipeline syntax we developed in the previous article:
// bind :: [a] -> (a -> [b]) -> [b] var bind = function ( list, f ) { var result = []; for ( var i = 0, n = list. length ; i < n ; i ++ ) { result = result. concat ( f ( list [ i ])); } return result ; }; // pipe :: [a] -> [a -> [b]] -> [b] var pipe = function ( x, functions ) { for ( var i = 0, n = functions. length ; i < n ; i ++ ) { x = bind ( x, functions [ i ]); } return x ; |
Barro Group application to extend their licence at the Mt Cotton Quarry had previously been rejected by Logan City Council in 2006, by Redland City Council in 2013, and by the Planning and Environment Court and Queensland's Supreme Court.
"We have spent 10 years of understanding our local environment, understanding our community and understanding the requirements," Mr Bridge said.
"And to have it trashed in this manner is a heart-rending blow to the community," he said.WASHINGTON—Stating that the policy change represented the kind of reform taxpayers have long demanded, the IRS announced Tuesday that all refunds for the 2016 fiscal year will be disbursed in the form of Forever stamps. “Persons anticipating a refund will receive a ream of Forever stamps equal to the expected amount within six to eight weeks of filing their taxes,” said IRS commissioner John Koskinen, explaining that someone with a $500 tax refund, for example, will receive an envelope containing 1,020 stamps, or roughly 51 booklets of the 49-cent postage. “We’re very excited about this change, and we think the public will be equally enthusiastic about getting a refund they can use immediately to mail a variety of items without having to bother with the extra step of purchasing stamps with cash.” Koskinen added that while a refund denominated in Forever stamps was not optional, taxpayers were free to choose among American flag, classic car, and Woodstock themes.
AdvertisementHillary Clinton created a previously undisclosed email account to communicate when her private server system was down, documents made public by the FBI Friday show.
Monica Hanley, a former Clinton aide, told FBI investigators that Clinton likely created the second private account — a "gmail.com" address — to send messages when her server crashed in 2011 during a trip to Croatia.
An FBI report made public earlier this month showed Clinton and her staff had been warned repeatedly about using private accounts while overseas. What's more, Clinton and her staff have repeatedly said the former secretary of state used just one personal address.
The 189 new pages of notes from the FBI's closed investigative file came amid controversy over the five immunity agreements doled out to witnesses in the criminal probe.A body of a 28-foot-long female sperm whale has been found washed ashore on private property north of Port Aransas.
The Port Aransas Coordinator with the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, Tony Amos, tells Corpus Christi television station KRIS the whale discovered early this week on San Jose Island was in bad shape and likely died some time ago. Samples from the remains have been taken to try to find out a cause of death.
He says it's been eight years since a whale has washed ashore in the area.
Amos is discouraging people from trying to reach the remains since it's possible viruses on the animal could be transferable to humans. Port Aransas is about 20 miles east of Corpus Christi on the Gulf of Mexico.
Copyright Associated PressMIDLAND, Tex. — President Trump does not know Mike Conaway.
A Republican congressman from a long brush stroke of West Texas, Mr. Conaway recalled meeting with him at the White House with other House Republicans. And he has shaken hands with Mr. Trump, a “standard, 500-people-on-a-rope-line, shaken-hand kind of thing.”
“He wouldn’t know me from third base,” Mr. Conaway said.
Whether he has exchanged pleasantries with the president may not have mattered before, but it does now. Mr. Conaway is taking over the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election. He is replacing Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican whose suspiciously cozy relationship with Mr. Trump derailed the inquiry before he was ultimately forced to step aside.
Mr. Nunes’s missteps have thrust Mr. Conaway, a low-profile, old-guard Republican, into the spotlight as the accidental heir to a potentially explosive investigation swirling around a president from his own party. He said he would dutifully pursue an extraordinary allegation that he appears to find dubious: that Mr. Trump’s associates may have worked with Russian officials to disrupt the election.
The vow of a vigorous investigation may be reassuring to some, but in Mr. Conaway’s district, many dismiss it as an effort to disparage Mr. Trump. On top of that, Mr. Conaway has never been under the glare of national scrutiny.The government of Iran released five senior members of Al Qaeda earlier this year, including the man who stepped in to serve as the terrorist group’s interim leader immediately after Osama bin Laden’s death, and who is the subject of a $5 million bounty, according to an American official who had been briefed on the matter.
Iran’s release of the five men was part of a prisoner swap in March with Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, the group holding an Iranian diplomat, Nour Ahmad Nikbakht. Mr. Nikbakht was kidnapped in the Yemeni capital of Sana in July 2013.
The Iranian government, in a statement on Thursday after the release was reported by Sky News earlier this week, denied that the five men had been freed. The American official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter, confirmed the release of Saif al-Adl, a senior member of Al Qaeda’s ruling body, known as the Shura Council, who oversaw the organization immediately after bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs in Pakistan in 2011.
Analysts tracking Al Qaeda described the release as alarming, given the seniority of the five men. It comes at a time when much of the organization’s leadership has been lost in back-to-back airstrikes, including the death earlier this summer of Nasser al-Wuhayshi, considered to be the organization’s general manager. At the same time, the organization had been hemorrhaging members to the more brutal and media-savvy Islamic State.Google is certainly no stranger to testing new features slowly. Most recently, it released an update to YouTube's UI that's been in testing for at least four months. And for Google, this is a good thing. Testing new features with limited samples of users helps get data not only on their usefulness, but also on how they augment user experience and engagement.
That brings us to the Play Store, an app where nothing is more important than engagement. Google appears to be testing a new feature called "Related Interests," which lists off various categories with round chips similar to the chips used for artists on Google Play Music's web interface.
The chips will evidently appear on individual app listings and on the Play Store's main page, recommending categories based either on the single app or on your possible interests in general.
Presumably the feature is intended to improve discovery, an area where - in this writer's opinion - the store could still use some help. Whatever the case, the new feature looks nice so far - who wouldn't want to tap on those chips?We don't have any recipes for a 4-course backcountry meal, but we do have some wide-ranging tips on planning and preparing food while camping or backpacking. Next to water and a good pair of shoes, food is certainly important "gear" - something has to fuel the several thousand calories a day you can burn thru while hiking. So scan our menu of suggestions below, and bon appetit!
When deciding what to carry as nourishment, consider the bang for the pound - carry those food items that deliver the most calories for the weight or bulk you have to pack. See more about loading backpacks here. You don't want to go hungry, but there's no point in overloading your pack either. Review the content labels and figure the total calories in a container of food and then compare to the weight of the contents. Lots of high-water content foods like fruits or prepared soups aren't good bets for backpacking, for example. (Fruit to eat the first day isn't a bad load though). Fatty foods that travel well (not all do) often have double the calories per ounce of carbohydrates. Also consider the weight of the container itself, which pretty much rules out canned goods. Look for freeze-dried or powdered foods you can mix with water found near your campsites for minimal weight. But if you're car-camping, anything goes, since carrying weight or bulk isn't a factor.
1 - 2 pounds per day is usually enough food to meet your caloric needs. Unless you're a really big guy, you can make it on the lower side of that on weekend trips since you always know you can pig out at a restaurant as soon as you get out of the woods. On longer trips any accumulating calorie deficit will have a more negative effect on your hiking ability, so plan on eating more per day to ingest close to what you're burning. Also, in colder weather, you'll burn a lot of calories just to stay warm, so pack accordingly.
Instead of carrying food in its original container, carry serving-sized amounts in sealable baggies. This cuts down on weight and trash, and the bags can have many other uses during your trip.
You can take some fresh fruit and veggies despite the weight - just make sure to eat those first to get rid of the weight as soon as possible and to eat before they spoil.
Pack just enough food to get you thru your planned trip, plus an extra cold meal or two just in case you run into a delay in getting out, or run out of fuel.
Love condiments but don't want to pack a refrigerator? Not that we would condone such a thing, but the reality is, the best source for those little packs is to snag them from your favorite fast food restaurant or convenience store. That way you can bring mayo, mustard, relish, hot sauce, etc with no refrigeration required!
Adherents to an Atkins-style diet can fall off the wagon a bit on a backpack trip without too much concern - you may need at least some carbs during the day for energy unless you're fully keto-adapted. A limited amount of sugar-carbs are OK since you'll be burning off the calories as you go, but better still are complex carbs for longer, controlled calorie absorption. Note that some energy bars are no better than candy bars as far as minimizing blood sugar spikes. Protein during the day won't absorb as well to give off the energy you may need; save your protein-heavier foods for dinner after you're in camp. There's nothing wrong with protein-friendly tuna fish or peanut butter during the day; just be sure to supplement with a few carbs if you'll be working hard. Drink lots of water when you eat to aid digestion. Learn more about water usage while hiking
Beware of too much chocolate in energy bars or snacks; not because of the calories - it's the melting that's the pain. M&M's and hot chocolate mix are good bets if you want chocolate without a melting mess.
Avoid overeating in general during the day; eat just enough to keep your energy levels up, but not so much to get bogged down from trying to hike hard on a full stomach.
Adding various spices to otherwise bland food is a big help; just don't overdo it and get your stomach all in knots. Some good suggestions - garlic cloves, onion, spiced oil, hot mustard, and dried salsa. Stash in clean prescription bottles or other small plastic container.
Avoid meals that are messy or time-consuming to prepare. Don't mix your food in the same pot you use to boil water unless it's a non-stick pot. Watch our video on our camping pots. Instead, take an additional easily cleaned container for mixing and re-hydrating dried foods. Use this container to hold food and condiments when stowed in your pack.
To keep hungry animals away, store food away and pick up spills. Never sleep with food (or other aromatic items like toothpaste, gum, etc.) in your tent -- hang it in a bag from a high tree limb, or store in a bear canister. See more information on bear precautions. Watch our video on bear canisters
Check out the cooking times for anything you bring. Some packaged products require more than 20 minutes; stick to preparation times of 10 minutes or less to cut down on fuel usage and hassle.
Freeze-dried food designed for backpacking trips is available in endless varieties, including desserts. Some of it is better than others; we stick to dried noodles and tomato-sauce selections which are apparently harder to screw up - we carry a few meal dehydrated options, and most outdoor stores have a selection. For more information, watch our video on backcountry meal options.
However, since some dehydrated meals are a bit expensive, you can can consider making your own with an inexpensive dehydrator or shop the regular grocery store and find good substitutes. Here's some grocery suggestions:
Oatmeal is a classic king of the trail - it's generally OK for anyone not carb-averse, easy to prepare, and lightweight. For best results, put individual servings into baggies. Add desired amount of sugar, cinnamon etc to each bag. Same goes for instant hot cereals, mashed potatoes, rice and other inexpensive dehydrated foods like couscous, instant grits, Chinese noodles, hash browns, refried beans, and chili. Visit your local food co-op or health store and browse in their bulk section for a good selection - you can buy as much or as little as you want.
Make your own trail mix (aka GORP- Good Old Raisins and Peanuts) with M&M's, mixed nuts and raisins. Separate into a daily allotment in baggies so you don't overeat on it during any single day. It's great stuff, but real boring by day 3 or 4. So mix it up with some pretzels, other nuts, crackers, sesame sticks, malt balls, dried fruit, cheese, etc for longer trips.
For a warming breakfast, take along a few flow-through coffee and tea bags, instant coffee packets, spiced cider packs or hot chocolate.
You have lots of powdered soup options to choose from - dump the containers and repackage in baggies.
Look for tuna fish in foil pouches. The packets cost more, but weigh less than a can. Note there is usually a lot of water weight in the pouches, so don't carry more t han 1 or 2.Bread is OK for a few days, but prone to crushing. Try tortillas instead.
Peanut butter is great on backpacking trips - take it out of the jar and put in a baggie. Cut one corner off so you can squeeze it onto your bread without using a knife, then store that cut bag into another baggie.
Some hard sausages and cheeses will keep for several days on the trail; keep well-sealed in your pack and eat first.
This page and its contents copyright 2002-2018 by lowergear.com. However, if the information on this page was useful to you, and you would like to link to it from another web page, feel free to do so. Please contact our camping gear rental office if you have any questions or comments.House Democratic Caucus Chair Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – House Democratic Caucus Chair Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) urged Congress on Wednesday not to leave for the week until it votes on a measure that would prevent people on the government’s no-fly list from purchasing a gun.
“This Congress should not leave this week without giving us a vote on something very simple: No Fly, No Buy. If you can’t fly, because you are on a watch list by our government and you are not allowed on an airplane, you should not be allowed to enter a gun shop and walk out with an assault weapon,” said Becerra.
The bill Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015, also known as No Fly, No Buy was introduced by Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), a member of the House Budget Committee, as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2017 Budget.
It “Amends the federal criminal code to grant the Attorney General the authority to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of a federal firearms and explosives license to any individual if the Attorney General: (1) determines that such individual has been engaged in or has provided material support or resources for terrorist activities, and (2) has a reasonable belief that such individual may use a firearm or explosive in connection with terrorism.”
It also “allows any individual whose firearm or explosives license application has been denied to bring legal action challenging the denial.”
Becerra noted that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is planning to meet with the National Rifle Association to discuss the No Fly, No Buy legislation. The Associated Press reports that Trump announced Wednesday on Twitter that he would meet with the NRA to block people on terrorist watch lists or no fly lists from purchasing weapons.
“We’re now beginning to hear some Republicans, including presumptive Republican nominee for president Donald Trump, say there’s something to No Fly No Buy,” said Becerra.
“The difficulty is this: This Congress is asleep at the wheel. It’s been a do-nothing Congress, especially when it comes to the issue of gun safety, and there’s no guarantee that anyone in Congress will have an opportunity to vote to prohibit someone who’s on a no-fly list from being able to purchase a weapon,” he said.
Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) called refusal to enact No Fly, No Buy “a form of political criminal negligence” and “a form of stunning political malpractice.Last year I went to Thanksgiving dinner in Chanhassen. A friend of mine bought a house out there and hosted a dinner and, being curious and friendly, I made the trek.
I was surprised when I got to my buddy’s place because, though it was in the middle of nowhere, my friend’s house wasn’t a house per se. Rather, he’d bought an attached townhome that was part of a long row of similar complexes in a brand new greenfield development, complete with sidewalks and quasi-porches and a pleasant almost grid-like street network.
Looking out at the sidewalks, I turned and asked my friend, “So where’s do you walk to?”
He looked at me blankly. “Um. People walk their dogs?”
The useless sidewalks in my friend’s strange middle-of-nowhere quasi-urban neighborhood got me thinking, so I started looking around for places where you have relatively urban densities, but no urban diversity. There are lots of these places, and not just in the suburbs. It doesn’t make any sense, but there you have it. Let’s meet some of them!
Suburban and Urban Examples
One way to measure this is through Walkscore, which simply counts the number of shops, parks, and transit options within a certain distance of your address. For example, here’s what my friend’s townhome neighborhood in Chanhassen looks like from the outside*:
And here’s the Walkscore:
Please note: It’s very difficult to get a Walkscore of 0. That’s impressive. Well done, Chanhassen! It’s all the more impressive in an area that technically has sidewalks and a facade of urban design.
There is probably a long list of similar suburban examples I could list, and one of the problems stems from the difficulty of attracting retail into suburban developments. For example, see this situation in Blaine, or the mixed-use challenges in Chaska [see comments].
But the real problem is when I see these kinds of developments built in ostensible cities like Saint Paul.
For example, here’s what the “upper landing” development along the Mississippi River in the shadow of Downtown Saint Paul: solid blocks of 4-story buildings…
But here’s the Walkscore: a paltry 36. Basically, there’s nothing down there unless you cross the busy Shepard Road quasi-freeway and climb the hill to West 7th Street.
Here’s a similar project along West 7th Street in the Shepard-Davern area. Again, you have solid blocks of beige 4-story condos…
But here’s the walkscore: 31. There’s one restaurant (Buca), a Taco Bell, and an Ethiopian restaurant that’s always in trouble with the city for various license violations.
The Legacy of Crappy Zoning
How does this happen? How do we build dense urban buildings that are potentially walkable only missing the mixed-use component that might actually provide destinations?
One of the big culprits was the single-use zoning that Saint Paul had in place for many years. I’m not sure of the exact history, but a few years ago the city began replacing its traditional “Sim City” zoning categories (R for residential, I for Industrial, and B for Commercial) with mixed-use “Traditional Neighborhood” zoning that allowed for the mixing of residential and commercial uses within the same building.
TN zoning came too late for many of these spots, but even in places where you do have TN zoning in place, you can still have difficulty creating proper mixed-use environments. For example, the latest from-scratch large-scale development in Saint Paul is in the Victoria Park neighborhood, also along West 7th Street. [See bottom image.] There, despite the four-story apartments and condos, there doesn’t seem to be much of any retail yet.
Changing Mindsets
There are lots of reasons why you might have density without mixed-use, but none of them seem very satisfying to me. One is that people don’t want it, because they view commercial spaces as a nuisance. For example, in the (aforementioned) Shepard-Davern area along West 7th Street there’s a new building planned to replace an empty office building. In the latest Highland Villager, the local paper, I found the following quote from a neighbor:
A lifelong highland park resident who moved into Gateway Village [development] several years ago said she loved the idea of getting rid of the vacant building, though she is concerned about adding more housing and traffic to the neighborhood. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to be able to get sell my condo and get a good price for it,’ she said.
To me, it’s sad when development equates to misanthropy. Surely the presence of more people, shops, and things to do in your neighborhood is a good thing and not a detriment?
Another challenge stems from the depressing fact that sometimes there isn’t much demand for commercial spaces because they often have trouble filing up. For example, it’s commonplace in many parts of the Twin Cities to see a new mixed-use commercial/residential building where the ground floor retail stays vacant for years.
This is another challenge that cities have to overcome. We need to change mindsets about retail, and start figuring out how to encourage walking (and shopping) in urban neighborhoods instead of simply driving to Target once a week.
In short, I just don’t get these kinds of buildings. I don’t get it in the suburbs, but I really don’t get it in the city. The whole point of living in an urban environment with sidewalks and 4- to 5-story buildings is that you can walk to places. Why would build a bunch of that kind of building only without anywhere to walk to? Why would you want to live in a 4-story building in the middle of nowhere? Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere?
Maybe someone can explain it to me. Thanks in advance!
* It’s very nice on the inside, BTW. Wall to wall carpeting, two-car garage, nice kitchen countertops, multiple TVs, etc.
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AKRON, Ohio - Counselors were at three Akron schools on Monday offering support for classmates and teachers of two sisters who died following a devastating fire at their home on Thursday.
Jayda Snowden,12 and Kymeria Cody,5 were not able to escape the flames.
The Akron City School District provided counselors at Schumacher and Buchtel Community Learning Centers where the two girls attended classes.
They also offered counseling at Crouse Community Learning Center, where Jayda attended school previously.
"Some are taking it extremely hard, you know? These were classmates. These were students that people knew and I think that it's our job as a crisis team to make sure that we are connecting, listening to students addressing their concerns," said Brian Hill, in charge of the district's crisis team.
The Akron Public School District earlier issued a release saying they were working on a plan to address fire safety away from the school after losing 9 students in three fires over the past ten months.
Firefighters confirmed that there were no smoke detectors in the house in which the two girls lived.
"I have heard lots of teachers asking questions of ways that they can continue to incorporate home safety into their curriculum and help out as much as possible," said Hill.
In the meantime community members were also rallying to support the girls' family, who lost everything in the fire.
Coaches were at Eerie Island Park, where Kymeria would have been at cheerleading practice on Monday, collecting donations of money and household items.
"We are out here trying to make sure that she gets everything we can get for her. Clothing, shoes, anything as far as housing.....whatever we can get for her," said Mechelle Hicks.
Counseling was also being offered to fellow cheerleaders who would have had their first practice since the fire on Monday, working toward a November competition.
"Just to know that we were all just standing at the field at our game talking and laughing and then to get that phone call stating that this happened it was just devastating," said Hicks.
The coaches planned to accept contributions at the park again from 2:00 - 5:00 pm again on Tuesday and from 1:00 - 4:00 pm on Friday.
A spaghetti dinner was also being planned for Buchtel CLC on Thursday.
The community is being invited to the park at 5:00 pm on Friday, where supporters plan to march to nearby United Baptist Church for prayer service and a balloon launch.
For now, they are turning away nothing to help the family recover.
"Anything, as well as your prayers, because she definitely need prayers," said Chemika Broadus.
"To know that the community will come together as one to come out and help this parent this mother that some people don't even know - this woman and to know that there's people out there, genuine people out there that love her, it's awesome," said Broadus.
A GoFundMe account has also been set up. You can click here to donate to the fund.
An account has also been set up with Chase Bank. Checks or money orders should be made out to JadaSnowden-KymeraCody (no spaces, just a hyphen between the girls' names).Jess is a curly-haired Jersey girl who adores penguins and watches the worst reality shows on TV.
Music is a form of self-expression as well as a common method of release. For one lone ostrich, music broadened his horizons in the realm of dance.
The typical zoo experience consists of strolling around from one animal to the next, sipping on some fresh lemonade, and taking more pictures than your camera can handle.
Every once in a while, some unusual antics will occur at the zoo, making for an unforgettable visit.
One zoo decided to enhance the visitor experience even more by adding music to the mix near the ostrich pen, as you’ll see in the video below.
When the beat progresses, this fluffy ostrich certainly takes notice. He has no problem dancing alone either!
The ostrich begins to swing his head around, even dragging his neck across the floor. Never seen that move before.
This ostrich isn’t the first animal to get swept away by a catchy rhythm. He soon starts to jiggle his torso, making each feather flow with the movement.
He then gets very into the song that is playing. He begins flapping around his long brown and white wings to the tempo of the music, demonstrating ideal dance moves for any bird.
The dance almost seems like an interpretive performance of some kind for this ostrich.
He holds his head up high, as if he is boasting about his stellar skills.
See the ostrich’s moves for yourself below and please SHARE this ostrich’s entertaining performance with any dance or music lovers!Someone looking for a tarot reading in Brooklyn, New York would not have to search for too long. The city is rich with tarot readers from many backgrounds and belief sets. From witch covens to tarot readers to occult bookstores, the borough houses an active and eclectic community that has developed particularly strongly in the traditionally working-class neighborhood of Bushwick. Many of the tarot readers and spiritual explorers in this area have gathered in recent years around two focal points: the occult bookstore, Catland, and the biweekly tarot bazaar, Tarot Society. Between these and other affiliated venues, a diverse metaphysical community is forming. Meet 7 of the tarot readers who are actively shaping this community:
DAMON
Damon lights Palo Santo at Catland in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Damon uses the Waite-Smith and the Cagliostro decks simultaneously. He always has with him an amethyst necklace, and often amethyst crystals, a small stone spider, two crystal skulls and a dried chicken foot (given to him by a voodoo priestess). He burns sage and Palo Santo before readings. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Damon described himself as a “nerdy boy” in childhood, raised in a Catholic family, who spent most of his time in libraries. But he was always fascinated by divination, he told HuffPost, having grown up watching his grandmother tell fortunes with playing cards. “I can’t live in nihilistic world,” he said. “To me the notion that there is a way to connect to a higher consciousness is essential.” At age 14 he asked for his own deck of tarot, and by his mid teens Damon began training with a professional tarot reader. After leaving home, Damon hit the road. “I was a vagabond with my pack of cards,” he said, hitchhiking throughout his native South Africa with a friend. In their travels Damon and his companion developed an interested in the practices of the sangoma -- traditional root workers who use divination to communicate with spirits on behalf of the living. Damon and his friend journeyed to the Mautse Valley where the sangoma were said to live in caves while receiving spiritual training. They lived there for two months -- an experience Damon said set the tone for his future career as a "spiritual practitioner." His own spirituality encompasses paganism and witchcraft. “I self identify very strongly as a witch, and I see my practice as a card reader as an extension of witchcraft.” In his readings Damon uses two decks simultaneously with various talismans, or sacred objects, placed on the table for added magical potency. He is most comfortable, he told HuffPost, reading from metaphysical bookstores where he can incorporate other healing traditions into his practice (i.e. writing ‘prescriptions’ with certain herbs and incense or directing clients to the right candles or oils to use for various spiritual ailments.) “I want people to feel empowered and feel that they can take agency for their own spiritual practice.”
STELLA
Stella begins a reading at Catland in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Stella uses the Medieval Scapini deck. She also often has a candle, a blend of cinnamon oil, frankincense oil and other oils for protection and sometimes incorporates wine, ginger tea, mugwort or vervain tea with lemon. She keeps a statue of the Egyptian cat god, Bast, next to her for protection. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Stella bought her first tarot deck at age 13 with lunch money she had saved up. In the process of learning about the cards she befriended a classmate, Dante, who shared her interest and who would become a lifelong mentor and friend. Dante told Stella she was a “natural born witch,” a term mentioned often in the magical community and which, Stella said, refers to someone “born with their light turned on.” “The more I do tarot,” Stella told HuffPost, “the more I understand that when I’m reading at my best it’s because I have something to say that’s helping someone.” Between being a tarot reader, a sex educator, a BDSM educator, a consent educator and also doing manual labor and service jobs, Stella is humble about her work. “I’m not trying to be a big shot. If I’m doing my job right, I’m providing a service.” Stella describes herself as a “pragmatist.” For example, she was born with cancer in one of her hands which prevented her from using her thumb. When she was 17 she got reconstructive surgery that left her with chronic pain. To emotionally cope with the pain and reclaim that part of her body, Stella got an arrow tattoo on both of her wrists. Years later she walked into Catland, and one of the owners saw her tattoos and immediately mentioned the Norse god, Týr. According to myth, Týr was a one-handed god whose associated rune symbol was an arrow. “I wouldn’t believe in magic if I didn’t have some kind of evidence,” Stella said.
BRUNO
Bruno his cards out for a reading at a cafe in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Bruno uses the Golden Tarot by Liz Dean. He also brings crystals - usually a combination of quartz, amethyst and obsidian. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
For Bruno, reading tarot was never something he could share with his Catholic Italian family. He began exploring divination at the age of 15 at a time, he said, when there was a lot of interest in occultism among his peers. A friend bought him his first deck -- a practice of gifting which assumes the potency of a rite of passage for many, Bruno said. His first phase of tarot reading was characterized by exploration, reading for his high school teachers in secret and making after school visits to a local metaphysical bookstore. “When I was younger I had more of a wild approach [to tarot reading] because I didn’t have the knowledge of the history and the symbolism.” That said, the “wildness” allowed him to tap into the tarot as an intuitive tool, Bruno told HuffPost. “Being young I felt almost more in tune to it.” He put the cards away for several years, returning to them when he felt more “psychologically ready” to tackle the kinds of issues people might bring up in their readings. Nowadays Bruno promotes transparency in the occult community. “To me it would be beautiful if everyone could learn tarot,” he said. Bruno reads primarily at events like Tarot Society and his approach is what he describes as “new age.” “[Reading tarot is] something I do, but it’s also part of who I am.”
CRIMSON KITTY
Crimson Kitty does a reading in her apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Crimson Kitty uses the Rider-Waite deck. On the table she also keeps a Bast athame (a Wiccan dagger) to ward off negativity, clarity spray oil to cleanse the space and purple candles. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Crimson Kitty grew up going to church every Sunday with her Episcopalian family. Her mother read tarot on the side, which added to the family’s pastiche of metaphysical inclinations. “My mom was a total witch even though to this day she’ll deny it,” Crimson told HuffPost. When she was 12 years old Crimson asked her mom to teach her the ways of tarot, but it wasn’t until she moved to Bushwick in 2013 and met Tarot Society organizer Darcey Leonard that she began reading regularly. With practice came skill. “I started saying things I wouldn’t normally say, words or sentences I wouldn’t normally use in my daily life.” Crimson also performs drag professionally but through tarot found a means for exploring her eclectic spirituality. “I am pagan,” Crimson told HuffPost, “but I have my own personal spirituality. I focus on a wholeness within myself.” Her readings emphasize the connection between reader and subject. “I have everyone shuffle the deck and take their time so they put their energy in there. If they’re not giving me energy, I can’t give them anything.” After this she shuffles the deck three times and takes a moment to absorb the energy, which she describes as being “like a vacuum through my throat. When I feel that feeling, I know it’s time to begin.”
MOLLY
Molly talks with HuffPost at Catland in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Molly alternates between the Morgan-Greer and Rider-Waite decks. She often uses crystals (amethyst quartz and green calcite) and candles during readings.
Molly was “in the broom closet” for her first years of exploring witchcraft and tarot, she told HuffPost. She received her first deck as a gift from her mother at age 15 but didn’t begin reading for others until college. Those initial years were critical, though, for Molly to develop a personal relationship with the cards. “My deck knows me through and through,” Molly said. She turned to it in times of distress and confusion, cultivating an "inner wisdom" that would benefit her in future readings. Several years ago Molly had what she described as a transformation. She went onto YouTube and began watching videos of protection mantras. Without noticing the time, three hours passed, inducing a state of “high” that she said lasted for four days. From then on she quit smoking, developed a yoga practice and began studying the tarot in a more focused way than she had before. “[Tarot] has a way of getting under your skin,” Molly told HuffPost. Molly has been reading tarot professionally for a year. It has taken on renewed importance in the wake of her transformation. “Tarot has been my entrance into believing I’m a spiritual person,” Molly said. Her goal, she told HuffPost, is to “bring [these] magical practices to the mainstream” by helping others awaken their own spiritual selves.
STUART
Stuart explains a card in his apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
Stuart uses the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. (Wendy George/Huffington Post)
“I’m not a psychic,” Stuart told HuffPost from the outset. “Nothing I do is supernatural.” Books and papers are strewn throughout his apartment, and Stuart himself can be found most days, he said, deep in study. Tarot is an field of academic inquiry for him. The cards contain messages and symbols, Stuart said, that stand alone without the help of “intuition” from the reader. “These symbols are absolute,” Stuart told HuffPost. “I only operate the deck.” The tarot deck does hold spiritual importance for many, though, Stuart said. “People sense dimly that something is missing from their life,” and they turn to tarot with the hope of discovering some truth about their lives and feeling more “spiritually |
code of sexual ethics—is actually required for attendance at this institution.”
In fact, the sexual-respect initiative never challenges the regime of drunken hook-up sex. To do such a thing, of course, would not be “sex-positive.” Rather, the initiative simply assigns wildly asymmetrical responsibilities and liabilities within that regime, consistent with the current practice of college administrations everywhere.
One of the initiative’s videos portrays two females drinking frenetically at a series of dance clubs; a male disengages one of them and escorts her to her dorm room where he has sex with her, allegedly non-consensually because she is too woozy from the boatloads of booze she consumed to offer proper consent. The moral of the video is that bystanders should intervene if they think that someone is too drunk to agree to sex with a stranger. Several additional interpretations come to mind. First, that university administrations should perform an “intervention” on the entire booze-fueled hook-up scene. Second, that females almost always have control over whether they end up in a mentally compromised state and should therefore be careful to avoid such a condition.
This second reading is unthinkable in today’s university, however, where the male is always responsible for regretted couplings, and the female a wilting victim. If this sounds like a resurrection of Victorian values, that’s because it is, but with one major difference: The modern college co-ed retains the prerogative of unbounded promiscuity (think: “sex-positive”), while also retaining the right to revert at will to a stance of offended innocence.
If Columbia felt compelled to take on the issue of “sexual respect,” it could have done so in a way that actually had intellectual value, had it remembered that its primary mission is to fill the empty noggins of the young with at least passing knowledge of mankind’s greatest works. Civilization has grappled for thousands of years with the challenge of ordering the relationship between the sexes and has come up with more sophisticated solutions than forcing males to watch videos on escaping the “man box.” Reading Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene would offer students an elegant take on sexual respect, albeit one grounded in the now taboo virtues of chivalry and chastity. If “relevance” is necessary, Mozart’s Don Giovanni might provide an example of “bystander intervention,” as when Don Giovanni’s aristocratic peers try to hustle the peasant girl Zerlina away from his clutches.
Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, however, were unblinkered about the male sex drive, something about which contemporary feminists can’t make up their minds. To recognize the specific hungers of the specifically male libido puts one dangerously close to acknowledging biological differences between the sexes. And it is precisely the force of the male sex drive that makes the norms of courtship and modesty so important for carving out a zone of freedom and civility for females.
Feminists, by contrast, are inclined to reduce the male libido to a political power play that has more to do with keeping females out of the boardroom than getting them into the bedroom. If gender “power dynamics” are really what lead men to aggressively seek sex, then a lecture from a TED “anti-sexism educator” might be relevant. But if, in fact, men pursue sex because they want to have sex, then a different set of strategies is called for. And one of those strategies might be to tell females in blunt terms: Don’t drink yourself blotto, take your clothes off, and get into bed with a guy you barely know. A sexual-assault counselor will never utter those empowering words, however, because preserving the principle of male fault is more important than protecting females from “rape.”
Naturally, the Columbia initiative embraces the conceit that college campuses are filled with shell-shocked female victims of rape culture who might collapse at any minute from the trauma of college experience. It is for them, explains Columbia, that the “Finding Keys to Resiliency” module was designed. The “Finding Keys to Resiliency” option allows “individuals who identify as survivors” and their “allies” to “incorporate wellness and healing into their day-to-day lives…from trauma-focused therapy to healing circles, from dance and movement to yoga and mind/body work.” If, however, you are a religiously conservative student who believes that premarital intercourse is immoral (a few such closeted throwbacks still exist), you are out of luck. There is no module for you.
Predictably, the sexual-respect initiative created more trauma for Columbia’s wilting co-eds, but not always in the expected ways. One “survivor” was forced to wait 45 minutes outside her “survivors-only” workshop, only to be told that the workshop had been cancelled. “Sitting there waiting with no word caused me to panic,” she told the Columbia Spectator. The university had failed to provide her with a Victorian fainting couch.
The sexual-respect initiative undoubtedly triggered, to borrow a phrase, by Columbia’s most famous self-identified survivor: the recently graduated Emma Sulkowicz, otherwise known as the “mattress girl.” Sulkowicz belatedly claimed that she had been raped by a fellow student with whom she had been having intermittent casual sex. When Columbia, after a lengthy investigation, failed to find her alleged rapist guilty and expel him, she started carrying around a dormitory mattress in protest. This yearlong stunt, for which Columbia granted her academic credit, earned Sulkowicz rapturous accolades from the campus-rape industry and inspired scores of student imitators at other campuses.
If anyone needs the qualification of being a “self-identified” survivor, it’s Sulkowicz. After her alleged rape, Sulkowicz sent fawning emails to her alleged rapist, begging to get together again. Two days after the incident, Sulkowicz texted him: “Also I feel like we need to have some real time where we can talk about life and thingz because we still haven’t really had a paul-emma chill sesh since summmmerrrr.” A week later she suggested that they hang out together: “I want to see yoyououoyou.” Two months later, she texted: “I love you Paul. Where are you?!?!?!?!”
It took Sulkowicz six months to decide that she had been raped. Columbia was indubitably right not to find her sexual partner guilty, but it lost the public relations battle anyway over its alleged mistreatment of rape “survivors.” Thus, Columbia’s burgeoning campus-rape boondoggles, including the “Sexual Violence Response” unit and the new “Special Adviser to the President for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response.” This special adviser, a self-described decades long “social-justice advocate,” was soon elevated to executive vice president, heading a new Office of Community Life. From there, she designed the sexual-respect initiative.
I asked the Columbia administration how many students had lost their good standing as a result of not participating in the sexual-respect initiative. The chief of staff for the Office of University Life would only respond, “Because it was a University requirement, there was a high compliance rate with the program.” That may sadly be true. Columbia, after all, has power on its side. Even the most obstreperous comments about the mandate on the Columbia Spectator student-newspaper website were calling for civil disobedience within the confines of the initiative: “Make sure to record every word spoken. If just one feminist gets out of line: walk out, claim you were traumatized by a trigger and file a grievance….Demand to take your class with men, because women trigger your false rape accusation.”
The American university’s plunge into triviality may have become irreversible. To the narcissism of identity politics and victimology can now be added the quackery of “healing circles” and “mind/body work.” Columbia proudly claims that it has developed one of the first university-wide programs on sexual respect in the nation. Expect desperate one-upmanship to follow as our national descent into a new academic Dark Age accelerates.Today is a double CotD for Great Nature players. We now know what the RR Heal Trigger and RRR G Guardian will be in Fighter’s Collection 2017! These cards keep in theme with Great Nature’s usual retiring and drawing, but not necessarily in a way you would expect.
Boxed Daughter, Spangled
[G guardian] (Usable when both fighters’ vanguards are grade 3 or greater, and the number of face up G guardians in your G zone is three or less)-Opponent Turn’s Guard Step-[Choose a card with “Heal” from your hand, and discard it] Call this card to your (GC) from face down.
[AUTO] Generation Break 1:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down G guardian from your g zone, and turn it face up] When this unit is placed on (GC), you may pay the cost. If you do, choose any number of your grade 3 or less guardians, and until end of that battle, they get “[AUTO]:When this unit is retired from (GC), draw a card.”.
Refugee Spangled
(You may only have up to four cards with “HEAL” in a deck.)
[AUTO]:[Soul Blast (1)] When this card is discarded from your hand for a cost to call “Boxed Daughter, Spangled” from your G zone, if the number of face up cards in your damage zone is one or less, you may pay the cost. If you do, Counter Charge (1).
Our Heal Trigger appears to be a clone of the previously revealed AF Heal. This is a nice boon for Great Nature, as Counter Charging is always valuable to have around. You can only get the Counter Charge as long as you have one or less face up damage, but Great Nature Counter Blasts so much, especially in Cath Palug builds, that this will rarely be much of a restriction. The G Guardian costs a Counter Blast though, which makes the Heal’s CC even more useful. Even if you have no face up damage, as long as you have a Soul to spare, you can get off a Counter Charge before needing to pay the cost for the G Guardian’s skill. If you decide to run multiple copies of the G Guardian, or even if you just want to go into it early while only running one, you can always G Guard with Spangled quickly before GB1 if you need an emergency CC and do not wish to sacrifice any RGs to Kundalini.
The G Guardian itself is where these cards really shine. Guarding will now require a bit more forethought, as you will want to have placed all other guardians on the Guardian Circle before calling out Spangled. This is because you will get a draw for every Grade 3 or lower Guardian that is retired at the end of the battle you used Spangled to guard. If your hand is full of Grade 1s and higher but you feel as though you will need more shield to guard out through your opponent’s turn, you can use Spangled alongside a handful of other cards, including Grade 3s, to empty your hand of useless low shield cards and have a chance to draw into useful combo pieces for your following turn or higher shield cards to survive through your opponent’s. However you choose to utilize Spangled, it is a powerful card when played well.
The next CotD we see for Great Nature will likely be our Generation Rare G Unit from Fighter’s Collection 2017, so make sure you follow this blog or our Facebook page to get updates when that card goes up. Also, Great Nature University now has a community on Facebook where lovers of this glorious clan can come together and talk strategy! Join your fellow GN players to find others who can help you better yourself and maybe find some new ideas that hadn’t come to mind before. I look forward to seeing you all there!
AdvertisementsUkrainian business tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the main sponsors of the Maidan coup d'état which rocked Ukraine two years ago, had $380 million of his assets frozen by a London court, Bloomberg reports.
The business news agency explains that Kolomoisky and fellow oligarch Hennadii Boholiubov have been accused by Russian oil company Tatneft of seizing control of a refinery being run as a joint venture in Ukraine, and of "siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars into their shell companies, according to documents filed at a London court. Two wealthy associates of the Ukrainians were named by state-controlled Tatneft in the suit that is seeking more than $334 million from the men."
© Sputnik / Vitaliy Belousov Stratfor: Political Infighting in Ukraine Could Resume Despite Leadership Change
The asset freeze approved by a London judge includes Kolomoisky's properties in the UK and France, including a one hectare French villa, and a 50 acre estate in the Haute Savoie region, a boat, and a private jet. Boholiubov's frozen assets include expensive London properties, including a house on Belgrave Square near the gates of Buckingham Palace in London.
Kolomoisky, who is believed to have been one of the principle financial backers of the Maidan protests of late 2013 to early 2014, which culminated in the illegal overthrow of unpopular but democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych.
He would go on to be appointed governor of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Region, running it like his own personal fiefdom, before being dismissed by post-Maidan President Petro Poroshenko, with whom he had a series of high profile run ins, in March 2015. Among the scandals were allegations that Kolomoisky had siphoned off $1.8 billion in IMF loan funds into a bank account in Cyprus, and an ownership dispute over state oil company Ukrnafta.
Following his dismissal, Kolomoisky funded the so-called UKROP Party, a rag-tag collection of ultranationalists and outright neo-fascist MPS including Dmytro Yarosh, Andriy Biletsky, and Boryslav Bereza, each of whom have been accused of war crimes in eastern Ukraine.
© AFP 2018 / SERGEY BOBOK Ukraine’s Naftogaz CEO Says Two Claims Against Russia’s Gazprom Amount to $50Bln
Last month saw the closure of Kolomoisky's Ukraine Today television channel, meant to serve as an alternative to the popular Russian broadcaster RT. Experts believe that the oligarch now lives in Switzerland, and spends time in the US, and is looking to get the remainder of his ill-gotten assets out of the country.
Long-known on the Ukrainian economic scene, Kolomoisky has been accused of using murder, bribery, and other illegal methods in his business dealings. A Russian criminal court launched a criminal case against him in 2014, convicting him in absentia of aggravated murder, kidnapping, obstructing the work of journalists and using prohibited means of warfare in eastern Ukraine.The Kogi ( KOH-gee) or Cogui or Kágaba, meaning "jaguar" in the Kogi language,[2] are an indigenous ethnic group that lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Their civilization has continued since the Pre-Columbian era.
A portrait of a Koguis Tribeswoman and child on one of the terraces at Ciudad Perdida, Colombia.
A portrait of a Koguis shaman at Ciudad Perdida, Colombia.
A portrait of a Koguis Tribesman on one of the terraces at Ciudad Perdida, Colombia.
Language [ edit ]
The Kogi language belongs to the Chibchan family.[1]
History [ edit ]
The Kogi are descendants of the Tairona culture, which flourished before the times of the Spanish conquest. The Tairona were an advanced civilization which built many stone structures and pathways in the jungles. They made many gold objects which they would hang from trees and around their necks. They lived not much differently from modern day Kogi. Before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, the Tairona were forced to move into the highlands when the Caribs invaded around 1000 CE. The decision to flee to the mountains proved beneficial and strategic by the time the Spanish entered modern-day Colombia in the 15th century. In 1498, the Spanish arrived in Northern Colombia where they began to enslave indigenous groups. Threatened by dogs and soldiers alike, the Tairona remained in isolation. Regardless, many priests were hanged, women were abducted and raped, and children were forced to accept Spanish education. Later, missionaries came and also began to influence their way of life, building chapels and churches amidst their villages to train and convert the locals. In the years since, the Kogi have remained in their home in the mountains, which allows them to escape the worst effects of colonization and aids them in preserving their traditional way of life [3]
Spiritual beliefs [ edit ]
Indigenous Koguis Shaman
The Kogi base their lifestyles on their belief in "Aluna" or "The Great Mother," their creator figure, who they believe is the force behind nature. The Kogi understand the Earth to be a living being, and see humanity as its "children." They say that our actions of exploitation, devastation, and plundering for resources is weakening "The Great Mother" and leading to our destruction.
Like many other indigenous tribes, the Kogi people honor a holy mountain which they call "Gonawindua," otherwise known as Pico Cristóbal Colón. They believe that this mountain is "The Heart of the World" and they are the "Elder Brothers" who care for it.[4] They also say that the outside civilization is the "Younger Brothers" who were sent away from The Heart of the World long ago.
From birth the Kogi attune their priests, called Mamos (which means sun in Kogi), for guidance, healing, and leadership. The Mamos are not to be confused with shamans or curers but to be regarded as tribal priests who hold highly respected roles in Kogi society. Mamos undergo strict training to assume this role. Selected male children are taken from birth and put in a dark cave for the first nine years of their lives to begin this training.[5] In the cave, elder Mamos and the child's mother care for, feed, train, and teach the child to attune to "Aluna" before the boy enters the outside world. Through deep concentration, symbolic offerings, and divination, the Mamos believe they support the balance of harmony and creativity in the world. It is also in this realm that the essence of agriculture is nurtured: seeds are blessed in Aluna before being planted, to ensure they grow successfully; marriage is blessed to ensure fertility; and ceremonies are offered to the different spirits of the natural world before performing tasks such as harvest and building of new huts.
The Kogi Mamos have remained isolated from the rest of the world since the Spanish Conquistadors came to plunder South America for gold. In order to preserve their traditional way of life, they rarely interact with the modern world or with outside civilization. Outsiders are not allowed inside their ancestral lands.[6] The Kogi Mamos say that the balance of the earth's ecology has been suffering due to the modern-day devastation of resources by Younger Brother. The Kogi Mamos in turn believe that their work as Elder Brother is instrumental in helping to prolong and protect life on earth. In a desperate attempt to prevent further ecological catastrophe and destruction, the Kogi Mamos broke their silence and allowed a small BBC film crew into their isolated mountaintop civilization to hear their message and warning to Younger Brother. The subsequent messages and warnings were voiced in the documentary The Heart of The World: Elder Brother's Warning. After the documentary was filmed, the Kogi Mamos returned to their work in isolation and asked outsiders to not come to their land.
The Kogi soon realized that their message and warning had not been heeded by Younger Brother, and instead, as they had predicted, many catastrophes occurred and the natural world continued to be devastated at an even more rapid pace.[7] In turn they contacted the same filmmaker twenty years later to give one final message. This became Aluna, a documentary made by the Kogi Mamos themselves in which they give a second warning and say that they have chosen to share their secret sciences with Younger Brother so that Younger Brother can help change the world for the better.[8]
Cosmology and socio-religious concepts [ edit ]
Traditional Kogi religion is closely related to the structure of the cosmic universe that exists in dualistic expressions. On a cosmic level, the sun separates the universe into two hemispheres: the east/west and consequently a right/left. The Kogi use this dualistic notion to elaborate on a number of earthly divides: man/woman, male/female, heat/cold, light/dark, and right/left. They believe each of these groupings are complementary opposites. Within each pair, one cannot survive without the other. In the case of good(right)/evil(left), the Kogi believe committing a sin once in a while serves as a justification for the existence of good. These natural opposites are a way to keep the society balanced or “in agreement” (yuluka).
The two hemispheres are then divided into four segments: North/South/East/West. Within these four points of reference, the Kogi have associated the orientation of their religious framework into South/East as good/light and North/West as evil/dark. This cosmic structure has influenced four entrances to each village, four principal clans, and has divided the Sierra Nevada into four sections. Following this concept, the Kogi have structured the ceremonial houses and sacred offering sites into four quadrants. In the ceremonial house, a line is drawn down the middle of a circle, which divides the men into a left side where men “know more”, and a complementary right side of men who “know less.”
In a system of four quadrants, the four lines inevitably meet in the center creating a fifth dimension to the cosmic universe. The central point holds great significance to the Kogi people. It represents the center of the universe, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. During the ceremony, this is the point where the mama buries the four sacred offerings and “speaks with god.” In the center of the circle, he places a tiny stool upon the spot where he receives and answers questions of the cosmic universe.
In Kogi cosmology, they have added three dimensions to the standard N/S/E/W: Zenith, Nadir and the Center. This fixed system of points resembles an egg and is formulated into nine stages/layers of development. Mother Goddess, the creator of the universe and mankind, created the cosmic egg. The horizontal layers of the egg are divided into two sections of 4 four worlds with mankind (the 5th layer) residing in the center. The cosmic egg also represents the uterus of Mother Goddess and the Sierra Nevada. Because of this, the Kogi have built the structure of the ceremonial house as a replica of the cosmos.
Funerary customs [ edit ]
The mamo[9]s participate in various rituals to celebrate the individual's life cycle from birth to death. These ceremonies include offerings, dances, and other ritual affairs. Although every life cycle is celebrated, emphasis on burial customs has been of much importance to the Kogi people. In this tribe, death is not viewed as a tragic event but as a “fulfillment of life.” The burial process usually lasts approximately two hours and is performed without prayers and chants. To an outside viewer, the ritual might seem simple without depth for such a spiritual tribe. What the viewer does not realize is that the funerary customs have philosophic concepts and deeper underlying meanings beyond the dimension of the western world.
Burial rites are an act of “cosmification”. When a person dies, the mamas return him/her back to the uterus of Mother Goddess.
The list below dictates 8 components of the burial ritual analyzed by anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff.[10]
Verbalization of the cemetery as the “village of Death” and as the “ceremonial house of Death”; verbalization of the burial pit as a “house” and as a “uterus”. Flexed position of the corpse, placed in a carrying net, with a rope tied to the hair. The net represents the placenta of the uterus, which is connected by an umbilical cord (rope) that is cut after nine days. This allows the person to be rebirthed into another world. Corpse resting on the left side and with the head orientated toward the east. The east is the direction of the sun and light of the universe. Marked emphasis on right and left: position of hands; position of the corpse; left turns and right turns. As the person is turned, it creates the movement of the cosmic axis. Placing of offerings at the sides, the center and the top of the burial pit. This placement relates to the sacred points: North/South/East/West/Zenith/Nadir/Center Verbalization of the offerings as “food for the dead”. The dead not only consist of ancestors, but also mythical beings of the masters of plants and animals. Eating this offering has a close relationship with sexual intercourse. The food symbolizes male semen and also the fertilization of the supernatural being and thus serves a way to multiply the offering. For example, if an offering is made to the Mother of Maize, the found constitutes as nourishment and an incentive to procreate more maize. Attitude of “opening” and “closing the home”. Purification by turning. By rapidly turning the corpse, one becomes invisible and invulnerable to Death. For nine days and nights, the soul wanders on a journey that ends in the rebirth of that soul.
[11]
Traditions [ edit ]
The Kogi have many characteristics that define their culture. For example, all Kogi men receive a "poporo" when they come of age. The "poporo" is a small, hollow gourd that is filled with "lima," a type of powder that is made by heating and crushing shells to produce lime. The men also continuously chew coca leaves, a tradition followed by many indigenous tribes to connect them to the natural world. As they chew the coca leaves, they suck on the lime powder in their poporos, which they extract with a stick, and rub the mixture on the gourd with the stick to form a hardened layer or crust. The size of this layer depends on the maturity and the age of the Kogi man.
Differences between women and men in the Kogi culture are very important; they have specific roles that are fundamental to their traditions. This image shows their clothes and the typical objects that they use in their common daily life.
Kogi men and women all carry traditional bags across their shoulders. Only women are allowed to weave the bags. Many of the things carried inside a bag are secret and known only to the owner. Bags carried by Mamas contain sacred traditional objects. When two Kogi men meet, they use the customary greeting, which is to exchange handfuls of coca.
Lifestyle [ edit ]
Kogi men and women alike have simple modes of dress. The women pick, card, and spin wool and cotton while men do the weaving of the cloth. Clothing for men consists of a tunic and simple pants tied with a string at the waist. Clothing for women consists of a single length of cloth wrapped around their bodies as a dress. The Kogi all wear only pure white clothing. They say that white represents the Great Mother and therefore the purity of nature.
The Kogi live in a series of villages, called Kuibolos [12] containing circular huts made of stone, mud, and palm leaves. Men live in a separate hut from the women and children. Each village contains a large hut called a "nuhue" or temple where only men are allowed. In the "nuhue" many things are discussed and decisions are made. Divination and concentration also occur in these temples. Women are not allowed because the Kogi believe that women are more connected to the Great Mother and have no need of entering the temple. There are also women priests in the villages.
All consultations are done with Mamos, and many of the decisions are based on their wisdom and knowledge. Many Kogi marriages are arranged by Mamos to ensure the most fruitful communities. Marriages are not forced, and the buying or selling of women is not permitted, although women as young as 14 can be married and have children. The Kogi do not allow the mistreatment of women, and it is not uncommon to find marriages that were not arranged, but the Kogi also disapprove of breaking arranged marriages.
Fields, houses, and livestock are passed from mother to daughter as well as from father to son, which is bilateral inheritance of these items. There is also the normal parallel descent of personal items, including ritual objects which are male property and descend patrilineally. But certain rights, names or associations descend matrilineally.[13]
Common crops of trade are sugar and coffee. Much of the sugar is turned into "panela," a type of Colombian hardened brown sugar. The women do most of the planting of the vegetables, but farming is a responsibility of the whole family.
Contemporary Kogi [ edit ]
The Kogi practice agriculture using slash-and-burn farming methods;[14] each family tends farms at varying altitudes of the Sierra, producing different crops to satisfy the range of their needs.[15] They also raise cattle on the highlands.[16]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]I’m listening to you guys. You wanted some C++ tutorials so here we go. I will do more C++ stuff later.
Next step with the project is to add level selection screen. I will create base data classes in C++.
<strong>This Tutorial has been created using Unreal Engine 4.9.2</strong> Make sure you are working on the same version of the engine. 1 2 < strong > This Tutorial has been created using Unreal Engine 4.9.2 < / strong > Make sure you are working on the same version of the engine.
Design
There will be three levels in the game which:
will have different difficulty,
will have different type of enemies,
take some time to complete,
level icon reference,
level background reference,
All of those will be visible in level selection screen (which I don’t have yet ) so I will create structure and enums inside C++ for later use.
“I can’t code!”
I have the same problem so don’t be afraid to install Visual Studio and try using C++. Why you should use C++? Main arguments for me:
Storing variables and declaring structures / enums in C++ is stable, you won’t get issues that can come when using Blueprints. Another thing is that your blueprints will load faster. I suggest to store variables / structures / enums inside C++ and I will work this way from Today.,
Placing math to C++ will increase your game performance,
And last one – most important: if you know how to blueprint you can learn C++ to create variables and math functions without a problem. It will be hard from start to understand UE4 macros but you should try.
How to Learn?
This book can help you a lot, Read this wiki page, Learn basics of C++, Learn by watching Epics code! This is the way I’m using. If I want to create blueprint pure function I’m searching one that was created earlier by Epic and trying to copy it with my variables / references. Watch all Youtube “UE4 C++ Tutorial” especially from Epic.
Enabling C++ creation
If you want to use C++ in your project simply add blank code to project. It will ask you to download Visual Studio – just do the whole steps. Restart your computer and again add code to project. Then restart your editor.
Adding Enums
If you don’t know how to open Visual Studio use FILE -> OPEN VISUAL STUDIO from Editor.
Navigate your project.h file. I have named my project “ShooterTutorial” so it’s ShooterTutorial.h file.
You can add Enums in every class. I’m using project.h file because it sounds like it’s global.
To add new Enum type add these to your project.h file: (PasteBin)
// Fill out your copyright notice in the Description page of Project Settings. #pragma once #include "Engine.h" #include "ShooterTutorial.generated.h" // //without this you will get compile error after GENERATED_USTRUCT_BODY() - always add.generated.h UENUM(BlueprintType) //"BlueprintType" is essential to include so you can create this enum in Blueprints. enum class ELevelEnemyType : uint8 // Name of Enum. Need starts with 'E'. This enum will hold type of enemies inside the level. Just as information in level selection screen. { ET_Robots UMETA(DisplayName = "Robots"), ET_Humans UMETA(DisplayName = "Humans"), ET_Aliens UMETA(DisplayName = "Aliens") }; UENUM(BlueprintType) //"BlueprintType" is essential to include so you can create this enum in Blueprints. enum class ELevelDifficulty : uint8 // This enum will hold level difficulty displayed in level selection screen. { LD_Easy UMETA(DisplayName = "Easy"), LD_Medium UMETA(DisplayName = "Medium"), LD_Hard UMETA(DisplayName = "Hard") }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 // Fill out your copyright notice in the Description page of Project Settings. #pragma once #include "Engine.h" #include "ShooterTutorial.generated.h" // //without this you will get compile error after GENERATED_USTRUCT_BODY() - always add.generated.h UENUM ( BlueprintType ) //"BlueprintType" is essential to include so you can create this enum in Blueprints. enum class ELevelEnemyType : uint8 // Name of Enum. Need starts with 'E'. This enum will hold type of enemies inside the level. Just as information in level selection screen. { ET_Robots UMETA ( DisplayName = "Robots" ), ET_Humans UMETA ( DisplayName = "Humans" ), ET_Aliens UMETA ( DisplayName = "Aliens" ) } ; UENUM ( BlueprintType ) //"BlueprintType" is essential to include so you can create this enum in Blueprints. enum class ELevelDifficulty : uint8 // This enum will hold level difficulty displayed in level selection screen. { LD_Easy UMETA ( DisplayName = "Easy" ), LD_Medium UMETA ( DisplayName = "Medium" ), LD_Hard UMETA ( DisplayName = "Hard" ) } ;
Please read comments inside the code for explanation. Now if you compile your project you can create new Enums in Blueprints from LevelEnemyType and LevelDifficulty.
Adding Structures
Here’s great Tutorial about structures in c++. And here’s my code – just copy it after enums declarations. (PasteBin)
USTRUCT(BlueprintType) //again BlueprintType means you can use this structure in Blueprints. struct FLevelData //name of structure - need start with 'F' this structure will hold level data which will be displayed in level selection screen. { GENERATED_USTRUCT_BODY() // without this you will get compile errors UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") // this means you can break structure in blueprints + it will be replicated. //Always use UPROPERTY() macro in variables. ELevelEnemyType EnemiesType; // declaring ELevelEnemy Enum in ELevelData structure. UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") ELevelDifficulty LevelDifficulty; UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") float LevelTime; // levels will be time based that's why we need to declare how long we can play before end of the level. UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") float HiScore; // we will store HiScore in this structure so it can be seen in level selection screen. UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") UObject* SequenceData; // reference to Object which will store sequence of enemies for the level. UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") UMaterial* LevelIcon; UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") UMaterial* LevelBackground; UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data") FString LevelToLoad; //name of the level to load. //Constructor FLevelData() { //Always initialize your USTRUCT variables! // exception is if you know the variable type has its own default constructor EnemiesType = ELevelEnemyType::ET_Robots; LevelDifficulty = ELevelDifficulty::LD_Easy; LevelTime = 120.0f; HiScore = 0.0f; SequenceData = NULL; //means clear reference } }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 USTRUCT ( BlueprintType ) //again BlueprintType means you can use this structure in Blueprints. struct FLevelData //name of structure - need start with 'F' this structure will hold level data which will be displayed in level selection screen. { GENERATED_USTRUCT_BODY ( ) // without this you will get compile errors UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) // this means you can break structure in blueprints + it will be replicated. //Always use UPROPERTY() macro in variables. ELevelEnemyType EnemiesType ; // declaring ELevelEnemy Enum in ELevelData structure. UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) ELevelDifficulty LevelDifficulty ; UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) float LevelTime ; // levels will be time based that's why we need to declare how long we can play before end of the level. UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) float HiScore ; // we will store HiScore in this structure so it can be seen in level selection screen. UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) UObject * SequenceData ; // reference to Object which will store sequence of enemies for the level. UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) UMaterial * LevelIcon ; UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) UMaterial * LevelBackground ; UPROPERTY ( EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Level Data" ) FString LevelToLoad ; //name of the level to load. //Constructor FLevelData ( |
the "sacred" symbols of religions "should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule."
Another joint statement by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and Cairo's respected Al-Azhar University was even clearer: it called on the media "in all countries to be vigilant that freedom of expression not be taken as a pretext for offending religions, convictions, religious symbols and everything that is considered sacred."
In both documents, however, the emphasis was on self restraint, with no mention of legislative enforcement.
But after the recent events in the Middle East, the Rev. Bryan Lobo, director of the Theology of Religions department at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, is convinced that "Christian leaders like Patriarch Bechara Rai and others cannot but support the Muslim world in its appeal to restrict such activities of religious defamation."
"Hatred for another religion which leads to the defamation of that religion's texts, figures or values," the Jesuit scholar said, is "totally contrary to the command of Jesus to'love your neighbor as yourself.'"
In recent years, the Vatican has gone to court to fight images that it considered "offensive" toward Pope Benedict XVI, such as an ad-campaign that portrayed the pontiff kissing a Muslim leader or, more recently, when a German satirical magazine published a photo-shopped image of the pope's vestments stained with urine.
The Rev. Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian Catholic scholar writing for AsiaNews from Lebanon, said that "beyond the exaggerations," Muslim anger "points the finger at something real: under the guise of freedom, in the West we tend to ridicule religion."The MicroVision founder looks at the big picture, including licensing technology from Japan's universities, the investment climate, and the government's IT initiative. And, oh, if you think cellphone screens are too small now...
Academic, inventor, technology guru, thinker, and business builder in both the US and Japan, Masahiro Kawahata embodies the Renaissance spirit many believe is required to build Japan's New Economy. Nominally engineering professor at Tokai University, he also holds positions at Stanford University and the Universities of Washington (UW) and Southern California. In the 1980s, he advocated a nationwide Cyber Japan plan based on optical fiber; a plan not unlike the Mori government's recently announced IT initiative. Later, he developed the technology behind one of the world's first and largest cable networks, eventually adopted by Tokyu Cable and other operators to power their cable TV businesses. He has worked at IBM (US) and Fujitsu. In the early 1990s, he participated in a study group at Southern California University focusing on the impact of information technology both in Japan and the US and drafted a scenario for fostering technology transfer across the Pacific. In 1993, he helped develop cutting-edge retinal scanning display technology with his colleagues at UW and established Microvision Inc. (Nasdaq: MVIS). Kawahata has received awards from MITI and other institutions. His current projects include scouting Japanese partners for Microvision and helping several other US ventures expand into this country, and he continues to help small and medium size companies learn from his experience. His passion is to bridge academia and industry, and promote technology transfer between universities and industry, and between nations. Chiaki Kitada and Daniel Scuka met with Kawahata at his Tokyo offices. A partial transcript follows. What started your interest in engineering and technology?
I guess it was an electric engine model I played with as a child. My father was an engineering architect working on power plants -- he helped build the first nuclear power plant in Japan. But he didn't encourage me to follow him. Once you become successful, it's a very good job. You can build all sorts of interesting things. But if you're mediocre, it's difficult to make a living. I always wanted to work in an interdisciplinary area between business and academia, which I did both in Japan on the CATV development project and in the US with Microvision. When I work for universities, I'm always conscious about business, and vice versa. However, in Japan, there's no equivalent industry-academia bridging as there is in the US, so [here] I've been extremely frustrated. How did you first get involved with US venture business?
With my colleagues at UW, I was researching new graphical information interfaces for PCs. One idea was to project an output image directly into the retina, which would eliminate the need for large, expensive, and energy-consuming LCDs or CRTs. It's very difficult to reduce the [physical] size of the screen -- we wanted pocket size -- so we decided to totally eliminate the display screen. With direct projection, you achieve a clear display with a very high resolution, full color, and good portability. Later, some VCs suggested forming a company to commercialize the idea. They were very happy to provide equity financing, and the university would license the rights to the new venture. The licensing fee was about $5 million; now I think that was a little too cheap. [Laughs.] The money was paid to the university, so they were very happy. At this time, 10 years ago, licensing like this would never happen in Japan -- this was before the TLOs [Editor's note: "technology licensing offices" are helping bring ideas developed in Japan's universities into the commercial realm], so I was very excited to get involved and work together with people who were trying to make the company grow. UW provided graduate students and research assistants to help develop the technology; some of them later moved to the new company, Microvision. It went public on Nasdaq in 1996. I am an advisory board member of Microvision and continue serving as a bridge between the company and UW. Interestingly, if you're kind of successful at making a public company, you start receiving many proposals from various parties. I was asked by quite a few investors, entrepreneurs, and other academics to work together on new commercial projects. Have you accepted any offers?
One of the new ventures is eCharge Corporation. It's a Web-based financial settlement software development company founded three years ago. I helped them come up with ideas and fundraising. At the same time, I was asked to join a new company called Terabeam, which is very successful now. I'm one of the founders and shareholders. Events have just unfolded in front of me without my asking for it; I had no intention of trying to find new business ideas. With Microvision's retinal scanning display (RSD) technology, we understand you first looked for investment from Japan, but had no success. Now you're back. Why the change?
In 1993, Microvision's product was only a fairly large prototype, only showing future possibilities. It was not a practical working model. We presented the idea to Japanese investors, and most said, "The idea is great -- come back when you're ready." So nobody was interested in investing. But the situation is very different in the States. There, they bet on potential and [future] possibilities. I've come back to Japan because Microvision has been very successful at developing military and medical applications and other professional uses. Also, RSD has been sold to companies like Boeing for pilot training. Microvision is sure that the technology is very stable and practical and does not affect the eyes. Now, it's trying to make very small integrated circuits; there's a possibility of making the circuits cheaply, which would allow RSD to be incorporated into a small cellphone or a PDA.
Are Japanese investors risk averse?
The mechanism for assessing investments here is very different from the way it's done in the States. Here, there are few people who can evaluate the market potential and "investability" of new technology, even if the ideas are good. VCs don't want to make investments based solely on a business plan; they only listen to entrepreneurs after they start making money. You can't incubate venture businesses in this kind of environment. It's a Japanese mindset; there's no room for losers to recover from [a failed venture]. That's why people are afraid of taking risks and don't accept challenges. Therefore nothing happens. This is a very conservative society. For example, if you graduate from Tokyo University, you receive a full score [from society]. Your life is thereafter measured against how many points you lose by the time you retire from your job. Why come to Japan for partners now?
Japan is the best country in the world for making small devices. Several companies have shown a keen interest, but they are still very slow at making decisions. They're now in the process of checking into [our technology], and they're asking a bunch of good questions. How can Japan boost the transfer of research technology to industry?
One of my colleagues in the US has pointed out that technology transfer relates to personnel transfers -- the movement of professors from universities to industry, which is a core part of technology transfer [in America]. In other words, tech transfer is the same as human transfer. There's no such concept in Japan. Once a professor leaves a university, [there's no going back] -- it's one way only. Also, the gap between academics and industry is zero in the US. In Japan, there's a gap. The university is an ivory tower. A professor who is interested in making money is [thought to be] no good. Conversely, if someone in industry is keen on [pure] academic work, they're [in trouble because they're] not making any profit. In the past 30 years, America has developed a fairly well-established model for technology transfer -- the now-famous Silicon Valley venture model. I don't think the best idea for Japan is to follow the Silicon Valley model. One idea [for here] is the TLO; it's a bridge between universities and industry. But the TLO should belong to the university itself. The most important thing is to support [academics] who are interested in following up on commercialization, not to regulate them. So with TLOs, if you come up with an interesting idea, the university will help you; for example, offering legal help. What do you think of the TLOs in Japan?
I don't have any prejudice against the government-backed TLOs, but the government officials tend to think something will happen, as long as they prepare some kind of system. Under the TLO system, you cannot get away from government control if you accept support from them. You have to submit full reports to the authorities and sometimes provide positions to retired government officials. I was turned off by these constraints. [Editor's note: In Japan, in a practice called amakudari, some bureaucrats actively canvass companies formerly under their supervision to provide cushy post-retirement jobs in return for favorable administrative oversight.] The good ideas that professors and researchers develop at universities should be freely commercialized through external funding. The TLO is supposed to play a role as a booster to make this happen. Are Japanese academics actively working to commercialize their research?
Only a very small number, as far as I know. This may be increasing, but [there's still] not so many. Even when they are interested in starting venture businesses, people around them discourage the idea, as they think it's better not to take risks. I'm hoping their attitude will change drastically. It's a lot easier to work together with American academics than Japanese, because there is a tradition in Japan -- and I'm not saying whether it's good or bad -- that a professor shouldn't make money. Here, if you make money, people look [down on] you, although this attitude is [starting to] change. At first, people looked at me and thought, "Raising money? He's not a real professor." But at recent university meetings, department and faculty heads have been saying, "What Professor Kawahata is doing is right." But there are still people who look at me as if I'm a different kind of being. I'm still feeling uneasy.
What about fiber-to-the-home being promoted as part of the national IT initiative?
The government is pulling in its horns, isn't it? They don't think they can pursue it. This idea already existed 15 years ago. If it had been implemented, all the homes would have been connected to fiber by now. [In the 1980s], I actually did the calculation and submitted a plan called Cyber Japan. At that time, fiber was more expensive and the technology was different. It's not an easy project, because you have to upgrade all the network switches. Otherwise they'll be overloaded due to the sheer amount of data carried by the fiber optic cables. So, it's not just a matter of installing fiber. People don't quite understand that. Is FTTH the best approach to getting broadband into Japanese homes?
I don't think so. I won't say it's bad; however, first of all, it costs money. Also, there's no grand design for building IT infrastructure in this country. None at all. Furthermore, there's no discussion about how it will become useful to people and make them happy. What the government wants to do is to install fiber optic cable to each household so that people can receive all sorts of information at high speeds. But the government hasn't told us what will happen to our lives as a result, and how much it will cost to do so. How should existing infrastructure -- such as TV, telephone, and video -- be integrated with the proposed fiber network? This hasn't been laid out clearly. Will the fiber network be separate? Will [the average home user] still need to install an antenna for digital TV? The CIA has reported that Japan's economic power and influence will decline by around 2015. What do you think?
It won't happen if everybody makes an effort to avoid it. In the past, Japanese used to work harder. But now, people seem to [take it easy]. Fifteen years ago, everybody said Japan had serious problems, but we really didn't; we made great progress. We Japanese tend to hold pessimistic views toward ourselves. We tell ourselves we're not good enough, and that [traditionally] has pushed us to work harder. Today, if you told students that Japan will lose its economic power [unless everyone works hard], they might say, "So what?" Today, the Japanese outlook has changed. People are rich; they're enjoying their lives. We have very nice restaurants. People have lost the hungry spirit. Of course people complain about low economic growth, but they are not seriously suffering from poverty. Five years ago, people were warning that Japan would go downhill, but it hasn't. People now can live with the fact that our country belongs to the upper middle or lower top class in the world, and they question whether we have to become No. 1 in the world, or even No. 2. They think, "It's fine, it's OK." Does the Japanese education system foster innovation?
Every human being has the ability to invent something, to be creative. Education determines the character of human beings. The educational system in this country has to change. Japanese students are capable, but they are not trained to become creative. They are educated from very early stages to be capable of performing given tasks. However, when you ask them to come up with new ideas and solve problems, they're not used to it. The Japanese school system overemphasizes equality and nips potential talent in the bud. There's no fostering of creativity or mental toughness. How can Japan maintain its position in the world?
In my opinion, Japan's strength is manufacturing and engineering technology. It can survive with manufacturing technology. Toyota is a good example. It's not outstandingly innovative, but it is able to manufacture excellent cars. That's how we survive. The invention of new technology can occur any place in the world, and Japan can still make good use of it. We don't need to insist on [Japanese] nationality for technological innovation. We don't have to pressure ourselves to become [overly] creative and inventive. If you put too much emphasis on a national project supported by the government, it will hamper technological development.The controversial striker is set for another spell in Serie A, while the Algeria international will continue his career in England
By William Joyce
Inter are close to agreeing a deal with Southampton to sign Dani Osvaldo on loan which would send midfielder Saphir Taider in the opposite direction.
The Serie A side hope to soon agree personal terms with the Italy striker, who made only 13 league appearances for the Saints last season before being loaned to Juventus less than six months after joining them from Roma for a club-record €15 million fee plus add-ons.
The 28-year-old Osvaldo previously wore the jerseys of Huracan, Atalanta, Lecce, Fiorentina, Bologna and Espanyol.
Taider, a box-to-box central midfielder who can also play out wide, was part of the Algeria squad that made it to the round of 16 at the World Cup finals, making two appearances in Brazil.
The midfielder, 22, only joined Inter from Bologna in the summer of 2013, but failed to live up to the high expectations at the Giuseppe Meazza side.
The arrival of Yann M'Vila on loan from Rubin Kazan has damaged Taider's hopes of holding down a place in Walter Mazzarri's first team, with Cardiff's Gary Medel also linked with Inter and he is now set to continue his career in the Premier League.
Southampton are also willing to take 34-year-old Argentina defender Hugo Campagnaro as part of any deal.
New Southampton boss Ronald Koeman is eager to bolster his squad following the departures of five key players this summer and with Morgan Schneiderlin prepared to hand in a transfer request to force a move to Tottenham.
Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez are wanted by Spurs but Saints insist they will not sanction their sales having already lost Rickie Lambert, Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Calum Chambers.
Those departures have brought in more than €110m in transfer fees, with Dusan Tadic and Graziano Pelle the only incoming signings so far at a combined cost of around €25m.It wasn't any moment in particular that inspired PlayStation 4 exclusive The Order: 1886; it was the feeling Ready at Dawn co-founder Ru Weerasuriya had after completing Uncharted 2.
It was a feeling that, four years after Naughty Dog's incredible action game released for the PlayStation 3, Weerasuriya still struggles to pin down.
"It's that emotion they created in people," Weerasuriya, who 10 years ago co-founded the California developer of the PlayStation Portable God of War games after a stint at Blizzard working as an artist, tells me in a cool, calm hotel room set away from the chaotic whirlwind of Gamescom's Koelnmesse.
"I remember even before the first Uncharted was released, internally there were talks of it. We know the Naughty Dog guys really well. They're very close to where we are and very close to us in so many ways as a team.
"We realised what they were trying to create. The first one came out and they were setting up an IP. And then with the second game suddenly they created an emotion in people of that Hollywood blockbuster."
Uncharted 2 launched to critical and commercial acclaim, but more importantly it sent shockwaves throughout the game industry, changing forever the idea of what a cinematic video game could be and sparking a horde of developers to emulate its design. Nathan Drake did Indiana Jones better than Harrison Ford and Tomb Raider better than Angelina Jolie, and everybody loved it.
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Uncharted 2 was the push Weerasuriya needed to settle upon Ready at Dawn's shot at the big time - a big budget triple-A home console exclusive of its own after years spent making high quality handheld games in the God of War series.
"We're not trying to emulate things they've done moment to moment," he says. "We're trying to give people that similar sense of entertainment. Entertainment comes in big Hollywood blockbusters and small indie movies - it's that. Games don't do that enough. Sometimes you get just stuck in one gameplay sequence or one thing you do all the way through. They gave us a multitude of things that created a whole. Once you played the game you felt, wow, that was a great ride. That's where the inspiration came from.
"It was one of the first times in my life when I felt, wow, you know what? That was an amazing ride. There was no single moment when I was like, that was just cool and that's the thing I love. The feeling at the end was, I just want more of this. This is what I want to do. This is what gaming is for me. That's what drove us to do this."
The Order: 1886 was announced at E3 in June with an eye-catching in-engine trailer that posed prospective PS4 owners more questions than answers. We know it's set in London in 1886, but it's a steampunk version based on an alternative history 40 years after the Industrial Revolution. According to the official blurb, "Man uses advanced technology to battle a powerful and ancient foe". You play as a member of an elite order of knights, joining a centuries-old war that will determine the course of history forever.
"The feeling at the end was, I just want more of this. This is what I want to do. This is what gaming is for me. That's what drove us to do this." Ready at Dawn co-founder Ru Weerasuriya
And that was all she wrote, until later in June, when Weerasuriya penned a PlayStation blog post that, again, posed more questions than answers. We discovered that The Order: 1886 is a linear, story-based third-person action adventure with shooting mechanics and moment-to-moment gameplay that's "really not what you might expect". Beyond that, no detail. The Order is real, but it remains a mystery.
A recurring theme is this concept of The Order being "filmic". It's a somewhat abstract term that I at first took to mean cinematic, so, sort of like Uncharted, but Weerasuriya says it's to do with the way Ready at Dawn is shooting the game.
Yes, shooting the game.
"I know it's a word that's been thrown around quite a bit," Weerasuriya admits. "We concentrate on the important part of what makes something feel like a movie. It's not about making a game that just has a string of things that happen, like a movie. But, how can we inject some of the things you've seen in films?
"It's not about one event following another. It's really about how the craft of making a movie is different from the craft of making a game. We are different as industries, but we have so much commonality. One gap we haven't bridged yet is that we create engines, cameras and lighting. All those things are done for the purpose of a game, in a very game centric way. We decided, okay, let's make the gameplay, but let's take the techniques we've seen in movies.
"Like lenses. How do lenses work? We felt we could build gameplay and at the same time build lenses that were real. In the engine, the lenses we shoot with I actually emulated from real lenses I've used to shoot photography. The guy who directs the game with me has done the same. He does cinematography. I do photography in my free time.
"Graphically it's not a question of making things look better because it's a new generation. It's not in how many polygons or how much better the fidelity is. It's those little techniques like chromatic aberration, like lens distortion.
"How do we build lighting and atmosphere around lighting? On movie sets lights are not just lights. They have a light, but they create with smoke or whatever an atmosphere to give this glow to the light that is kinda fake, but in movies you excuse it because you expect it and it's really cool. You're like, wow, that shot has so much depth. It's got atmosphere. It's got thickness. It's got grittiness. That was the stuff we wanted to bring to games.
"That's filmic."
I expected Sony to show The Order gameplay at Gamescom, in light of the game's announcement at E3, but Ready at Dawn isn't ready for that. Instead, behind closed doors presentations focused on the tech powering the game, which has been in the works for a number of years now. But despite Weerasuriya's obvious admiration of Hollywood, The Order is, after all, a video game to be played with the DualShock 4 by gamers who have forked out hundreds of pounds for a next-generation console. Unfortunately Ready at Dawn and Sony aren't talking about the way The Order plays, yet, but I ask anyway: how do all these fancy "filmic" techniques affect gameplay?
"It doesn't affect gameplay, which is the cool part," Weerasuriya replies. "It gives you a sense of immersion you expect out of what you see normally through a TV."
There is no doubt that, like Naughty Dog with Uncharted, Ready at Dawn wants to tell you a story with The Order. Weerasuriya says it's a "story-driven" game, with the aforementioned moment-to-moment gameplay providing a unique twist. What does this mean, exactly?
"It's the way the characters play out, the animations we use, the motion capture sessions we have," Weerasuriya says, his answer as unclear as London drenched in fog. "We try to make sure every single tool we have at our disposal, and that includes gameplay as well, serves the purpose of the goal, which is to drive people through this story.
"Sometimes you have to sacrifice a lot of what you want to do to make sure the gameplay works. We're trying to do it in such a way that there's a better balance between what you've seen. So things are not so segmented, put it that way."
"It doesn't affect gameplay, which is the cool part. It gives you a sense of immersion you expect out of what you see normally through a TV."
This looks nothing like the school I went to in Crystal Palace.
As a born and bred Londoner my interest was piqued when I heard the news that The Order was set in my home town. I've always wondered why more games haven't been set in The Big Smoke, making use of its history, landmarks and grime. I maintain a slither of hope that Rockstar North will one day turn its attention south as it ponders a setting for a future entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, but, given Dan Houser's ongoing penchant for satirising the American Dream, I'm doubtful.
And so The Order will do for now.
"I love the city," Weerasuriya says with a smile. "I grew up in Switzerland and I used to travel all around the place. There are a few cities that remain in my head as places I'd love to live in. At every street corner you find something different. You walk around greater London... people talk about America being a melting pot. For me, London feels like that. There's more diversity there than there is anywhere I've seen, and I've lived in the States for 17 years. That's got to do with how the city evolved.
"London affected so much of the world's history in good and bad ways. Monarchy and trading and all of that stuff. I don't think we could make enough games to talk about everything that happened in that single city. And that's the reason why London is the first one. This is where we wanted to have our base, how to kick off the IP, because there is so much we could take out of it."
The Order's London is not the London we know of today. It's not the London we know of of 1886, either. Remember, the game follows an alternative 40 years after the Industrial Revolution, so expect plenty of steampunk gadgets and weapons, some of which are shown off in the debut trailer. But you'll be able to explore well known landmarks, including Big Ben, Westminster Palace and the Houses of Parliament. The London Underground will play a part, too.
"As far as areas of London, we haven't pinpointed every single thing," Weerasuriya says, before suggesting that East London hipsters will feel right at home. "Whitechapel one because Whitechapel has a very interesting history and there are interesting places there. As of now we haven't locked down the full scope of everything we want to do, but I can guarantee you this: it's not going to be all of London."
Bah. No Croydon, then.
"London is a city that has open spaces and small spaces, but it will remain a story-driven game," Weerasuriya says. "You will see places at the beginning of the game you'll see later, you'll see them evolve, you'll have a chance to interact with them and in some ways change the way they are from the beginning to the end.
"That's where we concentrated most of our effort - trying to make sure the story we're trying to tell is complimented by the way we build the city."
"London is a city that has open spaces and small spaces, but it will remain a story-driven game."
The Order is set in Victorian-era London but you'll have advanced weaponry. Huzzah!
With The Order: 1886 Ready at Dawn is finally getting the chance to play with the PlayStation big boys. It's a new intellectual property and so, as per the rules of video game industry engagement, is one hell of a risk, but it's already set up to be a major franchise on PS4.
For amateur photographer Weerasuriya and co it's the dream game Ready at Dawn was founded to create, the reward for work done on three PSP games, a Wii game and a PS3 HD port, its origins forged in ideas scribbled down and saved for later.
"We started off as a small team of three people. 20 people by the time we finished the first game. 30 people by the time we finished the second one. We were slowly trying to get to the point where we learnt everything we needed to make this game."
Speaking to Weerasuriya, I realise he's as much a student of history as he is of film. In fact he's fascinated by it. "When I started writing it was all over the place," he says. "It was spanning a lot of centuries. And when we decided it was time for us to make the game, automatically there was this attraction to post-Industrial Revolution era Europe because of the changes in mankind during that time. There was so much happening in so little time. The world changed from an agricultural society to an industrial. It's amazing how fast that happened, if you really think about it."
But Weerasuriya's history lesson is as much about the real world as it is about the virtual. His passion for the "filmic", for history and for London is matched by his passion for the Uncharted series, created by his fellow Californians at Naughty Dog. He won't copy Nathan Drake's adventures - rather, he wants to rekindle that feeling, that "wow!", we all had upon completing them.
It's hard to explain, he says. When The Order eventually releases and the fog shrouding the game in mystery clears, fingers crossed, we'll feel it for ourselves.Improbable, a UK tech startup that helps companies build complex simulations and virtual worlds, has just raised a huge funding round in the real world. Today, Improbable announced it had closed a $502 million Series B financing round led by Japanese conglomerate, Softbank.
Improbable CEO Herman Narula wouldn't reveal the company's new valuation, but did say Softbank will hold a minority, non-controlling stake in the five-year-old company.
Founders--and Forbes Under 30 members--Herman Narula and Rob Whitehead, launched Improbable in 2012 as a platform to let companies run complex simulations quickly and for cheap. The potential market is both wonky and wide. Clients have ranged from video game makers (Bossa Studios), tech giants (Samsung), universities (Oxford), and governments (Britain's Ministry of Defense). As my friend, Parmy Olson wrote in a 2015 feature:
Improbable's software is designed to simulate systems on an unprecedentedly massive scale: the economics of a national health care system; a nation suffering a virulent infectious disease outbreak; or the cascading effects of a hurricane on a 100-mile stretch of inhabited coastline.
Improbable CEO Herman Narula hopped on a quick call with FORBES to talk about the future of the firm and the thinking behind the latest half-billion-dollar fund raise. Below, an edited Q&A:
Steven Bertoni: This is complex stuff, can you explain it to me like I'm a 10-year-old:
Herman Narula: Improbable is the logical next step of what we can do with machine learning and data analysis. Today it's possible to look at patterns in the past, but if you want to ask about the future--whether it's an economic policy, or building a road, or making any intervention into a system-- you need to recreate systems in their entirety. We go from analyzing data to recreating behavior. Our simulation helps you understand how systems operate.
Bertoni: How do you make money?
Narula: We are a platform. Every developer or company pays us based on usage. We run on a layer over the cloud--it's based on the amount of computation a virtual world uses.
Bertoni: How did you come up with the idea for Improbable?
Narula: Rob and I were students at Cambridge. Our passion was distributed systems and games. While working on the problem we thought we were solving (how to build more impressive virtual worlds) we soon saw there was actually a deeper, technical computing problem. We built a company based on those problems--that's what we are doing now, trying to be the world leader in distributed systems.
Bertoni: There are many potential markets, are you still involved in the gaming industry?
Narula: Where games are heading is something that is very important for society--massive scale, participatory worlds where people are having new experiences. That can be a seismic shift in how we interact with each other, how we experience the world and how we learn.
Bertoni: How did this $500 million round come about?
Narula: We were fortunate to have amazing early stage investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Horizon Ventures. We had good traction, now it was time to reach bigger scale and make deeper investments in what we are doing. Softbank was one of the companies we were talking to. What clinched it for me was going to Tokyo and meeting [Softbank boss] Masayoshi Son. We realize that our 50-year vision was something he embraced and really understood. For the ambition of what were are trying to do--that is to create entirely new worlds--we think it's worth that level of commitment and long term thinking -- that's the only way it can get done. These are hard technical problems.
Bertoni: What is the 50 year vision?:
Narula: It's that you and I can wake up and seamlessly move between this world and other worlds. Why would we want to do that? It's not just escapism, it's about having new experiences that enrich our lives, new ways of making money, new economies, new worlds powered by billions of people. A lot of people talk about colonizing new worlds, I think new worlds are right here for us to build.This Black Friday weekend only, T-Mobile’s giving away flagship smartphones for FREE, PLUS, for a limited time, you can get a cool $200 of spending money for EVERY line you switch to T-Mobile
Bellevue, Washington—November 22, 2016—Uh oh. Looks like the Un-carrier’s done with eggnog and is on to the hard stuff. Following last week’s inaugural Magenta Friday, T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) today announced Black Friday offers that can only be described as kinda crazy. But in a good way. Starting November 24th for Black Friday weekend ONLY, you can get a FREE flagship smartphone from Samsung, LG and the other top-selling smartphone after 24 monthly credits when you trade in a qualified device you own with T-Mobile ONE. Plus, when you also switch a number to T-Mobile, you’ll get a cool $200 to spend anywhere you want for each and every line—up to 12 lines or $2,400 total!
And it doesn’t stop there. Ahead of the busiest travel days of the year, the Un-carrier is also giving everyone—even AT&T, Verizon and Sprint customers—a FREE hour of in-flight Wi-Fi on Gogo®-equipped domestic flights.
“This year, the holidays are on us!” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “2016 has been a looong year. And now it’s time for family and holidays and giving! So we’re going to start giving like only the Un-carrier can. We’re covering the cost of your holiday shopping and giving you the most popular superphones for the holidays. Call me crazy, but it feels good to give!”
According to a recent Gallup survey, the average American will spend $785 on gifts this holiday season. That’s a chunk of change. But, now, T-Mobile is giving families a great way to fill the Holiday Bank. For a family of four, you’ll get $800 spending money with T-Mobile’s “Holiday on Us” promotion – more than enough to cover the holiday tab – AND everybody in the family can get a FREE flagship smartphone, too! Told you it was crazy.
Holicray-cray
Earlier this year, T-Mobile broke records with its most popular FREE smartphone deal ever. Not only is the Un-carrier bringing that deal back for Black Friday – almost definitely for the last time – but now, customers can choose to get a FREE Samsung Galaxy S7 32GB and/or LG V20 64GB with qualifying trade-in, as well. Here’s how it works:
Trade-in a qualified phone you own and get a brand new flagship smartphone for FREE! You pay only sales tax. If you’ve got an older trade-in or want more memory, that’s super simple, too. Just pay a little more up front. All the deets are right here and here for Samsung and here for LG. Use your new smartphone on T-Mobile with T-Mobile ONE or Simple Choice Unlimited Get the cost of your new smartphone covered via 24 monthly bill credits. In other words, pay ZERO. Zero is T-Mobile’s favorite price this holiday season.
Plus, when you also switch a number to T-Mobile, it gets even better. You’ll get $200 of spending money per line you switch – up to $2,400 – on a prepaid MasterCard® card!
Or, if you don’t need a new flagship smartphone, you can even BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Just keep your old phone to use on T-Mobile with |
to be the end, we’re going to survive somehow.’ But there was a moment back in 2001 when I remember telling the band that I was seriously considering quitting. Because there was just too much going on, we didn’t have a manager, so we were doing everything ourselves, and that burned me out a little bit.”
What is it that drives you to keep leading Nightwish?
“I don’t think I would function as a human being unless I had music. Nightwish is a concept that can fulfil every single musical dream and ambition – even perversion – that you have. We are not bound to any musical category with this band – you can do anything. I have such talented musicians and singers around me. I never have to think, ‘What if they cannot play or sing this?’ so I am extremely privileged. Making music is all about self-discovery for me – that’s why I do music and that’s why I need to do it.”
Nightwish 2016: sweet dreams are made by these
Parkway Drive
Winston McCall has long killed off his ‘himbo’ tag to become one of modern rock’s most outspoken activists
How do you feel the perception of Parkway has changed?
Winston McCall (vocals): “It’s definitely become more serious. For a long time we were the ‘board shorts happy band who go crazy on stage’. People would laugh at us, they’d ask us questions about being Australian, that was it. But that’s never been us; we’ve never been shallow in that sense, and luckily, people have become more bothered to read our lyrics and ask us proper questions based on that.”
How’s the political climate back home not compared to 10 years ago?
“It seems like the older style of politics just isn’t cutting it any more. A younger generation is pushing for change – that’s happening in England, in Australia, it’s happening everywhere. It’s pretty nuts.”
Are the younger generation waking up to world issues?
“Yeah. You’re talking about a generation which has more access to information and it’s created all these different viewpoints, and now it’s becoming a generational gap that’s coming to a head.”
What would you say to a young fan wanting to become more proactive?
“Talk to people. Go places. Most of the activity that I was exposed to when I was younger wasn’t from old hippies handing me leaflets – it was going to a gig and talking to someone and going, ‘Shit, this person is dressed like me and they care about things I care about.’ It’s called the ‘metal community’ for a reason.”
Five Finger Death Punch
Zoltan Bathory has come from behind the Iron Curtain to power a true new metal force
What was the metal scene like in Communist Hungary?
Zoltan Bathory (Guitar): “It was completely underground, but incredibly powerful. Heavy metal wasn’t just music for us – in some way it was the voice of rebellion. Even in the West the genre was demonised, so you guys can imagine how the authorities in communist countries received it. Hungary wasn’t completely insane, but my friends in Russia and Romania had to hide that they were metalheads for fear of very serious repercussions.”
What was it like making your first album, The Way Of The Fist?
“We were hell-bent on making the record our way. We didn’t care what the ‘hot sound’ labels were looking for at the time was. We didn’t have a producer, a manager or a label, and our attitude was, ‘We are doing this with or without the help of anyone, and we’ll release it on our own if we have to!’ After half of the record was done, we knew we had something special.”
With all the fights you guys have had, was there ever a point you thought you were done?
“There were some… challenging moments. I believe every conflict, even the most difficult ones, can be solved. You may not know how, but there is a solution. As long as you don’t get caught up in emotions and handle life as if it was a chess game, you’ll figure it out.”
What has been Five Finger Death Punch’s biggest challenge to date?
“To accurately portray who we are! People believe what they read and they don’t necessarily understand that, especially online, anybody can lie without serious repercussions. I mean, blatantly lie – take things out of context and bias public opinion. People will resent you for things you didn’t even do or say! That was a challenge.”
What ambitions do you have left?
“You have to stay relevant. You have to walk the fine line between innovating your sound and a change so drastic that you lose your musical identity and with that your fanbase. We always try to put on bigger, more interesting shows – in fact, we are about to make the next jump regarding them. It’s a great feeling when we’re firing on all cylinders.”
Five Finger Death Punch: only the maddest survive
Opeth
From metal masterpieces to prog odysseys, it’s always been about the music for Sweden’s pioneers of heavy
Do you remember your first UK show?
MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT (VOCALS): “I do! We were playing with a local band who had a demo tape out, and there were maybe 50 people there. The next time was on [1998’s] My Arms, Your Hearse, and we played to only one guy… who was on the guestlist.”
What’s the biggest crowd you’ve ever played to?
“One time at Wacken, it was sunset as we were playing, and from the stage it looked like a wide corridor of people and I couldn’t see the end. I’m sure people at the back were buying fajitas or something, but it looked like it went on forever and that everyone was watching.”
Was there ever a time when you felt like giving up?
“Yeah, around the time of [2002’s] Deliverance. After that record, we did a documentary that came with the Lamentations DVD. I had to redo it when I was in a better mood because I was so negative about the future of the band! We had all sorts of problems, I wasn’t happy with anything, and I got sick. My shit turned grey. I tried to pull some shows in the UK because I was ill, but we couldn’t! I remember going to the toilet at the Mean Fiddler and it was brown shit again, right before the show. I went, ‘Yeah!’ [does a fist pump]. Ha ha! But I couldn’t do anything else for a living.”
Do you remember the first time you were in Metal Hammer?
“No. I remember it being a big thing, but I didn’t have the money to buy the issue!”
What’s been the highlight of your career to date?
“Playing at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s an honour to play with bands like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, too. It’s good for our egos!”
Opeth: metal maestros to prog odysseys
Linkin Park
Nu metal’s innovators attacked the mainstream and carved out their own niche
How did it feel to be on the cover of Metal Hammer for the first time back in the early 00s?
Chester Bennington (vocals): “We were coming up to being one of the biggest bands in the world in a very short period of time. To be on the cover of Metal Hammer was a huge achievement.”
What’s been your career highlight, and your biggest challenge?
“One of the biggest for me was performing at the Grammys with Paul McCartney and Jay Z [in 2006]. It was trippy to see Tina Turner crying. As for challenges, I find every year of my life challenging. Even with all the success, I feel like life has an extra helping of shit that overshadows anything I could be celebrating. I find it hard to let go of expectations.”
Do you feel like the early cynicism about you guys ‘belonging’ in the metal scene has finally died out?
“I think people take us for what we are. We write songs that a lot of people can relate to. But on a really heavy lineup, I would feel like the Backstreet Boys, and there’s probably a lot of people who think the same. But we’re there for a reason – I feel like we’ve earned our place.”
You played Hybrid Theory in full at Download in 2014. Was there a sense of vindication that the set got so well received at the home of metal?
“That feeling of the public and the music community supporting that record was very special, because we got to see how profound its impact was. We played at the Warped Tour the same year, and a bunch of bands came up to me and said that our band was the reason they started playing. That record opened up every door in our life.”
Babymetal Quiz
The 10 Best Nightwish Songs
Linkin Park: How We Made Hybrid TheoryKISS — Keep ICOs Simple, Stupid
Chris Housser Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 3, 2017
KISS is an acronym for “Keep it simple, stupid” as a design principle noted by the US Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.
This principle should be used for ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). I applaud the efforts of innovators that try to adapt and improve upon previous forms, but more often than not it creates unnecessary issues.
FOMO
The crypto space is extremely difficult to predict and the Fear Of Missing Out displayed by investors leads to unexpected and very surprising results. Founders capitalize on this mindset.
Many ICOs sell out in minutes. A potential investor could miss out on one of these opportunities simply by going to the washroom or taking a phone call at the wrong time. Alternatively, even those who diligently try to invest could miss out by having their transactions unconfirmed by the network due to a drastic increase in transactions at ICO launch.
Aside from wanting to invest in the next Google or Uber, the main reason for this FOMO and craze to invest in ICOs as soon as possible is because of bonuses (bad) and caps (good).
BONUSES
When bonuses are structured based on the total amount invested, users may submit their transaction under the assumption they will achieve a 50% bonus, only to find out by the time the transaction is confirmed, the bonus has disappeared. This creates unnecessary uncertainty and a rush by all investors to obtain the greatest bonus.
TokenCard Bonus Schedule
If bonuses are structured based on short time periods, it also leads to a drastic increase in transactions to achieve that bonus.
FirstBlood did a Power Hour where 170 1ST tokens were received per ETH during the first hour of the sale. Following the first hour, this was to drop to 150 per, and continue to drop in the following weeks.
1ST Bonus Schedule
Naturally, savvy investors want to achieve the maximum bonus. This structure resulted in the $5.5M cap being hit in the first 10 minutes, ending the sale. It also left a number of investors unsuccessful as the blocks were too full to include their transactions.
I am not against bonuses in principle, but short-time period or cumulative amount bonuses should be avoided. Daily or weekly bonus structures are superior, and the greatest bonus should not be more than 20%.
A lack of bonuses doesn’t mean the sale won’t end quickly, but at least early investors will all get in at the same rate. In the TokenCard sale, investors who were mere seconds apart from each other received different bonus rates.
CAPS
The DAO is the classic example of a no cap situation. It raised $162 million, or roughly 14% of all ether. Shortly after the DAO creation period, the smart contract was hacked and 3.6 million ether was stolen, the equivalent of $60 million USD. Ultimately, the community decided to hard fork to regain the stolen funds.
The lack of cap creates a very strong incentive for a hacker or group of hackers to try to game the system for a great return. Overall, it was a good lesson for the ethereum community and I do not expect hard forks to occur again in similar situations.
Perhaps equally important to limiting hacking benefits, a cap is beneficial to limit founders’ greed. Founding teams run ICOs to gain funds to develop the project they are working on. Generally, founding teams retain around 20% of the tokens (or 95% for Gnosis). In my opinion, $10 million should be more than enough to cover salaries, legal, marketing and other expenses for the foreseeable future. It is helpful when teams identify what the funds are for and provide a breakdown.
Augur Crowdsale Funds Distribution Graph
No cap, very high caps, or alternative ICO structures create unwanted results, especially in a space with unsavvy investors with a high amount of FOMO.
CROSS-CHAIN CAPS
Blockchain Capital (BCAP) recently did a crowdsale with a $10 million cap. It accepted Fiat, BTC and ETH. Over $7 million was pre-invested with fiat, leaving less than $3 million cap space for crypto investors. Bitcoin transactions required 6 confirmations before being accepted. On average, it should take 1 hour for 6 bitcoin confirmations to occur. It was unclear if BCAP intended to credit bitcoin investors at the time the transaction was sent or after the 6 confirmations occurred. It was reasonable to think that sending ETH would provide a greater chance of getting in before the cap was hit.
Unfortunately for aspiring ETH senders, the website or ETH address generator was overloaded and it was not providing ETH addresses to send the transfer to. I am aware of people that tried upwards of 20 times to generate an ETH address before giving up and resorting to bitcoin, all the while being unsure if their transaction would beat the cap before 6 confirmations were made.
Due to the ability to send transactions over multiple blockchains, the BCAP offering ended up oversubscribed. I think they tried to make the crypto investors whole, while cutting back some of the fiat investors amounts. It has never really been made clear how they achieved this.
BCAP set a rate of 100 tokens per $1 USD. Unfortunately for crypto investors, it never set a corresponding rate of USD/ETH or USD/BTC, leaving investors uncertain of what rate they would receive. I am told the conversion rate for both ETH and BTC were well below the daily price that day.
BUGS
The May 2nd ICO for TokenCard allowed users to invest with ETH, REP, DGD, GNT, MLN, SWT, MKR, SNGLS, and Unicorns (easter egg!).
Unfortunately the added complexity of accepting multiple tokens increases the chances of a bug. Lo and behold, a bug occurred. Monolith Studio, the founders of TokenCard, has acknowledged this bug and is working to fix it.
The Smart Contract code should be made available to the public prior to the sale. This will help prevent any possible bugs.
MULTIPLE TOKENS
If a platform wants to accept multiple crypto-tokens, it should set an individual cap for each token. Together, these should create the max cap. TokenCard set caps for each token, but only set The Creation Event to end immediately if at any point a total amount of $12,500,000 in ETH is contributed.
The sale was set to end 24 hours after the $4.5 million ETH cap was hit, or immediately after $12.5 million in ETH was contributed.
The upper cap was hit and left some with other token transfers in limbo and uncertainty. I think it would be interesting to set the ICO to end after the cap for each individual token is reached. Rather than racing to be one of the first to send ETH, users may feel they have a better chance with MKR or GNT instead.
TokenCard token caps
TokenCard also allowed investment with BTC and Fiat through BitcoinSuisse, but it’s unclear how that factored in to the overall sale. A separate cap for Fiat, BTC, ETH + tokens would alleviate any uncertainty.
In terms of ERC-20 tokens, I think the added complexity caused by accepting them is unnecessary. It’s a cute feature, but anyone that holds ERC-20 tokens very likely has a decent understanding of how the ethereum blockchain works. Rather than sending a token of their choosing, these investors could convert their tokens to ETH prior to the sale.
STRUCTURE
Gnosis decided to implement a modified Dutch Auction structure. A total of 10 million GNO tokens were created, and a sale cap of $12.5 million. The ICO sale price commenced at $30/GNO, and would decline in the coming days.
Well, rather than declining, the $12.5 million cap was reached within 15 minutes. At $30/GNO, this means 12,500,000 / 30 = 416,666.67 GNO tokens were distributed to investors. Of 10,000,000 total tokens created, the investors only ended up with 4.16%. The Gnosis team retains the remaining 9,583,333.33 tokens.
Of all crowdsales I’ve seen to date, this was the most surprising and unexpected. I think the ICO structure confused most investors and they were happy to throw money at the project because they did not want to miss out. It’s possible I am wrong about Gnosis and it will provide great returns for those who invested (it has tripled since ICO!), and of course the founders who raised $12.5 million and still control 95.8% of the tokens.
PRIOR DISPLAY OF ICO ETH ADDRESS
This is a double-edged sword. Making the ETH address visible prior to the sale prevents scams and also prevents increased web activity causing the page failing to not load to show the address. ICO websites tend to be overloaded and crash at launch time. See BCAP above.
The issue with this situation is rather than publishing an address to commence the sale at a certain time, the sale would need to commence based on a certain ethereum block number. This format gives those with added technical know-how a slight edge over the general public that simply wants to invest in “the next great thing”. Smart contracts can be created to send a transaction on a certain block. I believe this is relatively easy to set up with Parity.
I still prefer the latter over the former. In the first instance, the address contribution address is already known by a select few. It’s not published on the website yet, but it will be at Noon, or whenever the launch is set to start.
If there are bonuses available, this address can be shared to a select few who will then be able to send their transactions before the general public is able to access the address from the overloaded website. The greater transparency of a pre-published destination address should help eliminate any foul play or conspiracy theories.
TRANSFER TOKENS IMMEDIATELY UPON ETH RECEIPT
The smart contract should be simple. It receives ETH, it returns tokens at the pre-determined rate. It should happen instantly. This lets the investor know they were successful.
However, once tokens are in the investors’ possession, there should be a brief (max 1 week) non-transferable period. This allows founders to sort out any possible bugs before people trade these tokens on the open market. If a bug is discovered, it can be remedied and proper token amounts can be re-deployed on a new contract. I expect this to happen with TokenCard following it’s ICO bug. Edit: See this link: http://vessenes.com/tokencard-tech-roundup-and-erc20-crediting/
Receiving tokens instantly allows the investor to mitigate against ETH fluctuation risks. If an investor needs to wait a long period to receive the tokens, a change in ETH price can drastically change the relative USD value invested.
The main issue with this feature is that even though there are multiple warnings not to, unsavvy investors are still sending ETH to the ICO contract from exchanges. This results in the tokens being sent to the exchange wallet, rather than to the investor.
To my knowledge, reputable exchanges will make the investor whole. This should be a discussion between the investor and the exchange itself. If the ICO address is provided prior to the sale, exchanges can also opt to blacklist this as a possible withdrawal address which would mitigate the issue entirely.
Of course, for non-ethereum tokens, such as Cosmos and QTUM, investors will have to wait until that platform is developed before they will get a return.
SIMPLE IDEAL CROWDSALE
Have a cap of no more than $10 million. Rather than setting the cap in $, set the cap in ETH. Eg. 125,000 ETH. Only accept ETH. Display the funding address at least a few hours prior to the sale. Upon receipt of ETH, transfer the tokens immediately to the sending address. A brief non-transferable period following distribution is recommended. Once the ETH cap is reached, no more transactions are accepted.
That’s it. Very easy.Each campaign sat in a conference room (or presumably something similar) some three or four weeks ago and mapped out their future campaign. Each advisor had "VP" circled somewhere on their memo pad; and each nominee had a VP in mind. But suppose for a second each candidate had a different perspective; could a different decision have entirely effected their nominee's standing in the last four weeks. What are their possible pasts?
Everybody is quick to point out that "if Obama had selected Hillary Clinton as his Vice President, the race would already be over;" I simply do not believe this. In fact I think entirely the opposite is true. Knowing what we know now, Hillary would have doomed the Democratic Party, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. McCain would have been forced to react, and would not have chosen Sarah Palin; I say this with 100% certainty. If you're running against the historic ticket you pick the slick white guy and hope to gain racist and sexist votes; that's the sad reality and I don't think the Republicans would have hesitated. Instead Obama's selection of Biden did no harm, the cardinal rule of VP selection. Ultimately I think Biden will do the most good, but that's not the point of this article.
John McCain likely chooses Mitt Romney (although, Pawlenty, Ridge or Liebermann would still have been options) to counteract the gravitas of the Obama-Clinton ticket; it's hard to predict, after all McCain did eventually chose Sarah Palin. I think Hillary Clinton is the only person for whom McCain doesn't choose Sarah Palin, with the possible exception of Kathleen Sebelius; but I don't think she was ever legitimately considered. Mitt Romney's strength is the economy and it just so happens that the economy is flying into a sharpened fan right now. McCain's possible past is much brighter with a Romney selection (and likely his future), especially after his disastrous week.
McCain likely would not have gotten such a large bounce in the polls had he chosen somebody other than Palin, but it clearly doesn't matter what the polls said at the beginning of September on November 5th. As of right now the only thing Palin has concretely provided McCain was a nice five percent boost in his polling numbers for what amounts to a week; the recent CBS poll shows McCain's support among women plummeting by 21%. Romney may or may not have provided a similar polling spike, but at least he would be useful with regards to the now diseased economy, after all that was Romney's main selling point.
If you take a look into the past and alter the VP permutations the scenario that actually happened appears to the best imaginable outcome for Obama and the worst possible for McCain. The McCain campaign fell into the trap of trying to pick what the central issue of the election would be; they guessed energy and fell flat on their face. Nobody cares how much gas costs because they have no money to buy anything. Most people have lost 10% of their portfolio in the past two days and the GOP ticket is offering no solutions to fix the already ailed economy.
The Obama campaign instead focused on the actual role of a Vice President and selected somebody who actually ran for the position twice. Joe Biden isn't an expert on the economy or energy by any stretch, but his central claim to knowledge is not the fact that he can see Russia, but rather his 35 years as a Senator. The Obama campaign took an entirely different approach to the selection that maximized their chances on any issue; they played the statistics. That I cannot say about the McCain campaign. I cannot conclude within any reasonable bounds of logic why Sarah Palin was selected. There are simply too many other, better possible pasts for John McCain.
The possible future will be theirs to command.Bohdan Pomahač ( Czech pronunciation: [ˈboɦdan ˈpomaɦatʃ]; born 1971) is a Czech plastic surgeon. He led the team that performed the first full face transplant in United States and the third overall in the world.[1]
Biography [ edit ]
Pomahač's parents were a chemical engineer and a school teacher. The family lived in the industrial city of Ostrava, today's Czech Republic, in a small three-room apartment, and used to spend weekends at their weekend house in Morávka, a municipality in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids mountain range.[2]
As a teenager, Pomahač became a passionate chess player, devoting as many as 40 hours a week to his hobby. He was inspired by Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov and made it to the major chess league in the country.[2]
After finishing high school in Ostrava, Pomahač became a student at the Palacký University of Olomouc Faculty of Medicine. During the 6 years study, Pomahač went on exchange to Boston, United States, which influenced his subsequent career choice.[2]
Pomahač left for the USA immediately after finishing his studies in the Czech Republic in 1996. He was employed at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he worked for 90–120 hours a week.[2]
In 2000, Pomahač married Hana Augustinová, an eye doctor and also a Palacký University of Olomouc graduate. Together with their two children they live in Dover, a small village not far from Boston. They visit the Czech Republic once a year, when their children undergo Czech language tests in a school.[2]
Face transplants [ edit ]
Face transplant recipient Jim Maki (left) with Bohdan Pomahač
Although face transplants were not the centre of his research work, by 2004 he became increasingly interested in the subject and devoted much of his free time to it. Great incentive came when Pomahač met Isabelle Dinoire, the first person to undergo partial face transplant in 2005 in France. Dinoire told him that if the face had not been accepted, she was ready to undergo the procedure again.[2] When Pomahač asked another patient why he sought repeated surgery, he told the doctor: “I just want a cab to stop when I’m at the curb.”[3]
In 2007 Pomahač became the head of the hospital's burn trauma centre and also head of the team specializing in facial transplants.
On 9 April 2009 Pomahač performed the second partial face transplant in the USA (and seventh in the world). During a 17-hour operation, a surgical team led by Pomahač, replaced the nose, upper lip, cheeks, and roof of the mouth - along with corresponding muscles, bones and nerves - of James Maki, age 59. Mr. Maki's face was severely injured after falling onto the electrified third rail at a Boston subway station in 2005. In May 2009, he made a public media appearance and declared he was happy with the result. This procedure was also shown in the eighth episode of the ABC documentary series Boston Med.
After that procedure was successfully completed, the Defense Department awarded a $3.4 million grant to the hospital in December 2009 to fund five face transplants, according to Col. Janet Harris, director of the Clinical and Rehabilitative Medicine Research Program for the Army Medical Research and Material Command.[3]
On 22 March 2011 Pomahač performed the first full face transplant in the USA (and third in the world, after full face transplants in Spain and France) on Dallas Wiens, 25, who was injured by an electric shock that removed his face. Pomahač led the team of physicians, nurses and anaesthesiologists for more than 15 hours to replace Mr Wiens's nose, lips, facial skin, muscles of facial animation and the nerves that power them to provide sensation.[1]
Two other patients are already on the list for other operations funded by the Defense Department. They are Mitch Hunter of Indianapolis, an Army veteran who was in a car crash after his Army stint, and Charla Nash, a Connecticut woman who lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids in 2009 when she was mauled by a chimpanzee.[3]
Historical connections to transplantations [ edit ]
Pomahač studied at the Palacký University of Olomouc Faculty of Medicine. The University conducts practical education in Olomouc hospital, where the world's first successful human organ transplant was performed by Eduard Konrad Zirm in 1905.[4]
Brigham and Women's Hospital, where Pomahač works, was the place of the second successful human organ transplant performed by Joseph Murray in 1954.
Etymology [ edit ]
"Pomahač" means "helper" and forename "Bohdan" means gift of a god or given by a god in the Czech language.
Appearances [ edit ]
Pomahač has been a keynote speaker at the Congress of Future Medical Leaders (2014, 2015, 2016).Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he arrives for a meeting with businessmen on the sidelines of the Russia-ASEAN summit in Sochi, Russia, May 20, 2016. Reuters Russia's use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to spread fake news and propaganda during the 2016 election has become a "red-hot" focus of FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's election interference, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
The news comes one week after Facebook shut down roughly 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that "were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia." Facebook said in a statement that the accounts were connected to roughly $100,000 in ad purchases between June 2015 and May 2017.
Congressional investigators want to question Facebook and Twitter representatives, too, and the Senate Intelligence Committee is reportedly weighing whether to hold a public hearing focusing on how Russia used social media to "manipulate" voters.
A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment Wednesday.
Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters last week that the social media element of Russia's influence operation — which included the hacks on the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta — "opens a whole new arena."
Warner added that he thought the advertisements the Russians purchased were "just the tip of the iceberg." Facebook has since confirmed that Russia-linked groups went further than ad buys and memes, and tried to organize anti-immigrant, anti-Clinton rallies in Texas and Idaho.
Russian "bots" posing as Americans also inundated Twitter during the election, spreading anti-Clinton messages and material that had been hacked from the DNC and Podesta.
A New York Times analysis of the Russian social media fingerprints revealed that "hundreds or thousands" of fake accounts on both Facebook and Twitter contributed to the interference campaign.
Americans "ought to be able to know if there is foreign-sponsored [internet] content coming into their electoral process," Warner said last week. "That becomes a method of influence exponentially, I would argue, bigger than TV and radio."
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that he too was "keenly interested in Russia's use of social media platforms, both the use of bots and trolls to spread disinformation and propaganda, including through the use of paid online advertising."
Schiff told MSNBC last week that he also wanted to know how sophisticated the ads were — in terms of their content and targets — to determine whether they had any help from the Trump campaign.
Facebook said in its statement that about 25% of the ads purchased by Russians "were geographically targeted." Facebook representatives told lawmakers behind closed doors Wednesday that the ad sales had been traced back to a notorious Russian "troll farm," according to The Washington Post.
Warner said Thursday that while "we know about the hacking, as a former tech guy, what really concerns me is that there were upwards of 1,000 paid internet trolls working out of Russia taking over computers, making botnets, and generating news down to specific areas."Think of this as the Soylent Green of cabinet shuffles.
Over the past week, we’ve watched as ageing MPPs were turned into eco-friendly sludge to be devoured by their own party.
Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet was massively moved and shaken Monday. It wasn’t so much a shuffle as an earthquake.
It was all about taking out the trash as she pushed the old farts out the door.
In a highly-inelegant process over the past week, we saw the Liberal Party tossing the old geezers overboard to make way for fresh blood.
And I say that as an old geezer myself.
There was a series of “resignations,” from older, whiter and mostly-male ministers, stepping down to make way for cabinet “gender parity.”
Gone is Jim Bradley, who held the largely honourific title of minister without portfolio. Bradley will stick around in a lesser role as chief government whip.
Ted McMeekin also stepped down in municipal affairs, saying he was making way for more women to join cabinet.
Ditto Mario Sergio. Ironically, Sergio was seniors minister. So the seniors minister gets canned to make way for a younger person.
Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur also quit. And you almost have to believe her statement that she wanted to “spend more time with family.” She resigned her Ottawa Vanier seat, triggering a byelection.
Some observers are surprised Bob Chiarelli survived the old geezer cull. His performance as energy minister has been lackluster at best and jaw-droppingly awful at worst.
He has been patronizing to women, insulting to the auditor — and performed dreadfully. Why’s he still in cabinet?
Here’s my theory: The standings in the Legislature are 57 Libs; 28 PCs; 20 NDP; 2 vacant seats (Bas Balkissoon and Meilleur.) Had Wynne dropped Chiarelli from cabinet, it’s unlikely he’d stick around as a backbencher, commuting to Toronto from Ottawa for the next two years.
Yet, if he quit his Ottawa West-Nepean seat, he’d trigger a byelection — a tough fight for the Liberals. Ditto for Bradley. Without his name on the ballot, St. Catharines would be a tight race.
Sergio is staying on in his York West seat — but that’s a lot shorter commute than from Ottawa.
There are still rumblings that veteran MPPs Monte Kwinter and Joe Dickson may quit as both have had health issues. If Wynne had to fight six or seven byelections, she could well find herself in a minority situation.
She had to give a sop to Bradley and Chiarelli to have them hang around.
There are seven new members of cabinet and 40% of Wynne’s crew are women. Not gender “parity,” for sure.
Then again, there are other important factors that come into play when building a cabinet — such as geography. All parts of the province must be represented.
Can this brave new cabinet slough off the incompetence and scandals of the past? In her first two years in office, Wynne brought in sweeping change. She calls it innovative. Others call it recklessly dangerous.
Cap and trade, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan and the sale of Hydro One will have a massive financial impact on all of us and change the face of the province.
Wynne’s brought in a crew of rookies to implement these initiatives.
I don’t trust the new guard to deliver them any more than I trusted the old farts.President-elect Donald Trump’s tax plan could prove a windfall for families much like his own: the uber-rich looking to keep their money in the family. That's how dynasties are made.
“If some his proposals go through, they would have a tremendous effect on very wealthy families,” says Angelo Robles, the founder and CEO of the Family Office Association, a membership organization that costs up to $16,500 a year to join and serves as a “think tank” for super-wealthy families. “His proposal on capital gains and the estate tax would be to the benefit of dynastic families.”
Trump's father, Fred Trump, became a millionaire, so the president-elect's grandchildren — he has eight already — are fourth-generation wealthy.
Here's how President-elect Trump's economic plan could help create more megarich families like the Trumps.
The Estate Tax:
In a speech at the Detroit Economic Club in August, Trump railed against what the GOP has long called the “death tax,” a 40% tax on estates above $10.9 million. “American workers have paid taxes their whole lives — and they should not be taxed again at death,” he said to loud applause. “It’s just plain wrong,”
Since the tax affects only the uber-rich, fewer than 5,000 families pay it each year. Many of those families are dynasties, like Trump’s. If President-elect Trump successfully repeals the tax, the super-rich will save nearly $270 billion over the next decade, passing along that nest egg to the next generation.
The 3.8% Investment Income Tax for Obamacare
Trump has vowed to repeal Obamacare. That may mean he will also eliminate a 3.8 % investment tax that went into effect in 2013. Though it affects only families making over $200,000 a year, the tax helped pay for Medicaid expansion — the portion of Obamacare that guaranteed coverage for low income Americans. If Trump scraps Obamacare, he will also be delivering a gift to high-income investors dinged by the 3.8 investment tax.
Capital Gains Tax
Income derived from capital gains is already taxed at a lower rate than income from employment. Trump has vowed to keep that system in place, but his tax plan adds a wrinkle that could end up benefiting dynastic families with similar holdings to his own. His proposal would allow wealthy individual to pass capital gains along to heirs — gains over $10 million would be taxed only when the assets are eventually sold. Most families can’t afford to sit on capital gains — but super-wealthy families can afford to hold onto inherited capital gains, postponing the the tax as long as possible.
Tax Cuts and Tax Holidays
Trump plans to cut the top tax bracket from 40% to 33 % — a major tax cut for the highest income earners in the U |
assets into one agency, enabling them to better accomplish the new homeland security mission. October 1st, 2015 - U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Air and Marine changed its name to Air and Marine Operations.
Missions [ edit ]
39' Midnight Express interceptors AW-139 helicopter and two39' Midnight Express interceptors
Among AMO's many missions are anti-terrorism, countering smuggling, and stopping illegal immigration. The agency uses its aviation and marine assets to detect, interdict, and apprehend conveyances carrying terrorists, contraband, or undocumented aliens intending to enter the United States illegally. AMO Also leverages its unique detection and interdiction capabilities to support individual components of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice. Providing support to agencies and multi-jurisdictional task forces such as ICE Homeland Security Investigations, the United States Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, the United States Coast Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Special Security Events, and Joint Interagency Task Force South accounts for the bulk of AMO operations.[2]
To accomplish its missions, AMO uses a multitude of fixed and rotary wing aircraft, unarmed versions of military UAVs, as well as high speed blue water interceptors and utility vessels for strategic operations in high-risk areas. All CBP aviation missions are conducted by Air Interdiction Agents, while CBP maritime operations in the Great Lakes, territorial waters, and international waters are the responsibility of Marine Interdiction Agents. Patrol Agents from the Office of Border Patrol are responsible for conducting U.S. Customs and Border Protection's marine missions in the small lakes and rivers along the Mexico–US and Canada–US borders.[13]
Air and Marine Operations Agents and Officers work with both U.S. and foreign agencies and military forces to support their law enforcement efforts. Personnel and assets are deployed abroad to support Department of Homeland Security priorities, most notably for foreign training and counter narcotics missions.
Aviation resources [ edit ]
Fixed wing [ edit ]
Beechcraft King Air C-12.
The Beechcraft King Air, C-12B, C-12C, and C-12M maritime surveillance aircraft are all medium-range, twin turbo-prop aircraft used by CBP’s Air and Marine Operations. These aircraft support investigation and enforcement efforts by conducting surveillance, tracking, and information gathering missions with equipment designed for those specific mission sets to include over water operations. Their secondary mission is the logistical relocation of personnel, equipment, or evidence that is time critical to investigation and enforcement actions. As an interdiction tracker, this aircraft can play a role in drug interdiction missions when accompanied by a C-550 Citation II or a P-3 aircraft flying as a radar platform or an interceptor.[14]
Beechcraft Super King Air 350ER.
The latest addition to the CBP Air and Marine Operations fleet of aircraft is the multi-purpose, fixed-wing, multi-engine Multi-Role Enforcement Aircraft (MEA). The MEA will perform marine interdiction, limited air-to-air interdiction, over land interdiction, and enforcement relocation of personnel and equipment. The MEA will also be configured to carry law enforcement technical collections equipment.
AMO's MEA, which will fly with a crew of four (two pilots and two sensor operators), will eventually replace AMO’s current array of C-12M, PA-42, C-12C, and B-200 aircraft.
The MEA is equipped with state of the art sensor equipment for detection, tracking, and surveillance operations in regions where terrain, weather, and distance pose significant obstacles to border security operations. In addition, the MEA serves as a force multiplier for law enforcement and emergency personnel because it provides a rapid-response deployment capability.[15]
Bombardier DHC-8Q200.
The Bombardier Dash 8 Q200 is a multirole patrol aircraft (MPA) equipped with multimode radar and electro-optical/infrared sensors that can detect and track maritime and surface targets. It can also be converted to a cargo configuration or into a 37-passenger aircraft, making it an ideal aircraft to respond to acts of terrorism, natural disasters and other emergencies.
The first AMO Dash 8 Q200 MPA was placed in service in August 2005 and was used extensively during the days following Hurricane Katrina to carry law enforcement officers, flight crews and other personnel, supplies and equipment to New Orleans. A second Dash 8 was delivered in mid 2006 and a third aircraft was delivered in February 2008. The fourth aircraft was delivered in December 2008.
AMO also utilizes Dash-8 Q300 MPAs. All AMO Dash-8's employ powerful surface search radar, cameras, advanced tracking software and other sensor equipment to secure America's maritime border. AMO's Dash-8's are widely recognized as some of the most capable and powerful maritime patrol aircraft in the world.[16]
Cessna C-206.
The C-172/182/206/210 surveillance aircraft are short to medium-range piston-powered aircraft used by the Air and Marine Operations to support investigative and enforcement efforts by conducting surveillance, tracking, photographic and information gathering missions. Their secondary mission is the logistical relocation of personnel, equipment or evidence that are time critical to investigative and enforcement actions.
These surveillance aircraft, which fly with a crew of two (pilot and observer), are particularly effective platforms for law enforcement operations. They provide better range and endurance than helicopters and blend more effectively with local traffic to mask the presence of continuous air surveillance.[17][18]
Cessna C-550 Citation II.
C-550 Citation II Interceptor aircraft are all-weather tactical jets used by CBP Air and Marine to intercept and track airborne drug smugglers and to enforce airspace security over critical venues. The Citation has also been used effectively in Panama, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, and Aruba. AMO Began using the Cessna Citation in the late 1970s as a high-speed interceptor and tracker.
AMO Citation Interceptors, which fly with a crew of three (pilot, copilot, and sensor operator), have the ability to operate from remote landing strips. The Citation II were the first commercial aircraft fitted with fire-control radar from the USAF F-16 Falcon, to be used in a law enforcement capacity.[19]
Lockheed P-3 Orion Long Range Tracker.
The P-3 LRT aircraft are high-endurance, all-weather, tactical turbo-prop aircraft used by CBP Air and Marine to intercept and track airborne smuggling threats. With the escalation of terrorist threats and the commitment of Department of Defense P-3 Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft in other regions of the world, AMO P-3s have assumed a significant role in Homeland Security efforts.
Key to the success of the P-3s are their endurance, small deployment footprint, and extensive sensor array. The aircraft can operate from most 8,000-foot runways and carries a crew of eight (pilot, copilot, flight engineer, and radar and sensor operators). The aircraft are supported by a ground maintenance team of only three people.
AMO P-3 LRT aircraft often fly in tandem with the P-3 AEW. Used in this manner, the P-3 AEW detects and tracks multiple targets and the accompanying P-3 LRT intercepts, identifies, and tracks those suspect targets.[20]
Lockheed P-3 Orion Airborne Early Warning.
The P-3 Airborne Early Warning (AEW) detection and monitoring aircraft are the only dedicated law enforcement AEW aircraft in the world. They were developed to provide wide area search, increased command control, and communications capabilities.
Air and Marine’s P-3s are high-endurance, all-weather, tactical turbo-prop aircraft, which are used primarily for long-range patrols along the entire U.S. border, and in source and transit zone countries throughout Central and South America. The aircraft carries a crew of eight (pilot, copilot, flight engineer, and radar/sensor operators). They are routinely sent on temporary duty to support the United States and foreign government initiatives to stem smuggling into the United States. With the escalation of terrorist threats and the commitment of Department of Defense AEW assets in other regions of the world, Air and Marine P-3s have also assumed a significant role in Homeland Security efforts.[21]
The MQ-9 Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is a force multiplier for CBP and its border security mission. AMO UASs began their service by supporting Border Patrol Agents and CBP Officers on the U.S./Mexico border. In January 2009, UAS operations began on the Canada–US border. In addition, the MQ-9 allows CBP to assist with non border related operations within other DHS organizations like the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, such as search and rescue or disaster relief. AMO Works closely with the Department of Defense to gain efficiencies in acquisition, testing, training and deployment of the Predator B.
CBP selected the Predator B for its large payload and ability to remain in the air longer than other UASs. CBP’s Air and Marine Operations Center (AMOC) at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, CA provides liaison from the UAS to other agencies within and outside of CBP. Command and control of the UAS is through KU-band satellite communications.[22][23]
Pilatus PC-12.
The PC-12 is a single-engine turbo-prop aircraft that combines the slow-speed capability of a Cessna 210 with the payload and high-speed capabilities of a B-200 King Air. These characteristics enable the Multirole Enforcement Aircraft to deploy rapidly and operate safely in remote areas.
These aircraft have enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of CBP’s Air and Marine Operations by providing:
Increased mission versatility, including air interdiction, aerial surveillance and logistical support.
Removable sensor consoles and retractable state of-the-art electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensors.
Reduced operating costs.
Key to the success of the PC-12s, which fly with a crew of two (pilot and sensor operator), are their endurance, small deployment footprint, and extensive sensor array. The aircraft have short-field capabilities of mission take-off in 2,300 ft and landing distance of 1,800 ft.[24]
Piper PA-42 Cheyenne IIIA.
The Cheyenne III Interceptor is a high endurance, all-weather, tactical turbo-prop aircraft, designed for CBP's Air and Marine Operations specifically for long-range missions. The Piper PA-42 is equipped with fire-control radar from the USAF F-16 Falcon along with a FLIR system. These aircraft, which fly with a crew of three (pilot, copilot, and sensor operator), can operate from remote landing strips and are utilized to intercept and track airborne smugglers.[25]
Rotary wing [ edit ]
AgustaWestland AW-139.
AW-139 helicopters are medium-range, all-weather, tactical apprehension aircraft used by CBP’s Air and Marine Operations to protect the American public from threats of terrorism and drug smuggling, and to enforce airspace security over critical venues.
AMO’s AW-139s, which usually fly with a crew of three (pilot, copilot, and crewmember), are large, powerful helicopters, which can carry all the equipment and personnel necessary for law enforcement operations without sacrificing range and speed. In addition, they are well suited to the all-weather hazardous environments in which AMO routinely operates.[26]
Eurocopter AS-350 A-Star.
The AS-350 Light Enforcement Helicopter (LEH) is a short-range, turbine-powered helicopter used by CBP’s Office of Air and Marine to perform aerial reconnaissance of stationary or moving targets.
These LEHs are the optimal aerial surveillance platform in metropolitan areas because their vertical lift capability and maneuverability enable operations from off-airport sites and in close proximity to congested airports. EO/IR sensors and video downlink provide intelligence and communications support that enhance officer safety during high-risk operations and increase covertness during surveillance operations. Video recorders document suspect activities for evidentiary use. The AS-350s, which fly with a crew of two (pilot and observer), are one of the few helicopters that maintain their performance from sea level up to 9,000 feet.[27]
EC-120 Helicopters are short-to-medium-range, turbine-powered helicopters which will be used by OAM primarily as a light observation helicopter for tracking and general ground unit support.
OAM’s EC-120 helicopter, which flies with a crew of 1 (Pilot), will provide a highly effective aerial surveillance platform in the border desert areas.[28]
Bell UH-1H Huey II.
AMO is remanufacturing UH-1H utility helicopters to a Huey II configuration. The UH-1H helicopters are short-range, turbine powered helicopters, which fly with a crew of two (pilot and copilot). The medium-lift capability of the UH-1H supports agents in high-altitude and hot environments.
The UH-1H helicopter is used by Air and Marine to perform tactical and utility missions along the border. The helicopter’s secondary mission is to provide external lift capability in support of drug seizures and equipment delivery.
The remanufacturing dramatically increases mission capability, including increases in hover performance, gross weight, payload, and speed. The conversion also enables Air and Marine to manage its component supply system more efficiently.[29]
MD-500 Light Enforcement Helicopters (LEH) are short- to medium-range, turbine-powered helicopters used by AMO primarily as a light observation helicopter for tracking and general support for ground units.
The MD-500 is a highly effective aerial surveillance platform in border areas. Its maneuverability enables operations from off-airport sites and in metropolitan areas.
OAM’s MD-500 Light Enforcement Helicopter flies with a crew of 1 (Pilot).[30]
Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk
UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters are medium-range, all-weather, rotary-wing tactical apprehension aircraft used by the Office of Air and Marine to protect the American public from threats of terrorism and drug smuggling and to enforce airspace security over critical venues.
AMO UH-60s, classified as medium lift, fly with a minimum crew of three (pilot, copilot, and crewmembers), and are large, powerful helicopters that can carry all the equipment and personnel necessary for law enforcement operations without sacrificing range and speed. In addition, they are well suited to the all-weather hazardous environments OAM may experience.
The newly acquired UH-60M model features a digital, glass cockpit, full autopilot capabilities and an upgraded navigation system. The Trakkabeam Search Light can be synched with the forward-looking infrared camera, allowing the two systems to operate more effectively when conducting aerial searches and can provide video to other agencies. Ballistic armor provides increased protection for pilots and crewmembers, and the engine upgrade provides more power and lift capability.[31]
Marine resources [ edit ]
AMO vessel crews work in conjunction with the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other law enforcement entities to accomplish the homeland security mission. These vessel crews are trained in maritime detection, pursuit, and high-risk boardings. They often work with a limited number of personnel during conditions conducive to smuggling to detect and interdict vessels carrying goods and people illegally crossing the United States border.
Marine Interdiction Agents are assisted by federal and state operated aircraft, and often utilize officers from other agencies who must be specially trained by AMO in maritime law enforcement tactics and safety. Air and Marine employs approximately 350 Marine Interdiction Agents throughout the nation who operate more than 300 vessels.
Open console [ edit ]
43' Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator.
Speed: 65 knots
Range: 400 nautical miles
Endurance: 10 hours
Length: 43 feet
Weight: 22,000 pounds
AMO is using an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator (ACTD) vessel to aid in the development of future interceptor vessel class requirements and further its ongoing exploration of new marine interdiction tactics, tools, and techniques. The ACTD incorporates several enhancements to operator safety. This vessel also provides Marine Interdiction Agents with additional speed and greater range. Equipped with the latest advancements in communications and sensor technology, the ACTD increases situational awareness, information sharing, decision making, and coordination which are all critical to the success of maritime law enforcement operations.[32]
40-foot Sea Hunter
Speed: 60 knots
Range: 351 nautical miles
Endurance: 10 hours
Length: 40 feet
Weight: 16,610 pounds
To provide maritime interdiction capabilities to newly created marine units, the Air and Marine Operations purchased 40-foot Sea Hunter vessels. These interim vessels will fill operational gaps at newly created units until the future Coastal Interceptor Vessel (CIV) is identified and purchased. Working in conjunction with AMO aviation assets, the Sea Hunter operates in offshore coastal waters to combat maritime smuggling and protect U.S. ports from acts of terrorism.[33]
Speed: 55/60 knots
Range: 400 nautical miles
Endurance: 10 hours
Length: 39 feet
Weight: 13,800/16,350 pounds
The 39-foot Midnight Express has been in service with AMO and its preceding agencies for over a decade. Interim 39-foot Midnight Express vessels were recently purchased to provide maritime interdiction capabilities to newly created AMO marine units. These vessels will fill operational gaps at newly created units until the future Coastal Interceptor Vessel is identified and purchased.[34][34][35]
Enclosed console [ edit ]
38-foot SAFE Boat
Speed: 52 knots
Range: 400 nautical miles
Endurance: 6 hours
Length: 38 feet
Weight: 18,000 pounds
The 38-foot Secure All-around Flotation Equipped (SAFE) Boat came into CBP service as a law enforcement interceptor in 2008. SAFE Boats have marine-grade aluminum hulls and polyethylene closed cell foam collars. This characteristic provides the stability and the buoyancy of a ridged hull inflatable, with a high factor of durability and safety. The protective cabin area of the SAFE Boat has heat and air to protect the crews from the elements.[36]
Speed: 51 knots
Range: 300 nautical miles
Endurance: 10 hours
Length: 33.3 feet
Weight: 13,000 pounds
The USCG and CBP awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract to SAFE Boats International of Port Orchard, Washington in 2006 to purchase 33-foot SAFE Boats. CBP purchased several of these boats for use as law enforcement interceptors. OAM uses the SAFE Boats for pursuing and boarding (inland and offshore) vessels transiting in rough waters and locations with extreme weather conditions.[37][38]
See also [ edit ]Despite promises to clean up violent and xenophobic content from textbooks, recent editions in Saudi Arabia continue teach school children barbaric practices, Fox News reported.
The news network, which was able to obtain translated copies of the recently-printed books from the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, DC, said that the books teaches ninth graders that the annihilation of Jews is imperative.
Related stories:
"The hour (of judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," one part reads. "There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
The reviewed editions were printed for the 2010-2011 academic year. Another book teaches 10th graders how to cut off the hands and feet of a thief.
"This is where terrorism starts, in the education system." Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, said, noting that the books were financed by the Saudi government.
In addition to coaching kids to kill Jews and amputate body parts, the text books depict women as weak and irresponsible. Moreover, al-Ahmed said the textbooks call for homosexuals to be put to death "because they pose a danger at society, as the Saudi school books teach.”
Suicide bomber education?
Al-Ahmed, as Saudi national, predicted that the extremist education within the kingdom could have devastation implications on the world at large.
“If you teach six million children in these important years of their lives, if you install that in their brain, no wonder we have so many Saudi suicide bombers.”
September 11, 2001 attacks on the US were of Saudi origin, a fact that violently turned the West's attention to the education system in the kingdom. In 2006, Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal said that King Abdullah is determined to eradicate the hateful ideology in his country.
"In recent years, the kingdom has reviewed all of its education practices and materials and has removed any element that is inconsistent with the needs of a modern education," al-Faisal said. "Not only have we eliminated what is objectionable from old textbooks that were in our system, we have also implemented a comprehensive internal revision and modernization plan. “
Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and TwitterBallpark proposals don't always end the way they're expected to.
On Sunday, a man attending a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park decided to propose to his girlfriend via jumbotron and she may have said "no."
Though there isn't any audio, a fan in attendance shot a video of the couple and posted it to Twitter, speculating that the woman had, in fact, said "no." The cameraman who was probably supposed to catch the moment, is seen turning away from the couple.
This guy just proposed at Fenway on camera. She said no. Now they are arguing. That poor camera man @barstoolsports @FeitsBarstool pic.twitter.com/n8tfU9jm6Z -- Kim (@kimba7391) May 1, 2017
Other game attendees took to Twitter to let everyone else know how the crowd reacted to it all:
The scoreboard proposal at Fenway may have just gone awry. There was no hug, the camera cut away and the crowd groaned. -- Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) May 1, 2017
Girl just said "no" it seems on engagement Jumbotron segment at Fenway Park. Crowd chanting "she said no". -- Ricky Engelberg (@rje7) May 1, 2017
Holy hell somebody just proposed to their girlfriend at Fenway and I think they said no. -- Ty Anderson (@_TyAnderson) May 1, 2017
As of Monday, no video of the actual proposal happening has made its way to the internet, which might be a good thing.After winning re-election in 2004, George W. Bush took a trip to Amish Country.
He hadn't come for a handmade quilt commemorating his second term, or a sampler of fresh preserves to keep onboard Air Force One.
This was business.
Specifically, Bush had come to thank Lancaster County Republican organizers who had worked on his behalf to secure strong turnout among local Amish voters that Nov. 2.
At the top of his list was a politically connected church family with growing influence and an increasingly checkered past as political organizers.
They had been called on by GOP brass months earlier, with Democratic Senator John Kerry leading Bush in the Pennsylvania polls, but just barely. Kerry's lead was so slim as to be within the margin of error.
Looking to seize an opportunity in a crucial swing state, Republican leaders mobilized a massive get-out-the-vote campaign.
It targeted new conservative voters who could, if registered in great enough numbers, sway the outcome in Bush's favor, or so the thinking went. It made sense, especially considering that just four years earlier, 537 votes in Florida had earned Bush the White House.
With this in mind, Republican strategists targeted evangelicals as well as the tens of thousands of eligible Amish voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, another key swing state.
Bush would go on to win in Ohio, helping him to also win his second term. He would lose in Pennsylvania despite the Amish recruitment efforts here, however.
But the Amish strategy would be celebrated for its savvy and cost-effectiveness, and it is now being mimicked in another high-stakes election in which nothing, and no one, will be left to chance.
For-the-record: Ongoing wars, terrorism fears, a "don't change horses midstream" mindset and 10 million evangelical votes certainly had far more to do with Bush's reelection than Amish voter participation.
But a vein had been tapped, and the Amish would be looked to as difference-makers in subsequent presidential elections, including this one.
This year, a Super PAC has already been established to stir up Amish support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, who is neck-and-neck with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in early polls in states like Pennsylvania.
But the Amish community's support is far from a given, and its history at the polls complicated to say the least.
'The Amish will be voting for Donald Trump'
Chet Beiler was born Amish. He became a businessman, chairman of Lancaster County's Republican Party and launched his own, ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for U.S. Congress this past year.
Beiler was also one of the architects of the Amish voter drive in 2004, leveraging his ties to the church community on behalf of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, of which he was an ambitious up-and-comer at the time.
While his immediate family had moved away from the community when Beiler was just a boy, he still had Amish relatives and also ran a gazebo manufacturing company that employed many church members.
For these reasons, he seemed an obvious choice to spearhead the GOP's outreach effort.
But the voter drive itself would prompt criticism of organizers like Beiler, who were accused of using scare tactics and hot-button issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion, to get the Amish to the polls.
Four years earlier, Beiler had been charged with violating election laws by paying campaign workers $4 for every voter registered and $8 for every voter registered willing to support Bush for president, the New York Sun reported. The charges were dropped after Beiler pleaded "no contest" and performed 50 hours of community service.
"I simply answered the call where there were some folks in the Old Order community that wanted to encourage more Amish to vote," Beiler recently told PennLive of the 2004 campaign.
"Part of why they did that was because George W. Bush had reached out to them and met with 30 Amish leaders when he came to Lancaster County for a rally. He met with them privately and it kind of took on a life of its own. My cousin met with me and said 'How about we do this thing?' It went so well that the president congratulated him directly, in person, after winning reelection."
In the fall of 2004, approximately 10,350 Amish adults in Lancaster County were eligible to register and vote. Only 1,342 turned out to vote on Nov. 2, but it represented the highest number and percentage to have done so in nearly a decade of municipal and general elections, researcher Donald Kraybill noted.
It may have also signaled the start of a trend, wherein strategists would begin to rely on Amish communities as bastions of conservative support.
The Amish that do vote are overwhelmingly Republican. Almost none are Democrats. A few might be Independent, Beiler said.
But while they embraced Bush in 2004, this year, their Republican patronage has been called into question, with experts wondering whether the Plain community can be galvanized around Trump, the ostentatious and thrice-married billionaire.
Some already have.
Jeremiah Raber, a former "Breaking Amish" cast member, said "I can promise you this time around the Amish will be out in full force voting for president. And I can almost guarantee you that the Amish will be voting for Donald Trump. Because they vote for what is right."
He added, "How do I know that? I grew up Amish. I was adopted by the Amish and raised by them. I know their beliefs. I know what they think."
Others, meanwhile, aren't so sure.
'Kennedy won and God then removed him'
There were hurdles for Bush in 2004, as well, in the form of incongruities that impeded Amish support.
For one: The Amish are staunch pacifists, conscientious objectors even.
And many in the church traditionally felt it would be a conflict of interest to vote for the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, let alone one in the midst of two wars as Bush was at the time of his reelection.
GOP recruiters overcame this by emphasizing the Republican/Democratic divide on social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Bush, they said, would defend church principles on bell-wether issues like these. His values, the recruiters argued, were their values. Bush was also the only candidate to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage at the time.
"That was really ironic because the Amish don't debate or spend much time talking about same-sex marriage or abortion," said Kraybill, an expert on Anabaptist groups, such as the Amish, and a senior fellow at Elizabethtown College.
They consider them foreign issues, or issues without a place in their social milieu, he explained.
But the Amish were told, mostly by Republican recruiters and sympathetic church members, that they could no longer ignore what was going on in the larger society around them. It represented a dramatic shift in orientation, and was a sentiment in diametric opposition to the separation of church and state on which their communities were built.
It was that same belief that helped to fuel Amish misgivings about political participation at the national and state level, too. And as a result, their electoral history is spotty at best, and often even contradictory.
Historically, the Amish tended to favor micro-level politics over macro-level -- more often getting involved in the local and municipal elections they felt bore a more direct impact on their lives as businessmen, farmers and community members.
For many, presidential politics were of little concern. And for the most part that remains the case.
But there were changes afoot in 2004, changes that may continue today, as some community members began to question the "Pray instead of vote" directives handed down by church leaders for generations.
"An Amishman once told me, 'We pray Republican and we vote on our knees,'" Kraybill recalled. "And I think that really sums up their position pretty well."
Over time, though, some church members had begun to question and challenge this conventional wisdom.
Kraybill quoted one Republican activist in the community who in 2004 argued, "Why was a [Democratic] governor elected to our state who brings in gambling, slot machines, and wants to put liquor in the grocery stores? Did our people just not pray enough?"
In a paper titled, "Bush Fever: Amish and Old Order Mennonites in the 2004 Presidential Election," Kraybill takes an in-depth look at the Plain community's history of political engagement.
He found that while voting was once forbidden by church forefathers, involvement in the political process and tacit support for it has waxed and waned for generations. The Amish have traditionally been discouraged from voting but not forbidden. They were, however, forbidden from directly participating in political campaigns or holding elected office themselves.
He wrote, "The traditional Amish view of the state reflects a position of subjection rather than citizenship. Unlike citizens in the modern state who display a sense of civic duty and responsibility for the welfare of their country, Amish understandings of the state parallel those of subjects to a king."
Kraybill said Old Order Amish attitudes toward voting have "fluctuated by historical period and region of the country as well as by local church sentiment."
"Some Amish were energized by the 1896 presidential contest between the Republican candidate, William McKinley, and the Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan, and expressed support for Bryan who sympathized with farmers and the working class," he wrote.
"Old Order interest in voting also intensified during the presidential election of 1960 when Vice President Richard Nixon, a Quaker, ran against Senator John F. Kennedy, a Catholic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Old Order voting spiked in that election because of fears of having a Catholic president."
In one particularly jarring anecdote, Kraybill cited an Old Order Mennonite who, following JFK's assassination, said, "Kennedy won and God then removed him from office... we can see what happens when people attempt to run ahead of God, or to take things into their own hands [by voting]."
But despite such entrenched resistance, the Plain community's openness to voting would grow, fueled by pragmatism, cross-pollination and in some cases the outside world's growing influence.
The trend arguably peaked in the 2004 presidential race, with the Amish, newly invested in the wider-world around them, coalescing around Bush's folksy, faith-first persona.
'They're not going to quit on us'
In the weeks and months before Election Day, Bush visited Pennsylvania Dutch Country on a number of occasions.
At around the same time, Beiler and his fellow Republican operatives began to beat the bushes, visiting Amish homes and businesses in an attempt to register the occupants. There were even voter registration booths set up at Amish auctions, community fairs and other events, Kraybill said, and free Election Day transportation would be provided to anyone who needed it.
The Amish community's embrace of Bush was itself remarkable, drawing national media attention and gasps from some inside the community who railed against the hypocrisy of voting for a "war president" like Bush, but then refusing to fight.
The debate continued even after the election was won, and after Bush signed into law a bill largely exempting the Amish from federal child labor restrictions. Bush signed the bill -- crafted by long-time Lancaster County congressman Joe Pitts -- in January of 2005, months after winning reelection.
Now, with another Election Day looming, the Amish are again being called on by a Republican campaign.
This time Donald Trump hopes to tap into the church's well-spring of conservatism.
His "Amish" Super PAC, or Plain Voters Project as it's known, expects to spend $41,000 on newspaper ads and billboards in the lead up to the election.
And despite the certainty of those like Jeremiah Raber, the jury is still out on whether the Amish will get behind Trump or return to a more passive form of civic engagement -- choosing to once again pray instead of vote.
"With Republican leanings, it's very unlikely that many if any would support Clinton," Kraybill said. "I'm also doubtful that they would be enthusiastic for Trump, but that is simply a guess, and not based on any discussions I've had with Amish people about him."
Kraybill called Trump's persona antithetical to Amish principles of humility, but added, "on the other hand, they do respect successful business people."
Even an insider like Beiler said he was unsure which of this year's Republican candidates the Amish would have preferred.
Only two things are certain then: There will be efforts to recruit Amish voters and internal debates about the compatibility of voting with Amish beliefs.
Many will likely recall the controversy of 2004, after which Kraybill said a sort of buyer's remorse was expressed to him by some organizers, some of whom questioned the legacy of that campaign on the religious order.
"Maybe I should not have done that [registered voters]," Kraybill quoted one with ties to the Amish community as having said. "Maybe we went overboard too much, I don't know. The politicians now want us to help again the next time. They're not going to quit on us."
Genetic disease is ravaging the Amish1976 studio album by Kiss
Rock and Roll Over is the fifth studio album by American rock band Kiss, released in 1976. It was recorded at the Star Theatre, and in order to get the proper drum sound, Peter Criss recorded the drum tracks in a bathroom, communicating via video-link with the rest of the band. Criss' vocals are featured on the tracks "Baby Driver" and "Hard Luck Woman". Paul Stanley, who originally wanted the latter song to be sung by Rod Stewart, gave it to Criss, after Gene Simmons insisted Criss sing the song instead.
Although "Hard Luck Woman" did not equal the success of "Beth", it did become another top 20 single for Kiss. "Calling Dr. Love" became a concert staple, being played on just about every tour since the album's release. The cover artwork was created by artist Michael Doret, who worked with Kiss again on their 2009 album Sonic Boom.[8] This is the first Kiss album to not feature a writing credit from Ace Frehley.
Release [ edit ]
Rock and Roll Over was released by Casablanca Records on November 11, 1976.[9] Included inside the album sleeve were a sticker of the album cover and a glossy photo press release pamphlet.
Commercial performance [ edit ]
Rock and Roll Over peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200.[10][11]
Track listing [ edit ]
Side two No. Title Writer(s) Lead vocals Length 6. "Love 'Em and Leave 'Em" Simmons Simmons 3:47 7. "Mr. Speed" Stanley, Delaney Stanley 3:18 8. "See You in Your Dreams" Simmons Simmons 2:34 9. "Hard Luck Woman" Stanley Criss 3:34 10. "Makin' Love" Stanley, Delaney Stanley 3:14 Total length: 33:18
Personnel [ edit ]
Kiss
Production
Charts [ edit ]
Chart (1976) Peak position Weeks on chart Australia 16 Canada RPM[12] 7 German Album Charts[13] 39 Japan 15 37 Sweden 9 US Billboard 200[10] 11 47
Certifications [ edit ]
Region Certification Certified units/Sales United States (RIAA)[11] Platinum 1,000,000^ ^shipments figures based on certification aloneIf your favorite football team gets destroyed by another team, and the local newspaper writes a story about the game, is the resulting news story--which paints an ugly picture of your team's performance--an example of the newspaper's bias against your beloved team?
Of course not.
But that's essentially what some conservative media believe when it comes to coverage of the Trump White House. In their view, since most coverage of Trump is negative, that proves the media is biased against the president.
"Harvard Study Reveals Huge Extent of Anti-Trump Media Bias" screams a headline by Heatstreet that was picked up by The Drudge Report Friday:
Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump’s first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets. They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations.
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ShareI sat with him, the oxygen cylinder that the flight attendant had also brought him between my legs, for the next several hours -- so much for getting any sleep. I coaxed him to drink water since I couldn't give him fluids intravenously while checking his blood pressure repeatedly. It was still low but stable. I was afraid that I might have to perform CPR on him if his blood pressure dropped further. How would we get him out of his seat and flat on the floor if it came to that? I asked the flight crew to have an ambulance waiting for us at the gate. As we prepared for landing, a flight attendant took back the oxygen tank. I protested, but she told me that it would be unsafe to leave it with us during the landing. Once on the ground, the flight crew allowed the other passengers to deplane first, even after I reminded them that their passenger might have a life threatening illness. By the time I helped the man off the aircraft, there were still no medical personnel at the gate to receive us. I was appalled.
***
Over the past seven years, I have responded to five in-flight medical events, three of which were true emergencies. It's estimated that a medical event of some sort occurs once for every 10,000 to 40,000 passengers on intercontinental flights. Information about these incidents is limited by underreporting, variable data quality, and the inability to determine what happens to patient-passengers when they leave the plane. In the United States, an airline is only required to report an incident to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) when a passenger dies or if the plane is diverted due to a death or medical emergency.
What we do know is that more Americans are flying than ever before: U. S. airlines alone transported 732 million passengers last year and by 2024 that number is expected to increase to 1 billion. At the same time an aging population means many passengers are taking to the skies with more medical problems. The result is an increase in in-flight medical incidents -- an upward trend that raises new questions about what ought to happen when a passenger falls ill while in transit.
Flying is stressful on the body. We carry heavy luggage over long distances between terminals, rushing to make our flights. We cross time zones, which may complicate our medication schedules. Some of us are afraid of flying or just see it as an opportunity to tune out the world and relax, and so drink alcohol or take sedatives.
While most medical emergencies occur due to pre-existing medical conditions or an acute illness, the aircraft itself can contribute to health problems. The cabin environment, which is pressurized to the equivalent of 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level, causes a 10 percent drop in blood oxygen saturation in the average traveler. Doctors generally advise healthy patients who are traveling to high-altitude destinations to allow at least a day at 8,000 feet to acclimatize before ascending further. Unfortunately many physicians aren't fully aware of the risks of flying, especially for their patients with chronic diseases. (If you can walk fifty yards at a normal pace or climb one flight of stairs without chest pain or significant shortness of breath, you are probably okay to fly without supplemental oxygen.)On December 29 the official website of Dynamo Kyiv announced the surprising news that striker Artem Kravets was departing on loan to German side VfB Stuttgart for the remainder of the season.
Kravets is a hard-working, tactically intelligent player who often finds himself in excellent positions. His finishing, however, is mediocre, and he often needs multiple golden opportunities before putting one away. If called upon he can also play on the left, but center forward is without a doubt his preferred position.
Kravets made him first appearance for Dynamo as an 18-year old in early 2007, and by the second half of the 2007-08 season he was a regular starter at the club. Most of his time at Dynamo, though, has been plagued by a series of injuries. In 2012 Dynamo manager Oleh Blokhin sent Kravets to train with the reserves, and he spent the first half of the 2013-14 campaign on loan at city rivals Arsenal Kyiv.
Under manager Serhiy Rebrov; however, Kravets has experienced a career revival. Last season he earned the starting spot in Dynamo’s one striker system over both Diuemerci Mbokani and Łukasz Teodorczyk and repaid Rebrov’s trust, scoring 19 goals across all competitions. As a result of his impressive performance, he was named one of the 10 revelations of the season by the Ukrainian football website Matchday.
Over the summer, however, Dynamo replaced the departed Mbokani with Brazilian striker Júnior Moraes from bankrupt Metalurh Donetsk. With Teodorczyk injured for the first half of this season, Kravets’ competition for the starting spot was limited to the newly arrived Moraes.
It is Moraes who has emerged as the preferred option up front. Out of Dynamo’s 16 Ukrainian Premier League matches so far this season Moraes has started in twelve and Kravets four. Moraes has five goals and three assists, while Kravets has contributed two goals and one assist. Neither have excelled in the Champions League – only Moraes has once been on the scoresheet. Kravets’ poor form has led to his unfortunate inclusion in Tribuna’s starting eleven of disappointments for the first half of the Ukrainian Premier League (UPL) campaign.
While it is clear that Rebrov has come to rely on Moraes more than on Kravets, the departure of the latter is still entirely unexpected. Teodorczyk has only recently returned from a long injury lay-off, and with Kravets on his way to the Bundesliga, Dynamo will now be left with just two strikers for the second half of the season – assuming they do not bring in a replacement.
For Stuttgart and Kravets, the move makes more sense. The German club, who are in 15th place at the halfway point of the season, have problems at the striker position. Daniel Ginczek is injury-prone and has been out since October with a herniated disc. Robbie Kruse, on loan from Bayer Leverkusen, has also been injured and has made just five substitute appearances. The 19-year-old Timo Werner is the only consistently available option, so it is no surprise that Stuttgart have sought to bring in a reinforcement.
Kravets, meanwhile, is looking for valuable playing time before the European Championships in France next summer. His main competition in the Ukrainian national team is Dnipro striker Yevhen Seleznyov, but an impressive run of form in a top European league will surely draw the attention of national team manager Mykhaylo Fomenko.
This move could thus prove beneficial to both parties. While the loan agreement is only until the end of the season, if Kravets can cement his place in the Stuttgart side, he could very well remain one of the Ukrainian national team’s few representatives in Western Europe.
By Vadim Furmanov –
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FacebookEditor’s note: This is one installment in a four-part series on this year’s candidates for ASUC president. Read about the other candidates here.
Growing up, André Luu was on a track to become a Buddhist monk.
Although Luu is ethnically Vietnamese, his family practices Tibetan Buddhism. Starting at the age of four, Buddhist monks would live with his family for weeks, and he would spend his summers at a monastery in Arizona. Luu is no longer pursuing this path, but his unique upbringing has heavily influenced many of his values — he’s a lifelong vegetarian, was taught to dream big and learned to love and respect everyone regardless of their background, which is why he is running for ASUC president.
“As an executive, it’s so important to represent the greater campus community, and I’ve given my attention to any and all communities,” Luu said. “I know that in the role of president, I am the person that will be there for students.”
Luu — who is running on the Student Action executive slate — was born in California but lived in Maryland for 12 years and returned to California before high school. His family is low-income and his parents worked irregular hours — his mom traveled as a translator for Buddhist monks and his father worked long hours — leaving him and his brother alone often.
Having grown up in a low-income family, he said he understands the struggles that students face on campus related to food and housing insecurity. If elected, he would place an emphasis on increasing students’ access to basic needs resources such as food and housing. He would aim to create a Food Security Fund that would guarantee five complimentary campus meals per month to students who receive Pell Grant funds.
“For me, the Food Security Fund will offer students another temporary solution that is so critical,” Luu said. “While we’re making headway toward a permanent solution, it’s so critical to also recognize that we need temporary solutions as well.”
Luu identifies as queer, having come out as bisexual this year. He said in middle school he was often bullied for not being masculine enough. He said having experienced bullying and the isolation it caused has inspired him to support students on campus, saying he knows what it feels like to feel unwelcome at school.
Although Luu identifies as queer and is running in part to represent this community — he would be the first openly queer ASUC president in the campus’s history — some critics have said he has not properly represented the community during his tenure as the current ASUC external affairs vice president and as a senator during the 2015-16 academic year.
In an op-ed published in The Daily Californian, Amir Amerian alleged that Luu didn’t recruit students in queer, trans and students of color communities for the Students of Color Conference. According to Amerian, Jerry Javier, board director of the Queer Alliance Resource Center, alleged Luu had organized no outreach regarding the application process to his or other LGBTQ campus groups.
Luu denied the allegations and said the campaign process can be dehumanizing.
“Oftentimes I think my reputation precedes … my right to be understood and heard as a human being,” Luu said. “I know that there are people out there who will never be satisfied with anything I say or do and will always conjure up rumors about me.”
During his first semester as EAVP, his work was heavily focused on getting students registered to vote, gearing up for the 2016 presidential elections. His office registered over 7,700 students before the 2016 election.
Luu wants to continue to engage the campus in national politics, and if elected, would work with the EAVP to advocate to make California a sanctuary state and work to create a refugee center to promote academic, mental and physical well-being of refugees. He said that as president, he would not tolerate President Donald Trump’s “bigoted rhetoric.”
“Our university is a unique situation because we are the flagship public university across the nation,” Luu said. “We as a university, as a student body, whatever statements we make, whatever actions we take, they ring so loudly across the entire nation and we set the precedent for other universities to follow.”
ASUC President Will Morrow endorsed Luu, calling him a “dedicated public servant.” He said he is consistently impressed by how Luu conducted himself as a representative of the student body during meetings with other student leaders, campus administrators and city officials.
“Most students will never have the chance to see that, but having seen it with my own eyes, he definitely has the patience and persistence needed for role of ASUC president,” Morrow said.
Pressly Pratt is an assistant news editor. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @presslypratt.The Best 3 Organic Stores in Tokyo
As many know, organic food carries a tremendous amount of health benefits. Finding stores where you can shop for organic produce and meals can be a little difficult in Tokyo but they do exist and are growing more and more popular every day.
If you are someone who is looking to shop for organic produce and would like to stay away from GMO foods, here are the best 3 organic food stores in Tokyo.
This place offers all different types of quality organic and natural food including vegetarian and vegan options. Crayonhouse is a unique store because it also has a restaurant on the lower floor offering an all-you-can-eat 1,200 yen buffet lunch. All of the dishes here are made with 90% organic food and are prepared with fresh ingredients. The ingredients used for the store and the restaurant are also very seasonal so you can enjoy some of the best foods each season has to offer. The atmosphere is very beautiful with a spacious terrace for dining which makes this a great place for family or a date.
Pros:
Very good cost performance organic and natural foods.
Creative and delicious organic dishes using seasonal ingredients.
Beautiful atmosphere makes this place comfortable to shop and eat.
The seats are all non-smoking
Really friendly staff who knows a lot about natural and organic food products.
Delicious lunch buffet!
Labels are in both Japanese and English
Cons:
Organic super market is a little small.
The terrace area for dining can get very busy on weekends
Service is a little slow.
Access
Address: 3–8–15 Kita Aoyama, Minato-ku
Weekdays: 11:00 to 23:00 (last order: 22:00)
Sat/Sun/Holidays: 10:30 to 23:00 (last order: 22:00)
Natural House is a chain store specializing in selling organic and natural foods. Natural House no doubt has one of the best selection of organic food options in Tokyo. With a few locations scattered across the city, accessing one near you is very convenient. At natural house you can buy organic foods, vegetables, meat, and even vitamins and body care products. They also have some amazing speciality items like all natural Flavored Honey from Estonia that is rich in nutrients. Overall, Natural House is the most convenient organic food store chain in Tokyo.
Pros:
Wide selection of fresh organic fruits and vegetables, variety of soy mockmeats, cosmetics and more.
Many locations around Tokyo near major train stations.
Located only a 7 minute walk from Shibuya station.
Healthy organic options are available for all diets including vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free.
The vegetarian and vegan options are clearly labeled
40% discount at night in take out food in late hours.
Cons:
Prices can be a little expensive.
Shopping bags are not free (make sure you bring your own).
Most stores locations get very busy on weekends.
Access
Address: 東京都港区北青山3–6–18
Lunch: 11: 30 to 15: 00
Dinner:18: 00 ~ 22: 00
In my opinion, Lima Shinjuku is the best organic and natural food store in Tokyo. What makes Lima Shinjuku organic food store so unique is that it has a long history in working with organic food that dates back decades. On top of offering a large selection of organic food, Lima Shinjuku also offer a macrobiotic cafe with dishes based around healthy brown rice, beans, sea vegetables. Some people believe a diet filled with macrobiotic foods can prevent or treat cancer and ward of other diseases.
Pros:
Good cost performance for organic food.
Cooking classes are available (basic Japanese language is needed).
Handmade healthy food options such as vegetarian burgers are always available.
Healthy and delicious macrobiotic cafe is available.
Staff is very educated about organic food.
Vegan and vegetarian items are available.
Cons:
Not so many lunch options at the cafe.
Very limited amount of seats which is bad on a busy day.
Service is a little slow.
Access
Address: 新宿Ｑビル Japan, 3 Chome-8–9 Shinjuku
Lunch: 11: 00 to 15: 00
Dinner:18: 00 ~ 23: 30Early cost estimates of government projects tend to be optimistic, but does that mean an ambitious project should be scrapped when its price increases?
NASA
The Washington Post reports on the political storm surrounding continued funding of the Webb Space Telescope, our planned next-generation instrument:
In 2006, NASA estimated that Webb would cost $2.4 billion and could launch in 2014. In 2008, the price tag rose to $5.1 billion. A congressionally mandated report released last year found that NASA had underestimated costs and mismanaged the project. This summer, NASA said it had already spent $3.5 billion on the project and needed a total of $8.7 billion to launch in 2018.
Against critics who say the gap has been growing and the project should be shut down,
[Edward J.] Weiler [retired head of NASA space sciences] said estimating costs on a project that's never been built before is difficult. "You bid optimistically. That's not just a problem with the James Webb Space Telescope. We see it at NASA all the time; you see it at defense contractors. I would argue -- and I'm not making excuses here -- that [the budget overrun] is a product of the way we do business in America."
Top astronomers said early estimates were never realistic.
"People were used to lowballing," said Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "Congress has been part of the game."
£ 40 million and finished only in 2004 at a cost of £4 31 million. The much-acclaimed Hubble Space Telescope, Weiler reminded critics, was also way over budget. And that very point is reflected in the new book by the Nobel Laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, in the chapter dealing with what he and his colleague Amos Tversky called the Planning Fallacy: using best-case scenarios and not reflecting actual costs of similar projects. Poster child: the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, originally budgeted in 1997 at
But would we always be better off by following Dr. Kahneman's wise counsel? Shouldn't we look the future squarely in the eye and not fool ourselves about costs? Mark Twain, who virtually bankrupted himself backing an ultimately unworkable typesetter, might have agreed.(Or maybe not; he kept backing esoteric projects like a Polish-Austrian inventor's carpet-pattern machine.) But Dr. Illingworth's remarks suggest there's something else at work, a tacit agreement to keep original estimates deliberately low. Regarding the Scottish Parliament and other architectural megaprojects, the Danish-born program management guru Bent Flyvbjerg believes such enterprises are more often than not Machiavellian charades.Of course that leaves open the question of whether some notorious cases like the Sydney Opera House may turn out to have been worth the deception or self-deception, while others like New Jersey's Xanadu have at least so far been mere money pits.
Scientific instruments are different from monuments; even ardent Scottish nationalists might not claim that the new building will give their country better laws, while the Webb instrument, like the Hubble, might change our view of the universe and our place in it, and yield the surprising economic benefits that expensive pure science (and some military cost overruns) often do. The question is whether the benefit of greater realism in the majority of cases would be offset by the loss of benefits if legislators ruled out all projects that by Kahneman's criteria were likely to produce substantial cost overruns. Sometimes coping with unexpected difficulties produces surprising new solutions, a phenomenon that the economist Albert O. Hirschman has called the Hiding Hand
Fiscal realism can also have unintended consequences. Cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, it has often been observed, helped drive legions of physicists from big science to even bigger finance, where they developed the computer infrastructure behind the trading that is now the target of Occupy Wall Street. The NASA executive Dr. Charles Beichman wrote tongue-in-cheek to the Financial Times two years ago that it's cheaper to pay scientists and engineers to work on accelerators and telescopes than to turn them loose writing derivatives.
So, on balance I would suggest implementing Dr. Kahneman's procedure, but (in the case of potentially productive investments) looking not just at all the potential additional costs but at the kinds of benefits, including spinoffs, that previous big projects have created. I find it hard to believe that in the context of the whole Federal budget, the Web Space Telescope would not survive that kind of realism.
Image: NASA
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.Football Federation Australia (FFA) is refusing to bid to host any future global football events until there is systemic change at the world governing body FIFA.
Australia hosted the Asian Cup for the first time earlier this year but failed to win the bid for the 2022 World Cup, which was awarded to Qatar with the FFA garnering just one vote in the process.
It has now shelved its bid for the 2023 Women's World Cup pending an "overhaul" of FIFA as the global football governing body reels from a corruption scandal.
"In the current volatile environment, FFA can give no consideration to bidding for any FIFA tournament," the FFA said in a statement.
"FFA has made it clear that major reform is needed. FIFA's problems are deep-rooted and tangled in a culture that has developed over decades.
"Until such time that the existing governance model is overhauled, it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which FFA would put Australia forward as a bidding nation."
Investigations
The bidding process for 2022 is among a number of World Cups under investigation by US and Swiss authorities for bribery allegations.
National police are probing Australia's 2022 bid which was criticised by FIFA's own ethics committee last year in a summary of a major investigation into all bidders for the tournament and the 2018 finals awarded to Russia.
FFA president Frank Lowy has been under pressure from local media to step down until Australia's bid is cleared but insists the country's bid was clean.
Australia's sports minister Sussan Ley said last week the government could not consider committing public money toward any future bid overseen by FIFA until major reform of the governance of global football.But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront.
New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.
America was the place where nearly 4000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.
So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history; well, what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.
And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame—all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.
So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.
For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.
As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other.
So, let’s start with the facts. The historic record is clear. The Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal—through monuments and through other means—to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.
First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy.
It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.
These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.Tom Brady may still be serving his suspension, but new quarterback on the block Jimmy Garoppolo helped guide the New England Patriots to a 23-21 victory over the Arizona Cardinals last week during Sunday Night Football. Garoppolo goes for win number two of the young season when the Patriots lock horns with the Miami Dolphins in this NFL Week 2 divisional matchup. While Miami kept the score close against the always dangerous Seattle Seahawks last week, they ended up on the losing end of a 12-10 game. The battle for the AFC East continues during Week 2 of the NFL season!
WHAT TIME DOES THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS VS. MIAMI DOLPHINS GAME START?
The Dolphins and Patriots will kick off at 1:00 P.M. Eastern.
HOW DO I LIVE STREAM THE MIAMI DOLPHINS VS. NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS GAME?
The Patriots/Dolphins game is being broadcast on CBS. Unfortunately, this means live streaming options are limited. Due to current restrictions, NFL games broadcast on CBS are NOT shown on CBS All Access, CBS’s streaming platform.
One possibility for fans is PlayStation Vue. Subscribers to their ‘Access’ basic cable streaming service have access to CBS, though channel lineups vary by region.
CAN I STREAM VIA DIRECTV SUNDAY TICKET?
You can, but only if you live at an address at which DirecTV does NOT offer service (and only out-of-market games). Check your eligibility here.
WHAT ABOUT NFL GAME PASS?
NFL Game Pass shows games that have already concluded. If you’re fine with on demand NON-live games, sign up for $99/year.
WHAT ABOUT TWITTER? I HEARD THEY WERE STREAMING THE NFL THIS YEAR.
Twitter is indeed streaming a number of games, but only Thursday night games, and not all of them.There are a lot of surprised people in California now that more Obamacare details are coming out:
In California, 1.9 million people buy plans on the open market, according to officials with Covered California, the state’s new health insurance exchange. And many of them are steaming mad. “There’s going to be a number of people surprised” by their bills, said Jonathan Wu, a co-founder of ValuePenguin, a consumer finance website. “The upper-middle class are the people who are essentially being asked to foot the bill, and that’s true across the country.” Covered California spokesman Dana Howard maintained that in public presentations the exchange has always made clear that there will be winners and losers under Obamacare. “Some people will see an increase who are already on the individual market purchasing insurance,” he said, “but most people will not.”… Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level — the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn’t realize they would rise so much. “Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
Raise your hand if you think Dana Howard has much of a clue how many people will actually see premiums go up and how many will see them go down. No one expected the Obamacare Sticker Shock:
Also, the levels that premium payments are set this year are not necessarily what they will be next year, or the next—and those levels will to some measure depend on how many people sign up for Obamacare and how many people opt to pay the penalty instead—another unknown.
But it’s that last quote from Vinson that seems to encapsulate a common liberal mindset on Obamacare—or on government-funded benefits in general—that so infuriates conservatives. Who doesn’t “want people to have health care”? But the real question—and the real difference between the approaches of conservatives and liberals, inflammatory rhetoric aside—is how such a thing would be paid for, and especially whether it is possible to do so without putting an undue burden on the wage-earning tax-paying public.
Vinson, like so many people, uses the term “health care” to mean “health insurance,” but let’s gloss over that and stipulate that most people couldn’t afford the former (particularly if a major health problem were to arise) without having the latter. Vinson probably isn’t saying that she didn’t expect to pay for her own health insurance. She is saying that she expected to pay only for her own health insurance, not for the health insurance of those others she “of course” wants covered.
So the trillion-dollar question is: who did she expect would pay for their insurance?
It couldn’t have been the poor themselves who would pay. And if it wasn’t someone like Vinson, whose income clocks in at four times the poverty level—who would it have been? A good guess would be: people who are richer than Vinson.
It’s an interesting phenomenon that’s not at all uncommon among liberals; call it the “do it to Julia, not to me” phenomenon. In this case, something that is recognized as unfair and/or unwanted for oneself is acceptable if the responsibility is put on others instead, those people who for some reason are thought to deserve it more or to be able to absorb it better. But if it’s unfair for the first group, why is it suddenly fair for the second?
Perhaps some people such as Vinson haven’t thought it through even to that extent. Perhaps their thinking stops at the “Of course, I want people to have health care” point. That makes them good people in their own eyes: nice people, compassionate people, unlike those who disagree with them and are imagined to be mean people who do not “want people to have health care.” The idea that conservatives actually might also “want people to have health care” and yet be more realistic than liberals about the costs and benefits of such an undertaking, and might have different ideas about the best way to effect the greatest amount of health care for the greatest number of people, seems to be a foreign notion to many who think as Vinson does.
But hope springs eternal, even for them:
“I’m not against Obamacare,” Waschura said. “It’s just the initial shock. I’m holding out hope that there will be a correction over a handful of years.”
There will probably be a “correction” all right. It just might not be in the direction Waschura assumes.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]People make things more difficult than they have to in many cases and finding jewelry wholesale for most is no exception to this. I think that with the access we have to a world of information through the internet it is quite easy. You can find anything you are looking for at wholesale prices, you just have to be willing to take the time needed to sort through all the garbage to find the jewels.For starters you must know that there is a world of difference between jewelry stores online and their wholesale c...
Jewelry has a long history and being in our world in the ancient times, the wearing of this would be seen by others as a sense of power. It was also worn as a sign of wealth and that is why it is sometimes passed down from generation down.In tribes it was used to show modification to ones body in some tribes women wore neck rings to make ones neck longer and once these were worn they couldn't be taken off because the neck would not support itself. The tribe's women did this to just look different from all t...
Body jewelry has been an influential part of many cultures all over the planet for thousands of years. I would imagine one of the first that comes to mind would be belly dancers of the Middle East, or the beauties in India or adorn their foreheads with jewels. In many societies it was also used to signify a particular class.In modern times the use of body jewelry has reached the mainstream of our society with even grandmothers going to local piercing shops to get belly rings. Many people are beginning to re...
Antique jewelry has never lost its charm among true lovers of this unique craft. It is easy to appreciate old items, whether or not you like pieces with a classic touch. Compared to many other types of antiques, jewelry pieces often last longer. They also require much less them.While there are many talented jewelry designers today, older pieces exist in a class by themselves. In fact, many modern designers will admit that they have been inspired by these pieces. Sometimes modern designers are commissioned t...
Through the years to most people gold has been thought to be the most valuable and desired metal of them all. By many it has been the best thing that they will every want and most people that try and dig it up are the ones that seem to love for it the most. Set aside from buying used as money it has been the primary metal in making fine jewelry that is mot expensive. Even though gold back in the day was used to show power and wealth nowadays it is worn to show a person's uniqueness. That is just why the gol...
Jewelry has been around for more than two thousand years, worn as a show of class, stature, and beauty. Today most people wear jewelry just because they like it. Both men and women wear jewelry. Since real gems and precious metals are very expensive, many people turn to mainly wearing costume jewelry which is made of less expensive materials yet still holds the look almost as well as real jewelry.Men and women alike have developed individual taste when it comes to costume jewelry. Necklaces are very popular...Consider the comments of Sharron Angle, the Tea Party favorite who unsuccessfully ran against Harry Reid for the Senate in Nevada last year. She talked about “domestic enemies” in the Congress and said, “I hope we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies.” Then there’s Rick Barber, a Republican who lost his primary in a Congressional race in Alabama, but not before airing an ad in which someone dressed as George Washington listened to an attack on the Obama agenda and gravely proclaimed, “Gather your armies.”
In fact, much of the message among Republicans last year, as they sought to exploit the Tea Party phenomenon, centered — like the Tea Party moniker itself — on this imagery of armed revolution. Popular spokespeople like Ms. Palin routinely drop words like “tyranny” and “socialism” when describing the president and his allies, as if blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms.
It’s not that such leaders are necessarily trying to incite violence or hysteria; in fact, they’re not. It’s more that they are so caught up in a culture of hyperbole, so amused with their own verbal flourishes and the ensuing applause, that — like the bloggers and TV hosts to which they cater — they seem to lose their hold on the power of words.
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On Saturday, for instance, Michael Steele, the Republican Party chairman, was among the first to issue a statement saying he was “shocked and horrified” by the Arizona shooting, and no doubt he was. But it was Mr. Steele who, last March, said he hoped to send Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the “firing line.”
Mr. Steele didn’t mean this the way it sounded, of course; he was talking about “firing” in the pink slip sense of the word. But his carelessly constructed, made-for-television rhetoric reinforced the dominant imagery of the moment — a portrayal of 21st-century Washington as being like 18th-century Lexington and Concord, an occupied country on the verge of armed rebellion.
Contrast that with one of John McCain’s finer moments as a presidential candidate in 2008, when a woman at a Minnesota town hall meeting asserted that Mr. Obama was a closeted Arab. “No, ma’am, he’s not,” Mr. McCain quickly replied, taking back the microphone. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with.” Mr. McCain was harking back to a different moment in American politics, in which such disagreements could be intense without becoming existential clashes in which the freedom of the country was at stake.
None of this began last year, or even with Mr. Obama or with the Tea Party; there were constant intimations during George W. Bush’s presidency that he was a modern Hitler or the devious designer of an attack on the World Trade Center, a man whose very existence threatened the most cherished American ideals.
The more pressing question, though, is where this all ends — whether we will begin to re-evaluate the piercing pitch of our political debate in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, or whether we are hurtling unstoppably into a frightening period more like the late 1960s.
The country labors still to recover from the memories of Dealey Plaza and the Ambassador Hotel, of Memphis and Birmingham and Watts. Tucson will either be the tragedy that brought us back from |
defeats the purpose of getting younger at the position.
That leaves Hassan Whiteside, Festus Ezeli, and Bismack Biyombo.
Whiteside is an unrestricted free agent and as crazy as it may seem to think he’d leave Miami, they do not have his Bird Rights and cannot exceed the salary cap to retain him.
Ezeli is a young center with defensive upside but has had injury issues including a knee injury this season which has kept him out of action and pretty much out of the rotation in Golden State.
While Festus offers similar upside to Whiteside at likely a lower rate, his injury history makes him a tough option to rely upon when committing big free agency dollars.
Biyombo can fit the Washington Wizards’ need for a rim protector, but his lack of offense could hurt a team that already struggles to score in half court sets.
Move #1:
The Wizards sign Whiteside to a 4-year/$93 million max contract in free agency. His contract would start at $21.8 Million with 4.5% annual raises. Whiteside may not qualify as a “star” but he can absolutely impact and change a game with his defensive prowess.
Why would Miami let him go? I don’t think they will let him go without a fight, but not having bird rights doesn’t help their odds.
That would leave Washington with approximately $8.7 million in cap space plus the room exception to fill out the remaining 5-7 spots on the roster.
Now the Washington Wizards have two centers, neither of whom would likely be pleased to come off the bench, which leads us to…
Move #2:
Washington shops Gortat for salary cap relief to a team that loses a center in free agency (possibly Miami in this scenario). The Wizards, in additional to salary cap relief, should be able to net some type of asset in return for a productive center like Gortat.
That moves nets Washington an additional $12 million in cap space which puts them back at $20.1 million in cap room with the following depth chart.
The needs now fall back to backcourt depth behind to John Wall and Bradley Beal, a scoring wing, and a third big to rotate behind Markieff Morris and Hassan Whiteside.
A recent report out of Europe indicates that Washington is ready to offer Tomas Satoransky multi-year guaranteed deal. The combo guard would likely come here and assume primary responsibilities behind John Wall while his length provides position versatility.
Considering he was requesting the mid-level exception to sign with Washington previously, it’s likely those demands remain consistent.
Move #3:
Washington signs Satoransky to a 3-year/$17.6 million deal. With a starting salary of $5,628,000, Washington is left with $15 million in salary cap space with front court depth and a scoring wing remaining their needs.
Front Court/Wing Possibilities (ranked by preference)
This list is comprised of dependable veterans (Jared Dudley) to guys who could be the next Al-Farouq Aminu in terms of impact with a larger role (Dwight Powell).
Move #4:
Washington signs Dwight Powell for 3-years/$24 Million.
Admittedly, Powell will be tough to land as a restricted free agent. Dallas likely will attempt to retain him which is why an overpay is likely necessary. However, he is the type of free agent Washington should pursue – banking on upside rather than their current production.
Powell is a young big with athleticism, the makings of a decent shooting stroke, and a player who can contribute without having plays run for him. The Washington Wizards, according to CSN, were set to take him had he not been selected 45th overall in the 2014 NBA draft – just one spot ahead of where Washington was selecting.
One spot and we could have avoided all the hand wringing over the Wizards selling their selection to the Los Angeles Lakers which turned into Jordan Clarkson.
Acquiring Dwight Powell could be a longshot, making a player like Jeff Green or Jared Dudley being more likely.
Let’s just assume they land Powell, though. The updated depth chart now looks like this:
This is looking better, but a backup center and a scoring wing are still needs, and with Washington only $7 million under the cap, the options are going to be limited.
Move #5:
Washington signs Miles Plumlee 2-year/$7 Million contract.
There was rumored interest in Plumlee at the trade deadline and while that didn’t materialize then, it does now as he fills the needs for an insurance policy behind Whiteside, is active on the glass and can run the floor.
Leaving roughly $3.5 million in available cap room, Washington must fill the void behind Bradley Beal, especially when you take into account his injury history.
Move #6:
Washington, in need of perimeter shooting, signs Anthony Morrow to their remaining cap space on 2-year/$6 million contract. Capped out, the depth chart looks like this.
That’s an actual young roster – not an old roster that’s being sold as a young core.
Ernie Grunfeld, however, is now likely desperate for a veteran presence on the roster and based on their ability to exceed the cap to sign him…
Move #7: Washington re-signs Garrett Temple to a 2-Year/$5 million contract.
Shooting is still needed on this roster and with the room exception of $2,898,000 they will – in true Ernie Grunfeld – fashion offer the exception to several free agents and say first come, first serve.
Move #8: Washington signs Brandon Rush to a 2-year/ $6 million contract.
The roster now stands at 13 and the balance will be comprised of the best from camp invites and Aaron White, Washington’s second round selection from the 2015 NBA Draft who spent last season playing in Germany.
Final Depth Chart
What I like about this scenario:
Washington becomes much more athletic, and with Whiteside anchoring the defense, can become a defensive juggernaut.
This potential roster doesn’t lack rim protection and can also get out and run the floor. The integration of Satoransky also gives Washington something they’ve needed – a secondary ball handler.
What I don’t like about this scenario:
While I filled the team needs, the lack of a high quality wing scorer still stands out. Let’s say the end of game lineup features Wall, Beal, Porter, Morris, and Whiteside. Who gets the last shot? Who does the offense flow through for scoring and who can get a basket when it’s absolutely needed?
Another issue I have with this roster is while Satoransky does give Washington a second ball handler, unless they play heavy minutes together, the team still with often have only one ball handler on the floor at the time.
No starting player in the frontcourt adds that dynamic under this scenario.
Note 1: Washington should have the advantage when it comes to signing priority undrafted free agents given the number of open roster spots they have and the limited cap room. Agents likely will view Washington as a landing spot where a fringe player can stick due to their cap constraints.
Note 2: This scenario can play out with additional cap room if the Wizards settle for a less expensive center like Festus Ezeli or Bismack Biyombo.The mysterious and growing divide between the rich and the rest in just about every wealthy country on Earth, including the U.S., is really two mysteries wrapped in one. The first mystery is why real wage growth has sped up at the top and slowed down for everybody else. But the second, more recent, and more fascinating problem is why labor’s share of the winnings in developed economies has been in decline. It’s not just that middle-class wages are falling behind the rich. Overall wages are falling behind something else — capital.
People are becoming less valuable to workers. Why?
Simply put, the world shrank. Two seemingly unrelated inventions — the microprocessor and the shipping container — conspired to create a global market for all assets, including people. A century of achievements in computing power and shipping ushered in an era of global trade so expansive that it completely disaggregated the process of doing business (especially in manufacturing), allowing firms to treat finished goods as a bundle of globally sourced components and services.
As more than a billion new workers flooded a global labor market open to multinational companies, capable workers became less scarce, and therefore, less valuable. In order to understand how all of this happened, we have to dig into recent economy history, exploring the rise of digital technology and global trade.
THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
20th century mathematicians were probably aware of the potential for computers to disrupt the market for human labor. It is, however, extremely unlikely that anyone could have predicted the convoluted manner in which this potential was realized. The obvious candidate would have been artificial intelligence — if machines were able to mimic or perhaps exceed human intelligence, scores of people would suddenly find themselves useless. Though the specter of true AI still hangs over the 21st century, the great technological disruption of the 20th century was the advent of digital technology. The power of digital technology to reliably store and reproduce information led to a sea change in the way human beings communicate, making worldwide communication cheap, reliable and instantaneous.
Although no single invention can take full credit for the current ubiquity of digital devices, the microprocessor is generally credited as the core driver of smaller, more powerful digital devices. Microprocessors are computational engines that temporarily store and operate on information, doing the physical work of computation, taking information as input, changing it, and transmitting the altered information as output. The surface of a microprocessor is covered in tiny electrical switches called transistors — the workhorses of the microprocessor. The “speed” of a microprocessor depends on the number of transistors it contains. In the early days of computation, transistors were large and computers were slow.
Transistor technologically improved rapidly, leading to microscopic transistors, and smaller yet vastly more powerful microprocessors. This greater power expanded the scope of tasks that computers could perform, placing computers at the heart of a variety of tasks previously performed by human beings, including, ironically, the design and manufacture of microprocessors. In addition to growing to control complex manufacturing processes, modern computers are able to store, process, and reproduce complex forms of sensory information, such as sounds, and moving images.
This dramatic reduction in scale, coupled with a new ability to realistically reproduce sensory information, transformed the computer from a tool of industry and academics into a consumer item. So while the notion of a “bit” was the fruit of a mathematical inquiry, its ubiquity is perhaps better understood as the product of market forces — the demand for a common unit of information. This demand from consumers and businesses alike for the capacity to store and transmit bits prompted the development of an omnipresent network of payments, phone calls, and electronic messages that fundamentally changed the way human beings conduct business and go about their daily lives. Suddenly, a single, global network could transmit payment information, photographs, scientific data, and current events, all on a nearly real time basis, creating geographically independent access to an ocean of transactions, human knowledge, culture, and experience.
THE BOX
Just as computers led to the proliferation of a common unit of information, world trade has been transformed by a common unit of shipping capacity — the container.
Prior to containerized shipping, each piece of cargo had to be individually loaded onto and unloaded from shipping vessels using manual labor, forcing ships to spend substantial amounts of time idle in port. Every second a ship spends idle in port is a second the ship is not doing what ships are meant to do, which is shipping goods and generating revenue for the ship’s owner. The key to containerized shipping is that goods are packed once at the point of production in a standardized “box.” That box is left packed until it reaches its final destination. This allows containerized goods to be transferred from ship to rail to road and back, all without much manual labor. Eliminating the lag caused by manually packing and unpacking cargo, containerization dramatically reduced the amount of time it takes to load and unload ships, leading to a spike in the amount of time ships spend at sea, from around 50% of the ship’s life to around 90%. Containerized volumes grew rapidly since the 1980s, at about 10% per year – three-times faster than total seaborne trade.
Though the overall volume of global trade has grown over the last few decades, the share driven by developed economies like the U.S. has decreased. Today, developing nations account for half of global trade and half of its growth.
The infrastructures of global trade and digital communication broke the shackles of geography, making finished goods complex assemblages generated by a network of component products and services – e.g., the iPhone consists of several independently manufactured components sourced from the U.S., Italy, Taiwan and Japan that are assembled in China and then marketed globally. Since the points of production and service along a supply chain are now geographically independent, the pool of labor that can be utilized to perform any task along the chain is global, effectively increasing the supply of labor — and decreasing the value of workers in developed economies.
THE RACE FOR INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
The new infrastructure of global trade made it economical to deploy capital across the world to utilize enormous pools of labor in developing nations. The flow of money into developing nations operated like a magnet, causing enormous populations to leave farmlands for cities and transition from peasantry to paid labor. More than one billion non-farm jobs were created globally since the 1980’s, according to the McKinsey Global Institute’s report, ”The World at Work: Jobs, pay and skills for 3.5 billion people.” Nine out of every ten jobs were created in developing nations, and 44 percent were created in China and India alone. Now that wages are rising in both China and India, capital is moving elsewhere, chasing cheaper labor in South Asia and Africa.
The freedom of capital to move throughout the world in search for labor has fundamentally changed the balance of power between labor and capital, and technology and trade continue to expand the scope of tasks that can be performed at a distance, although truly local labor (construction, hair-cutting, locksmithing) probably won’t escape overseas. This dynamic is already exerting sizable, downward pressure on the value of labor relative to capital in developed nations. But despite more efficient, more complete markets, labor is inherently divided into skill sets, placing a fundamental limit on its fungibility, and as suggested above, leading to growing disparities between the wages of high skill workers and low skill workers.
Global trade would be impossible without the human beings that do the physical and intellectual work of everyday business. Like the transistors that blanket a microprocessor, human beings are scattered about the surface of the Earth, operating like tiny economic switches, moving and consuming objects, building and abandoning relationships, and ultimately, both deliberately and inadvertently contributing to a collective engine that determines the distribution of our planet’s resources and our labors. But unlike the static abilities of a transistor, human beings are malleable, and can be cultivated to generate transformational, physical power.
Over the coming decades, as developing markets grow and mature, and new markets develop, there will be unprecedented demand for power of all varieties, from combustion to computation, and with it, unprecedented demand for the types of highly developed human intelligences that can unlock and utilize these powers. As a result, there will likely be a global shortage of high skill workers and a global surplus of low skill workers. This imbalance in the supply of skill sets is likely to exacerbate the power imbalance created by the prevailing dominance of technology and capital over labor, leading to even greater wage disparities between high earners and low earners, and further decreases in the overall value of labor relative to capital in developed nations. Nations that cultivate the brainpower of their populations will be rewarded with funds channeled from a global pool of capital aggressively searching for the brightest minds across the entirety of the human species. Nations that don’t will be punished, finding themselves saddled with populations that simply cannot compete in this new, remarkably complex, and dynamic world.
THE DEEPEST BENCH
The United States is the world’s preeminent economic engine, generating a remarkably large and diverse set of products and services used all over the world. Nonetheless, we are subject to the same market forces gradually reshaping economic realities across the developed world. As the home of household brands like Intel, Facebook, and Google, and the world’s greatest scientific research institutions, we are, arguably, uniquely positioned to exploit, rather than be exploited by these forces.
So far, however, we have done a terrible job.
The wage gap between high-skill and low-skill labor in the U.S. mirrors the broader developed world. Similarly, the value of capital relative to labor mirrors trends observed in the broader developed word, with the relative share of income generated by labor in the U.S. declining over the last several decades. As noted above, these trends will probably continue and become more pronounced as greater imbalances in the global supply of labor develop over the coming decades.
If, however, the supply of labor is truly global, then there is in theory nothing keeping the U.S. from dominating the market for high skilled labor — not only fulfilling its own demand but generating excess and exporting its intellectual capital abroad to fill the global deficit. There are, however, substantial practical barriers, in particular our education and immigration policy. The U.S. is simply not producing enough college graduates in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (“STEM”). We can either produce more STEM graduates domestically or encourage more immigration of STEM graduates from abroad, or perhaps utilize some combination of both. Doing nothing is not an option, unless we are willing to voluntarily decay into an increasingly polarized and overall poorer society. A polarized, poorer society that will likely lead to even greater political instability as the primary revenue generator of the U.S. government, taxing labor, becomes inherently less lucrative.
Change is an inevitable aspect of the human experience, but progress is not. Things can always get worse. And unless we take action to adapt to the new reality that surrounds us, we will be swept away by it. If, however, we are honest about the risks we face and the actions we can take to address them, we can instead opportunistically exploit the disruptions brought about by technology and global trade, make a conscious decision to produce the type of population that will succeed in this new reality, and, perhaps, inadvertently incubate the types of scientific revolutions that led the United States to economic, military, and political dominance in the first instance.
The article is based on a presentation given by the author at The Concordia Summit.
This originally appeared on The Atlantic. Also on our sister site:
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.Pine Manor College president Thomas O'Reilly and college students stood on the grounds of their campus. The Town of Brookline has proposed taking the college's land, by eminent domain, to build an elementary school.
A standoff is brewing in Brookline over town officials’ surprise announcement that they may seize 7 acres of Pine Manor College’s front lawn by eminent domain to build an elementary school.
Pine Manor president Tom O’Reilly said he was shocked to receive a phone call this week from the town’s top official, who told him Brookline might take part of his campus.
“I said, ‘Whoa, the college is not interested in any land deals,’ ” O’Reilly said in an interview.
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But the town is very interested. Officials have been searching for five years for a site for a ninth elementary school, and their top choice just fell through. The town was considering a site a half-mile down Heath Street from Pine Manor, but learned recently about an obscure federal restriction that would make it more difficult to build there.
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Town officials said they have not ruled out that option, or a few others, but they now believe that Pine Manor’s land could be exactly what they’re looking for. Two town boards, the selectmen and the School Committee, came to that conclusion at a closed-door meeting on Sept. 19, the town said this week in a press release.
“Sometimes a municipality has needs and we have to meet those needs, and eminent domain is a tool. It’s a last resort, but it’s a tool in our arsenal, and if we have to use it we have to use it,” said Neil Wishinsky, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.
The land in question is along Heath Street, near its intersection with Hammond Street and close to Route 9. In all, the school sits on 52 acres that include classrooms, dormitories, a recently renovated cafeteria, and the Dane Estate, the historic mansion that is now Pine Manor’s central office.
On Tuesday evening, after he found out about the proposal to seize the school property, O’Reilly wrote a strongly worded letter to the town vigorously opposing it. Town officials had approached the college about the land twice before, most recently this spring, but O’Reilly had told them the school wasn’t interested.
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The letter touted the school’s diversity — 85 percent of students are people of color and 84 percent are first-generation students. It said the school has recovered from its formerly troubled financial position and is on track to thrive.
And, O’Reilly noted, the college was not invited to a hearing or public meeting on the topic.
“As our elected representatives, I ask you to press the stop button on this proposal,” he wrote.
Wishinsky, in a phone interview Wednesday, said the town values Pine Manor and does not want to harm it.
“If anything, I see this as an opportunity to better integrate Pine Manor into the life of the community by bringing more town residents in contact with Pine Manor,” he said.
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The matter won’t be decided soon. Wishinsky said officials hope to now gather public input; the agenda for a Special Town Meeting in mid-November includes a proposal to study this or other possible locations for a new school.
He said selectmen hope to hold a public meeting about the proposal next week.
The town needs a new school because of a burgeoning population of children, according to School Committee chairman David Pollak. Some schools are so crowded they have five lunch periods, he said.
According to town documents, officials ruled out the Pine Manor site last September after they learned the college was not interested in selling. Eminent domain was deemed a “hostile” approach at the time, according to meeting minutes on the town website.
Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Pine Manor College students.
The former two-year finishing school for women has struggled for years with financial problems and a series of presidents. It was placed on academic probation by the regional accreditation agency in 2016, and O’Reilly was hired 15 months ago to turn the school around.
By his accounting, that has happened. The school has balanced its budget for the past two years and grown enrollment and revenue, he said. It now has 500 students — half degree-seeking undergraduates and the other half foreign students who come for intensive English language training programs.
In 2013, before O’Reilly was president, the college did sell 5.1 acres to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, but O’Reilly said the school no longer needs to do that. According to town records, the front of Pine Manor’s land has been subdivided into four one-acre lots, but O’Reilly said that was before he became president.
Accreditors are due to visit the school this fall to assess whether to remove the probationary status. O’Reilly is hopeful. He has been making his way around town on a public relations tour to reintroduce the “new” Pine Manor College to those inside and outside the higher education universe.
He said the college, a nonprofit, makes payments in lieu of taxes to the town, opens its yards and fields to the community, and has even connected its library to the Brookline public library system.
“Then to be sideswiped and shocked in this way is striking,” he said.
To take the property, the town would need a vote of approval at Town Meeting, said James Masterman, an eminent domain attorney at the firm Greenberg Traurig. The town would then have to give the college fair market value for the land based on the site’s highest and best use, he said.
Wishinsky, the Brookline selectmen chairman, said he has an idea of what the land is worth but would not disclose that number. The land Brady bought for $4.5 million is now worth $15 million, town records show.
The Pine Manor land and the original site the town was considering are surrounded by several rich and powerful neighbors.
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft owns four properties directly east of Pine Manor that are worth a combined $19 million, according to town records online.
Kraft’s son Jonathan owns four properties on the west side of Pine Manor that are also near the original site where the town wanted to build a school. They are worth a combined $14 million, according to town records.
Brookline neighbors have been closely following the search for a new school site. Attorney Stephen Wald represents a group of residents who live near the other site the town was considering and oppose that option for several reasons, chief among them traffic.
Some residents are also upset that the town developed the idea to take the college site without public discussion. They worry the same traffic problems would occur at Pine Manor.
“Everybody’s trying to figure out what they’re doing, given the fact that they’ve been doing it behind closed doors in secret,” Wald said.
Laura Krantz can be reached at laura.krantz@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @laurakrantzOn Saturday, Mission America’s Linda Harvey spoke with Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality about how she and other anti-gay activists are running out of places to shop because so many major businesses have announced their support for LGBT rights.
Harvey criticized the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which she called “a huge fascist scheme to reward homosexual, this immoral behavior, and I can’t imagine how many hundreds of thousands of stories there are out there that we never hear about of people in the workplace whose views are silenced and feel like they work in a concentration camp.”
“Well yes, that’s what political correctness does,” LaBarbera said. “It forces people to be victimized at work.”
In a recent radio commentary, Harvey similarly vented her outrage that she can’t find anywhere to go Christmas shopping because “the big retailers” are “doing everything the homosexual movement wants them to do.”Gentile Folly: the Rothschilds
by
ARNOLD LEESE
Author of
“My Irrelevant Defence: Jewish Ritual Murder.”
This book is dedicated, with permission, to
H. H. BEAMISH,
the pioneer, who set my feet upon the way.
“If I am killing a rat with a stick and have him in a corner,
I am not indignant if he tries to bite me and squeals and
gibbers with rage. My job is, not to get angry, but to keep
cool, to attend to my footwork and to keep on hitting him
where it will do the most good.”—
A. S. Leese, speaking at Reception, 17th Feb., 1937, on his
return from prison where he was consigned for writing the
truth about Jews.
CONTENTS [by original pages]
Chapter. Page
INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - -
HISTORICAL LANDMARKS - - - - - - -
WORKS FREQUENTLY REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT - -
A ROTHSCHILD STUD-BOOK - - - - - -
1. THE FRANKFORT HOUSE - - - - 9
2. THE LONDON HOUSE - - - - - 15
3. THE PARIS HOUSE - - - - - - 26
4. THE VIENNA HOUSE - - - - - - - 31
5. THE NAPLES HOUSE - - - - - - 36
6. THE AMERICAN HOUSE - - - - - - 37
7. THE ROTHSCHILD GRIP IN OTHER LANDS - - - 41
8. THE ROTHSCHILDS AND BRITISH ROYALTY - - - 42
9. GENTILE INTERMARRIAGES WITH THE ROTHSCHILDS - - - 45
10. GENTILE FRIENDS OF THE ROTHSCHILDS - - - 47
11. ROTHSCHILD FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER JEWS - 53
12. ROTHSCHILDS AND PRESS CONTROL - - - - 55
13. ROTHSCHILD CONTROL OF RAW MATERIALS - - - 56
14. DIAMONDS AND GOLD - - - - - - 61
15. ROTHSCHILDS AND ZIONISM - - - - - - 63
16. OTHER ROTHSCHILDS - - - - - - - 63
17. THE MORAL OF IT ALL - - - - - - 64
INDEX - - - - - - - - -
CORRECTIONS.
P. 4. Date of Leipzig battle was 1813, not 1812. 1864. Item refers to Seven Weeks’ War, not Seven Years’ War.
P. 8. Leopold Rothschild had three sons, not two sons and a daughter as stated. The son not mentioned was Evelyn A. Rothschild, died 1917.
P. 10. 13th line from bottom: Date of Battle of Leipzig was 1813, not 1812.
P.p. 13 and 14. “Tugenbund” should be “Tugendbund.”
P. 17. Line 9. Omit “companies, particularly.” Also delete the sentence beginning on line 10 with “Now” and ending “(see p. 25).”
P. 25. Line 1. “First Sea Lord” should be “Prime Minister.”
P. 25. In the 3rd para., the references to “Lloyds” refer to Lloyds Bank, not the Insurance organisation.
P. 47. 10th line from bottom: “Censored” should be “Censured.”
ADDENDA.
P. 18. In 1848, Lionel Rothschild offered Thomas Carlyle any sum he cared to name if he would write in support of Jewish emancipation; Carlyle indignantly refused. (Froude’s Carlyle’s Life in London).
P. 61. First para. G. W. Smalley in Anglo-American Memories states that Lord Randolph Churchill borrowed £5,000 from Lord Rothschild on his South African trip, and invested it in gold mines, making an enormous profit; also that the expert engineer accompanying him was sent by Rothschild.
PREFACE.
THIS little book has been produced with the object of filling a vacancy which the author considers has too long existed.
Works on the Rothschilds are many, but nearly all these are either purposefully inaccurate or, like Count Corti’s masterpiece, long and rather dry. This book of mine contains no padding and needs to be read slowly.
I am not concerned with anecdotes about the Rothschilds, nor with registering their “wise-cracks,” nor with their “charity.” I take no interest in the Rothschilds as men or robots, but only as Jews; this book, which has been condensed so as to be within the reach of any working-man or woman, deals with the principal aspects of control over the Gentile by sheer weight of money-power, a control used for purposes not Gentile.
Dealing, as it does, with the last 150 years which have been so full of world-shaking events, it has been no easy task to squeeze what I have to say within the compass of a one-shilling publication. To enable those who have either forgotten their history or (let us be honest) never learned it, to follow the narrative more easily, a calendar of some of the principal historical events of the period follows this preface, and I would advise the reader to have within reach, when reading the book, an ordinary school history-book for occasional reference.
On the page following the Calendar, the reader will find a list of the principal works from which quotations, etc., have been taken, together with the letters of the alphabet used as references to them. Thus, for example, the sign (B, Vol. IV. p. 272) refers to that volume and page in the Jewish Encyclopædia.
In attempting my task, I know that I am only able to expose a small fraction of the total evil done by certain members of this Jewish family in the past; but, like a geologist who tells the story of the earth by his observations upon outcrops of rock, I tell the story of Rothschild control over the Gentiles from the evidence which has happened to come to light, so that my readers may judge for themselves what still lies underground.
Trusting that this book may enable others to dispense knowledge of the subject, I now drop this spanner into the wobbling, squeaking, overheated machinery of an outworn democracy, hoping for the best. I ask my readers to get busy, for the time is short.
ARNOLD LEESE.
White House,
Pewley Hill,
Guildford. 28th February, 1940.
A FEW HISTORICAL LANDMARKS
FOR THE READER’S GUIDANCE.
1789. French Revolution.
1793. Louis XVI. beheaded.
1804. Bonaparte made Emperor Napoleon 1st.
1806. Napoleon shattered Prussia at Battle of Jena.
1808-13. Peninsular War.
1812. Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow.
Napoleon defeated at Leipzig and abdicated, being exiled to Elba.
1814-15. Vienna Congress to settle the affairs of Europe.
1815. Napoleon returns, the “hundred days,” Battle of Waterloo. Return of Bourbon Kings.
1830. Second French Revolution. Charles X. expelled. Louis Phillippe, Duke of Orleans, became King of France.
1836. Don Carlos claimed Spanish throne; war ended in his defeat.
1848. Third French Revolution, Louis Philippe dethroned; Republic proclaimed. Similar disturbances in other European States.
1851. Louis Napoleon voted President of French Republic.
1852. Louis Napoleon becomes Emperor as Napoleon III.
1854-6. Crimean War.
1860. Italy united by Garibaldi.
1861. Civil War in America between North and South over Slavery. [sic! — JR, ed.]
It continued until 1865.
1864. Outbreak of Seven Years’ War between Prussia and Austria.
1870. Franco-Prussian War. Napoleon III. abdicated, and France became a Republic.
1871. Communist insurrection in Paris. On restoration of order, Thiers elected President of French Republic.
1877. Russo-Turkish War.
1878. Treaty of Berlin, settling affairs of Turkey.
1881. Death of Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), principal Rothschild agent in England.
Transvaal wins self-government under British suzerainty.
1888. De Beers Diamond monopoly formed.
1895. Jameson Raid.
1899-1902. Boer War ending in defeat of President Kruger.
1901. Death of Queen Victoria.
1910. Death of King Edward VII.
1914-18. Great World War, followed by Versailles Conference.
1915. Sir H. McMahon promises Palestine to the Arabs.
1917. “Liberal” Revolution in Russia quickly followed by Bolshevik revolution.
Lord Balfour promises Palestine to the Jews.
1939. Beginning of the Jewish War of revenge against Hitler.
Works frequently referred to in the Text.
A. The Rise and the Reign of the House of Rothschild, by Count Corti, in 2 volumes, 1928. This is a work of independent historical research of great value, completely documented, but naturally a little long and dry for ordinary readers.
B. Jewish Encyclopædia, Vols. I to XII. Published between 1903 and 1906, an authoritative reference book by Jews, representing their own interpretation of Jewish and other activities.
C. The Riddle of the Jews’ Success, by F. Roderick-Stoltheim, translated by C. Pownall. Hammer Verlag publication, 1927.
D. Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice, 2 vols., 1929. Edited by S. Gwynn.
E. L’Anti-semitisme, by the Jew Bernard Lazare, 1894.
F. Occult Theocrasy, by Lady Queenborough, published posthumously, for private circulation only, 2 vols.
G. Life and Memoirs of Count Mole, edited by Marquis of Noailles, 2 vols., 1923.
H. Essays in Jewish History, by the Jew L. Wolf, 1934.
J. The Financiers and the Nation, by T. Johnston, 1934.
K. Greville Diary, edited by P. W. Wilson, 1927. Chas. Greville was Clerk to the Privy Council for many years. The references given are the dates of the entries cited.
L. The Magnificent Rothschilds, by the Jew C. Roth, 1939.
M. Lady Rothschild and her Daughters, by L. Cohen, 1935.
N. The Life of Lord Beaconsfield, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P.
O. Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit, by Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Berlin, 1883, 2 Vols.
P. Diary of Lord Bertie, 1914-18, edited by Lady Algernon G. Lennox, 1924. Lord Bertie was our Paris Ambassador, 1905-18.
Q. World Hoax, by E. F. Elmhurst, 1938, U S.A.
R. Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition.
S. The Life of Lord George Bentinck, by the Jew Disraeli. There are many editions of this book, so all references are to Chapters.
T. History of the Jews in Vienna, by the Jew M. Grunwald, 1936, Jewish Publication Society of America.
Works frequently referred to in the Text.—Continued.
U. My Irrelevant Defence; Jewish Ritual Murder, by A. S. Leese, 1937.
V. Grey Wolf, by H. C. Armstrong, a study of Mustafa Kemal.
W. Reminiscences, by the Jewess Lady Battersea, 1922. She was a Rothschild.
X. Letters of Charles Greville and Henry Reeve, edited by A. H. Johnson, 1924.
Y. My Autobiography, by Margot Asquith.
Z. Merchants of Death, by H. C. Engelbrecht and F |
system is called the Passenger Transport Driver Authorisation System or PTDAS.
But despite its competitors having access to the system, the Department of Transport and Main Roads continues to block Uber's access to the PTDAS, citing several different reasons. The first reason given to Uber was privacy concerns; the second was because Uber didn't fit into the Department's definition of a legal operator. Whatever the reason, it's a move Uber calls "out of synch with the rules and regulations around access" to the PTDAS.
"It is astounding, given that the DMTR continues to deny Uber access to the PTDAS that it could make this claim: 'public safety is the primary concern and there are no restrictions on who can apply to have access to PTDAS.'"
"Given the DTMR’s publicly stated and consistently reiterated position that public safety is the primary concern and its willingness to allow other mobile platforms access to the PTDAS, then it should provide Uber with access to the PTDAS so it is able to undertake the daily checks of the currency of the driver authorisations of its partners," it wrote.
Uber Queensland's GM, Michael Abbott, told us in an interview today that if the Department of Transport and Main Roads wanted to give access to Uber, "it could be sorted out within 20 minutes, that's how simple it is".
He added that access to the system would improve safety and allow Uber to ensure the ongoing currency of the documentation.
In a clever turn of phrase, Uber actually argues that it's doing the State Government's work for it by running a ride-sharing service in the Sunshine State.
Policy documents released by the Queensland State Government as far back as 2005 advocate the use of ride-sharing for people looking to get to work.
Uber said it was a bold idea that it's now making a reality despite resistance from regulators:
"The Uber app has just taken what the Government previously advocated and made it a viable reality."
"At a policy level governments like to encourage the better utilisation of vehicles, reductions in traffic and congestion and the environmental and economic benefits of ridesharing. However in practice, the regulatory enforcement arms of governments appear distant from the policy objectives and are unwilling to embrace change."
Uber goes one step further, however, and says that the regulator has sour grapes because the ride-sharing start-up out of San Francisco is implementing Government policy better than the Government ever could:
Uber believes it is hypocritical for DTMR to seek to penalise one platform simply because it was more successful in achieving a policy outcome than the Government’s own implementation.
In today’s modern world the way the Uber app works is no different to a person advertising on a notice board or a database in their office to car-pool or share with a colleague in return for payment. The Government was more than willing to promote this and advocate for it at the time.
Why would method of connection between individuals be considered legal and be encouraged by governments, but another be considered as outside of the law because it occurs via technology?
The Future
After all the regulator bashing and he-said/she-said, however, the submission makes suggestions as to how the ride-sharing service can be better integrated into Queensland's transportation system.
Uber wants to expand ride-sharing in Queensland and ultimately open its UberPOOL feature to the local market. UberPOOL is a service that lets Uber customers become passengers in the same car. Two people are both in Sydney’s CBD, for example, and need to get to the airport. Both would flag that on UberPOOL and jump in the one car together to get to their destination.
Uber also said that the state has an imperative to improve its transport alternatives given the impending arrival of the Commonwealth Games in 2018.
"Queensland is preparing to host the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018 and there will be a severe transport shortage. The Gold Coast only has one taxi network and only 357 Taxis. There will be a shortage of taxi services and the Government and municipal authorities and the games organisers will need to consider alternative solutions that deliver appropriate services, without increasing the cost to the taxpayer - Uber can be this solution."
"Imagine 2000 additional vehicles travelling to the Gold Coast every day to transport athletes, officials, spectators and tourist at no cost to the taxpayer and providing an increase in employment," it wrote, adding that the State Government could save buckets of cash hiring private vehicle partners to shuttle athletes, minders and other VIPs around.
To facilitate these lofty goals, Uber has four "recommendations" in its submission to the government:
1. The Government enter into meaningful conversations about reform and recognise ridesharing as a new and distinct form of point-to-point transport that requires a new regulatory approach. 2. The Government enter into discussions with Uber to develop a set of sensible, safety- based regulations. 3. A Transport Network Company regulatory framework is considered that will allow the DTMR to regulate and license both the driver-partners and the platform. 4. The Queensland Government should follow other States and reduce the Cabcharge surcharge without further delay.
Uber summed up its report by saying that the Queensland Government has the opportunity to "lead the nation" by legalising Uber, allowing the service to create jobs and income for Queenslanders in the process.
The ball is in Queensland's court now.
We reached out to the Taxi Council of Queensland for a statement on the Uber report, but it hadn't returned our call at the time of writing.
Are you buying what Uber is selling here? Should it be legalised and allowed to expand in Australia? Tell us in the comments.Today, in News That Will Make You Irate, there's a guy starting a "White Men Only" college scholarship fund. Yeah, we're serious.
British conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos created the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant, which will begin taking applications later this year and plans to give 50 grants of $2,500 to white men, according to BuzzFeed News. The money will come from private donors as well as from a $25,000 donation from Yiannopoulos himself. British conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos created the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant, which will begin taking applications later this year and plans to give 50 grants of $2,500 to white men, according to. The money will come from private donors as well as from a $25,000 donation from Yiannopoulos himself.
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"Young white boys do not have any advantages whatsoever and are significantly disadvantaged," Yiannopoulos told the site. "We're just trying to level the playing field for an underprivileged group."
The website for the fund highlights a statistic that says male students make up 43% of college students, but BuzzFeed points out that there are, in fact, existing scholarships The website for the fund highlights a statistic that says male students make up 43% of college students, butBuzzFeedpoints out that there are, in fact, existing scholarships for men, and that according to a 2011 paper by finance expert Mark Kantrowitz, "Caucasian students receive a disproportionately greater share of private scholarships and merit-based grants. Caucasian students receive more than three times as much in merit-based grant and private scholarship funding as minority students."
Yiannopoulos says they'll rely on self-identification, so there will be no race or gender test for eligibility, and that the scholarships will be based on need and merit. He hopes to eventually expand the opportunity to other countries because, "young white boys are suffering."
We'll leave you with this bio that Yiannopoulos gives himself on his grant's We'll leave you with this bio that Yiannopoulos gives himself on his grant's Web site : "Milo continues to be an unlikely angel for men struggling to find acceptance in mainstream society."A group of 10 prominent doctors from around the country is taking aim at Dr. Mehmet Oz, calling on Columbia University to oust the popular TV doctor from its faculty.
In a letter addressed to Dr. Lee Goldman, Columbia's Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine, they write:
"We are surprised and dismayed that Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons would permit Dr. Mehmet Oz to occupy a faculty appointment, let alone a senior administrative position in the Department of Surgery.
"As described here and here, as well as in other publications, Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops. Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.
"Thus, Dr. Oz is guilty of either outrageous conflicts of interest or flawed judgements about what constitutes appropriate medical treatments, or both. Whatever the nature of his pathology, members of the public are being misled and endangered, which makes Dr. Oz's presence on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution unacceptable."
The author of the letter, Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told CBS News that in his view, "a person who endangers patients and is a menace to public health should not be on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution."
Oz -- in addition to being a TV personality first made famous on "Oprah" -- is a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon and vice-chair of the department of surgery at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he says "our mantra is we train doctors to save lives."
Miller said he felt compelled to speak out because of what he called Oz's "fear-mongering" on the issue of genetically modified foods, which Miller has written about in Slate and elsewhere.
"He's been so wrong and so misleading and so unconstructive and antisocial on that subject, I thought enough is enough," Miller said.
Oz has come under fire before for making unsubstantiated claims and promoting questionable products on his syndicated program, "The Dr. Oz Show."
A 2011 episode about arsenic in apple juice prompted an angry rebuttal from the FDA, which called his report "irresponsible and misleading."
Dr. Oz to testify on Capitol Hill over weight loss product scams
And last summer, Oz was called before Congress to testify at a Senate hearing about deceptive advertising for over-the-counter diet supplements after he sang the praises of green coffee bean extract as a "miracle" weight loss pill.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, blasted him for making such claims on his show when "you know it's not true."
"I've got no problem with celebrity endorsements of any product but I do have a problem when a science-based doctor says something is a miracle when there's no science to back it up," McCaskill told CBS News' Nancy Cordes at the time.
At the hearing, Oz defended his approach and the value of introducing viewers to a range of alternative treatments. "My show is about hope," he said. "We've engaged millions in programs -- including programs we did with the CDC -- to get folks to realize there are different ways they can rethink their future," he said.
The controversy did not die down after his testimony. The company behind the "miracle" diet supplement in question later agreed to pay a $3.5 million settlement over false advertising. A study that purported to prove the product's weight-loss benefits turned out to be based on fraudulent data and was retracted.
Miller points out that such supplements are not regulated by the FDA the way drugs are, and do not have to meet the same standards for safety and effectiveness.
"If [Oz] is promoting products that have side effects, possibly severe side effects, that's a menace to public health. And he has millions of people adhering to his advice," Miller said.
Miller admitted he did not really expect Columbia to act on his letter and fire Dr. Oz, though he held out hope that the board of trustees might take up the issue.
He and his co-signers received a brief email response from a university spokesman, stating: "As I am sure you understand and appreciate, Columbia is committed to the principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members' freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion."
Read the full letter below:While DJI are the undisputed leaders of the consumer drone market, it seems as though they’re keen on securing their future — despite it looking fairly bright. They’re riding high on the launch of their newest consumer-focused drone, the Phantom 4… but at the same time, seem to be keen on making sure that no one’s able to steal their share of the pie. Ever?
Here’s why.
Recently, we got sent a story by DJI on how the obstacle avoidance feature the Phantom 4 features was superior to that of the Yuneec Typhoon H, a prime Phantom 4 contender. We’re particular about having original content and only original content here at RC Drone Arena, so I double checked with the person (a public relations executive from DJI) about the story being 100% original, and exclusive to RC Drone Arena, to which he agreed. More on this later.
The article, naturally, had the Phantom 4 come on top in the end. What’s interesting is that the couple of videos used in the article were both not made by DJI — so if something did ever go wrong, DJI for sure wouldn’t be the ones to blame.
E P I C Camera Drones on sale!
The videos embedded in the article came from FliteTest (well-known YouTube channel) and another (perhaps made-up) channel called LEE ROL.
DJI Hitting Below The Belt?
Earlier today (two days after having the DJI-sent article up on RC Drone Arena) I came across this post on sUAS News, talking about pretty much the same thing. What was interesting to see was the video that the article had embedded in it; it turns out someone — DJI or someone else — are hitting below the belt. Take a look at the video:
I was surprised to find that DJI had sent the exact same article to sUAS News as well — without caring about the consequences that could land both (and others, if any) parties in jeopardy. As you may know already, search engines aren’t particularly fond of copied content (and they don’t know about the dirty games being played otherwise).
So, it turns out that:
The article sent to us was NOT an exclusive. DJI — or a PR agency they’ve hired — aren’t respecting the rules of the game, and are indulging in negative advertising.
I encourage you to go over Gary’s piece on sUAV News talking about the same issue. To answer his question about someone being afraid of the Typhoon H — umm, do I even need to?Whenever it is that Shakeema Hutcherson, a dog walker in New York City, dies, she plans to be buried with her family — and that includes her angelic Yorkshire terrier-Chihuahua mix, Tinka, and her frequently demonic cat, Sweetie. Now, when Ms. Hutcherson’s time comes, Tinka and Sweetie will be allowed to rest in peace in her family’s plot: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recently signed a law allowing cemeteries for people to inter pets alongside their owners.
“It’s like having a kid, so it’s like having a kid buried next to you,” Ms. Hutcherson, 35, said. Besides, she said, it would make things simpler in the hereafter: “I could talk to God,” she said, asking, “‘What did I do to deserve this cat?’”
The new law permits only cremated remains of pets to be buried. Religious cemeteries are exempt, and cemeteries are not obligated to accept animals. “Four-legged friends are family for many New Yorkers,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Who are we to stand in the way if someone’s final wish includes spending eternity with them?”TMPP: Template Metaprogramming Programming Joren Heit 4.64 (11 votes) 1 2 3 4 5 4.64/5 - 11 votes a 0.74 [ μ 4.64, σ0.74 [? Rate this: Please Sign up or sign in to vote. This article describes the workings of TMPP, a technique to easily write compile-time evaluated functions. Introduction to TMPP Templates can be used to perform compile-time calculations on data that is known, of course, at compile time. In some cases, this can be used to optimize the eventual run-time of a program. This technique is called template metaprogramming (TMP). Template metaprograms are often hard to comprehend, and I must warn you that this may well apply to many of the code-blocks in this article. I'm not even sure how any of the code presented here can be used in a practical application, but I wrote this to find something out for myself: "Is it possible to define a higher-level template metaprogramming meta-language?" It turns out that to a certain extent, this is possible and more importantly, that I managed to do it. Below is presented an example that illustrates my results, and if you are wondering how I did that, you might consider reading on! A possible program could look like this: #include < iostream > #include " tmpp_function.h" using namespace std; template <int X, int Y> using Foo = Function< ArgList<X, Y>, Assign< Var<'x' >, Int<4> >, Assign< Var<'y' >, Int<5> >, Divide< Var<'x' >, Arg<0> >, Multiply< Var<'y' >, Arg<1> >, Return< Add<Var<'x' >, Var<'y' >> > >; int main() { Foo<2, 3>::Evaluate(); cout << Foo<2, 3>::evaluate << '
' ; } What we've done now is program a little function or subroutine that is evaluated compile-time, using TMP. Therefore, I call this project/technique Template Metaprogramming Programming. It allows even inexperienced programmers to perform compile-time computations without doing any TMP on the surface. The output (the resulting value of Var<'x'> ) can be presented in a compiler error, just to be able to get output from a program without even running it. On my own system (g++-4.7), it looks like this: In file included from tmpp.cc: 2 : 0 : tmpp_function.h: In instantiation of ‘struct Function<ArgList<2, 3>, Assign<Var<120>, Int<4> >, Assign<Var<121>, Int<5> >, Divide<Var<120>, Arg<0> >, Multiply<Var<121>, Arg<1> >, Return<Add<Var<120>, Var<121> > > >::Evaluate’: tmpp.cc: 17 : 25 : required from here tmpp_function.h: 85 : 9 : error: static assertion failed: The output of your TMPP program will be shown below in Output<...>: tmpp_function.h: 87 : 26 : error: ‘Function<Body>::Evaluate::error’ has incomplete type In file included from tmpp_operators.h: 4 : 0, from tmpp_function.h: 4, from tmpp.cc: 2 : tmppfwd.h: 43 : 8 : error: declaration of ‘struct Output<17>’ Of course, the result can also be retrieved at runtime as I did on the second line of main. In this case, it is sent to the standard output, showing 17. Using the Code The code in this introduction makes use of a C++11 feature known as template typedefs. This allows you to use the function body multiple times, giving it a nice descriptive name (not Foo!), while passing different (compile-time) parameters each time you use it. It actually looks like a real function now! Formatting Conventions I have not really researched if there exist any formatting conventions when it comes to templates and in particular template metaprogramming (TMP), or what happens to these conventions when you start to nest lots of templates within one another. When it comes to whitespace, I just did what seemed most convenient and readable at the time, not conforming to any convention at all. Regarding variable and type-names, I used the same convention I always use: capitalized CamelCase for types, uncapitalized snake_case for variables. One exception to this might be that I also used the CamelCase for all template non-type parameters (which could be considered 'variables'), to emphasize that they are, in fact, template parameters. Another choice was whether to use enum values for type-specific data (a crucial part in TMP) or static int const values. For no apparent reason, other than the fact that this is just the way I was introduced to TMP myself, I have chosen to use enum s. Background For those not very familiar with TMP, I will list some techniques I used to realize my 'language'. These examples will also illustrate some ideas behind TMP. Value to Type Conversion Templates were designed to write generic code that can be used with many different types. However, templates can also take value parameters, or template non-type parameters. This can be used to convert a value to a type: template <int Value> struct Int { enum { value = Value }; }; The value can be stored in the struct within an enum, to be retrieved later if necessary. We have now realized multiple different types, depending on the value of the int. This can be used to specialize class-templates, based on the integral value, for example. Type Equality To test if two types are equal, we use partial specialization, and let the compiler figure out which one to instantiate, based on the two types. When the types happen to be equal, it will pick the specialization for which the enum -value is true : template <typename, typename> struct Equal { enum { value = false }; }; template <typename T> struct Equal<T, T> { enum { value = true }; }; Conditional typedef It is not uncommon to feel the need to do something like this: typedef (condition? Type1 : Type2) MyType; This of course is not possible, but we can accomplish the same with some TMP using again partial specialization. As we will see, most TMP techniques rely on (partial) specialization of class-templates: template <bool Condition, typename TrueType, typename FalseType> struct ConditionalType { typedef TrueType Type; }; template <typename TrueType, typename FalseType> struct ConditionalType<false, TrueType, FalseType> { typedef FalseType Type; }; Variadic Templates, Dealing with the Pack Often, when dealing with variadic templates, you need to know how many types are contained in the pack, or you need the Nth type. The code below shows how this can be achieved: template <typename... Pack> struct Variadic { template <typename N, typename First, typename... Rest> struct Get_ { enum { value = Get_<N - 1, Rest...>:: value }; }; template <typename First, typename... Rest> struct Get_<0, First, Rest...> { enum { value = First }; }; template <typename N> struct Get { static_assert (N < number_of_arguments, " Index exceeds number of arguments" ); enum { value = Get_<N, Pack...>:: value }; }; enum { pack_size = sizeof... (Pack) }; }; We can now use Get<2>::Type to get the 3rd type in the pack (index starts at 0). To obtain the number of elements contained in the pack, I used the new C++11 syntax (correct me if I'm wrong on this being new and C++11) of the sizeof operator. The Internals Now let's get to business. I will start explaining the code top-down, starting at Function which is the type you actually see when using the code as shown in the introduction. Along the way, we will see many different types and techniques which I will try to explain as well as I possibly can. The only thing left for me to do afterwards is pray that anyone actually bothers to read it... Function The Function class is what the end-user will actually use, and should provide the means to define the input-parameters, a body, and some way to evaluate the body based on its input. The declaration therefore simply looks like this: template <typename... Body> struct Function; As you can see, the argument-list ( ArgList ) is contained within the body, which it doesn't have to be. Actually it would probably be even more convenient to separate it, but this is just how it grew in the project, so no big deal. However, we must now manually assert that the body starts with an ArgList, and ends with a Return statement. To do so, we define the following enumeration for convenience: enum { number_of_statements = sizeof... (Body), return_index = number_of_statements - 1 }; and use the method described above on how to fetch the Nth type from a variadic typelist. In this case, we rename the Get struct to GetStatement, as each type in our body (except the first one) will be some sort of meta-statement. To make sure that the body meets the requirements regarding a VarList and Return statement, we use static_assert : enum { arglist_check = IsArgList<typename GetStatement<0>::Type>:: value, return_check = IsReturnStatement<typename GetStatement<return_index>::Type>:: value }; static_assert (arglist_check, " First statement in body should be an argument-list" ); static_assert (return_check, " Last statement in body should be a return statement" ); Here, IsArgList and IsReturnStatement are defined like this: template <typename T> struct IsReturnStatement { enum { value = static_cast<OperatorID>(T::id) == RETURN }; }; template <typename T> struct IsArgList { enum { value = static_cast<OperatorID>(T::id) == ARGLIST }; }; Again, I had to apply some trick in order to make this work. As you will soon see, each meta-operator (like Add, Return, etc.) has a field called id. We can use this field to find out what kind of base-type the template has. In this context, a base-type has nothing to do with inheritance and polymorphism. I'm not sure if this is accepted as a term, but I will use it to indicate the template-template type of a type. For example, the base-type of Add<Var<'x'>, Int<5>> is Add. This will later be used to specialize based on the base-type instead of the complete type. In the implementation of IsReturnStatement and IsArgList it is used in a somewhat simpler, but convenient way. So far, we have only established a means to assert that the body has the correct structure. Now we need to parse the statements and come up with a way to calculate the final value. This is the heart of the entire project and will be explained below. Parsing the body Parsing the array of statements boils down to merging all the statements into one, big, final, statement (which is of course a type). The idea might be best explained through example. Let's assume we have these two statements: Add<Var<'x' >, Int<1>>, Add<Var<'y' >, Var<'x' >> These two statements can be condensed into one: Add<Var<'y' >, Add<Var<'x' >, Int<1>>> where we have just substituted Var<'x'> in the second statement with the entire first statement. This was easy, but what if we need to replace the Var<'x'> in the above result again? It is nested one level deeper this time, and you might already feel what will have to happen next: recursion. The entire process for the program from the introduction is as follows: Assign< Var<'x' >, Int<4> >, Assign< Var<'y' >, Int<5> >, Divide< Var<'x' >, Arg<0> >, Multiply< Var<'y' >, Arg<1> >, Return< Add<Var<'x' >, Var<'y' >> > Add<Var<'x' >, Var<'y' >> Add<Var<'x' >, Multiply< Var<'y' >, Arg<1> >> Add<Divide<Var<'x' >, Arg<0>>, Multiply< Var<'y' >, Arg<1>>> Add<Divide<Var<'x' >, Arg<0>>, Multiply< Int<5>, Arg<1>>> Add<Divide<Int<4>, Arg<0>>, Multiply< Int<5>, Arg<1>>> Add<Divide<Int<4>, Int<2>>, Multiply< Int<5>, Int<3>>> This entire process is left to be handled by Substitute which is 'called' (actually instantiated, but I think it's nicer to talk about template instantiation as if they were functions that are being called) by the Function's Parse member: template <int Index, typename Statement> struct Parse { typedef typename GetStatement<Index>::Type NextStatement; typedef typename Substitute<Statement, NextStatement>::Result Result_; typedef typename Parse<Index - 1, Result_>::Result Result; }; template <typename Statement> struct Parse<0, Statement> { typedef typename SubstituteArgs<typename Statement::ReturnType, typename GetStatement<0>::Type>::Result Result; }; typedef typename Parse<return_index - 1, typename GetStatement<return_index>::Type>::Result ResultingType; The first int parameter ( Index ) to Parse is the index of the next statement to be parsed, whereas the second parameter Statement is the current statement. To parse the body, we have to start at the final statement (the Return statement) and move up all the way to the statement with index 0 (which was the ArgList, remember?), hence the specialization for Index == 0. The final resulting type is'stored' in ResultingType. Three things happen in Parse : The next statement is fetched, The next statement is substituted in the current one, and Parse is recursively called on, again, the next statement. This continues all the way up to the statement at index 0, where we enter the specialization. Here, instead of calling Parse again, we only need to process the arguments in SubstituteArgs. This is because at this stage, the references to arguments in the body are still unresolved. SubstituteArgs will substitute all types of the form Arg<...> with their corresponding value in the ArgList. After this, the recursion is terminated and the result can be fetched from Parse<...,...>::Result. The final elements that need to be added are the means to retrieve a result. For runtime purposes, I just add another enum -value: enum { evaluate = ResultingType:: value }; For a compile-time error that displays the value, I declare a struct -template Output without defining it: template <int> struct Output; Now, in another struct called Evaluate, I try to instantiate an object of the type Output<evaluate>, which can't be done, resulting in a compiler error (the one from the introduction). struct Evaluate { static_assert (!arglist_check &&!return_check, " The output of your TMPP program will be shown below in Output<...>:" ); Output<evaluate> output; }; Substitute The Substitute struct is where the real magic happens, and it does so in a 3-stage process. In order to make the substitution work as illustrated in the example above, we need to specialize on the base-type. After all, when the target statement is Add<...,...>, the resulting type must also be of base-type Add, even though its template parameters might be completely different after substitution. To extract the basetype, we first inspect its id field: template <typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute { typedef typename Substitute2<static_cast<OperatorID>(Current::id), Current, Next>::Result Result; }; This id is then passed on to the second stage: Substitute2, which is specialized for each possible id. template <OperatorID ID, typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute2 { typedef void Result; }; template <typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute2<VAR, Current, Next> { typedef Next Result; }; template <typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute2<ARG, Current, Next> { typedef Next Result; }; template <typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute2<ASSIGN, Current, Next> { typedef typename Substitute3<Assign, Current, Next>::Result Result; }; template <typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute2<ADD, Current, Next> { typedef typename Substitute3<Add, Current, Next>::Result Result; }; template <typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute2<RETURN, Current, Next> { typedef typename Substitute<typename Current::ReturnType, Next>::Result Result; }; Most of these specializations call the third stage, which is Substitute3. This accepts a template-template parameter which is used in the final method of substitution. Two exceptions are those for Var and Arg, at which the recursion ends. When the statement-tree is parsed all the way to its final leaves. The thing that has to be substituted, Next is defined as the Result in both cases. Another exception is the specialization for Return, in which case Substitute is called for the ReturnType to get rid of the encapsulating Return. Now let's have a look at what happens in the third and final stage, Substitute3. But before we do, let's first think about what it has to do... Looking at the example above a little more closely, we find that the thing that is being substituted ( Next ) has to match somehow with one or both parameters the target statement. In our case, the upper statement Add<Var<'x'>, Int<1>> needs to replace only the right-hand-side (RHS) of the lower statement Add<Var<'y'>, Var<'x'>>, because they match in the variable being modified: x. To provide a method to check which parts match and thus have to be substituted, we make sure that every operator has a name field. Moreover, each operator should provide information on what to actually substitute. For most operators it is the operator itself, but for the assignment-operator it is only its RHS operand. This information is'stored' in the ReturnType definition: template <int Name> struct Var { static_assert (Name < 0xf0, " Numeric representation of variable-name must be smaller than 0xf0" ); typedef Var<Name> LHS; typedef Var<Name> RHS; typedef Var<Name> ReturnType; enum { name = Name, value = 1, id = VAR }; }; template <int Val> struct Int { typedef Int<Val> LHS; typedef Int<Val> RHS; typedef Int<Val> ReturnType; enum { name = 0xff, value = Val, id = INT }; }; template <int Index> struct Arg { typedef Arg<Index> LHS; typedef Arg<Index> RHS; typedef Arg<Index> ReturnType; enum { name = 0xf0 + Index, value = 1, id = ARG }; }; template <typename T> struct Return { typedef T ReturnType; enum { name = T::name, id = RETURN, value = T:: value }; }; template <typename L, typename R> struct Assign { typedef L LHS; typedef R RHS; typedef R ReturnType; enum { name = L::name, id = ASSIGN, value = R:: value }; }; template <typename L, typename R> struct Add { typedef L LHS; typedef R RHS; typedef Add<L, R> ReturnType; enum { name = L::name, id = ADD, value = L:: value + R:: value }; }; This way, Add &co will have the same nametag as the most nested variable in their left-hand-side (LHS). Matching names can now be detected and it should now be clear which of the operands to substitute, if any. However, we are only supposed to substitute single variables like Var<'x'>, not entire statements like Add<...,...>. To avoid this from happening, I introduce a new term to the equation: atomics. We will call a type atomic when it can't be subdivided anymore. For example, Add<Var<'x'>, Int<1>> is not atomic, whereas Var<'x'> and Int<1> are. Now, to determine whether a type is atomic, I'll use the IsAtomic struct : template <typename T> struct IsAtomic { enum { value = false }; }; template <> template <int Value> struct IsAtomic<Int<Value>> { enum { value = true }; }; template <> template <int Name> struct IsAtomic<Var<Name>> { enum { value = true }; }; template <> template <int Index> struct IsAtomic<Arg<Index>> { enum { value = true }; }; We now have the tools available to define Substitute3 : template <template <typename...> class Operator, typename Current, typename Next> struct Substitute3 { enum { next_name = static_cast<int>(Next::name), lhs_name = static_cast<int>(Current::LHS::name), rhs_name = static_cast<int>(Current::RHS::name), lhs_name_match = (lhs_name!= 0xff) && (lhs_name == next_name), rhs_name_match = (rhs_name!= 0xff) && (rhs_name == next_name), lhs_done = static_cast<bool>(IsAtomic<typename Current::LHS>:: value ), rhs_done = static_cast<bool>(IsAtomic<typename Current::RHS>:: value ) }; typedef typename ConditionalType < lhs_done && rhs_done, typename ConditionalType < lhs_name_match && rhs_name_match, Operator<typename Next::ReturnType, typename Next::ReturnType>, typename ConditionalType < lhs_name_match &&!rhs_name_match, Operator<typename Next::ReturnType, typename Current::RHS>, typename ConditionalType <!lhs_name_match && rhs_name_match, Operator<typename Current::LHS, typename Next::ReturnType>, Current >::Type >::Type >::Type, typename ConditionalType < lhs_done &&!rhs_done, typename ConditionalType < lhs_name_match, Operator<typename Next::ReturnType, typename Substitute<typename Current::RHS, Next>::Result>, Operator<typename Current::LHS, typename Substitute<typename Current::RHS, Next>::Result> >::Type, typename ConditionalType <!lhs_done && rhs_done, typename ConditionalType < rhs_name_match, Operator<typename Substitute <typename Current::LHS, Next>::Result, typename Next::ReturnType>, Operator<typename Substitute <typename Current::LHS, Next>::Result, typename Current::RHS> >::Type, Operator< typename Substitute<typename Current::LHS, Next>::Result, typename Substitute<typename Current::RHS, Next>::Result > >::Type >::Type >::Type Result; }; It's getting more interesting now, right? Let's start at the top and work our way down... The enumeration will perform some checks as to which names match the one of the replacement type ( Next ) by extracting all names, and comparing them. When the name is that of an anonymous value, like Int<4>, it will never match the names. Next |
Last year's The Last of Us presented a gay man — Bill — whose sexuality was nothing more than a footnote. Many people who played the game didn't even catch his relationship with another man. The game's recent Left Behind DLC continues that trend, presenting a complex, interesting, non-straight character with dignity and even subtlety.
This could have easily been a big, splashy reveal, played for shock value. Instead, the story it tells simply gives us more detail about a beloved character. Naughty Dog seems to have hit on an important strategy in writing queer characters in their games: They write a person first, and use their sexuality as one aspect of who they are. I only wish that more studios would (or could) follow that lead.
The importance of representation
Why does it matter that a character is LGBT at all if it has no huge impact on the game?
Every poorly drawn character is a wasted opportunity
There is erasure of identity without diversity and representation. Queer people are a minority of the population. This is OK! But it does mean that we have to demand better representation in media, as the images people are exposed to have a tremendous impact on their opinions and treatment of queer individuals in real life. This is why people get mad over tired stereotypes in LGBT characters in games: There are so few queer representations in pop culture that every poorly drawn character is a wasted opportunity.
We can all laugh at stereotypes sometimes — but it helps if you're laughing with us, not at us. The use of stereotypes should say something larger about society and their role in it. Every character that is boiled down to a few broad traits is harmful to a story, but queer characters that are played for laughs due to their sexuality harm people.
We all deserve better, and the best way to get that is to demand that LGBT characters in games be people first, and their sexuality second.Boris Johnson’s past troubles finally returned to haunt him yesterday when he gave what senior Conservatives called a “car crash” television interview which they said had dented his hopes of becoming Conservative Party leader.
The colourful, humorous Mayor of London is often treated with kid gloves by interviewers but Eddie Mair, who hosted the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, was wearing boxing gloves. He subjected Mr Johnson to the awkward questions and scrutiny he could expect if he were running to be Prime Minister rather than running the capital.
“You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” asked Mr Mair. Mr Johnson looked surprised and distinctly uncomfortable as the presenter asked him about his being fired by The Times newspaper for making up a quotation; being sacked from the Tory frontbench for telling “a bare-faced lie” to the party leader Michael Howard about his affair with the journalist Petronella Wyatt and the claim that he agreed to provide a reporter’s address to his friend Darius Guppy, a convicted fraudster, so the journalist could be beaten up.
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.
An exasperated Mr Johnson said he would “dispute” all three allegations. Only up to a point, it seemed. He admitted he had “mildly sandpapered something someone said” for The Times, saying it was “very embarrassing” and he was “very sorry”. He insisted he never spoke directly to Mr Howard about the affair, although at the time in 2004 he publicly denied it as “an inverted pyramid of piffle.” He told Mr Mair: “I could explain that I think all three interpretations you’re putting on those things aren’t wholly fair…. the case of my old friend Darius [Guppy] yes, it was certainly true that he was in a bit of state and I did humour him in a long phone conversation, from which absolutely nothing eventuated. But I think if any of us had our phone conversations bugged, they might, you know, people say all sorts of fantastical things whist they’re talking to their friends.”
The softly-spoken, dry but deadly BBC presenter, standing in for Mr Marr while he recovers from a stroke, told Mr Johnson: “I want to talk about you.” Revealingly, the Mayor replied: “Well that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.” He insisted it was “nonsensical” to talk about whether he wanted to be Prime Minister and insisted he wanted David Cameron to win the next election, even though some Tory MPs dream of installing Mr Johnson as party leader before or after the 2015 poll.
The Mayor complained that he had in effect been blackmailed by Michael Cockerell, the veteran documentary-maker, into co-operating with a programme about him to be screened by the BBC tonight
Asked about his ambitions, Mr Johnson told Mr Cockerell: “I think it’s a very tough job being Prime Minister. Obviously if the ball came loose from the back of the scrum – which it won’t— it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at it. But it’s not going to happen.”
Some of those interviewed by Mr Cockerell were less than flattering about his subject. “Boris isn’t pretending to be chaotic; he really is utterly chaotic,” said Sir Max Hastings, his former editor at the Daily Telegraph. Conrad Black, who appointed Mr Johnson editor of The Spectator magazine, describes him as “a sly fox disguised as a teddy bear.”
Yesterday Mr Mair had the advantage because he had already watched a sneak preview of “Boris Johnson: The Irresistible Rise”, to be shown at 9pm tonight on BBC2. “I’m not going to watch it,” Mr Johnson told him. “No. I’m certainly not, not after what you’ve told me.”
And this morning Johnson's father, Stanley Johnson, defended his son, telling Nick Ferrari on LBC radio: "I thought Eddie Mair's interview was about the most disgusting piece of journalism I've listened to for a very long time."
"The BBC sank about as low as it could. If grilling people about their private lives, accusing them of guilt by association and openly abusing them is a legitimate interview, then frankly, I don't know where we are coming."
But later this morning Johnson himself said: "Eddie Mair did a splendid job. There is no doubt that is what the BBC is for - holding us to account.
"He was perfectly within his rights to have a bash at me - in fact it would have been shocking if he hadn't. If a BBC presenter can't attack a nasty Tory politician what's the world coming to?"
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or know any others who do, please consider asking them to donate blood to the Stanford Genome Technology Center as a healthy control. The blood will be used for multiple purposes, including in Ron Davis‘s ME/CFS research. If you know individuals who are happy to help others in the SF Bay Area, please let them know that a half-an-hour of their time can potentially help millions of people!
We’re looking for healthy controls between the ages of 18 and 75. A healthy individual would not have any serious health condition, such as diabetes or heart disease, even if it is managed with medication. We are also looking specifically for individuals who do not have family members who have ME or fibromyalgia. If you have ME, please don’t ask blood relatives to donate as healthy controls.
We are doing our best to schedule people by age group!
Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 8, we are collecting from individuals between the ages of 26 and 35.
Monday, March 13 — We are collecting from individuals between the ages of 36-45.
Wednesday, March 15 — We are collecting from individuals between the ages of 46-55.
We are collecting from all ages — please follow the instructions in the link below in order to schedule a blood draw!
Click here to see how to schedule a draw right now.
Additional Information:
Please eat something a few hours before you arrive. The only way to ensure there will be enough time for your appointment is to contact the scheduler. (We would love it if individuals just showed up, but we cannot guarantee we’d have time for everyone in that case, and cannot say how long you might wait.) If you schedule your visit, it should take no more than a half-an-hour — 15 minutes to sign a consent form, and 15 minutes for the draw. You will receive a small gift card for your time… along with the glow of having done something that is genuinely good.
One of the often-overlooked aspects of research is the gathering of data from healthy controls. Without healthy controls to compare to, there is no research! Please help us out by passing this along to friends and acquaintances.
You can also see the event on EventBrite here.
Please SHARE on social media to get the word out. Thank you so much for all you do!The new General’s Handbook – your FIRST look inside the covers
The General’s Handbook 2017 is out soon. We could hint at what’s inside and what you have to look forward to – or we could just make things easy and show you:
That’s a lot of content – and nearly every single bit of it is new or updated. This isn’t just a new edition of the General’s Handbook, this is a completely new guide to gaming in the Mortal Realms – new ways to play, new Alliance Abilities, tonnes of new battleplans, allies, updated units and more.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be going into detail as to what all of these the new additions to the game mean, from the Open War cards to siege battles, to allies, which we’re covering today.
Allies are an exciting new addition to matched play games. We’ve all had that struggle when building our armies having to choose between focussing on one faction to take advantage of Allegiance Abilities and battleline units, or using the full Grand Alliance to get access to a wider selection of options. Each faction now has a list of other factions it can ally with, fitting the theme of each force; if your army is made up of the multitudinous hordes of the Clans Verminus, you can ally in the specialised troops of the other great clans, while the Deathlords can rule over any of the other Death factions (the clue’s in the name).
We’ll be going deeper into the allies for each Grand Alliance in the coming weeks, but to tide you over, here’s your allied contingent allowances for matched play games:
With between 200 and 500 points, you’ll have plenty of space to experiment – that’s enough for an Aleguzzler Gargant in an army of Ironjawz, a furious Spirit of Durthu aiding a warband of Wanderers, a vicious Chimera alongside the Khorne Bloodbound or a fast moving pack of Vargheists to aid your legion of Deathrattle skeletons.
Allies are particularly useful in light of the new Allegiance Abilities. We’ll be going into these further with future previews, but armies like the Hosts of Slaanesh or the Dispossessed will be able to make full use of powerful unique skills while having a range of choices available when writing lists for matched play. Similarly, you’ll be able to combine powerful allegiance-specific battleline units with allies to make for focused lists made up of the models you want to play.
This is a major change for all matched play games, whether you’re looking to compete at a tournament or just use some new tricks in battles with friends.
We’ll be taking a closer look at Death in the new General’s Handbook tomorrow, so make sure to come back so you don’t miss it.The battle for suburbia grows to crazy new heights in Plants vs. Zombies™ Garden Warfare 2! In this hilarious, action-packed shooter, zombie leader Dr. Zomboss has strengthened his horde and rebuilt suburbia as a zombie utopia. But hope remains, because for the first time the plants are taking the offensive in an all-out attack to reclaim their turf. Play as both the plants and zombies in new 24 player multiplayer and 4-player co-op modes, or go at it solo or in split-screen against the AI across all game modes. Garden Warfare 2 also introduces the Backyard Battleground, your very own interactive hub where you and up to 3 friends can take on daily quests, challenges, and interact with your favorite PvZ characters. Pre-order now and receive: • Grass Effect Pack – Z7 Imp & Mech in-game character variant • Emoji Pack – 14 emoji customization accessories, 1 for each character class • Peggle 2 – full game download of PopCap’s famous ball and peg puzzler (immediate download) For a limited time, pre-order Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 for Xbox One and receive Peggle 2. Your copy of Peggle 2 can be obtained by searching for "Peggle 2" on the Xbox Store and downloading the game. This offer is available for a limited time only and you must download your copy of Peggle 2 prior to Mar 1, 2016.
Show MoreA comment on our last status update mentioned our budget. Our plan is to make a new game for a lot less than it cost to do King of Dragon Pass. Hopefully our experience (with KoDP and games in general) will let us do things more efficiently this time. We will likely do a lot less reworking of certain elements than we did the first time, since we have a better idea ahead of time what should work. And automated testing will let QA concentrate on bugs only a human can find.
The pie chart shows where we expected to spend our budget shortly after starting. The bulk of the expense (44%) was projected to be art.
Note that this doesn’t include any sort of overhead (like development machines, internet access, etc.). And I’m not directly expensing my own time. In other words, this is just what we expect to pay our freelancers.
This was just a plan, and once we were far enough along to see how things were working, we realized had to do more writing and art. So the final percentages will end up a bit different, though art will predominate.
(And yes, the title of this post is an excuse to watch OK Go.)The Auto Avenger Doom.Doom is all consumed by the theory that there was an era of lifeforms prior to our own, and that this civilization somehow influenced todays design.• Geniues level intellect, expert level strategist, inventor, scientist.•If reports are in fact credible: this is the only mech capable of succesful cognitive transfer. Aparently Doom has been destroyed multiple times, only to resurface soon after in another frame.• Unparalleled engineer, Doom has built a extremely formidable fortress around himself and his work, along with dozens of hive constructs designed as offence, defence and support soldiers under his direct control.•Use of an unknown weapons type known as "Magic". unknown offensive capabilities.• slightly above average strength and fighting abilities, Doom rarely ever enters a fight himself.• His obsession with the "truth before the origin" keeps him preoccupied• Often underestimating others, Dooms obsessive genius is only matched by his arrogance, and has more than once landed him in situations he barely survivescheck out the rest of the Auto Avengers!Back in 2001, Dr George Stanford conducted an interview with the National Policy Analysis Center on the IFR. Nearly ten years later, in September 2010, George has updated this material, which is pitched squarely a layman audience. I post the updated version below (7-page printable PDF version here), since it fits like a glove with the IFR Facts & Discussion series that I am gradually developing. It’s probably the single best introduction to the IFR for the totally uninitiated — but there’s also real value here for the nuclear veteran, so everyone, read on!
Q&A on Integral Fast Reactors – safe, abundant, non-polluting power
By Dr George S. Stanford. George is is a nuclear reactor physicist, part of the team that developed the Integral Fast Reactor. He is now retired from Argonne National
Laboratory after a career of experimental work pertaining to power-reactor safety. He is the co-author of Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry.
What is the IFR?
IFR stands for Integral Fast Reactor. It was a power-reactor development program, built around a revolutionary concept for generating nuclear power—not only a new type of reactor, but an entire new nuclear fuel cycle. The reactor part of that fuel cycle was called the ALMR—Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor. In what many see as an ill-conceived move, proof-of-concept research on the IFR/ALMR was discontinued by the U.S. government in 1994, only three years before completion.
You might also see references to the AFR, which stands for “Advanced Fast Reactor.” It’s a concept very similar to the IFR, with some improvements thrown in. GE-Hitachi has the plans for a commercial version they call PRISM.
How was the IFR idea different from the concepts underlying traditional nuclear-power fuel cycles?
All of those fuel cycles were derived from technologies developed to meet special military needs: naval propulsion, uranium enrichment, weapons-plutonium production, and plutonium separation. Waste disposal has been approached as “someone else’s problem.” The IFR concept is directed strictly to meeting the needs of civilian power generation. It is an integrated, weapons-incompatible, proliferation-resistant cycle that is “closed”—it encompasses the entire fuel cycle, including fuel production and fabrication, power generation, reprocessing and waste management.
Do we need a new kind of reactor? What’s wrong with what we have now?
IFRs could reduce or eliminate significant difficulties that beset thermal-reactor fuel cycles—problems or concerns with:
* production and build-up of plutonium
* short-term management of plutonium
* disposition and long-term management of plutonium
* plutonium in national and international commerce
* other proliferation concerns
* long-term waste management
* environmental effects
* resource conservation
* long-term energy supply
* safety
What is a fuel cycle? What fuel cycles are there?
“Fuel cycle” refers to all the steps involving nuclear fuel that are needed to generate electricity: mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor operation, reprocessing and waste management. Depending on the fuel cycle, some of those steps might not be needed. The three major fuel cycles of current interest are: thermal without reprocessing (“once-through,” or “throw-away”), thermal with reprocessing and IFR. The IFR will eliminate the need for mining (for centuries), and milling and enrichment (forever).
Who was working on the IFR? How far along was it?
The idea of the IFR originated at Argonne National Laboratory, which was about three years from finishing a study that was expected to establish firmly the technical and economic practicality of the concept. Progress had been spectacular. Design of the ALMR was being done at General Electric in San Jose, California. However, construction of a full-size prototype was not to be approved until Argonne’s research study had been completed and a current need was demonstrated.
What sort of reactor was the ALMR?
The ALMR was to be a “fast” reactor (one in which the chain reaction is maintained by high-energy neutrons)—so called because the energy spectrum of the neutrons is said to be fast.
Is there a slow reactor?
Yes, in concept, but it’s not called “slow,” it’s called thermal. Almost exclusively, current reactors are of the thermal variety: their chain reaction relies on thermal (slow) neutrons. In most of the thermal-spectrum reactors, the neutrons are moderated (slowed) by light water. Such reactors are called LWRs.
What is the most important difference in capabilities?
Probably this one: Inherently, thermal reactors are copious producers of plutonium, while IFRs can consume plutonium. In fact, two IFRs could consume the plutonium output of five LWRs of the same size, while generating electricity and bringing in revenue.
What’s so important about plutonium?
High-quality plutonium is the preferred bomb material for a sophisticated nuclear weapons program. It is even possible to make a nuclear explosive with low-quality plutonium, such as is found in power reactors.
What else can IFRs use for fuel, besides plutonium?
Their fast spectrum permits IFRs to burn any and all actinides from thorium on up. This is because in a fast neutron spectrum there are enough extra neutrons to convert the actinide isotopes that don’t fission easily into ones that do. The most important actinide elements are uranium (atomic number 92), plutonium (94) and, to a lesser extent, thorium (90). Since currently there is a growing glut of plutonium continuing to pile up from nuclear weapons and from thermal-reactor operations worldwide, the first IFRs will undoubtedly be fueled primarily with some of that plutonium.
How is that different from thermal reactors?
In a thermal neutron spectrum, many of the fission products and actinide isotopes absorb neutrons readily without undergoing fission (they have a high “capture cross section”), and the chain reaction is “poisoned” if too much of such material is present. Thus a thermal reactor cannot be a net burner of transuranic actinides. The main starting fuel for thermal reactors is a mixture of the fissile isotope U-235 (Pu- 239 can also be used), along with the fertile isotope U-238.
What in the world are “transuranic actinides?”
They are the elements beyond uranium—that is, their atomic number is 93 or greater: neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium and more. All of them are man-made elements, since they are so radioactive that the naturally created ones have long since decayed away in our little bit of the universe. They are also called higher actinides.
And what do you mean by “fissile” and “fertile?”
An isotope is called “fertile” when the addition of a neutron changes it into a fissile isotope—one that, like U-235, has a very high probability of undergoing fission when exposed to thermal neutrons. Both fissile and fertile isotopes are fissionable—it’s just that fertile ones require a high-energy neutron to make them split.
Burning and Breeding
What is a “breeder?”
A breeder is a reactor that is configured so as to produce more fissile material than it consumes. A fast reactor can be designed and operated to be either a net breeder or a net burner. A thermal reactor is a net burner of nuclear fuel, but—and this is very important—all thermal reactors are prolific breeders of plutonium.
What do you mean?
A thermal reactor starts out with no plutonium at all, and soon has a lot of it. In the process, though, it burns more fuel (mainly uranium) than it gives back as plutonium, and therefore is not called a breeder.
If IFRs can be either breeders or burners, why do some people insist on calling them breeders?
Partly for historical reasons (originally, fast reactors were investigated because of their potential to breed), partly because of genuine confusion, and partly for the emotional impact, since “breeder” carries the subliminal connotation of runaway plutonium production. The central fact that those people are missing is that with IFRs you can choose not to breed plutonium, whereas with thermal reactors you make plutonium whether you want it or not.
Then it is today’s reactors that are runaway producers of plutonium, and IFRs could put a stop to it.
Exactly.
What about the high-grade plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons? Can we get rid of it?
Depends on what you mean by “get rid of it.” I suppose you could say we would have gotten rid of it if it were degraded to the point where it is as hard to deal with as the poor-quality plutonium in the used fuel from thermal reactors. That’s called the “spent fuel standard” for disposition of weapons plutonium.
How do you do that?
One straightforward way is to incorporate it in fuel for today’s thermal reactors. The fuel would consist of a mixture of the oxides of uranium and plutonium, called MOX. That process is now being started in the U.S. and Russia.
How long will it take?
There’s maybe 200 metric tonnes (1 metric ton equalling 1.1 standard tons) of weapons-grade plutonium in the world, most of which, we hope, will gradually become available for disposal over the next two or three decades. To process that much plutonium in 30 MOX-burning thermal-reactor plants (1000 MWe) would take approximately 20 years. Thus the MOX approach should be able to deal satisfactorily with the weapons plutonium.
Can IFRs help with this?
Eventually, when we get IFRs. When they do start up, they will of course begin consuming the accumulated plutonium— weapons-grade first, probably, if there’s any left, and then reactor-grade.
Commerce in Plutonium
You explained why the IFR is “fast.” Now, why is it “integral?”
“Integral” refers to the fact that the fuel processing facility can be an integral part of the IFR plant.
Is that important?
Very, if you are concerned about shipments of plutonium and spent fuel, or if you want to minimize national and international commerce in plutonium.
I think it is U.S. policy to discourage commerce in plutonium.
Yes, it is. And these days there certainly is commerce in plutonium—witness the controversy over shipments of plutonium from France to Japan a few years ago, and the recent controversy in England over a reprocessing plant at Sellafield. For the foreseeable future, and beyond, there will be no plutonium shipped out of IFR plants. The only shipments will be into them, from dismantled weapons and thermal reactors. Those are not extra shipments, but ones that otherwise would be to repositories. Thus the IFR all but eliminates commerce in plutonium.
How can that be?
An IFR plant will be a “sink” for plutonium: plutonium to be disposed of is shipped in, and there it is consumed, with onsite recycling as needed. Only trace amounts ever come out.
Safety
How safe are IFRs?
While the safety record of commercial reactors of Western design is superb, Three Mile Island notwithstanding, it would be desirable to have reactors that rely more on inherent safety features and less on engineered ones. ALMRs do that.
What is an “inherent safety feature?”
A safety mechanism that does not depend on human or mechanical intervention. For instance, ALMRs use metallic fuel rods, whereas LWRs use oxide fuel (as the Clinch River Breeder Reactor [CRBR] would have done).
Why are metallic fuel rods an inherent safety feature?
Metal is a good heat conductor, while oxide is a poor one. That means the interiors of the metal rods stay much cooler, which means that there is far less heat stored in an operating ALMR, which means that if there were a loss of coolant flow there would be much less heat present to raise the temperature of the fuel, which means that the consequences of a hypothetical accident would be much less severe.
Why is that?
Briefly, there’s a phenomenon called the “resonance Doppler effect,” which causes the reactivity to change somewhat with temperature. Because in an ALMR the temperature does not change much in a hypothetical accident, the reactor is much more stable.
O.K. What else?
ALMRs use liquid sodium for cooling and heat transfer, which makes the system intrinsically safer than one that uses water. That is because the molten sodium runs at atmospheric pressure, which means that there is no internal pressure to cause the type of accident that has to be carefully designed against in an LWR: a massive pipe rupture followed by “blowdown” of the coolant.
Also, sodium is not corrosive to steel like water is.
But doesn’t sodium burn in air and react violently with water?
Yes it does, and this of course requires prudent design, involving inert atmospheres and multiple barriers.
Not so fast! Seems to me there was a serious sodium leak and fire at a Japanese fast reactor.
You’re right. In December, 1995, at the Monju reactor, a temperature sensor broke and sodium leaked from a secondary sodium loop and caught fire. The plant was shut down, and has not yet been restarted.
How many people were hurt?
None.
Was radioactivity released?
No.
Was the reactor damaged?
No.
Was there any damage at all?
Yes. Some minor damage was caused by the burning sodium, and combustion products were spread through a portion of the building; cleaning them up took almost a year. The accident was classified as Category 1 on the international scale of 0 to 7 (with 0 being the least serious) by a committee of independent specialists.
So the sodium isn’t so safe after all.
When you think about it, it is pretty safe. There have been sodium fires, and undoubtedly there will be more. The Monju fire was a public-relations disaster, but did not even come close to being a public health threat. There is a great deal of industrial experience with liquid sodium, and there have been very few problems.
Well, I suppose that’s a risk we can tolerate, since we need electricity.
I think so.
What’s become of the Monju reactor?
Last I heard, it had commenced initial operations in May 2010, after a string of administrative and other non-technical snafus. But it’s not scheduled to go on the grid until 2013.
We were talking about inherent safety features. Are there any others?
The ALMR core sits in a pool of liquid sodium. In combination with the low heat content of the metal fuel rods, this means that, if there were to be loss of control power, the core would be cooled passively by convection.
Is this different than for other liquid-metal-cooled reactors?
Almost all the earlier fast reactors were of the “loop type”—relying more heavily on forced coolant flow—and also had oxide fuel, making passive cooling more problematic.
Wasn’t passive cooling tested in a prototype ALMR?
Yes, it was. All control power for the operating reactor was cut off. Coolant pumps stopped, control rods did not move, and the operators did nothing. The core temperature rose slightly, causing the reactor to go subcritical and shut itself down without incident. Unassisted convective cooling then prevented overheating.
Conservation and the Environment
What are the environmental considerations?
We already mentioned waste management. In addition, it can be argued that the major environmental problems with nuclear power are the consequences of the mining and milling operations. Because IFRs can use not only the surplus plutonium, but also the uranium (including U-238) that has already been mined and milled, they can eliminate for centuries any further need for mining or milling.
And of course, in common with all nuclear reactors, operating IFRs emit no carbon dioxide.
Do they put out any atmospheric pollutants?
None worth mentioning.
Then there some that aren’t worth mentioning?
Extremely small amounts of radioactive gas.
How small?
So small that there’s a lot more radioactivity from coal-burning plants.
You’re pulling my leg.
No I’m not. In coal there are trace amounts of radium and uranium, for instance, that come out of the smokestacks.
Then there’s dangerous radiation from coal plants?
No, there isn’t. It’s far below natural background levels. But nuclear plants put out even less.
Then I won’t worry. How do IFRs help conserve natural resources?
Thermal reactors are incredibly profligate with the earth’s endowment of potential nuclear fuel. The once-through, “throw-away” cycle in favor in the U.S. uses less than a hundredth of the energy potential of the mined uranium. Even with recycle, probably less than 1% can be extracted. IFRs can use almost all of it.
Wait a minute—less than 2% with recycle? I thought you could get nearly all of the energy that way.
Sorry, but you can’t. After two or three passes through a reactor, the fuel has gotten so contaminated with isotopes heavier than Pu-239 that various technical and operational problems arise. The only way to consume all of it is in a flux of fast neutrons.
I’ll be darned! Well anyway, with uranium so cheap, why do we care about conservation?
For the same reason we care (or should) about conserving petroleum, even though oil is now cheap. The current worldwide glut of reactor fuel is strictly temporary. Particularly with the U.S. throw-away cycle, the economically available U-235 is not predicted to last much longer than the petroleum reserves—a few decades.
Reprocessing & Proliferation
Thermal reactors with reprocessing would do at least a little better.
Recycling (it would be with the PUREX process, or an equivalent) could stretch the U-235 supply another few decades—but remember the consequences: growing stockpiles of plutonium, pure plutonium streams in the PUREX plants, and the creation of 100,000-year plutonium mines.
If you’re going to talk about “PUREX” and “plutonium mines” you should say what they are. First, what’s PUREX?
It’s a chemical process developed for the nuclear weapons program, to separate plutonium from everything else that comes out of a reactor. Weapons require very pure plutonium, and that’s what PUREX delivers. The pyroprocess used in the IFR is very different. It not only does not, it cannot, produce plutonium with the chemical purity needed for weapons.
Why do you keep referring to “chemical” purity?
Because chemical and isotopic quality are two different things. Plutonium for a weapon has to be pure chemically. Weapons designers also want good isotopic quality—that is, they want at least 93% of their plutonium to consist of the isotope Pu- 239. A chemical process does not separate isotopes.
I see. Now, what about the “plutonium mines?”
When spent fuel or vitrified reprocessing waste from thermal reactors is buried, the result is a concentrated geological deposit of plutonium. As its radioactivity decays, those deposits are sources of raw material for weapons, becoming increasingly attractive over the next 100,000 years and more (the half-life of Pu-239 being 24,000 years).
You listed, back at the beginning, some problems that the IFR would ameliorate. A lot of those problems are obviously related to proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Definitely. For instance, although thermal reactors consume more fuel than they produce, and thus are not called “breeders,” they inescapably are prolific breeders of plutonium, as I said. And that poses serious concerns about nuclear proliferation. And proliferation concerns are even greater when fuel from thermal reactors is recycled, since the PUREX method is used. IFRs have neither of those drawbacks.
Why does it seem that there is more proliferation-related concern about plutonium than about uranium? Can’t you make bombs from either?
Yes. The best isotopes for nuclear explosives are U-235, Pu- 239, and U-233. Only the first two of those, however, have been widely used. All the other actinide isotopes, if present in appreciable quantity, in one way or another complicate the design and construction of bombs and degrade their performance. Adequate isotopic purity is therefore important, and isotopic separation is much more difficult than chemical separation. Even so, with plutonium of almost any isotopic composition it is technically possible to make an explosive (although designers of military weapons demand plutonium that is at least 93% Pu-239), whereas if U-235 is sufficiently diluted with U-238 (which is easy to do and hard to undo), the mixture cannot be used for a bomb.
High-quality plutonium is the material of choice for a large and sophisticated nuclear arsenal, while highly enriched uranium would be one of the easier routes to a few crude nuclear explosives.
So why the emphasis on plutonium?
You’re asking me to read people’s minds, and I’m not good at that. Both uranium and plutonium are of proliferation concern.
Where is the best place for plutonium?
Where better than in a reactor plant—particularly an IFR facility, where there is never pure plutonium (except some, briefly, when it comes in from dismantled weapons), where the radioactivity levels are lethal, and where the operations are done remotely under an inert, smothering atmosphere? Once enough IFRs are deployed, there never will need to be plutonium outside a reactor plant—except for the then diminishing supply of plutonium left over from decades of thermal-reactor operation.
How does the IFR square with U.S. policy of discouraging plutonium production, reprocessing and use?
It is entirely consistent with the intent of that policy—to render plutonium as inaccessible for weapons use as possible. The wording of the policy, however, is now obsolete.
How so?
It was formulated before the IFR’s pyroprocessing and electrorefining technology was known—when “reprocessing” was synonymous with PUREX, which creates plutonium of the chemical purity needed for weapons. Since now there is a fuel cycle that promises to provide far-superior management of plutonium, the policy has been overtaken by events.
Why is the IFR better than PUREX? Doesn’t “recycling” mean separation of plutonium, regardless of the method?
No, not in the IFR—and that misunderstanding accounts for some of the opposition. The IFR’s pyroprocessing and electrorefining method is not capable of making plutonium that is pure enough for weapons. If a proliferator were to start with IFR material, he or she would have to employ an extra chemical separation step.
But there is plutonium in IFRs, along with other fissionable isotopes. Seems to me that a proliferator could take some of that and make a bomb.
Some people do say that, but they’re wrong, according to expert bomb designers at Livermore National Laboratory. They looked at the problem in detail, and concluded that plutonium-bearing material taken from anywhere in the IFR cycle was so ornery, because of inherent heat, radioactivity and spontaneous neutrons, that making a bomb with it without chemical separation of the plutonium would be essentially impossible—far, far harder than using today’s reactor-grade plutonium.
So? Why wouldn’t they use chemical separation?
First of all, they would need a PUREX-type plant—something that does not exist in the IFR cycle.
Second, the |
0:32:21 20 Sander Armee (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:49:25 21 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 0:52:03 22 Jack Haig (Aus) Orica-Scott 0:55:12 23 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 0:58:46 24 Pello Bilbao (Spa) Astana Pro Team 1:00:36 25 Stef Clement (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 1:05:14 26 Jaime Roson Garcia (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 1:08:12 27 Luis Angel Maté Mardones (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 1:08:32 28 Franco Pellizotti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 1:12:00 29 Antwan Tolhoek (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 1:13:25 30 Gianni Moscon (Ita) Team Sky 1:18:01 31 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 1:20:14 32 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 1:20:33 33 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Astana Pro Team 1:21:42 34 Igor Anton Hernandez (Spa) Dimension Data 1:24:33 35 Peter Stetina (USA) Trek-Segafredo 1:25:34 36 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 1:26:07 37 Rui Alberto Faria da Costa (Por) UAE Team Emirates 1:37:38 38 Hernán Aguirre (Col) Manzana Postobon 1:37:57 39 Bob Jungels (Lux) Quick-Step Floors 1:38:06 40 Richard Carapaz (Ecu) Movistar Team 1:42:12 41 Bart De Clercq (Bel) Lotto Soudal 1:44:25 42 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 1:44:30 43 Rafal Majka (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 1:45:41 44 Aldemar Reyes (Col) Manzana Postobon 1:48:09 45 Koen Bouwman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 1:48:19 46 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 1:57:04 47 Nelson Oliveira (Por) Movistar Team 1:57:32 48 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 1:58:24 49 Bernardo Suaza (Col) Manzana Postobon 2:08:55 50 Odd Christian Eiking (Nor) FDJ 2:09:45 51 Anthony Roux (Fra) FDJ 2:13:07 52 Antonio Pedrero (Spa) Movistar Team 2:14:34 53 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 2:14:41 54 Ricardo Vilela (Por) Manzana Postobon 2:15:27 55 Thomas De Gendt (Bel) Lotto Soudal 2:16:34 56 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 2:19:15 57 Fabricio Ferrari (Uru) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 2:19:50 58 Clement Chevrier (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 2:22:56 59 Daan Olivier (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 2:24:01 60 Floris De Tier (Bel) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 2:24:07 61 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 2:25:08 62 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 2:25:36 63 Jesus Hernandez Blazquez (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 2:26:38 64 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 2:27:03 65 Stefan Denifl (Aut) Aqua Blue Sport 2:30:32 66 Alessandro De Marchi (Ita) BMC Racing Team 2:32:37 67 Jeremy Maison (Fra) FDJ 2:34:23 68 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 2:35:28 69 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 2:36:36 70 Jetse Bol (Ned) Manzana Postobon 2:41:17 71 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 2:42:23 72 Valerio Agnoli (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 2:42:30 73 Alberto Losada Alguacil (Spa) Katusha-Alpecin 2:45:50 74 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 2:46:29 75 Koen de Kort (Ned) Trek-Segafredo 2:47:20 76 David Lopez Garcia (Spa) Team Sky 2:47:22 77 Salvatore Puccio (Ita) Team Sky 2:47:23 78 Carlos Verona Quintanilla (Spa) Orica-Scott 2:48:47 79 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 2:51:01 80 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 2:52:27 81 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 2:54:16 82 Jacques Janse van Rensburg (RSA) Dimension Data 2:56:13 83 Lluís Guillermo Mas Bonet (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 2:56:47 84 Anthony Perez (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 2:57:24 85 Daniel Navarro Garcia (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 2:57:38 86 Hector Sáez Benito (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 2:59:49 87 Julien Bernard (Fra) Trek-Segafredo 3:02:07 88 Juan Felipe Osorio (Col) Manzana Postobon 3:04:43 89 David Arroyo Duran (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 3:05:09 90 Lachlan Morton (Aus) Dimension Data 3:05:45 91 Przemyslaw Niemiec (Pol) UAE Team Emirates 3:05:48 92 Guillaume Bonnafond (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 3:06:24 93 Edward Theuns (Bel) Trek-Segafredo 3:08:03 94 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 3:11:34 95 Fernando Orjuela (Col) Manzana Postobon 3:14:27 96 Sergei Chernetckii (Rus) Astana Pro Team 3:14:58 97 Adam Hansen (Aus) Lotto Soudal 3:19:11 98 Joe Dombrowski (USA) Cannondale-Drapac 3:20:05 99 Patrick Konrad (Aut) Bora-Hansgrohe 3:20:40 100 Francisco Ventoso (Spa) BMC Racing Team 3:21:53 101 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 3:23:12 102 Antonio Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 3:25:43 103 Eros Capecchi (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 3:25:53 104 Arnaud Courteille (Fra) FDJ 3:26:35 105 Domen Novak (Slo) Bahrain-Merida 3:28:37 106 Ivan Garcia Cortina (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 3:29:56 107 Brendan Canty (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 3:31:13 108 Chad Haga (USA) Team Sunweb 3:31:15 109 Julien Duval (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 3:31:33 110 Bert-Jan Lindeman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 3:31:41 111 Juan José Lobato (Spa) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 3:35:34 112 Damiano Caruso (Ita) BMC Racing Team 3:36:41 113 Hugo Houle (Can) AG2R La Mondiale 3:37:33 114 Christopher Juul Jensen (Den) Orica-Scott 3:38:18 115 Søren Kragh Andersen (Den) Team Sunweb 3:39:01 116 Loic Vliegen (Bel) BMC Racing Team 3:39:27 117 Manuele Boaro (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 3:41:11 118 Markel Irizar Aranburu (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 3:41:58 119 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha-Alpecin 3:43:47 120 Johannes Fröhlinger (Ger) Team Sunweb 3:44:03 121 Laurens De Vreese (Bel) Astana Pro Team 3:46:05 122 Toms Skujins (Lat) Cannondale-Drapac 3:46:30 123 Nicholas Schultz (Aus) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 3:48:21 124 Anthony Turgis (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 3:49:16 125 Tim Declercq (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 3:51:45 126 Magnus Cort (Den) Orica-Scott 3:51:54 127 Michel Kreder (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 3:52:38 128 Chris Hamilton (Aus) Team Sunweb 3:53:18 129 Christian Knees (Ger) Team Sky 3:54:55 130 Daniel Hoelgaard (Nor) FDJ 3:55:21 131 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 3:59:13 132 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Quick-Step Floors 4:00:23 133 Maxim Belkov (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 4:02:29 134 Rafael Reis (Por) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 4:03:46 135 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) Cannondale-Drapac 4:04:16 136 Sacha Modolo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 4:04:20 137 Hernando Bohórquez (Col) Manzana Postobon 4:05:27 138 Michael Mørkøv (Den) Katusha-Alpecin 4:06:20 139 Yves Lampaert (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 4:06:48 140 Mark Christian (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 4:13:57 141 Aaron Gate (NZl) Aqua Blue Sport 4:14:38 142 Nikita Stalnov (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 4:15:51 143 Christoph Pfingsten (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 4:15:55 144 Andreas Schillinger (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 4:17:30 145 Peter Koning (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 4:18:05 146 Kenneth Van Bilsen (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 4:18:06 147 Rein Taaramäe (Est) Katusha-Alpecin 4:19:04 148 Ian Stannard (GBr) Team Sky 4:19:52 149 Lasse Norman Hansen (Den) Aqua Blue Sport 4:20:20 150 Federico Zurlo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 4:23:45 151 Sam Bewley (NZl) Orica-Scott 4:25:02 152 Remy Mertz (Bel) Lotto Soudal 4:27:23 153 Sebastián Molano (Col) Manzana Postobon 4:28:00 154 Thomas Scully (NZl) Cannondale-Drapac 4:29:57 155 Jelle Wallays (Bel) Lotto Soudal 4:31:17 156 Adam Blythe (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 4:31:27 157 Michael Schwarzmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 4:34:22 158 William Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 4:35:42 159 Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) FDJ 4:35:52 160 Conor Dunne (Irl) Aqua Blue Sport 4:47:32
Points classification # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 137 pts 2 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 127 3 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 118 4 Miguel Angel Lopez (Col) Astana Pro Team 90 5 Wilco Kelderman (Ned) Team Sunweb 89 6 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 80 7 Ilnur Zakarin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 79 8 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 70 9 Johan Esteban Chaves Rubio (Col) Orica-Scott 61 10 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 58 11 Michael Woods (Can) Cannondale-Drapac 55 12 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 54 13 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 51 14 Rafal Majka (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 51 15 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 49 16 David de la Cruz (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 42 17 Romain Bardet (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 42 18 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 41 19 Thomas De Gendt (Bel) Lotto Soudal 41 20 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 40 21 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) Cannondale-Drapac 39 22 Fabio Aru (Ita) Astana Pro Team 38 23 Nicolas Roche (Irl) BMC Racing Team 38 24 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 38 25 Alessandro De Marchi (Ita) BMC Racing Team 35 26 Wout Poels (Ned) Team Sky 33 27 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 29 28 Edward Theuns (Bel) Trek-Segafredo 29 29 Yves Lampaert (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 28 30 Michael Schwarzmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 28 31 Sander Armee (Bel) Lotto Soudal 25 32 Stefan Denifl (Aut) Aqua Blue Sport 25 33 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 25 34 Søren Kragh Andersen (Den) Team Sunweb 24 35 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Astana Pro Team 23 36 Jetse Bol (Ned) Manzana Postobon 23 37 Floris De Tier (Bel) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 22 38 Sacha Modolo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 22 39 Gianni Moscon (Ita) Team Sky 20 40 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 20 41 Juan José Lobato (Spa) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 20 42 Rui Alberto Faria da Costa (Por) UAE Team Emirates 19 43 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 17 44 Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team 17 45 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 17 46 Mikel Nieve Ituralde (Spa) Team Sky 16 47 Jaime Roson Garcia (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 16 48 Anthony Perez (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 16 49 Ivan Garcia Cortina (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 16 50 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha-Alpecin 16 51 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 15 52 Jack Haig (Aus) Orica-Scott 15 53 Bob Jungels (Lux) Quick-Step Floors 15 54 Michel Kreder (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 15 55 Jacques Janse van Rensburg (RSA) Dimension Data 14 56 Patrick Konrad (Aut) Bora-Hansgrohe 14 57 Arnaud Courteille (Fra) FDJ 13 58 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 12 59 Pello Bilbao (Spa) Astana Pro Team 12 60 Stef Clement (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 12 61 Nelson Oliveira (Por) Movistar Team 12 62 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 12 63 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 11 64 Brendan Canty (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 11 65 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 10 66 Richard Carapaz (Ecu) Movistar Team 10 67 Aldemar Reyes (Col) Manzana Postobon 10 68 Rafael Reis (Por) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 10 69 Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) FDJ 9 70 Louis Meintjes (RSA) UAE Team Emirates 8 71 Sergio Pardilla Bellon (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 8 72 Luis Angel Maté Mardones (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 8 73 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 8 74 Bart De Clercq (Bel) Lotto Soudal 8 75 Antwan Tolhoek (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 7 76 Alberto Losada Alguacil (Spa) Katusha-Alpecin 7 77 Daniel Navarro Garcia (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 7 78 Andreas Schillinger (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 7 79 Adam Blythe (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 7 80 Koen Bouwman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 6 81 Anthony Roux (Fra) FDJ 6 82 Jeremy Maison (Fra) FDJ 6 83 David Arroyo Duran (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 6 84 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 6 85 Daan Olivier (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 5 86 Bert-Jan Lindeman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 5 87 Peter Koning (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 5 88 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 4 89 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 4 90 Julien Duval (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 4 91 Loic Vliegen (Bel) BMC Racing Team 4 92 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 3 93 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 3 94 Julien Bernard (Fra) Trek-Segafredo 3 95 Sebastián Molano (Col) Manzana Postobon 3 96 Christian Knees (Ger) Team Sky 2 97 Jesus Hernandez Blazquez (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 1 98 Koen de Kort (Ned) Trek-Segafredo 1 99 Christoph Pfingsten (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 1 100 Conor Dunne (Irl) Aqua Blue Sport 1 101 Antonio Pedrero (Spa) Movistar Team -1 102 Valerio Agnoli (Ita) Bahrain-Merida -5
Mountains classification # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 67 pts 2 Miguel Angel Lopez (Col) Astana Pro Team 47 3 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 33 4 Thomas De Gendt (Bel) Lotto Soudal 30 5 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 29 6 Rafal Majka (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 28 7 Stefan Denifl (Aut) Aqua Blue Sport 26 8 Romain Bardet (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 24 9 Ilnur Zakarin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 20 10 Sander Armee (Bel) Lotto Soudal 18 11 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 18 12 Johan Esteban Chaves Rubio (Col) Orica-Scott 15 13 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 14 14 Wilco Kelderman (Ned) Team Sunweb 14 15 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 12 16 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 12 17 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 12 18 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 11 19 Lluís Guillermo Mas Bonet (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 11 20 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 9 21 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 9 22 Brendan Canty (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 9 23 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 8 24 Alessandro De Marchi (Ita) BMC Racing Team 8 25 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 8 26 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 8 27 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 7 28 Michael Woods (Can) Cannondale-Drapac 6 29 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 6 30 Rui Alberto Faria da Costa (Por) UAE Team Emirates 6 31 Juan Felipe Osorio (Col) Manzana Postobon 6 32 Jacques Janse van Rensburg (RSA) Dimension Data 5 33 Przemyslaw Niemiec (Pol) UAE Team Emirates 5 34 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 4 35 Laurens De Vreese (Bel) Astana Pro Team 4 36 Jaime Roson Garcia (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 4 37 Fabricio Ferrari (Uru) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 4 38 Nicolas Roche (Irl) BMC Racing Team 3 39 Ivan Garcia Cortina (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 3 40 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 3 41 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 3 42 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 3 43 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 3 44 Luis Angel Maté Mardones (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 2 45 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 2 46 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 2 47 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 2 48 Clement Chevrier (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 2 49 Floris De Tier (Bel) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 2 50 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 2 51 Bert-Jan Lindeman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 2 52 Toms Skujins (Lat) Cannondale-Drapac 2 53 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 2 54 Hernando Bohórquez (Col) Manzana Postobon 2 55 Antwan Tolhoek (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 1 56 Nelson Oliveira (Por) Movistar Team 1 57 Ricardo Vilela (Por) Manzana Postobon 1 58 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 1 59 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 1 60 Francisco Ventoso (Spa) BMC Racing Team 1 61 Arnaud Courteille (Fra) FDJ 1 62 Magnus Cort (Den) Orica-Scott 1 63 Rafael Reis (Por) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 1
Combined classification # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 7 pts 2 Miguel Angel Lopez (Col) Astana Pro Team 12 3 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 18 4 Ilnur Zakarin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 20 5 Wilco Kelderman (Ned) Team Sunweb 22 6 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 28 7 Johan Esteban Chaves Rubio (Col) Orica-Scott 33 8 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 34 9 Romain Bardet (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 43 10 Michael Woods (Can) Cannondale-Drapac 46 11 Sander Armee (Bel) Lotto Soudal 61 12 Rafal Majka (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 63 13 Nicolas Roche (Irl) BMC Racing Team 76 14 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 78 15 Thomas De Gendt (Bel) Lotto Soudal 78 16 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 85 17 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 88 18 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 89 19 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 97 20 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 98 21 Stefan Denifl (Aut) Aqua Blue Sport 104 22 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 106 23 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 108 24 Jaime Roson Garcia (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 109 25 Rui Alberto Faria da Costa (Por) UAE Team Emirates 109 26 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 110 27 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 112 28 Alessandro De Marchi (Ita) BMC Racing Team 115 29 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 117 30 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 124 31 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 125 32 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 130 33 Luis Angel Maté Mardones (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 143 34 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 145 35 Floris De Tier (Bel) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 146 36 Antwan Tolhoek (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 159 37 Nelson Oliveira (Por) Movistar Team 164 38 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 168 39 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 168 40 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 169 41 Jacques Janse van Rensburg (RSA) Dimension Data 169 42 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 179 43 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 184 44 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 187 45 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 189 46 Brendan Canty (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 193 47 Ivan Garcia Cortina (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 194 48 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 210 49 Arnaud Courteille (Fra) FDJ 222 50 Bert-Jan Lindeman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 247 51 Rafael Reis (Por) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 265 52 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 273Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot has was met with suspicion from the get-go, and every move has just seemed to irritate fans more. The latest debacle was the casting of producer Michael Bay‘s one-time nemesis Megan Fox as April O’Neil — not really the best way to convince audiences that TMNT wouldn’t just be a Transformers rehash.
Where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman has been vocal about his support of the film (which likely has something to do with the fact that he’s been involved all along), co-creator Peter Laird has been far more critical of the endeavor. And he’s no happier about the casting of Fox than other TMNT fans have been. Hit the jump to keep reading.
Laird offered his thoughts in the comments section of his blog.
My only exposure to Megan Fox as an actress is through her role in two “Transformers” movies and the wretched (but happily forgettable) “Jennifer’s Body”. It may not be fair to judge her range of acting skills just from those three movies, but I think it is safe to say that there are probably hundreds of better choices for the role of April O’Neil. Of course, her name has promotional value, and maybe that’s what they want. Who knows? I can’t get myself too worked up about it.
I’d argue that Fox isn’t such a terrible actress, but then I didn’t hate Jennifer’s Body as much as some people did. But she’s a less exciting choice than Anna Kendrick, Jane Levy, or Elizabeth Olson, all of whom were reportedly also up for the role, and the combination of Fox and Bay isn’t a promising one.
Fox is currently the only cast member announced for the film, but that’s certain to change soon as director Jonathan Liebesman is preparing to shoot in April. Ninja Turtles will open June 6, 2014.Dell launches its lightest, smallest and most power-efficient thin client, the Wyse 3040, which promises excellent performance and manageability when it comes to multitasking and basic productivity.
Dell launches its lightest, smallest and most power-efficient thin client, the Wyse 3040, which promises excellent performance and manageability when it comes to multitasking and basic productivity. Dell
Dell has launched what the company calls its lightest, smallest and most power-efficient thin client. The Dell Wyse 3040 promises excellent performance and manageability when it comes to multitasking and basic productivity. The new thin client – which is compatible with Microsoft, VMware and Citrix virtual workspaces – offers an economical and secure endpoint solution that’s easy to deploy and manage.
Dell takes pride in the fact that the new Wyse 3040 is the first entry-level Intel x86-based quad-core thin client in the business that’s capable of delivering not only robust connectivity options, but operating systems as well. Users get to choose between the virus-resistant and ultra-secure Wyse ThinOS or the soon-to-be available ThinLinux when it comes to the Texas-based tech titan’s new unit. It’s the practical solution for users who are involved in various industries, even those that are considered as highly-regulated areas like healthcare, retail, education and finance.
“Our customers are looking for that ideal blend of security, performance, energy efficiency and price,” said Steve Lalla, Dell’s Senior Vice President of Commercial Client Software and Solutions. “The new Wyse 3040 thin client – the smallest and most efficient thin client – exceeds expectations of what an entry-level thin client can do.”
Featuring a fresh slim line form factor starting at less than a quarter of a kilogram (0.53 lbs), the Dell Wyse 3040 is the first entry-level thin client to house an Intel Atom X5 1.44 GHz quad-core processor that supports up to 2 GB DDR3 RAM and 8 GB flash. It’s also said to be 30 percent better when it comes to performance compared to previous models, which makes it perfect for efficient local application tasks and light multimedia use. It’s compact enough to be easily mounted on the rear of a monitor for a clean and orderly setup.
The Wyse 3040 can be deployed right out-of-the box and also has dual digital display support (2,560 x 1,600). It’s likewise easy to maintain thanks to Dell’s Wyse Device Manager (WDM) and Cloud Client Manager (CCM), both of which provide hassle-free remote configuration and policy management.
The Dell Wyse 3040 thin client with Wyse ThinOS is now available to purchase worldwide starting at US$329 (AU$429). The Wyse ThinLinux, which is described by the company as “a thin client-optimised software based on SUSE Linux that has been further hardened and optimised,” is set to be available starting June 2017.
Dell Wyse 3040 thin client specs and features
Operating System: Wyse ThinOS (with optional PCoIP support) or Wyse ThinLinux
Wyse ThinOS (with optional PCoIP support) or Wyse ThinLinux Display: Dual display support (2,560 x 1,600 at 60 Hz)
Dual display support (2,560 x 1,600 at 60 Hz) Power: Under 5 Watts power consumption
Under 5 Watts power consumption Ports: 3 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x Audio-mic combo jack, 2 x DisplayPort, 1 x RJ45
3 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x Audio-mic combo jack, 2 x DisplayPort, 1 x RJ45 Connectivity: 10 MB / 100 MB / 1 GB Copper RJ45 (Wired Ethernet), Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless option
10 MB / 100 MB / 1 GB Copper RJ45 (Wired Ethernet), Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless option Multimedia: Audio-mic combo jack, Integrated speakers
Audio-mic combo jack, Integrated speakers Chipset: Intel Quad Core 1.44 GHz
Intel Quad Core 1.44 GHz Memory: 2 GB RAM
2 GB RAM Height without stand: 27.94 mm (1.1 inches) x Width: 101.6 mm (3.75 inches) x Depth: 101.6 mm (3.75 inches)
27.94 mm (1.1 inches) x 101.6 mm (3.75 inches) x 101.6 mm (3.75 inches) Target weight: 0.24 kg (0.53 lbs)
0.24 kg (0.53 lbs) Slots: Built-in Kensington Security Slot (cable sold separately)
MORE STORIES:Image copyright AP Image caption Mustafa Abdel Jalil says he will not allow Libya to be divided
Libya's national unity will be defended with force if necessary, the head of the governing National Transitional Council (NTC) has said.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil called on regional leaders to engage in dialogue, a day after senior figures in oil-rich eastern Libya called for semi-autonomy.
He warned that remnants of the Gaddafi regime were "infiltrating" their ranks.
Civic leaders in the east say they have experienced decades of neglect from Tripoli-based governments.
Leaders from the region, which was once called Cyrenaica, made their call for more autonomy in a document issued after a meeting in Benghazi, which was the focal point of the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi.
They demanded a regional parliament, and control over the police force and courts, but stopped short of advocating a division of the country.
They agreed that foreign policy, among other responsibilities, should be left to the government in Tripoli.
But Mr Jalil said he would not allow a divided Libya.
"We are ready to deter them, even with force," he said in a speech shown on national television.
Other NTC members have claimed that the authors of the Benghazi declaration were trying to hijack the revolution and did not fully represent the region.
However, correspondents say the declaration has significant popular support among people in Benghazi.
Libya's three regions enjoyed federal power following the country's independence in 1951, until the country became a unitary state in 1963.
Cyrenaica stretches from the central coastal city of Sirte to the Libyan-Egyptian border in the east - containing two-thirds of the country's oil reserves.
The people of Cyrenaica, known as Barqa in Arabic, felt particularly marginalised and neglected under Gaddafi, who focused much of the development on the west.
The city of Benghazi was the seat of the uprising that eventually toppled the |
ondo’s The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying and then raved about how much better they felt after ditching the piles of useless possessions that have cluttered up their homes for years.
As they pack into bin bags hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds worth of stuff they’ve neither used nor needed since bringing it home, they see the futility of heading back to the shops to buy even more. Little wonder shop sales are falling.
I used to have plenty of stuff, but sold most of it soon after I decided to try my hand at becoming a writer seven years ago.
It meant my husband Simeon, 50, and our two sons — now aged 20 and 21 — would have to survive off his modest soldier’s wage.
Living in a poky two-bedroom rented house, with very little to call my own, I used to spend whole evenings poring over the interiors of million-pound properties, while fantasising about being in a position to buy one myself.
Five years ago, my gamble to be a writer paid off, resulting in virtually overnight success and instant wealth.
After 75 rejection letters in 2012, an agent finally took me on. Within three days, she landed me a three-book deal with a six-figure advance for my novel What Have I Done, the story of a woman living in a controlled marriage.
ADELE EARNS £116,000 A YEAR ADELE STICKLAND, 47, is a Pilates instructor ADELE STICKLAND, 47, is a Pilates instructor who also runs get-gorgeous.com. She is married to Dave, 52, who has a shop design business, and they have three children, Ben, 19, Joe, ten, and Zoe, nine. She says: It’s taken almost two decades and a lot of hard work for me to earn over £100,000 a year. Our biggest annual expense is travel — we spend around £12,000. But I can’t think of a better use for our money than creating memories for the family. Last year we had a fortnight in Disneyland, Orlando, a week in Corfu, four weeks touring France and Spain in our camper van and two weeks in an all-inclusive hotel in Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa. Looking after my body — at a cost of £515 a month — may seem like an extravagance, but it’s essential when, like me, you’re running your own health and fitness business. A couple of months ago, I did treat myself to a brand-new BMW 3 Series car. I had £20,000 in my account, so I thought why not? It brings me great joy. Monthly income £6,200 Mortgage £950 Pension £200 Utilities £690 Holidays £1,000 Groceries £790 Insurance £88 Travel £300 Cleaner £254 Clothes (including children)... £350 Window cleaner £70 Beauty treatments £515 Dyslexia tutor £200 Kids’ activities £154 Haircuts £40 Child trust fund £30 Savings £400 Total £6,031
Since then I’ve had 17 books published all over the world, nearly all bestsellers — they provide me with an income of £1 million each year.
A financial adviser immediately suggested investing in a new home, with a budget of around £1.5 million.
Imagine the thrill I felt that evening, looking at all those fabulous houses, boasting private tennis courts and rolling lawns, knowing I could take my pick.
And yet, by the time I shut down my computer several hours later, that initial buzz had completely evaporated.
I felt overwhelmed rather than excited at the prospect of every woman’s fantasy becoming my reality.
I was awake all night, mulling over the hours it would take to clean a big house, asking myself what was the point of a tennis court when I hadn’t picked up a racquet since school — and stressing over finding a gardener to maintain lawns I didn’t even own yet.
I felt upset thinking how much I’d miss chatting with my neighbours over our rickety garden fence and imagining how lonely and cut off I might end up feeling in a fabulous home set behind imposing electronic gates.
Amanda says 'Actually, it took me becoming immensely wealthy to realise just how little real value belongings actually hold'
As I lay there, it struck me more profoundly than it ever had before that all my happiness in life truly depended on was the people in it. My friends and my family were what defined me, not the size of my house or the things inside it.
I got more gratification from a chat with the bin men or sharing a pot of tea with our postie than I’d ever fully appreciated until now.
Living in an ivory tower would deny me those simple pleasures. As morning dawned so did the realisation that you are only ever happy or unhappy — there isn’t a sliding scale in between those two states that can be influenced by what you do or don’t possess.
There was so little about my life that I actually wanted to change.
So we stayed put. The next day I booked a holiday to Majorca — the first I’d taken without having had to scrimp and save for it. I did that before paying off £30,000 of credit card debt. Apart from never having to worry about whether we could pay our bills again and being able to indulge a previously unrequited passion for travel, little else has changed.
She continues: 'For me, the phrase ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ is more than a cliche — it is a dictum by which I live my life'
We bought a nondescript three-bedroom house on a busy estate for the boys — our base at the moment while they’re away at university. When they move back in next year, we may pick up something similarly modest for ourselves or even rent.
Only yesterday, my neighbour told me that she didn’t get it. That if she had my money she’d be living in luxury — shopping for designer clothes, day in and day out.
‘And then what?’ I asked her.
‘Once you’d filled that big house with bling where would you look next for happiness? When would it all ever finally be enough?’
Then she got it.
Because the truth is, when you fail to separate one from the other, happiness only ever lies at the end of the next shopping trip.
And that will never be the kind of happiness that I’m looking for.He audaciously flew his single-seater aircraft through one of the country’s most restricted airspaces, defiantly landed it on the US Capitol’s West Lawn only to be greeted by a massive law enforcement response, and seemingly has no regrets about it now.
Douglas Hughes entered a guilty plea in federal court in Washington D.C. on Friday for the charge of operating a gyrocopter without a license.
"I have always accepted that there would be consequences for what I did," Hughes told The Associated Press.
The felony carries a potential for up to three years in prison, but prosecutors said they would not request more than 10 months if he pleaded guilty, according to Mr. Hughes’s attorney Mark Goldstone. Hughes was originally charged with offenses that could have landed him in jail for nearly a decade.
But why did he do it?
At the time of his arrest, Hughes was a mail carrier for the US Postal Service. He pulled the stunt on April 15 to bring awareness to the influence of big money in politics. While flying the bare-bones aircraft from Gettysburg, Penn., to the nation’s capital, the Florida man carried letters addressed to every member of Congress. The tail of the gyrocopter was emblazoned with the Postal Service logo.
Mr. Goldstone said the incident “exposed major flaws” in Washington’s air defense system, and it came after a series of embarrassing security lapses for the Secret Service. Indeed, an August report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee showed the incident brought to light significant gaps in capitol security and the need for better air security technology and information-sharing.
As the Tampa Bay Times reported, the impetus for Hughes’ act of civil disobedience came from tragedy – he lost his son to suicide a few years earlier, and his “political frustrations and grief merged” into a passion for campaign finance reform:
At the root of Hughes' disdain is the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court decided campaign contributions were a form of "political speech" and struck down limits on how much corporations and unions could give to political contenders. The decision changed the game. Campaign spending went through the roof. In Hughes' mind, there was a parallel spike in favor-dealing and the government is now practically owned by the rich. Hughes likes to point out that nearly half the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning some 14 times their congressional salaries.
Goldstone said his client will request probation in the case. The sentencing is expected to take place on April 13.
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Hughes has said he lost his job after the incident and that after the criminal case is resolved he intends to work as an activist for campaign finance reform.
This report contains material from Reuters and The Associated Press.What is Zcoin and how is it different?
Zcoin (XZC) was launched on in September 2016 and employs the Zerocoin protocol to enable private transactions. The coin emission curve follows that of Bitcoin and there has been no ICO or pre-mine. The underlying cryptography utilizes Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) that allow users to mint and spend coins with no transaction history.
Our current implementation of the Zerocoin protocol uses RSA 2048 parameters as a trusted set up. These are used in many aspects of internet security, such as HTTPS and SSH. At projected computing capacity, they will be safe to use for many more decades. Furthermore, we are working to implement the Sigma protocol, which completely eliminates the need for a trusted set up.
Another mitigating factor in the worst-case scenario of a compromised set up is that in Zerocoin the total coin supply and wallet balances can be audited. If there is any issue with the code or implementation resulting in double-spend or counterfeiting, it can be detected early before leading to hyperinflation. Zcoin encountered an attack earlier this year, but was able to find the bug after being alarmed by a sharp increase in minted coins.
Zcoin is also in the first coin to implement Merkle Tree Proof (MTP) as POW algorithm. MTP was developed by the same researchers that came up with Equihash. However, it is fast to verify and has the potential to revolutionize mining since you can slot in other “memory hard” proof-of-work (ASIC-hostile) into the parent algorithm. MTP is already running on our testnet and will be rolled out within the next month.
Why have Zerocoin on Ethereum?
The Zcoin team is conducting its own R&D into implementing the Zerocoin protocol on the ethereum blockchain. We believe this is in accordance with ethereum’s philosophy of redundancy and having multiple implementations, especially when it comes to cutting-edge and still highly experimental cryptography.
It can be argued that only a handful of cryptography academics fully understand zk-SNARKs. Meanwhile, the cryptography principles behind Zerocoin have been around for a longer period and the Zerocoin paper has been one of the most often cited cryptography papers in the past years, with about 200 citations.
In addition, we believe there should be a backup option to ensure basic privacy on the ethereum network in the unlikely event that the Zcash’s SNARK public parameters have been compromised. As mentioned, recent advances in Zerocoin-based research even allow for a completely trustless setup.
ZoE, Hawk, and now Zcoin?
Thre are already several projects trying to implement privacy on ethereum, most notably Zcash-on-ethereum (ZoE) and Hawk. Zcoin is looking to implement Zerocoin spending verifications on smart contracts with the goal of creating a decentralized (and in the future trustless) coin mixer for Ether.
Zerocoin breaks any transaction links and it allows for Ether transactions to be obscured with plausible deniability of up to several thousands, which compares favorably to other anonymization mechanisms that typically give you an anonymity set of less than 10 per transaction.
Unlike Coinjoin and its variants, it also does not require a central server to process such mixing, does not require you to trust any third parties and does not require other users to provide liquidity for a mixing transaction. Other features down the road could be “untraceable” tokens for anonymous voting and blind auctions and ICOs, among others.
The Zerocoin spend computation for cryptographic shielding depends on accumulator size and could be lowered enough to find a sustainable gas costs. However, when compare to Zcash, our proof-of-transaction is relatively large (25 kb) and the proposed coin mixer would in the first implementation only accept fixed denominations (e.g. 1, 10, 50, etc.).
After initial calculations and correspondence with Vitalik Buterin, we believe that implementation should be feasible with the upcoming Metropolis release. As running these operations directly in the EVM is too costly, we also are looking to implement pre-compiled contracts instead.
Smart contract outline for Zerocoin-based mixer:
The smart contract allows you to deposit a fixed denomination of ETH by adding a cryptographic commitment (“serial number”) into a RSA accumulator maintained by the contract. After depositing ETH into the contract you receive a “wrapped” ERC20-compatible token with the secret serial number. In order to withdraw ETH without revealing which commitment you are spending, it uses a ZKP to prove that we know a commitment inside of the contract. After usage you redeem your ETH and the token gets destroyed. The serial number is then marked as used, so you cannot double-spend with the same proof.
If you are interested in helping Zcoin to implement the coin-mixer contract, we are looking for additional developers to join our team. This also includes talent who can write EVM code in Solidity, Serpent or Viper. Remuneration will be commensurate to skill set and experience. We are also open to starting with project-based fees.Image caption The child went missing from Primark in Northumberland Street
Two teenage girls have been charged with kidnapping a two-year-old child in central Newcastle.
The girl went missing from the Primark store in Northumberland Street shortly before 17:00 BST on Wednesday.
She was found just over an hour later, about three miles away in Gosforth.
Northumbria Police said two girls, aged 13 and 14, would appear at South East Northumberland Magistrates' Court on Friday, charged with shoplifting and kidnap.
The force said all local police resources were involved in the search for the child.
A spokesman said travel networks in the city were alerted and officers scoured CCTV footage from the council and shops in the area.
He added: "I would like to thank all of those involved for their help in finding this little girl and helping reunite her with her mother."This is excellent. You may have been looking at the complex series of dance steps that the boy Gabbani is enacting throughout his hit tune and wondered to yourself: "How can I pull off those moves without looking like a lead-footed idiot?" I know we were! So why not get the lad himself, along with his more talented monkey mate, to show you how!It's all here in video form as our teachers lead us through the wavy-wavy-leg-uppy dance in a simple step-by-step guide. You'll be dancing like the pros in minutes, and can show off your skills to your friends and family on the big night. You'll be the prince or princess of the party!All larking aside, this good-humoured skit is just another reason why we reckon the Italian delegation is going to be terrific value in Kiev. Francesco's easy charm just oozes through the screen, and I was hanging on his every word - even though I speak next to no Italian at all. Win or lose on the big night, I think we've got ourselves a Eurovision star - and dance - who's going to live on in the memory for a very long time!DONALD Trump has warned he will "solve" the nuclear threat posed by North Korea if China doesn't.
Speaking from the Oval Office in an interview with the Financial Times, the US president gave China an ultimatum: "Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you.”
Bloomberg via Getty Images 9 US president Donald Trump says he will eradicate the nuclear threat posed by North Korea with or without China's help
In a separate interview with the publication, deputy White House national security adviser KT McFarland warned: “There is a real possibility that North Korea will be able to hit the US with a nuclear-armed missile by the end of the first Trump term."
The US sees North Korea as its most pressing threat after former president Barack Obama warned Trump about the substantial advancements Pyongyang has made with their nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
AP:Associated Press 9 Deputy White House national security adviser KT McFarland says the US could be hit by North Korea's nuclear weapons by 2020
Trump confirmed he would be discussing the issue of North Korea with Chinese president Xi Jinping when he hosts the world leader at his resort this week.
The president added: "China has great influence over North Korea.
"And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t.
"If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone."
Reuters 9 White House officials have warned there is a'real possibility' North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, pictured, 'will be able to hit the US with a nuclear-armed missile by the end of the first Trump term'
MOST READ IN NEWS Exclusive BRUTE FARCE Albanian killer fighting deportation over right to happy family life beats wife Exclusive PIE ROLLER £148m EuroMillions winner scoffs 50 home-delivered Cornish pasties every WEEK TREE OF TERROR Mum horrified to learn what the strange 'pods' were hanging from branches MISSED THE BOAT Clueless couple stranded as cruise leaves WITHOUT them because they're late MOMO NO-NO Momo Challenge in 'Peppa Pig and Fortnite vids' as YouTube and Instagram slammed HEN DO MYSTERY Brit newlywed, 27, 'CLUNG to balcony before fatal Benidorm hotel plunge'
Getty Images 9 Donald Trump said he has a 'great deal of respect' for China and the nation's leader, president Xi Jinping
Ahead of the meeting, which will be the world leaders' first, Trump raised hopes he would reach a deal of sorts with Xi.
The president told the Financial Times he has a "great deal of respect" for both China and its president.
He added: "I would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries and I hope so.”
Earlier this month, an envoy claimed North Korea is preparing to launch an inter-continental ballistic missile that is capable of travelling 10,000km and could strike the US.
The envoy said Pyongyang will pursue “acceleration” of its nuclear and missile programme, including a “pre-emptive first-strike capability” and development of an ICBM missile.
Military officials claim Kim Jong-un is set to show the United States its capability of striking a designated target on the American mainland when it tests its next missile.
Reuters 9 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches the ground jet test of a newly-developed Korean-style high-thrust engine
9 Propaganda film shows aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson being targeted
The officer, who did not want to be named, told the Korea Times: “The North showed off improved engine efficiency in a test last Saturday, and it will now focus on perfecting a long-range re-entry vehicle to make an operational ICBM.
“This is a step toward completing its ICBM technology.”
North Korea has never flight-tested its road-mobile KN-08 or KN-14 ICBMs, but they are believed to be capable of flying more than 10,000km – a range sufficient to reach the States.
Choe Myong Nam, deputy ambassador at the DPRK (North Korean) mission, told the United Nations in Geneva the North is developing a "pre-emptive first strike capability" and an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).
9 Footage shows missiles launching as part of a ballistic rocket test
9 The video featured images from recent North Korean rocket tests
A senior US official in Washington reported that the Trump administration is considering sweeping sanctions as part of a broad review of measures to counter North Korea's nuclear and missile threat.
Choe said: "I think this is stemming from the visit by the Secretary of State (Rex Tillerson) to Japan, South Korea and China...We of course are not afraid of any act like that.
"Even prohibition of the international transactions system, the global financial system, this kind of thing is part of their system that will not frighten us or make any difference."
He called existing sanctions "heinous and inhumane".
Reuters 9 Kim's Hwasong rockets are tested during another drill earlier this year
North Korea has been under sanctions for "half a century" but the communist state survives by placing an emphasis on juche or "self-sufficiency", he said.
His country wants a forum set up to examine the "legality and legitimacy of the sanctions regime".
He denounced joint annual military exercises currently being carried out by the United States and South Korea on the divided peninsula and criticised remarks by Tillerson during his talks with regional allies last week.
"All he was talking about is for the United States to take military actions on DPRK (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Choe said.
North Korea rejects claims by Washington and Seoul that the military drills are defensive.
They involve strategic nuclear bombers and a nuclear submarine Columbus that recently entered South Korean ports, he said.
"In the light of such huge military forces involved in the joint military exercises, we have no other choice but to continue with our full acceleration of the nuclear programmes and missile programmes.
"It is because of these hostile activities on the part of the United States and South Korea."
It comes as North Korea stepped up its war of words with Washington and declared "we're ready for war" in a fiery state TV broadcast.
A state official roared that Pyongyang has "the will and capability" for conflict with Donald Trump's America.
Getty Images 9 Donald Trump is reportedly considering sweeping sanctions as part of a broad review of measures to hit back at North Korea's nuclear and missile threat
He said: "We have the will and capability to fully respond to any war which the US wants.
"If the businessman-turned-US officials thought that they would frighten us, they would soon recognise that their method would not work."
Officials close to Trump responded by declaring the president is considering seizing dictator Kim Jong-un's assets outside North Korea.
The outburst comes just after tyrant Kim released a propaganda video showing a US aircraft carrier being blown up and a bomber shot down in flames.
Snaps from the secretive state's recent ballistic missile launches are shown alongside the haunting message: "A knife will be stabbed into the throat of the carrier."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368.In the hallway that leads to the corner chambers of Canada’s chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, the view to the right is all red-velvet dignity.
Portraits of chief justices past — Antonio Lamer, Brian Dickson, Bora Laskin — hang in oracular grandeur on stone walls, with an empty spot awaiting the mandatory retirement in 2018 of “McLachlin C.J.,” as she is styled, the first woman and longest-serving chief, whose court is on a roll of momentous rulings about life, death, freedom, and fairness, often against the wishes of government.
The view to the left, however, is a reminder that she and her eight colleagues are not so aloof as they seem, for outside the windows, down in an interior courtyard of the Supreme Court of Canada, there is a badminton court.
Taking in such contrasting views is key to appreciating McLachlin’s career as a judge, which coincides almost exactly with the lifespan of the Charter of Rights & Freedoms, Canada’s foundational statement of values. It is precisely what she does on the bench. To her, judgment is not a coldly neutral evaluation of competing positions, robotically free of passion or perspective. It is an engaged, human act of imagination.
Governments have always suffered defeat
“What you have to try to do as a judge,” she says in an exclusive interview, “whether you’re on charter issues or any other issue, is by an act of the imagination put yourself in the shoes of the different parties, and think about how it looks from their perspective, and really think about it, not just give it lip service.”
She describes it as “conscious objectivity,” and it is a major factor in her court’s rise to almost unprecedented levels of public scrutiny, interest, admiration and occasionally resentment.
[np_storybar title=”A scorecard of the Harper government’s wins and losses at the Supreme Court of Canada” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/scoc-harper-gov-scorecard-741324″%5D
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By a purely quantitative measure, the government wins here more than it loses — about two thirds of the charter cases it fights. Politically, however, it wins small and loses big.
Recent headlines scream out the trend. On prostitution (Bedford), assisted suicide (Carter), mandatory minimum gun crime sentences (Nur), Senate reform and, just this month, whether Omar Khadr deserves an adult sentence, the government has lost on key elements of its party’s platform. The ugliest was its effort last year to elevate Federal Court judge Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court, which the top court struck down because he did not qualify as a Quebec appointee. That led to competing press releases about who did what when, and the revelation that Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to take a call from McLachlin, whom he called sniffily “a sitting judge,” despite a long tradition of private consultation on such matters.
“Governments have always suffered defeat at the hands of the court,” says Emmett Macfarlane, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo who specializes in the role of the top court. “What is unique about the Conservative government is that there have been a string of highly salient losses in two areas.”
One is the Conservative Party’s law and order agenda, often in the case of criminal appeals. The other is institutional reform, such as the recent ruling against Senate term limits and elections, which Harper criticized as enforcing an unworkable status quo. It also torpedoed a long-standing Tory platform plank.
All this has solidified an image of the court as the government’s nemesis, with McLachlin as its fearless, indomitable leader. In this majority government, she sometimes seems like leader of the opposition.
Tom Mulcair holds the role, technically. Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking it is Justin Trudeau. Senators really ought to keep their heads down at the moment. That leaves the Supreme Court as the most potent democratic challenger to the questing prime minister, the only one that can actually ever stop him. The rest just build the dramatic tension.
***
The Supreme Court of Canada was not always supreme. Until 1949, its rulings could be appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. Laskin described it as a “captive court,” with barely any doctrine of its own other than perhaps in criminal law. Most cases were commercial disputes, with interpretation of statute a lesser priority, and overturning the government a rarity. Judges were political appointees.
It was not until the passage of the charter in 1982, and its equality section in 1985, that the court became as prominent and active as it is today. In a way, the charter embodies the judicial independence of Canada. It set out national values, then gave them voice and impact through the court on issues from the decriminalization of abortion in 1988 to the rapid expansion in gay and lesbian equality through the 1990s.
As Macfarlane writes in his book Governing From The Bench, the Supreme Court “has evolved from a largely legal, dispute-resolving body into a policy-making institution whose decisions have far-reaching implications for virtually all areas of Canada’s political, social, cultural and economic life.”
This is the era in which McLachlin rose like a helium balloon through the judicial ranks. In at least one instance, she heard a case in Vancouver, then beat the appeal to the Supreme Court.
It was not an obvious path. Born in 1943, one of five children, she was raised by devout Pentecostal Christians who operated a ranch in Pincher Creek, Alta., a small town between Lethbridge and the Rockies.
She recalls a high school teacher’s appalling advice. “You’ve got the highest reading retention scores we’ve ever seen, but a girl can’t do much with that,” the woman said, adding whatever she did, she should not become a waitress or telephone operator because her attention was poor.
McLachlin became neither, instead studying languages and philosophy, and later law, at the University of Alberta. It was there that she met and married Roderick (Rory) McLachlin, a biologist, and after being called to the Alberta bar in 1969, she moved with him briefly to the northeastern British Columbia town of Fort St. John, where she practised law.
Soon, they moved to Vancouver so she could join a major firm, and in 1975, she started teaching law at the University of British Columbia, focused on rules of evidence.
The next year, their son Angus was born, and with Rory handling much of the child care, her career took off: in 1981, she was appointed to county court in Vancouver, then elevated to the B.C. Supreme Court the same year; in 1985, she became the first woman justice on the B.C. Court of Appeal.
You’ve got the highest reading retention scores we’ve ever seen, but a girl can’t do much with that
Rory died of cancer in 1988, a few days after she was appointed chief justice of the B.C. Supreme Court. But even that devastating loss did not impede her ascent. The following spring, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney called to offer a seat on the Supreme Court.
In 1992, she married Frank McArdle, a lawyer and executive director of the Canadian Superior Courts Judges Association. She became chief justice in 2000.
It has now been decades since she lived on a ranch, but McLachlin still has a reputation as a farm girl who knows the weight of mud on her boots.
Eugene Meehan, a lawyer at Supreme Advocacy and former executive legal officer at the Supreme Court, describes her character as tough, independent, competent, “the kind of lady who would bag her own groceries.”
But describing her jurisprudence is trickier. Meehan uses terms of art, pointillism and chiaroscuro, to describe the effort as artistic as much as intellectual.
The dominant theme in her career, the interpretation of the charter, reflects this union of principle and imagination. The charter is the human core of Canada’s constitution, famously regarded by judges as a “living tree,” to be interpreted in a way that grows and adapts to changing times.
It is also a mechanism through which courts can decide that a law, duly passed, is “ultra vires,” literally “beyond the powers,” and thus strike it down — either killing it outright, or forcing its legislative improvement.
From the beginning, McLachlin embraced this brave new style of judicial oversight. In one of her last trials in Vancouver, she heard the case of a male teacher accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy (not his student). The teacher’s defence — that the boy was the aggressor who performed sex acts on him as he remained passive, and had earlier been in a similar situation with other men who were convicted, which put a different spin on the boy’s presence in his apartment — was impossible to argue.
According to the law as it was, the boy was too young to consent to any sex with someone more than three years older, and no alleged victim could be cross-examined about sexual history with other people.
McLachlin struck down both laws. The first discriminated based on age, she found, and the second denied the man a full and fair hearing.
Her ruling was later overturned, and the teacher eventually acquitted, but the revolutionary wheels of charter jurisprudence had been set in motion.
***
The Supreme Badminton Court of Canada is not often used. Looking out the window behind McLachlin’s desk, however, east toward Parliament Hill, you can almost imagine a great game of legal badminton, in which Parliament lobs a passed vote across the clifftop, only to see a judgment come whizzing back. In democracy, as in badminton, keeping the birdie aloft is competitive and cooperative.
“Democracy is a complex affair,” McLachlin says. “You simply have to have courts there to resolve the various, not only legal issues that arise in the course of applying the law, as would be the case in any democracy, but also the constitutional issues, be they division of powers or interpreting the fundamental rights and obligations set out in the charter. So you could not conceive of a functioning Canadian democracy without the court, and without a strong and independent court.”
Of course, this also allows for cycles of conflict between government and the bench.
Chess theorists of Harper’s strategy see a method here, of legislative over-reach to invite the campaign storyline of judicial activism.
At best, his government seems not to care that its most “spectacular” losses reveal a persistent disregard for the rule of law, says Audrey Macklin, a University of Toronto law professor. At worst, it seems to regard the court as an “arbitrary obstacle” to its agenda.
The government is comfortable in this tense, adversarial relationship because it can then present itself to voters as trying its best and not failing so much as being thwarted, says Carissima Mathen, a law professor at the University of Ottawa. This is new, she says, and the change has been with the government, which takes rigid and uncompromising “all or nothing” stances that are tougher to win in constitutional law, which is based on the dynamic of balancing rights. Compromise rarely seems an overt goal.
“I have to wonder if some of this is very conscious,” she says.
The day before McLachlin’s interview, Justice Minister Peter MacKay slagged off her court in an op-ed for overturning mandatory minimum gun sentences. That ruling, known as Nur, boldly announced that the government’s law and order agenda would not trump actual law and constitutional order, and offered one of the cheekiest hypotheticals in recent jurisprudence.
In effect, the majority judges kicked the mythical duck hunter of Canadian electoral politics back at the government that loves him so well. Such a person, a “licensed and responsible gun owner,” might make a mistake about where and how he stores his ammunition, with “little or no moral fault and little or no danger too the public,” but he would still be caught by this law. That is “totally out of sync with the norms of criminal sentencing,” the court ruled, and thus unconstitutional.
Mackay criticized this “far-fetched hypothetical scenario,” and said he preferred the view of the dissenting minority. Macklin says this kind of thing “shows a lack of respect for the independence of the judiciary.” But McLachlin sees it differently.
I think the people in government have to treat the courts with respect, otherwise we will undermine our system and it won’t work very well
“The government of the day or anyone else has the right to say they don’t agree with a court decision,” she says. “What I think should be the case is that this is done in a respectful way.
“The courts have to be respectful of Parliament’s role and the executive’s role, and I think you can seen this in our decisions. We’re often giving a measure of deference to ministerial decisions. We often say — and it’s not just lip service — that Parliament has a right to make these and other choices. I think the people in government have to treat the courts with respect, otherwise we will undermine our system and it won’t work very well.”
She thinks this has been successful, and whatever tension exists has no discernible effect on rulings. The next day, for example, the Supreme Court reinstated extradition orders signed by Mackay for two men New Hampshire wants to try for murder. The day after that, it reinstated a Harper judicial appointment in a similar case to the Nadon debacle.
***
Despite the chief justice’s air of equanimity, there are those who look for a political agenda in her court’s rulings, and see a deliberate pattern in the political losses.
If there is any perceived trend in McLachlin’s legal thinking, it is that she emphasizes access to justice, and individual rights and liberty. She is thought to be slightly to the right of the genial Rosalie Abella, and slightly to the left of the gruff Michael Moldaver — the opposite of their seats on the bench. But for every grasp at an ideological decryption of her work, a counter-example announces itself.
The same is true for her court. Though there are long-standing rumours about voting blocs — in the 1970s, Laskin, Spence and Dickson were know as the LSD Connection for their dissents, and in the 1990s, Lamer, Sopinka, Cory, Iacobucci and Major were known as the “Gang of Five” for their majorities, often in favour of the criminally accused — McLachlin thinks they are an amusing fiction. She even feels disappointed for the press when they cannot discern these patterns, and not for lack of looking, especially now that Harper is about to make his eighth appointment after the resignation of Marshall Rothstein, who was his first.
“I just shake my head, because we aren’t the United States,” she says. “It’s not part of the Canadian tradition, perhaps because we’re slightly less political in our orientation. People here aren’t appointed because they represent a certain point of view.”
For example, when human rights hate speech laws came up for review in Whatcott, 20 years after they were upheld as valid limits on free speech, there was speculation McLachlin’s earlier dissent would become the majority view. It did not, and the provincial laws still stand. But when assisted suicide came up again, she led a unanimous court in striking down the ban, just as she advocated in dissent the first time.
Winning is not a judge’s goal, but there is a certain satisfaction in this for the chief.
“Only in a secondary |
type of sauce over any veggies or a tofu scramble for a decadent dish.
Once you know how to make your own savory sauces, anything you make will instantly be elevated into a delicious, composed dish. Have fun experimenting with different ingredients and flavors and you’ll find the variety of dishes you can make will be endless.
Lead image source: Life-Changing Cheese SauceScott Olson, Getty Images
If you live in the northeast, Verizon is the new ticket to blazing internet speeds.
The broadband provider is rolling out what it says is the nation's largest deployment of gigabit internet on Monday. Called Fios Gigabit Connection, it promises download speeds of 940 megabits per second and upload speeds of 880 Mbps.
That's hella fast (though not 1 gigabit per second as you might assume from the name). The average American household has speeds of about 25 Mbps up, according to an FCC study at the end of 2016.
"No cable provider comes close to offering the speeds and power of Fios Gigabit connection on this kind of scale," said Ken Dixon, president of Verizon's consumer wireline business, in a statement. "We've priced it so that millions can enjoy it."
To get the new speeds you'll need to live in a service area that includes parts of parts New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond, Virginia, Hampton Roads, Virginia, Boston, Providence and Washington, D.C. Verizon says the service is currently available to more than 8 million homes.
Online pricing starts at $70 per month standalone and $80 per month as part of a triple-play bundle.
Meanwhile AT&T Fiber is available to around 2.2 million homes for $80 per month, and Google Fiber recently got a new CEO. CNET's sister site Tech Republic recently outlined Google's plans to go wireless in its battle to bring faster internet to more cities.We jump to ‘the present day’ two join to people on the hunt. This contrasts a little with the dense, urban sprawl that London has now become.
This sequence was one the first I envisioned when I started the script writing process for issue 10.
I recently went for a week long trip down to Dorset and the New Forest. It’s an absolutely lovely place. Seeing the untouched landscape of the rolling countryside is a joy.
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PAPER CUTS AND INK STAINS – Issue one out NOW!
Written by Rob Jones, art by Kevin Pospisil, Mike Smith and Nick Gonzo and published by Madius Comics. Cover by me! 🙂
Click the cover above to go and buy the first issue.
MrHades
Edited/Co-Written by
Gary CohenIsrael is moving ahead with plans to apply a legal device that would enable it to seize of up to forty percent of Arab private property in annexed East Jerusalem, the area Palestinians envision as their future capital.
The legal preparations to advantage Jewish settlers at the expense of Palestinians, combined with announcement of plans to build more than 3,100 units for settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, are enflaming tensions even as substantive peace talks resumed in Jerusalem for the first time in five years.
Haaretz reported that Israeli Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein has now decided on criteria for barring West Bank Palestinians from maintaining their properties in Jerusalem.
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.
One of these criteria, according to Haaretz, is the proximity of the Palestinian property to Jewish settler housing, raising Palestinian fears that the move could pave the way for significant transfers of Palestinian properties to settlers.
“This is another very dangerous, provocative move to consolidate Israel’s hold in East Jerusalem,” said the PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi. “East Jerusalem is occupied territory and Israel has no business annexing it or applying this property law.” Israel captured the area in the 1967 Middle East war and later declared it part of its “eternal, undivided capital”. The international community rejected the annexation as a violation of international law.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, played down the Haaretz report, saying it referred to a “draft resolution that may be amended before it is adopted”.
“The Palestinians are complaining about everything in order to get the upper hand in the media battle,” he said.
In June, Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein wrote to Israel’s Supreme Court saying that the government supports applying in East Jerusalem an absentee property law originally used to take over the property of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled in the 1948 war accompanying Israel’s establishment. Mr Weinstein wrote that Palestinians residing outside the Israeli-declared municipal boundaries of the city in the West Bank are considered “absentees” rather than the owners of their property in Jerusalem – a designation that would enable the state to seize their land.
That stance, given in the context of a high court appeal by Palestinians to reclaim sequestered property, represented a shift from the position enunciated in 2005 by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, who held that the law should not be applied in East Jerusalem because that was not its original intent and because doing so could harm Israel’s international standing.
The shift in the Israeli government position on the law could make up to forty percent of the private Palestinian property in East Jerusalem subject to state confiscation, according to Daniel Seidemann, head of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli NGO that supports a compromise in the city.
Yehudit Oppenheimer, director of the dovish NGO Ir Amim, said: “Applying the absentee property law is a legal way of stealing the property of the Palestinians.”
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 nowWe visited Sunmin (SMIP), our animation studio in Korea this week! They’re animating Infinity Train.
Something that I think people forget sometimes is that a huge amount of the animation you see on TV is still animated by hand, on paper, by HUMAN BEINGS!
I’ll start at the top:
This is a picture of the studio. They’re a small studio in a nice neighborhood in the outer part of Seoul. They’ve worked on a TON of different animated projects, including every Ben 10 since the first series, Kablam, OKKO, Mighty Max, Megas XLR, Gargoyles, Steven Universe, and the pilots for Twelve Forever, Ridin’ with Burgess, Victor and Valentino, and Infinity Train. That’s me looking at some blown up storyboards that I should’ve drawn better with all the directors from the different departments. There’s a background director, a CG director, Compositing, two layout directors, animation checkers, etc. One of the women to my right worked on Batman the Animated Series! All of these people handed me this piece of paper because I drew something badly and now they have to deal with it. So since I’m there, I can help fix it and also apologize for being bad at my job!
The head of the studio is Director Sang, who worked as an animator for many years. He’s an artist and his office is full of stuff, including the One-One statue I made for him when Sunmin created my pilot!
These are some of the desks where the compositors are, though you can’t really tell because the animation checker cubicles, BG cubicles, and compositing cubicles all kinda look the same from the outside.
Director Sang is showing Maddie and me and our producer some stuff they’re working on. Director Sang is very hands on, and sometimes explores and animates stuff for the shows himself.
Each of those colored folders on the shelf reoresents a different episode of a show. Most of the ones you see there are Ben 10, OKKO, or Powerpuff Girls. There’s a team of people that make the layouts and all those folders are filled with…
…layouts! This is what a layout looks like. It’s the step before keyframes and inbetweens. They have a small team of people doing layouts of the storyboard, seeing what the board looks like, and taking direction from it and the layout director. It’s up to art direction how much layouts look like the storyboard versus the model sheet. So for example, in OKKO the “model” is the storyboard, that’s why their drawings are so fun and different in every episode. For infinity train, it’s sort of a mix between the model sheet and the storyboard. I want them to adhere strongly to the face of the character in the storyboard, and then follow the model for details like zippers and pockets etc.
After this it goes to key framing, then eventually to inbetweening, and then eventually back to the animation checkers to make sure it’s all working. Then it gets scanned, colored, and composited. I didn’t take any pictures of these stages as Infinity Train has only reached the layout stage as of right now, so there wasn’t any for me to take pictures of.
The studio has maybe a little over a hundred people in it I think? It’s very good that we got to visit them. It’s an eye opening experience and VERY helpful to me in understanding what they’re dealing with and how we can make stuff on our end work better for them.
I just want people to see that this is a process that is very labor intensive and isn’t just pressing “animate” on a computer.
IT’S PAPER AND PENCIL.
At one point we got in the elevator and a currier came in behind us carrying a giant stack of animation pages from their downtown branch (which we also saw, it’s where Victor and Valentino is being made).
All these people working together to make the stuff you see on TV is fascinating and inspiring to me.Tom Hanks is probably one of the most likable actors to ever exist. So it was only a matter of time before the Oscar-winner brought that quality to another art form.
Hanks will publish his debut collection of short stories with Alfred A. Knopf in October, according to Entertainment Weekly.
The collection, titled Uncommon Type: Some Stories, will include 17 pieces that all have something to do with ― get ready for this ― a typewriter. Apparently, the actor has an appreciation for the old-school devices and owns over 100 of them.
Tom Hanks to publish his first book in October. UNCOMMON TYPE will contain 17 stories, each involving a different typewriter. pic.twitter.com/6qGazay59p — Ron Charles (@RonCharles) February 21, 2017
The book was announced back in 2014, but Hanks worked on it while also making movies in New York, Berlin, Budapest and Atlanta starting in 2015. (And you thought you were busy.)
The actor told EW that he was inspired by some of the “smallest, most distant of memories, as well as those haunting questions about why things come about.”
“What would you see at the 1939 Worlds Fair that would change your life? I remember a ride in a small plane when I was 7 years old — why was it was confusing? How did a veteran of WWII celebrate Christmas in, say, 1953?” he told the publication.
The stories in the collection include tales about a man who immigrated to New York City after fleeing a civil war in his country, a billionaire who wants more out of life, an actor stuck on a press-junket hamster wheel, and more.A Mississauga, Ont., man is stunned after witnessing and filming a woman make several demands for a "white doctor" who "doesn't have brown teeth" and "speaks English" at his local walk-in clinic on Sunday.
Hitesh Bhardwaj recorded the incident while waiting for his own appointment at Rapid Access to Medical Specialists in Mississauga, Ont. He shared his video with CBC News.
Video shows woman making several demands for doctor who 'doesn't have brown teeth' and'speaks English.' Video courtesy of Hitesh Bhardwaj. 4:13
Over the course of four minutes of video, a woman asks clinic staff several times for a "white doctor" to treat her son who she says has chest pains. When staff tell her that no such doctor is available, the woman gets angry and at one point says "being white in this country I should just shoot myself."
"I saw a doctor that was not white that did not help my kid," says the woman in the video. "I would like to see a white doctor. You're telling me there isn't one white doctor in this whole entire building?"
I would like to see a white doctor. You're telling me there isn't one white doctor in this whole entire building? - Woman in video captured at walk-in clinic in Mississauga, Ont.
CBC Toronto tried to identify the woman to give her a chance to respond to the video, but was unsuccessful as of Monday evening.
We've obscured her face in the video to protect the identity of her son.
Bhardwaj says that he started filming the incident after a woman sitting next to him asked the agitated woman why the doctor had to be white.
"I couldn't help but record the video," said Bhardwaj. "This is bad, this is inappropriate and shouldn't go unnoticed."
Hitesh Bhardwaj recorded the incident while waiting for his own appointment at Rapid Access to Medical Specialists in Mississauga, Ont., and shared his video with CBC News. (CBC)
Bhardwaj said, as an immigrant to Canada himself, he's really proud to live here and "couldn't believe" what he saw.
"I couldn't stop thinking about it," Bhardwaj said. "The whole episode kept on repeating in my head, I was very upset. You know I can't even define the feeling."
'Everyday racism' resurfacing
Cheryl Teelucksingh, a sociology professor at Ryerson University, sees the incident as an example of the kind of "everyday racism" that is "beginning to resurface" in Canada.
She said some people are pointing to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump making people feel more comfortable saying things they normally wouldn't. But Teelucksingh thinks there's a more important factor: perceived multiculturalism, or the assumption by some Canadians that racial minorities are already treated equally across the country.
Cheryl Teelucksingh, a sociology professor at Ryerson University, sees the incident as an example of the kind of “everyday racism” that is “beginning to resurface” in Canada. (CBC)
"I think people are feeling that there's a little bit more space now to question who's in positions of power, who's actually getting the jobs, those sorts of things," said Teelucksingh.
In response, Teelucksingh believes, non-white professionals will probably revert to demonstrating their credentials by saying things like "look I went to school this long and did this sort of speciality.
"They're legitimizing not just their place in their profession and workplace but their place within Canada. To say, look, I actually belong here and I have the right to practise my profession."
Witnesses at clinic step up
In addition to Bhardwaj, other people in the waiting room also confronted the woman in the clinic. In the video several of them try to get the woman to go to the hospital, to which she responds, "I was there and they only have brown doctors."
The woman on the right is one of the witnesses who argued with the woman demanding a "white doctor." (Hitesh Bhardwaj/CBC) One female witness in the video, tells the woman that, "Your child clearly has more issues with you being his mother than him needing to see a doctor. You are extremely rude and racist."
Later in the exchange the woman accuses the witnesses of "attacking me because I'm white."
The fact that witnesses in the clinic stood up and spoke out against what the woman was saying is a good sign, Teelucksingh said.
"That sort of shows the broader societal values and that offers some hope," Teelucksingh told CBC Toronto.
Police respond to 'disturbance' at clinic
Peel Regional Police said they were called to the clinic just after 12:30 p.m. on Sunday for a "disturbance."
The incident happened at Rapid Access to Medical Specialists in Mississauga, Ont. (CBC)
Const. Mark Fischer said a police officer spoke to "all involved" and afterward the woman's son was treated by a doctor at the clinic.
No allegations of threats or assault were brought forward by anyone involved and the matter is closed, according to police.
In a statement, Rapid Access to Medical Specialists said it "is proud of the quality of medical care provided at this clinic," but that "no one in the clinic has any comments for the media."Story highlights 4 remaining hostages rescued Wednesday morning, nearly a day after situation began
Police: 2 officers responding to Tuesday's robbery were shot in Harvey, Illinois
The suspects took people hostage inside a home, police add
Law enforcement from around Illinois converged on the residence
Law enforcement officers forcefully but safely ended a two-day hostage situation at a suburban Chicago house Wednesday morning, rescuing two children and two women while taking two suspects into custody in a raid on the home, authorities said.
The move -- made after four other hostages were released the previous night -- finished a roughly 20-hour standoff that police say began with a robbery attempt at the home in Harvey, Illinois.
The hostage-takers shot and injured at least one police officer when the standoff began Tuesday, but no shots were fired and no one was hurt when police moved into the home Wednesday, having determined negotiations were no longer progressing and that tensions were rising.
"We're very happy that there's been a peaceful resolution," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told reporters.
JUST WATCHED Police: Robbery suspects holding hostages Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Police: Robbery suspects holding hostages 01:08
The four rescued hostages, including a 6-year-old child and a 12-year-old girl, were "traumatized" but unharmed, Dart said.
Police knocked down a first-floor door and rushed up to the second floor, where they found the hostages and the suspects. Authorities decided to move after round-the-clock negotiations "were getting a little bit more on the dicier side," Dart said.
"It was the (proper) time to act," Dart said.
Started with robbery attempt
The incident began at about 12:45 p.m. Tuesday when two people tried to rob the home, Dart said.
Inside the home when the suspects arrived were four children from one immediate family, plus two children who are related to them, and the two women, Dart said.
Police were called, and one responding officer was shot in the arm but is OK, Dart said. Another officer was injured and also is OK, Dart said, without elaborating.
Sometime afterward, law officers from all over Illinois surrounded the residence and began the negotiating process.
Four hostages -- children ranging in age from 1 to 12 -- were released Tuesday night and were not injured, police said.
Dart said the talks persisted for hours and proved to be a "very thoughtful approach" to hostage negotiations. Then, the back-and-forth stalemated and "the time had come for certain action," Dart said.
"At this juncture it was the prudent thing to do, which was to enter the house and to secure the hostages to make sure they weren't being harmed," Dart said.
Asked if police and the suspects were in a struggle, Dart answered: "They didn't surrender themselves."
There's no indication that the suspects had any connection to the hostages before Tuesday, Dart said.
Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg had asked residents to stay inside their own homes as police, who blocked off nearby streets, dealt with the situation.
A city of about 25,000 people, Harvey is about 20 miles south of Chicago.Two memos signed Monday by the Department of Homeland Security ushered in a new era of immigration policy.
While President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty protecting illegal immigrants who arrived as children remains in place, the memos bring drastic change by directing DHS employees to follow through on President Trump’s executive orders.
All illegal immigrants (except DREAMers) are subject to deportation
The Obama administration specifically prioritized the most serious of criminals for deportation. But A DHS factsheet released Tuesday stated, “Under this executive order, ICE will not exempt classes or categories of removal aliens from potential enforcement. All of those present in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention, and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.”
One the memos signed by Homeland Security secretary John Kelly also widely broadens which immigrants are prioritized for deportation to include those who “in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.”
The construction of detention facilities and a border wall
President Barack Obama repeatedly belittled the idea of a border wall while in office, but as of Monday Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is ordered to immediately begin the planning and construction of a wall on America’s land border with Mexico. This represents a fulfillment of one of President Trump’s key campaign promises.
One of the two memos also calls for the the establishment of additional detention facilities.
Expansion of the 287(g) program
President Obama essentially ended the 287(g) program started under President Bush which allowed for state and local enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration law. “From January 2006 through September 2015, the 287(g) program led to the identification of more than 402,000 removable aliens, primarily through encounters at local jails,” Secretary Kelly wrote in one of the recent memos. “Empowering state and local law enforcement agencies to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law is critical to an effective enforcement strategy.”
Currently only 32 law enforcement agencies in 16 states participate in the program. “In previous years, there were significantly more law enforcement agencies participating in the 287(g) program,” Kelly wrote. “To greatest extent practicable, the Director of ICE and Commissioner of CBP shall expand the 287(g) program to include all qualified law enforcement agencies that request to participate and meet all program requirements.”
Establishing office to help victims of illegal alien crime
Secretary Kelly in a memo ordered ICE to create the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), which will provide the victims of illegal immigrant crime and their families information about the offender’s immigration status and custody status, and to address their concerns about immigration efforts.
“To that end, I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens (except as necessary to comply with a judicial order) to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens,” Kelly wrote.
Expanding America’s “deportation force”
The memos called for the hiring of an additional 10,000 ICE officers, 5,000 border patrol agents and 500 CBP air and marine officers.
Monitoring sanctuary cities
Secretary Kelly also ordered ICE to produce a weekly public report on illegal immigrant apprehensions, as well as a report on the the release of illegal immigrants from jails by sanctuary jurisdictions. One of President Trump’s immigration orders called for the defunding of sanctuary cities.There is increasing interest in the possibility that mitochondrial impairment may play an important role in bipolar disorder (BD). The Krebs cycle is the central point of oxidative metabolism, providing carbon for biosynthesis and reducing agents for generation of ATP. Recently, studies have suggested that histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors may have antimanic effects. The present study aims to investigate the effects of sodium butyrate (SB), a HDAC inhibitor, on Krebs cycle enzymes activity in the brain of rats subjected to an animal model of mania induced by D-amphetamine (D-AMPH). Wistar rats were first given D-AMPH or saline (Sal) for 14 days, and then, between days 8 and 14, rats were treated with SB or Sal. The citrate synthase (CS), succinate dehydrogenase (SDH), and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) were evaluated in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and striatum of rats. The D-AMPH administration inhibited Krebs cycle enzymes activity in all analyzed brain structures and SB reversed D-AMPH-induced dysfunction analyzed in all brain regions. These findings suggest that Krebs cycle enzymes' inhibition can be an important link for the mitochondrial dysfunction seen in BD and SB exerts protective effects against the D-AMPH-induced Krebs cycle enzymes' dysfunction.Jordan Matthews is on track for Week 1.
The Philadelphia Eagles' No. 1 receiver has insisted he'll be back by the regular season opener, despite sitting out all of preseason due to a knee injury.
On Monday, Matthews will return to the practice field, coach Doug Pederson said.
Getting Matthews back to practice a week before the season is a positive sign for the Eagles and quarterback Sam Bradford.
There are a ton of questions at the receiver position for Philly heading into the regular season. Matthews is the only proven commodity of the group and he works best out of the slot. After the team jettisoned veterans Rueben Randle and Chris Givens on Sunday, it's clear former first-round pick Nelson Agholor will get a chance to prove he deserves to keep a big role on the outside. Josh Huff should also start opposite Agholor. Recently acquired Dorial Green-Beckham will be used as a red-zone target early, with a chance to earn more snaps as the season progresses.
Other injury notes we are tracking Monday:
1. Pederson said rookie quarterback Carson Wentz is still dealing with a rib issue. One of Wentz's injured ribs is fully healed, but another remains just 60 percent. Pederson said Wentz won't play in the final preseason game if he's not fully healed by Thursday, and Wentz on Monday told NFL Media's Mike Garafolo that the rib remains sore and he won't play in the preseason finale.
"I was obviously hoping for more time in the preseason but it is what it is," Wentz said. "I'm still trying to learn as much as I can and be ready for Cleveland."
The Eagles will be cautious with their investment -- why stick him out there with a backup offensive line? Given that he's missed the majority of the preseason, it seems unlikely we'll see Wentz at all this season.
"Where we are this late in the preseason, it obviously hurts from a young quarterback standpoint to fully grasp his position," Pederson said. "But (I like) what I see in the classroom and out here (on the field), what he understands and knows. The situation with Sam (Bradford) and Chase (Daniel) and him as the third, it doesn't concern me as much."
2. The Patriots' offensive line received good news with the return of guard Jonathan Cooper to practice. Cooper battled a plantar fascia issue early during camp.
3. The Ravens are expecting two of their tight ends to return to practice after the preseason concludes Thursday night, saying Dennis Pitta (finger) will be back before Week 1 and Maxx Williams will return shortly after Thursday. Baltimore is also hoping wide receiver Breshad Perriman will play Thursday. Coach John Harbaugh said Perriman will participate if he gets approval from the medical team.
4. Bears guard Kyle Long (shoulder) and linebacker Pernell McPhee (knee) did not practice Monday. Tight end Zach Miller and wide receiver Eddie Royal were cleared from the concussion protocol and returned to practice.
5. Redskins coach Jay Gruden confirmed that running back Keith Marshall (elbow) will be out for three weeks. Linebacker Ryan Kerrigan (groin) is day to day. Running back Matt Jones (shoulder) is progressing nicely.
6. Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians told reporters cornerback Mike Jenkins suffered a torn ACL.
7. Falcons safety Keanu Neal had surgery to repair damage in his knee on Monday, and the operation went well, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The AJC also reported coach Dan Quinn expects to have receiver Julio Jones (ankle) back for the season opener against Tampa Bay on Sept. 11.
8. Titans coach Mike Mularkey confirmed to reporters that receiver Kendall Wright re-injured his hamstring.Weight-Loss Win is an original Yahoo Health series that shares the inspiring stories of people who have shed pounds healthfully.
Jesse Frank Shand is 28, 6′1″, and currently weighs 260 pounds. But back in 2013, he weighed more than 653 pounds. This is the story of his weight-loss journey.
The Turning Point
I could tell I was getting more and more overweight. I had made attempts to lose weight in the past, but could never continue past the initial burst of motivation that I would experience in the first month or so. When I wouldn’t see drastic results, I’d always give up. It got to a point where I finally told myself that I just didn’t have the will to do it. I gave up trying and just tried to distract myself from my worsening situation with video games.
Initially, I went to Bodybuilding.com as an ill-fated attempt to get a rise out of bodybuilding types. I created a thread called “Ask the fattest man on the misc [sub-forum] anything,” and posted photos of my then-obese body. I then waited, fully expecting a backlash. But my plan backfired on me. People on the site were more encouraging than I expected. They started trying to convince me that it wasn’t too late to change, and that even at my weight, all was not lost. I didn’t want to hear it and made my usual excuses, like not having enough money for groceries or lacking the motivation. But the members on Bodybuilding.com didn’t accept my excuses and even offered advice on how it could be done.
Related: How This Couple Lost Nearly 200 Pounds Combined by Changing the Way They Eat
The Changes
Due to my physical condition, I was unable to do traditional physical activity when I started. I could barely even stand up at that point. So one of the members in the forum thread said to me, “At your weight, you could literally just flop around and lose weight.” So that’s what I did. I flailed my upper body around to some music until I had worked up a sweat for my first real workout.
I started doing workouts like this at the same time every night, and within a couple months, I was walking laps around my house, I coupled this with very small changes in my diet — a couple less chicken quesadillas, or shaving a few hundred calories off my intake here and there. It was only a few months before I started to see serious weight loss! Within roughly seven months, I had lost 100 pounds!
View photos
Jesse’s weight-loss progression: At the beginning of his weight-loss journey, on May 24, 2013 (left), about a year later, on Aug. 19, 2014 (middle), and this year, March 1, 2015 (right). (Photos courtesy of Jesse Shand)
During all of this, the Bodybuilding.com community kept giving me tips, helping me find ways to keep improving, and gave me the encouragement and motivation I needed to continuously progress and stay consistent.
Related: Vinson Smith’s 258-Pound Weight Loss: ‘Being Able to Buy My Clothes in a Store Was One of My Proudest Moments to Date’
The After
I feel so much better. I am active and get to enjoy activities I never would have tried before. I play racquetball, cycle, swim, practice archery, and lift weights. I have gotten to meet up with friends I haven’t seen since high school who can’t get over how different I am now. The public nature of my weight loss has meant I get to hear people’s struggles and advise and help them in a similar fashion to the way others helped me.
For me, it’s hard to narrow down a single thing that’s best about being slimmer. Getting to buy clothes from normal (non-big-and-tall) stores, getting to play sports again, having a reason to care about my appearance, and feeling good about myself again all rank very high for me.
Related: 10 Tips for Losing Weight (and Keeping It Off) From People Who’ve Done It
The Maintenance
I find myself seeing food less as a source of comfort and more for the fuel and energy it provides. I ask myself if I want to waste my calories on something empty or if I’d rather spend them on a meal that will help me get through my workouts or my day at work. I also find myself more interested in the content of all the food I put into my body. Learning about nutrition has really opened my eyes to the many pitfalls that can be found when choosing what to eat.Eliminating National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in office less than four weeks delivered a major body blow to Trump’s administration.
Trump sacking him was poor judgment, a self-inflicted wound on his presidency, a pro-Hillary neocon victory, leaving himself vulnerable to more attacks on his legitimacy.
Instead of supporting his national security point man responsibly, he surrendered to forces wanting his presidency undermined, a counterproductive act.
Ostensibly it was over Flynn’s pre-inauguration phone conversation with Russia’s US ambassador, failing to explain sanctions were discussed, but doing no harm – not making himself vulnerable to Moscow blackmail as media claim.
Hillary’s deep state supporters, including mainstream presstitutes, are celebrating after scoring a big victory.
The day before Flynn’s sacking, The New York Times headlined “Mental Health Professionals Warn About Trump,” claiming his “speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president” – an accusation no responsible mental health professional would make without firsthand evaluation.
Pro-Hillary, Trump hater Times columnist Charles Blow accused him of wanting to be an “emperor,” not president, saying he wants “to grind the opposition underfoot.”
The neocon, CIA-connected Washington Post called upheaval “standard operating procedure inside the White House,” saying:
He “failed to fill such key posts as White House communications director, while sub-Cabinet positions across agencies and scores of ambassadorships around the globe still sit empty.”
Fact: WaPo failed to explain Democrats continue obstructing confirmation of Trump officials, slowing the process instead of proceeding responsibly.
Fact: Various posts don’t sit empty. Holdover Obama officials temporarily fill them until Trump appointees are confirmed and assume their duties.
WaPo: “The chaos and competing factions that were a Trump trademark in business and campaigning now are starting to define his presidency.”
Fact: All new administrations have growing pains. Running the nation is no simple task, far more complicated than what any incumbent experienced in other positions.
Fact: WaPo, The New York Times and television news were Trump’s sharpest critics since announcing his presidential candidacy in June 2015 – continuing an unrelenting hateful drumbeat post-inauguration.
Justifiable criticism is warranted – almost entirely absent during Obama’s disgraceful two terms, ignoring Hillary’s record of high crimes.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.Get the biggest Everton FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Everton will rebuff any interest in Seamus Coleman from Manchester United as speculation grows that Louis Van Gaal wants the defender at Old Trafford.
The Red Devils have already failed to sign one attacking full-back in Dani Alves this summer, and reports today claimed they will now turn to the Blues star.
But the ECHO understands that Coleman, 26, is not for sale and remains very much a key part of Roberto Martinez’s plans at Goodison Park.
The Republic of Ireland international signed a bumper five-year deal last summer to keep him contracted to Everton until 2019, and remains settled at the club.
One of the Blues best ever bargain buys, Coleman was signed from Sligo Rovers for just £60,000 in 2009 and has since gone on to make 185 appearances, scoring 19 goals.
He was voted the club’s 2013/14 player of the season after Martinez’s successful debut campaign in charge, when his marauding displays down the right helped the Toffees to a fifth-place finish and a record Premier League points haul.
And although last term the right-back managed slightly less of an impact, he is still a prized member of the Catalan’s first-team who he would fight to hold onto like he did when United tried to sign Leighton Baines in 2013.
Antonio Valencia spent much of last season as van Gaal’s regular right-back with Brazilian Rafael Da Silva suffering injury problems and both Phil Jones and Chris Smalling deployed in central defence.
Reports claim that the Dutch manager wants to bolster his back-four options and add further quality going forward with a player who can operate as a conventional right-back or wing-back.
Coleman fits the profile but the Everton board will back their manager in resisting any approach for their man.
Meanwhile, the Manchester Evening News believe Van Gaal will use his club's summer tour to America to solve his right-back problems with an in house solution.
The forgotten Guillermo Varela may be given the USA platform to convince the United boss that he can challenge Antonio Valencia for the number two position this season.Buy Photo An apartment complex under construction July 10 on Gerber Road in South Asheville. (Photo: Angela Wilhelm/awilhelm@citizen-times.com)Buy Photo
ASHEVILLE - It's not your imagination.
A lot of apartments have been going up in the Asheville area over the past five years or so. And by a lot, we're talking thousands.
South Asheville and southern Buncombe County have been especially popular because of good schools, abundant shopping and restaurants, and proximity to downtown.
Residents there generally have a live-and-let-live attitude. But a proposal this spring by a Greensboro developer to put 230 apartments and 30 town homes on Overlook Road seemed to be a breaking point for some residents.
"We feel like as residents of South Asheville that we’ve gotten enough apartments," said Shannon Reese, who lives in the Oak Forest subdivision off Overlook and fought the developer's proposal. "Maybe it's time to go to other sections of Asheville where there's other land available."
While the developer did scrap the apartments plan, the big question l |
never seen again by her family. She has become somewhat of a “nature girl” with witch-like features who travels at night with a lantern in quest of food. This girl – the teller says – has actually been seen.
With these conversations fresh on my mind, we turned onto the road to watch the light…and there it was! My first impression was of an invisible person walking down the road with a lantern in his hand. As he walked the lantern would swing to and fro. Then it seemed to disappear as if going off into the woods only to reappear at another point. This was my first visit.
Another time a group of boys and myself took a rifle to see if we could shoot the light. This was an ideal night because the weather was quite damp and the light seemed to loom closer and larger. On this particular night there was a slight sprinkling of rain, but no fog. We stopped our car when we judged the distance between the light and ourselves to be approximately a half-block, we started to shoot. As we shot, the light seemed to dance from side to side as though dodging the bullets. Needless to say we never did hit our target.
So it is with these experiences, I leave to the experts the solution of the light. If I ever hear of a logical solution concerning it, I well be ever-ready to lend an inquisitive ear.
My “Green-Thumb” Trembled
My folks used to call the light “jack-o-lantern” when we moved here some 30 years ago. The old lantern and I got along pretty good together until about two and a half years ago. Seems the old light felt real neighborly one night and decided to help me with my plowing. It gets hot here during the day so I do alot of plowing late in the evening. I couldn’t see too well and I guess the old light sensed it, because he started hovering all over the field where I was plowing. He made a dart in my direction and I absolutely froze stiff to the tractor. I was too frightened to run. He must have seen my predicament because jsut about then he sailed out of sight.
Another time while standing in the yard listening to the hounds running a wolf I saw the light sitting atop the Cherry Grove church, it would turn bright and dim alternately. I called my wife to look, but when I did the light disappeared.
Fun and Failure
Having lived on State Line road near the area where the Ghost Light is located, I have seen it hundreds of times. I can remember about 1942 when a group of students from Michigan University came down and camped out for 2 weeks in the vicinity of the Spook Light.
They performed every test they could, even shooting at it with high powered rifles, but they found out nothing. An old timer, the late Charley Dawes, who lived three-fourths of a mile off the road for 70 years, told me his father had seen the Ghost Light even before his son was born. A number of times we have left people in a parked car and walked down the road a mile or so, only to have the light appear between us and the car.
Charles Miller,
Joplin
I have seen the Spook Light a number of times. I have been within 10 feet of the light, but I still cant figure it out. It looks like a lantern swinging to and fro as it moves down the road.
Ray Taylor, Joplin
Geologists and scientists claim that the Spook Light is caused by a mineral deposit. I am in business at Quapaw and I know it isn’t lights from Quapaw
J.E. Rhodes, Quapaw
The Tri-State Spook Light
The stories of the mysterious Light of the Ozarks has been a subconscious challenge to my curiosity since first hearing of his existence over five years ago. My inner urge to meet the eerie light has resulted in hours of silent planning as to where, when and how I mist solve this strange phenomenon. The opportunity presented itself this summer for my quest into the realm of the supposed supernatural.
The experience I had acquired as a Weapons Company Commander had given me ample knowledge of how to seek out and destroy by using various instruments and methods relevant to this task. I felt over-confident in my proposed conquest as to the solution of the myster surrounding this light near Hornet, Missouri.
Several months ago had you mentioned the Tri-State Spook Light I would have casually replied, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” This however, would have turned out to be the understatement of my career. Maybe I had not forgotten that a small boat, a raft, a good dog team and a couple of size dozen feet would take me almost anywhere; as it did in Alaska.
Having moved somewhat south, I had now gathered equipment for another type of adventure and was ready to launch a new experiment. My first action in this direction was with my neighbor, Bill White, who escorted me to the area near Hornet where the Spook Light was known to perform its fantastic capers. i was a little surprised that first night, that some of my informants had been accurate in their description of the ghostly light.
The next day I visited the area and was directed to the home of Bill Mizer, who is the most well-versed resident of Hornet regarding the light. After a lengthy interview, Mr.Mizer accompanied me in my car to the road where the Army Engineers had performed their test in 1946. It was then I realized the Army experiment had been conducted on a different road than that from which I had seen the light on the previous night. rechecking of the two roads showed I was correct in assuming the Army had been on the wrong road. The number of people viewing the light numbered ten to one on the new ghost light road. Mr.Ghost had changed the location of his nightly promenade. This seemed strange but not unusual inasmuch as the light was first viewed by Mr.Mizer from still another location-often referred to as the original ghost light area. It was after these revelations that I obtained a copy of the Engineers’ test of the area. My first endeavor was to check the correctness of their report. On the next day I reconoitered the road forming the north boundary of the city of Quapaw, Ok. I located and marked the high ground at several points for a distance of 10 miles west of Spring River. That night my party split into two groups; one to watch from the old spook light road near Hornet, Mo., and Bill White and I returned to the road north of Quapaw, Ok. Through the use of a portable spotlight connected to our car battery we were able to signal the other party a prearranged code from a distance of approximately 9 miles. This proved the Army test, though not comprehensive, had its merits.
Beore trying to solve the mystery of the new spook light road, i made every effort to obtain more Information about the light. It was while in search of old reports, newspaper articles, and the whereabouts of individuals connected with former experiments that I saw the need for compiling a booklet about the spook light. Many people had told me about seeing articles concerning the light in various publications. Some of this information was true but in other cases publishers denied having printed such articles.
In my search for the best picture available of the light I was directed by Marie Kolb, director of the Ozark Playgrounds Association, in Joplin, Mo., to the studio of Orrick Sparlin, Miami, OK. Having made this trip to Miami about 2 p.m. on a sunny afternoon it was not by chance that I noticed a small section of Highway 66 south of Quapaw that seemed to run directly east and west. Previous to this day, I had checked all the gravel roads west of Spring River but could not find a parallel to the road forming the north boundary of Quapaw. On my return from Miami I measured the distance from the east-west segment of Highway 66 between Quapaw and Commerce and found it to be the same distance as that between the old and new ghost light roads near Hornet, Mo. It seemed almost impossible that car lights as seen from this section of highway could appear as a gigantic ball of fire on a lonely road 13 miles away.
By the time I became aware of this section of east-west road between Quapaw and Commerce I had become acquainted with the most distinguished scientist. ever to visit the spook light road-Dr. George W. Ward, scientist formerly of the Bureau of Standard, Washington, D.C., and of late The Midwest Research Institute. We had both worked out a hypothesis for the new spook lights existence.
My job was now to make several experiments with light of Highway 66 and report my findings to Dr. Ward. The night of August 3, 1955, through the use of colored lights I sent signals which were received on the new spook road near Hornet. The were times when only one car was moving east on the segment of Highway 66 and other times when 20 or 30 cars moved in this same direction simultaneously. This explained why the phantom light would change from the appearance of a lantern to a stupendous ball of fire. The reddish glow of the light would vary as the number of cars and truck increased or decreased as they moved in a westerly direction. When there wasn any traffic on the Highway, we had complete control of the ghost light as to when it appeared or disappeared or turned pink or green. This still did not wholly solve the mystery of the light. After a further study of light itself, I realized Dr. Ward was correct in his refraction theory. His theory is,
The fact that the light did not always appear, substantiated the refraction or bending of light idea in that the relative humidity and temperature would have to attain the correct density of atmosphere to bend the light sufficiently for observation.”
This simply means that the rays of light are bent out of their normal course, since they pass through a rare, then dense, then rare substance which varies continually with the humidity and temperature. The interesting phenomena about the spook light is that it appears where it actually isn’t. Thus the ray of light as you see it from hornet can do a bag of tricks while the source of light might remain stationary.
The weeks of hard work I spent in solution of the light were made insignificant by the fact I knew I had been the first man to hold the “spook” in his hands.
I wish to thank the many people who helped to make this experiment possible, especially the 93rd Special Infantry Co., U.S.M.C.R. in Joplin for the use of their instruments, and certainly to Dr.George W. Ward whom I quote from his letter to me of August 8, 1955 –
“Your experiments with lights on the aforementioned highway were followed with a good deal of interest. It was indeed most gratifying when you finally proved our theory.”
I will probably be called a liar more often than has the late Robert L. Ripley, but I can truthfully say a trip to Hornet, Mo., to view this interesting phenomena is well worth your time.
Editor’s Note:
The article “Tri-State Spook Light” which also appeared in our first issue this summer, has caused considerable controversy. All the letters and cards received, including the corrective criticism, were sincerely appreciated. However, there were some who insist on believing in ghosts. We thought everyone was entitled to an opinion of his own, but evidently not. Some of the letters and remarks bordered on the insulting and for these few we recall this old adage –
Remember that its better to remain silent and appear a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
We admit there is a range of hills protruding above the line of vision from the spook light road to the section of Highway 66, referred to in the experiments. Our assuming a possible solution is based entirely upon the theory that the light is bent up over the mountain and comes down on the road on the other side, the light coming down at different points and with various intensities dependent upon the temperature and humidity. Our hypothesis is based on the double Refraction of Light.
We welcome discussions and correspondence and in no way insist our solution is infallible. Why not try it yourself? We haven’t convinced many.
Letter By Dr.George W. Ward
August 8, 1955
Dear Captain Loftin,
Following our telephone conversation this week-end. I am relating my first experience regarding the Spook Light, near Hornet, including the refraction theory, which you have received. It has been a pleasure working with you and I wish you every success in your publication.
I came to Kansas City January, 1945, from the National Bureau of Standards, Washington D.C.m to aid in the development of the Midwest Research Institute. Part of this effort involved addresses to various group such as Chambers of Commerce, Rotary, etc. It was while appearing in Joplin that one of the Joplin Newspaper reporters recounted the story of the Spook Light, or as he called it, the Mysterious Light of the Ozarks. Naturally, being trained scientifically, my curiosity was aroused. Arrangements were immediately made with the Joplin newspaper reporter, whose name I have forgotten momentarily, to view the phenomenon.
We drove down south of Joplin some eight to ten miles and eventually parked on a gravel road at the top of a long slope, the road continuing down hill away from us, as we faced west, to dissipate itself in a number of cattle paths. The moon was not up and our reporter friend claimed that the night was ideal for observation.
Not long after our arrival a suffered glow appeared in the sky, to the west over a range of hills, the center of the lighted area being in line with the axis of the road. This was followed almost immediately by a ball of light estimated as 4 to 6 feet in diameter that appeared to descend out of the hills and to rapidly advance toward us.
As the greenish-yellow ball of light approached, the Publicity Director of the Institute caused some amusement by exclaiming that he had seen enough and he dashed back to lock himself in the car. The light approached and seemed to envelop us. Upon rapidly turning toward the east to observe the continuance of the light past us I observed nothing.
After observing the phenomenon a second time I placed an observer at these points, one in the center of the road, another some 50 feet behind him and one at the fence line on each side of the road. I was the first observer on the road and found that after the light passed me I could not see it, but that the observer 50 feet to my rear could still see it.
The fence line observers reported only an obscure flash appearance. These observations then caused me to believe that the source of the phenomenon lay ahead to the west and preferrably over the range of hills. Further reasoning led to the possibility that the cause lay in the refraction of automobile headlights from a road in direct line with the gravel road where we stood. The fact that the light did not always appear, substantiated the refraction or bending of light idea in that the relative humidity and temperature would have to attain the correct values to produce the correct density of atmosphere to bend the light sufficiently for observation. Further it was observed that as an observer moved downhill toward the observed source of light, the phenomenon was not visible while an observer remaining at approximately the top of the slope could see the light. The refraction theory was also borne out by the lack of good observation at the fence lines.
Satisfied that we were dealing with the refraction of distant automobile headlights – one light instead of two, automatically called for distance – we sought on the highway road map a road traveled by cars that was directly in line with our observation point. It was decided that such a road was the section of highway running east and west from Commerce to Quapaw, Oklahoma.
It now remained to correlate automobile headlights on the highwy with observation of the Spook Light. We had satisfied ourselves as to the probable explanation and had no further interest. We suggested observation from an airplane as to cars in Oklahoma and a radio report to a ground observer of the Spook Light.
We were quite pleased at your offer to collaborate when you when you learned of our theory. Your experiments with lights on the aforementioned highway was followed with a good deal of interest. It was indeed most gratifying when you finally proved our theory.
Yours Truly,
George W. Ward,
Director of Research
I first saw the Spook Light back about 1911, before many roads or cars existed in this area. I have seen it a number of times, even in rain and snow and at all hours of the night for the past 44 years.
Ora C. Winfrey
Redings Mills
I’ve lived around Quapaw for 61 years. I’ve seen a number of teams investigating the source of the Ghost Light, but none of them have ever found out what it is. I was here before there were any cars in this district and the Ghost Light was here then.
Leonard Stoner,
Quapaw
Miami News Record 1-5-52
“… even scientific experts have been mystified by the Hornet Spook Light, which bounces along a gravel road between Baxter Springs and Peoria.”
The Kansas City Star – May 19, 1946
The reader of ghost stories, if he would derive the fullest enjoyment from his reading, should put his mind in a state of temporary belief in the supernatural. The deeper one can sink into the belief, the greater is his enjoyment of the ghosts, but when the story is ended it’s time to come back to reality.
In my pocket was a short manuscript by C. Paul Spidell of Baxter Springs, Kansas, addressed to the Sunday Editor of The Star. I had read it two or three times. In stark incredulity first, then in growing amazement; it came to me that Spidell was not fooling. He was telling an actual experience, and his back- ground did not admit of undue superstition in his make-up. He is a big man, a Harvard graduate, with considerable experience in the realistic occupation of advertising. Here, in part, is what he wrote: “There was a dull glow. It got brighter, then scampered quickly across the field to a point about a hundred yards directly ahead of us. There it halted and grew in size and intensity. Excited whispers came from the car. The light paled and disappeared, only to repeat its performance, making its entry again in the field to the left. When it got in front of us this time, it started to come toward us in a sort of wavering dance.
“It seemed to be about ten feer up from the ground. At it approached there was a reflection on the hood of my car. Four beams were like pipe-stem arms and legs. About fifty feet away it stopped and decided to climb a tree to our right where it perched for awhile, losing its brilliance and turning into a kind of ectoplasmic cloud.
“Whatever it was, it had a restless spirit. It faded and by fission reproduced itself into three bright little lights with waving arms and leg beams. About six feet apart, the trio scurried through a grove of jackoaks and across a field to our right, then converged into one blazing light which halted.” There was more including a description by Mr. Spidell of a luminous tadpole which wriggled out of sight under a house, and a mansion with lighted windows.
In The Star office we have received reports of these spook lights for many years. Scientists had visited the area, seeking explanations on the spot, but they failed to locate the source. In 1936 the late A. B. Macdonald of The Star went to see them and an explanation satisfactory to himself, but he did not obtain any proof.
This spring a Kansas City scientist, Dr. George W. Ward of the Midwest Research Institute, had veiwed the lights for diversion when on a business trip to Joplin. The intrigued him. after a few preliminary tests he reasoned out a hypothesis that was subject to proof. With that to start with, I sent a letter to Col. Dennis E. McCunniff, commanding officer of Camp Crowder, three miles from Neosho, and not far from the lonely road. I explained to him the hypothesis, and asked the assistance of the army in seeking proof. Colonel McCunniff invited me to Camp Crowder to talk it over.
The Army Joins the Quest
“They have my curiosity aroused,” the colonel said. “I should like to know what they are. We shall be glad to co-operate.”
The solution of the mystery light probably will not satisfy some persons who have seen it. We have no desire to insist upon the solution and we certainly don’t want to rob anyone of the enjoyment of a good ghost. We should like to point out only that the light is brighter, visible for longer periods, and seen more frequently in winter than in summer.
The reason is because the trees, being denuded of foliage in winter, form less obstruction than in summer. In any event, the phenomenon of optical illusion enters into all of it, for it has been demonstrated many times that light at night often appear much closer than they actually are. For what it may be worth, that is the opinion of the men who conducted the tests.
Unpredictable
I have lived here on the road over 2 years. We were about to take the light for granted, when one night about dusk, that crazy light came within about 7 feet of our car as we were driving home. It appeared as a big bright ball but vanished when we turned on the cat lights. The thing scared the “daylights” out of us.
Mary Hamilton
Carthage Evening Press–7-23-55 “Whence comes the light or the reason for its existence are still a mystery.”
The Southwestern–7-1-55 “For a half century, the light has attracted tourist. It’s a cinch that it will continue to do so for a good long time to come.”
If I ever have a flat on the “Spook Light” road, I’ll drive it flat, cause I’ll never get out to fix it. DR. J. C. KIMBROUGH, Veterinarian
Refraction of Light
When a ray of light passes from one sub- stance to another of a different density, it is bent out of its course or refracted. The law of refraction is: When light passes from a rare to a dense substance, it is bent in the direction of a line that is perpendicular to the surface of the refracting body, when light passes from a dense to a rare substance, it bent away from a line perpendicular to the surface of the refracting body.
Editors Comment: The test shown below has no connection whatsoever with the present spook light. The army test was conducted on a road approximately 1 mile north of the road from which the light is seen today. The results of this test has been best described by the State of Missouri, Resources and Development Di- vision stating... “They came away baffled.” The tri-pod mounted telescope, now operated on the new spook light road by A. P. “Spooky” Meadows is three times more powerful than those used by the army. The light as seen through this scope cannot be separated into a pair or pairs of automobile headlights. The light as seen through the telescope appears as a firey flame or flames, us- usally green at the bottom and red at the top. It is sure worth seeing.DAVID NORRIS HAS said gay cousins should be allowed to marry each other if that is what they wish to do.
The independent senator was speaking as the Seanad debated the Marriage Equality Bill, which gives effect to May’s historic referendum result.
Speaking in the upper house this evening, Norris said the regulations covering cousins marrying each other were introduced to protect the genetic pool.
He said this “will remain relatively untroubled by same-sex marriage” and added:
It wouldn’t take a feather out of me if two cousin married each other, what’s the problem with that. Really?
Acknowledging he was not politically correct, Norris also said it doesn’t bother him if cousins want to get married.
The veteran politician and gay rights campaigner said he was sure he would be “pilloried” by the “grotesque Irish media” for his remarks.
Hailing the campaign for a Yes vote, Norris said the broader campaign for gay rights in Ireland was “a struggle of over 40 years”.
When I started off it was a world of hatred, contempt and silence. Gay people were regarded as sources of sin, crime and disease… Everything was clouded completely with silence.
He thanked the people of Ireland for having voted the referendum through last May in “overwhelming numbers” saying the gay community could not have done this “on their own”.
“I was extraordinarily moved by the many, many young people, both gay and straight, who came home from abroad to vote.
He also expressed gratitude towards the Taoiseach Enda Kenny, whom he described as “a conservative man from a rural constituency, who changed his mind and was convinced by the arguments”.
Of the No campaign, Norris said “they were perfectly awful”.
The bill has already passed the Dáil and this evening passed second stage in the Seanad. There will be further debate at committee stage on Thursday before the bill goes to President Michael D Higgins to be signed into law.Corporate interests have taken credit for reducing private-sector unions to afraction of their former strength, and for eroding public-sector collective bargaining, especially since the 2010 “Tea Party midterms.” A resurgence in low-wage worker organizing, sparked by growing inequality in the United States, promises to help defend the rights—and paychecks—of vulnerable workers. But corporations and their paid shills aim to snuff out the movement before it catches fire.
During an April 16 event at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Joe Kefauver—a lobbyist and PR man for the National Restaurant Association and the Convenience Store Association—warned the audience of business leaders about an emerging challenge to their corporate dominance. The threat comes, he said, from groups that “have the ability to leverage infrastructure to bring a multi-pronged attack, and force internal corporate changes [that] they wouldn’t have been able to get through [union] collective bargaining.”Though the organizing efforts the Chamber warns about take many forms, corporate PR lumps them together under the label “worker centers.”
At the same Chamber event, Kefauver gloated about industry’s recent successes in weakening “the union movement,” which, he said, “has hit a lot of roadblocks, in large part due to the good work of a lot of folks in this room.”1 Building on their victories, over unions, corporations are now deploying their firepower against a resurgence in low-wage worker organizing prompted by the worst economic inequality in a century.
The stakes are high. For too many working Americans, chronic debt and economic insecurity have become inescapable facts of life. Institutions that once offered refuge and the hope of escape from poverty have been hollowed out by decades of policies that concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Labor unions have been decimated by business interests’ relentless anti-unionization campaigns, and by their successful lobbying in Congress and state legislatures for laws and regulations that favor employers.
As workers face intimidation and legal challenges to their right to join unions (including a case that would damage public sector unions, Harris v. Quinn, on which the Supreme Court is about to rule2), the United States has gained a reputation for lousy treatment of workers. In a new report, the International Trade Union Confederation used a five-point scale to rank countries on their commitment to workers’ rights, with five being the worst. The United States received a ranking of four, meaning there are systematic violations.3 Only about 11 percent of U.S. workers are now represented by unions, down from a peak in the private sector of around 35 percent in the 1950s.4 Today, most union members are public-sector employees such as police officers, teachers, and government workers.
Without unions to advocate for workers’ rights at the local level, employers are able to keep wages low and suppress worker self-organization with impunity. Workers’ rights advocates have documented abuses—such as wage theft, intimidation, and sexual harassment—being committed against immigrant and low-wage workers without fear of prosecution. Inequality is at its highest level since 19285, and studies show that 95 percent of the financial gains made during the current recovery have gone to the top one percent of income earners.6
Into this breach has stepped small but vibrant constellation of low-wage and immigrant-worker organizations. This organizing resurgence features a variety of structures and approaches striving to ensure that workers’ voices are heard in public-policy debates on wages and employment practices. According to a recent briefing paper by United Workers Congress, a federation of such groups, “Worker centers [and other low-wage and immigrant worker advocates] have won changes in local policies and practices, built vocal and active membership, and raised public awareness of workers’ issues. These efforts have laid the groundwork for the recent spread of legislative efforts to protect the rights of workers not covered under existing labor law, and to raise the minimum wage for all workers.”7
Such organizing efforts have also drawn the attention of corporate wolves—PR flacks and conservative-leaning think tanks answering to the same business interests that are responsible for the decline of unions and other anti-poverty institutions. While some new worker organizations have endured and even thrived in the face of relentless attacks, their antagonists have generally hailed from the particular industry (restaurant, agribusiness, big box retail, etc.) or social sector (e.g. anti-immigrant movement) that they challenge.
In the court of public opinion, low-wage and immigrant worker organizing campaigns are gaining a reputation for being scrappy underdogs, standing up for the little guys. (More often than not, these “little guys” are actually women; a recent study from the National Women’s Law Center found that women represent almost two-thirds of minimum wage workers.8) But the business lobby is trying to use its megaphone to reverse that momentum. Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association are taking advantage of low public awareness of new worker organizations to frame these loosely connected groups as part of the union “Goliath”—a familiar frame that allows corporations to repurpose decades of anti-union messages and tactics.9
Although the attacks are well-coordinated, there are opportunities for low-wage and immigrant worker organizing to respond strategically. The business community is trying to hit a field of small, moving targets with independent leadership. The strength of the field lies partly in its diversity—its networked strength rather than its deep pockets. The opposition is trying to homogenize a heterogeneous field of grassroots organizing in order to simplify, vilify, and attack it. The experienced operatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce refer to their chosen targets as “worker centers,” using the term to merge all organizing efforts—union and non-union, immigrant rights’ groups, domestic workers, food service and retail workers, day laborers, supply chain workers, and more— together into one single, seemingly formidable enemy.10
Wage Thieves
Attacks on worker organizing are taking place against a backdrop of an economy in crisis. A 2013 New York Times article, quoting a report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that the “median income for working-age households (headed by someone under age 65) slid 12.4 percent from 2000 to 2011, to $55,640. During that time the American economy grew more than 18 percent.”11
As real wages stagnate or fall, consumers have less money to spend. In response, big corporations seek to preserve their profits in ways that further squeeze workers and their disposable income. This squeezing takes many forms: scheduling workers for fewer hours on the shop floor, spreading fear and anti-union propaganda, cutting back on benefits packages, and, perhaps most shockingly, committing outright wage theft.
Imagine being hired as a cashier at a big-box retailer and being told that you’ll make $8.81 per hour, the average wage of a Walmart cashier.12 Imagine getting your meager paycheck and finding that it’s even less than you expected. Now imagine learning that the missing money isn’t being withheld by mistake. It’s being stolen by your employer. Such wage theft is pervasive across all U.S. industries, and the sums involved amount to much more than petty larceny.
“When we measure it,” Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education & Research Center, recently told Moyers & Company, “the total amount of money stolen out of American workers’ paychecks every year is far bigger than the total amount stolen in all the bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience store robberies combined.”13
“It really has become for many industries the way they do business,” said Sally Dworak-Fisher, lead attorney in the Workplace Justice division at the Public Justice Center in Baltimore, Maryland. “By not paying overtime or paying less than the minimum wage, they are eroding the bedrock of labor protections in this country.”14
As real wages stagnate or fall, big corporations seek to preserve profits by further squeezing workers and their disposable income: scheduling workers for fewer hours on the shop floor, spreading fear and anti-union propaganda, cutting back on benefits packages, and, perhaps most shockingly, committing outright wage theft.
The phenomenon of wage theft is especially cynical given the amount of money that low-wage employees already produce for their employers: McDonald’s, for instance, makes an average per-employee revenue of $65,000, according to a report from the business blog “24/7 WallStreet,” derisively titled “The Companies with the Least Valuable Employees.”15
In an article for Alternet in 2013, Paul Buchheit wrote that “McDonald’s employs 440,000 workers worldwide, most of them food servers making the median hourly wage of $9.10 an hour or less, for a maximum of about $18,200 per year.”16 That $9.10 per hour McDonald’s employee is being paid less than one-third of what she earns for her employer in a year. Now she is also having those meager wages stolen, as the Labor Department found in at least two recent cases in New York and Pennsylvania.17
Wage theft is just one of a variety of weapons that private-sector businesses have deployed in order to cheat workers and maximize profits. Other tools include public policy instruments like so-called right to work laws that hamper union organizing; threats of deportation to keep unauthorized immigrant workers from asserting their rights; and lobbying to carve out loopholes in new worker-protection laws, among other devices.
For the past few years, in metro regions and states, workers and their communities have galvanized around the problem of wage theft, standing together to sue and win back money that rightfully belongs to the workers who earned it and the local communities where they spend their paychecks. Additionally, low-wage and immigrant workers are seeking relief from abusive and exploitative working conditions by expanding the laws that defend their interests—raising the minimum wage, creating stiffer penalties for wage theft, and instituting paid sick days and other basic workplace protections. Their grassroots organizing—sometimes, but not always, conducted in partnership with unions—has been effective, and a growing number of cities and states are passing these new laws.
Corporate interests are striking back with bills to pre-empt cities from passing their own minimum wage increases or to mandate paid sick days. These pre-emption bills are produced by right-wing bill mills like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and pushed by state lawmakers who are often groomed for office by corporate lobby groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.18
The legislative attack is well underway. Eleven states, including Wisconsin, Florida, and Oklahoma have already passed state-level “pre-emption” laws banning cities and counties from mandating employer-provided paid sick days. At least six other states, according to the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, are currently considering similar pre-emption bills that would prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage.19
Chamber of Horrors
When the Los Angeles-based Koreatown Immigrant Workers’ Alliance (KIWA) began urging city voters in 2012 to support a state bill that would allow workers to place a temporary lien on the business owner’s property if the business owner committed wage theft, KIWA’s members were excited. The bill would have allowed workers whose employers had stiffed them to place a lien—that is, a transfer of possession— on the employer’s property until workers received the back pay they were owed. A lien is a red flag for lenders and can become a PR problem for employers. “We see this lien as a tool to bring employers who are committing wage theft to the table,” said Alexandra Suh, KIWA’s executive director. “If there’s a lien on the table, they’re going to pay attention.”20 One state—Maryland—passed a similar lien law that went into effect in October 2013.
Dworak-Fisher of the Public Justice Center said she expects that Maryland’s law will deter employers from committing wage theft. “We’re just getting it up and running,” she said. “We’ll be bringing wage lien claims over the summer and into the fall. The unscrupulous employers will be on notice.”21
As the California campaign gained steam, however, local politicians and business owners—some of whom were involved with KIWA projects in the community—started getting notifications from the California Chamber of Commerce. These Facebook ads, blog posts, and other advertising materials claimed that the anti-wage theft bill posed a danger to homeowners.
In one ad shared with PRA, the California Chamber falsely claimed that if the bill passed, it would mean that a third-party homeowner who had a contractor or cleaning service work in the home could wind up with a lien on the home. “Despite the fact that the third party homeowner had absolutely no control over the employee’s work or the wages he/she was paid,” read the statement from the California Chamber, “that homeowner could have his/her property leveraged for unpaid wages of the company’s employees.”22
In reality, the bill explicitly prevents third-party liens, or liens from one company’s workers on a third party’s, or homeowner’s, property. Yet the Cal Chamber’s lie confused and frightened California homeowners. The anti-wage theft measure died in the state Senate in January 2014. When it was brought up again for a vote in the State Assembly on May 28 of this year, it passed by a vote of 43-27. It now moves back to the California Senate for a potential vote later this year.
The corporate smokescreen also obscures the widespread nature of the problem, which continues to be “very, very serious,” as Suh said.23 Indeed, a 2010 UCLA-sponsored survey showed that the vast majority of workers are experiencing some type of wage-related violation on the job in Los Angeles County. “Low-wage workers in L.A. County frequently are paid below the minimum wage, not paid for overtime, work off the clock without pay, and have their meal breaks denied, interrupted, or shortened,” according to the report. |
move on with their lives. "It will be a great show but it is the last time we'll be working together."Individuals with schizophrenia are distracted by emotional information, which is uniquely caused by reduced activity between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex, according to a new study published this February in Schizophrenia Bulletin.
Psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, are characterized by deficits in cognitive control, with previous evidence showing impairments in both focusing upon relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information. More specifically, it has been shown that irrelevant emotional information can disrupt attention during tasks in psychotic disorders, when compared with healthy individuals.
Being able to maintain focus in the presence of distracting emotional information involves a network of brain regions acting together. These regions include the amygdala – important in emotional processing – as well as the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex – which are involved in emotion appraisal and regulation.
The study, led by Prerona Mukherjee of the University of California, Davis, involved 76 participants (26 with schizophrenia; 21 with bipolar disorder with psychosis; and 29 control participants with no history of psychotic disorders). A task was completed in which participants had to identify faces (relevant information) whilst ignoring the emotional expressions of the faces (irrelevant information). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine the disruption to the connectivity of the important brain regions as a result of emotional interference.
Importantly, the study tested whether this emotional interference was specific to schizophrenia, or whether it was common across other psychotic disorders (in this case comparing it to bipolar disorder with psychosis).
The study found that individuals with schizophrenia showed worse accuracy in the task, as well as a reduction in connectivity between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex, when compared with the other participants (the bipolar disorder with psychosis group did not differ from the control group). Therefore, reduced functional connectivity in these brain regions, when dealing with distracting emotional information, reflects a deficit that is specific to schizophrenia. Furthermore, the study found that this was related to other clinical deficits, such as restricted affect and diminished emotional range, along with unemployment.
Altogether, these findings highlight the potential for the connectivity between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex to be a neural marker of schizophrenia.In a 2012 interview, Oregon State University philosophy professor emerita Kathleen Dean Moore said, “Climate change is damaging food supplies, spreading disease and creating refugees, and it is poised to become the most massive human rights violation the world has ever seen."
Increasingly, the two issues - climate change and human rights - are being recognized as inextricably connected. Two major studies published this year reinforce that link, providing sobering evidence that a hotter, increasingly unstable climate is fueling more conflict and human rights violations, and that it is happening sooner rather than later.
The first study was published in the journal Science by researchers at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Researchers found that a hotter, more unstable climate exacerbates three specific types of violence: personal violence (such as murder, rape and domestic violence), intergroup violence/political instability and institutional breakdowns (including the collapse of governing institutions and whole civilizations).
Lead author Prof. Solomon Hsiang said the study includes “meta-analysis" of 60 previous studies from disciplines like history, economics, geography, criminology and political science. The research strongly indicates that tropical regions of the world, in particular, will be “very intensely hit".
If tropical populations remain on their current trajectories, Hsiang said certain types of intergroup violence could exceed a 50 percent amplification in association with climate change.
Hsiang is cautious about drawing a direct link between climate change data and specific human rights abuses, but said, “There’s certainly the potential for situations where the climate leads to political changes that could adversely affect people’s rights," adding, [climate change] destabilises and tests the amount of stress social institutions can endure."
“There is a lot of political rhetoric after disasters where people talk about becoming stronger as a community or economically because of it, but…there is very little evidence that is actually true," Hsiang said. “Populations tend to be permanently worse off, families don’t necessarily become stronger because of these disasters, they end up struggling much more. Political organisations tend to do very badly."
In the face of greater violence, Hsiang said research continues to examine how certain social and political institutions may help mitigate some of the impacts that lead to more conflict. “What are the things that let societies weather [climate change] without exhibiting any type of conflict? That’s what we want to know so we can help create ‘pockets of calm’ in the future," Hsiang said.
Sooner than later
The second study, published in the journal Nature by the University of Hawaii’s (UH) Department of Geography, presents a concrete time frame when temperatures will reach unprecedented levels - so-called “climate departure".
The projected timing of climate departure refers to specific dates when given locations around the world continuously exceed historical temperature averages for the last 150 years. The study does not suggest the world will lose seasonality but, when averaged over a year’s time, temperatures will depart from recent historical norms.
Co-author Ryan Longman said, “The coldest year in the future will be hotter than the hottest year in the past." He added that the earliest impacts will occur in the tropics and have a ripple-effect to northern latitudes.
Speaking from Honolulu, UH researcher and co-author Abby Frazier said climate change provokes three main reactions in plants and animals: migrating to more suitable environments, staying and adapting to the new climate or going extinct.
“It’s very sobering," Frazier said. “We see all of the evidence piling up and it’s really hard for people to accept that our future is heading toward these unprecedented climates. We’re trying our best to get the information out there in a concrete way that can connect people to this and is not abstract."
“The coldest year in the future will be hotter than that hottest year in the past." - Ryan Longman
The UH study finds that on average, by 2047, under a “business-as-usual" scenario, the world will be experiencing a “radically different climate." The study pays special attention to tropical regions. Frazier points out that while the largest absolute changes in climate do not occur in the tropics, because they are, by nature, climatically stable, it takes less change to exceed historic norms. As a result, the tropics are expected to experience climate departure first with Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Mexico, India, Colombia and Iraq forecast to see climate departure as soon as 2020 and no later than 2036.
“There’s no doubt that those early changes in the tropics will be felt at higher latitude even if the temperature is not getting hotter as fast," Longman said.
Frazier noted that climate change puts additional stresses on countries already facing extreme environmental degradation, burgeoning young populations and growing political instability. These countries have lower GDPs and less economic capacity to respond to climate change than those that have had the biggest role in producing carbon emissions.
From toxic to ‘more toxic’
Richard Pearshouse, a senior researcher with the health and human rights division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Geneva, recently contributed to a report examining environmental, health and safety conditions in and around the tanneries of Hazaribagh, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Listed as one of the top ten toxic threats on the planet in 2013, Hazaribagh epitomises how an environment degraded by extreme pollution and fed by climate refugees produces a human rights catastrophe.
Pearshouse told Al Jazeera, “Climate change will affect many of the most vulnerable in society. It will affect the poor, it will affect religious or ethnic minorities, it will affect women and children. That should say a lot to a human rights organisation. It’s going to be the most marginalised who feel those impacts most acutely."
From health, housing and education to the right to life itself, Pearshouse sees climate change as having a massive impact on “a vast range of civil and political rights".
“If [climate change] is going to be about impacting on the most marginalised, then it’s going to be an issue of discrimination…and whether or not existing resilience or mitigation measures that are put in place by governments or international mechanisms truly reflect the reality of who’s suffering most on the ground."
Human rights groups like HRW, Amnesty International and others already work with environmental and climate groups but Pearshouse sees room for greater cooperation on a national and provincial level. “I think that as the human cost of climate change becomes increasingly evident, it’s untenable for human rights organisations not to be working on some of those issues," he said.
Bangladesh is a prime example of how climate change impacts impoverished fishing villages along the Bay of Bengal with more frequent, more powerful cyclones and flooding which drives villagers to migrate to places like Hazaribagh. There, out of desperation, the rural poor live in slums where the air, water and earth are so polluted by chemicals, tin roofing corrodes in months rather than years and severe health afflictions are the norm.
“As someone who works on human rights and health, to me and my colleagues, that [climate change] overlap is very much apparent, particularly when you go someplace like Hazaribagh and see the amount of human suffering caused by extreme environmental degradation. To me that overlap is very, very obvious," Pearshouse said.
Whether it’s a government unwilling to enforce basic health and environmental protective safeguards in Bangladesh, state-sponsored repression of climate and environmental defenders in Russia, or military forces involved in illegal logging in Cambodia, Pearshouse said examples of clear links between the unofficial exercise of government power and environmental harm are found around the world.
Facing a human rights ‘meltdown’
Far from the toxic tanneries of Bangladesh, indigenous peoples across Russia’s far north face new and increasing threats to their basic human rights as resource extraction, development, industrial pollution and climate change converge at the top of the world.
Rodion Sulyandziga represents the interests of RAIPON (Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North) with the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation among Arctic states and indigenous communities.
Speaking from Moscow, Sulyandziga described how the loss of sea ice, decline in snow levels and permafrost and general warming all impact the most basic human rights of the 41 indigenous groups in Siberia and the Russian far north and Far East: the right to live.
Increasingly unpredictable weather and unreliable sea ice directly impacts animal migration, which affects subsistence hunting for traditional food sources like reindeer and sea mammals. Warmer temperatures, Sulyandziga said, also hasten the introduction of plant and animal diseases as southern species of fish and birds move north.
In addition to a warming Arctic, Russia’s indigenous peoples also face the rush to exploit vast energy and mineral resources. Oil, gas, coal, nickel, iron ore, platinum and other minerals draw multi-national corporations to Russia’s most remote regions where highly restricted access makes monitoring health and safety practices, damage and pollution mitigation and other conditions difficult or impossible.
RAIPON has worked with Greenpeace and smaller environmental organisations to protect the environment critical to the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, Sulyandziga said.
Last year RAIPON was subject to a temporary closure when the Russian Ministry of Justice forced it to cease activities during a five-month investigation of what it alleged were “illegal activities" and defenders called a registration technicality. This kind of extra scrutiny of NGOs makes protecting indigenous and environmental interests even more difficult.
Sulyandziga added, “Russia now approved the Arctic strategy meaning they declare the Arctic is a main resource [of] economic development for the whole country. That means potential conflicts will grow among stakeholders, including indigenous people."
He also spoke of the threat to basic human rights for indigenous groups stemming from illegal timber harvesting, the destruction of arboreal forests and its role in massive wildfires and last year’s devastating floods in the Russian Far East. His own people, the Udege (which means “forest people") live in the affected area near the Amur River north of Vladivostok.
The biggest human rights violation ever
Back at the University of Hawaii, lead author of the above climate departure study, Dr. Camilo Mora, assistant professor in the UH geography department, sees climate change as a problem of fairness. “While developed countries are benefitting from [carbon] emissions, developing countries are the ones that are going to pay the most consequences from this," Mora told Al Jazeera.
“The science is as solid as it can be. Now it’s for us to start acting and I think that’s where we’re struggling to convince people of how real this thing is. We have seven billion people we need to convey this message to."
Mora said climate change is, and will continue to be, interconnected to the most basic of human rights: the right to have a home, food and water. “I don’t think there is a disconnection [to human rights], in fact, things are more connected than people tend to assume."
Greenpeace International’s executive director, Dr. Kumi Naidoo, argues the same point. Naidoo recently said, “The struggle to avert catastrophic climate change and the struggles for human rights, poverty and gender equity are and should be seen as two sides of the same coin."
Read an extended interview about human rights and climate change with Greenpeace International’s executive director Kumi Naidoo here.
Jon Letman is an independent journalist in Hawaii, covering wildlife conservation and politics in the Pacific Rim.#HawaiiFB
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – After a six hour flight from Honolulu to Denver, the University of Hawai'I football team made a short drive to Craig Hospital for an emotional visit with teammate, who is undergoing spinal cord rehabilitation.Nearly 90 players, coaches, and support staff greeted Naotala and his family with hugs and handshakes. The group shared stories and laughs with the defensive lineman, who in his short time in Manoa, made an immediate impact on the Rainbow Warriors."It felt good to be surrounded by them again," Naotala said. "Ever since I met most of them in January, they've been my family so it was good to be with them again. Family is a huge part of our team especially. Whether it be beach barbeques that we go out together or just hanging out in the locker room playing cards, I think it's a huge part of our team chemistry."Naotala, a freshman from Virginia who grey-shirted in 2016, suffered a serious spinal cord injury on July 1, 2017 while diving with friends near Waikiki in Honolulu. He was rescued from the water, and received treatment at The Queen's Medical Center before being transferred to Craig Hospital.Naotala participated in the team's spring practices and was expected to compete for playing time this season."Kalepo was with us for 6 to 8 months and he impacted our program greatly," head coachsaid. "As you can see from our guys, for a lot of them it was the first chance they got to see him since the hospital so its meaningful, its important. I think its great for Kalepo knowing he's still apart of our team."The team sported beenies with Naotala's jersey number 75 and the slogan "Back and Better," a phrase that he uttered to Rolovich days after his accident."This is a guy who joined midyear, didn't join in the traditional class, spent spring ball with us and makes this kind of impact," Rolovich said. "He was all about our philosophy of living aloha and playing warrior when its time to play football. I think that's why you see how important he is to these guys."The Rainbow Warriors were en route to Cheyenne, Wyo., where they will spend the next two days before Saturday's Mountain West opener versus Wyoming. The game will be televised nationally on ESPN2 at 8:15 p.m. MT (4:15 p.m. HT).Dear Mr. Buchal,
We are writing to you from the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and monitors extremist groups nationally and internationally.
In a May 29, 2017, interview with The Guardian (US) newspaper, you said that recent protests have prompted members of the Portland GOP to consider security alternatives, including militia groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.
“I am sort of evolving to the point where I think that it is appropriate for Republicans to continue to go out there. And if they need to have a security force protecting them, that’s an appropriate thing too.”
“…. There are these people arising, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. We’re thinking about that. Because there are now belligerent, unstable people who are convinced that Republicans are like Nazis.”
We think it is important for you to know that the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters are not benign “security forces.” They are, in our judgment, militia-style, anti-government extremist groups.
The Oath Keepers are conspiracy theorists who focus their recruiting and propaganda efforts on members of the military and police, reminding them that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic” and asking them to pledge to disobey unconstitutional orders they might get from superiors — orders that explicitly or implicitly refer to various militia‐related conspiracy theories, such as imminent mass gun confiscation or the impending incarceration of Americans in concentration camps. Each theory is tied to the idea that the United States government is falling under global governance and will at some point use police and military members to enforce the New World Order’s dominance. The federal government, therefore, is a force to be resisted.
A number of Oath Keepers have been arrested on criminal -- primarily weapons -- charges.
We’ve written extensively about the Oath Keepers' philosophies and practices, and we've included links to a couple of our stories/reports about militia groups here.
https://www.adl.org/education/resources/profiles/the-oath-keepers
https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/oath-keepers-and-three-ers-part-of-growing-anti-government
In recent years, some anti-government militia groups – including the Oath Keepers -- have become increasingly savvy about presenting themselves as mainstream “patriots,” which makes it even more important to identify them as what they actually are: dangerous extremists.
The ADL is a great resource for extremist-related information. We hope you will reach out to our national office or our Pacific Northwest office for additional background on these alarming groups.
More immediately, we strongly urge you to reconsider any plans to use these extremist groups to provide security services.
Sincerely,
The Center on Extremism
Anti-Defamation LeagueThe Conservatives inched closer to supporting marijuana decriminalization this week, while insisting they by no means support decriminalizing marijuana. “Our government is still considering … creating a new ticketing proposal for possession of small quantities,” Justice Minister Peter Mackay’s office said in a statement. “To be clear,” it continued, “any proposed changes would not decriminalize or legalize cannabis possession.” Earlier musings from Mr. MacKay suggest criminal offences would remain on the books; police would have the option to lay charges or to issue a ticket.
[np_storybar title=”Tories considering changing pot laws to make possession a ticketable offence in lieu of criminal charges” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/04/tories-considering-changing-pot-laws-to-make-possession-a-ticketable-not-criminal-offence/”%5DWith just 12 weeks left before Parliament shuts down for an election, the federal Conservative government is still considering introducing a bill to let police issue tickets to people caught with small amounts of marijuana, instead of laying criminal charges.
The potential legislative change is in the hands of Justice Minister Peter MacKay, who has spoken strongly about the dangers of marijuana use, particularly by young people.
The government has not made a final decision on the proposed change. As well, it isn’t clear – with time running short – if it would introduce a bill in the current Parliament, which ends in June, or make it a campaign promise in the fall election.
Continue reading…
[/np_storybar]
This idea, long supported by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, would represent a small and, on balance, positive step. But the only difference between the “decriminalization” proposal the Conservatives virulently opposed in the 2000s, when the Liberals proposed it, and what the Conservatives are now considering adopting as their own policy is the matter of police discretion. And that sole difference makes it a worse idea.
Police already have discretion — to charge or to look the other way. And we know how they use it. Deliberately or otherwise, they use it inconsistently: In 2012, in hippie haven Tofino, B.C., police laid marijuana charges at a rate of 588 per 100,000; in hippie haven Nelson, B.C., often called Canada’s “pot capital,” the rate was roughly half that. When criminal charges and tickets are totted up, it’s easy to imagine who’s going to get the pointy end of the stick, deliberately or otherwise. A 2002 study of more than 10,000 drug arrests in Toronto found black suspects were far more likely than whites, even after other factors had been accounted for, to be taken in to a police station (rather than released at the scene), and even more likely to be held overnight pending a bail hearing.
It’s not just race, either. “In criminal law we used to call it the ‘I-didn’t-respect-the-officer-enough’ offence. If you apologized enough you were unlikely to be charged,” Derek Corrigan, a former defence attorney and now mayor of Burnaby, B.C., told a pro-legalization event in 2013. “I found that to be reprehensible.”
Indeed. Circumstances aggravating marijuana possession can be written into law. Otherwise, other things being equal, it is not clear why police should be afforded this level of discretion.
The Conservatives know the status quo doesn’t work
At the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Colombia, Stephen Harper conceded “the current approach [to the war on drugs] is not working. But it is not clear what we should do.” Being open to marijuana law reform is one thing it is clear the Conservatives should do, and it’s good news they’ve come this far — even if it’s only in response to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s embrace of a legalization-and-regulation model.
Still, a party notionally dedicated to free markets must realize the absurdity inherent even in the new, quasi-enlightened policy they’re entertaining. It would leave the marijuana trade in the hands of sometimes violent criminals. It would continue to lumber some Canadians with criminal records for simple possession of a product that’s considerably less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, products we have been relatively successful at keeping out of children’s hands through regulation and which we tax to highly lucrative effect.
In short, the Conservatives should be looking miles beyond this timid proposal they’re considering. If they’re not yet ready to contemplate Mr. Trudeau’s position, they can at least commit to closely monitor the legalization experiments currently under way in several American states. They know the status quo doesn’t work. It’s time they started working in earnest toward a coherent new approach.
National PostThe Great American Beer Festival is taking place in Denver this weekend, bringing together 618 of the country’s craft breweries for what’s become the largest beer competition in the United States. Not only did the 49,000+ attendee tickets sell out quickly this year, the record number of breweries now in operation exceeded the number of available industry slots, leaving over 350 breweries on a waiting list, many of which—like Eagle Rock Brewery, Ohana Brewing, and Anaheim’s Noble Ale Works—aren’t able to attend.
L.A.’s largest craft brewery, Golden Road Brewing, was originally waitlisted but was later contacted and will now be representing L.A. alongside other confirmed entrants: Beachwood BBQ & Brewing (Long Beach), Bravery Brewing Company (Lancaster), Claremont Craft Ales, El Segundo Brewing Company, Haven Brewing (Pasadena), Kinetic Brewing (Lancaster) Ladyface Ale Companie (Agoura Hills), Newport Beach Brewing Co., Smog City Brewing (Torrance), and The Lab Brewing Co. (Agoura Hills).
Julia Herz, Craft Beer Program Director at the Brewers Association, the industry group behind the Great American Beer Festival, feels the frustration many locked out brewers are facing, but says assuredly, “It’s something we’re taking very seriously. We’ve had countless meetings on how to expand the festival in future years to match the explosive growth of craft breweries in the U.S. But at the same time, this is held in the Colorado Convention Center, which books up years in advance. We can’t just call and say, ‘Hey! We need more space!’ and expect to get it right away.”
In the end, the Brewers Association was able to let Eagle Rock Brewery enter two beers for judging consideration. And while Eagle Rock Brewery co-owner (and past GABF gold medal winner) Jeremy Raub was initially shocked at how quickly the spaces filled up, he’s taking it as a bit of a blessing. “We’re saving a bunch of money by not going this year,” he says. “Sure, we’d love to be there, but this will allow us some time to keep focusing on all of our projects here at home, and I’m OK with that. There’s always next year.”
Brew Dogs is a new television series revolving around craft beer that’s debuted on the recently launched Esquire TV network. It follows James Watt and Martin Dickie, co-founders of BrewDog, the U.K.’s most infamous brewery. While frequently marginalized for their over-the-top, gimmicky marketing (think “Royal Virility Performance”, an IPA laced with Viagra to commemorate the Kate Middleton/Prince William nuptials, and “The End of the World”—formerly known as the strongest beer in the world—which was brewed and freeze-distilled to weigh in at 55% alcohol by volume, before getting its bottles stuffed within taxidermied squirrels and stoats), the Scottish duo does turn out a solid line-up of core beers and special releases.
Their new show brings them to America on a quest to visit some of the best craft breweries, restaurants, and bars in select cities, brewing batches of highly experimental beer with them, and searching around the respective cities for “craft beer virgins” that they hope to convert. The debut episode finds them in San Diego, brewing an IPA with Stone Brewing Co. CEO and co-founder, Greg Koch. Did I mention that it’s spiked with kelp they’ve harvested from the Pacific Ocean? And rosemary from Stone Brewing? And one of the world’s hottest chiles? And that it’s brewed on a moving train? A custom brewing system was installed on a train car tugged by the Pacific Surfliner, headed from San Diego to Los Angeles and back.
A quick stop in Union Station to find more “craft beer virgins” is the only shout-out L.A. gets, but we have a feeling they’ll be back soon, as our local craft beer scene continues to flourish. While the show can be a bit overdone at times, it’s a great watch for anyone who’s really starting to get into craft beer.
Brew Dogs airs on the Esquire TV network Tuesdays at 10 p.m. A repeat of the San Diego episode will air this Saturday, October 12, at 10 p.m., followed by a repeat of the San Francisco episode at 11 p.m.While Hungary's currency, the forint, slumped to new lows against the euro on Thursday, illustrating low investor confidence in Hungary's economy, the European Commission has said it would decide in "days or weeks" whether it will mount a legal challenge against controversial constitutional reforms adopted by Hungary's parliament last week.
Adopted thanks to a two-thirds parliamentary majority enjoyed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, critics say the reforms tighten his grip on state bodies meant to be independent, including the judiciary and the central bank.
"Our concerns remain, and will remain until the Commission has completed its legal assessment of these new laws," Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told reporters on Wednesday.
European legal experts have been poring over official translations of the Hungarian reform bills to determine whether they are compatible with EU law and basic EU values before the bloc's 27 commissioners meet on January 11.
A full legal analysis of the Hungarian reforms could take days or even weeks
Once the analysis is over, the Commission "will decide on the next step," Bailly said.
Painful process
Bailly said the Commission's infringement proceedings, which can include action before the European Court of Justice as well as fines, would take several months if initiated
But some observers like Daniel Gros, director of the Center of European Policy Studies (CEPS), questions whether that would yield the desired results.
"If a government fails to enforce an EU directive about paperclips, for example, then the European Court of Justice can come along and say: 'Hey government, you have to pay one million euros a month until you've fixed it'. And the government will normally say: 'OK, we'd better act quickly.'"
Daniel Gros is the Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels
With something as major as constitutional reform, however, going down that path could be like "banging your head against a brick wall," Gros added – especially if major EU powers remain passive.
"Just how the EU should deal with Hungary is certainly being discussed at the Commission. But Brussels will only have real authority in the matter if Berlin and Paris get on board."
Scant success
The European Commission initiated no less than 2,000 infringement proceedings against member states in 2010, but more than half of those cases were suspended.
Some were dropped because the governments in question addressed the complaints promptly, while others had to be abandoned because they were not legally tenable.
Many areas of legislation, such as media law and immigration, lie beyond the European Commission's sphere of influence. This can be very frustrating for European officials intent on righting perceived wrongs – as Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding discovered when she tried but failed to prevent Nicolas Sarkozy's government from deporting Roma from France last year.
Guy Verhofstadt says the Commission needs to up its game
Escalation possible
Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who leads the European Parliament's third-biggest group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), urged the Commission to act swiftly to ensure freedom and democracy were fully upheld in Hungary.
"It is no longer a matter of 'exchange of letters' between the Commission and the Orban government," he said. "The time has come to initiate legal and political sanctions by the EU institutions."
Political expert Gros said exceptional measures can be taken if a member state is found to be in blatant violation of the European's Union's fundamental values.
"That would, of course, be the equivalent of going 'nuclear'," Gros said, adding that option had never been exercised by Brussels.
But Hungary's precarious financial position means it may not be necessary if the IMF applies pressure.
Financial leverage
Upcoming IMF/EU aid talks could be Brussels' best shot at influencing Budapest
The parliamentary group leader of Hungary's ruling Fidesz party, Janos Lazar, said the government was ready to make certain concessions to secure financial aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
"In some cases there will be an agreement, in some cases there will not be an agreement," Lazar told the MTI news agency.
Although Lazar made it clear Hungary needed help from the IMF and EU, he stopped short of identifying specific points up for negotiation.
"Only such compromises, agreements, decisions can come up which serve the interests of the country, as the servile behavior which characterized previous governments is not justified because the revenues and expenditures of this country broadly match," he said.
While the prospect of further concession is a step in the right direction as far as Brussels is concerned, some analysts fear it will be politically difficult for Orban to change his economic and other policies significantly, boding ill for future negotiations.
Author: Christoph Prössl, Sam Edmonds
Editor: Nicole GoebelIn the midst of Marvel's Netflix series and DC's Arrowverse, another exceptionally dark and harrowing comic book TV show has popped up recently. And it's one that most people probably didn't see coming.
Early this year, Riverdale debuted on The CW, featuring the classic characters of Archie Comics. However, as opposed to silly love triangles and school dances, Archie and co. now have to deal with such things as illicit relationships, drug-related filicide, gang wars, and serial killers.
In other words, this isn't your dad's Archie.
That said, just how much have the characters themselves changed? Well, just like virtually any comic book adaptation, it varies. Some of the characters are almost exactly the same, in terms of both look and personality, but with some subtle yet significant alterations. Meanwhile, there are other characters who are almost completely unrecognizable. And considering the stark contrast between the show and the source material, both of these things make perfect sense.
Riverdale is now well into its second season, which means there's been plenty of time to see a good amount of the Archie characters who have been given the modern live-action treatment. Here's how they compare to their old, printed selves.Bastian Schweinsteiger has urged his Manchester United teammates to “build” on their good performance against Chelsea on Monday.
Man United were much improved against the London club but the game ended in a 0-0 draw, meaning Louis van Gaal’s side have now gone eight games without a win in all competitions.
Schweinsteiger made his return to the starting XI in the game having missed United’s last three matches due to suspension. The German told his United teammates they must “keep working hard”:
Let's build on this team performance and keep working hard! #mufc pic.twitter.com/6iGms1pE0M — Basti Schweinsteiger (@BSchweinsteiger) December 28, 2015
Schweinsteiger was solid at Old Trafford, although he faded towards the end of the match along with the rest of the team.
United were better against Chelsea but they lacked the quality in the final third which would have secured all three points.
It remains to be see if Louis van Gaal will remain in charge of United in the coming weeks but the Dutchman can have no complaints if he is let go by the club following such a torrid run. His potential exit would hit Schweinsteiger hard as the pair enjoy a good relationship.Besides suppressing entrepreneurship, the top-down model of industrialisation through Five Years Plans re-enforced the process. Instead of building manufacturing units on a mass scale, which could have provided jobs to millions of unskilled and semi-skilled masses, India went for heavy industrialisation with imported technology. And these industrial wonders sat like an island in remote corners of the country with hardly any forward and backward linkages with the sea of destitute humanity surrounding them. A chance at employment in them required a level of education and modern technical knowhow. And there is no guessing who would be getting employment in these temples of modern India. Certainly not the Dalits whose educational statistics were as abysmal as it can be imagined. And the much-touted land reforms too gave the land to tenants, OBCs, and not to the tillers who were largely landless Dalit labourers.Britain recently banned it, but porn studios in this country are still cashing in on films that feature women “squirting.” Is female ejaculation even real, though? What causes it? And should we care?
Thankfully, a new study attempts to get to the bottom of the phenomenon – and inspired us to clarify for ourselves what’s really happening when women experience the seeming “release” during sex. (Would Sex and the City really lie to us?)
After speaking with physicians, sex researchers, and, of course, porn stars, we nailed down a few basics about the act one adult actress compared to “being able to do a backbend.”
Female ejaculation is real, but it’s not what you think.
The latest research points to one conclusion: Most of us laypeople have been defining “female ejaculation” incorrectly. Essentially, we’ve been using the phrase as an umbrella term to describe two completely different processes that can occur during sex.
These two processes are known as “female ejaculation” and “squirting,” explained Samuel Salama of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Hospital Privé in France, who published a paper on the issue in December in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Salama and many other researchers say female ejaculation and squirting involve different fluids that originate in different parts of the body, both of which can be expelled during extreme arousal.
The former describes a fluid that is released in small quantities from the female prostate, formerly known as the Skene’s gland. (Yes, some women have a prostate! These teeny glands are located near the lower end of the urethra.) This fluid creates extra lubrication during sex, but doesn’t exactly call for towels on the sheets.
Squirting, on the other hand, refers to a large volume of “clear liquid coming from the bladder.” That’s right: watery pee. “In French we say ‘femme fontaine,’” or “fountain women,” said Salama, because the liquid expelled can gush out like a fountain. This is what you see in porn.
In their study, Salama and his colleagues used an Ultrasound to prove that, during sexual stimulation, participants’ bladders filled up with fluid – then emptied after squirting. Salama tested the substance released and found it to contain the same contents as urine.
How many women experience ejaculation or squirting?
The experts still don’t know, though rough estimates suggest somewhere between 10 and 54 percent of women experience ejaculation and/or squirting.
“Just as some people can lift one eyebrow or some people can wiggle their ears, it’s anatomy,” said Lanalee Araba Sam, an OBGYN in private practice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, of female ejaculation and squirting. “Some people can have it happen naturally, some people will have to work on it, and some people will never achieve it no matter how much they practice.”
News flash: Squirting in porn is often faked.
Porn blatantly suggests that squirting is proof of sexual climax – and the ability to make a woman squirt is a sure sign of sexual prowess. Which is just not the case.
Still, squirting has taken off in adult films over the past several years. Porn distributor Brazzers told Fusion that the act is in their top 10 searched categories. They even launched a subsite, “She’s gonna squirt,” to accommodate demand. And Vivid, another major distributor, said they’ve released several films featuring squirting, and they “sell extremely well.”
And so, adult film stars |
49,578 732,187 529,681 202,506 14.7 10.7 4.1 1.96 1979 49,755 735,188 552,019 183,169 14.7 11.1 3.7 1.96 1980 50,044 742,489 568,243 174,246 14.8 11.4 3.5 1.95 1,197,000 1981 50,222 733,183 568,789 164,394 14.6 11.3 3.3 1.93 1,112,734 1982 50,388 745,591 568,231 177,360 14.8 11.3 3.5 1.94 1,131,437 1983 50,573 807,111 583,496 223,615 16.0 11.6 4.4 2.11 1,125,686 1984 50,768 792,035 610,338 181,697 15.6 12.0 3.6 2.08 1,127,627 1985 50,941 762,775 617,548 145,227 15.0 12.1 2.9 2.02 1,179,000 1986 51,143 792,574 565,150 227,424 15.5 11.1 4.4 2.13 1,166,039 1987 51,373 760,851 586,387 174,464 14.8 11.4 3.4 2.07 1,168,136 1988 51,593 744,056 600,725 143,331 14.4 11.6 2.8 2.04 1,080,029 1989 51,770 690,981 600,590 90,391 13.3 11.6 1.7 1.92 1.78 2.33 1,058,414 1990 51,838 657,202 629,602 27,600 12.7 12.1 0.6 1.84 1.69 2.27 1,019,038 1991 51,944 630,813 669,960 −39,147 12.1 12.9 −0.8 1.77 1.61 2.33 957,022 1992 52,056 596,785 697,110 −100,325 11.4 13.4 −2.0 1.67 1.48 2.19 932,272 1993 52,244 557,467 741,662 −184,195 10.7 14.2 −3.5 1.56 1.37 2.07 860,996 1994 52,114 521,545 764,669 −243,124 10.0 14.7 −4.7 1.47 1.28 1.97 798,538 1995 51,728 492,861 792,587 −299,726 9.6 15.4 −5.8 1.40 1.22 1.86 740,172 1996 51,297 467,211 776,717 −309,506 9.2 15.2 −6.1 1.33 1.16 1.77 687,035 1997 50,818 442,581 754,151 −311,570 8.7 14.9 −6.2 1.27 1.11 1.68 596,740 1998 50,370 419,238 719,954 −300,716 8.4 14.4 −6.0 1.20 1.04 1.62 525,329 1999 49,918 389,208 739,170 −349,962 7.8 14.9 −7.0 1.12 0.97 1.51 495,760 2000 49,429 385,126 758,082 −372,956 7.8 15.4 −7.6 1.11 0.96 1.49 434,223 2001 48,923 376,479 745,953 −369,474 7.7 15.3 −7.6 1.085 0.96 1.41 369,750 2002 48,457 390,687 754,911 −364,224 8.1 15.7 −7.6 1.12 1.03 1.47 345,967 2003 48,003 408,591 765,408 −356,817 8.5 16.0 −7.5 1.17 1.09 1.48 315,835 2004 47,622 427,259 761,263 −334,004 9.0 16.0 −7.0 1.21 1.12 1.53 289,065 2005 47,280 426,085 781,964 −355,879 9.0 16.6 −7.6 1.21 1.16 1.48 263,950 2006 46,929 460,368 758,093 −297,725 9.8 16.2 −6.4 1.31 1.21 1.61 229,618 2007 46,646 472,657 762,877 −290,220 10.2 16.4 −6.2 1.34 1.28 1.69 210,454 2008 46,372 510,588 754,462 −243,874 11.0 16.3 −5.3 1.46 1.31 1.72 201,087 2009 46,143 512,526 706,740 −194,214 11.1 15.3 −4.2 1.46 1.33 1.77 194,845 2010 45,962 497,689 698,235 −200,546 10.8 15.2 −4.4 1.44 1.31 1.78 176,774 2011 45,778 502,595 664,588 −161,993 11.0 14.5 −3.5 1.46 1.32 1.80 156,193 2012 45,633 520,704 663,139 −142,435 11.4 14.5 −3.1 1.53 1.39 1.87 141,396 2013 45,553 503,656 662,368 −158,712 11.1 14.6 −3.5 1.51 1.37 1.83 2014 43,001 465,882 632,296 −166,414 10.8 14.7 −3.9 1.50 1.35 1.83 2015 42,844 411,783 594,795 −183,012 9.6 13.9 −4.3 1.51 1.39 1.71 2016 42,672 397,039 583,631 −186,592 9.3 13.6 −4.3 1.47 1.36 1.64 2017 42,386 363,987 574,123 −210,136 8.6 13.5 −5.0 1.38 (e) 2018 335 874 587 665 -251 791 8.0 14.0 -6.0
(e) estimate
Urban live births Urban deaths Urban natural change Urban crude birth rate (per 1,000) Urban crude death rate (per 1,000) Urban natural change (per 1,000) Rural live births Rural deaths Rural natural change Rural crude birth rate (per 1,000) Rural crude death rate (per 1,000) Rural natural change (per 1,000) 1990 442,869 357,114 85,755 12.7 10.2 2.5 214,333 272,488 −58,155 12.7 16.1 −3.4 1991 419,205 380,988 38,917 11.9 10.8 1.1 211,608 288,972 −77,364 12.6 17.2 −4.6 1992 387,696 401,849 −14,153 11.0 11.4 −0.4 209,089 295,261 −86,172 12.5 17.6 −5.1 1993 356,833 432,462 −75,629 10.1 12.2 −2.1 200,634 309,200 −108,566 12.0 18.5 −6.5 1994 328,522 450,823 −122,301 9.3 12.8 −3.5 193,023 313,846 −120,823 11.6 18.8 −7.2 1995 308,408 476,434 −168,026 8.8 13.6 −4.8 184,453 316,153 −131,700 11.1 19.1 −8.0 1996 291,121 460,805 −169,684 8.4 13.3 −4.9 176,090 315,912 −139,822 10.7 19.2 −8.5 1997 274,961 444,446 −169,485 8.0 13.0 −5.0 167,620 309,705 −142,805 10.2 18.9 −8.7 1998 258,724 425,521 −166,797 7.6 12.6 −5.0 160,514 294,433 −133,919 9.9 18.1 −8.2 1999 239,408 439,986 −200,578 7.1 13.1 −6.0 149,800 299,184 −149,384 9.3 18.5 −9.2 2000 238,014 457,069 −219,055 7.2 13.8 −6.6 147,112 301,013 −153,901 9.2 18.8 −9.6 2001 237,228 450,329 −213,101 7.2 13.8 −6.6 139,250 295,623 −156,373 8.7 18.6 −9.9 2002 248,877 454,406 −205,529 7.7 14.0 −6.3 141,811 300,505 −158,694 9.0 19.1 −10.1 2003 266,415 459,965 −193,550 8.3 14.3 −6.0 142,174 305,443 −163,269 9.1 19.6 −10.5 2004 284,361 460,492 −176,131 8.9 14.4 −5.5 142,898 300,769 −157,871 9.3 19.6 −10.3 2005 284,257 471,561 −187,304 8.9 14.8 −5.9 141,829 310,400 −168,571 9.4 20.5 −11.1 2006 306,635 461,774 −155,139 9.6 14.5 −4.9 153,733 296,318 −142,585 10.3 19.8 −9.5 2007 314,065 466,253 −152,188 9.9 14.7 −4.8 158,592 296,624 −138,032 10.7 20.1 −9.4 2008 340,594 462,897 −122,303 10.8 14.6 −3.8 169,995 291,563 −121,568 11.6 19.9 −8.3 2009 339,497 432,294 −92,797 10.8 13.7 −2.9 173,028 274,445 −101,417 11.9 18.9 −7.0 2010 326,587 431,130 −104,543 10.4 13.7 −3.3 171,102 267,105 −96,003 11.9 18.6 −6.7 2011 328,934 411,025 −82,091 10.5 13.1 −2.3 173,661 253,563 −79,902 12.1 17.7 −5.6 2012 341,599 411,787 −70,788 10.9 13.1 −2.2 179,106 251,352 −72,246 12.6 17.7 −5.1 2013 330,284 412,552 −82,268 10.5 13.1 −2.6 173,372 249,816 −76,444 12.3 17.7 −5.4 2014 304,190 391,739 −87,549 10.2 13.2 −3.0 161,692 240,557 −78,865 12.2 18.1 −5.9 2015 266,082 358,749 −92,667 10.4 13.2 −2.8 145,699 236,047 −90,348 11.3 18.0 −6.7 2016 258,688 354,634 −95,946 10.0 13.2 −3.2 138,349 228,997 −90,648 10.8 17.6 −6.8
Note: Data excludes Crimea starting in 2014.[12]
[13][14][15] Birth rate Death rate Natural growth rate The natural population growth of Ukraine since 1950.
Current vital statistics [ edit ]
Number of births for January–October 2018 = 286,064
Number of deaths for January–October 2018 = 484,481
Natural increase from January–October 2018 = −198,417
Note: Starting 2014 territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol and part of the anti-terrorist operation zone are not included in Demographics of Ukraine. These territories are included to the Demographics of Russia. All datas from State Statistics Service of Ukraine. [16]
Life expectancy at birth [ edit ]
Life expectancy at birth in Ukraine by oblast in 2012
total population: 71.37 years
71.37 years male: 66.34 years
66.34 years female: 76.22 years (2013 official)
Average life expectancy at age 0 of the total population.[17]
Period Life expectancy in
Years 1950–1955 61.83 1955–1960 67.11 1960–1965 69.69 1965–1970 70.66 1970–1975 70.57 1975–1980 69.65 1980–1985 69.15 1985–1990 70.55 1990–1995 68.72 1995–2000 67.36 2000–2005 67.46 2005–2010 67.89 2010–2015 71.12
Total fertility rate [ edit ]
6.00 children born/woman (1913 est.)
children born/woman (1913 est.) 5.39 children born/woman (1925 est.)
children born/woman (1925 est.) 1.08 children born/woman (2001)
children born/woman (2001) 1.46 children born/woman (2011)
children born/woman (2011) 1.53 children born/woman (2012)
children born/woman (2012) 1.51 children born/woman (2013)
In 2001 Ukraine recorded the lowest fertility rate ever recorded in Europe for an independent country: 1.08 child/woman. During this year the number of children born was less than half of that born in 1987. Lower rates were recorded only in former East Germany, which registered 0.77 child/woman in 1994, as well as Taiwan (from 2008 to 2010), and both Hong Kong and Macau (from about 2000 to 2010). After neglect by the Kuchma administration, both the Yushchenko and the Yanukovych governments have made increasing the birth rate a priority.
Demographic statistics [ edit ]
Birth data by oblast [ edit ]
Note: Recent data for Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts has been affected by the War in Donbass, and may only include births within the government-held parts of the oblasts.[18]
Year in review 2013 [ edit ]
Compared to 2012, amount of attrition increased by 16,278 persons, or 3.1 to 3.5 persons per 1,000 inhabitants real. Natural decrease was observed in 23 oblasts of the country, while natural increases were recorded only in the capital Kiev, Zakarpattya, Rivne and Volyn oblast (respectively 5,302, 3,689, 2,889 and 1,034 people).
Some regions registered a low natural decline, such as Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Sevastopol, Lviv, Ternopil, Crimea, Kherson and Odessa (respectively, −55, −642, −863, −2,124, −2,875, −2,974, −3,748 and −4,448 people). The largest declines were recorded in Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Poltava and Chernihiv (respectively −28,311, −15,291, −15,007, −12,765, −10,062 and −10,057), regions which have in common a low birth rate and high mortality of a large urban population and a strong rural population aging.
Net migration rate [ edit ]
−5.4 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2015).
Infant mortality rate [ edit ]
9.1 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,564 deaths. (2010)
deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,564 deaths. (2010) 9.0 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,511 deaths. (2011)
deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,511 deaths. (2011) 8.4 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,371 deaths. (2012)
deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,371 deaths. (2012) 8.0 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,030 deaths. (2013)
deaths/1,000 infants live births for 4,030 deaths. (2013) 8.9 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 2,193 death for January–June 2011
deaths/1,000 infants live births for 2,193 death for January–June 2011 8.6 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 2,190 death for January–June 2012
deaths/1,000 infants live births for 2,190 death for January–June 2012 7.8 deaths/1,000 infants live births for 1,993 deaths for January–June 2013[19]
Total fertility rate by oblast [ edit ]
Fertility rate in Ukraine by oblast in 2011
Although none of the oblasts in 2013 has recorded a higher fertility rate 2.10 children per woman. However, the rate has been in rural areas in the Rivne Oblast (2.50) and the Volyn Oblast (2.20). While a very close generational renewal rate was achieved in the Odessa Oblast (2.04), Zakarpattia Oblast (2.00), Mykolaiv Oblast (1.95), Chernivtsi Oblast (1.93) and Zhytomyr Oblast (1.91) weaker when they have been recorded in the Luhansk oblast (1.41), Sumy oblast (1.47) and Cherkasy Oblast (1.53).
The fertility rate of the highest urban areas were recorded in the Zakarpattia Oblast (1.80), the city of Sevastopol (1.57), Volyn Oblast (1.56), Kiev Oblast (1.56) and the Rivne Oblast (1.54). The lowest rates were recorded in the Sumy Oblast (1.23), Kharkiv Oblast (1.26), Cherkasy Oblast (1.28), Chernihiv Oblast (1.28), Chernivtsi Oblast (1.28), Luhansk oblast (1.28), Poltava oblast (1.29), Donetsk oblast (1.29) and Zaporizhia Oblast (1.32).
Other demographics statistics [ edit ]
Population pyramid in 2016
Population change, 1970–2010
Population change, 1970–1979
Population change, 1989–2001
Population change, 1989–2012
Population change of urban settlements, 1970–1989
Population change of urban settlements, 1989–2010
The population of Ukraine has undergone a major crisis since the 1990s. This is mainly because of the high death rate and a very low birth rate. The country's population is shrinking by over 150,000 people every year. However, things have changed a little since the year 2000. The birth rate, which was previously very low, has risen recently.[20]
The fertility rate, however, is fairly low: 1.29 children born/woman. The death rate of almost 15 deaths/1000 persons is higher than the birth rate, which is almost 9.59 births/1000 population.[20]
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review.[20]
One birth every 1 minutes
One death every 48 seconds
Net loss of one person every 2 minutes
One net migrant every 26 minutes
Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.[21]
Population 44,033,874 (July 2017 est.) 45,426,249 (1 January 2013)[22]
Age structure 0-14 years: 15.76% (male 3,571,358/female 3,366,380) 15-24 years: 9.86% (male 2,226,142/female 2,114,853) 25-54 years: 44.29% (male 9,579,149/female 9,921,387) 55-64 years: 13.8% (male 2,605,849/female 3,469,246) 65 years and over: 16.3% (male 2,409,049/female 4,770,461) (2017 est.)
0–14 years: 15.1% = 6,449,171 (2015 official.) 15–64 years: 69.3% = 29,634,710 65 years and over: 15.6% = 6,675,780
0–14 years: 14.8% = 6,989,802 15–64 years: 69.2% = 32,603,475 65 years and over: 16.0% = 7,507,185 (2005 official.)
0–14 years: 21.6% = 11,101,469 15–64 years: 66.7% = 34,320,742 65 years and over: 11.7% = 6,022,934 (1989 official.)
Total fertility rate 1.54 children born/woman (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 191st
Mother's mean age at first birth 24.9 years (2014 est.)
Median age total: 40.6 years. Country comparison to the world: 48th male: 37.4 years female: 43.7 years (2017 est.)
total: 39.8 years
male: 39.7 years
female: 40.1 years (2014 official)
total: 39.7 years
male: 39.5 years
female: 40.1 years (2013 official)
total: 34.8 years
male: 31.9 years
female: 37.7 years (1989 official)
Population growth rate -0.41% (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 220th
Life expectancy at birth total population: 72.1 years Country comparison to the world: 150th male: 67.4 years female: 77.1 years (2017 est.)
Birth rate 10.3 births/1,000 population (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 189th
Death rate 14.4 deaths/1,000 population (2017 est.)
Net migration rate 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 100th
Ethnic groups
Ukrainian 77.8%, Russian 17.3%, Belarusian 0.6%, Moldovan 0.5%, Crimean Tatar 0.5%, Bulgarian 0.4%, Hungarian 0.3%, Romanian 0.3%, Polish 0.3%, Jewish 0.2%, other 1.8% (2001 est.)
Languages
Ukrainian (official) 67.5%, Russian (regional language) 29.6%, other (includes small Crimean Tatar-, Moldovan/Romanian-, and Hungarian-speaking minorities) 2.9% (2001 est.)
Note: in February 2018, the Constitutional Court ruled that 2012 language legislation entitling a language spoken by at least 10% of an oblast's population to be given the status of "regional language" - allowing for its use in courts, schools, and other government institutions - was unconstitutional, thus making the law invalid; Ukrainian remains the country's only official nationwide
Religions
Orthodox (includes Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox (UAOC), Ukrainian Orthodox - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), Ukrainian Orthodox - Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP)), Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish
Note: Ukraine's population is overwhelmingly Christian; the vast majority - up to two-thirds - identify themselves as Orthodox, but many do not specify a particular branch; the UOC-KP and the UOC-MP each represent less than a quarter of the country's population, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church accounts for 8-10%, and the UAOC accounts for 1-2%; Muslim and Jewish adherents each compose less than 1% of the total population (2013 est.)
Urbanization urban population: 69.4% of total population (2018) rate of urbanization: -0.33% annual rate of change (2015-20 est.)
School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education) total: 15 years male: 15 years female: 16 years (2014)
Unemployment, youth ages 15–24 total: 22.4% Country comparison to the world: 56th male: 22.7% female: 21.9% (2015 est.)
Statistic rate of regional capitals [ edit ]
Ethnic groups [ edit ]
Ukrainians Russians Others National structure of the population of Ukraine (2001).
In 2001, the ethnic composition was: Ukrainians 77.8%, Russian 17.3%, Romanian 1.1% (including Moldovan 0.8%), Belarusian 0.6%, Crimean Tatar 0.5%, Bulgarian 0.4%, Hungarian 0.3%, Polish 0.3%, Jewish 1.0%, Pontic Greeks 0.2% and other 1.6% (including Muslim Bulgarians, otherwise known as Torbesh and a microcosm of Swedes of Gammalsvenskby).[23]
Ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine by raions (2001 census)
Bulgarians, Hungarians, Moldovans, Romanians Largest ethnicity in Ukraine's cities and raions according to 2001 census. Legend colors: Ukrainians, Russians
Before World War II [ edit ]
Population of the Ukrainian SSR according to ethnic group 1926–1939 Ethnic
group census 19261 census 19392 Number % Number % Ukrainians 23,218,860 80.0 23,667,509 76.5 Russians 2,677,166 9.2 4,175,299 13.5 Jews 1,574,428 5.4 1,532,776 5.0 Germans 393,924 1.4 392,458 1.3 Poles 476,435 1.6 357,710 1.2 Moldavians / Romanians 257,794 0.9 230,698 0.8 Belarusians 75,842 0.3 158,174 0.5 Pontic Greeks 104,666 0.4 107,047 0.4 Bulgarians 99,278 0.3 83,838 0.3 Tatars 22,281 0.1 55,456 0.2 Romani 13,578 0.0 10,443 0.0 Others 103,935 0.4 174,810 0.6 Total 29,018,187 30,946,218 1 Source: [1].
After World War II [ edit ]
Population of Ukraine according to ethnic group 1959-2001 Ethnic
group census 19591 census 19702 census 19793 census 19894 census 20015 Number % Number % Number % Number % Number % Ukrainians 32,158,493 76.8 35,283,857 74.9 36,488,951 73.6 37,419,053 72.7 37,541,693 77.5 Russians 7,090,813 16.9 9,126,331 19.4 10,471,602 21.1 11,355,582 22.1 8,334,141 17.2 Belarusians 290,890 0.7 385,847 0.8 406,098 0.8 440,045 0.9 275,763 0.6 Moldovans 241,650 0.8 265,902 0.8 293,576 0.8 324,525 0.9 258,619 0.8 Crimean Tatars 193 0.0 3,554 0.0 6,636 0.0 46,807 0.1 248,193 0.5 Bulgarians 219,419 0.5 234,390 0.5 238,217 0.5 233,800 0.5 204,574 0.4 Hungarians 149,229 0.4 157,731 0.3 164,373 0.3 163,111 0.3 156,566 0.3 Romanians 100,863 0.3 112,141 0.3 121,795 0.3 134,825 0.3 150,989 0.3 Poles 363,297 0.9 295,107 0.6 258,309 0.5 219,179 0.4 144,130 0.3 Jews 840,311 2.0 777,126 1.7 634,154 1.3 486,628 1.0 400,000 1.0 Armenians 28,024 0.1 33,439 0.1 38,646 0.1 54,200 0.1 99,894 0.2 Greeks 104,359 0.3 106,909 0.2 104,091 0.2 98,594 0.2 91,548 0.2 Tatars 61,334 0.2 72,658 0.2 83,906 0.2 86,875 0.2 73,304 0.2 Romani 22,515 0.1 30,091 0.1 34,411 0.1 47,917 0.1 47,587 0.1 Azerbaijanis 6,680 0.0 10,769 0.0 17,235 0.0 36,961 0.1 45,176 0.1 Georgians 11,574 0.0 14,650 0.0 16,301 0.0 23,540 0.1 34,199 0.1 Germans 23,243 0.1 29,871 0.1 34,139 0.1 37,849 0.1 33,302 0.1 Gagauzs 23,530 0.1 26,464 0.1 29,398 0.1 31,967 0.1 31,923 0.1 Karaites 3,301 0.0 2,596 0.0 1,845 0.0 1,404 0.0 1,196 0.0 Others 129,338 0.3 157,084 0.3 165,650 0.3 209,172 0.4 363,821 1.1 Total 41,869,046 47,126,517 49,609,333 51,452,034 48,240,902 1 Source: [2]. 2 Source: [3]. 3 Source: [4]. 4 Source: [5]. 5 Source: [6].
Ethnic Groups in Ukraine 2001 [24] Ukrainian (77.8%) Russian (17.3%) Belarusian (0.6%) Moldovan (0.5%) Crimean Tatar (0.5%) Bulgarian (0.4%) Hungarian (0.3%) Romanian (0.3%) Polish (0.3%) Jewish (1.0%) Other (1.8%)
Languages [ edit ]
According to the latest census that took place, the following languages are common in Ukraine Ukrainian 67.5%, Russian 29.6%, Crimean Tatar, Urum (Turkic Greeks), Bulgarian, Moldovan, Polish, Hungarian. The below table gives the total population of various ethnic groups in Ukraine and the primary language, according to the 2001 census.[23]
Native languages according to 2001 census Ukrainian Russian Romanian and Moldovan
Crimean-tatar Bulgarian Hungarian
Religion [ edit ]
A 2016 survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre found that 70% of the population declared themselves believers in any religion, while 6.3% declared themselves non-believers, and 2.7% declared to be atheists.[25] Of the total Ukraian population, 81.9% declared to be Christians, comprising a 63.4% who declared to be Orthodox, 8.5% Greek Rite Catholics, 7.1% simply Christians, 1.9% Protestants, and 1.0% Latin Rite Catholics. Islam comprises 1.1% of the population, while Judaism and Hinduism were the religions of 0.2% of the population each. A further 16.3% of the population believed in some other religion not identifying in one of those listed hitherto; it may comprise Rodnovery and other faiths.[25]
Among those Ukrainians who declared to believe in Orthodoxy, 38.1% declared to be members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kievan Patriarchate (a body that is not canonically recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church), while 23.0% declared to be members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscovian Patriarchate (which is |
al Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will be the third in a series by the IPCC, updating science from 2007.
It says the world is doing too little to achieve a goal agreed in 2010 of limiting warming to below 2 degrees (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, seen as a threshold for dangerous floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.
To get on track, governments may have to turn ever more to technologies for “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) from the air, ranging from capturing and burying emissions from coal-fired power plants to planting more forests that use carbon to grow.
Most projects for capturing carbon dioxide from power plants are experimental. Among big projects, Saskatchewan Power in Canada is overhauling its Boundary Dam power plant to capture a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
And, if the world overshoots concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere consistent with the 2C goal, most scenarios for getting back on track “deploy CDR technologies to an extent that net global carbon dioxide emissions become negative” before 2100, it says.
Temperatures have already risen by 0.8C (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution.
BIOENERGY
To limit warming, the report estimates the world would have to invest an extra $147 billion a year in low-carbon energies, such as wind, solar or nuclear power from 2010 to 2029.
At the same time, investments in fossil fuel energy would have to be reduced by $30 billion annually. And several hundred billion dollars a year would have to go on energy efficiency in major sectors such as transport, buildings and industry.
By contrast, it said that global annual investments in the energy system are now about $1.2 trillion.
And it says there are huge opportunities for cleaning up, for instance by building cities that use less energy for a rising world population. “Most of the world’s urban areas have yet to be constructed,” it says.
Overall, the report estimates that the costs of combating global warming would reduce global consumption of goods and services by between 1 and 4 percent in 2030, 2-6 percent in 2050 and 2-12 percent in 2100, compared to no action.
The IPCC said in September that it is at least 95 percent probable that human activities, led by the burning of fossil fuels, are the dominant cause of global warming since the 1950s, up from 90 percent in a 2007 assessment.
The world has agreed to work out a global U.N. deal by the end of 2015, entering into force from 2020, to fight climate change. But progress has been sluggish.
“Global greenhouse gases have risen more rapidly between 2000 and 2010,” the draft says, with greater reliance on coal than in previous decades. China, the United States and the European Union are the top emitters.
The IPCC cautioned that the findings in the draft, dated Dec. 17, were subject to change. “This is a work in progress which will be discussed and revised in April,” said Jonathan Lynn, spokesman for the IPCC in Geneva.
The report adds many details to earlier drafts. The IPCC’s credibility suffered in 2007 after one of its reports wrongly said that Himalayan glaciers could all melt by 2035, centuries earlier than experts reckon.
The draft says that only the most radical curbs outlined in an IPCC report in September would give a better than 66 percent chance of keeping temperature rises below 2C. The scenario corresponds to greenhouse gas concentrations of 430 to 480 parts per million in the atmosphere - up from about 400 now. (Editing by Alison Williams)Pygmy blue-tongue lizards, once thought extinct, bred in SA's Monarto Zoo
Updated
Australia's pygmy blue-tongue lizards are so rare they were once believed to be extinct, but 14 of the little creatures have been born in South Australia.
Fun facts: Found only in South Australia's mid-north region between Kapunda and Peterborough
The smallest reptile of the blue-tongue family, although they have distinct pink tongues
Adult lizard less than 18 centimetres in length
Spend most of their time in disused spider burrows
Monarto Zoo successfully bred the lizards in captivity in what they have hailed a conservation world first.
The babies — about 10 centimetres in length and, contrary to the name, bearing distinctive pink tongues — were born to five different females at the zoo last month.
The lizards have started exploring the burrows in their enclosure, emerging only to feed and bask in the sun.
Zoos SA conservation programs manager Phil Ainsley said the birth of 14 pygmy blue-tongue lizards would help protect the species from extinction.
"Over the last few weeks, the little lizards have become more active, venturing out of their burrows where they have been seen eating crickets," he said.
"The pygmy blue-tongue is one of the rarest reptiles in the country and we need to do everything we can to ensure the survival of this species.
"Zoos SA has been involved in the conservation of this species since its rediscovery back in 1992, so this is an amazing success story and a resounding endorsement for our purpose-built breeding facility that has only been in use for just over 18 months."
The pygmy blue-tongue had not been seen in its natural habitat for more than 30 years, but in 1992 a herpetologist found the body inside the stomach contents of a roadkill snake he was examining.
Nowadays, the little reptile is only found in South Australia's mid-north region between Kapunda and Peterborough.
Topics: animals, zoos, zoology, adelaide-5000, monarto-south-5254, murray-bridge-5253, sa
First postedAntoine Ealy, Federal Correctional Complex, Coleman, Florida.
It began with a Polaroid.
Artist Alyse Emdur was perusing a family photo album in 2005 and discovered a picture that seemed familiar. She saw herself at five-years-old, posing in front of a painted beach scene with her sister and older brother. But this wasn't your typical family portrait: it was taken at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, New Jersey, where her brother was incarcerated. "It amplifed the sadness of visiting him," Emdur writes in the introduction to her book, "Prison Landscapes." "The painting behind us represented freedom, the exact opposite of the prison's mission and the reality my brother was living. My sister and I could go to the beach, but our brother could not go with us." From 1988 to 1998, her family would visit the different institutions where her brother, Bruce, was serving a sentence for car theft and possession of illegal substances. In each visiting room, she saw a new backdrop. These hand-crafted murals were produced by inmates and would depict various environments outside of the prison walls. Some were depictions of forest scenes or natural settings, while others showed whimsical worlds conjured from the inmates' imaginations. But for Emdur, these backdrops were pieces of art; a kind of folk art created by a population intentionally cut off from the world.
After discovering that photograph, Emdur invited prisoners to send her their own family photographs taken in front of prison visiting room backdrops, thus creating a community-generated project. After accumulating hundreds of portraits and documenting portrait studios in ten prisons, Emdur assembled her new book, "Prison Landscapes," which provides access to the interior world inhabited by the incarcerated.
Artbound caught up with Emdur to discuss the process of obtaining these images inside prisons, the micro-economies of incarcerated artists, and how the project has informed her own works.
Prison Visiting Room Backdrop, State Correctional Facility, Woodbourne, New York.
Describe for us what it was like finding that photograph of your family with your brother in prison. How did the meaning of that photograph change for you over time?
When I first discovered this image, I was just an undergraduate student at the Cooper Union. I was home from college visiting my parents on winter break. Looking through family photo albums, anyone's family photos, and vernacular photography in general, is a deep pleasure of mine so it has become a sort of ritual. Each year I visit family, I look through a few albums. I look through the same albums over and over again. They never get old. At the time, all of the work I was making embodied a dual spirit of darkness and happiness. I traveled around the country-visiting Optimist clubs, photographed lottery winners as they received their checks, and built a seven-foot sign in the style of playful Las Vegas strip signage that declared, "Goodbye." Discovering this photograph was a revelatory moment for me because it summed up my entire art practice in one image. It was an "ah-ha" moment. The image also walked me back to the memories of visiting my brother in prison. I realized how much those experiences shaped my attitude toward the world. With all of this said, I was never and am still not interested in making art about myself. Although this image and my family history inspired the book, I used it as an entryway to discover other people's family photographs in front of visiting room backdrops. After untangling my own relationship to the image, I thought painted prison backdrops were jarring but kind gestures. Now I see them as a way for prisons to control the representation of prisons and prisoners.
Backdrop painted by Darrell Van Mastrigt in State Correctional Institution, Graterford, Pennsylvania.
When did you realize that these prison backdrops were going to be the focus of your own art?
After discovering this photograph, I sat with it and held it in my mind for nearly three years before realizing that prison visiting room backdrops could be the subject of a book. When I found the image, I instantly new that it was important but it took me a few years to unlock what it meant to me and what it could mean to others. In those three years, I corresponded with several inmates asking them to send me photographs of themselves in front of these backdrops. At the time, I saw the correspondence as research and did not realize that it would become a central part of the artwork. After receiving a few portraits from pen pals and realizing that the backdrops are in most state and federal prison visiting rooms, I knew someone had to uncover them.
How did you first go about documenting these backdrops?
My initial impulse was to make portraits of incarcerated artists in front of their own backdrops. After a few leads from pen pals, I proposed the idea to an incarcerated backdrop painter in Oregon, where I was living at the time. He was of course thrilled but the Warden quickly rejected the idea. This rejection helped me realize that collecting photographs of prisoners by prisoners is the best way to document these portrait studios. Aside from that, the portraits that I began receiving from pen pals were mind blowing. I didn't want my presence as an outside photographer to interfere with the way prisoners pose for photos so I decided that I would not be behind the camera.
After years of collecting the portraits, the framing of the images became more and more prominent. The inmates who volunteer to run the portrait studios are specifically instructed to not photograph the room beyond the edges of the backdrops. As a result, the portraits intentionally hide everything beyond the frame of the painted landscapes. Understanding that many viewers of my book, Prison Landscapes have never been in prison, I wanted to reveal more than the collected portraits allow. I ultimately photographed portrait studios in ten prisons with a large format camera. My goal for these images was to pull the camera back and to reveal sliver details- security cameras, mirrors, bars, and furniture. My photographs show the contrast between the hand-painted backdrops and the institutional architecture of the prisons.
Darrell Van Mastrigt, State Correctional Institution, Graterford, Pennsylvania.
Have you ever met the prisoners that were your pen pals in person?
Only once. In the summer of 2011, as the book developed, I went on a road trip to photograph portrait studios in 10 prisons. On the first day of this two-week prison tour, I met Darrell Van Mastrigt in State Correctional Institution -- Graterford in Pennsylvania. Darrell's painting, which I photographed later that day, is featured on the cover of "Prison Landscapes." Prior to the visit, we had been corresponding through the mail for about a year. Through our correspondence, I interviewed him about his experiences as an incarcerated backdrop painter. The interview is printed in the book. There was a delay waiting to get into the visiting room so we unfortunately only had one hour. As I walked down the steps to the narrow visiting room, I could slowly see Darrell's feet, legs, then chest, then a jumpsuit and his white arm with tattoos and I knew it was him. Then I saw his face. He had a big smile, long hair, and sweat dripping down his forehead. The volume was loud and the scent of body odor and cafeteria food filled the room. After selecting snacks from a wall of vending machines -- Darrell had Doritos and a Mountain Dew, and I selected plain Lays potato chips and a water -- we felt instantly at ease and thankful for the hour. We had so many questions for one another -- there was not a single break in conversation. I was so engaged in our conversation that most of the activity in the visiting room fell out of my periphery.
Directly after the visit, I went to the car in the parking lot to bring in the camera equipment -- a Toyo field camera and strobe lights -- back in after visiting hours. I met the Public Information Officer in the lobby before going through security a second time. Entering the prison as a prisoner's visitor and then again as a photographer was alarming. When I went in as a visitor, no one working knew I would be back as a photographer an hour later. As photographers, prison guards suddenly seemed to think I was entitled to more respect.
Victoria Williams, Valley State Prison for Women, Chowchilla, California.
What interested you about the social interactions that would happen in those prison visiting rooms?
Prison visiting rooms are unlike any other space in the prison. They are clean and sanitized and intended to be the face of the prison for the public. They are also spaces of emotional and intimate meetings -- a mother who drove 20 hours to see her son, a child meeting his dad for the first time, someone's first visit in over a decade. In the visiting room there is a heightened understanding that visiting hours are a sacred and often joyful time for everyone receiving visits.
You've mentioned the micro-economies of the prison artists. What do you see in their works that you related with? What was different than the processes that you employ to make art?
Backdrops, murals, portraits, tattoos, calligraphy, greeting cards, and gifts are the most popular visual art forms in prisons. In the artwork of prisoners, I see an attempt to escape and meaningfully connect with one another and with people on the outside. My work is also about connecting. The aim of the book was to humanize prisoners, give inmates an opportunity to represent themselves and to be seen by the outside world. It was also to reveal the extent of control prisons have over the representation of America's prison population but on a personal level, it was a chance for me to connect with other people who have visited loved ones in prison and who posed in front of these backdrops. So although our artwork is very different, we share this common desire.
Prison Visiting Room at State Correctional Facility Otisville, NY.
'Prison Landscapes' Book Launch is tonight, Tuesday, January 29th, 8-10 p.m. at Human Resources in Los Angeles' Chinatown.
The book is available for purchase on Amazon.
Dig this story? Sign up for our newsletter to get unique arts & culture stories and videos from across Southern California in your inbox. Also, follow Artbound on Facebook and Twitter.With unemployment high and the Dow Jones industrial average bumping about, the big debate this summer is how to prevent a double-dip recession resembling that of the late 1930s. Some say Washington should spend more, arguing that government austerity triggered the collapse in 1937 that erased previous gains. Others say that cutting spending now will strengthen the economy generally and preclude dramatic downturns.
President Obama may be about to repeat Franklin D. Roosevelt's mistakes -- but not the ones captured in this narrow discussion.
By fixating on the debt and stimulus plans, Obama and Congress are overlooking challenges to the economy from taxes, employment and the entrepreneurial environment. President Roosevelt's great error was to ignore such factors -- and the result was that sickening double dip.
Taxation is an obvious area the Obama administration ought to reconsider. Income taxes, the dividend tax and capital gains taxes are all set to rise as the Bush tax cuts expire. The Obama administration portrays these increases as necessary for budgetary and social reasons. A society in which the wealthy pay their share, the message goes, has a stronger economy. The administration and congressional Democrats are also striving to ensure that businesses pony up. The carried-interest provision in the tax extender bill seeks to raise rates on gains by private equity and hedge funds. If that were not enough, a so-called enterprise value tax would be levied on partnerships that sought to elude the new high taxes by selling their companies.
Roosevelt, too, pursued the dual purposes of revenue and social good. In 1935 he signed legislation known as the "soak the rich" law. FDR, more radical than Obama in his class hostility, spoke explicitly of the need for "very high taxes." Roosevelt's tax trap was the undistributed-profits tax, which hit businesses that chose not to disgorge their cash as dividends or wages. The idea was to goad companies into action.
The outcome was not what the New Dealers envisioned. Horrified by what they perceived as an existential threat, businesses stopped buying equipment and postponed expansion. They hired lawyers to find ways around the undistributed-profits tax. In May 1938, after months of unemployment rates in the high teens, the Democratic Congress cut back the detested tax. That bill became law without the president's signature.
Then there is labor policy. Obama announced this year that the federal government would award contracts to firms with more generous pay and benefit packages. With its support of private- and public-sector unions -- recall its treatment of the automakers' unions in the 2009 bailout -- the administration generally wants wages or compensation to be high.
Roosevelt's flamboyant pursuit of a similar goal cost the economy dearly. The National Industrial Recovery Act and, later, the Wagner Act gave workers the power to demand higher wages. They got them. But employers struck back, choosing not to hire or rehiring many fewer workers than they otherwise might have. In the later 1930s, the divide deepened between those with jobs and the unemployed. Economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian wrote in the Journal of Political Economy that the politically driven wage increases were the most important factor in the double-digit unemployment of the later 1930s. A popular Gershwin song of the period, "Nice Work If You Can Get It," captured the bitterness.
What about the third factor, the entrepreneurial environment? The Obama administration places a premium on action. When it comes to spending, the idea seems to be that any spending is better than none. Big new laws -- financial reform -- are put forward to inspire confidence.
But change that is too arbitrary and too frequent petrifies firms, especially before their rules have been tested in the courts. As Verizon Communications chief executive Ivan Seidenberg noted recently in a Business Roundtable speech: "By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses."
This analysis echoes those of Depression-era entrepreneurs. In 1938 Lammot du Pont, head of the eponymous chemical concern, spoke of a "fog of uncertainty" slowing business and noted in the company's annual report that arbitrary government always slowed business down: "by land and sea the universal practice under conditions of fog is to slacken speed."
What about the old spend-or-save debate? The evidence suggests that easier money did indeed help end this second slump. But a larger factor was Roosevelt's decision to stop attacking business and turn to foreign policy. When Republicans made gains in the 1938 midterms, it became clear that the New Deal era of mega-intervention was ending.
It is that backtracking of the later '30s that is relevant to recovery today.
Amity Shlaes is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression."An Austrian tourist was punched in the face after she 'politely rejected the advances' of a passerby as she left a tube station.
The 60-year-old woman, who does not wish to be named, was approached by the man outside of Warwick Avenue station, in north west London, at around 8pm on Friday, March 10.
Metropolitan Police Officers said the victim 'politely' rejected his attempts to 'chat her up' but the man followed her as she walked along Formosa Street, near Paddington.
The 60-year-old Austrian woman, who does not wish to be named, was approached by a man outside of Warwick Avenue station at around 8pm on Friday, March 10
She rejected his advances but he punched her in the face, leaving her needing surgery for her injuries
He then grabbed her from behind and repeatedly struck her in the face, leaving her needing surgery on her injuries.
She was taken to a London hospital after a passer-by found her.
Police have released the image as part of their appeal for information.
Her attacker is described as a white man, aged around 25 to 27, around 5ft 8in tall, with short brown hair and brown eyes.
He was wearing light-coloured trousers, a brown jacket and a black baseball cap.
Detective Constable Mike Reilly, the investigating officer from Westminster CID, said: 'This was a vicious, unprovoked attack that has left the victim very shaken. Her injuries are so severe that she requires surgery.
'Warwick Avenue is a busy area, especially at 8pm on a Friday evening. Someone must have seen something and I'd appeal for anyone with information to come forward as soon as possible so we can bring the perpetrator to justice.'
Any witnesses or anyone with information is asked to contact Westminster CID via 020 7321 8260 or @MetCC.
Information can also be reported anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or online at www.crimestoppers-uk.org.Samsung just reported a fantastic Q1, but the company didn't breathe a word about what could be its most outstanding achievement yet: according to research firm Strategy Analytics, the company just passed Nokia as the world's largest phone maker, at least in terms of shipments. Samsung shipped an estimated 93.5 million handsets this quarter, the firm reported, including 44.5 million smartphones, while Nokia apparently shipped 82.7 million phones. Strategy Analytics says that Nokia had been the market leader for shipments since 1998, when it displaced Motorola as the lead. Now, South Korea-based Samsung is standing tall, and if the figures are correct, Apple and Samsung combined make half of all smartphones shipped around the world.
That's not good enough for Samsung, of course, which wants to take an even firmer lead next month with the Galaxy S III.National Football League Playoff Chances Philadelphia +67.8, Minnesota -67.8 Add your own league
Games Above.500 Chance Will Make Playoffs
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FINAL 2018 NFL STANDINGS
Big Games
Who should we root for? Explain
Week of 12/15 Minnesota 41 Miami 17 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Indianapolis +2.7 Philadelphia -3.1 Minnesota +14.6 Tennessee +3.8 Atlanta Out *No Washington -4.4 Carolina -3.0 Miami -9.6 Green Bay -2.4 LA Rams 23 Philadelphia 30 8:20 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Philadelphia +19.7 Minnesota -9.7 Washington -5.0 Pittsburgh 17 New England 10 4:25 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore -10.4 -0.6 Indianapolis -4.2 Pittsburgh +19.6 +0.7 Tennessee -2.5 Cincinnati No NY Giants 0 Tennessee 17 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore -3.2 Pittsburgh -2.5 Tennessee +12.8 Miami -4.3 Denver Out NY Giants No Jacksonville 13 Washington 16 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Chicago -0.1 Minnesota -6.7 Washington +13.1 Indianapolis 23 Dallas 0 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore -1.9 Dallas -0.5 Indianapolis +9.7 +0.2 Pittsburgh -2.3 Miami -4.5 Baltimore 20 Tampa Bay 12 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore +8.0 +0.4 Indianapolis -1.0 Pittsburgh -5.7 -0.2 Tennessee -1.0 Denver 16 Cleveland 17 8:20 PM Sat 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Indianapolis +3.2 Cleveland +0.8 Denver -5.2 No Chicago 24 Green Bay 17 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Chicago In +0.4 Minnesota +0.9 Washington +1.2 Green Bay -4.3 Carolina 9 New Orleans 12 8:15 PM Mon 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Philadelphia +2.4 Carolina -4.1 Buffalo 14 Detroit 13 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Detroit -3.2 NY Jets 22 Houston 29 4:30 PM Sat 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Houston +1.6 +0.8 San Francisco 26 Seattle 23 4:05 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Seattle -0.8 Cincinnati 30 Oakland 16 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Cincinnati +0.2 Week of 12/22 LA Chargers 10 Baltimore 22 8:20 PM Sat 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Houston -0.2 Baltimore +35.7 +2.2 Indianapolis -7.7 -0.3 Pittsburgh -21.1 -0.9 Tennessee -4.0 Miami -2.6 Philadelphia 32 Houston 30 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Houston -0.7 -2.2 Dallas -3.7 Philadelphia +25.1 Minnesota -12.9 Washington Out No Detroit 9 Minnesota 27 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Philadelphia -15.0 Minnesota +25.3 +0.2 Washington -7.2 Carolina Out No Tennessee 25 Washington 16 4:30 PM Sat 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore -4.9 -0.2 Dallas +1.9 Philadelphia +1.6 Pittsburgh -3.0 Minnesota +6.6 Tennessee +11.2 Washington -10.4 Miami -3.2 New Orleans 31 Pittsburgh 28 4:25 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Houston In Baltimore +2.3 +0.5 Indianapolis +7.2 +0.2 Pittsburgh -17.8 -0.8 Tennessee +7.8 Indianapolis 28 NY Giants 27 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Indianapolis +7.3 +0.2 Pittsburgh -6.2 -0.2 Dallas 27 Tampa Bay 20 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Dallas In Minnesota -1.7 Miami 7 Jacksonville 17 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl New England In Miami Out No Carolina 10 Atlanta 24 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Carolina Out No Seattle 38 Kansas City 31 4:25 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Seattle In +0.2 New England 24 Buffalo 12 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl New England In +0.5 Miami -1.2 Week of 12/30 Tennessee 17 Indianapolis 33 8:20 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Indianapolis In +1.5 Tennessee Out No Washington 0 Philadelphia 24 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Philadelphia +28.1 +0.1 Minnesota -28.1 -0.3 Minnesota 10 Chicago 24 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Philadelphia +21.2 +0.1 Minnesota -21.2 -0.2 Baltimore 26 Cleveland 24 4:25 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore In +1.4 Pittsburgh -17.7 -0.6 Pittsburgh 19 Cincinnati 16 4:05 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Baltimore -5.4 -0.4 Pittsburgh +5.4 +0.2 New England 38 NY Jets 3 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl New England +1.4 Kansas City 35 Oakland 3 1:00 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl Kansas City +1.3 LA Chargers -0.9 LA Rams 48 San Francisco 32 4:25 PM Sun 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl LA Rams +0.7 Chicago -0.8 * A starred outcome could have no effect or just a really small effect. The simulation did not run long enough to know.BOULDER, Colo. – The USA Eagles’ historic match against the New Zealand All Blacks at Soldier Field, sponsored by AIG, is officially sold out, USA Rugby announced Friday.
Tickets for the Nov. 1 match at the 61,500-seat home of the National Football League’s Chicago Bears were first released to registered fans June 13 through a unique pre-sale opportunity. By the general on-sale date, June 16, 20,000 tickets had been sold.
The highest attendance ever for an international rugby union match in the United States – 20,181 – was recorded at a match between the Eagles and Ireland at BBVA Compass Stadium in Houston, Texas, June 7, 2013. The Eagles’ match against the New Zealand Maori All Blacks at PPL Park in Philadelphia, Pa., last November set the record for a largest sell-out crowd with 18,500 tickets sold.
A record crowd in the stands will also be dwarfed by the number of viewers watching the live broadcast on NBC. Universal Sports Network will host a pre-game show at 2 p.m. CT before NBC begins its live telecast at 2:30 p.m. The official match kick-off time is 3 p.m., but fans are encouraged to get to their seats early to hear Jim Cornelison and SOL3 MIO sing the national anthems of the United States and New Zealand, respectively, and to see the world famous haka performed.
“This sellout crowd speaks to the growing popularity of rugby in the U.S.,” said Gary Quinn, vice president of programming & planning for NBC Sports Group. “More than 61,000 passionate fans at a historic venue like Soldier Field will paint a fantastic picture for the audience at home watching this game on NBC next Saturday.”
“It’s been a while since we’ve hosted the All Blacks and I think you can tell with this sell out,” USA Rugby Chief Executive Officer Nigel Melville said. “The USA is growing as a rugby nation both on and off the field; I know the atmosphere in Soldier Field will be electric. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase the global game of rugby to American sports fans at an iconic football stadium in Chicago and across the country via a live NBC broadcast.”
Select merchandise is already available for sale on Shop USA Rugby, with a wider assortment of gear set to be sold in the stadium.
Fans without tickets can still experience rugby fever in Chicago during the week of the match. A Rookie Rugby Festival, organized by AIG, the Illinois Youth Rugby Association, and USA Rugby, will be held in Jackson Park Saturday, Oct. 25. More than 30,000 kids in Chicago have been introduced to the flag version of the sport with AIG’s Rugby in a Box initiative, and they will demonstrate what they have learned with each other.
“We are thrilled, albeit not surprised, by the official sell-out,” AIG Global Head of Sponsorship Daniel Glantz said. “As an Official Partner of both the USA and New Zealand sides we are excited for this milestone for the sport of rugby here in the U.S.”
Rookie Eagle, the Eagles’ mascot, will take a tour of Chicago Wednesday, Oct. 29. The famous Chicago Bean and the Willis Tower Skydeck are just two of Rookie’s afternoon destinations, with a mouth-watering finale scheduled.
Union Station will be the scene of the VIP rugby event of the year in USA Rugby Trust’s USA vs. All Blacks Gala. Select Eagles and All Blacks stars will be in attendance, as will more than 700 attendees. While registration for the Gala is closed, interested donors will have the opportunity to bid on a selection of memorabilia during the auction.
On match day, the #USAvAllBlacks Fan Fest will help kick off the festivities in Soldier Field’s Stadium Green. Fans can interact with rugby activities from AIG, Heathrow Express, World Rugby Shop, and Smith & Forge Hard Cider, while Astellas Pharma US, Inc., and Men’s Health Network will provide free health screenings.
For more information on events and game-day activities, visit the official event website.
New Zealand is playing an international match in the United States for the first time since 1980. The game in San Diego drew a reported 14,000 fans, who witnessed a New Zealand win. The All Blacks are the current Web Ellis Cup Trophy holders following a Rugby World Cup win on home soil in 2011.
“We are really pleased that American sports fans have responded so strongly to this very special opportunity to see their national side take on the All Blacks,” said Steve Tew, chief executive of New Zealand Rugby. “This is a great result for USA Rugby, as well as New Zealand Rugby’s key sponsors, Principal Partner adidas and Major Global Sponsor AIG, who have all worked very hard to help make this test a success.
“Right from the outset we thought this match would be a great fit for a city which is so passionate about sport, so to see this historic test match now sold out is great news. This will be a really special week in Chicago and we are very much looking forward to arriving on Sunday.”
Both the Eagles and All Blacks have announced their November Tour rosters. USA Rugby reached an agreement with Premiership Rugby to release U.S.-eligible players for the match in Chicago, which is not in the IRB’s end-of-year-test window.
Follow live match updates from kickoff at Soldier Field on Twitter with @USARugby and the #USAvAllBlacks hashtag. Submit a video for the #AnswerTheChallenge campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and be entered to win two tickets to the match and touch line access to the All Blacks’ cultural challenge, the haka.
The Legacy Agency has acted as USA Rugby’s exclusive commercial agent for the match.
About The Legacy Agency/TLA Worldwide
TLA Worldwide plc (TLA:LN) and its subsidiary, The Legacy Agency, Inc., is a leading athlete representation and sports marketing business with a full service offering to its clients in baseball, broadcasting, coaching, endorsement and golf talent. In addition, it also provides a range of services in respect of media and corporate consultancy, sports sponsorship and event production to many sportspeople and corporate clients. The company’s success and growth potential is founded on three key pillars: the competency of the underlying businesses, their complementary practices and the strength and experience of the management team. With over 55 full-time personnel, TLA serves its clients from 10 locations worldwide including its principal offices in London, UK; New York and Newport Beach, USA; and Melbourne, Australia. For more information, please visit www.legacy-agency.comOn Tuesday the Buffalo Sabres, courtesy the My One Buffalo app revealed some teaser images of the soon to be released 2018 Sabres Winter Classic jersey.The first teaser we saw showed us that the classic royal blue and yellow will be on the jersey. We also get to see that there will be a crossed swords logo on the pants and there will be a yellow stripe running down the pants.Teaser #2 shows us that the TV numbers will be solid blue. We did not get to see the numbers on the back or the NOB (Name On Back), so we will have to wait to see if they match or have any additional features.We can also see some arm striping that matches the Fanatics hat we saw a few weeks back.Teaser #3 indicates that the full Buffalo with script logo will be on one shoulder. We can also see that the shoulder yokes will not have yellow trim and are simply blue. If you look at the collar, you can see that the wool effect from the front terminates into a standard collar in the back.Teaser #4 shows us that the 2018 Winter Classic logo is on the right shoulder yoke. This also lets us know that the full Buffalo with |
mustachioed men. There was also a picture of Dr. Korn himself, sitting next to his “telephotographic apparatus.” He had a healthy mustache, too.Outgoing U.S. Official Urges Diplomats to ‘Stay’ and Protect Constitution
A senior career diplomat delivered a soaring and thinly-veiled critique of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy in a farewell address Tuesday that pleaded with colleagues to stay in their positions and uphold America’s longstanding policies of openness and liberty.
“We still owe something to America,” said Tom Countryman, the outgoing under secretary of state for arms control, at a private goodbye party at the State Department. “A policy without professionals is by definition an amateur policy. You have to help make the choices that bring this country forward.”
The remarks came hours after at least 900 State Department officials defied the White House and delivered a formal dissent memo criticizing the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim majority countries. A day earlier, White House spokesman Sean Spicer, responding to early reports of the dissent, had slammed Foggy Bottom’s “career bureaucrats,” opening an early rift with the department’s rank-and-file. “They should either get with the program or they can go,” he said. There were no signs Tuesday of mass defections at the agency, though several officials have retired in recent days, including Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland.
Countryman didn’t name Trump or reference his travel ban directly, but his meaning was clear to listeners in the room. He said the torch carried by the Statue of Liberty “is not only a magnet for immigrants, it is a projector. It shines the promise of democracy around the world.”
“If we wall ourselves off from the world, we will extinguish that projection of liberty just as surely as the Gospel says ‘if you put your lamp under a bushel basket,’” he added.
More than a hundred State Department officials filled the room with cups and flutes of champagne in hand, including the Acting Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. The mood in the room was mostly somber as Countryman delivered his warning to diplomats. Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, is expected to win Senate approval this week and promptly replace Shannon.
Several senior career State Department officials were pushed out of their jobs last week, including Countryman who received the news while he was en route to Rome on Wednesday for an international summit on nuclear weapons. He returned to the U.S. immediately in an unceremonious termination after 35 years as a foreign service officer.
“One of you here compared the situation to the scene in Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi is struck down,” he said, referring to his own ouster. “I find that touching.”
“Another compared it to the scene when Princess Leia strangles Jabba the Hutt and I find that confusing,” he added, to thunderous laughter.
In perhaps the most direct criticism of Trump, a former real estate tycoon and author of the Art of the Deal, Countryman said the trade of business and dealmaking does not often translate to diplomacy and governing.
“Business made America great and business leaders are among the key partners of the Department of State,” he said. “But let’s be clear: despite similarities, a dog is not a cat, baseball is not football and diplomacy is not a business. Human rights are not a business and democracy most assuredly is not a business.”
In his remarks, he referenced the Chinese government’s brand of transactional diplomacy that is often criticized for prioritizing the energy demands of its people over human rights and democracy.
“If our interaction with other countries is only a business transaction and not a partnership with allies and friends, we’ll lose that game,” he said. “China practically invented transactional diplomacy. If we choose to play their game, Beijing will run the table.”
He also emphasized that the Russian government, which funds media outlets that advance the Kremlin’s viewpoint around the world, should not be a model for the United States government.
“If our public statements become indistinguishable from disinformation and propaganda we will lose our credibility,” he said. “And if we choose to play our cards that way, we will lose that game — at least to Moscow.”
In his parting remark, he urged his colleagues to remain “tireless” in upholding their oath to the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic.”NCSL's The Canvass
can•vass (n.)
Compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results by a political subdivision.
Ranked Choice Voting Has Its Red-Carpet Moment in 2017
Among the more notable developments on Election Night 2016 (wait there was only one?) was that Maine became the first state in the country to approve the use of ranked choice voting for state elections, including state legislative races. Ranked choice voting, sometimes called instant runoff voting, is a practice that’s used most often by cities and towns for local and municipal elections and sometimes by states for overseas and military voters in the case of a runoff election. Now that it’s burst onto the scene in a big way, NCSL decided to take a deeper dive into some of the basics, like:
What is ranked-choice voting and how does it work?
What’s the why for legislators?
What are the concerns for election administrators?
What’s happening in 2017 legislative sessions?
What Is Ranked Choice Voting and How Does It Work?
Ranked choice voting works just as it sounds. Voters rank all candidates for a given office according to their preference—first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. Voters aren’t limited to simply picking one option as in winner-take-all elections. Instead, voters can rank multiple options in order of their preference, especially if they feel multiple candidates would be qualified to hold the office.
“With Ranked Choice Voting, you have the freedom to vote for the candidate you like best, without worrying that you will help to elect the candidate you like least,” said Representative Andrew McLean (D-Maine, right). “Ranked Choice Voting rewards consensus candidates and ensures that candidates who are opposed by a majority of voters can never win. This better voting system gives more voice and more choice to voters.”
Ranking the candidates is the easy part. The more complicated part comes in how the votes are counted, mainly because the votes may have to be counted more than once. In a typical plurality election, the candidate who receives the most votes wins. But in ranked-choice voting, a winner is not declared until one candidate receives 50 percent plus one or above. Here’s how to get there:
First, the votes are counted per each voter’s number one preference.
If no candidate receives 50 percent or more of the vote, then the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and the votes are counted again.
If a voter’s number one choice was the eliminated candidate, then the vote is given to that voter’s second choice candidate.
Repeat with choices down the list until one candidate tops 50 percent.
Believe it or not, ranked choice voting isn’t a novel idea. It originated in Europe in the late 19th century and was first used in elections in Australia in the early 20th century. In fact, the U.S. has used the system before—several cities adopted it throughout the 1920s and 1930s, according to the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. It fell out of favor in the 1950s until a resurgent adoption by cities in the last two decades. Currently, 10 cities use ranked choice voting including Cambridge, Mass.; Minneapolis and St. Paul; and San Francisco, Oakland and other Bay Area cities in California. Nine other jurisdictions have laws allowing it, but have not yet implemented. Additionally, ranked choice voting is used by colleges and universities, private nongovernment organizations and even by the Academy Awards for deciding Best Picture. (Be sure to check out media outlet Vox’s video scrutinizing the RCV process, and FairVote executive director Rob Richie’s response to the criticism.)
What’s the Why for Legislators?
Why should legislators care about ranked choice voting? Let’s look at some of the pros and cons.
Opponents argue that plurality seems to work just fine. Here’s the kicker from ranked-choice supporters: in a plurality election with several candidates, the winner may receive less than a majority of the votes (i.e. less than 50 percent). Cited often is the 2010 Maine governor’s race when winning candidate Paul LePage received approximately 38 percent of the vote among a divided field of four candidates. Supporters of ranked-choice argue that candidates should receive at least 50 percent of the vote to win to indicate a broader base of support from their constituents. Another instance took place in Hawaii: special elections to fill congressional seats are done without primaries in the Aloha State and in 2010, a Republican won a special election for the 1st Congressional District with 39 percent of the vote. The rest of the vote was split among several Democrats in the race.
Another benefit, depending on whom you ask, of ranked choice voting is limiting the ability of independent or minor party candidates to play spoiler. In a plurality election, it’s possible for third party candidates to siphon off votes from other candidates who might otherwise receive a certain base of support. One can’t help but think of Ralph Nader and the Green Party in the 2000 presidential election when some say that votes for him swung the election to George W. Bush. Still, third parties would need to receive a certain level of support for ranked choice to effect limiting their influence.
Ranked choice voting gives independent and minor party candidates a different role. Voters can cast their first preference for someone from the Green Party or the Libertarian Party and know that, if the vote counting goes to a second level, their second choice—a Democrat or a Republican—will get their vote. They can vote their heart, without fear of throwing a race to someone they especially do not want.
Ranked choice voting may also bolster access for military and overseas voters when a primary race necessitates a runoff. States must adhere to federal law mandating ballots be sent 45 days ahead of time to overseas voters—but if there is a runoff, getting a second ballot to them is nearly impossible. Five states—Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina—have chosen to use a ranked choice system for military and overseas voters to ensure they still have a vote in the runoff. It’s sometimes called instant runoff voting but it works very much like ranked choice with some slight nuances.
Ranked choice voting could help eliminate separate runoff elections in those 11 states that have provisions for primary runoff elections. Since running any election is costly and time-consuming, this may be an increasingly interesting option for states.
Ranked choice voting is not without criticism. What happens if a voter decides to only vote for one candidate and not rank the others (sometimes called “bullet” voting)?
“It’s that voter’s choice to not rank the candidates so that therefore is an exhausted ballot. Voters can vote for as few or as many candidates as they would like,” says Gary Bartlett of the Ranked Choice Voting Center. “It’s a choice of whether you vote for one, some or all.”
Others have expressed concern with the idea that candidates with fewer first-choice votes could end up winning. “The loser’s voters that opted to rank their choices will have their ballots pulled and re-tabulated,” said Representative Heather Sirocki (R-Maine, left) in a 2016 op-ed opposing the ballot measure in Maine. “This means the ballots of the loser(s) will determine the winner. Some voters, the voters of the loser(s), would get to vote more than once.”
While supporters argue that ranked choice forces candidates to appeal for second and third place votes, doubters say that today’s polarized environment likely won’t result in voters significantly crossing the aisle and that nonpartisan municipal races are a poor indicator of what would happen with partisan statewide elections.
What Are the Concerns for Election Administrators?
So, your jurisdiction has authorized the use of ranked choice voting—what happens now? It falls to election administrators to implement the system and there are some challenges for administrators.
“The concept of ranked choice voting is pretty basic. It’s the nuances of how you tabulate as well as how many choices you have on your ballot that can be difficult,” says Minneapolis Director of Elections and Voter Services Grace Wachlarowicz. “There’s also no consistency across the jurisdictions that currently do allow ranked choice voting, so there’s no real commonality on how to tabulate.”
Administrators’ concerns center on technology, or perhaps the lack thereof. Only two voting equipment vendors have systems capable of performing ranked choice voting that are certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Others have developed modules or workarounds, but do not have EAC certification. This has left jurisdictions to utilize creative methods for doing the complicated calculations needed for the allocating (and reallocating) of votes. For example, in Minneapolis a hand count is combined with formula-heavy Excel spreadsheets—a rather clunky process. Minneapolis also uses two teams that must compare their counts to ensure accuracy, says Wachlarowicz. The city also recently changed its ordinance to allow the city to eliminate candidates who are mathematically unlikely to advance, especially in races with crowded fields (a mayoral race in 2013 had upwards of 30 candidates). Advocates are pushing for new voting machines to include ranked choice capability.
Cost is another factor. The Maine secretary of state’s office said it would need $761,000 in 2017-2018 and $641,000 in 2018-2019 for additional ballot pages and updated voting equipment. Additionally, the Department of Public Safety would need $149,000 over that same timeframe for the cost of transporting and securing ballots for central counting in Augusta, rather than in local jurisdictions.
What about the voters? Because ranked choice voting is different from what voters are used to seeing, voter education is key to effectively implementing ranked choice voting. Wachlarowicz recommends a robust voter outreach and education program that explains how to fill out the ballot and what each choice means. Engaging outside groups can also be effective, but doing so may compromise the consistency and accuracy of the educational materials. Candidates play a part in the education process too as they reach out to voters. After the 2013 election, a survey of voters in Minneapolis found that 92 percent of voters knew that they would be asked to rank candidates and 80 percent found the explanation of ranked choice voting by elections judges very or somewhat helpful.
What’s Happening in 2017?
To date in this year, 25 bills have been introduced in 14 states to use ranked choice voting in elections at various levels. NCSL is tracking these bills and any that relate to other alternative forms of voting and the elections legislation database has more information.
In Maine, the fate of the 2016 ballot measure authorizing ranked choice is currently up in the air. One of the key questions over the ballot measure was whether it would hold up under Maine’s constitution which states that the governor can be elected with a plurality of votes, rather than a majority. The origin of that clause is a fascinating bit of history from the Pine Tree State, but state lawmakers have asked the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to weigh in on the constitutionality of the ballot measure. Supporters of the ballot measure say the action isn’t necessary but briefs have been filed and oral arguments are set for April. Stay tuned.
Better Data, Better Elections?
“Better Data, Better Decisions, Better Government.”
Many variations on that phrase can be found with a quick Google search. However it is worded, the increasingly popular phrase suggests that if you have access to a decent source of data on the topic du jour, you can make wiser decisions.
In terms of elections, candidates can use better data to more effectively target their get-out-the-vote resources. Election administrators can and often do use data to better allocate resources. Here’s how North Carolina visualizes its data, to give some ideas.
Lawmakers? A well-run election produces happier voters—always a good thing. In Virginia, in a recent special election, turnout was expected to be low so not enough ballots were printed (that’s the unhappy voter option). That prompted Delegate Steve Newman to sponsor SB 1552, requiring data to be used to decide how many ballots to print.
“There was some concern about locals turning over absolute control over to the state,” said Newman. “We understood that they didn’t want the state to dictate.” As enacted, the bill requires local election officials to consult with the state, and the state provides their estimate of the number of ballots to be printed.
Frequently legislators use data-based reports from local officials, national sources such as the Election Administration and Voting Survey from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the Election Performance Index from the Pew Charitable Trusts, or from academic researchers to determine what’s best for their state in terms of the number of polling places, ballots to be printed, days and hours for early voting and more. Data can also help with key decisions about the election model, such as whether changing to vote centers or adding pre-Election Day voting will help decrease election costs or increase voter satisfaction.
Is data a panacea for all that ails elections? “Data can’t tell you everything,” says Monica Crane Childers, director of government services for nonpartisan, nonprofit Democracy Works. “But it can point you in the right direction. When it is visualized in a clearly understandable way, it allows legislators to make decisions based on the facts of the matter rather than on any one person’s opinion.”
Because “show, don’t tell” works best, Democracy Works, teamed up with the Center for Technology and Civic Life, NCSL and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission last year to create webisodes about data visualization for elections. Check out the Tech Time series intended for election officials on how to gather data, how to find national sources of data that can be helpful at the local level, and how to present that information to policymakers, such as legislators. The first two episodes, Building a Data Culture in Your Office and Visualizing Data Effectively, are aimed at election administrators—although they may easily provide legislative staff or legislators with ideas on what is in the realm possibilities.
NCSL hosted a related conversation on how local election officials can use data to persuade legislators. This webisode is now the basis for a Data Analysis for Election Administration class taught through the Election Academy program at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Senators John Murante (Neb.) and Cheryl Kagan (Md.) helped provide a reality check on the uses of data visualizations. Their big message to election officials: Tell us first—in plain terms—what is the problem you aim to fix, and what you suggest as the solution. Only then, show off the data.
Ask NCSL
What Is a Common Data Format for Elections and Why Should I Care?
Let’s start by noting that elections are all based on the transfer of data: from a voter registration system to a poll book; from a voting machine to an election night reporting system; you get the idea. Right now, the tech associated with elections is proprietary and the pieces of equipment don’t necessarily communicate well from one vendor to another. With a “common data format” any device would input/output data in a common format, without needing any “bridge” software. Basically, a common data format assures interoperability. Like your laptop can connect to any printer or projector or keyboard—because the ports have been standardized.
In the elections world, a common data format could lead to at least two good outcomes. First, data would be more readily collected and used. Second, administrators could “plug and play” different kinds of equipment from different vendors, opening the marketplace a bit. Both benefits could increase efficiency, and decrease costs, over time.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, with lots of input from vendors, is developing common data formats. (Our thanks to John Wack from NIST for helping us on this question.)
From the Chair Representative Kenny Imes chairs the Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Republicans took control of the Kentucky House after the 2016 elections for the first time in 96 years. He represents House District 5, which encompasses Calloway County and part of Trigg County in southwestern Kentucky. Imes spoke to The Canvass on March 14. Q: What is your overriding perspective when it comes to elections policy? A: We try to evaluate each bill on the merits and what it’s trying to accomplish. Talking about elections is talking about a whole gamut of issues from running elections to campaign finance reports. Q: What are some of the elections issues in Kentucky? A: We are trying to make voting more accessible for disabled voters by allowing them to apply for absentee ballots and go ahead and cast their vote there in the election office at the same time. We will be voting on that bill soon. In Kentucky, we have local option elections on allowing liquor sales—whether you go “wet” or “dry”—and current laws states those elections can’t be held on the same date as a regular election. One of my bills has been to make local option elections on regular election days, otherwise the petitioner could choose another date but would have to bear the cost of the election. Since January, we’ve had 15 local option elections. It costs per precinct about $1,800 to $2,000 for these elections. We had 52 local options last year, some countywide, some precincts, but that’s a lot of money for counties. I’ve also got a bill that I will be pushing next year to move all statewide elections to an even-numbered year. In a four-year cycle, it will save counties about $13.5 million and the state about $3.5 million. It will also help with voter fatigue and increase voter participation. We’re also trying to simplify our campaign finance process—if you’re running for city council or a local office and only expect to raise a minimal amount of money it doesn’t make sense for you to have to file multiple reports. By combining the three tiers into one threshold, it will make it easier on our election finance people. Our secretary of state wants early voting, but many our county clerks, especially rural clerks, don’t want it, but I expect we’ll address that during the interim session. Q: Are there any takeaways from the 2016 elections that have come up in the 2017 session? A: Constitutional amendments are always a big concern and we will address many of them in the interim session and the 2018 session. Reforming our campaign finance system is something that came up that we are addressing now. I want to have hearings on early voting as well so the public understands where we are. We’ll be looking at other ways to help disabled voter and overseas and military voters. We want to be as accommodating as we can while ensuring only eligible people are voting. Another area we may look at is improving our voter list through better intergovernmental relations so we don’t have voters on the rolls in two different states. Q: What are you most proud of when it comes to elections in Kentucky? A: I think systematically we are working toward what’s cost effective for the taxpayer, but also getting as many people involved as we can. That’s what I’m working towards. Whether they are Democrat, Republican or Independent, I want them to be voting. We want it to be as open, successful and encouraging as we can. In a recent local option election for a whole city only 30 people voted. We’ve got to get the word out and get people more engaged.
From the election administrator's perspective Kristen Zebrowski Stavisky is the Democratic commissioner of elections for the Rockland County, N.Y., Board of Elections. Rockland County is the smallest county geographically in New York and was the site of several skirmishes and the battle of Stony Point during the Revolutionary War, which earned General “Mad” Anthony Wayne his nickname. Stavisky spoke to The Canvass on March 20. Q: How did you get into county election administration? A: New York is unique in that the county boards of elections have a Democratic commissioner and a Republican commissioner and they are recommended by their parties and appointed by the legislature. I’m also the chair of the Democratic Party in Rockland County and I was recommended by committee in 2012 for a four-year term, was reappointed last year, and have been a committee person since I was 18. My father was a county legislator in Rockland County and the State Assembly for over 20 years—I feel like I grew up in county government. Q: How did things go in 2016? A: Last year was amazing. We had the possibility of four elections—in New York our primaries are not consolidated and we have a presidential primary, a federal primary and a state and local primary. We help the towns and villages with their local elections too so there’s always an election going on that we are involved [with] in some shape or form. Last year, it seemed like it never stopped. By the time one election was over, you were already trying to prepare and educate people about the cutoff registration dates for the next election. It was a busy, but extremely exciting time for us especially as we had two candidates from New York at the top of the ballot and unprecedented interest in the election. The run up to the general election was unlike anything I’ve seen—to say it was busy is an understatement. On Election Day, we planned on 100 percent voter enrollment for ballots printed, but we still ran out in some places and we were printing ballots that day. You can do all the planning in the world, but life can get in the way. There was one race where people were confused. They had to vote for two candidates, but the office spanned three columns. We had a huge number of voided ballots which caused panic for many of the election inspectors. People are counting on you to exercise their right to vote. We’ve now decided to have a user group with inspectors and regular voters to help us look at the ballots before an election, especially in a presidential year when you have voters who may not have voted in four years. Q: What are some of the elections issues in Rockland County? A: Rockland County is extremely diverse and that can lead to some tension, especially when it comes to school district elections and that tension has bled into all elections now. Q: What are some of the elections issues at the state level in New York? A: We are living in the instant gratification society where things can be ordered online and on your door step within days and voters are expecting that level of customer service from their boards of elections, rather than viewing us as a cash-strapped and beleaguered government agency. Voters want to vote the week before the election and are even willing to wait in line to do it. Early voting is not an “if” it’s a “when.” Online voter registration is another issue. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has done a great job registering people—there have been incredible increases in the number of people registering online through the DMV, which is the only way to register online. Direct online registration would streamline the process. Registration deadlines are another issue. I’ve certainly dealt with my share of irate voters who didn’t understand why the deadlines were so early. The deadlines were designed to prevent party raiding and we’ve had some experience with that in Rockland County. It’s ripe for abuse and that lag time does serve a purpose. With that goes consolidating primary dates—the cost of having separate primaries is just astronomical not to mention the cost of voter fatigue. Governor (Andrew) Cuomo put many of these reforms in his State of the State address this year and we are watching all these things. Things are changing and change can be difficult. I would like the legislature to get on board with some of these changes because it will save money in the long run and help us provide a better service to voters. Q: What are you most proud of when it comes to running good elections? A: We have one mission here: that every eligible voter has unfettered access to the polls. When we can help, people vote, it’s a great feeling. Last year, a group of students thought they registered to vote in class but the information never made it to us. One student took the initiative, reached out to us, and we were able to help them obtain court-ordered ballots. It was a great feeling to help those students vote in their first presidential primary. Q: What would you like state legislators to know? A: People want to utilize their right to vote. It’s up to us to make it as easy and seamless as we can. Legislators should know it’s all about people. The time it takes for outreach and educating voters is money well spent. Voters can have a voice and those voices matter to us.
Worth Noting
from ncsl's elections team
You absolutely cannot miss NCSL’s Future of Elections: Technology, Policy and Funding Conference, June 14-16 in Williamsburg, Va. Now’s the time to register and tell all your friends, colleagues and acquaintances. While there is no registration fee for legislators or legislative staff, everyone is welcome and we expect a good turnout of administrators, vendors and policymakers.
The Canvass doesn’t usually talk about redistricting, but when it does it provides a LegisBrief on redistricting commissions and a webpage on redistricting commission bills. Stay tuned for more redistricting information, my friends.
—Wendy Underhill, Dan Diorio and Amanda BuchananLANGLEY, VA—Saying that the recent shift in opinion is further proof that women have access to more opportunities than ever before, sources within the CIA confirmed this week that the U.S. intelligence agency may finally be ready to install its first female world leader.
Members of the CIA, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters that an increasing number of agents hired from a younger, more progressive generation are significantly more open to a woman leading one of the handful of nations the agency has deemed ready for a regime change. According to informal polling within the Clandestine Service division, the violent overthrow of a foreign leader in favor of a female dictator backed by the U.S. could occur as soon as within the next few years.
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“Certainly, when I first started off in the agency, installing a woman as a country’s president in order to stave off the communist threat would have never even been considered,” said one veteran official, adding that the gender norms of the times suggested that a woman’s place was in the home and not at the forefront of a pro-Western paramilitary organization receiving arms, training, and millions of untraceable dollars from the CIA. “Had someone in 1964 suggested we conspire with the Brazilian army generals to replace President João Goulart with a woman, he would have been laughed out of the room. However, like many Americans, our views have evolved over time, and today, we’ve reached the point where a woman is definitely considered as a legitimate possibility during our black ops planning.”
“I would like to think that in the year 2014 we are forward-thinking enough to supplant foreign leaders with the best and most pliant person we can find, regardless of gender,” he added. “If this individual can follow our explicit agenda and successfully destabilize leftist movements, what does it matter if the person’s a man or a woman?”
When surveyed, the majority of intelligence community members stationed overseas said they would be willing to foment civil unrest within a country to elevate a woman to power, be it by orchestrating a wide-scale misinformation campaign or paying local gangs to spark protests and rallies in her name. While some said it might initially feel strange or uncomfortable seeing a woman condemn her predecessor to death for the first time, they argued they have a firm obligation to rig an election on the behalf of whoever is truly up to the task of brutally cracking down on political activists the U.S. views as threats to its interests.
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Many officers told reporters they are surprised it has taken so long for the idea to gain acceptance, given that the agency propped up its first black president, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, back in 1960.
“Most agents nowadays recognize that there are countless women across the globe who are more than qualified to kowtow to every demand of the United States,” said one station chief, adding that he could name at least seven or eight different Venezuelan women he believes could be thrust into a power vacuum created by the U.S. and successfully declare themselves president for life. “Over time, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of women around the world who are involved in the planning and execution of bribery schemes and assassination plots, and they are certainly well-represented within the leadership of the various radical student groups we control. However, it’s about time we actually see a woman elevated to the presidency after the U.S. strong-arms that country’s military leaders into supporting her.”
“They’re ready,” he continued. “And far more importantly, so are we.”
Despite reports that a significant percentage of the agency is now receptive to propping up its first female dictator, sources confirmed that many hardliners at CIA headquarters remain reluctant to endorse such an operation, citing their belief that women simply are not equipped to handle the physical and psychological demands of illegitimate rule, such as managing a secret police, regularly killing off rival political and business leaders, and developing a cult of personality. Others told reporters they fear that female political puppets may not command the level of respect from other foreign leaders necessary to provide the U.S. with a useful proxy in their respective region of the world.
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“While there are still holdouts within the agency, it is my personal hope that one day, future CIA operatives will find it completely normal to choose a woman to, for example, denationalize a country’s titanium mines after paying a local death squad to assassinate the prime minister,” said one high-level official. “But that can only happen if we take the bold and admittedly difficult first step today of creating a constitutional crisis that results in the elevation of a female despot, whose brutal, iron-fisted rule will be subsequently overlooked.”
“I just want my children to know I was on the right side of history,” he added.BOSTON (CBS) — After spending 39 days in the hospital, Jane Richard has been released.
The family also says they are planning a memorial service for their son Martin on June 9. It would have been his 9th birthday.
The family released the following statement Thursday afternoon:
We are pleased to share news that Jane was discharged from Boston Children’s Hospital this morning. She was hospitalized in the ICU there for 39 days, during which time she underwent 12 surgeries. Today Jane is in good spirits and looking forward to beginning the next phase of her recovery. We all shared very emotional goodbyes with the doctors, nurses and staff at Children’s, who have taken such good care of not only Jane, but all of us.
Jane was transferred to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital where she will undergo rehab to regain her strength, balance and stamina. Jane and her body will ultimately dictate the timeline for her stay at Spaulding. Jane’s stay will serve as a bridge to what will be the “new normal” for Jane and our family going forward.
While we remain devastated over Martin’s death and all that has happened to us, Jane’s determination for getting better is an inspiring source of strength for the entire family. We will also be moving from the Longwood Medical Area to accommodations that allow us to remain close to Jane.
Finally, we want friends in our community to know that a Mass will be offered in Martin’s memory on June 9, 2013, which would have been his 9th birthday. It will be the 10:30 AM “Family Mass” at Saint Ann Church in Dorchester.Ray J has some choice words about Kim Kardashian in a new song track called "Famous" featuring Chris Brown.
The single off Ray J's upcoming album Raydemption pretty clearly calls out his mega famous reality star-turned-mogul ex, with reference to their 2003 sex tape that leaked in 2007.
On the Drumma Boy-produced track, he raps, "She fucked me for fame, look in her eyes/ She was the first one to sign on the line/ She was the real one to plan it all out/ Look at the family, they walk around proud/ All because she had my dick in her mouth."
As it's clearly now Ray J's turn to piggyback off Kardashian's fame with this diss track, it's no coincidence the song shares a title with his ex's husband Kanye West's "Famous," which name-dropped Ray J and featured nude wax likenesses of him and Brown in its music video. Last month Ray J told Billboard he was responding to West's work with his own song with the same name.
"You can't fault me and Chris for responding to all the things that have been done about us [in the media] over the last few months," he said.
As for Brown's involvement, his sentiments are slightly broader on the song's hook where he sings, "I know that you cry when you’re going to sleep every damn night/ I'll fuck around and make another one famous."
Ray J was at Brown's home in Tarzana, California, last August when the Brown was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after a woman visitor accused him of pointing a gun at her.
Listen to Ray J and Chris Brown's "Famous" here:A new television ad on the air in Virginia introduces viewers to a man who people say is a nice doctor.
He listens to people.
He’s done a good job as Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor.
AND GAYS LIKE HIM.
That’s the thrust of the first campaign ad from Ralph Northam, M.D., a centrist Democrat who is running for his political life against Tom Perriello, a former congressman who has been praised by President Obama.
Perriello was recently endorsed by both Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, according to the Virginian-Pilot. He may be the progressive in the race but as Slate reported in 2016, he has an anti-abortion and pro-gun voting record.
So Northam is touting his liberal politics in hopes younger voters that Perriello is targeting will vote for him instead on June 13th.
Northam’s six-figure ad campaign features Norfolk couple Tim Bostic and Tony London. He did a reading at their wedding in 2015 after they led the fight to strike down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage.
“He supported marriage equality before it was popular to do so,” Bostic says in the commercial.
The campaign ad ends with Northam driving the home the point that his race is not against Perriello but against their common enemy.
“We’re going to keep making progress every day. And we’re not going to let Donald Trump take us backwards.”
This Story Filed UnderAmid the mud and mechanised slaughter, it is difficult to see how the teachings of the Good Book could have been much more than an afterthought for those who lived and fought through the horrors of the First World War.
Yet as a new research project aims to reveal, the Bible may have done far more to shape popular perception of the war than has previously been appreciated. Starting this week, researchers at the University of Cambridge will embark on a centenary |
its acronym, EMPTA), the plant was mistakenly believed to be producing the chemical nerve agent VX for Al Qaeda. A 1998 report by a Monterey Institute of International Studies researcher conservatively concludes that it was possible “a small quantity of a VX precursor chemical was produced or stored in Shifa or transported through or near it. However, the balance of available evidence indicates that the facility probably had no role whatsoever in [chemical weapons] development.”
More recently and famously, America’s leaders neglected to follow established standards of scientific analysis — and propagated outright falsehood — while tragically taking American forces into Iraq in a disastrous quest to disarm Saddam Hussein of his country’s chimerical chemical weapons program, fictitious mobile biological weapons platforms, and illusory nuclear weapons potential.
Syria is the first WMD-armed country (but certainly will not be the last) to descend into civil war. How the United States — and the world — handles Syria will unmistakably affect future dealings in similar situations. But to get the WMD assessment in Syria right, US and world leaders will have to break free of the past habits of obfuscation, unsound scientific forensics, and the withholding of conflicting data. Unfortunately, as of now, the United States appears to be reprising its history of opaque and questionable WMD decision-making by claiming chemical weapons use on the basis of insufficient evidence.
Redrawing the red line. On June 13, the Obama administration determined that Syria had used chemical weapons against its own people and crossed the so-called chemical weapons red line, a declaration that allows for direct US military support of opposition forces. But this determination is impossible to verify through open sources and regrettably shows the United States to be in danger of repeating past WMD mistakes.
Ironically, from the beginning of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 until very recently, informed concerns about Syria’s chemical arsenal have rightly focused more on the nexus of chemical weapons with terrorists and other non-state actors than on the Assad regime’s chemical proclivities. As I have argued since early 2012, terrorist groups, especially violent Islamists, have more incentive to conduct large-scale chemical weapons attacks than does the Assad regime. The Syrian leadership effectively and ruthlessly neutralizes perceived enemies easily enough without chemical weapons. In a war that has killed upwards of 90,000 people since 2011, less than 100 deaths can be potentially attributed to poisons — including several fatalities of soldiers loyal to the Assad regime in the March 19, 2013 attack at Khan al-Asal. Such realities notwithstanding, since August 20, 2012, the US government has issued eight red-line warnings to the Syrian government, saying use of chemical weapons would result in American intervention. Although the precise text of the warnings varied, the red line was defined by four broad triggering mechanisms:
The most recent of the eight warnings was contained in a letter the White House sent to Michigan Sen. Carl Levin on April 25, 2013. By this time, the governments of France, the United Kingdom, and Israel had levied three separate accusations of definitive chemical weapons use against the Assad regime. The April communiqué focused on the accusations and established why, in the White House’s view, the red line had not been crossed.
In hindsight, the most salient features of the letter describe scientific and methodological inadequacies that precluded the US government from agreeing with its allies’ claims that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. The White House communiqué stated that the US intelligence community “does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.” Although it acknowledged that the intelligence communities’ assessment was partly based on physiological samples, the White House also asserted that “intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient — only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making…” Consequently, the Obama administration called for a “comprehensive United Nations investigation that can credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what took place.”
The letter acknowledged that credible facts were hard to come by in part because of gaps in evidence: “[T]he chain of custody is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions.” As Matthew Meselson, co-director of the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Weapons, explains: “High confidence requires that the chain of custody and the treatment of samples before they reach the participating analytical laboratories be accurately known and without possibility of tampering, contamination, or influences that might interfere with subsequent chemical analysis.”
Yet less than two months later, on June 13, the Obama administration announced “high confidence” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. New evidence had emerged since the April 25 warning — recent physiological samples and unspecified intelligence intercepts reportedly of chemical weapon-related communications between Syrian officials. But the initial treatment and chain of custody of the new samples was devoid of credible scientific protocol. Similarly, intelligence intercepts are often misinterpreted — sometimes with tragic consequences.
Repeating the April 25th warning “that chemical weapons have been used on a small scale by the Assad regime in Syria,” the White House broke from its previous criteria for US intervention in Syria. The administration simply asserted that after “a deliberative review,” the US intelligence community now had “high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on a small scale multiple times, and that this intelligence assessment meant the Assad regime had crossed the red line. This pronouncement led to prompt expansion of aid to include direct support to Syrian opposition, operating under the banner of the Supreme Military Command. Thus, the United States prepared for its seventh military involvement in a Muslim country since 2001.
The evidence not offered. Although virtually unexplored by the US media, several puzzling issues arise from the US government’s about-face on the Syrian chemical weapons red line. The obvious issue involves the initial handling and the chain of custody of the physiological samples used by French scientists to confirm presence of isopropyl methylphosphonic acid (IMPA), a chemical marker of sarin. Earlier chains of custody were highlighted in the White House’s April 25 letter as “not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions.” Even with the subsequent French samples that reportedly validated the existence of IMPA, original treatment of samples and their chain of custody remains unresolved in the public record. Then again, the April letter observed that “intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient — only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making.” Yet the Obama administration’s June 13 declaration that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons rested almost entirely on an intelligence assessment for which little new evidence was adduced in public. Most striking was the declaration’s assertion that confirmation “can be made that an individual was exposed to sarin” — even though no evidence exists about “how or where the individuals were exposed or who was responsible for the dissemination.”
Regardless of its perceived necessity, the growing US military involvement in Syria — predicated on the announcement of the Syrian government’s crossing of the chemical weapons red line — has not been well justified to the public. Use of significant quantities of chemical warfare agents has never been established or claimed by the White House — even though its first warning and implicit message in its final warning clearly establish that significant use is a criterion for red-line breach. No incontrovertible evidence has been publicly demonstrated despite US emphasis on the need to “establish credible and corroborated facts.”
By late April 2013, the Syrian regime and, possibly, opposition forces had arguably engaged in a limited number of small-scale chemical attacks since the first red line warning in February 2012. Total chemical-related deaths during that 14-month time frame could have reached 100, with the possible inclusion of 16 Syrian soldiers loyal to the regime. Yet the publicly available evidence — including the White House’s April 25 letter and the seven earlier American warnings — all suggest that the Assad regime is uncommitted to widespread use. According to one defector, “The intention was to incapacitate rebels and force them out of strategic areas, while keeping deaths among their ranks limited.”
Still, the evidence is uncertain. The chain of custody for the samples of soil, blood, urine and hair that supposedly confirm chemical weapons use remains opaque. And without knowing for certain where samples came from and who has controlled them, the samples are not, in a scientific or legal sense, evidence of anything. As former UN weapons inspector David Kay warns, “You’d be an idiot if you didn’t approach this thing with a bit of caution.” Renowned biological and chemical warfare authority Julian Perry Robinson elaborates: “For the time being, onlookers can reasonably believe the reporting only if they are willing to trust unsubstantiated assertion or incomplete evidence, or to disregard the history of chemical warfare. That history is full of false [chemical weapons] allegations and of instances in which people who should have known better were led astray by such tales — either through ignorance or through deception or through self-delusion.”
It appears the White House believes that onlookers will trust inadequate evidence and disregard prior intelligence failures that have precipitated disastrous outcomes. The Syrian opposition has a clear incentive to manipulate evidence so it suggests that the Assad regime has crossed the red line. As Robinson notes, such manipulation would not be particularly unusual, as shown, for just one example, in the months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, when members of the opposition Iraqi National Congress provided US intelligence services with false information suggesting that Saddam Hussein’s government had biological and nuclear weapons programs.
Certainly there are strong arguments to be made for US military involvement in Syria — not the least of which is to ensure that any successive Syrian government is not run by violent Islamists, currently the most effective opposition forces in Syria. The manner in which the Obama administration has justified a military component to its handling of the Syrian dilemma is, however, highly troubling. Inconsistencies and vague wording have plagued American red-line warnings. The central question — what would constitute a violation of the chemical weapons taboo? — remains unanswered. Moreover, the administration has not heeded lessons from past WMD disasters. It has failed to insist on the scientific methods and legal standards necessary to confirm the use of chemical weapons and, in the process, it is setting a dangerous precedent. Over time, other WMD-armed states — including, for example, North Korea and several countries in the Middle East — may well become embroiled in civil strife. If the red line is not drawn clearly in Syria, how can the United States expect other governments and other insurgencies to refrain from crossing it?New details have emerged in the case of a British woman who admitted to a triple killing last year.
Joanna Dennehy, 31, pleaded guilty in November to murdering three men by stabbing them in the heart and dumping their bodies in ditches in Cambridgeshire.
Her alleged accomplices, Leslie Layton, 36, and 7-foot-2-inch Gary "Stretch" Richards, 47, are now on trial. Providing evidence against them, Dennehy's friend Georgina Page described how the confessed killer likened herself and Richards to Bonnie and Clyde, and "jumped around like a schoolgirl" when she learned of news reports about the murders, according to the BBC.
New photos of Dennehy, Richards and Layton, which portray the confessed killer and her alleged accomplices in various poses, were shown in court Monday.
(Story continues below)
PHOTOS (GRAPHIC CONTENT):
PHOTO GALLERY Joanna Dennehy Female Serial Killer
In one image, Dennehy poses with a large knife and handcuffs while sitting in a chair. In another, she flashes her bra and shows apparent self-harm scars on her belly. Richards also appears in photos, showing his belly.
Witness Mark Lloyd was in the same car as Dennehy and Richards when they allegedly pulled over and attacked two men on the street in April of last year. The pair was already wanted for the murder of three men.
Lloyd said Dennehy, a mother of two, flirted with him before he got in the car. Once there, she admitted to killing three men, and Lloyd said he had no choice but to join them in their quest for what Dennehy called her "fun."
Dennehy told Richards "I want my fun. I need you to get my fun," as her alleged accomplice drove the car, Lloyd said in court Monday.
Denehy's victims include her landlord and two other men. Lloyd described the victims in the April attacks as dog walkers chosen at random:
"She [Dennehy] takes a knife out of her left pocket with her right hand. She strikes him like in the film Psycho, just like that. Thrusting and putting her whole weight behind it... Gary is seeing exactly what I’m seeing and there’s just no emotion from him at all."
According to the Mirror, the woman allegedly bragged to her accomplices that she'd killed eight people, glibly remarking, "Oops, I did it again."Transcript:
Rat: Hello. I'm Rat and I'm running for President. Face it...you don't have a lot of good choices in this election. So vote for me. Because if elected, I promise to do one thing. "I will hand out free beer helmets to everyone." Rat: This will look generous. But it is a ruse. "Because the helmets of stupid people will be magnetized. And when they are out enjoying their beer helmet, a giant magnetic crane will lift them off the street. And drop them safely on the giant trash heap that floats in the Pacific. We'll be rid of stupid people. And stupid people will think they won a Hawaiian vacation." Woman: A crane just put me here. Goat: Won't stupid people read this and be alerted? Rat: Good news: they don't read. Pig: I'm flying! I'm flying!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.
I don’t believe that you can obtain immediate Divine salvation by barbequing outside the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meiron on Lag BaOmer, or that a neo-Kabbalist can guess your problems and offer wise, instant solutions after hearing your voice for 30 seconds over the telephone. Amulets and kabbalistic incantations are not the mainstream route to living a life of faith.
Religion, I was otherwise taught, stems from the most sophisticated and complicated thinking. It probes the most difficult quandaries of human existence, metaphysical presence and purpose, identity, and spiritual makeup. It seeks to bridge ancient devotions with contemporary sensibilities. It seeks to embrace both the particularistic and humanistic aspects of nationality. It aims to authenticate and guide our creativity and drive for success in all fields of human endeavor. It is more relevant and needed than ever in the modern age.
Oved Hashem
In Quest of Your Presence: Conversations with Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein
Leaves of Faith
By His Light
Varieties of Jewish Experience
I learned much of this complex approach to religious thinking from Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, dean of the multi-faceted and magnificent Har Etzion hesder yeshiva in Gush Etzion. Last Friday, I was privileged to join more than 1,500 of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s students and alumni in a Torah conference marking his 80th birthday.Since moving to Israel from America more than forty years ago, Rabbi Lichtenstein has taught the highest-level Talmud, halacha and philosophy to his tens of thousands of students. He did so while simultaneously validating their service in the IDF as a religious obligation and their subsequent pursuits of university education as a natural outgrowth of their religious personalities. Himself a former professor of English literature, he has taught that intellectual openness is a hallmark of true Orthodoxy, alongside single-minded devotion to Torah study and adherence to halachic boundaries and values.Rabbi Lichtenstein has taught that critical thinking and humanism characterize the(the worshipper of G-d), not slavish and blind devotion to self-proclaimed prophets and closed-minded soothsayers. He has taught that full involvement in Israeli society and a passion for social justice are key religious obligations, not the isolationism and jingoism that characterize too much of Haredi and ultra-nationalist religious Zionist communities today.Rabbi Lichtenstein’s views are path-breaking on a range of critical issues, including the value of secular literature from a Jewish religious perspective, the nature of holiness, religious humanism, religious-secular relations, the role and status of women in studying Torah, attitudes to the non-Jew, the meaning of Zionism from a religious perspective, the methodology of the study of Bible and Talmud, the (problematic) role of (crude) kabbalistic thought in the religious world, Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, and more.It’s not surprising that some of the boldest leaders of today’s religious Zionist community are students of Yeshivat Har Etzion, including the founders of the Tzohar rabbinical association. In his address at last Friday’s alumni gathering, Rabbi Lichtenstein pointedly devoted his remarks to exhorting his students to expend even greater effort on influencing the moral and religious character of Israeli society – through intellectual and social leadership, not coercion.In all this, he draws on and develops the thought of his mentor (and father-in-law), the late, great Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the greatest Jewish thinker and Rosh Yeshiva of the twentieth century. Rabbi Lichtenstein’s mature thinking was plumbed by Rabbi Haim Sabato in the recent book, and is laid out in Rabbi Lichtenstein’s previous books,, andAt the core of these works is Rabbi Lichtenstein’s deep love for G-d and his dedication to the learning of Torah as a supreme religious value, notwithstanding his appreciation of general culture, secular literature and scientific investigation. Aside from Rabbi Soloveitchik’s writings, there is no better articulation of devout faith – both child-like and super-erudite – for the modern man.To mark his eightieth year, the Har Etzion yeshiva last week re-published eight volumes of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s breathtaking and very challenging lectures in Talmud. The printing is already almost sold-out; a testament to the profundity and uniqueness of his meticulous approach to Talmudic analysis.Beyond the sophistication, what stands out for Rabbi Lichtenstein’s students is his humility and modesty. Everyone could only be impressed by his approachability and lack of airs. Everyone could only be amazed at the unpretentious way in which shared leadership of the yeshiva with its founder, the late Rabbi Yehuda Amital. No one could forget his devotion to his blind and mostly-deaf father, to whom he chanted the prayers out loud, and whom he led along the lanes of the yeshiva gardens with incredible patience. No one could fail to notice his sincere respect for his distinguished wife, Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein, and his attentiveness to the education and pioneering careers of his children. Everybody learned from Rabbi Lichtenstein’s unassuming nature and tolerance; qualities that make his insistence on high moral and intellectual standards and ritual exactness all that much more impressive.I remember being startled from my yeshiva bed at 4 am during the First Lebanon War by a hand that was shaking my shoulder. It was Rabbi Lichtenstein, making rounds of the dormitories to personally awaken his students for early Talmud class, so that he could fly-off to southern Lebanon just after 7 am prayers to visit his students on the battlefront.When the Rosh Yeshiva himself pulls you out of bed because he can’t imagine cancelling a Talmud class, you don’t dare roll-over and go back to sleep! And you learn a lesson or two in self-discipline, dedication, and comradeship.Alongside Rabbi Amital, Rabbi Lichtenstein raised a generation of disciples who are both like him and unlike him: admiring of his great mind and religious integrity yet independent thinkers who often dissent from his political and public policy views; scholars who follow his approach in study yet seek to expand its horizons; community activists who embrace his inclusive approach yet find deeper stirrings in religious nationalist romanticism than he did.I suspect that in his self-effacing way, Rabbi Lichtenstein is enormously proud of the alumni who have absorbed his nuanced teachings; who view him as a revered leader yet dare to pave their own ways within Orthodoxy; who seek both to emulate and go beyond him.To my own sons (two of whom joined me in honoring Rabbi Lichtenstein last week) I say: Seek the rich life of religious purity, constant study, intellectual rigor, universal knowledge, and societal commitment that Rabbi Lichtenstein has so bravely modeled for us.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>The Power Macintosh 7100 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer Inc. from March 1994 to January 1996. It is the mid-range machine of the first generation of Power Macintosh line, between the Power Macintosh 6100 and the 8100. The 7100 re-used the Macintosh IIvx case with few changes. There were two versions of the 7100; the original 66 MHz version and an 80 MHz version that replaced it in January 1995.
The 7100 was succeeded in August 1995 by two new models, the Power Macintosh 7200 and the Power Macintosh 7500, though sales of the 7100 continued into early 1996.
Models [ edit ]
The 7100AV variants include a 2 MB VRAM card with S-Video in/out. The non-AV 7100s have a video card containing 1 MB VRAM which was expandable to 2MB, and no S-Video in/out capability.
Apple did not release a "DOS Compatible" card for the 7100 as they had for some contemporary Macintosh Quadra models, opting instead to offer the 7100 bundled with the SoftWindows emulator at a price of $385.[2] With an optional 256KB L2 cache card installed, MacWorld Magazine determined that the performance is comparable to 25 MHz Intel 80486SX.
Introduced March 14, 1994:
Power Macintosh 7100/66 : No L2 cache. [3] $2,650 USD. [1]
: No L2 cache. $2,650 USD. Power Macintosh 7100/66AV:[4] $3,450.[1]
Introduced January 3, 1995:
Power Macintosh 7100/80 : 256KB L2 cache. [5]
: 256KB L2 cache. Power Macintosh 7100/80AV[6]
Codename lawsuit [ edit ]
The Power Macintosh 7100's internal code name was "Carl Sagan", one of the three "fraud" code names (Pilt Down Man, Cold Fusion, and Carl Sagan) referring to the PowerPC processor pretending to be a 68000.[7] Though the project name was internal, it was revealed to the public in a 1993 issue of MacWeek. Sagan, worried that the public might interpret this as an endorsement which sullied his name, reportedly contacted Apple and threatened to sue unless they could prove the codename did not officially link to his intellectual property and identity. After they reportedly refused, he wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in a 1994 issue of MacWeek, seeking to inform their readers of the situation.[8]
Following the letter, a rogue programmer at Apple renamed the project to "BHA" (for Butt-Head Astronomer). Sagan then sued Apple for libel over the new name, but since the codename was internal he lost his case. Sagan continued pursuing lawsuits. When he sued Apple again, this time for the original use of his name, he lost this suit as well. Sagan and Apple, apparently not wishing to engage in a series of lawsuits over the issue, came to an out-of-court agreement in November 1995, leading to Apple making a statement of apology. The engineers on the project made a third and final name change from "BHA" to "LAW", short for "Lawyers are Wimps".[8]
Timeline of Power Macintosh modelsDUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was summoned to parliament on Wednesday for an unprecedented grilling by lawmakers who accused him of economic mismanagement and making “illegal” appointments.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets journalists as he enters a room to meet with India's Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah (not pictured) in Tehran March 4, 2012. REUTERS/Caren Firouz
Less than two weeks after a drubbing in parliamentary elections, Ahmadinejad became the first president in the Islamic Republic’s history to be called before the legislature which has the power to impeach him if unsatisfied with his answers.
Factions who express complete loyalty to Iran’s most powerful figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been trying to summon the president for months over what they say are repeated challenges to the supreme leader’s authority.
Emboldened by their success over Ahmadinejad supporters at parliamentary elections this month, they finally had the chance to interrogate him about the near-stagnant, high-inflation economy and concerns over his allegiance to Khamenei.
Asking the questions, lawmaker Ali Motahari asked why Ahmadinejad had stayed at home for several days last April after Khamenei overturned the president’s decision to sack his intelligence minister - an absence seen by some as a protest against the supreme leader’s decision.
Belying his weakened standing, Ahmadinejad responded in a confident and, at times, flippant tone that did little to calm the excitement of the hearing, broadcast live on state radio.
He denied challenging the supreme leader, saying: “This is one of those things - Ahmadinejad staying home and resting. Some of my friends have repeatedly told me to rest. In this government, work has never been stopped for even a day.”
BLAME
He played down the historic significance of the summons, saying it was parliament’s right and not out of the ordinary.
“I was ready to answer questions before the election,” he said. “But I thought it might have an impact on election results and then I would be blamed for it. I am the easiest to blame.”
After an hour-long grilling that included questions on the botched financing of the Tehran metro and the veracity of government figures showing the creation of 1.6 million jobs in 2009 and 2010, many parliamentarians remained unimpressed.
“Ahmadinejad’s answers to lawmakers’ questions were illogical, illegal and an attempt to avoid answering them. With an insulting tone, Ahmadinejad made fun of lawmakers’ questions and insulted parliament,” Mohammad Taqi Rahbar was quoted as saying by parliament’s news agency.
Having made several ministerial appointments that were unpopular with parliament - including briefly taking charge of the oil ministry, in charge of Iran’s biggest economic sector - Ahmadinejad was questioned about how he picked people for key posts.
Outgoing reformist lawmaker Mostafa Kavakebian said: “The president did not give any logical answers and took everything as a joke.”
“Is this a place to joke?” another parliamentarian, Mohammad Reza Khabbaz asked the assembly.
Iran’s English-language television channel, Press TV, reported that some deputies had been riled by Ahmadinejad’s mocking language and, after the session, made threats to impeach him after the Iranian new year holiday later this month.
But analysts said that was unlikely.
SERIOUS CHALLENGE
Ali Ansari of St Andrews University in Scotland characterized the hearing as a “not serious bit of bloodletting”.
“Khamenei is clearly in charge and regards Ahmadinejad as too useful and divisive a figure to get rid of. Heaven forbid that a competent and well liked president take office who might pose a serious challenge to Khamenei,” he added.
Tehran-based Professor Sadeq Zibakalam said Ahmadinejad’s tone showed he was not a spent force.
“Some conservatives want to get rid of him before his term is over,” he said. “Ahmadinejad showed today that it won’t be easy to do. By being firm and not taking conservatives seriously, he’s become stronger.”
Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran said Ahmadinejad’s failure to adequately answer questions about his differences with the supreme leader showed “a weak spot” but that he remained popular among ordinary Iranians.
“I don’t think he’ll be impeached,” Marandi said. “This parliament doesn’t have the motive at this stage. They are critics and want to keep him in check.”
Analysts are now eyeing the make-up of the new parliament to assess the extent of the damage inflicted on the pro-Ahmadinejad faction during the parliamentary elections.
Zibakalam said it was still unclear whether the more than 70 newly-elected independent members would stand with or against Ahmadinejad during his remaining time in office which expires mid-2013.
Initially lauded by conservatives for his radical views on Israel and the West, attacks on Ahmadinejad by rival hardliners in parliament increased after last year’s spat over the intelligence minister with his critics saying any challenge to Khamenei threatens the foundations of the Islamic Republic.Justin Trudeau has difficulty staying out of the headlines. Of course it’s natural for Canada’s Prime Minister to turn up in local newspapers from time to time. What’s surprising is that occasionally Trudeau makes it into American news as well. For example, on August 3 Slate ran a piece on an Ontario family encountering a shirtless Trudeau as he exited a cave system in a national park, where he’d been vacationing with his family. And people were fascinated—at least to judge by Twitter, where some are always fascinated by Trudeau’s activities, particularly when he’s missing articles of clothing. Which may explain why the Independent ran a piece on Shirtless Trudeau In A Cave two days later.
Meanwhile, in late July Trudeau’s government granted two permits for the Site C dam project in British Columbia. That’s a provincial hydro scheme that’s met with opposition from environmentalists and First Nations groups who argue that the project infringes on their treaty rights (a court hearing is set for September). It’s unlikely any Prime Minister would’ve wanted to interfere with something that essentially falls under provincial jurisdiction—the federal government’s only involved because of the impact on waterways and fisheries—but the appearance of complicity in a project that’s bad for the environment and challenged by First Nations doesn’t do anything to quell suspicion of Trudeau. Which is visible in Canada both on the left and on the right.
Canada’s Conservative Party roasted Trudeau as an inexperienced pretty face during the last election. On the other hand, people on the left remember that Trudeau’s Liberal Party has a long history of running elections campaigns from the left and then governing from the right. Trudeau became Canada’s first meme-worthy PM, a heartthrob on social media. But a bewildered foreigner might well wonder: who is this guy, really?
I don’t know. I suspect few people outside his friends and family do. But as a Canadian, I’ve been trying to work out how much there is to my current Prime Minister. It’s tricky; he’s a politician, and a good one. It’s his job to manage expectations, to handle symbolism, and to lead people even when they don’t want to be led. I don’t claim to have any deep insight into the man. But like most Canadian voters I’ve learned a bit more about him than I get from the info-light stories that seem to catch international attention.
Let’s start with some of those, though, if only because that’s where an international audience will most likely have heard of him. And because they’ve helped burnish, if not create, Trudeau’s image. So: after winning a majority government last October, in early November Trudeau named a cabinet that was perfectly gender-balanced; asked at the following press conference why he did this, he said “because it’s 2015,” and shrugged. The mix of the sentiment, the visual impact of the shrug, and the casual assumption of gender equity went viral. Then in December, Trudeau went to Toronto’s Pearson airport to greet the first group of Syrian refugees his government had agreed to take in. The images again went viral worldwide.
Add to these moments of state more casual images and video clips that spread like wildfire: Trudeau doing yoga, Trudeau hugging pandas at the Toronto zoo, Trudeau giving a breathless explanation of quantum computing, Trudeau shirtless. It’s a tremendous change from his predecessor, the dour-yet-oleaginous Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party. More than a stylistic change, Trudeau is in many ways the anti-Harper, in the same way Barack Obama at his election was viewed by many as the anti-Bush.
Obama’s a useful point of comparison more generally. Both men are youngish leaders who caught the imagination of their country; both are technocratic centrists with some left-wing instincts on social policy. Unsurprising that, according to a recent article in The Atlantic, Obama “sees Trudeau as very much the younger brother and is mentoring him actively.” On a recent trip to Washington the bond between the two men was obvious; The New York Times resorted to describing their connection as a “bromance.” Reaction on Twitter and elsewhere was less restrained and frequently more carnal. This was the state visit that launched a thousand slashfics.
Trudeau’s unlike Obama in one important way, though, having been born a son of privilege. More precisely, the son of a man who was at one time perhaps Canada’s most popular and certainly most flamboyant Prime Minster. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was aristocratic yet dashing; a journalist and public intellectual turned law professor, in 1965 he won a seat as a Liberal MP and was named Justice Minister. In 1967 he introduced a bill that brought in new gun restrictions while also decriminalizing contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. Regarding this last, he observed that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” highlighting his knack for a pithy quote.
Pierre Trudeau became Prime Minister in April 1968, taking over from the retiring Lester Pearson, then won an election later that year thanks to his immense personal popularity—as it was dubbed at the time, Trudeaumania. As PM, he was a mixed bag. He’s notorious among some for sending in the army to deal with terrorist activity in Quebec in 1970. (“How far would you go with that?” he was asked at the time. “Just watch me,” he shot back, creating yet another memorable Trudeau quote.) He’s notorious among a whole different group of people in an entirely different part of the country for a largely failed National Energy Program. These things demonstrated what many of his detractors felt to be his main weakness, if not defining characteristic: a tendency to arrogance, to assuming he was the smartest man in the room.
On the other hand, Trudeau very often was just that. And much that has become key to contemporary Canada was initiated or formalised under his rule. He passed the Official Languages Act, establishing English and French as Canada’s official languages. His administration formally committed the federal government to multiculturalism (following the increase to immigration instigated by his predecessor, Lester Pearson). Perhaps most important, Trudeau brought in Canada’s constitution, and along with it a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Which led to another classic Pierre Trudeau moment: having gone to London to receive Royal assent for the new constitution, a photographer caught a picture of Trudeau turning a pirouette behind the Queen’s back.
What the younger Trudeau and the elder have in common is that kind of unconscious knack for being newsworthy. For doing something distinctive, something individual, at moments others don’t. And yet there’s a difference in tone. Pierre Trudeau was seen as prickly, combative. He immortalized phrases like “the Trudeau Salute” (for The Finger) and “Fuddle Duddle” (following a loud debate in the house, an opposition MP claimed Trudeau had told him “fuck you;” when asked about it, Trudeau acknowledged he had moved his lips and then to further questioning said “What is the nature of your thoughts, gentlemen, when you say ‘fuddle duddle’ or something like that?”). Compare, as a contrast, “because it’s 2015.” There’s a kind of positivity—even earnestness—to Justin that I think was alien to Pierre’s public persona.
It’s oddly appropriate that the son of the Prime Minister who first enunciated a formal multiculturalism policy is himself the first Prime Minister to have verified non-European ancestry (obviously, on his mother’s side). Justin Trudeau first made a name for himself when he delivered his father’s eulogy in the year 2000; I can remember observers at the time speculating that the speech was the beginning of a political career. In 2008 he was elected as MP for the Montreal riding of Papineau. Re-elected in 2011, he became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in 2013, despite criticism from opponents that he was too young and inexperienced. Conservative Prime Minster Stephen Harper would recycle those comments in the federal election of 2015, one of the rare instances of the anti-environmentalist Harper recycling anything. It didn’t help him. Harper, a right-wing ideologue who’d dedicated himself to trying to undo some of the progressive initiatives spearheaded by Pierre Trudeau, found his party knocked out of power by Pierre’s son in a rare instance of the universe creating note-perfect poetic justice.
But let’s skip back to 2012, and an earlier knockout. Trudeau was looking to raise funds for Fight for the Cure, a cancer research charity. He wanted to take part in a charity boxing match, but couldn’t find a Conservative opponent. Eventually a mutual friend asked Senator Patrick Brazeau to fight him, and Brazeau agreed. Brazeau, who has a second-degree black belt in karate, had been a reservist in the Canadian Forces. He was widely viewed as the favorite in the match, and some worried that Trudeau would be badly hurt. Instead, Trudeau knocked Brazeau out in the third round. The match was a risk for Trudeau on multiple levels: he could’ve been gravely injured physically, but losing might also have crippled his political career, tarring him as a weakling or giving his opponents a picture ripe for satire. Instead, he came out a winner in what now has to be considered a well-calculated risk. It might be atavistic, it might even be barbaric, but among at least some elements in the media Trudeau’s ability to punch |
and irrationality? Nurturing social discourse and curiosity about the stars above us? Too much to be a coincidence. Clearly once their first priority of covering up Pluto was finished, the Mi-go, through their emissary Neil DeGrasse Tyson, are aiming to slowly educate and develop our culture into a more rational and star-loving one. How dare they!
But none of what I’ve talked about yet amounts to anything close to the most damning evidence of all. I’m sure many of you are still doubting whether or not Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a representative of an alien space race. But answer me this: if he isn’t an alien emissary then why hasn’t he told us – publicly and clearly – that he isn’t? It should be simple. It doesn’t cost him anything at all. So if he really isn’t an ambassador of the Mi-go, why hasn’t he said so??
So, Mr. Tyson, what’ll it be? What’s the real motivation behind all this anti-superstition, tolerance loving, and science promoting propaganda?
Paul Chiariello (Chief Editor, Rutgers & Yale University) Paul Chiariello graduated from Rutgers in 2009 after studying Philosophy and Anthropology and has been running around the world ever since. Currently he is on the Board of Directors of the Rutgers Humanist Community, Co-founder of the Yale Humanist Community, and Director of the Humanism & Philosophy Curriculum for Camp Quest, Inc. Paul has a MSc in Comparative Education from Oxford, completing his field research in Bosnia on ethno-religious identity and conflict, and has spent a year studying philosophy of ethics and religion at Yale on a PhD fellowship. He has also worked with research organizations at the UN and in DC, as well as schools abroad in Uganda, Kenya, India, Indonesia and Germany.What I most admired about the aesthetic was its boundless energy and unpredictability, and the way it let rappers be upfront and extroverted about their desires. The covers also perfectly complemented the music within — onslaughts of bold and abrasive sonic experimentation. Whether for canonical artists (Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne) or for radically obscure ones, Pen & Pixel covers represented a sort of promise; not a guarantee of quality, exactly, but one of imaginative humor and deliberate, playful surrealism.
The firm was founded by two brothers, Aaron and Shawn Brauch. Aaron had an M.B.A. from Cornell and was a proud lifetime member of Mensa. Shawn was a scuba-diving enthusiast with multiple design degrees. Originally employed by the seminal Texas hip-hop label Rap-A-Lot, the brothers soon found themselves inundated with outside requests. They struck out on their own in 1992, their operation consisting of a computer and a dining-room table, and by 1998 they were reporting gross annual profits of $3.7 million. They started their own TV show and, as Shawn told The Los Angeles Times that year, planned a book of Pen & Pixel artwork, “including a magnifying glass, to see all the detail.”
And what detail! Rappers delved into their own psyches and dreamed up scenarios in which they tamed tigers, leveled skyscrapers with laser vision, gaped at alligators or reigned over ruined worlds engulfed in flames. The results may have started out as an affront to mainstream taste, but by the turn of the century they were practically a primary expression of it. The firm decorated the covers of 750 million albums sold, including 12 platinum and 38 gold records. It might be more accurate to say that the firm burrowed into the id of mainstream taste, stripping it for parts in a manic cut-and-paste frenzy. Its success was accompanied by the usual hand-wringing: The Brauchs were dismissed as tasteless and grossly materialistic by people who probably danced at their weddings to Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want).”
The Brauch brothers have cited Napster and Sept. 11 as the twin harbingers of Pen & Pixel’s demise: Fears of file-sharing and terrorism alike apparently rendered long-distance flights to Houston to spend large amounts on artwork (which listeners may or may not even see) a hugely optional luxury. In the company’s wake, rap-album art has in large part degenerated into a kind of solemn professionalism, a zone overcrowded with nostalgia and self-serious monochromatic portraits. There’s less room today for the truly unexpected juxtaposition — no pineapples, pet cheetahs or convertibles riding waves like surfboards. What I miss most about these covers is their tendency to transform real-life injustice into a luminous and liberating absurdism; the world of Pen & Pixel was limited only by artists’ imaginations. They shared cigars with grizzly bears, recast themselves as Rambo-like war heroes and constructed still lifes out of Rolex watches and bottles of Moët & Chandon. And we were all allowed to take part, if only from a distance.Door to afterlife found in Egypt
Updated
A carved stone door which ancient Egyptians believed was the threshold to the afterlife has been discovered in Luxor, Egypt's culture minister said.
The door belongs to the tomb of User, a powerful adviser to the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut, Faruk Hosni said in a statement.
Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt between 1479 BC and 1458 BC, was the longest reigning female pharaoh.
The large red granite door is 1.75 metres high and 50 centimetres thick.
It is said to be engraved with religious texts and various titles used by User, including mayor of the city, vizier and prince.
Mansur Boraik, who headed the excavation mission, says the door "was reused during the Roman period".
"It was removed from the tomb of User and used in the wall of a Roman structure," he said.
-AFP
Topics: archaeology, history, egypt
First postedLike the weird human that he is, H.R. has once again revealed something about himself that makes me scratch my head – apparently, H.R. is the best at heists, he even has the books he’s written to prove it. But for me, seeing is believing. We went to the workshop where I prompted him with the task of hosting his very own heist within S.T.A.R. Labs. H.R. didn’t shy away from the opportunity – he sat for a few moments methodically planning something out in his head and then he was ready for the execution. His objective was to steal Wally’s beloved Pop Tarts from the kitchen without anyone noticing.
H.R. reached for one of my remote controlled droids and began to maneuver it – I turned on the webcam that was attached so we could watch the action live on the monitor. H.R. guided the remote control outside the kitchen where Wally and Joe were talking about Barry’s own heist. H.R.’s plan hit a wall but he wasn’t sweating it. He controlled the droid and allowed it to glide across the floor so it remained unseen by Wally and Joe as the two left the kitchen. The droid landed at the drawer filled with Pop Tarts to find it locked.
With the press of a button, the droid released it’s mechanical “arm” and twisted the lock off. H.R. confessed that Wally had told him the combination was his birthday – easy fix. The drawer was open – free and clear from the droid to grab the tasty pastry pack and quickly escape the room.
The droid returned to the workshop with the Pop Tart still in tow. Color me, impressed, H.R. seems to know his way around the lab and heist. Who knew? Have to say the Pop Tart was delicious too – sorry, Wally.With the historic rally in Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are more investors than ever seeking to diversify their newly expanded cryptocurrency holdings. Whether this diversification involves exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat, other cryptocurrencies or a mix of both, the downside can be capital gains tax exposure.
Capital gains (if the underlying property has been held for over a year) are taxed at 15 percent, 18.8 percent or 23.8 percent, dependent upon the amount of income received during the year. One common method of tax reduction is to spread sales/exchanges over multiple years, in order to “soak up” the maximum amount of income into the 15 percent and 18.8 percent brackets.
If you're seeking to diversify, it’s really only practical to spread sales over a few years at most. But what if there were a way to sell immediately while still deferring this capital gains income over a much longer period, such as 20 years or even a lifetime? And what if this method were able to also provide some benefit to charity, with a corresponding charitable deduction?
Enter the Charitable Remainder Trust
This can actually be done with a quasi-charitable trust, namely a charitable remainder trust. With a charitable remainder trust, you contribute some amount of your cryptocurrency to a trust before selling. The trust then sells the cryptocurrency (or otherwise diversifies) on a completely tax-free basis. The proceeds of sale stay within the trust, where they can be reinvested in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, other cryptocurrency or almost any other investment asset.
In exchange for your contribution of cryptocurrency, the trust makes a payment to you each year for so long as you are alive. (You can alternatively choose to have the payment made for the joint lives of you and your spouse, or some shorter fixed term of years.) You choose the amount of this annual payment at the time you create the trust.
The whole process is sort of like receiving an annuity in exchange for your cryptocurrency. This payment can be a fixed amount, or it can be expressed as a fluctuating percentage of trust assets each year. When you pass away, whatever is left passes to a charity of your choice.
There are numerous tax benefits:
The sale or exchange of cryptocurrency is completely tax-free. You personally only pay tax each year on the annual payment you receive from the trust. So if you use a charitable remainder trust to sell $5M of Bitcoin in 2017, but your annual payment for the rest of your life is $250,000 per year, then you only pay tax on $250,000 in 2017. This payment would be taxed at favorable capital gains rates. Depending on the amount of your other annual income, this strategy will likely keep you in the lower capital gains brackets. In the year of trust creation, you receive an income tax deduction equal to the actuarial value of the charity’s projected gift. This actuarial value is a calculation done by your attorney-CPA. The smaller the payment you select, the larger the charitable deduction. Assuming you choose an appropriate charity, the deduction can be used to reduce up to 30 percent of your income in a given year, and any unusable amount carries forward for up to five future years. For example, if a 42-year-old man were to contribute $2.5M of cryptocurrency to a charitable remainder trust in 2017 and selected an annual payment equal to 5 percent of trust assets, he would receive a charitable deduction of approximately $480,000 (at current IRS rates). That deduction could be used against his taxable income in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
You can even reserve the right to serve as trustee of the trust and to change the charitable remainder beneficiary whenever you please.
There are of course many technical caveats that need to be complied with. Most important, the IRS requires that the actuarial value of the charity’s share must be at least 10 percent of the assets contributed to the trust. Be sure to consult with appropriate counsel to ensure you meet the 10 percent rule and other technical requirements.
If you are looking to reduce and defer income taxes while keeping a guaranteed income for life and doing some good in the process, a charitable remainder trust can be the way to go.
This article is a guest post by Jeff Vandrew Jr. It does not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Media or Bitcoin Magazine and is for general information purposes only; it should not be taken as investment advice. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with a qualified tax/investment professional before attempting anything described in this article.Nokia's overlooked assets---its geolocation and mapping services---are cobbling together some momentum.
The latest burst of activity for Nokia's map business is a deal with Oracle, according to the Wall Street Journal. In short, Oracle will provide Nokia's mapping data in its applications. Oracle needed some option since Google wasn't going to cut it after a stinging courtroom loss for Larry Ellison and the gang.
Meanwhile, Nokia maps also got a plug from Apple CEO Tim Cook in his apology over iOS 6 mapping.
For a company where expectations are generally low, Nokia will take any good news it can get. And on the map front, Nokia has some mojo. Nokia partnerships include:
Amazon.
Microsoft.
Yahoo.
Oracle.
Groupon.
Now the Oracle deal, which is expected to be announced Monday, isn't a huge win Nokia does find a new audience. If Nokia's maps fly with the enterprise, perhaps tech execs will go for the company's Windows Phone 8 devices too. With Oracle, Nokia's geolocation business will have solid enterprise distribution to go along with its Microsoft partnerships on maps.
Related: Nokia comes out swinging after Apple's rocky iOS 6 Maps launch | Nokia Maps may provide mapping and GPS navigation on new Amazon Kindle Fire | Apple iOS 6 map flap gives Google geolocation advantage
Sure it's a stretch but you never know.
Should Nokia continue to land map deals it will have an asset it can always sell to bolster its balance sheet. Perhaps it'll even garner a return on its Navteq purchase, which topped the $8 billion mark.
Mapping is a major battleground for smartphone makers. Nokia finds itself with a rare edge on the geolocation front. The strategy for Nokia is also clear: Partner with everyone not named Google.
It's unclear whether Nokia can press its map advantage into other parts of the market, but the company has something it can build on.Pennsylvania College Traumatized By Board Chair's Twitter
Tweeted memes and "Ben Carson worth listening to," forced to resign.
A few cheeky tweets took down the chairman of the board of trustees at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
5:19 PM, Sep 09, 2016 | By By Alice B. Lloyd Alice Lloyd The Weekly Standard
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Photo credit: Montgomery County Planning A few cheeky tweets took down the chairman of the board of trustees at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Self-styled student activists started an online shame campaign last week, which led insurance executive and Ursinus alumnus Michael Marcon to quit the board chairmanship on Thursday—"in order for true healing and true growth to take root," per Marcon's statement to students and faculty. The Philadelphia Inquirer chose to print Marcon's greatest hits, at the risk of ThePhiladelphia Inquirerchose to print Marcon's greatest hits, at the risk of retraumatizing the Ursinus community "Got to love a janitor with a 'Ban Fracking Now' sticker on his bucket. Barack is clearly reaching his target demographic," said one of the tweets.
"Yoga pants? Per my DTW visual survey, only 10 percent of users should be wearing them. The rest need to be in sweats - or actually get dressed," said another.
A third, which was a retweet, referred to Caitlyn Jenner: "Bruce Jenner got 25 K for speaking engagements. Caitlyn gets $100K. What wage gap?" As the tweets circulated and outrage spread earlier this week, Inquirer Marcon "clearly needs to go through some sort of diversity rehab." As the tweets circulated and outrage spread earlier this week, another trustee left the board in protest. One student told theInquirerMarcon "clearly needs to go through some sort of diversity rehab." Before submitting his resignation, Marcon first tried to smooth things over. He sent aggrieved faculty and students an apologetic email that some interpreted as a partial defense of his Twitter habits. According to the Inquirer, "Marcon also wrote that he believes in, 'a free and lively exchange of ideas and that we should always challenge ourselves to understand different perspectives or just appreciate the banal observations of everyday life.'" Find fifteen more of Marcon's tweets and retweets archived Find fifteen more of Marcon's tweets and retweets archived here alongside stony-faced commentary by a student with apparently nothing better to do. The offending tweets all predate his brief chairmanship, which began on July 1. Among his "horrifying" missives, are a link to a Ben Carson speech, a Bernie Sanders meme, a smattering of original thoughts—ordinary, if obnoxious, gripes about air travel and modern life. Marcon's tweets have horrified these students and, a day after his departure, their subsequent healing period has only just begun. Okay, so who wants to tell them about talk radio? Web Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/article/2004266 Next PageHey there, and welcome to the Bug Report forum!
Lets talk a little bit about how you can make your bug reports the best damn bug reports they can be. The better the report, the faster we can investigate it, so here are some things you can do to help:
First and foremost, read the Bug Report Forum Guidelines.
Supply screenshots if you can. We love screenshots.
Provide as much information as you possibly can, such as full names of NPCs, gear pieces, locations, abilities, etc.
If you have steps to reproduce the problem, include them! We will try to reproduce issues internally, of course, but if we are not able to reproduce a bug, we can't fix it.
If you have a game crash or graphics issue (as it relates to the game client as a whole, not clipping, stretching, etc), include all of the above if possible, but also include a DXDiag so we can get your exact configuration (spoiler tags are your friend here): Click on the Start button and select Run. (For Vista users, press the Windows Key + R) In the "Open:" field type "dxdiag" and click the OK button. Click Save All Information, then open the file and copy the information into your post.
If you've considered all of the above in your report, congratulations! You have a great bug report ready to go so that we can begin researching and documenting the issue. Thank you from all of us for your time and help! Tait "pariahloki" Watson
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[Contact Us] [Rules of Conduct] [F.A.Q.]The hype around virtual reality is now at an all-time peak, and with good reason. Thanks to Moore’s Law and the passage of a few decades, virtual reality is finally here (or just months away, depending upon where you draw the line on what is or is not truly virtual reality). But this is hardly the first time that virtual reality has been the super-hot Next Big Thing…
In fact, exactly 26 years ago this week VR got its first mainstream “hype moment” via a front page article in the January 23, 1990 edition of the Wall Street Journal. In a lengthy, well-researched, and well-written piece, legendary WSJ staff reporter G. Pascal Zachary described the promising technology as nothing less than “electronic LSD”. As I wrote about in Virtual Reality Then and Now, that piece inspired me to seek out a demo of the tech upon my arrival to Silicon Valley in the fall of 1991, and helped set me on the path to becoming a virtual reality entrepreneur (now two times over). With the anniversary of its publication just days away, I recently decided to dig up that historic article and re-share it with the world.
Alas, the online archive for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t go back that far, so I had to find another way. An online chat with a librarian at Stanford confirmed that they had a copy of the issue, so on a recent morning I headed over to campus and used my alumni status to gain entry to the Green Library.
Once inside, I asked where I could find the old newspaper collection. The nice folks behind the counter let me know that I was mistaken in my quest for hard copy. That morning I would not be flipping through yellowing pages of newsprint; the publication I sought was only available in the form of “microfilm” in the Media and Microtext Center, down in the basement.
Downstairs I was greeted by two friendly staffers who confirmed I was the guy they just were discussing on the phone, and that I was indeed seeking the WSJ microfilm from January 1990. A few minutes later, one of them emerged from the deep recesses of storage, carrying a single spool of film about three inches in diameter. He sat me down at one of many unoccupied microfilm viewing stations and started to give me a tutorial on how to use the equipment:
After a minute or so of painfully arcane instruction, my aide stopped himself. “Actually,” he said, “how much of this are you planning to do?”
“Honestly,” I said, “I haven’t used microfilm in decades, and I don’t really anticipate doing it again any time soon. Maybe ever.”
And so he stopped his tutorial and kindly went about the cumbersome process of spooling the film back and forth to zero in on the edition in question. Fortunately, this “modern” microfilm machine was connected to a PC and had digital scanning capability. After a few minutes, we were able to resurface and digitally scan the front page, complete with the legendary “dot drawing” of the dreadlocked Jaron Lanier, founder/CEO of pioneering virtual reality startup, VPL:
Of course, just having a digital scan of the print edition doesn’t quite satisfy your, my, or anyone’s thirst for full-on digital access to the text, so over recent evenings I took on the painful task of “manual OCR”. [Hopefully, my friends at the Wall Street Journal will see this as “fair use” for posterity and not an infringement on their copyright.]
There’s so much I could say about this piece, starting with my surprise that it uses the term “artificial reality” throughout, despite VPL being widely credited with coining the term “virtual reality”. Also, note how much of modern Silicon Valley startup mythology is present: unconventional, visionary, “dropout computer whiz” founder/CEO with a disruptive technology that could impact many industries: “entertainment, education, engineering, medicine and many other fields of endeavor — pornography among them” — along with some rather prescient market timing doubts by a highly credible naysayer, no less than Jim Clark of Silicon Graphics (and later) Netscape fame.
So much more I could say, but here, without any more of my commentary, is the full text of this truly amazing intro of virtual reality to a mainstream audience:
Artificial Reality
Computer Simulations May One Day Provide Surreal Experiences
Jaron Lanier Develops Way For the User to Control and “Feel” Video Action
A Kind of Electronic LSD?
By G. Pascal Zachary, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Jaron Lanier, his blond dreadlocks swaying, fiddles with the goggles on a young man’s head, then slips a black Lycra glove onto the subject’s right hand. The crowd that looks on is awaiting a glimpse of the future — the world of “artificial reality”.
“Just wave to get started,” instructs Mr. Lanier, a stocky six-footer who looks like a white rap-musician.
The crowd hears a sudden eruption of music and, on a video monitor, sees a bird flying high over a calm blue bay divided by a red bridge. The same vision to the man in the goggles seems eerily surreal. He is watching the bird through two screens mounted in the goggles. He feels as if he is part of the scene, which changes with a movement of his gloved hand: The bird soars then swoops down toward the water.
The crowd oohs and the young man giggles. Moments later, Mr. Lanier taps the subject’s shoulder. “Are you ready to enter the physical world” he asks. “Are you sure you’ll like it?”
To hear Mr. Lanier tell it, he himself wonders if artificial reality might be too appealing. He thinks of it as electronic LSD, with the power to blur a participant’s ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Advocates of the “Just Say No” persuasion, he says, may someday feel obliged to seek a ban on it. Timothy Leary, the former Harvard researcher who popularized LSD in the 1960s, says of artificial reality: “It’s getting closer and closer to the psychedelic experience.”
Mr. Lanier, a 29-year-old high-school dropout and computer whiz, is the most articulate and attention-grabbing member of a loose network of artificial-reality researchers and inventors. They have a vision of Americans working and playing in electronic fantasy world that, they say, will transform entertainment, education, engineering, medicine and many other fields of endeavor — pornography among them.
“This is far more important that the development of the personal computer,” contends Michael McGreevy, who oversees the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s work in artificial reality. “You’re not constrained by keyboards, ‘mice’ and monitors,” he says. “You can explore living environments.”
Wrung-Out Pilots
The crude artificial-reality machines that already exist are the product of years of research by the Air Force, NASA, and several universities and individuals such as Mr. Lanier, who is something of a maverick in the field. He is founder and chief executive officer of VPL Research Inc., a 16-person artificial reality firm here in Redwood City.
Even now, artificial worlds are in use. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, fighter pilots train in artificial cockpits. Outfitted with special goggles and headphones, they both see and hear the battle. “This really gets their juices flowing,” says Thomas Furness, until recently head of Wright-Patterson’s artificial reality project. “They come out of the cockpit sweating, wrung out.”
Architects and designers are on the verge of exploiting artificial reality. A University of North Carolina computer scientist has designed a program that allows architects to design a building and, after putting on the appropriate devices, lead a client on a tour of it. If the client wants larger windows in his office, the architect simply grabs the window with his electronically gloved hand and enlarges it. Many other projects are in the works.
First, Toys
In a modest way, Mattel Inc., the toy maker, brought artificial reality to the consumer market last fall. Mattel introduced a $90 computer glove, partly based on VPL’s design, that enables users to control some Nintendo games with hand gestures.
Dozens of companies in the U.S., Japan and Europe have purchased devices from Mr. Lanier’s firm, VPL Research Inc., to study ways to exploit the technology of artificial reality. Its unlimited potential for creating environments that a properly wired subject can see, feel and control explains all the interest. “This is probably the most powerful stimulant to the imagination ever,” says Brenda Laurel, a Los Gatos, Calif., computer consultant who has followed developments in artificial reality for a decade.
How does it work? Besides supplying computer-generated images, VPL’s goggls contain a magnetic tracking mechanism that responds to movements of a person’s head, causing the field of vision to shift as it might in the real world. Moving the glove signals the computer to move objects in the artificial environment.
Sensors stitched in the “data suit” can signal body movements by the wearer and change the visual perspective as if the wearer were moving through the scene. The sensing devices are connected by fiber-optic cables to computers that update the visuals 15 to 30 times a second. What the viewer sees is close to some sort of reality.
Still, today’s systems fall short of that. “I felt as if I were in a theater and could still see what’s going on backstage,” says Eric Hulteen, an engineer at Apple Computer, Inc. who has tried an artificial reality system developed by NASA. “The movement was slow, the images cartoonlike, and it was hard to grab anything. But I enjoyed it.”
Costly Trip
The hardware is expensive: $88,800 for a glove, $9,400 for goggles, up to $500,000 for a complete system — “a lot of money for a hit of acid,” quips Eric Lyons, director of technology for Autodesk, Inc., a Sausalio, Calif., concern developing artificial-reality software.
Mr. Lanier, artificial reality’s most extravagant promoter, was born in New York City and grew up in El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, N.M. “Jaron was the noisiest infant in the nursery,” says his father, Ellery. “You could hear him through the glass windows.” In grade school he dressed so strangely — often wearing his shirts sideways, for example — that classmates once refused to allow him in a school photograph. As a teen-ager in New Mexico he lived with his widower father in a lean-to and, later, a geodesic dome. He kept a a herd of goats and milked them in the kitchen.
After dropping out of high school, Mr. Lanier faked his way into New Mexico State University. “He was a giant mind, one of the most brilliant students I’ve ever had,” recalls Warner Hutcherson, a professor of electronic music at the school. Yet he failed to get a degree. He also lacked social graces. “He smelled bad,” says Mr. Hutcherson. “But Jaron had other things to worry about than take a bath.”
As a corporate executive, Mr. Lanier has lost little of his eccentricity. Though neither a black nor a Rastfarian, he keeps his hair in dreadlocks that distinguish the Jamaican sect. He is apt to wear the same clothing for days. He drives a 1986 Citroen and lives in a rented four-room cottage at the end of an unpaved street in nearby Palo Alto.
World Without Limits
He is an accomplished musician and born performer. His place is cluttered with instruments. Many, like his Chinese harp and his Thai pipe organ, are exotic. Eleven wood flutes hang on one wall alone.
His obsession with artificial reality seems to reflect his dissatisfaction with conventional reality. “There’s this problem that you have to cope with [in] the real world,” he says. “You have to give up the infinity of your imagination to reach other people. Because we meet in this physical world, we have to make compromises, we have limited power. In [artificial worlds] there’s this incredible sense of release. All of a sudden you are infinite in this world.”
Mr. Lanier seized on artificial reality in 1983, after winning some notice as the creator of video games that blended sounds and scores into computer programs. On a visit to Atari, a video-game maker that was exploring new approaches in computer entertainment, he met Tom Zimmerman, a Massachusetts Institure of Technology graduate and also a musician, who had designed a computer glove in his spare time. They hit it off, and founded VPL in 1985.
One of the first things Mr. Lanier did with Mr. Zimmerman’s glove was to create a software program that enabled him to perform the music of the late guitarist Jimi Hendrix and another in which he conducted an orchestra. “Jaron’s dream is to make the experience of using a computer like playing music,” says Scott Kim, a software developer.
Manufacturing Chaos
Several VPL employees are enterprising artists with a knack for electronics. Ann Lasko chief designer of data suits, spends most of her free time doodling away at an artificial world in which she is a lobster (one of her biggest problems is to figure out the best way to move her antennae). Her husband, Young Harvil, who designed the firm’s three-dimensional program, has a master’s degree in fine arta and no formal training in computers. Before joining VPL, he was curator of a coprorate art collection.
As a workplace, VPL leans toward the chaotic. Mr. Lanier is no Henry Ford. The firm’s complex, custom-made products often aren’t finished until hours before shipment deadlines. The data suit in particular defies mass production. Unless it is fitted to its user with extreme care, its sensors fail to register properly. Some customers send wearers to VPL’s office so the suits can be tailored on them.
Yet customers as diverse as computer and amusement park developers are so excited about the prospect for artificial reality that they’re willing to endure Mr. Lanier’s dicey production schedules. “There’s something fundamentally right and interesting about what Lanier is doing,” says Jean-Louis Gassee, head of new products at Apple Computer, which has purchased several of VPL’s gloves.
Some customers, however, have soured on Mr. Lanier. ShareData Inc., a Chandler Ariz., software firm that financed VPL’s glove research in the mid-1980s, eventually became frustrated at Mr. Lanier’s inability to finish the job. Later it ran into unrelated financial problems that caused it to cancel the project.
Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, a New York toy design company, says it faced similar frustration after licensing VPL’s glove design. It then agreed to supply Mattel with a toy glove based on VPL’s technology. Abrams/Gentile says it spent $1.5 million developing VPL’s glove technology, but found “it wasn’t living up to its billing,” said Christopher Gentile, a principal in the firm. The company paid another design team to finish the glove, and is now seeking to deny VPL royalties on Mattel’s sales. VPL is fighting Abrams/Gentile’s move in court.
Playing With Toys?
Some have accused Mr. Lanier of taking credit for inventions made by others in an attempt to monopolize the essential technology of artificial reality.
VPL recently settled a lawsuit against Stanford University that, among other things, involved a dispute over the ownership of ideas. Howard Perlmutter, a Santa Cruz, Calif., inventor accuses Mr. Lanier of stealing his ideas about computer clothing. Mr. Lanier denies it. “People look at Jaron and think they can take advantage of himm” asserts Jack Russo, a specialist in intellectual property law whose clients include Mr. Lanier and Apple Comuter.
Others fault Mr. Lanier’s showmanship and says he is overselling artificial reality. “He’s bumbling around with toys,” says James Clark, chairman of Silicon Graphics Inc., maker of the high-speed graphics computers central to Mr. Lanier’s system. Mr. Clark thinks that computer goggles and clothing are too constraining, and won’t enter wide use.
Mr. Lanier disagrees, insisting he’s chosen the richest technical path toward artificial reality. “We’re certainly the pioneers of this field,” he asserts. In any case, he says, technical considerations are in a sense trivial when compared with the dream-fulfilling promise of artificial reality. He is eager to pursue it; asked how he plans to spend a weekend, he answers: “I’ll be busy. I’ve got some worlds to create.”Chances are, you have heard of Sailor Moon. Her unique dango hairstyle and ultra leggy sailor outfit are hard to forget. Sailor Moon, also known as Usagi or Serena (depending on what language you read/watch), is the main character of said shoujo manga and anime. She likes boys and sweets, hates homework, is often clumsy, and occasionally extremely selfish. Oh, and she fights evil with her friends using magical makeup and accessories. Cute, right?
But have you ever thought of Sailor Moon as a form of empowerment for girls? Even though it's a cartoon, Sailor Moon is all about kicking butt, friendship, and using your femininity as a source of power. You may not see it yet, but trust me. Sailor Moon is oozing with girl power!
Naoko Takeuchi: The Woman Behind It All
Naoko Takeuchi, the beloved creator of Sailor Moon affectionately dubbed "goddess" by her fans, was already a popular up-and-coming shoujo writer when she began work on Sailor Moon. Unlike her previous shoujo mangas, Naoko wanted to deviate from strictly romantic stories toward self-contained fights between good and evil, as seen in super sentai shows. Naoko's intention wasn't to make a "feminist" manga. She simply wanted to tell a story that readers, especially females, could relate to, all while tying in friendship, action, romance, and fantasy into one glorious package.
Naoko herself said she was inspired to create Sailor Moon based on her experiences in junior high. When she first pitched the idea (then titled, Codename is Sailor V) to her editor, he said he wanted her to put the hero in a sailor outfit. She ultimately turned this idea into a powerful symbol for the girls reading her comics. As you may already know, sailor uniforms are familiar in Japan as the typical girls' school uniform, and Naoko liked the concept of such a recognizable symbol for young girls.
Despite the cute and innocent image of the sailor style uniforms, Japanese middle school girls have quite a rough time. Academics become increasingly important, which leads to added stress and (surprise, surprise!) bullying. In an interview from 1992, Naoko confides that she drew inspiration from this time in her life because she believes it is one of the most difficult times for girls. Rather than make an ideal hero, Usagi/Serena was created to be an average girl that was sometimes lazy and boy-crazy. Contrasting her normal student life and her alter ego, Naoko made a character that readers could relate to, while including the fantastic elements they craved.
Usagi/Serena represents an everyday Japanese girl and isn't a perfect role model. Watching her mature is one of the strong points of the series. Ultimately, we watch her grow from a clumsy 14-year-old girl into a capable young woman with a solid group of friends. By series' end, Usagi is a loving wife, caring mother, and supportive friend.
Sailor Moon was groundbreaking for its time, thanks to Naoko's unwillingness to back down and tailor the story to her editor's liking. She mentions in a 2013 interview with ROLa Magazine that many older male workers at Nakayoshi Magazine tried to dictate her characters' appearances and attributes. In her own words, she exclaimed that she wouldn't let "old men" decide how a story for young girls should be written. (Really, what would they know about shoujo?) It was obvious, she added, that they did not respect female authors in the first place. One of the biggest disputes arose when the male editors did not |
HZXKfpAl — Christopher Massie (@chrismassie) December 7, 2017
Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who lost the GOP primary to Moore, delivered his farewell address in the Senate:
And this moment gave Californians hope amid the wildfires:Image copyright AFP
South Korean prosecutors have raided the offices of Samsung Electronics as part of a probe into the political scandal around President Park Geun-hye.
The prosecutors are investigating allegations that Samsung gave money to the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, a close friend of the president.
Ms Choi is accused of using their friendship to interfere in politics and solicit business donations.
Samsung confirmed the raids to the BBC saying they had "no further comment".
President Park has apologised for her ties to Ms Choi but faces mounting calls to resign.
In this latest twist of the scandal that's been rocking South Korea for weeks, prosecutors are investigating allegations that Samsung might have provided €2.8m euros ($3.1m, £2.5m) to a company co-owned by Ms Choi and her daughter, to bankroll the daughter's equestrian training in Germany.
Prosecutors are also reported to have raided the offices of the Korea Equestrian Federation and the Korea Horse Affairs Association.
Ms Choi was arrested on 3 November and charged with fraud and abuse of power.
Image copyright AFP/getty Image caption Ms Choi, a long-time friend of Ms Park's, is the daughter of Choi Tae-min, a shadowy quasi-religious leader
Over the past days, tens of thousands of South Koreans have protested in the capital, Seoul, to demand the resignation of President Park over the corruption row.
Ms Choi, a long-time friend of Ms Park's, is the daughter of Choi Tae-min, a shadowy quasi-religious leader who was closely linked to Ms Park's father, then-president Park Chung-hee.
She is alleged to have pushed businesses to donate millions of dollars to foundations she controlled, helped choose presidential aides, and even picked the president's clothes.
Ms Park has since apologised on TV for allowing her long-standing friend inappropriate access to government policy-making. The president admitted she had let Ms Choi edit her speeches.
President Park has already replaced her prime minster, reshuffled her cabinet and dismissed several aides, but there are growing calls for her resignation or impeachment.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Ms Park said she had "put too much faith" in her friendship with Ms Choi
The scandal has left Ms Park with an approval rating of just 5%.
Choo Mi-ae, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said she did not believe the apology was genuine and called on her to accept a new prime minister recommended by parliament.
Ms Park became her country's first female president when she was elected in a close-run contest in December 2012.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Chuck Schumer is about to be the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate. And he's not happy with FBI Director James Comey.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), the soon-to-be-top-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said on Wednesday that he’s lost faith in James Comey following the FBI director’s handling of newly discovered emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton.
“I do not have confidence in him any longer,” Schumer told Bloomberg News. He went on to call Comey’s letter to members of Congress, which alerted them to the discovery of emails that may or may not be pertinent to the FBI’s prior investigation into Clinton’s private email server, “appalling.”
“To restore my faith, I am going to have to sit down and talk to him and get an explanation for why he did this,” the senator said.
Schumer ― who is on track to serve as Senate minority leader for the next Congress, or perhaps majority leader based on Senate projections for next week’s elections ― is the latest in Democratic leadership to criticize Comey.
“Maybe he’s not in the right job,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN’s Jamie Gangel. “I think that we have to just get through this election and just see what the casualties are along the way.”
President Barack Obama, too, seemed to ding Comey for breaking protocol in announcing a new investigative finding so close to the election.
“Setting aside the particulars of this case, I know that [Hillary Clinton] is somebody who has always looked out for the interests of America and the American people first, and I do think that there is a norm that when there are investigations, we don’t operate on innuendo, we don’t operate on incomplete information, we don’t operate on leaks, we operate based on concrete decisions that are made,” Obama told NowThis on Wednesday.
Shortly after the interview, the White House stressed that the president was not being critical, per se.
Comey has been rebuked by Republicans as well for inserting his bureau into a presidential race so close to Election Day.
But Comey serves a 10-year term, which isn’t set to end until 2023. If he’s going to lose his job, it would have to be at the behest of the president. So while Schumer may want a sit-down after the election is over, Comey’s fate will be determined by either Clinton or Donald Trump.Note: Areas with no shading may have had gunshots but are not within ShotSpotter’s range. Half of the incidents involve multiple gunshots.
Mouseover a sound wave to listen to the audio
VS
The system can be taxed by the sheer number of noises it has to evaluate. It weeds out noises that are obviously not shots and sends about one of every 10 to D.C. police, who make the final determination, often in 2 to 3 seconds.
Each type of sound has a waveform that shows its characteristics, like a fingerprint. Because of this, the system can distinguish a gunshot from fireworks.
A gunfire detection system has captured more than 39,000 gunshots in D.C. since 2006. (The Fold/The Washington Post)
Occasional difficulties
A Washington Post analysis found that distinguishing gunshots from pyrotechnics in the District can be difficult. ShotSpotter reported gunshots from the source of the Cherry Blossom Festival fireworks and from ballgames at Nationals Park, including three season home openers and two playoff games, where fireworks were used. About a third of detected gunshot incidents in the city happen on New Year’s Eve or around July 4. Officials explain the high rate as celebratory gunfire.
24% Fourth of July 10% New Year's 66% Non-holiday
Locating the sound
The sound of a gunshot can travel up to two miles, more than enough distance to register on several synchronized sensors. In D.C., an average of eight or nine sensors pick up each shot.
Each sensor records the time it detects a shot. Using the times and distances between pairs of sensors, the system creates curves. The system says the shot was fired where the curves intersect.
Diagram is schematic
Things that can interfere with the system
Alleys
Tall buildings cause sound to bounce around so much that it loses energy and may travel only a few hundred feet. And because sound bends in an arc, a sensor on top of the nearest building may not even pick it up.
Cars
If a person fires into a car and the barrel of a gun is near or within it, the sound is contained and it qualifies as an indoor shot, something the system can’t accurately detect.
Bodies
The sound wave from a shot fired at very close range — within a foot or so — is largely absorbed by the soft tissue of a person’s body and drastically muffled.A compendium of the wacky and weird: 10 strange camera designs that history has forgotten
The good folks over at FStoppers published a new article by Alex Cooke yesterday that really grabbed our attention. Rather logically entitled "10 of the Weirdest Cameras Ever Made", the piece appealed to our love of photography, added a healthy splash of history and nostalgia, then neatly tied it off with a bow by adding some quirkiness to the mix. In the piece, Cooke presenting what he feels are 10 of the most bizarre camera designs from over the years, both film and digital.
From the bewildering medium-format Fuji camera that turned the idea of portrait and landscape photography on its head (no pun intended) to Ian Ruhter's delivery truck pinhole camera -- yes, really! We covered this ourselves last year, actually -- Cooke's article has it all. Intending to point readers towards it straight away with a very brief item of our own, we first shared it around the IR office... and promptly got ourselves more than just a little sidetracked with a discussion of some of our own favorite strange cameras.
What started out as a quick "Look at this, guys!" rapidly turned into a lengthy back-and-forth that consumed most of our afternoon as we roamed memory lane, and eventually snowballed from there into a full-blown article in its own right. But all credit where it's due, the FStoppers story was the progenitor of the piece you're now reading, so before you continue, click here to read Cooke's article in a new browser tab. You can come back for our thoughts when you're done.
OK, are you finished? Great story, we're sure you'll agree, but we immediately found ourselves recalling even more cameras we'd have loved to have seen on Cooke's list, either because they're epoch-making, extremely unusual or just plain weird. Unlike Cooke, though, we decided to limit ourselves just to cameras which were either mass-produced or probably intended to have been at the time of their conception, which ruled out more bizarre creations such as the turtle shell camera which Stan Horaczek over at PopPhoto turned up for a similar piece a few years back.
Whoops, we just sent you down another rabbit hole, didn't we? Okay, now that you're done with PopPhoto's article too, we humbly submit our own list of some of the weirder cameras we could recall from the last few decades of our own shared experiences. (Between us, the team at IR has probably a century and change of experience in the photo business, and to slightly misquote Family Guy, "We've seen some things, man! And some stuff!")
Without any further ado, here are our own top 10 Weird Cameras That History (Mostly) Forgot...
10. Pentax Optio NB1000
Over the years, Pentax and its current parent company Ricoh have made some very interesting and unusual cameras, from the Ricoh GXR with its interchangeable lens/sensor modules or the see-thru rainbow cornucopia that was the Ricoh LX-22 Xobbox to the bewilderingly themed, limited-edition Pentax K-x Korejanai Robot Model. For our money, though, the Pentax Optio NB1000 really takes the cake, however.
The Optio NB1000 was in essence a plain old Pentax Optio RS1000 with a different face plate -- if a camera with an available tartan vinyl skin can be called plain, that is. But what an even more extravagant affair the Pentax NB1000 was. Newly-equipped with its Nanoblock front plate, the Pentax NB1000 could be clad in the tiny, Lego-like blocks from Japanese toymaker Kawada, near-instantly transforming it from a plain old photographic tool to an objet d'art... sort of.
Who wouldn't want a snowman, say, or a pair of Easter Island statues protruding from the front of their camera? A stick-in-the-mud, that's who. Undeniably fun and yet totally impractical, we can't imagine that Pentax sold terribly many of these. Was the NB1000 weird, though? Unquestionably!
9. Game Boy Camera
The camera which introduced many a teenager -- and probably a fair few adults -- to the concept of digital photography, Nintendo's Game Boy Camera was a photographic device only in the very loosest sense of the term. With a paltry resolution of just 256 x 224 pixels in two-bit grayscale (that's black, white and two shades of gray), the Game Boy Camera's output was interpolated downwards by a factor of two, instantly dashing the high-res hopes and dreams of mega... err... kilopixel lovers everywhere.
Nevertheless an impressive piece of kit for its time, the Game Boy Camera was for a while recognized by the folks at the Guinness Book of Records as the world's smallest digital camera. Of course, it helped that it could piggyback off the much chunkier Game Boy unit itself for its power, screen, and most likely much of its processing and control as well. Affordably priced at just $50, its images could be printed on fast-fading thermal paper -- the same thing often used for printed receipts -- if you were willing to pay another $60 for a separate Game Boy Printer accessory.
Unlike the Pentax NB1000, the Game Boy Camera sold surprisingly well, and lasted a good four years or so before it was finally discontinued. A followup GameEye offering color imagery on the Game Boy Advance was planned, but never released.
8. SMaL Ultra-Pocket
Sticking with the theme of record-destroyingly small cameras for a minute, we have the rather bizarrely-named SMaL Ultra-Pocket, a device which at the time seemed almost straight out of a James Bond movie. Almost all digital cameras at the time were chunky, clunky affairs. We're talking 2001 here, bear in mind. The words "pocket friendly" weren't much-used at the time. Three megapixel cameras were all the rage, and the smallest on the market -- the Casio QV-3EX -- was a full 1.3 inches thick.
At just 0.2 inches thick, the SMaL Ultra-Pocket was the stuff of sci-fi fantasy made real. In fact, even by today's standards, it's a svelte little beauty. (Bear in mind that the MultiMediaCard protruding from its side in the rather dated product rendering above is the exact same size as the omnipresent Secure Digital card your camera likely uses today.) Well, okay, maybe it wasn't beautiful, but it was certainly slender. So what if it had a paltry resolution of just 640 x 480 pixels, and lacked any screen on which to review your images post-capture, or even much in the way of controls?
SMaL left commercialization of the Ultra-Pocket to other companies such as Creative Labs, Fujifilm, Logitech, Oregon Scientific and Radio Shack. The best-known of these was the Fujifilm AXIA eyeplate, which left us wondering just how they managed to choose a worse name than the "SMaL Ultra-Pocket". By all accounts, though, the design did pretty well for SMaL, which was eventually absorbed byCypress Semiconductor in early 2005. Somewhere north of a million units had been sold over several iterations, with the final model launched in 2004 having finally reached the three megapixel point, just a few years behind the rest of the market. Presumably more than a few would-be spies were among its owners.
7. Ritz Dakota Digital Single-Use Camera
The very notion of a single-use digital camera might seem rather wasteful, but there was a brief period when there was just such a product on the market. In fact, there were actually quite a few of them from a variety of retailers, although the Ritz Dakota Digital sticks in our minds best of all. It was the somewhat-logical end play from an industry which really didn't want to let go of the revenue-boosting disposable film camera, but which struggled to find a justification for its continued life in the digital era.
The concept of a disposable digicam was first floated and later commercialized in Japan, but its US equivalent was brought to fruition by a partnership between the aforementioned SMaL Camera and San Francisco-based Pure Digital Technologies. (The latter went on to be best known as the company behind the Flip Video Cameras, which were briefly all the rage before being taken over by Cisco and, just two years later, rather unceremoniously shuttered.)
These cameras weren't quite as bad for the environment as they might have sounded, however, because truth be told, they weren't actually disposable. Instead, they just had an intentionally-obfuscated data connection which was hidden behind a sticker on the side of the camera body. Instead of processing film inside the camera, the photofinisher would download photos through a proprietary cable for printing, before sending the camera itself off to be cleaned up, prepared for reuse, and repackaged.
The gaping hole in the business model -- and one which should have been blindingly obvious in hindsight -- was that hackers saw these cameras as a way to gain very cheap entry to the digital photography game. At $10-20 a pop, they bought disposable cameras which doubtless cost the retailers far more, and then reverse-engineered the hardware and software necessary to get the photos off the camera by themselves.
An all-too-predictable arms race ensued, with Pure Digital, SMaL and their partners releasing newer versions -- including a disposable camcorder -- and hackers breaking into each new model in short order. Within a few short years, the disposable digital camera market was abandoned, relegated to the history books under the chapter "products we probably should never have made".
6. Konica AiBORG
With a name incorporating a nifty little bit of wordplay -- both "AI" (or Artificial Intelligence, if you prefer) and "cyborg" are hinted at in its AiBORG branding -- this interesting little film camera had a face only Darth Vader could love. Or perhaps famed German industrial designer Luigi Colani. We're pretty sure he'd be right at home with the AiBORG, actually. All bar the slightly tacky glitter-finish plastic, perhaps; we can't say that we remember glitter featuring too prominently in his futuristic-meets-organic-and-then-gets-put-too-close-to-the-radiator styling.
Either way, if you were willing to look beyond its unconventional exterior, the AiBORG was a rather interesting device. That's perhaps not too terribly surprising, as Konica had made a bit of a name for itself with unconventional cameras. For example the Konica Kanpai, a voice-activated film camera, could swivel on a tripod to aim towards the source of a loud noise -- someone shouting "Kanpai" (or "Cheers!") at a party, perhaps -- and then capture a photo, all by itself.
Launched in 1991, the Konica AiBORG was packed with external controls, even including a four-way joystick. You might wonder why you'd need this on a relatively compact film camera, but it hinted at a feature heavily promoted as a world's first. As well as controlling the 35-105mm zoom lens, the AiBORG's joystick was also used to choose one of five focus points, although the camera actually only had a single-point AF sensor which was moved from side to side mechanically.
It also featured some fairly unusual modes and functions for what was a relatively compact body, including one specifically for taking photos of the image on a TV, another capable of taking a timed exposure of roughly 100 hours in length, and still more allowing 39-frame interval or multiple-exposure bursts. There's a pretty in-depth user review over at 35MMC.com.
5. Ricoh RDC-i700
At the outset of this list, we alluded to Ricoh's unusual cameras, and the Ricoh RDC-i700 certainly bears mention as one of the company's standout efforts. Not that it was particularly unusual in its imaging pipeline, sporting the same three-megapixel resolution as everyone else, and a fairly typical 35-105mm-equivalent zoom lens. The hybrid autofocus system, pairing both contrast-detection and passive AF, was perhaps a little unusual in a relatively compact camera, admittedly, as was its curious horizontal, brick-like form-factor with a flip-up screen.
Close the screen, and it struck us at the time as looking a whole lot like a VHS tape with a lens on one side, which doubtless has the youngsters among us looking slightly confused. (If you're one of them, we'll just say that a VHS tape was like a big Blu-Ray disk with awful picture quality, and which was incredibly slow to change tracks -- and let's leave it at that!)
But some of the tech in the RDC-i700 was surprisingly far ahead of its time. In the last few years, touch-screens and in-camera networking technologies have become de rigeur, but at a whopping list price of US$1,200, the Ricoh had both all the way back in the year 2000. And not just that, the touch-screen LCD panel had a diagonal of 3.5 inches, huge at the time. There was even a touch-screen stylus.
Add in its networking capability, and the Ricoh RDC-i700 was effectively a modestly-powerful PDA melded with a camera. You could browse the web, send emails or transfer images via FTP, set up lists of images to be captured and have them automatically turned into Word, Excel or HTML documents, build presentations in-camera, and even send text images as faxes. (Youngsters: Go and ask your grandparents what a fax was! There may be a test later.) Of course, back then it didn't support Wi-Fi: Instead you had a choice of installing a full-sized PCMCIA Ethernet card for wired networks, or a cellular modem card for dial-up internet.
4. Sanyo IDC-1000Z
Back in the FStoppers article which was the source of all this -- Remember that? Yeah, we'd almost forgotten too. We have a tendency to be a bit verbose around these parts some times! -- they referenced the Sony Mavica floppy disk cameras. We were all set to offer the CD Mavica cameras (one of which is shown in the thumbnail atop this page) as a rebuttal, and then we remembered the Sanyo IDC-1000Z. Where the CD Mavicas were quite unusual, the Sanyo '1000Z was just plain bonkers.
It used an unusual magneto-optical floppy disk format that almost no one had even heard of at the time, let alone seen in person. Sure, it could store 730MB of data on each disk, but what good was that if you had to buy a new drive for every machine you wanted to use the camera with? And forget taking one to your friends' house or colleague's office and finding the right drive in use. Instead, you'd have to rely on USB or FireWire connectivity.
The latter was pretty fast, but again, finding a FireWire port on the typical Windows computer in 2000-2001 was a bit like winning the lottery, except not quite as common. And the USB port was the slow-as-treacle USB 1.1, the USB 2.0 standard still being brand-new at the time. Offloading a single disk via USB could be expected to take ten minutes or more.
All of which could be forgiven if the IDC-1000Z wasn't a big, chunky camera with a disappointing 1.5-megapixel resolution and a puny 38-114mm 3x optical zoom lens. As was, though, the Sanyo didn't live up to expectations, and nor did its unusual storage medium see widespread adoption. Both quietly vanished into the sunset, and nobody really noticed -- quite a shame for a camera which could potentially have been a game-changer had it just offered better imaging capabilities. (No wonder we can't find a higher-res image than the rather blurry one we had to upsample from our 16-year old coverage above.)
3. Kowa TD-1
OK, hands up anybody who remembers the Kowa TD-1. Anybody? No? We didn't think so. To call this camera specialist would be a severe understatement. With a powerful 450 to 1,350mm-equivalent, f/2.8-4.0 3x zoom lens, you could pretty much bring people from the next town over into your living room, so long as you didn't need great image quality, you had a solid tripod and they weren't moving around too much. Wide-angle or fast-paced sports shooting you could forget about, however.
Essentially, the Kowa TD-1 was a spotting scope with a 3x zoom digicam built in, piggybacking off the telescope optics. (Ever held your camera or smartphone lens up to the eyepiece of a telescope? You were kind of doing the same thing.) A reflex mirror inside the camera acted much like that in an SLR, choosing whether the light reached the image sensor or viewfinder.
This choice handily meant that you could forego the camera portion altogether if you ran out of batteries, which you probably wanted to do pretty often, given that the low-res three-megapixel image sensor was basically obsolete by the time the TD-1 went on sale. Still, kudos to Kowa for trying something different. (Back in those heady days of the early noughties, it seemed that everyone and their uncle saw a big future for themselves in the camera market.)
Oh, and did we mention that the Kowa TD-1's designers liked circles? We mean they really liked circles. They liked them so much that the TD-1 even placed circles inside circles, on top of other circles. All bar the handgrip, there was barely a straight line in sight on the TD-1, and it certainly made for an interesting design aesthetic!
2. Zenit PhotoSniper
Resident news maven Jeremy Gray contributed the Zenit PhotoSniper to our list, and we have to confess to not knowing too terribly much about it, given that it was manufactured in two different models and in very small numbers from the early 1940s thru the end of the '60s. Boy, does it ever look the part, though. Camera-Wiki.org has it that the PhotoSniper was originally made for military use, and we'd believe it.
There are no cutesy circles in sight here: This thing is all business. A pistol grip -- and we do mean a pistol grip, complete with the trigger -- was accompanied by a shoulder stock for stability. We've never seen one in person, but we'd imagine the temptation is strong to say "Pew, pew, pew!" while framing through the viewfinder on the attached Zenit camera body. A 300mm lens rounded out the setup, which probably meant your subject was close enough to hear your pretend gun sounds unless you were framing them pretty loosely or remembered to be quiet. But we still want to try one. We'll whisper, and you'll never hear us coming!
1. Canon EOS Elan
We hemmed and hawed over what to put in the number one spot for this roundup. Our decision came down to a single feature which was so memorably bizarre that it stuck somewhere in the back of Senior Reviews Editor Mike Tomkins' memory for a full quarter-century, without once having discussed or even seen mention of it. And that narrowed our choice down to two camera models. (Or six, if you consider the different regional brand names used by Canon to be different cameras. We won't, in this instance.)
The folks over at PhotoNotes.org ended up unknowingly making the call for us, by claiming the Canon EOS Elan to have bested the earlier EOS 10 S in its implementation of this feature. (Incidentally, the Elan was known as the EOS 100 in Europe, and the EOS100 QD or 100 Panorama in Japan. The EOS 10 S was the EOS 10 in Europe, and the EOS 10 QD in Japan.)
So what was the standout feature on what would otherwise look to be a fairly straightforward -- if fairly dated -- EOS-series camera from late 1991? Both of these film SLRs featured built-in infrared sensors in their sides, adjacent to the film rewind button. And for each, an optional barcode reader was offered as an accessory, communicating with the camera itself by IR.
What on earth did a film SLR need a barcode reader for, we hear you asking? It was a case of technological wizardry over common sense; of ease-of-use made unintentionally and unnecessarily awkward. Attempting to make it so that amateur photographers could get the photos they were after without needing to understand how to actually use a camera, Canon had imbued both models with an autopilot of sorts, that would handle the basics based on a knowledge of the image the would-be photographer had in mind.
And that's where the barcode reader came in. Along with your camera, EOS Elan and 10 S owners received a 33-page booklet entitled "EOS Photo Files", with a total of 23 different photo types shown in full color. Alongside each one was a 2D barcode which you'd swipe across the sensor accessory, allowing it to communicate with the IR sensor on the side of the camera, and the settings would be configured appropriately for the photo type you'd chosen.
And if you really wanted to get serious about your casual photography, you could buy a separate companion book for your SLR called "EOS Barcodes 101", jam-packed with another 111 full-color pages and 107 different photo types for your scanning delectation.
There was just one flaw with this otherwise very clever feature: You had to carry these books and the barcode reader around everywhere you went, trying to take care of them while regularly pulling them out of your camera bag or pocket, juggling the camera, book and reader accessory, and trying not to crease the barcodes or drop the reader on the ground. You could just as easily have read a few short sentences on how to adjust a couple of on-camera controls to get the same settings, and learned something about photography in the process. And honestly, you'd likely have saved time.
Mike remembers playing with the Asian variant of the EOS Elan in the Canon showroom in Hong Kong, bright sunlight shining in through the window, and struggling to get the reader to scan codes near the off the glossy paper and near the spine of the book, let alone to get the reader to talk to the camera body -- and that with a brand-new showroom setup.
There are many really great ideas Canon has come up with over the decades. One we'd love to see return was the interesting Depth of Field AE mode from the Asian variant of the EOS Rebel S II, which Mike ended up buying as his first Canon camera (and his first non-manual SLR, to boot).
This was very intuitive, letting you indicate your desired nearest and furthest depth of field by simply aiming the camera first at one subject, and then the other, focusing on each in turn. The camera then did the math necessary to figure out the settings to ensure everything between the two was in focus. We've seen something similar in more recent cameras, but it relied on being able to fit both subjects under autofocus points at the same time without reframing, which made it far less useful.
But while we'd love to see that Depth of Field AE mode option return, we wouldn't want to see the barcode scanner come back. Canon correctly assigned that one to the annals of history, chalked it up to experience, and went on to much bigger and better things -- and good on them for recognizing the fumble and moving on!
CNN provides an overview of the Logitech Fotoman in 1992.
A few honorable mentions
And that brings us to the end of our list, and a rather fun stroll down memory lane. (Occasionally, down someone else's memory, second hand via a little Googling, we'll admit.) It's been fun, and we can see the challenge faced by FStoppers in their article. (If you didn't go ahead and read that already, you'll find it here.)
You just can't get all the cameras you want into a list like this, or you'll be here all week. We had so many more we'd have loved to mention ourselves: The interesting Canon RC-701, the first commercial still video camera which stores images on analog floppy disks. The Logitech Fotoman (aka Dycam Model 1), a 1992 CNN video for which we can't resist sharing above. The Pentax Optio X, which took the swiveling form factor of cameras like the much-beloved Nikon Coolpix 900-series and *500-series cameras, and then rather bizarrely didn't take advantage of the opportunity to hide the lens inside the width of the swiveling portion, and so still had to extend and retract its more fragile optic. Pretec's unusual SD card camera. (Yes, really. The SD card *was* the camera.) And so, so many more.
And that's just the cameras which reached the market. We also wanted to cover some of the really unusual concepts, some of which we were lucky to see in person, occasionally even as fully-functional prototypes. The original Kodak Ecam D-5000, an entirely in-house three megapixel camera with standard K-mount which, if sold, would have been the world's first DSLR. (Instead it was sold only to the government, according to Jim McGarvey's excellent DCS Story document.) The 1981 Sony Mavica prototype with its proprietary floppy disk that would go on to be used in the aforementioned Canon RC-701. The unnamed Pentax DSLR prototype that could have put the company into the full-frame market several years before its rivals at Canon and Nikon. Not to mention bewildering Canon prototypes designed, once again, by Luigi Colani, as well as one presented at EXPO 2010 which probably wouldn't have looked too out-of-place in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But alas, we've reached the end of our piece. These and more will have to wait for another day. But what of you, dear readers? Which cameras would be on your list of the weirdest, coolest, or just plain most bewildering? Let us know in the comments section below!
(Konica Aiborg image courtesy of John Nuttall / Wikimedia Commons; used under a Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0 license. Ricoh RDC-i700 image courtesy of Morio / Wikimedia Commons; Zenit PhotoSniper image courtesy of LordKalvan / Wikimedia Commons; both used under a GNU Free Documentation license. Images have been modified from the originals.)Trying to increase its presence and to dominate the European car scene, Skoda started an adventure called the Yeti more than ten years ago. The first concept surfaced at the Geneva Motor Show back in 2005 and the production car greeted the masses in 2009 again in Geneva. Skoda sold almost 300.000 units (in Europe) in first five years of production and, interestingly enough, the Yeti had a record sales track in 2014. For the 2015 model year, the Yeti remained much the same as the year before, when it received a profound redesign.
Based on the Volkswagen PQ35 platform, the 2015 Scoda Yeti received much the same tech as all the other compact cars from the segment. Up to 19 cars share similar tech from the PQ35 and the Yeti, along with the Audi Q3 and the Volkswagen Tiguan is like the crossover representative of the same platform.
Trying to differ the car from the quirky, yet appealing styling of the 2009 Yeti, Skoda made some profound style changes to it. Mods included the removal of the double front headlights setup and design of the new front lights now in line with other stuff Skoda sells. The new redesigned Yeti forgot to be playful and it matured a bit, but it seems that buyers love it more like this. Actually, they love it 10 percent more as the sales increased as much after the redesign.
Even though the exterior was changed, the interior and the cabin arrangements have stayed the same. Now, that is particularly good news mainly because the Yeti had one of the best interiors in the business. Perfectly combining the prospects of the MPV and employing them in the quite boxy, but comfortable Yeti cabin, Skoda succeeded in creating the ultimately practical passenger space. Rear VarioFlex seats that move in every direction (independently) can even be removed in an instant if a need arise. Furthermore, the simplistic yet appealing design of the interior is perfectly adapted for a bit harsher use. So, if you plan to go on terrain with the Yeti and get back inside the car with your muddy boots, you will not feel guilty of anything. You will like it!
For the latest 2015 Yeti, Skoda even revealed a special Outdoor version which comes with better underbody protection standard, all-wheel drive and interesting cladding hardware on the outside. If you are the one who likes to get your boots all dirty and muddy, this is the Yeti you should go for. On the other hand, the 2015 Scoda Yeti is available in many different engine/transmission/drive configurations. It is available with engines as small as 1,2L TSI with 105hp, while the top notch version is powered by a two liter TDI developing 170hp.
All in all, the 2015 Skoda Yeti is almost a perfect representation of the European compact crossover segment. It offers versatility, ruggedness, simple design and it is available for a far lower price than its higher grade counterparts.Told you the pieces would start landing once Tyson Clabo re-signed. FOX's Jay Glazer reported Friday afternoon that the Atlanta Falcons had agreed to five-year contract terms with Minnesota Vikings DE Ray Edwards, who'd reportedly been the team's top target for months now.
Update: D. Orlando Ledbetter confirms "Air Blank departs at 6:01 p.m. to scoop him up."
Update: Adam Schefter says the deal is for $30 million, with $11 million guaranteed.
Rumors throughout the week have had the Cleveland Browns, New England Patriots, Philadelphia Eagles and others also jockeying for his services. The Eagles dropped out, if they were ever in, upon landing Jason Babin, while we don't yet know if the others were interested.
We also don't yet know how much the Falcons paid for Edwards. The team can afford a move like this, having released two former first-round picks Friday, though they still have a few key free agents left to re-sign. Edwards won't be able to join the team for practice until next week, if indeed he has agreed to terms with the team, but wow.
In five years as a Viking, Edwards compiled 29.5 sacks in 72 games and 58 starts. He's put up eight or more sacks in two straight seasons and five or more in four straight. He'll be penciled in as the starter opposite John Abraham from day one on.
How do we feel about Atlanta's defense now?
Updated free agency chart:
Name Pos. Age Status Word on the street Brent Grimes CB 28 RFA Brian Finneran WR 35 UFA Won't re-sign; Rams target Brian Williams CB 32 UFA Won't re-sign Eric Weems KR 26 RFA Harvey Dahl RG 30 UFA Rams target Jason Snelling RB |
Tamari of the Inquirer, Li did in fact originally choose the 6th district but “decided on the seventh after talks with party leaders”. At Pennsylvania Society, the candidate and her campaign consultant casually discussed the PA-6 contest.
At this moment, Google searches and the campaign’s own website still identify Li as running in PA-7.
With this move, the PA-7 Democratic primary is now between 2014 nominee Mary Ellen Balchunis and pastor Bill Golderer. Meanwhile, Li will now face former Army Aviator Mike Parrish.
Last week, Nathan Gonzalez of Roll Call reported that the DCCC is looking for an alternative to Parrish. In November, Tamari mentioned that the DCCC pushed Golderer to run in PA-7. Couple that with his previous report that Li initially chose the 7th on the advice of party leaders and it looks like the Democratic establishment is playing musical chairs in Southeast PA.
December 30th, 2015 | Posted in Congress, Front Page Stories, Top Stories | 48 CommentsOnce again boosting their reputation as a country intent on helping the environment, Spain has announced that they intend to put 1 million electric cars on their roads by 2014. This will be part of the Zapatero government’s plan to reduce their use of energy and increase the countries overall energy efficiency.
Spain’s minister of industry, business and tourism Miguel Sebastian said Tuesday that the plan should gain approval from Spain’s Council of Ministers on Friday, and should then be carried out this year and on through to 2011.
“Electric vehicles are the future and the driver of the industrial revolution,” Sebastian said in testimony to a congressional panel. “Every time we ease off the accelerator, we boost national income and employment.”
The plan will cost some 245 million euros, and is made up of a total of 31 separate measures. In enacting this plan though, Spain is set to save between 5.8 and 6.4 million tons of oil over the three-year period, this according to industry estimates.
According to Sebastian, Spain has been trying for awhile to cut oil imports. Over the past year alone, Sebastian noted that the country had spent 17 billion euros on oil imports.
Source 1 and 2
credit: James Gordon at Flickr under a Creative Commons licenseMile-High Health Concerns Leave Steelers Star On The Bench For Playoff Game
Enlarge this image toggle caption Christian Petersen/Getty Images Christian Petersen/Getty Images
When the Pittsburgh Steelers start the NFL playoffs Sunday with a road game in Denver, they'll do it without free safety Ryan Clark. That's because Clark, who has 100 tackles and the confidence of his coaches, also has sickle cell trait, which can cause severe complications at high altitudes.
The condition can be particularly risky when those who have it exert themselves — something Clark is called upon to do dozens of times in an NFL game. And he's had a close call before, during a previous game against the Broncos. The New York Times' Judy Batista describes the situation:
"Clark knew about the trait, but was unaware of the severity of the risk, when the Steelers played at Denver in 2007. The altitude caused a reaction in Clark's blood that attacked his spleen. Over a few weeks, in separate operations, doctors removed Clark's spleen and gallbladder. At one point, when a doctor told him that they would pray together as Clark lay in a hospital bed, Clark feared that he was going to die. He lost more than 30 pounds and did not play again that season."
And since that ordeal, Clark has not played a game in Denver. But he also told ESPN's Josina Anderson that he had been planning to play in Sunday's AFC wild-card game — until he was overruled by his coach, Mike Tomlin. Clark told ESPN that every athlete wants to see action in the playoffs:
"I talked to my doctors and we actually had a plan in place for me to play. All things pointed to me going until [Tomlin] told me I can't. He said he wouldn't have let his son play, and so I'm not playing either."
Tomlin says the decision to start reserve Ryan Mundy and sit Clark, who leads the team in tackles, was an easy one.
"It's a big game for us. But it is a game. We'll keep it in that perspective," Tomlin said at a news conference videotaped by The Pittsburgh Tribune.
Clark will make the trip with the Steelers, and Tomlin says he expects Clark to help his teammates prepare for Sunday's game.
According to the National Institute of Health, sickle cell trait is a condition in which someone has inherited one copy of the altered hemoglobin gene associated with sickle cell disease (also called anemia). For the disease to manifest itself, it requires two copies.
An estimated 2.5 million people share Clark's condition. The NIH says the majority of them lead normal lives — until situations like those experienced by Clark pop up.-prefix-free lets you use only unprefixed CSS properties everywhere. It works behind the scenes, adding the current browser’s prefix to any CSS code, only when it’s needed.
“[-prefix-free is] fantastic, top-notch work! Thank you for creating and sharing it.”
Just include prefixfree.js anywhere in your page. It is recommended to put it right after the stylesheets, to minimize FOUC
You can also visit the Test Drive page, type in any code you want and check out how it would get prefixed for the current browser.
Browser support
The target browser support is IE9+, Opera 10+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+ and Chrome on desktop and Mobile Safari, Android browser, Chrome and Opera Mobile on mobile.
If it doesn’t work in any of those, it’s a bug so please report it. Just before you do, please make sure that it’s not because the browser doesn’t support a CSS3 feature at all, even with a prefix.
In older browsers like IE8, nothing will break, just properties won’t get prefixed. Which wouldn’t be useful anyway as IE8 doesn’t support much CSS3 ;)Credit: DC Comics
Credit: DC Comics
With the Green Lantern titles spinning in a whole new direction post-Converence — with the Corps missing and Hal Jordan playing the role of renegade — readers might expect smaller threats to the universe, since there's no cosmic police force anymore.
Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Green Lantern writer Robert Venditti.
In July's Green Lantern #42, drawn by regular artists Billy Tan and Mark Irwin, readers found out that tiny stone-like fragments are floating through space and turning everything they touch into stone — including entire planets. They're connected somehow to Black Hand, who also has the not-so-Midas touch — presumably because of his interaction with the Source Wall in the recent "Godhead" storyline.
At the same time, Hal Jordan is also dealing with the absence of the Green Lantern Corps, and he's picked up a few supporting cast members for Green Lantern. Newsarama talked to Venditti to find out more about the surprising new cast members and what readers can expect from the challenges Hal will face with Black Hand, Relic and what's coming up in Green Lantern.
Newsarama: Rob, #42 indicated there were ramifications of Black Hand's participation in "Godhead," particularly what happened to the Source Wall. Are these little floating pieces part of the Source Wall?
Credit: DC Comics
Robert Venditti: We're going to find out exactly what's happening in issue #43. But yes, it would be correct to say there were definitely ramifications to the events in "Godhead" where Black Hand actually interacted with the Source Wall. He was the first person, that we know of, to ever interact with the Source Wall and not become fused to it, and not even just that — he actually raised beings off the Source Wall that had been fused to it for countless millennia.
So that's a very significant event, not just in Green Lantern, but in the entire history of the cosmic part of the DC Universe. Of course there are lasting ramifications from that. We want to make sure it has the kind of weight it should. And when something like that happens, big things are going to result.
Nrama: At the end of #42, it looked like Black Hand is going to be one of the main antagonists for this storyline?
Venditti: Oh yeah, definitely. It's a different look on Black Hand and his power set. He was an instrumental figure in the "Godhead" storyline. I found him a really fun character to write, because he's completely insane and completely creepy, but in this weird way he's also pathetic. He just doesn't want to be by himself. His version of that is to surround himself with resurrected dead people. So definitely a creep factor to him. But he's also a pretty complex character.
We also haven't seen him in cosmic settings very much either, so this is an opportunity to do things with him.
He's just one of the huge challenges that Hal's going to be facing as he finds himself as sort of the last Green Lantern in the universe. The Corps has disappeared. There is no more police force. And in the middle of it, he finds out that entire worlds are being turned to stone for some reason.
So he's got to find a way to deal with that while also trying to find the Corps and other things that come up as well. So in a lot of ways, he's the last man standing.
Nrama: He said something about seeing it before. Does Hal suspect this has something to do with the Source Wall?
Credit: DC Comics
Venditti: I would say that's accurate.
Nrama: Let's talk about this new direction so far. Are these two characters that he picked up going to be part of his cast going forward, since one is under arrest and the other has no home world?
Venditti: Yeah, they will be part of the cast, as will Darlene the ship, who is obviously where they're all living and traveling out of, but is a character in and of herself, in that she has an A.I. and doesn't really get along with Hal all that much.
So yeah, they're going to be cast members of the book.
Basically, you have Virgo, who is a royal who was taken from his family by a guy named Trapper to be sold into these gaming pits where people pay money to see others get killed by beasts — sort of a Gladiator situation, with Virgo being the prize that people would really want to watch get killed, since he's a royal and there are a lot of criminals that hang out there.
Hal rescued Virgo and figured he would take Virgo back to his home world with Trapper, and that Trapper would stand trial and pay for his crimes, because even though Hal's a renegade in the eyes of the universe and is somewhat of a villain, as readers know, he's a hero. And he's trying to get by and be a hero as best as he can given the circumstances.
But he shows up at Virgo's home world and finds that it's been turned into stone. So now he's got Virgo and Trapper on his ship, and he's got to figure out what to do with them.
Credit: DC Comics
That's just one of the many things that Hal's going to be dealing with, on top of all the other conflicts he's got in coming issues.
Nrama: We've seen in solicitations for the next couple issues that Relic is going to be involved. Is that because, the last we saw him, he intended to investigate the Source Wall? Is it because of his connection to that?
Venditti: Yeah, Relic is going to be in #43. When we last saw him, he was one of the beings that was broken free from the Source Wall by Black Hand. He's always been fascinated with the Source Wall and what lies beyond. So this is a very significant event for him.
He is one of the smartest (if not the smartest) people in the entire DC universe, when it comes to matters of the Source Wall, because he comes from a previous universe, where he studied it.
So he's somebody that Hal can potentially go to for answers.
But at the same time, he's somebody who doesn't like Hal very much, so that's something that Hal's going to have to negotiate. How can you find out the information that you want, not just about the Source Wall, but also potentially about where the Corps went, from someone like Relic.
Nrama: The promotional copy for the September issue has a tease about a "new menace from Thanagar." Is this a revamp of something readers might have seen before, or is this a brand new concept?
Credit: DC Comics
Venditti: This is a completely new thing. A lot of what we're trying to do with the cosmic universe in the DCU — not just in Green Lantern, but across books like Sinestro, Lobo, Omega Men — what we're trying to do with a lot of these books is build out the universe, add new concepts, but also do it in a way that builds on what's already there.
So we get a sense that we're all inhabiting the same space, all these books — not to say that they're all interlocked or that you have to read them all to understand what's going on, but you get the sense that they're all hanging out in the same universe.
And so#44, because of plot developments that will happen in #43, are going to mandate that Hal has to take a detour to deal with something that's more of an immediate emergency to one of the members of his crew.
And to do so, he's going to come across a gang of Thanagarian marauders. I don't know how else to describe them, except to say they're not typical Thanagarian. They have a very particular way that they operate their criminal enterprise, and it comes across in their design, which Billy did a really good job with.
It's a completely new team of characters. It's fun to do those types of things — to take the idea of a Thanagarian and turn it into a marauder and see what you come up with, and to add something like that to the DCU. That's what all of us are trying to do across the cosmic books.
Nrama: The Green Lantern Annual #4 in September looks like it's more of a flashback, since we don't know the origin of Darlene and a lot of the other things that showed up in June's issue.
Venditti: Yeah, we'll find out some of the backstory. This idea to have Hal on the run in the universe was originally going to have him on the run from the Green Lantern Corps as well, so we were going to do stories about that. But now that the Green Lantern Corps has disappeared in the Green Lantern Corps: Lost Army book, this is going to show you a flashback to his earliest days of being on the run when the Corps was still around.
You'll also see things happening in the current timeline, as we're building those threats. But you'll also see a glimpse of some of the things that he ran across in the earliest days, and what his reputation is becoming throughout the universe, now that he's a renegade.
Nrama: We've seen a couple issues of this new direction, although there have been a couple of surprising twists and turns. There were really different cliffhangers on the first two issues. Can you give us a sense of what's coming up in the rest of 2015?
Venditti: Yeah, basically, we're going to see what the universe is like in the absence of the Corps, with Hal being the only one out there wielding the green light as a force of good.
Again, a lot of the people in the universe, because of the way he's portrayed himself, are going to think he's a villain, but we as readers know he's a hero. And he's trying to continue to do the right thing in that kind of environment, and do it all alone.
And just like what happens in the real world, if you woke up one day and the police force was completely gone, something would come in to fill that vacuum. So what is that going to be like? Who are the people who are going to come in and try to be law and order now. And what are their motives? And how do they feel about Hal, the last remnant from the previous police force, still being out there?
So there are a lot of conflicts coming up. They're all going to be intertwined, even if it's not necessarily apparent right away. But I'm already deep into writing this new storyline; I'm farther ahead on Green Lantern than I have been since I came onto the title, and I've always been pretty far ahead. So it's all plotted out and mapped out in a way that it will all come together and will hopefully continue to build on each issue for the reader.Just before the election, Liberty Counsel, like other conservative groups, was quite confident of President Obama’s defeat. In fact, LC deputy Matt Barber said that “the question now becomes whether Romney will win by a comfortable margin or a landslide,” ultimately predicting a landslide. During Faith & Freedom with LC chairman Mathew Staver, Barber continued to spin the results and said that Obama’s 332 electoral vote win represented merely a “razor thin margin.”
Staver, however, was much more downcast and repeated claims from his post-election statement that America is in moral disarray. He said voters “looked at evil and they adopted it” by supporting Obama and wondered, “have we actually lost America, has the American dream been dealt a devastating blow?” Staver reiterated a claim made by pastor John MacArthur that Democrats have based their platform on Romans 1 by supporting gay equality and abortion rights. “You really have a Romans 1 platform that is being adopted, that is the platform that Barack Obama promoted, that is the platform that he ran on, that is what he stands for, and people looked it that and they adopted it,” Staver said. “And when you adopt evil as your platform, you become evil, and you ultimately go down the road of self-destruction.”
Watch:Potential. That is the name of the game in the weeks leading up to the annual NFL Draft. The enigma that is drafting and projecting an athlete’s career is one that will never be solved. You can put all your chips into a single franchise player to be the building block of a Super Bowl run, like the Falcons did with Julio Jones. Or you can put all of those chips into one pot, only to watch the player’s body, mind, and skill set completely destroy the next several years of your franchise, like Washington did with Robert Griffin III.
There is no formula for greatness. I have read things where college scouts “knew” a player was going to be a bust because he had flat feet and therefore would never be a Pro-Bowl caliber OT. We’ve heard of players who are basically graded higher because their hand size is that of a Shrek-like proportion. These statistics malign the two true evaluations of a player’s talents: their film and their desire. Both are measurable. Both are tangible. Oh, you can’t see desire? Well, watch Ray Lewis play football and tell me that his tenacity to beat the man in front of him is not a visible trait.
To me, the Texans in the 2013 NFL Draft got caught up in too many of the tangential theories and ideals that get teams into trouble. With the draft, you have to get players whose ceiling is higher than their floor. When so many of these draft picks fell through the Moon Door of the NFL (gotta throw in a “Game of Thrones” reference), you have to re-evaluate your draft style. As 2013 was Gary Kubiak’s last draft, it’s somewhat understandable to see how this draft class looks so poor years later.
Please note Rick Smith’s evaluation of the Texans’ class directly after the 2013 NFL Draft:
“I really do, as you look at it from top to bottom. I think we added two players in the first and second round and even in the third round… there’s an element of mental toughness, of aggressiveness with all three of those players."
I have always been critical of Smith’s draft style. I was banging my head against the wall throughout the entire 2017 NFL Draft. In the first round, it was for a good reason - I had never seen him make a move like trading up to get a star player in Deshaun Watson. For the rest of the draft, I thought he made decisions that were not based on HOuston’s needs. For a team that seemed to be about two or three players away from making a run, I thought he neglected to address those issues. But that’s for another draft conversation.
The 2013 Houston Texans class should now be in their fifth season in the NFL. With their rookie contracts completed, these players should have been the centerpiece of much of the depth chart the last two years. Even though this draft for teams across the NFL was considered a major flop, this one in particular was miserable for the Texans. Many of these players...well, I will let you read and see what they turned out to be.
Round 1, Pick 27 (27 overall): WR DeAndre Hopkins, Clemson
Raw natural skill to make plays. What I loved about Hopkins coming out of the draft was how many TDs he caught at Clemson. It was unmistakeable from the beginning that he had great hands and a knack for getting open. In his final year at Clemson, Nuk racked up 18 touchdowns in a spectacular season. Thankfully he was overlooked by 26 other teams; I honestly do not know how he fell to the 27th pick. In a draft that is routinely cited as one of the worst in recent memory, Hopkins is a bright spot for the entire draft class. He was recently selected to his second Pro Bowl and has set a franchise record of twelve (and counting) receiving TDs in one season.
Round 2, Pick 25 (57): SS D.J. Swearinger, South Carolina
#twospoons. D.J. Swearinger was my favorite pick of this draft. He was going to bring a toughness and tenacity that the defense had always been lacking. His college highlight tape was one of the most punishing displays of tackling in coverage I ever saw. I thought he would be the vocal leader of the team. Unfortunately, Swearinger did not pan out as a Texan, and it can be mainly attributed to his off-the-field issues. On the field, he struggled with the deep ball and would lose players in coverage. Combine this with his pit bull biting Jadeveon Clowney on the arm, his alleged theft of his own truck off of the lot of a local body shop, and rumors that Swearinger walked out of special teams meetings because he felt that being a second round pick meant he should not have to contribute on special teams, and it was obvious that his time with the Texans would be up. Now, he is the heart and soul of the Washington Redskins’ defense and the second-leading tackler on the team.
Round 3, Pick 27 (89): OT Brennan Williams, North Carolina
If you do not do anything else today, please watch what our third-round selection is doing instead of being our desperately needed offensive tackle. Williams has signed with the developmental WWE league and is now calling himself Marcellus Black. The kid never played a down in the NFL. He proclaimed early his love for wrestling, so I guess good for him to pursue his actual dream. Williams could be considered one of the biggest busts in Texans draft history, though it would be a tough competition for him to win, given the other busts the team’s had.
Round 3, Pick 33 (95)*: OLB Sam Montgomery, LSU
When an All-American does not make it through training camp, you know you messed up. Even before he was drafted, Montgomery was stirring up trouble during his NFL Combine by saying that “effort wasn't needed” when playing inferior opponents. That will not bode well when you now are going to face professional level competition. Then Montgomery was caught with either a cigar or marijuana while with the team in Kansas City before a game with the Chiefs. Conflicting reports are difficult to parse out, but he and two other players were promptly let go from the team. I do not know if this still would have happened in today’s NFL since social and legal opinions have changed. Montgomery spent time on Oakland and Cincinnati’s practice squad, but he never played a down in the NFL. It’s always disappointing when a player’s character gets in the way of histalent.
Round 4, Pick 27 (124): OLB Trevardo Williams, Connecticut
Born in Jamaica, Trevardo provided a completely different OLB style than Montgomery. Smaller, faster, and diverse in skill set, Williams would have made a great nickel linebacker. Basically, the Texans were hedging their bet that either him or Montgomery would pan out. Welp, neither did. Williams sat out the 2013 season with a foot injury. The next season, he came back and passed his physical. This must not have been enough for the new Bill O’Brien regime as he was cut the next day. With Williams’ release, the Texans released three of their first five picks from 2013 within a year. Yikes. Between August and December, Williams went from the Texans to the Cardinals to the Colts to the Redskins. He was injured during training camp of 2015 and released by the Redskins. In 2016, he signed with the Toronto Argonauts in the CFL.
Round 6, Pick 8 (176): OT David Quessenberry, San Jose State
Thankfully, I had to rewrite his section, because Quessenberry just got upgraded to the 53-man roster for the first time in his career. Unbelievable. All that he has gone through, from being diagnosed with cancer during his second training camp to being cut by the team on several occasions, including publicly on “Hard Knocks,” the OT/OG will finally demonstrate why the Texans have kept him around for the past five years. I hope the team puts him in at some point during the next two games, because we all know the offensive line couldn’t be any worse.
Round 6, Pick 27 (195): WR Alan Bonner, Jacksonville State
With Kevin Walter leaving the Texans for the Titans, the wide receiver position was due for a complete overhaul. Bonner was supposed to be the slot receiver the Texans never had. He suffered a hamstring injury and was released a couple weeks later. The kid returned for the 2014 season and suffered another leg injury on the first day of practice. He was duly cut and never appeared again. Unbelievable how much potential can be expunged so quickly.
Round 6, Pick 30 (233): DT Chris Jones, Bowling Green
You know, it’s so thoughtful that the Texans organization loves to give our players to other teams so they can go on and win Super Bowls. How considerate. Jones’ first year was a wild one. He was cut before he could make the Texans’ 53-man roster, and then was cut again by Tampa Bay. Jones was then great for the New England Patriots and started 23 games for them, including in a Super Bowl victory against Seattle. A calf injury sidelined him for all of 2015 and he is currently on IR with the 49ers. I could see him in D.J. Reader or Christian Covington’s role with the Texans right now.
Round 6, Pick 33 (201)*: TE Ryan Griffin, Connecticut
Ahhh, a late round pick for the Texans that finally worked out. Besides being injured frequently, Griffin has been a steady force in the passing game. It took a while for him to be a major part of the offense, but once (Name Redacted) arrived and was too terrible enough to look anywhere beyond 15 yards or dead center of the field, Griffin’s numbers exploded. A pass-catching TE and a solid blocker, Griffin just signed a new contract this past offseason. With all of the concussions and injuries he’s been nursing, it will be interesting to see how strong he comes back next season.
*Compensatory selection
Out of nine selections, only DeAndre Hopkins and maybe Ryan Griffin have made legitimate impact on the Texans’ franchise. Hopkins is now the highest paid receiver in the league, Williams is now a semi-professional wrestler, and Jones helped another team to a Super Bowl. Typical draft for the Texans.
When doing the research for this post, two things came abundantly clear as to why these players did not work out and why the Texans are lacking so much depth.
If you are going to do anything at a professional level, you have to love the game. From an accountant to a librarian to an outside linebacker, if there is any evidence for a lack of drive and purpose, they will burn out fast. Many of these players, specifically Montgomery and Williams, demonstrated early signs of lacking effort and must be bigger red flags. Injuries are unfortunate, as we have fully realized this year, but you cannot play for the pay. The game is too rough for that.
Second, imagine where the Texans could be if a couple of these picks came through. Williams would be holding down the left tackle position in the absence of Duane Brown. The roller coaster that is the offensive line would seem a lot smoother of a ride. Maybe fortunately for the Texans, neither Montgomery or Trevardo Williams amounted to anything, allowing the Texans to draft Whitney Mercilus and Jadeveon Clowney in later drafts. Chris Jones would be a great rotational player on this team. We routinely draft mid to late-round defensive linemen. Since Jones’ pick, we have selected a nose or defensive tackle in every draft. None have fully legitimized themselves as a premier starter.
With the 2017 season falling apart as we speak, the depth and potential the 2013 class could have supplied may have been enough to help plug some of the giant holes the Texans have.0 of 11
There are some footballers whose reputation has always preceded their talent, some who have wasted a chance of glory due to persistent ill discipline and making the wrong decisions and some who had such a gift for football that no matter they did off the pitch they will be fondly remembered for their achievements as footballers.
So for every Mbulelo Mabizela (above) there is an Eric Cantona.
Two of the world's greatest ever players, Diego Maradona and George Best led famously controversial and often illegal lifestyles.
However, for every high there is a low. In the case of several footballers, that meant taking their own lives or being caught in the wrong time at the wrong place as was the case for tragic Colombian star Andrés Escobar Saldarriaga in 1994.
Here in no particular order is a list of the 50 most troubled stars to have played professional football.Howard University is unapologetic about their treatment of two teenaged children who dared to step foot on the black college wearing Donald Trump regalia.
A group of students from Union City High School were harassed and threatened with violence when their tour bus stop decided to stop at the historically black college for lunch. Two of the girls were wearing a Trump “MAGA” hat.
The students quickly took to social media to shame the high-schoolers, saying things like “who told these lil yt girls they could come to THE HU like it was about to be some joke.”
https://twitter.com/EssenceDalton/status/898940229511520256
Responding to the first, another student said they’d like to “meet you behind south” to “beat the f**k out of them.”
Several groups within the school responded to the incident, but only to take the side of their own harassing students.
“We will take any action necessary to ensure that HU students feel safe and comfortable in our dining spaces. This group is no longer on campus,” the school’s dining services office tweeted.
We will take any action necessary to ensure that HU students feel safe& comfortable in our dining spaces. This group is no longer on campus. — HUDining (@HUdining) August 19, 2017
Amazingly, the school itself released a statement “warning” students that “there were visitors on our campus who were wearing paraphernalia that showcased their political support,” adding that while it is “an institution where of thought, choice, and expression are ever present,” it would “never compromise [its] values or allow other to convince [it] to do so.”
A Thread:
Today, there were visitors on our campus who were wearing paraphernalia that showcased their political support. 1/10 — Howard University (@HowardU) August 20, 2017
Piling on, the school’s chapter of the NAACP also rebuked the two minors, calling them “white supremacists.”
Howard University students have no time for white supremacists and neo-nazi sympathizers on our campus. Good riddance. https://t.co/zEEQ06qDtU — Howard Univ. NAACP (@HU_NAACP) August 19, 2017
“Howard University students have no time for white supremacists and neo-nazi sympathizers on our campus,” they wrote. “Good riddance.”
The girls responded saying that they were unaware that Howard was a black school, but that shouldn’t have mattered.
“What happened to my friend and I today was absolutely pathetic,” wrote one of the students, Allie Vandee, saying she and her friend had been able to “visit many different historical places in DC without being harassed by anyone for supporting Donald Trump.”
Vandie goes on to note that one Howard student exclaimed “f*ck y’all” as he passed by, while another even stole one of their hats.
“This is America. These are the people who are racist and disrespectful,” she concluded. “I will never be embarrassed for supporting Donald Trump.”
H/T: CampusReform
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.A Car's Middle Back Seat May Be Least Desirable, but It's the Safest
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In a full car, some poor soul is relegated to the middle of the back seat, the least desirable, most uncomfortable, most "un-cool" spot in the vehicle.
It also happens to be the safest.
University at Buffalo researchers studied all auto crashes involving a fatality in the U.S. between 2000 and 2003 where someone occupied the rear middle-seat.
They found that occupants of the back seat are 59 percent to 86 percent safer than passengers in the front seat and that, in the back seat, the person in the middle is 25 percent safer than other back-seat passengers.
"After controlling for factors such as restraint use, vehicle type, vehicle weight, occupant age, weather and light conditions, air-bag deployment, drug results and fatalities per crash, the rear middle seat is still 16 percent safer than any other seat in the vehicle," said Dietrich Jehle, M.D., UB associate professor of emergency medicine and lead author on the study.
Results of the study were presented at the May meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in San Francisco, Calif.
Jehle and colleagues at the Center for Transportation Injury Research (CenTIR), conducted a retrospective cohort study of fatal crashes in which there were rear-seat occupants and at least one fatality in the vehicle. CenTIR is headquartered in the Erie County Medical Center and is affiliated with the Calspan UB Research Center (CUBRC).
The data was obtained from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The study involved two different sets of fatal crash data. Researchers first analyzed a special class of car crashes in which there were occupants in the front seat and in the middle of the back seat. Fatal crashes in which there was no occupant in the rear middle seat were excluded. This class of crashes involved 27,098 occupants. Researchers compared survival rates of front-seat versus back-seat positions.
The second data set compared survival rates of back-seat occupants only in crashes in which there was at least one fatality. The middle-seat group contained 5,707 occupants, while the "outboard" or window-seat group had 27,611 occupants, for a total of 33,318 back-seat passengers.
The fatality rate for the rear middle-seat occupant then was compared to that of the window-seat positions.
The analysis produced some revealing statistics, aside from the issue of the safest place to be sitting during a crash. The average age of the 33,318 rear seat passengers was 20 years, while middle back-seat passengers were only 15.4 years on average.
Nearly half of the passengers in the back seat -- 46.9 percent -- were not wearing seat belts, results showed, and of these unrestrained passengers, 34.6 percent were fatally injured, compared to only 14.9 percent of seat-belt wearers.
In general, back-seat passengers who wore seat belts were 2.4 to 3.2 times more likely to survive a crash than their unbelted back-seat companions.
One reason the rear middle seat is the safest, Jehle noted, is because passengers sitting in this position have a much larger "crush zone" than rear side-seat passengers in near-side impact crashes. The crush zone is an area of the car designed to collapse in an effort to absorb some of the impact from a collision.
"In addition, in rollover crashes there is potentially less rotational force exerted on the middle seat passenger than on those in the window seats," he said.
"This study reinforces the importance of using seat belts in the back seat, as well as demonstrating that the rear middle seat is the safest," stated Jehle. "Legislation to require rear-seat belt use by all passengers should be strongly supported."
Also contributing to the research were James Mayrose, Ph.D., UB research associate professor of emergency medicine and mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Aruna Priya, a doctoral student in biostatistics.
The research was supported in part by a grant from the Federal Highway Administration awarded to CenTIR.
The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State University of New York.For other people named Charles Barkley, see Charles Barkley (disambiguation)
Charles Wade Barkley (born February 20, 1963) is an American retired professional basketball player who is currently an analyst on Inside the NBA. Nicknamed "Chuck", "Sir Charles", and "The Round Mound of Rebound", Barkley established himself as one of the National Basketball Association's most dominant power forwards.[1] An All-American center at Auburn, he was drafted as a junior by the Philadelphia 76ers with the 5th pick of the 1984 NBA draft. He was selected to |
.ISPs Are Now Forcing Cord Cutters To Subscribe To TV If They Want To Avoid Usage Caps
from the damned-if-you-do dept
"The continued migration of Netflix usage from mailed DVD to Internet streaming/download, as well as other data intensive uses of the Internet, are impacting all providers of high-speed Internet service. While we certainly acknowledge and appreciate that content rich services like Netflix make our high-speed offering more valuable to the end user, the volume of data associated with this content drives significant incremental investment in the network and the need to purchase more bandwidth in order to maintain the user experience and this must be funded."
We've noted time and time again how broadband usage caps on fixed-line networks are arbitrary, unnecessary, and harm innovation. They're also a useful weapon against streaming video competitors, and the natural evolution of TV competition. Caps can be used to either punish users who try and cut the cord with higher prices, but they also allow ISPs to exempt their own streaming services from said caps (something currently being done by both Verizon and Comcast ), thereby giving these services a distinct and unfair advantage in the market.But broadband ISPs are now coming up with a new way of attacking cord cutters: forcing them to subscribe to television if they want to avoid usage caps.Back in January, AT&T announced that the company would be happy to remove usage caps on its wireless network, but only if you subscribe to DirecTV or U-verse TV service. Then last month, AT&T carried this idea over to its fixed-line broadband network, announcing that it would be imposing new usage caps on its broadband users starting May 23. While AT&T says it will generously allow users to pay $30 more per month to avoid usage caps entirely, it also announced that users who subscribe to its TV services will be able to avoid usage caps entirely.This month, an Oregon company by the name of Bend Broadband followed suit, informing its users that it would be happy to remove its usage caps (ranging from 150 GB to 500 GB), but only if users subscribe to television service. Bend offers up a misleading explanation for why caps are necessary in the first place in a company FAQ Right, but that's bullshit. U.S. residents already pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world ; money that any earnings report will clearly illustrate is more than enough to offset what at this point is only modest network upgrades. As one cable CEO recently noted, most of the heavy investment is over, and the name of the game now is milking these uncompetitive markets for all they're worth until either broadband competition magically sprouts from the ether, or regulators wake up from a deep slumber and shut down the price gouging party.Usage caps on fixed-line networks are nothing more than rate hikes on uncompetitive markets, and anybody claiming otherwise either has been swindled by a good salesman, or is selling you something themselves.There's absolutely nothing good about this trend. ISPs are using a lack of competition in the broadband space to impose usage caps. They're then using caps to force subscribers to sign up for TV services they may or may not actually want. It's a mammoth, misleading and anti-competitive abuse of two markets simultaneously, all sold to consumers under the lie that ISPs need even more revenue to keep funding unprecedented investment and innovation. In reality, the entire push may just be one of the largest cons ever perpetrated on consumers in the modern communications era.
Filed Under: broadband, bundling, cord cutting, data caps, isps, tv, tying, usage capsSydney FC have today announced a number of changes to their contracted squad for the upcoming Hyundai A-League 2016/17 season to kick off in October.
New signings Alex Wilkinson and Michael Zullo are on the list and are among a number of players who steered the Sky Blues to a historic AFC Champions League last 16 berth.
2015/16 golden boot winner Filip Holosko is included, along with fellow overseas players Milos Ninkovic and Milos Dimitrijevic, leaving two places open for new foreign players in the squad.
Head Coach Graham Arnold confirmed a number of new signings would be made in the off-season to the current list.
“I believe we have strong nucleus of players with which to build towards next season and re-fresh our squad,” he said.
“We will be bringing in a number of new signings which will help to improve our current squad and I’m confident and determined to see Sydney FC make a renewed challenge for silverware in the 2016/17 season. It is where this club belongs.”
Players leaving the club include goalkeepers Ivan Necevski and Anthony Bouzanis, defenders Zac Anderson, Riley Woodcock and Jacob Tratt, and front players Robert Stambolziev, Alex Mullen and Christopher Naumoff.
Their departures follow the earlier releases of Jacques Faty, Mickael Tavares and Ali Abbas.
“I’d like to thank all of our departing players for their efforts and service to Sydney FC this past season. Your contributions have been appreciated and I wish you all well in the next stage of your careers.”
Details are still being discussed and finalized with off contract players Alex Brosque and Matt Simon.
Sydney FC return to training in early July ahead of the Hyundai A-League 2016/17 season’s commencement in October and Westfield FFA Cup in August.
Sydney FC Players Currently Contracted For 2016/17:
1. Vedran Janjetovic
2. Sebastian Ryall
5. Matthew Jurman
7. Andrew Hoole
8. Milos Dimitrijevic
9. Shane Smeltz
10. Milos Ninkovic
13. Brandon O’Neill
17. David Carney
21. Filip Holosko
23. Rhyan Grant
24. George Blackwood
25. Aaron Calver
TBC. Alex Wilkinson
TBC. Michael Zullo
(Please note squad numbers are subject to change for the Hyundai A-League 2016/17 season.)- The authors of a bathroom bill in the Minnesota Legislature will tell you it’s about protecting rights to privacy, but opponents say it’s about transgender discrimination. In between, there’s no shortage of fear and emotion.
When you walk into a bathroom, there’s already a reasonable expectation of privacy. But Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) wants to take it a step further. His bill would amend Minnesota’s Human Rights Act to change the rules for bathrooms and locker rooms. Read a copy of the proposed legislation at http://bit.ly/1RhueKs.
“It protects the constitutional right to privacy and public safety for transgenders, straights, gays and also our children,” Rep. Gruenhagen said.
Gruenhagen’s bill says clearly that no employer, public school or university “shall permit access to restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, and other similarly places on any basis other than biological sex.” Supporters say the current law is a free-for-all.
“Over the last summer I encountered a biological male in the women’s locker room watching women shower and typing on his phone,” said Kate Ives, a mother in favor of the bill.
“That’s a situation that’s ripe for abuse by those who have the intention of harming children,” said Emily Zinos
But the LGBT community argues there are no such documented cases, and one lawmaker with a transgender adult son says fear does not equal danger.
“This bill treats my son like a dog, because he can’t pee inside of a public accommodation,” said Rep. Barb Yarusso (DFL-Shoreview).
"How many gays and lesbians must God create before they are accepted?” asked Rep. Danny Schoen (DFL-Cottage Grove).
“I want to live my life, and this guy wants to call me a rapist so that he can win some seats on the state and national level,” said Catherine Crowe, a transgendered attorney.
The bill has one big political obstacle in Gov. Mark Dayton. The governor has already banned non-essential travel to North Carolina, where a similar bill has passed. Last week, he also imposed travel restrictions to Mississippi after the state passed a law allowing religious groups and private businesses to deny services to gay and transgender people.
“It’s just a step backward for this country,” Gov. Dayton said.
Caught in the middle of this debate are the people who want their rights protected, too.
“I want to live,” said Andrew Dodge, a transgender 16 year old. “I don’t want to be in a mental hospital because I want to use a bathroom.”
There was no vote on this bill Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean the bill is dead. Rep. Gruenhagen said he has more than 40 co-sponsors and they want to try to find a way to bring this up for a floor vote this session.(JTA) — The widow of a Canadian soldier killed by Israeli forces accused Canada’s Defense Department of removing a report of his killing from its website in an effort to shield Israel.
Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three other United Nations observers were killed in 2006 when Israel’s military shelled their outpost in southern Lebanon during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
Hess-von Kruedener’s widow, Cynthia, says that the report was removed because of reluctance on the part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to criticize Israel, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
The 67-page report was posted to the Canadian Defense Department’s website in 2008 and removed a year later. The report blamed Israel’s military for the observers’ deaths.
The Defense Department told the newspaper that it removed the report for security reasons “after it was discovered that some of its content is considered protected information.”
Legion magazine, an Ottawa-based publication sent to members of the Royal Canadian Legion, recently obtained a copy of the report and posted it on its website.
The report said that the outpost appeared on an Israeli targeting list, which Israel later acknowledged was a mistake.Linwood Michael Kaine, 24, and four others were arrested on suspicion of second-degree riot after the "March 4 Trump" rally in St. Paul; a sixth person was cited for disorderly conduct. Counter-protesters clashed with Trump supporters in the Capitol rotunda after they attempted to disrupt the proceedings with air horns, whistles and chants. At one point, someone set off a smoke bomb.
Linwood Kaine, a Carleton College graduate who lives in Minneapolis and goes by "Woody," was released from the Ramsey County jail on Tuesday morning pending further investigation, law enforcement officials said.
No charges were filed against him or the four other people who were arrested by St. Paul police.
St. Paul City Attorney Samuel Clark is reviewing the case for possible misdemeanor charges.
A voice-mail message left Tuesday night for Linwood Kaine was not returned.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a St. Paul native, released a Tuesday night statement through a spokesperson to the Pioneer Press.
"We love that our three children have their own views and concerns about current political issues," he said. "They fully understand the responsibility to express those concerns peacefully."
Woody Kaine is one of three children of Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Houlton. An older son, Nat, a Marine serving overseas, was more visible during the presidential campaign. The couple also has a daughter, Anella.
On Saturday afternoon, several hundred Trump supporters showed up at the Capitol for a permitted rally billed as the "March 4 Trump," one of several held around the country.
The Minnesota State Patrol estimated the crowds at 400 Trump supporters and 50 counter-demonstrators.
Speeches had been going on for about a half-hour inside the newly remodeled Capitol rotunda when a group of people tried to disrupt the event. At one point, someone set off a smoke bomb—apparently striking a woman in the head, police said.
A 61-year-old Plymouth woman said she was hit in the head at 12:30 p.m., about 10 minutes after she arrived at the Trump rally. The woman said she saw something coming toward her, tried to avoid the object, but it struck her in the forehead, according to Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman. She was not injured. It was not clear who threw the smoke bomb.
Security guards intervened, skirmishes broke out, and someone sprayed chemical irritant into the crowd. Some counter-demonstrators dispersed, and the rally resumed.
Linwood Kaine was seen with four people who lit fireworks inside the Capitol, Linders said. Police are investigating whether Kaine was one of the people who was lighting the devices.
St. Paul police arrested Kaine and the four others near Rice Street and University Avenue, less than a block from the Capitol. After the group ran and a St. Paul police officer detained Kaine, "he turned around and squared up to fight with the officer," Linders said Tuesday. "The officer was able to place Mr. Kaine under arrest and take him to the Ramsey County jail for booking."
The officer used "some force" to take Kaine into custody, according to Linders, who said he didn't have details about what it involved. The State Patrol arrested a sixth person at the Capitol.
People involved in Kaine's arrest were not aware that he is the son of Tim Kaine, and it was brought to the police department's attention by a Pioneer Press reporter, Linders said. No one from the U.S. senator's office had contacted the department, he said.
On Tuesday evening, Clark said he was also unaware of any connection to Tim Kaine until a Pioneer Press reporter informed him of it.
The other five people arrested during the rally were Jonathan Adams, 25, of Minneapolis; Glenn Kimball, 22, of Minneapolis; Isabell Kimball, 26, of Minneapolis; Haley Ryan, 23, of Webster, Minn.; and Anton William Bueckert, 29, of Ontario, Canada.
Reporters Nick Woltman, David Orrick and Mara H. Gottfried contributed to this report.The rebuilding process continues for Chivas USA, and this time, they reached into South America to pluck a champion as their latest reinforcement.
On Wednesday, the Rojiblancos announced the acquisition of 28-year-old Ecuador international midfielder Oswaldo Minda, who will join the team from Ecuadorian league champs Sociedad Deportivo Quito pending receipt of his International Transfer Certificate and P-1 visa.
“Our commitment and goal to bring in the best players for our club continues,” said Chivas USA general manager Jose Domene in a club statement. “When we scouted in South America, Oswaldo Minda was one of the players we wanted. … His experience in both local and international competitions will be of great value. We welcome him to the Red and White, and we are sure he will adapt to coach [Robin] Fraser's system very quickly.”
Minda leaves behind SD Quito after a championship season — the club won the Serie A crown for the fifth time on Dec. 18. The midfielder featured in 85 matches for los Azulgranas (82 starts), and scored 11 goals in his three years with the club.
On the international scene, Minda has recorded 13 caps (seven starts) with Ecuador, most of them since 2010, including Copa América and World Cup qualifying matches this year.
Minda becomes the fourth acquisition for Chivas USA this offseason. The club has thus far picked up midfielder Ryan Smith and Arturo Alvarez, as well as defender James Riley as they look to strengthen their lines for the 2012 campaign.So Which Way is the Right Way?
There isn’t a single right way for an industry, but there is a right way (or at least a wrong way) for individual players. Each gamer has a specific system he or she likes and most likely at least one that is disliked. We have our own tolerances towards randomness and pacing and that guides us to our perception and preferences for different games. We also have different gateways to gaming and those shape our opinion on what a game “should” play like.
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Using myself as an example, my gaming experience began with miniatures, strategy and wargames. Turn based systems with a hint of randomness work just fine for me. While I am not exactly a fan of action based combat, the move towards action combat hasn’t deterred me on the genre just yet. I can stick near the top of a DPS list, play PVP scenarios, and dance with a modern raid boss just fine. But, these days I find playing through X-Com or even Pirate 101 fights, setting up traps and sequencing units, to simply be more engaging and enjoyable.
Additionally, as I get older, I find my wrist and elbow have a bit less tolerance for banging out combat rotations for hours on end. Ultimately, the dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge model of action combat itself wears thin. Finally, while it hasn’t happened to me just yet (I’m still clearing nightmare’s just fine in TSW), there will certainly come a day where synchronized swimming bosses just stop being doable (let alone fun) as my reaction speed and timing wanes.
That doesn’t mean that action oriented systems aren’t fun and engaging for others, though. They are, clearly, based on the feedback of players. To me, it’s less of whether games should be built a specific way or not, but rather a question of who your target demographic is. With video gaming now well past the twenty-year mark, there’s a whole slew of gamers across all age demographics.
I don't see much Eorzea in this column
So where does this leave FFXIV? Well, at the moment we don't really know. FF has its roots in the simulation system, with the single player series shifting from turn-based to an active time system some years back. I experienced a return to roots moment recently playing around with Final Fantasy IV on my iPad. Once I have played through that a few times, I fully expect to return for more nostalgia with Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy Tactics and Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition.
Combat systems in Final Fantasy have always been slower-paced, emphasizing attribute development, resource management and party interdependency. FFXI and the original FFXIV both worked from a resource management approach where tactical points (TP) and mana (MP) were reasonably scarce. However, it was never the "stand in one place" system that its deterrents claimed. There were encounters where movement was rewarded or required, just not the non-stop, synchronized swimming model that characterizes raid design in the modern MMO.
Yoshida does seem to want to push FFXIV closer to the action approach to combat with A Realm Reborn. Players start with full resources, as opposed to building resources. Additionally, the alpha combat videos show melee and archers in motion along with a Global Cooldown replacing individual ability recharges.
FFXIV: ARR – Instanced Dungeons (Alpha)
However, there also appears to be an intention to stay true to the classic FF model. Players are to have personal combos, abilities which do more when sequenced properly. Groups will have Limit Breaks where interdependency between teammates will produce some synergy.
It will be interesting to see FFXIV move towards its open beta. Will a more action oriented approach appeal to consumers? Will there be enough of a classic combat system to appeal to the Final Fantasy fan base?
How about you? What type of combat engages you? Which game’s combat systems really grab you? How would you like to see party-based combat mechanics implemented? Join us in the discussion below!I have just finished the design of my latest custom LEGO build which I'm calling "Autumn Café" [now available to support on LEGO Ideas]. The design is inspired by various real cafés I've seen in the past and borrows elements from each of them to create one cohesive model. I decided on Autumn as the season because - as we all know - Fall is simply the best time of the year to cozy up in your local café with a warm cup of coffee or tea. The exterior of the design includes covered outdoor seating, trees with autumn foliage, fallen leaves which have spread across the sidewalks and awning, benches for additional outdoor seating, trash cans, a bicycle rack with one bicycle parked [probably a café employee's bicycle] in the back, and a drain pipe along the back of the building.
The interior of the design is packed with all of the café staples, such as a serving area complete with cupboards, drawers, a cash register, espresso machine, blender, sink, and broom for cleaning. There is a seating area with three tables and a number of chairs, and a newspaper rack for anyone wishing to purchase a paper or simply read one while they savor their beverage. A shelving unit filled with café merchandise [primarily mugs] sits in the back right-hand corner of the café for those wanting to take a piece of the café home with them. Of course, there is also a wall clock just above the newspaper rack so that the café patrons can casually watch the hours tick by while they forget their worries within this cozy and charming local café - a café which has clearly been a well-beloved fixture in the town for quite some time now.
The total piece-count for the set is a little over 1,600 pieces, and the entire model is 10"x10"x5" [built upon a light bluish gray 32x32 baseplate]. I have recently sourced the parts for the build, and built a tangible model of the design as well. You can check out photographs of the fully built model on my latest project post. I have also since posted the project to LEGO Ideas, so if you enjoy Autumn Café, please visit the project on LEGO Ideas and provide your support. Every supporter counts! Thank you in advance for your support and/or criticism.
What do you think about Autumn Café? Please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts. Your input is highly valued. Thanks in advance for any input you may have.
Click the images below to view more of the exterior and interior of the design:ISIS has released a new propaganda video showing its fighters stamping on busts of Jesus, ripping pictures of the Pope in half and promising to come to Rome.
Filmed mostly in the Philippines - where the jihadist group has been fighting a battle with the government for control of the city of Marawi - the latest 'Inside the Khilafah' video focuses on conflict between Christianity and Islam.
The narrator, speaking with an American accent, praises 'the truthful soldiers of Mohammed' who have fought to conquer territory in East Asia while ISIS members are shown wrecking a church.
One of the criminals - named 'Abu Jindal' - looks straight at the camera and says in English: 'Remember this, you kuffar [an extremely offensive term for non-Muslims] - we will be in Rome, we will be in Rome, inshallah [god willing]'.
A picture of Pope Francis is held up by an English-speaking jihadi in a Marawi church before it is ripped in half
Decorations - including Jesus on the cross - are dragged down by the ISIS fighters before 'kuffar' around the world are threatened
The video begins by showing a line of men and boys with assault rifles and an ISIS flag in Marawi, Philippines
The church is last seen in flames, with the narrator explaining: 'After all their efforts, it would be the religion of the cross that would be broken'
Meanwhile, decorations in the church - including a statue of Jesus on the cross and one of Mary - are torn down and destroyed.
Pictures of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis are also shown being torn up and thrown to the ground.
The church is last seen in flames, with the narrator explaining: 'After all their efforts, it would be the religion of the cross that would be broken.'
He adds: 'The crusaders' enmity toward the Muslims only served to embolden a generation of youth.'
The obsession with Rome dates back to the birth of Islam, when Arab soldiers attempted to conquer the Byzantine (or Roman) Empire in what is today the Levant and Turkey during a long and bloody war.
A small bust of Mary is smashed on the floor as the Islamists smash up a Catholic church in Marawi
One of the criminals, named 'Abu Jindal' (pictured), points at the camera and warns that soon 'we will be in Rome'
One of the fighters points his gun at a printed image of Pope Francis during the ransacking of the church
The picture is then torn in half as the narrator promises that Christianity is 'broken'
In 846, Arab raiders attacked the outskirts of the city and sacked Old St Peter's and St Paul's-Outside-the-Walls but were never able to take the whole of Rome.
The video also attacks the United States, with the narrator stressing: 'America does not liberate - it can only obliterate.'
Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte is said to have run to his'master' - the USA -and his master's 'guard dog', Australia.
ISIS is losing more and more ground in its Syrian and Iraqi heartland.
In Marawi, however, the battle rages on - with hundreds of people already killed.The New Face of Chinese Nationalism
The just-completed 2016 Rio Olympics didn’t just mark the ascendance of major Chinese athletes like swimmer and internet darling Fu Yuanhui — it also showed, in real time, how Chinese nationalism can affect the global online dialogue. During the games, Australian gold medalist swimmer Mack Horton called Chinese competitor Sun Yang a “drug cheat”; in response, Chinese netizens flooded Horton’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — all of which are blocked in China and can only be accessed with censorship circumvention tools — to demand an apology. (Chinese fans were in such a rush to bombard Horton’s social media presence that some of them even misspelled his name and ended up attacking Mark Horton, an English IT worker, instead.)
But members of this latest group jumping over China’s so-called great firewall of censorship don’t necessarily fit the well-worn trope of the young, angry male internet troll. On what seems to be Horton’s personal account on Chinese social media site Weibo, for example, Chinese users left over 243,000 recent comments under a 2015 post, most calling Horton a “loser.” A Weibo analytics tool developed by prestigious Peking University shows 83 per cent of these users identifying as female. Some were likely part of an increasingly high-profile, active, and female-dominated online group commonly called the “Little Pink.”
While less known to Westerners than the so-called 50 cent party, a much-reviled online group that praises the ruling Communist Party (whose members may be paid, at least indirectly, for their support), the Little Pink group is gaining momentum in China’s online spaces. While many 50-centers may actually be government workers, and skew male, Little Pink members are known to be predominately young women, both in China and abroad, who genuinely believe that they have a sense of duty to guard their country against unwelcome opinions or criticism.
The group’s backstory is surprisingly genteel. “The term ‘Little Pink’ probably originated from Jin Jiang Literary City (Jinjiang Wenxue Cheng),” an online Chinese forum where users share original writings, according to Gu Chetan, a former forum user who refers to himself as “a veteran netizen,” explained in a Weibo post. Founded in 2003, Jin Jiang Literary City has a simple web design with large blocks of pink background color. With 16 million registered users, 93 per cent of whom are female, it claims to be “the most influential female-led literature website in mainland China.” From early in the forum’s existence, discussion was often heated, as those “who have similar views would usually form a group and argue with others.” According to Gu, in 2006, forum administrators opened a hidden section for users to discuss politics. The temperature began to rise further.
Around 2008, a group of vocally patriotic overseas students and immigrants, predominately female, started to reach critical mass on that hidden discussion board. “They disliked users who posted negative news about the government,” Gu wrote, “and would say they had been brainwashed by overseas media.” (Opponents frequently replied by asking why patriots were living overseas.) According to Gu, the patriotic group would migrate to other websites to argue with and taunt anyone who dared disagree with them. Eventually, users started calling the group “Little Pink.”
But only in 2016 did Little Pink’s roving members start to bombard overseas social media en masse. It started in January; Chinese Internet users were uproarious after Chou Tzu-yu, a 16-year-old Taiwan-born pop singer in a South Korean band, waved Taiwan’s national flag — a move that Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of China, sees as treasonous — while on a television show. Mainland netizens swarmed Chou’s Instagram account, accusing her of supporting Taiwanese independence. (Chou later apologized, apparently under duress.) Then on January 20, less than a week after Tsai Ing-wen won Taiwan’s presidential election, partly because of her less-than-cozy attitude toward the mainland, Chinese netizens bombarded Tsai’s Facebook page as well as the Facebook pages of Taiwan- and Hong Kong-based media organizations viewed as pro-independence. Some of these messages were Chinese Internet memes and emojis; others decried “pro-independence dogs.” Wang Liming, a Chinese Cartoonist more commonly known as “Perverted Chili Pepper,” said in an interview with Voice of America that some of the participants are members of the Little Pink group.
The recent flurry of activity, though unpopular with overseas audiences, has elicited praise from Chinese state media and increasing awareness of Little Pink among the general public. The Communist Youth League of China, a cradle of many senior party officials, has name-checked the Little Pink group and praised them for their online assertiveness. But that praise has been highly gendered. On its official Weibo account, the League wrote, “As the cross-strait ‘meme war’ continues, certain people use the word ‘Little Pink’ again to ridicule patriotic girls. But this time, these girls fought back with action.” It called members of the Little Pink group “our daughters, our sisters, the girls next door we secretly love. Let us protect them together.” (The post was later deleted by the account administrator for reasons unknown.)
Online commenters seem to agree, often referring to Little Pink rhetoric as offering kukoupoxin, which roughly means firm but motherly advice. That may be overstating the case, but compared to some other online tribes, Little Pink are at least less likely to swear. In one instance, tens of thousands of Weibo posts — predominantly by members of the Little Pink — scolded Leon Dai, a high-profile Taiwanese celebrity, for supporting Taiwanese and Hong Kong independence, and labeled Taiwanese youth supporting him “misguided.” Another wrote, “the Taiwan regime is like a mistress who only loves herself but not the kids.”
Although they are best known through their online screeds, several members of the Little Pink brigade opened up during a remarkable interview with Hong Kong-based Initium media. Zhang Youyou, a 25-year old mainland Chinese citizen who now works in Hong Kong as a book editor, and who participated in the Facebook bombardment of Tsai and Taiwan-based media organizations herself, complained, “It sucks that only [Taiwanese] are allowed to lash out at us and we are not allowed to argue back.”
Others were more ambivalent. “This country is full of propaganda everywhere, asking you to love the country and love the Party. If you disagree, you will feel very uncomfortable,” said Dingding, a 22-year old college student in the southern province of Guangdong who did not give her surname. Dingding said in the same interview that “the fundamental basis for any political discussion in China is that you are a patriot.” Being anything else in China “would be very tiring, so I choose to live a more relaxing life.” That requirement seems to have been extended to Chinese who live abroad. In January, the Party issued a new directive to education officials, calling for more “patriotic education,” and President Xi Jinping said in April that Chinese students abroad must be a focus of that effort.
Small wonder that one Weibo user asked whether it was more accurate to call members of Little Pink the “Birdcage Generation.” That birdcage, built and maintained by the state, may be getting larger, but it’s also getting harder to escape.
Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesA grassroots political action group is raising funds to air ads in key swing markets immediately before and after the Super Bowl featuring Sen. Ted Cruz’s fierce battle against President Obama’s health care law.
The “Thank You Ted Cruz” ads are produced and sponsored by the Conservative Campaign Committee, which says its aim is to “hold Barack Obama and the liberals in Washington accountable and support important campaigns and outstanding conservative candidates for federal office.”
The ads, featuring Cruz’s controversial 21-hour quasi-filibuster against Obamacare in September, first aired across Texas during the Thanksgiving NFL games and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“With the 2014 midterm elections upon us, it’s incumbent that we keep the heat on Barack Obama and remind the American people that Senator Ted Cruz and the Republicans were right about Obamacare, and Barack Obama was wrong,” the group said in a fundraising email.
Contributions to the Super Bowl ad campaign can be made here
The ads also ran New Year’s Eve in key swing markets in Nevada.
“Now it’s time for us to expand our ad campaign to other swing states across the country and we’re going to make a big impact by airing these ads immediately before and after the big Super Bowl football game,” the Conservative Campaign Committee said.
The group said it doesn’t “believe in playing defense in the arena of politics.”
“We’re not going to wait for the news media to admit that Ted Cruz was right and Barack Obama was wrong – because that day will never come,” the group said.
“And that is why this Super Bowl day we are going to broadcast TV ads across America thanking Ted Cruz for standing up and trying to spare the American people the disaster that Obamacare has proven to be. We’re going to broadcast these ads to take our message direct to the American people, unfiltered by the liberal news media.”
The group said contributions can be as little as $5, and the maximum allowed contribution is $5,000.
Shortly after Cruz’s filibuster opposing funding for the Affordable Care Act, a Public Policy Polling survey found him to be the top pick among Republican voters for the 2016 presidential nomination. Cruz garnered 20 percent, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., favored by 17 percent.
Cruz, along with Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Paul, were recipients of WND’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” Award presented to those who exemplify the ideals of the iconic movie character “who was willing to fight for ordinary Americans rather than cater to the political establishment.”
His marathon against funding of Obamacare began with: “I rise today in opposition to Obamacare.”
“I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand,” he said.Behind your favorite rider, there’s a team of professionals that work quietly in the background to make sure everything is perfect come race day. These individuals don’t ask for any recognition, but without them, flights wouldn’t get booked, meals wouldn’t get prepped, and bikes wouldn’t get transported or worked on. For Troy Lee Designs/Lucas Oil/Honda’s Corey Martin, being a truck driver wasn’t something he had ever planned to do, but when an opportunity to drive the team semi was presented to him, he took the chance and has now been behind the wheel for over five years. Sadly, Martin will be moving on in his career after the 2014 National series, but we were able to catch up with him in Indiana to see what life has been like on the road.
Corey Martin | Life Behind The WheelCNN President Jeff Zucker at an event in New York in 2014 Rob Kim/Getty Images
CNN President Jeff Zucker dismissed President Donald Trump's most recent criticism of the network's international channel.
During an interview at Business Insider's Ignition conference, BI's advertising editor Mike Shields read Zucker the president's recent claim that Fox News is "MUCH more important" domestically than CNN, but "outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly."
"He is a terrible media critic," Zucker said.
The CNN president noted that the network had a record-breaking viewership year, but that he the network could have "never anticipated the audience levels we're seeing now."
"We did not expect this kind of news bump, news interest," Zucker said. "I don't think that any news organization did."
He added: "The one thing I know for sure between The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, is that Donald Trump has made journalism great again."
Trump's tweet over the weekend produced reported anxiety, as critics inside and outside the network said that his attacks imperiled its journalists overseas in countries where press freedom rules were not as strong.
Once professional bedfellows during Trump's star turn on "The Apprentice" when Zucker was at NBC, the relationship between Zucker and the president has soured significantly.
Over the past year, Trump has repeatedly escalated his rhetorical attacks on both CNN, its individual personalities, and Zucker himself.
For his part, Zucker said that Trump's attacks have "only emboldened us."An independent three-member panel is set to hand down its final report today on the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, a decision that will include recommendations to the federal government on whether the project should be approved.
If approved, the report will include a number of terms and conditions Enbridge must follow, but the federal government will have 180 days to make the final decision on the project.
The $7.9-billion project proposes to build two pipelines stretching 1,177 kilometres from Bruderheim, Alta., to Kitimat, B.C.
One of the lines would carry around 525,000 barrels per day of petroleum west to Kitimat, allowing Canadian oil producers to reach the emerging markets of Asia.
The other line to Bruderheim would carry around 193,000 barrels per day of condensate — a toxic mix of liquid hydrocarbons that forms during the extraction of natural gas and is used as a thinning agent to dilute and help transport heavy oils such as bitumen. The majority of the pipeline would be buried underground,
1. Public hearings, environmental impact all part of the panel decision
The panel held hearings for more than a year throughout Alberta and B.C., listening to issues raised and information submitted by a number of people, including business leaders, environmental and aboriginal groups and members of the public.
Danny Nunes holds a sign in support of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project outside hearings in Kitimaat Village, B.C., in January 2012. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)
The panel's decision is supposed to be based on the information learned from those hearings, its examination of the potential environmental effects of the project and their significance. It also looked into issues relating to routing and land matters, safety and economic feasibility and whether the project is in the Canadian public |
injury is not so serious as to rule him out of action. He’ll miss the championships, but could well be racing in cycling’s top event.
"I am hopeful for the Tour,” a relieved Voeckler told Ouest France after he got the results of his scan. “I have an inflammation of the iliotibial tract, that is to say, the outside of the knee. I have to take a week off without cycling.” After that, he should be able to resume and to travel to Liege for the Tour start on June 30th.
One drawback is that he wont be as sharp as he had intended, but he’ll hope to settle in as the race progresses. “This is detrimental to the preparation for the Tour, but I will be fresh, without being in top condition because I will only have three days of cycling in the legs before the start.” Still, depending on how his body responds, he could click as the race progresses. What’s important is that he is there, doing what he can and helping to lead the team.
Voeckler is a virtual national hero, both due to his aggressive spirit and also his two long career stints in yellow. He held the yellow jersey for ten days in 2004 and again for a similar period of time last year; on both occasions, he fought above expectations to retain the Maillot Jaune and impressed with his tenacity.
He ended up fourth last year but could well have taken third – or possibly even second – overall had he not made a tactical error on the final mountain stage to Alpe d’Huez.
At the time he pledged to return to try to fight for a top three finish but now, almost a year later, he’ll revert to his stage hunting role if his legs and his fitness permits. He might not wear yellow, but his presence should shake things up and add an extra element of unpredictability to the race.That doesn’t mean she hasn’t made her share of mistakes in a mayoral race in which she was once frontrunner and now trails John Tory and Doug Ford (open Doug Ford's policard). Over the past few months, the most prevalent questions on the political circuit have been “Whatever happened to Olivia?” and “What went wrong with the Chow campaign?”
In many ways, Olivia Chow’s life has been a testament to unheralded courage.
The couple spent only one night at Stornoway, home of the Official Opposition leader in Ottawa, because of Layton’s illness.
The first and most obvious is how she bore the death of her beloved husband, friend and colleague, Jack Layton, three months after he led the NDP to Opposition status in the May 2011 federal election.
We’ll return to that later. First, though, there are many ways in which she has shown grit without complaint.
She cried so little in public, and then her face became immobile. Was this an illustration of Norman Mailer’s statement that “disease is the speech of the psyche?”
A year later, in late 2012, she woke up one morning and the left side of her face was paralyzed. She had Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a viral infection of the facial nerve from the same family that causes chickenpox and shingles. It was very painful, destroying her tear duct and distorting her face.
She pushed on, one event after another, until she was finally diagnosed with pneumonia.
Then came the private torment. She went back to work as MP for Trinity-Spadina and became very sick over that fall. In her autobiography, My Journey, she writes that she woke up at night wheezing, thinking she was hearing Layton’s laboured breath.
We never learned the type of cancer that killed him on Aug. 22 at 61, but the country grieved openly with Chow. Slight, her dark hair shining, she stood without tears by his coffin at the state funeral at Roy Thomson Hall.
She tries to make light of her predicament with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, half-laughing as she tells me. “I look mean,” she says. “I can’t smile properly and I look so stern, disapproving. Look at my face and it seems like I’m mad at you.”
Gradually, the virus waned, but its effects were still noticeable by the time she resigned her federal seat in March 2014 for the gruelling Toronto race for mayor.
It’s the last thing a politician needs, especially — sadly — a female one. Maybe you’re no longer expected to be smiling all the time, but it’s not good to look sour — cold.
She doesn’t want to think about trying to lift the left side of her mouth when she’s talking about better child care in Toronto or putting more buses on the roads immediately. It can be distracting.
“I think it does affect how voters see me,” she says. When she does television interviews she prefers to sit with the right side of her face to the camera.
When I sit down for an interview with her on a recent Sunday morning, Chow is warm and engaged. Asked if she’s OK, she replies, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, I’m fine. Not very much bothers me.”
Besides, she adds, “I love campaigning. Getting ideas. Having ideas on how to create a better city matters, whereas Mr. Tory and Mr. Ford want to attack each other in a more personal way.”
Our conversation takes place in her large bedroom/sitting room at the top floor of the house off Spadina Ave. she shares with her mother. It looks out over a roof garden, and the sun is shining.
Both Chow, 57, and Ho Tze Chow, 89, have a green thumb. There’s a fish pond with water lilies in the back garden; Olivia brings the koi inside every winter.
This election has been problematic, she says, although with hindsight it might have been expected.
For much of the summer, she was drowned out by John Tory and (then) Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard) in debates. “I had options,” she says. “I could either talk on top of them, which I can do, or let them bicker and then get my points out.”
She didn’t try to outshout them and finally realized her mistake at a Board of Trade debate after Labour Day. “If you look at TV, it’s fine, I come across. But if you’re there, all you see is those two talking. I changed after that because people who were there said I should have jumped in more. So that’s what I’m doing now.”
Councillor Jon Filion, who has endorsed Tory, believes that “Olivia just got overtaken in the campaign. It turned into ‘Who could beat the Fords,’ and there’s a general consensus John Tory is best able to do that.”
That’s a common theme among people interviewed in the street. Often, they say they like Chow and her policies best but will vote for Tory to thwart Ford. It’s called strategic voting, and it drives staunch Chow supporters crazy.
Even the Star, in an editorial which endorses Tory, makes the point: “Either Olivia Chow or John Tory would make a fine mayor for Toronto, But at this time, with the challenges the city faces now, we believe Tory is the clear choice to bring Toronto together, make progress on the key issues and put the chaos of the past four years behind us.”
The Star calls Chow “Toronto’s political conscience.”
“Olivia works as hard as they come,” says Councillor Joe Mihevc (open Joe Mihevc's policard), who supports her. “She’s a fine leader... a consensus-builder. You should have seen her effective work on council during the (mayor) Mel Lastman years... We need a healer on city council.”
She has “a great sense of humour,” he adds.
There’s another issue in this campaign, one that seems more pronounced than in the past: her gender and ethnicity.
About a year ago, I began to phone around to get the early lay of the land. I talked to a few political stalwarts (nobody running in this race) and was surprised by the venom against Chow.
A normally mild-mannered conservative described her as a radical communist who had to be stopped or she would destroy Toronto. There was an uncomfortable backbeat in his words that hinted being a Chinese woman was some kind of insurmountable problem. Frankly, I was surprised at his tone because it had never come up in our conversations about Chow — and especially not after such a public period of mourning for her husband three years earlier.
She has lived it before. Who can forget the 2006 federal election campaign in which a Liberal party executive compared her to a chow chow dog on his blog.
But the negative tone from a political operative in the late summer of 2013 should have been my wake-up call. And Chow was reminded of it disturbingly as soon as she announced her candidacy.
“I got a huge number of emails that were racist, sexist rants,” she says, opening her laptop.
She scrolls down and shows me a few. They’re not printable and are the kind that make women go, “Oh, YUCK!” and try to physically shake off the effects of such slurs.
At a debate on Sept 23 at York Memorial Collegiate in Weston, it got nasty.
Hecklers shouted: “She’s Chinese. She’s not Canadian.” And: “Go home. Go back to China.”
Chow, born in what was then British-ruled Hong Kong, bristles: “I’m not even from China.”
She continues: “Here I am running for the top job of the city and some people feel threatened. Maybe because I don’t look like them.”
It’s that sentiment that “you’re not one of us, you’re a foreigner,” she adds. “How dare you?... Sometimes I get angry and call them out on it.”
She did, raising her voice and telling the crowd: “I-am-a-Canadian. I-am-a-proud-Torontonian.” There were loud cheers.
At home on this Sunday, Chow says of John Tory and Doug Ford (who replaced his ailing brother): “They said nothing on stage, which was surprising to me.”
Both men later denounced the slurs from the crowd to the media.
It’s been 44 years since Chow immigrated to Canada at 13 with her mother and her father, Wilson Wai Sun Chow. Her stepbrother André was already at university in the United States. In her book, she describes leaving her family, her friends, her dog Ah Woo and her “comfortable, middle-class life on Blue Pool Road in Happy Valley.”
She missed her dog terribly and lost his trail after he was passed from one set of relatives to another. She became, she writes, “Woo-less.”
The family settled eventually in the massive housing complex of St. James Town, and she praises Jarvis Collegiate for taking a “little immigrant girl and making her feel loved.”
The hard part for Chow was life at home. Her mother found low-paying work as a seamstress in a sweatshop and then as a hotel maid and laundress. Her father, a teacher in Hong Kong, found it hard to keep jobs as a substitute teacher, cab driver or Chinese food delivery man.
She was frightened by the beatings her mother suffered at the hands of her father, now in a nursing home and suffering from Alzheimer’s. As a teenager she had an abusive relationship with a boyfriend.
Education and talent saved her. She excelled at school, graduating from the Ontario College of Art and from Guelph University with a fine arts degree (she also took religion and philosophy courses at the University of Toronto). Some of her powerful sculptures in cement hang on the walls in the home she shared with Jack.
Chow continues to keep the biggest heartache, the loss of Jack, for private moments.
She recently heard k.d. lang sing “Hallelujah” and thought she was going to break down. “It’s so beautiful and Steven Page sang it at Jack’s funeral,” she says. “But I didn’t cry.”
They met in 1985 and married on the Toronto Islands in July 1988. They served on council together, supported causes together, canoed in the Arctic — did everything together. Chow even cut Layton’s meat for him at restaurants.
Through Layton, Chow got another family in his son, Mike, a Toronto city councillor, his daughter, Sarah Layton, her husband, Hugh Campbell, and their children Beatrice, 5, and Solace, 2.
She finds she has more happy memories now than sad ones, and that’s a big step into a bright future. But ask if she might marry again and she shakes her head.
“My husband died, he died already.”Summary: Researchers have identified seven risk genes for insomnia.
Source: VU.
An international team of researchers has found, for the first time, seven risk genes for insomnia. With this finding the researchers have taken an important step towards the unravelling of the biological mechanisms that cause insomnia. In addition, the finding proves that insomnia is not, as is often claimed, a purely psychological condition. Today, Nature Genetics publishes the results of this research.
Insomnia is probably the most common health complaint. Even after treatment, poor sleep remains a persistent vulnerability for many people. By having determined the risk genes, professors Danielle Posthuma (VU and VUmc) and Eus Van Someren (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, VU and VUmc), the lead researchers of this international project, have come closer to unravelling the biological mechanisms that cause the predisposition for insomnia.
Hope and recognition for insomniacs
Professor Van Someren, specialized in sleep and insomnia, believes that the findings are the start of a path towards an understanding of insomnia at the level of communication within and between neurons, and thus towards finding new ways of treatment.
He also hopes that the findings will help with the recognition of insomnia. “As compared to the severity, prevalence and risks of insomnia, only few studies targeted its causes. Insomnia is all too often dismissed as being ‘all in your head’. Our research brings a new perspective. Insomnia is also in the genes.”
In a sample of 113,006 individuals, the researchers found 7 genes for insomnia. These genes play a role in the regulation of transcription, the process where DNA is read in order to make an RNA copy of it, and exocytosis, the release of molecules by cells in order to communicate with their environment. One of the identified genes, MEIS1, has previously been related to two other sleep disorders: Periodic Limb Movements of Sleep (PLMS) and Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS). By collaborating with Konrad Oexle and colleagues from the Institute of Neurogenomics at the Helmholtz Zentrum, München, Germany, the researchers could conclude that the genetic variants in the gene seem to contribute to all three disorders. Strikingly, PLMS and RLS are characterized by restless movement and sensation, respectively, whereas insomnia is characterized mainly by a restless stream of consciousness.
Genetic overlap with other characteristics
The researchers also found a strong genetic overlap with other traits, such as anxiety disorders, depression and neuroticism, and low subjective wellbeing. “This is an interesting finding, because these characteristics tend to go hand in hand with insomnia. We now know that this is partly due to the shared genetic basis”, says neuroscientist Anke Hammerschlag (VU), PhD student and first author of the study.
Different genes for men and women
The researchers also studied whether the same genetic variants were important for men and women. “Part of the genetic variants turned out to be different. This suggests that, for some part, different biological mechanisms may lead to insomnia in men and women”, says professor Posthuma. “We also found a difference between men and women in terms of prevalence: in the sample we studied, including mainly people older than fifty years, 33% of the women reported to suffer from insomnia. For men this was 24%.”
The risk genes could be tracked down in cohorts with the DNA and diagnoses of many thousands of people. The UK Biobank – a large cohort from England that has DNA available – did not have information as such about the diagnosis of insomnia, but they had asked their participants whether they found it difficult to fall asleep or to have an uninterrupted sleep. By making good use of information from slaapregister.nl (the Dutch Sleep Registry), the UK Biobank was able, for the first time, to determine which of them met the insomnia profile. Linking the knowledge from these two cohorts is what made the difference.
About this neuroscience research article
Funding: Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, European Research Council funded this study.
Source: Eus van Someren – VU
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Abstract for “Genome-wide association analysis of insomnia complaints identifies risk genes and genetic overlap with psychiatric and metabolic traits” by Anke R Hammerschlag, Sven Stringer, Christiaan A de Leeuw, Suzanne Sniekers, Erdogan Taskesen, Kyoko Watanabe, Tessa F Blanken, Kim Dekker, Bart H W te Lindert, Rick Wassing, Ingileif Jonsdottir, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Hreinn Stefansson, Thorarinn Gislason, Klaus Berger, Barbara Schormair, Juergen Wellmann, Juliane Winkelmann, Kari Stefansson, Konrad Oexle, Eus J W Van Someren & Danielle Posthuma in Nature Genetics. Published online June 12 2017 doi:10.1038/ng.3888
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Abstract
Genome-wide association analysis of insomnia complaints identifies risk genes and genetic overlap with psychiatric and metabolic traits
Persistent insomnia is among the most frequent complaints in general practice. To identify genetic factors for insomnia complaints, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and a genome-wide gene-based association study (GWGAS) in 113,006 individuals. We identify three loci and seven genes associated with insomnia complaints, with the associations for one locus and five genes supported by joint analysis with an independent sample (n = 7,565). Our top association (MEIS1, P < 5 × 10−8) has previously been implicated in restless legs syndrome (RLS). Additional analyses favor the hypothesis that MEIS1 exhibits pleiotropy for insomnia and RLS and show that the observed association with insomnia complaints cannot be explained only by the presence of an RLS subgroup within the cases. Sex-specific analyses suggest that there are different genetic architectures between the sexes in addition to shared genetic factors. We show substantial positive genetic correlation of insomnia complaints with internalizing personality traits and metabolic traits and negative correlation with subjective well-being and educational attainment. These findings provide new insight into the genetic architecture of insomnia. “Genome-wide association analysis of insomnia complaints identifies risk genes and genetic overlap with psychiatric and metabolic traits” by Anke R Hammerschlag, Sven Stringer, Christiaan A de Leeuw, Suzanne Sniekers, Erdogan Taskesen, Kyoko Watanabe, Tessa F Blanken, Kim Dekker, Bart H W te Lindert, Rick Wassing, Ingileif Jonsdottir, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Hreinn Stefansson, Thorarinn Gislason, Klaus Berger, Barbara Schormair, Juergen Wellmann, Juliane Winkelmann, Kari Stefansson, Konrad Oexle, Eus J W Van Someren & Danielle Posthuma in Nature Genetics. Published online June 12 2017 doi:10.1038/ng.3888
Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.The South Carolina Gamecocks learned of their NCAA Tournament fate on Sunday night during CBS's annual Selection Show announcing the 68 teams that made the field. Unfortunately, a resume filled with unattractive losses - despite 24 wins - was enough for the selection committee to leave them out of the field for the 12th straight season.
Whether or not the Gamecocks would be in the field of 68 was thrown in doubt thanks to a poor strength of schedule (271) and bad losses during the regular season to Alabama (KenPom ranking of 86 at time of loss), Tennessee (89), Missouri (177), and Mississippi State (79). Those were on top of two regular season losses to Georgia and a third in the SEC Tournament. Although the Gamecocks held their own against RPI top 100 teams (8-5), Carolina ended the season with just a pair of games against Top 50 teams (Kentucky and Texas A&M, beating the Aggies while getting crushed by the Wildcats).
Curiously, Vanderbilt and Tulsa got in ahead of South Carolina. Also, Syracuse, a team not expected to get into the tournament, were put into the field.
An invitation to the NIT is likely for the Gamecocks and would equal their first postseason bid since their last trip in 2009. The Gamecocks have appeared in three NIT championship games, winning back to back times in 2005 and 2006 and losing to Memphis in the 2002 final.The Historical Unreliability of Jesus: A Review of Robert VanVoorst’s Jesus Outside The New Testament
The Historical Unreliability of Jesus: A Review of Robert VanVoorst’s Jesus Outside The New Testament
by Sarah Schoonmaker
Robert VanVoorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament claims to provide evidence for Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection from non-Christian historians and Jewish writings. Jesus Outside the New Testament refers to the following classical writers in order to defend the historical reliability of Jesus: Thallos, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus. The purpose of this review is to address the historical writers that remain lauded as evidence for the historical Jesus and demonstrate how they all fail to bolster any historical support for Christianity.
Thallos:
VanVoorst points to Thallos as the earliest reference to Jesus set in the middle of the first century 55 C.E. Most of Thallos’ works perished, but was quoted by Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian writer in his History of the World. This book was eventually lost, but the quote originating with Thallos was also mentioned by Byzantine historian, Georgius Syncellus. According to Syncellus, when Julius Africanus writes about the darkness of the death of Jesus, he mentions that, “Thallos calls this an eclipse of the sun, which seems to be wrong.”[i] Julius claims that the darkness was miraculous, “a darkness induced by God.” Even though Thallos could have mentioned the eclipse with no reference to Jesus, VanVoorst claims that it is more likely that Julius who had access to the context of Thallos’ quotation was correcting Thallos as a “hostile reference to Jesus’ death.”[ii] For instance, VanVoorst concludes, “if Thallos was simply writing about an eclipse, Julius Africanus would not have cared to say that Thallos was mistaken.”[iii]
In logic, when an argument against a particular view is offered, one mentions the claim under refutation, followed by premises and a conclusion. If Thallos were arguing against the claim that the eclipse was associated with the death of Jesus, he would have mentioned this event. However, there is no reference to Jesus, so therefore, one cannot conclude that it is even likely that Thallos was responding to a Christian claim about the “darkness induced by God” surrounding Jesus’ death. VanVoorst’s conclusion is a straw man fallacy because he creates an argument that Thallos does not claim to make. At best one may only infer that Thallos wrote about Jesus in his lost writings, but this is a massive assumption.
Pliny the Younger
As a prominent lawyer and senator in Rome, Pliny published nine books of letters between 100 and 109.[iv] He writes about punishment of Christians specifically by the Roman governor Trajan. Pliny also records that Christians would “sing hymns to Christ before dawn on a determined day and took oaths to refrain from theft, robbery, and adultery, not to break any promises, and not to withhold a deposit when reclaimed.”[v]
Pliny also tells Trajan that, “many people of all classes, ages, and regions of his province are infected by this contagious superstition.”[vi] VanVoorst credits this source fairly by claiming that Pliny’s writings do not bear independent witness to Jesus independent of Christianity. “What is related about Christ confirms two points made in the New Testament: first, Christians worship Christ in their songs (Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:15-20; Rev. 5:11,13), and second, no Christian reviles or curses Christ (1 Cor. 12:3). Pliny, however, shows no knowledge of Christian writings in his letter.”[vii]
Pliny bears witness to the practices of Christianity and the persecution from the government. However, he offers no contribution to the historical Jesus. As a result, he is equivalent to any other historian writing about Greek mythology. Just because a historian writes about a certain group worshipping a god or gods, this does not validate the existence of their god or gods.
Suetonius
The Roman writer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (ca. 70-ca. 140) practiced law in Rome and was a friend of Pliny the Younger. He published a book Lives of the Caesars, which covers the lives and careers of the first twelve emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian.[viii] In the fifth section of Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius reports how emperor Claudius treated several people during his reign. The quote claimed to support Jesus Christ is as follows, “He (Claudius) expelled the Jews from Rome, since they were always making disturbances because of the instigator Chrestus.”[ix]
VanVoorst claims that “Christus” often found confusion with “Chrestus,” by non-Christians. Furthermore, the Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century) spells Christian with an -“eta” in all three New Testament occurrences of the word (Acts 11:26, 26:8; 1 Pet 4:16).[x] In particular, “Christians” were also referred to as “Chrestians.” I find VanVoorst most convincing for the possibility of the connection to Jesus Christ when he claims that ‘Chrestus’ “does not appear among the hundreds of names of Jews recorded by the Roman catacomb inscriptions and other sources, yet was a familiar Gentile name. He concludes that this opens the door to the possibility that Suetonius may have confused Christus for Chrestus.”[xi] On the contrary, Bart Ehrman notes that Suetonius is probably referencing an individual “Chrestus” and Jesus’ followers, since Jesus of the Gospels was executed twenty years prior to the riots.[xii] My conclusion rests on the possibility of a reference to Jesus Christ here, however advances no farther than speculative evidence.
Tacitus
As a Roman historian, Tacitus is most famously known for the Annals, which covers the Roman Empire from 14-68 C.E. and includes information about the reign of Nero. He records Nero’s probable arson of Rome in order to implement his own architectural designs and how he passed the blame to Christians as a ready scapegoat. As a result of this blame, Nero heatedly persecuted Christians and Tacitus wrote the following about this, “But neither human effort nor the emperor’s generosity nor the placating of the gods ended the scandalous belief that the fire had been ordered. Therefore, to put down the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the most unusual ways those hated for their shameful acts, whom the crowd called “Chrestians.” The founder of this name, Christ, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate.”[xiii]
Indeed, emperor Nero used Christians as a scapegoat to explain the fire, which broke out in Rome (64 A.D.). Tacitus mentions that the Christians were likely not the cause of the fire, but used the fire as an excuse to persecute Christians. The Annals do not prove that Jesus Christ existed but merely that Christians existed in the First Century A.D., which no scholar has ever disputed. Since Tacitus recorded The Annals one hundred years after Jesus’ proposed existence, this lacks historical reliability. It is important to remember that the negative evidence cited above is not “absence of evidence,” but rather “evidence of absence.” In science, negative evidence is often as important as positive evidence.
Josephus:
As a Jewish historian, Josephus briefly mentions Jesus two times in the Antiquities. Josephus mentions James “the brother of Jesus who is called Messiah” (Ant. 20.9.1). While Josephus does discuss many individuals with the name Jesus in the Antiquities, he does not refer to any of them as “Messiah.” I believe this is a reference to the Jesus of the Gospels since no other Jesus was associated with “Messiah” or called by its definition, “the anointed one.” While I grant this as a reference to Jesus of the Gospels, the credibility of this reference remains highly contestable.
For instance, Josephus’ other reference has him professing faith in Jesus, calling him Messiah when Josephus never became a Christian in the first place. “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”
Since Christian scribes copied Josephus’ writings through the Middle Ages, it is controversial whether his references to Jesus were altered or not. While Christians quote this passage as reliable evidence to Jesus’ existence, teachings, and resurrection, these references did not show up in the writings of Josephus until centuries after his death, at the beginning of the fourth century. Thoroughly dishonest church historian Eusebius is credited as the real author. The passage is out of context, which points to text alteration. All scholars agree that Josephus, a Jew who never converted to Christianity, would not have called Jesus “the Christ” or “the truth,” so the passage must have been doctored by a later Christian–evidence, by the way, that some early believers were in the habit of altering texts to the advantage of their theological agenda. The phrase “to this day” reveals it was written at a later time. Everyone agrees there was no “tribe of Christians” during the time of Josephus–Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.
If Jesus were truly important to history, then Josephus should have told us something about him. Yet he is completely silent about the supposed miracles and deeds of Jesus. He adds nothing to the Gospel narratives and tells us nothing that would not have been known by Christians in either the first or fourth centuries. The paragraph mentions that the divine prophets foretold Jesus, but Josephus does not tell what they said or us who those prophets were. If Jesus had truly been the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, then Josephus would have been the exact person to confirm it.
[i] VanVoorst, Robert. 2000. Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, (Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans), 20
[ii] Ilbid, 21
[iii] Ilbid, 21
[iv] Ilbid, 23
[v] Ilbid, 25
[vi] Ilbid, 26
[vii] Ilbid, 29
[viii] Ilbid, 29
[ix] Ilbid, 30
[x] Ilbid, 31
[xi] Ilbid, 33
[xii] Ehrman, Bart. 2001. Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 58
[xiii] VanVoorst, Robert. 2000. Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans, 41
(Sarah Schoonmaker is completing her second BA in philosophy at the University of Colorado–Denver after receiving a BSBA in Finance from the University of Denver and an M.Div from Denver Seminary. She plans to begin a Ph.D program in the fall of 2010 to study philosophy of science, philosophy of language, logic, and epistemology. In the meantime, she researches and writes on a variety of topics covering religion, science, culture, and philosophy. For more information see: www.schoonmaker.wordpress.com.)
AdvertisementsThey sit next to each other in the Devils’ dressing room, but Scott Gomez and Jaromir Jagr are worlds apart.
Gomez loves it. Jagr … doesn’t.
“I didn’t forget how to play hockey,” Gomez said Wednesday, minutes after the team’s pre-game skate in preparation for the Calgary Flames. “Not for one second did I question I knew how to play. Should I be surprised? Not at all.”
Since the calendar flipped to 2015, the 35-year-old centre has 16 points in 21 games. He looks revitalized, now playing with Jagr and Tuomo Ruutu. After Tuesday’s optional skate at the team’s practice facility, New Jersey uberboss Lou Lamoriello smiled at Gomez’s rise from the NHL ashes.
“Up until a month ago, I could say I was surprised,” Lamoriello said. “Now, I’m not. He earned it, he worked at it, paying at his own expense to be here.”
Moments later, in a small scrum with reporters, Jagr said, despite the fact he “loves” the Devils’ organization, he would like to be traded. (Full disclosure: I was not writing down his quotes, so credit to Tom Gulitti of The Record, The Star-Ledger’s Rich Chere and NHL.com’s Mike Morreale for the exact words.)
“If I stay here and we’re not going to have a chance to make the playoffs, I don’t think I’m going to play at all. And I still like to play,” the Future Hall of Famer said, adding he saw what would happen once Peter DeBoer was fired. “I knew from the first day … I knew it. There is a history, so I knew it.”
Jagr would not elaborate on “the history,” but he played briefly in Washington with Adam Oates, who now coaches the forwards. Jagr played 24:55 in DeBoer’s last game. His highest under the new regime is 18:37, which was the first game Lamoriello ran the bench. He played 12:13 on Saturday and 12:49 on Monday.
Asked if he would talk to the coaches about it, Jagr replied, “Do you think it’s going to change anything? I don’t think so.”
For his part, Gomez said, “I love playing for Oates … all the offensive guys do.” (Well, all except for one.)
According to one coach, Oates made an adjustment in Gomez’s game, telling him not to swing low in his own zone to make up for a lack of footspeed. Starting higher up the ice has helped his numbers.
“At 35, I am still learning,” Gomez said. “Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about?”
He says the turnaround began at the end of last season, while a Florida Panther. Realizing this could be it for his NHL career, he poured everything into those final few games. He said teammates told him, “You’re not done,” so he went all-out in the summer, seeking out Vladimir Bure, who once worked as the Devils’ fitness consultant.
“It was the Russian Communist mentality,” Gomez smiled. “Skating two times a day, six days a week. All the time I believed I was going to make it.”
“I understand everything anyone can go through in this game. I’ve been there. People say, ‘Do you regret being in Montreal?’ No. Montreal was awesome. Everything I went through, I learned from. There is not anything anyone can say to me about hockey where I can’t say, ‘I’ve been there.’”
“If I quit, how could I look anyone in the eyes and say that?”
Asked if there was anything he would do over again, Gomez said, “Yeah, I probably should have asked this one girl out in high school. She was at a party, my friend asked her first and they stayed together a few years. Later I found out she liked me.”
Turning serious, he said, “I’ve never been one to look back.”
(This was a day for wild quotes. Jagr, asked why things were going badly for him, replied, “Why is gravity keeping us on this Earth?”)
Gomez was effusive in his praise of Oates and Scott Stevens, former coaches DeBoer and Dave Barr for letting him stay and practice, and, of course, Lamoriello. They remained close after the player left New Jersey as a free agent in 2007. During one New Jersey/Montreal Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, Lamoriello sought out Gomez post-game to see how the player was doing in a particularly low moment. So, when it was time for one final shot, the first call was easy.
Both men say they have not discussed next season. But, his future is more secure than Jagr’s, especially in New Jersey. After finishing his commentary, Jagr walked toward the workout room, then stopped, turned around and said he understood why other players were getting more time.
As a Devil, he is done. Gomez, against all odds |
deal signed in February by the Ukrainian government, pro-Russian rebels, and Russia. Poroshenko is under pressure to institute the controversial reforms by Kiev’s Western allies, who see them as a way to end the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine that has claimed over 6,800 lives.
Still, passing the final reforms will be a tall order for Poroshenko. The first reading of the bill passed Monday with 265 deputies in favor — 39 more than is required. But if the Ukrainian president is to succeed with the second and final reading later this year, he will need the support of 300 of parliament’s 450 deputies. Poroshenko is also preparing to bring other elements of the Minsk agreement before parliament, including local elections, before the end of the year. Given the dissent and violence shown Monday, the president is in for an uphill fight.
SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty ImagesAn expected Senate vote on ethanol subsidies Tuesday represents a test of a larger issue: Can Republicans embrace a view of tax loopholes that finds common ground with Democrats?
If so, that shared viewpoint could help build broader consensus on fiscal reforms designed to bring down federal budget deficits over time. If not, getting to a bipartisan "yes" on any major deficit-reduction would be much harder.
The point at issue goes beyond ethanol and the debate over whether corporations should reap a tax credit for putting the corn-based fuel into US gasoline. The deeper issue is a philosophical one: If Congress takes away a tax subsidy, should that count as a tax hike?
Many Republicans argue that any move that allows more tax revenue to arrive at the US Treasury is a tax increase. Killing the ethanol subsidy is a great idea, many say, but it should be done in a "revenue-neutral" manner, with new tax cuts designed to offset the change.
Others in Congress – including some Republicans – argue that rolling back this kind of spending is a good thing, even if the resulting boost to federal revenues is not offset by new tax cuts.
The poster children of this great tax debate are antitax lobbyist Grover Norquist and Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma.
Mr. Norquist, of the lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, is pushing Republicans not to allow any new tax revenue to arrive in Washington. The rationale: The basic problem in the federal budget is too much spending, not too little taxes. And if more revenue flows in, Congress will spend it.
Senator Coburn is no lover of high taxes, but he’s backing a bill that would phase out the ethanol subsidies, and thus allow federal tax revenues to rise.
The ethanol vote is just one battle in a much larger budget war: Will fiscal discipline eventually be achieved by spending cuts, tax hikes, or a mix of both. Or not at all.
Currently, federal spending is running at historic highs, with only about 60 cents of tax revenue arriving for every dollar of spending.
But it will be very hard to fix America's long-term fiscal imbalances without a bipartisan deal. Democrats are wary of signing off on any plan to close the whole budget gap through spending cuts, as many Republicans would like to do.
If Republicans move toward the Coburn view and away from Norquist, it could help create conditions for a possible compromise, along the lines of a package proposed by President Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission last year.
That commission called for stabilizing the nation's debt over the next decade, with roughly $4 trillion worth of reductions in projected deficits. The plan included roughly $1 dollar in new tax revenue for every $2 in spending cuts.
Public opinion polls show a public that is not enamored of the budget policies of either party. American voters are willing to see some of both spending cuts and tax hikes as part of an effort to put the nation on sound footing for the future, a number of polls have found, including one new one by the Pew Research Center.
While the two parties have different opinions on economic policy and the size of government, leaders in both parties agree on the to cut spending. They also agree in general on the need to streamline the tax code.
That points to the elimination of tax breaks as a potential bipartisan solution.
"It seems like both sides want to do that," says Diane Lim Rogers, chief economist at the Concord Coalition, a group that supports controlling the national debt. "The big difference is the Republicans are stuck with this no new taxes pledge, the Grover Norquist pledge."
Such choices aren't easy for either side to make. But the alternative may be protracted gridlock – and the risk that the rising public debt sparks a crisis of confidence among investors.
The danger is that every year "our interest payments grow, the risk of a crisis grows," says Maya MacGuineas, who heads the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
In the recent Pew poll, roughly three-quarters of Americans say the budget deficit is a major problem that the country must address now. In addition to cutting spending, a sizable majority say they would support reducing the deficit by raising taxes on high-income Americans and eliminating tax breaks for large corporations.Weekly Update – 9/8/2017 Sep 8 - TheFeelTrain
This week at Installation 01 we partied it up at PAX West.
We spent so much time hanging out in Seattle we forgot we were even developing a game. Next week we'll be back on track, but until then, here's that update you've presumably been waiting for.
Play With Your Pianist
Our musical boys are looking to expand their team. We're on the lookout for someone who is both a pianist and copist. While a musical degree (specifically piano) is preferred, if you can prove yourself to our sound team we can make an exception. You should at least have knowledge of writing full orchestra music sheets, and have a recording setup available. Be sure to have the most extensive portfolio in the existence of man ready to go, along with a video of you playing and composing a song.
This is pretty urgent so contact Jafet, Kyxe, or one of our leads directly on Discord if you're interested.
PAX Adventures
Here's a totally neccessary number of photos from Bean, Church, and Greg's trip to PAX West and 343 Industries in Seattle. This is yet another reason we can't accept your donations. They would just be spent on 70 plane tickets to PAX next year.
The true identity of Spiderman is actually lead director Church. I hope he asks me to homecoming.
It turns out the gang brought Isaac's best friend, but forgot to actually invite Isaac himself. Can somebody say betrayal? I bet they stole his corn too.
Bean got to meet various people from 343 Industries and the Halo community. I may or may not have chosen the worst possible photos to display here.
Here are some weapons and props that 343 Industries just leaves lying around. No big deal. I feel 100% safe when Bean is holding automatic weaponry in a room full of people. I'm glad Church and Greg were there to provide this wild boy some adult supervision.
There was a PAX panel with none other than Marty O'Donnell himself speaking. If you were following our PAX crusade on Twitter, you already know that the gang all took selfies with him. Greg's selfie took extra artistic liberties.
Met some old guy here...dunno who he could be @MartyTheElder pic.twitter.com/9mdmpDtmKG — Installation 01 (@Installation01) September 3, 2017
I even heard Marty was asking about Jafet. I'll be waiting for the new collab album.
Overall, the Installation 01 team leads had the time of their lives, and are very thankful that 343 Industries would invite them into the studio to play Halo 3 Anniversary before anyone else does.
Note: Halo 3 Anniversary does not actually exist.
Website Woes
It's coming.
The greatest website update known to man is hitting your computer screen in mere 5-500 business days. I'm not very good at estimates. There was a sneak peak of friends and notifications a few weeks ago, but after Bungie.net got it's remodel (for better or for worse), I was inspired to basically revamp everything there is to revamp. Hence the several week delay in said friends system.
I don't think my notification box is ready for the onslaught of requests I'm going to get anyways, so this is for the better. There's a few things you should know about this up and coming web facelift. It's cleaner and easier to use. Who would've thunk it? I certainly didn't, and I'm the one making it. Now, I know what you're thinking:
"TheFeelTrain, where's that armor customization I was promised in the Q&A so many months ago!?"
Besides the fact the Unity web player is extremely slow and over 40MB, we just aren't ready to show off the armors we have yet. We can't give away our surprises! And besides, you can't actually play with your spartan yet. Just be patient, because I said so. This website upgrade probably won't have the customization. That's what I'm trying to say.
Blame Bean
Bean has become best friends forever with Valve. They both have so much in common, like not releasing any games. The only difference is one makes billions of dollars and the other can't even afford to pay his team members. On second thought, they aren't so similar at all.
This ended up being juicier than expected. I always think they're going to be so short and yet here we are, at the end of an adequately sized update. And they can only get bigger from here.
The plan is that once the elusive closed alpha runs its course, we'll be more open about development and what we're currently working on. But for now, this is all you get. You should be grateful for what you have. I could give you nothing. Or I could go bi-weekly instead of weekly. But where's the fun in that?
TheFeelTrainThe majority of patent lawsuits today are brought by "patent trolls" that do nothing but sue—but suits between actual competitors do still happen.
Case in point: AT&T has sued Cox Communications, saying that Cox has infringed seven AT&T patents covering everything from DVRs to methods for hiding "packet loss or frame erasure" over a network.
In its complaint (PDF), AT&T claims it "provided a detailed explanation" of how Cox's products infringe its patents during meetings that took place in 2009 and 2010.
"Despite years of protracted negotiations, Cox has sought to avoid payment for its infringement by repeatedly delaying and rescheduling negotiations," wrote AT&T lawyers in the complaint, filed in federal court in Delaware. "Given every opportunity, Cox has failed to provide substantial arguments for either non-infringement or invalidity of AT&T's patents. Cox’s conduct constitutes a steadfast refusal to take a license, even though Cox generates billions of dollars in revenue every year through its use of AT&T’s technologies."
Sued over other companies’ hardware
AT&T claims that Cox DVRs and set-top boxes, including the Cisco-made Explorer 8000 and 8300 lines, infringe two AT&T patents: No. 5,809,492, which covers the DVR's ability to "create, organize, identify, and resolve potentially conflicting program recording requests," as well as No. 6,118,976, which "allow[s] a single device to select between and tune both analog and digital content streams."
Cox's digital telephone system is said to infringe AT&T's patent No. 6,487,200. AT&T patents numbered 6,952,668, 7,233,897, and 7,908,140 also get lobbed at Cox's "packet telephone system network components," including all of Cox's "eMTAs [cable modems that can interface with home phones] and other network components implementing... packet loss concealment or an equivalent, including at least [modems such as] the Motorola 5220 and Arris TM502G, TM202A, and TM402A models."
The "packet loss" patents are related to an AT&T licensing program that has published rates, ranging from six cents to 20 cents per device for large-scale providers.
Another patent covers transmitting data using "multiple RF channels" and is said to be infringed by Cox cable modems implementing the DOCSIS 3.0 standard.
Finally, Patent No. 7,907,714 discloses a system for allowing users to maintain subscriber profiles. "This allows subscribers to obtain a higher level of service while simultaneously lowering cost to the service provider by reducing the need for customer service representatives," says the patent.
An AT&T spokesperson told Ars, "After trying for more than five years to reach a reasonable license agreement with Cox for its use of our patented technology, we had no alternative but to seek assistance from the court."
Representatives from Cox did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tough target
AT&T is more often on the defense side of IP disputes, at least in public. But it has enforced its patents before. In 2001, AT&T sued Microsoft in a patent suit that went to the Supreme Court, which found Microsoft not liable for infringement.
In December 2005, two months after Apple introduced new iPods that included video capabilities, AT&T started sending out licensing letters saying it owned patents underlying the MPEG-4 digital video standard. According to a report in PC World, the targets included Apple, CyberLink, DivX, InterVideo, and Sonic Solutions, as well as retailers.
The new lawsuit, which was filed by two AT&T intellectual property holding companies, isn't seeking an injunction that would shut down any Cox services. Instead, it asks for a "compulsory ongoing royalty" for future infringement.
It could be a bruising dispute. It's impossible at this stage to know what kind of numbers are being talked about behind the scenes, but Cox has a recent history of being willing to see through patent fights. In 2008, Verizon used its VoIP patents against Cox, fresh off a punishing $117M win against Vonage. A Virginia jury rebuffed Verizon's $404 million case and invalidated two of its patents.The stable channel has been updated to 50.0.2661.94 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Security Fixes and Rewards
Note: Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed.
This update includes 9 security fixes. Below, we highlight fixes that were contributed by external researchers. Please see the Chromium security page for more information.
[$3000][ 574802 ] High CVE-2016-1660: Out-of-bounds write in Blink. Credit to Atte Kettunen of OUSPG. [$3000][ 601629 ] High CVE-2016-1661: Memory corruption in cross-process frames. Credit to Wadih Matar. [$3000][ 603732 ] High CVE-2016-1662: Use-after-free in extensions. Credit to Rob Wu. [$3000][ 603987 ] High CVE-2016-1663: Use-after-free in Blink’s V8 bindings. Credit to anonymous. [$1000][ 597322 ] Medium CVE-2016-1664: Address bar spoofing. Credit to Wadih Matar. [$1000][ 606181 ] Medium CVE-2016-1665: Information leak in V8. Credit to HyungSeok Han.
[$n/a][ 586820 Low CVE-2016-5168: Side channel information leak in Skia. Credit to Roeland Krak.
We would also like to thank all security researchers that worked with us during the development cycle to prevent security bugs from ever reaching the stable channel.
As usual, our ongoing internal security work was responsible for a wide range of fixes: [ 607652 ] CVE-2016-1666: Various fixes from internal audits, fuzzing and other initiatives.
Many of our security bugs are detected using AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, Control Flow Integrity or LibFuzzer.
A list of changes is available in the
log
. Interested in
switching
release channels? Find out
how
. If you find a new issue, please let us know by
filing a bug
. The
community help forum
is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.
Krishna Govind
Google ChromeConan In Dallas - Free Tickets Request
"Conan" Dallas shows will tape March 31st – April 3rd at The Majestic Theater. Want to see the show live? Of course you do. Below is all the info you'll need in order to score tickets...
[Update Monday March 10, 2014: Hey Team Coco fans -- All Dallas ticket holders have been notified. The bad news: If you have not received an email from us, you do not have tickets reserved. The good news: You still may have a chance to see the big man in person; check out the "Standby Tickets" process below.]
DALLAS STANDBY TICKETS: Didn't get a reserved ticket, but still dying to see "Conan" live in Dallas? A limited number of Standby Tickets will be made available on the day of each taping. PLEASE NOTE: Standby tickets are NOT guaranteed tickets. You will fill in any empty seats we have available just before show time and most of these seats will be single seats throughout the theater. For Standby Tickets, come to The Majestic Theater at 8am on the morning of the taping you'd like to attend and join the main line of reservation holders. (March 31st – April 3rd) At 8am, a member of our staff will distribute numbered wristbands to anyone in the main ticket line that does not have a reservation. You will be given a location to return to by 3:30PM to see if you'll be getting in to the show.
REGULAR TICKET INFO:
Requests are processed in the order they are received. If you are issued free tickets, you will receive a ticket confirmation via e-mail from a member of our audience department the week of March 3rd. If you do not receive an email from us, your submission was not chosen. To ensure safe delivery of our email reservation, be sure to add Tickets@conacotv.com to your “safe senders” list.
All shows will tape in the late afternoon. The arrival time for the show you are scheduled to see will be included in your reservation email.
Tickets for each night’s show may only be claimed the day of taping between 9AM and the check-in deadline stated on your reservation letter.
To claim tickets, all members of your party must be present. Tickets will only be released to the ticket holder. The ticket holder must be present with valid ID matching the name used to reserve the tickets.
Tickets and reservations are non-transferable with regards to the name of the ticket holder and the date you are scheduled to attend. No exceptions.
All members of your party must be at least 16 years of age with photo ID showing date of birth.
Please note ticketing will be in excess of seating capacity and a reservation does not guarantee admission. Although we do not anticipate turning reservation holders away, it is possible. The closer you arrive to the check-in deadline stated in your reservation, the higher your chance of being turned away. TRANSLATION: Please come as early as possible!
Show times and dates are subject to change at any time.
"Conan" does not reimburse travel expenses due to show cancellations or inability to attend due to the show’s overbooking.
Tickets have no cash value, are non-transferable, and may not be auctioned or sold without the show's permission.
If you have questions that are not addressed on this page, or have lost your confirmation e-mail, please contact us at: Tickets@conacotv.com
Thanks for wanting to be a part of the show and good luck!Yes,@leighalexander WAS attacking nerds & autistics #Gamergate #notyourshield
Alternate title: An explanation of the blindingly obvious
When critics of Leigh Alexander's “Gamers are over” article (https://archive.today/l1kTW) point out that the article drips contempt for nerds in general, for socially awkward people, and perhaps especially people on the autistic spectrum, it is common for her apologists to insist that she was only condemning gamers who threaten or abuse women, or a who are so fixated on gaming that they maliciously lash out at any perceived threat to it, or other morally objectionable traits. Therefore, nerds/awakward people/autistics in general are supposedly not the targets and have no reason to object- unless, of course, they ARE one of those despicable people who send women death threats and what have you.
Alexander's apologists may sometimes go further: By claiming that Alexander's article was attacking nerds/autistics/etc., isn't the critic implying that misogyny, threatening criminal behavior, and so forth are typical nerd traits or autistic traits? So who REALLY despises nerds or autistics here, huh?
Now, I find it hard to believe this argument is ever made in good faith. If Alexander had only wanted to attack abusive people, there was no reason to fill her article with sneeringly contemptuous descriptions of gamers and gamer culture in general. liberally invoking and attacking nerd/autistic stereotypes that- however uncool they may be- harm no one, and which Alexander gives no reason to believe are even positively correlated with misogyny or abuse, much less causally connected.
(Similarly, if Alexander merely wanted to celebrate the popularity of games beyond stereotypical nerds to a wider audience- which is another common defense- there would be no reason to attack people who DO fit the stereotype to one degree or another.)
Nevertheless, since it appears so commonly, I finally felt compelled to spell out WHY it's a ridiculous defense of Alexander's article. Or, rather, to show why.
(Also, in before some dipshit claims I think hating gamers is just like homophobia.)
Suppose I said something like this:
“Let me tell you about a group of awful men. They're very prissy and effeminate. They speak in lispy voices and make limp-wristed gestures. They're into fashion and interior decorating. They have sex with other men. They love Broadway musicals and electronic dance music. They often dress up like construction workers or bikers, or wear assless leather pants. They march in 'pride' parades with others of their kind. They all have at least one heterosexual female friend who they provide with dating tips and sassy reparte. They're really into Judy Garland. Also, they're prone to sexually abusing little boys. They're terrible people.”
Do you think that what I just wrote was a perfectly unobjectionable, straightforward condemnation of people who sexually abuse children?
No, because you're not an idiot.
Do you think what I just wrote was even primarily ABOUT attacking people who sexually abuse children, rather than smearing another group?
No, because you're not an idiot.
Now, suppose a gay man said he found what I'd just written objectionable. And suppose I replied, “Why? I never said anything bad about gay people. I didn't even use the word! I was condemning child molesters. If you don't molest children, I wasn't referring to you and you have no reason to object to anything I said.” Would you buy that?
No, because you're not an idiot.
And suppose I said, “Are you implying that every gay man matches the description I gave, that every gay man fits all the popular stereotypes? Worse, are you implying that all gay men are pedophiles, that pedophilia and homosexuality are somehow inextricably linked? Who's the REAL homophobe here, huh? Huh?” Would you consider that a compelling rebuttal??
No, because you're not an idiot.
Now suppose I rewrote the above in a more Leigh Alexanderesque style. Instead of just rattling off gay stereotypes in a (until the last one) neutral, unjudgmental fashion, I talked about them in highly unflattering terms. I ridiculed the idea of men with interests that are not stereotypically masculine, talked about gay sex being weird and gross and unnatural, I described described the patrons of gay bars and clubs or members of gay groups and organizations as ugly, dull-wiitted, pathetic freaks whose interests and activities were stupid and contemptible. what have you. THEN would you believe that I had no antipathy towards gay men, and that there was no reason for them to feel attacked unless they were also pedophiles?
No, because you're not an idiot, or at least not that big of an idiot. Even if you're pretending you are to score rhetorical points.
I'm autistic, but I'm not an idiot, either. Stop acting like I am by expecting me to believe that Leigh Alexander's article somehow wasn't an expression of hatred and disgust for people like me- whether they're autistic, or just too nerdy or weird for Alexander to be seen tolerating when she's showing the other bullies that she's cool like them.
Reply · Report Post38 Stretch Goals Unlocked So Far With an Estimated Retail Value of over $200
The Great Old Ones have returned to claim the ruins of Earth, and you are one of them! Cthulhu Wars is a competitive strategy game in which 2 to 8 players face-off to determine the fate of the planet. You'll recruit cultists and summon monsters, cast spells, open interdimensional gates, and awaken your Great Old One!
Every game is different - as you play, you unlock new spellbooks, giving you new amazing powers unique to your faction. Play is highly asymmetric - every faction has a unique set of spellbooks and creatures. A strategy that works for Opener of the Way will not work for Windwalker.
Cthulhu Wars’ original Kickstarter campaign launched in 2013 to stellar success. Now it returns, with seven new expansions, plus fourteen of our original expansions. If you’re already a fan, now is the time to complete your collection! If you have been waiting for the opportunity to get in on Cthulhu Wars, this is your best opportunity!
The core game offers an asymmetric, two to four player strategy experience (up to eight players with expansions). Each player controls a faction of cosmic evil competing with its rivals for the remains of the defeated, dying Earth. Players push and battle each other to control areas, build gates, gain power, achieve personal goals, and unlock special abilities in the form of spellbooks to render their own faction supreme. The player wins who, having acquired all six of his spellbooks, accumulates the most Doom Points by controlling gates on the board and gathering Elder Sign trophies. The miniatures are conspicuously monstrous, appealing and evocative.
Not only does this entitle you to all updates, but you can pick and choose from dozens individual add-ons. If your add-on total reaches a total of $150, you'll also get all of the stretch goals unlocked!
If you backed our earlier campaign, you might want the Million Favored Ones pledge. This gives you all the new expansions. If you missed out on any items from the original campaign, you can also grab any or all of them as add-ons. Plus this pledge level includes all stretch goal reached!
This pledge gets you the famous original game AND it ships to your house immediately post-campaign, so the terrifying fun starts right away! You can also individually select those add-ons that most interest you, plus you're automatically entitled to all the stretch goals!
If you already have the core game but want all of the expansions, you can get every single one (plus the stretch goals) in one monstrous bundle with this pledge!
You can go all-in with the Mysteries of the Worm pledge, and get every single item available for the Cthulhu Wars game system, plus all stretch goals as they become available.
Amis francophones, grâce à votre soutien et l'acharnement de Pitpipo, nous avons trouvé le moyen de vous proposer les nouvelles extensions de cette campagne intégralement traduites en français et ce sans aucun supplément de coût. Il vous suffit de choisir le pledge Million Favored Ones et vous pourrez, via le pledge manager, demander à le recevoir en français. Bien sûr si vous prenez un pledge supérieur (ou des add on), seules les extensions du Million Favored Ones seront traduites (tout le reste restera en anglais).
The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.
Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again. Now it begins.
Onslaught Two is the culmination of years of effort -- the ultimate Cthulhu Wars game system! Now, we give you the ability to pick and choose options and take your game of Cthulhu Wars beyond the limits of excitement and fun!
The Tcho-Tcho faction expansion
The Tcho-Tchos are an exciting new human-based faction. Representing the psychically advanced, but ethically repulsive Tcho-Tcho tribe, you gain the ability to interfere with other players by worshipping their Great Old Ones! Your own Great Old One, Ubbo-Sathla, is a tool and slave, not an object of worship!
The Library at Celaeno Map expansion
This map is inside a single building - it all takes place inside the cyclopean alien facility in the Hyades, renowned in Lovecraft Lore. This map includes Special Collections, where the first player to build a Gate can seize amazing new powers in the form of extra spellbooks.
But beware! If you lose control of your Special Collection, your new spellbook becomes overdue, and the terrifying Librarian menaces you. The map also includes the Custodian, who is to be avoided, and who cleans up after the Library's monstrous visitors.
New spellbooks, and the new threats, the Library at Celaeno is certainly our most unusual map!
Great Old One Pack 4
New for Onslaught Two is Great Old One Pack 4 - it includes Byatis, Nyogtha, and Tulzscha with complete rules for play. Byatis lures enemy cultists to their doom, while Tulszcha subverts the purpose of the Ritual track. Meanwhile, Nyogtha takes prisoners away to its lair.
Cosmic Terror Pack
The Cosmic Terrors are neutral, particularly powerful Monsters. You seize control of one by spending your Doom points, and it remains loyal thereafter. The pack includes the gigantic Dhole, destroyer of worlds; the Great Race of Yith, with the power to seize men's minds; and the demonic Quachil Uttaus entity, Treader of the Dust.
Ramsey Campbell Horrors Pack 1
We have permission from Mr. Campbell to use his creations this time around, and so we have two new packs to celebrate his contributions to the Lovecraft Mythos. In Pack 1, we have two Great Old Ones - Eihort and Gla'aki. Also included is a new Monster - the famous Insects from Shaggai. You get three hives for the Insects should you demand their loyalty, so the pack includes a total of 5 large figures in this pack.
Ramsey Campbell Horrors Pack 2
In this Pack we have the Great Old Ones Daoloth and Y'Golonac, plus the Satyr monsters - humans degenerated through contact with the Outside. This pack contains 5 figures - three Satyrs, and the two different Great Old Ones.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft Bust
This is perfect to replace the cardboard first player markers included with the core game, and jazz up your tabletop. Also, simply owning a bust of HPL has 1001 uses!
You can energize your game even more by getting expansions.
Faction expansions give you whole new Great Old Ones plus their minions, spellbooks, and faction cards. You can mix and match factions in your games and watch their powers clash excitingly.
Map expansions give you a new world in which to play your game! Every map includes new creatures, new rules, and new strategies.
Figure expansions provide your game with great old ones, types of monsters and even a new type of cultist! These new creatures don't just provide extra possibilities, they transform an entire game with new tactics and battle plans, and even victory conditions.
Petersen Entertainment was founded to make games with top-grade components, amazing art, and great depth of gameplay. We are explicitly trying to provide a luxury, high-end product for the hobby community.
We got our start decades ago when Sandy Petersen first conceived of the idea of doing a roleplaying game based on H. P. Lovecraft’s stories. That original idea, the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, is still in print today. Since that time, Sandy has worked on many tabletop products, including helping develop the original Arkham Horror boardgame. He also spent almost 20 years in the computer gaming industry, as a designer on the teams that produced Civilization, Doom, Quake, the Age of Empire series, and Halo Wars.
He returned to the world of tabletop gaming with the famed Cthulhu Wars strategy game, and now he is Chief Creative Officer of his own company. Our team are all fanatic game players and designers in our own rights, and between us, we have almost a century of combined experience.
The Petersens, 3 Cultist, and 1 Friendly Frog
Our social media pledge is to put content of interest, and not just spam you, our customers and friends. This is also where we will be running contest during the campaign for copies of our games and other goodies. Feel free to follow us and share our social media links.
Shipping for Cthulhu Wars: Onslaught Two
We make and sell board games. Therefore, we do not expect to make any money from our shipping charges. However, we also do not expect (nor can we afford) to lose money on shipping. The way it will work is after the campaign we will send out a survey to gather your addresses. We will use this data to get the most detailed shipping pricing we can based on our actual cost to ship your reward level to your home.
Through our pledge manager, CrowdOx, you will then be able to pay the actual shipping cost for your pledge. We don’t want to decide for you whether you should be paying for someone else’s shipping. Therefore, backers in one part of a country or the world will not be subsidizing backers in other parts of the world. You pay for your shipping, and no one else does.
Shipping will be handled in two parts. The first will be shortly after the campaign to ship the 1500 copies of the Cthulhu Wars core game we have in two warehouses (1200 in the US, and 300 in Germany). If you do not live in N. America or Europe, we highly recommend not pledging for the first printing of the core game on this Kickstarter. We will have to ship you a 5kg box from the US or EU and it will not be cheap. The second wave of shipping, comprising all the remaining items, will be shipped from China via containers to various regions around the world. Each will then be sorted and shipped out to your home from the fulfillment centers.
There is a large variety of combinations of products that can be ordered in this Kickstarter campaign. Add-ons, being additional boxes and weight, will incur additional shipping charges. However, these should be minimal by comparison to the reward level shipping pricing. We will not charge extra for shipping stretch goal contents. For the pledges containing the core game, be sure to appropriate select the N. America or EU versions!
*Courier Costs can vary widely within a given region. We are ONLY showing the average for that region. Remember, no backers subsidize another’s shipping costs. So, if you live very near the fulfillment warehouse, you can expect your courier cost to be lower. If you live quite far from it, you should expect a higher cost to ship. That’s how shipping works. In geographically large countries, such as the US, Canada and Australia, we will be breaking the courier cost down to the level of zipcodes/postal codes. In most other regions it is simply by country (or, by shipping “zones”, if you are familiar with how shipping is typically priced). Asia’s average is high because it ships from Hong Kong, and takes into account such diverse places as Singapore, South Africa, and Japan.
**GST (goods and services taxes) vary widely from country to country, and are sometimes based on manufacturer’s value, and other times based on sale price. This is a ballpark estimate, particularly for Asia. Canada actually does have a small GST, but it is small enough that it is included in the courier fees column.
***We are looking for a cheaper solution in Asia and will update this as soon as we can. We may not be able to update this before the end of the campaign, but you do not pay shipping until the pledge manager opens so we will be able to confirm this prior to you paying.
A word on VAT
We understand that this is an enormous part of shipping costs for the EU. We have come to learn there is no legal and ethical way around it - physical crowdfunding rewards must be treated like any other transaction, and the 19% VAT applies. Our German shipper's legal counsel has investigated; our US shipper who handles worldwide imports and works hand in hand with the EU shippers have legal counsel who has separately investigated, and we have also independently had our legal counsel look into it.
There may be shippers who don't require it to be paid, but we are not willing to risk an audit which could lead to ALL Petersen Games products denied entry into the EU, resulting in zero EU customers getting their games. Crowdfunding is a relatively new phenomenon, and both the German and EU governments have a wide span of time during which they can audit a business. We do not want to be surprised in a year or two with an enormous bill and perhaps fines in order to continue importing into the EU. We plan on being around for a long time, making more awesome games just for you!Advertisement APD faces drastic officer shortage 'People are getting a lot more violent towards our officers,' major says Share Shares Copy Link Copy
The Albuquerque Police Department is losing officers in droves, and department leaders say they’re worried for the safety of the public as well as the officers.Last week KOAT Action 7 News aired video of a man suspected of stealing a truck, punching a cop, carrying a knife and wearing body armor. All of it was caught on police lapel video. Two strangers stepped in and helped the officer arrest the suspect."Let’s face it, people are getting a lot more violent towards our officers, so having |
18 report, which focuses on public safety, notes that most chronic offenders are committing nonviolent crimes. But the costs of their “revolving door” interactions with the justice system are significant. “Averting a 14-year-old high risk offender from a lifetime of offending would save somewhere between three and five million dollars,” it states.
For offenders already in the system, the report continues, there is little done to break repeat offenders free of that cycle.
“At present, in this province, release planning and programs to facilitate the successful social reintegration of offenders are apparently minimal,” it reads. “The current approach to reducing recidivism among these offenders is too often limited to a patchwork of disjointed punctual interventions in their life, without a significant impact in terms of their desistance from crime. This must change.”
That document was produced by a panel chaired by Darryl Plecas, parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice and attorney general for crime reduction. In a telephone interview, the Liberal MLA for Abbotsford South maintained that recidivism isn’t a problem without answers.
“There is a great consensus about what the issues are and what we need to do to fix it,” Plecas told the Georgia Straight. “We just need to start putting things in place to make that happen.”
In response to Throness’s report on the provincial prison system, the government announced it will facilitate collaboration between B.C. Corrections and postsecondary institutions to expand job training for offenders. Plecas said the deployment of “assertive community treatment” teams—a relatively new model of care for the severely addicted and/or mentally ill—is also reducing clients’ interactions with police.
Plecas, addressing a lack of prerelease planning, said B.C. Corrections could look to its U.K. or federal counterparts, where, he said, recidivism rates are substantially lower.
“The fundamental difference is related to having supervision at the end of one’s sentence,” he said. “We do not have that luxury in the provincial system, because people do their 57 days, on average, and then you say: ‘Thanks, have a good day.’ You really need to have more than that.”
Asked why such reforms have not yet been initiated, Plecas spoke frankly about the government’s failings on recidivism.
“Many of the people who are the most problematic—who are the biggest drain on services—are people who truly need 24/7 attention on many different fronts,” he said. “And society just does not have deep enough pockets to address that to the extent that we ought to. I wish I had an answer to that.”
In a separate interview, Throness suggested that interventions should begin at the start of an inmate’s sentence.
“Sometimes people get out of prison and all that they have for ID is a letter from B.C. Corrections saying that they’ve been released,” he said. “We need to help these people, while they are in the system still, to fill out the forms for social assistance, to apply for social insurance, and all the rest, all the things that you need in a normal life.”
Throness also emphasized that in researching his report on B.C. prisons, a recurring theme he encountered was a need to address repeat offenders’ struggles with addiction. He suggested “recovery-based treatment” could, in many cases, serve as a more effective option than traditional incarceration.
“I think there needs to be a bit of a broadening of culture within B.C. Corrections,” he said. “Their role is not just enforcement. Their role within the institution is to help these people get ready for life on the outside.”
Housing can break a cycle
Julian Somers is an associate professor at Simon Fraser University’s faculty of health sciences. He’s authored a number of studies on recidivism that have found support services such as housing and treatment for addiction lower the odds that a released inmate will reoffend.
In a telephone interview, Somers repeatedly emphasized the role that addiction plays in high recidivism rates. He praised Throness’s report for calling attention to this issue, but criticized it for failing to include concrete recommendations for how addiction support services for inmates could be improved.
“For people who are suitably motivated, drug treatment courts can be a really timely intervention,” Somers said. “Overall, it leads to reductions in recidivism compared to the traditional court process.”
He described a release without such support systems as, “a recipe for disaster.”
At the same time, he noted these recommendations are all about approaching the problem from behind. Somers suggested deploying greater resources for drug treatment and education before a crime is committed. “We have enough information now to know that we can actually go upstream and, probably with a lower dollar investment, make a big difference in an individual’s life course,” he said.
With societal addiction issues unlikely to be addressed in the near future, groups that provide rehabilitation assistance to criminals unanimously stress the importance that housing can play in lowering rates of recidivism.
Tim Veresh, executive director of the John Howard Society, said B.C. Corrections was once more involved in housing. But he recalled that began to change around 2000, when many support services previously offered were stripped from that body. Some were transferred to other agencies, such as B.C. Housing and the Ministry of Social Development, Veresh noted. But he argued that gaps have subsequently developed, the consequences of which are obvious.
“If you lose hope when you’re released because you don’t have a place to stay or it's cold on the street and you’re struggling, where do you go?” Veresh asked. “You go back to what you know. If all your friends are involved in crime, you still go to them for support and shelter, and next thing you know, you’re going to be back in crime because that’s the lifestyle that they lead.”
The Lookout Emergency Aid Society has a small but growing program that aims to break the revolving door cycle for inmates released from Fraser Regional Correctional Centre in Maple Ridge.
According to Lookout's executive director, Shayne Williams, a pilot project called Homeless Intervention has provided housing for 62 former inmates released between May 2011 and December 2013.
“We’re meeting incarcerated men three months before statutory release,” he said. “We’ve got a Lookout employee that’s cleared to go into the jail and meets with them and talks about that cycle of becoming homeless and getting re-incarcerated.”
Williams described it as "a very good example of what can be done"; however, he noted it’s far from the norm.
“Your standard is, folks come up for stat release, they’re given a bus ticket, and good luck," Williams lamented. "And quite often, they’ll come straight into our system again.”
Home for the holidays?
In a telephone interview, Trotchie’s father, James, described the strain that recidivism places on a family.
“When Christopher gets out of jail, I can’t watch the news,” he began. “I don’t want to hear that my son got killed or something. I’m so scared of it.”
Trotchie’s mother was murdered when he was just 11. James counted 13 foster homes that the boy went through before he was returned to the custody of his family. When Trotchie was old enough to enter juvenile detention facilities, that’s where he ended up.
“As soon as he gets out, he’s back to it," James said in another interview. "And the reason for that is, he gets released with no plan, no medication—nothing. It’s like they’re setting him up.”
James noted Trotchie has seldom spent long in prison. Despite his lengthy record, he has remained within the provincial correctional system, which deals with less severe crimes. But he added that it has been 15 years since his son was free for the holidays. “Since he turned 12, he’s never been with me on the street for Christmas,” James said. He added he was hoping 2014 is the year that will happen.
Unaware of his father’s wish, Trotchie said the same thing at the Guildford Centre food court.
“This was all a lack of a plan,” he said. “So my plan now is just to stay out through Christmas. I think I can stay out that long.”
That was December 10. Neither Trotchie nor the Straight knew it at the time, but one day earlier, Surrey RCMP had issued a warrant for his arrest citing a probation violation. He’ll return to prison as soon as he’s caught.Cannabis is a plant that can be used in a wide range of settings such as medical purposes, a source of fiber and oils, or as a recreational drug. Growing evidence has been reported on the clinical benefits of medical marijuana (herbal form) for treating chronic pain. Currently, several countries in the world and almost half of all U.S. states authorize the use of medicinal marijuana.
According to a new article published in Nature entitled, “Medical marijuana: Showdown at the cannabis corral,” author Michael Eisenstein notes that current marijuana laws make assumptions concerning the medical benefits of cannabis that sometimes go beyond the scientific evidence available, opening the door to the creation of new, opportunistic markets that are selling unproven medicines to people with chronic diseases.
“Everybody is selling stuff, but the real professionals who are supposed to do the job are not there yet,” said in a news release Dr. Arno Hazekamp, the Head of Research and Education at Bedrocan in Veendam, the Netherlands, the country’s official provider of medical cannabis. Supporters of medical marijuana fear that this deregulation can undermine the efforts developed so far for the establishment of the medical legitimacy of the controversial plant.
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Dr. Donald Abrams, an oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues have shown in a previous clinical trial with patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), that 52% of the patients using cannabis reported a significant reduction in HIV-associated neuropathic pain in comparison to 24% in the control group. Other clinical trials have obtained similar results in patients suffering from neuropathic pain caused by several medical conditions. On the other hand, other trials have reported no added benefit from cannabis use.
Concerning multiple sclerosis, medical marijuana has been found to help improve chronic pain and muscle spasticity in patients with this progressive neurodegenerative disorder.
The design and performance of clinical trials involving cannabis use can be challenging, as the range of doses tested is limited due to the levels of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the difficulty in finding an adequate placebo control and the subjectivity of conducting self-reported patient analysis. “It gets you high, and if you believe it’s going to cure everything under the sun, then when you smoke it you feel like it cures everything under the sun,” noted Dr. Margaret Haney, a neurobiologist at Columbia University in New York, in the Nature article. Furthermore, the costs, burocracy and the number of government agencies involved when conducting clinical trials on cannabis add an extra barrier.
U.S. policies are now changing and the National Institute on Drug Abuse has expanded the range of strains available on its unique authorized growing facility at the University of Mississippi.
The future of medical marijuana remains unclear, however. The interest of the scientific community, pharmaceutical companies and the general public in this field may accelerate the already present deregulation or force governments to apply a stricter control.
“There’s an opportunity for us to take a global leadership position — the world is crying out for some direction in managing not just medical, but also recreational cannabis, (…) This should stop being an issue for legal minds to wrestle over; it should be the scientists that are putting the evidence together that drive the policy,” concluded Dr. Mark Ware, pain specialist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “There are risks, but those can be modulated by careful patient screening and public health messaging, (…) and they should not stop progress in considering these drugs for middle-aged women with multiple sclerosis, or for men with HIV/AIDS.”This is a guest blog by Professor Roger Pielke Jr, who is founder and chair of the Sports Governance Center in the Department of Athletics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. You can also follow his sports blog here and on Twitter at @RogerPielkeJr
In principle, issues related to conflict of interest in organizations are straightforward. In practice, the implementation of conflict of interest policies can be challenging, as we are right now witnessing with the incoming Trump administration.
In my new book, The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports, I discuss the challenges of governing sport in the 21st century, especially the need to adopt standards of good governance common to business and governmental organizations. Here I apply some of these ideas to US Soccer.
Specifically, US Soccer needs to take three important actions in order to bring its conflict of interest policies into the 21st century. First, US Soccer should transition the role played by its CEO and board in evaluating possible conflicts to an independent Ethics Committee. Second, there needs to be a comprehensive independent evaluation of the mixing of non-profit and for-profit activities that occur under the umbrella of US Soccer. Third, these changes should be accompanied by greater transparency in US Soccer conflict of interest policies, following the practices of USATF, for instance. This post discusses each of these in a bit more depth.
At the outset, I should disclose that I am an independent academic who has studied governance and conflicts of interest in science and sports for many years. I have received no compensation for this article, but I do value good governance in sport, especially US sport and soccer. Officials at US Soccer read and commented on an earlier draft of this post, and I appreciate their engagement.
The main motivation for sports organizations to step up their governance game is scandal and the potential for scandal. FIFA has led the way, but other organizations, such as IAAF and the NFL, have been embroiled in their own controversies involving conflicts of interest. In a 2015 report, Play the Game, a Danish sports governance watchdog, found that of the 32 international federations for which data was available, only 6 had “clear conflict of interest rules in place that include disclosure requirements.” That is just not good enough.
This post summarizes the results of my exploration of conflict of interest policies of US Soccer, the sport’s governing body in the United States under the umbrella of the US Olympic Committee. US Soccer staff, including its president Sunil Gulati, have been supportive of my work, even knowing that some shortfalls and areas for improvement might be identified. As Gulati told me, “We’re happy to get better!”
US Soccer is a non-profit organization and with that comes benefits in the form of no tax burden, but it also comes with obligations. To maintain its non-profit status, US Soccer must comply with relevant US laws. To maintain non-profit status under US law an organization is not required to adopt a conflict of interest policy. However, for national and international sports organizations in the 21st century, adoption of a conflict of interest policy is not just a good idea, it is essential.
The elements of a “best practice” conflict of interest policy are commonly understood across organizations. For instance, the OECD, Council of Europe, UN, the IOC, USOC and Nike all offer have conflict of interest policies that share common elements.
US Soccer also has a conflict of interest policy. However, it departs from best practices in three important respects. Below I summarize these deviations and recommend steps that are needed to bring the governance of US Soccer in line with 21st century principles of good governance. Taking these steps will require strong leadership.
First, US Soccer describes its conflict of interest policy in its internal employee handbook. That policy requires that any actual or potential conflict of interest “must be disclosed to and approved by the Chief Executive Officer or Board of Directors.” This structure is highly problematic. Consider just the cases of Daniel Flynn (CEO, and member of Board of Directors) and Sunil Gulati (President, and member of Board of Directors) who under the policy are placed in a position of disclosing and approving any potential conflict involving themselves to the Board of which they are a part (and lead).
I asked Alexandra Wrage, president of Trace International and past member of FIFA’s “independent governance committee,” about this sort of practice. She told me, “You certainly wouldn’t find a CEO or Board of a corporation investigating difficult, often tedious, conflict issues. There’s usually someone within the company’s ethics or compliance office that handles that, with the help of outside counsel where necessary. Most corporations have high level potential conflicts reviewed by outside counsel as a matter of course. That provides a robust, arms’-length review as well as a strong sense of independence.” The notion of “independent” oversight, in particular, is one that sports organizations have struggled with.
Unlike an increasing number of sports organizations, US Soccer does not have an Ethics Committee to review conflict disclosures. A US Soccer official tells me that its board has a “Risk, Audit and Compliance Committee” that “is charged with assisting with the oversight of U.S. Soccer’s compliance with ethics (and therefore, conflicts) requirements.” However, there is no mention of this committee in the US Soccer COI policy and no explicit mention of COI in the Committee’s charter. Further, as part of the organization’s board of directors, the Risk committee is almost entirely made up of US Soccer officials.
To improve its conflict of interest policies it will be important for US Soccer to change how it discloses and evaluates potential conflicts, by removing this function from internal officers and putting into place an independent Ethics Committee. USA Track and Field, for instance, has empaneled a completely independent Ethics Committee, “composed of active and retired athletes, an athletic director, a coach, two attorneys, and a business person,” and on which USATF employees and contractors are not allowed to participate. US Soccer should also follow this model.
I am under no illusions that making such a change would be easy, as it goes against a longstanding culture that has eschewed independent oversight. Of course, as we’ve learned this culture is common to soccer organizations around the world. But if you think changing conflict of interest oversight is going to be hard, it pales in comparison to the next issue.
Second, US Soccer exempts from its conflict of interest policy “any constituent or affiliated member entities of U.S. Soccer.” This is hugely problematic because an affiliate of US Soccer is Major League Soccer, which contains a for-profit marketing arm called Soccer United Marketing. The opportunities for conflict are many. For instance, according to the New York Daily News, in addition to being US Soccer president since 2006, Gulati was “also a founder, board member and deputy commissioner of MLS, and a member of SUM’s board of directors.”
The actual inter-related workings of SUM, MLS and US Soccer are opaque, to put it mildly. We do not know if SUM provides any compensation to US Soccer officials or if any of these individuals have an equity stake in SUM. We also do not know much about the business relationships between SUM, MLS owners, sponsors, vendors, clients and others with a financial interest in decisions made by SUM. That includes US Soccer officials who oversee the organization’s non-profit functions.
Of course, even when everything is done appropriately and above board a crucial aspect of managing COI is that the appearance of conflicts is just as important as any actual conflicts. The “cozy” relationship of US Soccer and SUM certainly appears problematic to the outside observer.
Consider this example. Earlier this year SUM was chosen by CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, the two FIFA confederations in the Americas, to represent these organizations’ worldwide marketing rights. The president of SUM, Kathy Carter, explained that the deal would be very lucrative: “CONCACAF events are valuable properties that garner worldwide attention. There is a tremendous amount of value for brands looking to engage with the soccer fan in this diverse region.”
Yet, as a member of CONCACAF’s governing council, Gulati was, according to ESPN, not allowed to participate in the evaluation process of the 24 companies that bid for the rights, due to his conflict of interest resulting with his relationship with SUM. This raises a question: How can Gulati be conflicted in his relationship with CONCACAF and SUM, but not US Soccer and SUM? If the answer to this question is that the interests of SUM and US Soccer are one and the same, then that illustrates the fundamental problem of locating a for-profit company inside a national governing body for an Olympic sport.
To improve its governance, US Soccer should undergo a high-level, independent evaluation of the relationship of US Soccer, MLS and SUM. Such evaluation will no doubt be strongly resisted because in many respects US Soccer, MLS and SUM are one and the same. However, the mixing of business interests and non-profit sports governance is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen repeatedly in the soccer world in recent years. The business and non-profit functions currently under the umbrella of US Soccer should be clearly separated into completely separate organizations.
If US Soccer does not invite such an independent evaluation, then the International Olympic Committee should take responsibility. If the current arrangements are indeed appropriate, then an independent evaluation will reveal that, making them stronger and more legitimate. If they are not, then they should be fixed. Either way, there is no good reason to oppose such an evaluation and plenty of good reasons for it to occur. If improved governance of business and sport functions has been deemed appropriate for organizations like FIFA, CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, then the same steps are also good ideas for US Soccer.
Third, and finally, US Soccer needs to improve its transparency with respect to its conflict of interest policies and procedures. At present, the organization’s COI policy is available only by request. It is not online. In fact, there is essentially no information on the US Soccer website related to conflict of interest, though it does advertise a whistleblower hotline. Of course, transparency goes hand-in-hand with the taking of the steps recommended above. Right now the relationship of US Soccer and SUM makes true transparency impossible.
The lack of transparency of US Soccer stands in stark contrast to other US sports organizations. Consider again, US Track and Field. USATF has a dedicated website for its Ethics Committee. That site includes links to policies and procedures, and it also includes a list of sponsors and vendors to USATF, as well as event organizers, for which relationships with these organizations would raise questions of a conflict of interest. This list includes dozens of companies, some as large as Nike and ESPN but also a printing company and limousine service. The site has a FAQ and invites whistleblowers to report COI issues to its independent Ethics Committee, not to the organization’s staff or leadership.
It is worth noting that the USATF conflict of interest policies and procedures, as well as it notable commitment to transparency, has not eliminated criticism of the organization and its financial decisions. For instance, recently the Washington Post published a hard hitting piece on the “spending and style” of USATF CEO Max Siegel. Such criticism is a feature of transparency, not a flaw. To ensure that public interest organizations in sport are doing their job, all stakeholders need to be able to look inside, see what it going on and then debate and discuss the implications out in the open.
We should be under no illusion that changing the culture of US Soccer is anything other than a monumental task. I am optimistic that its present leadership will see the need for constructive evolution of how the organization is run toward best practices of 21st century sport governance. But if not, the inexorable winds of change will eventually win out, to the benefit of how US Soccer is governed and ultimately to the overall benefit of soccer in the US.Stephen Leslie
Researchers have found genetic signatures among Britons that betray their historical roots in particular locales of the United Kingdom, leading to the finest-scale map of genetic variation yet created. The analysis — which shows a snapshot of clusters of genetic variation in the late 1800s, when people were less likely to migrate far from their region of birth — reflects historical waves of migration by different populations into the island.
“The patterns we see are extraordinary,” says Peter Donnelly, director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford, UK, who co-led the study published on 18 March in Nature1. “The genetic effects we’re looking at are the result of, probably, thousands of years of history.”
Nature Podcast Reporter Ewen Callaway meets Peter Donnelly to discuss a portrait of British genetics. You may need a more recent browser or to install the latest version of the Adobe Flash Plugin.
Today, few Britons have ancestors from just one local region of the United Kingdom, so it is hard to identify patterns of genetic variation specific to any one place. But Donnelly and his team found 2,039 Britons of European ancestry who lived in rural areas and knew that their four grandparents were all born within 80 kilometres of each other. Since these volunteers’ DNA was a mosaic of their grandparents’, who themselves were to known be strongly linked to one British region in the late nineteenth century, Donnelly hoped to find genetic variation that clustered neatly with their grandparents' geographic location.
So it proved: a statistical model lumped participants into 17 groups based only on their DNA, and these groupings matched geography. People across central and southern England fell into the largest group, but many groupings were more isolated, such as the split between Devonians and Cornish in Britain’s southwest. People who trace their ancestry to the Orkney Islands, off the northeast coast of Scotland, fell into three distinct categories. They are likely so differentiated because the islands made it hard for different populations to mingle.
As well as geographic barriers like these, the patchwork was formed by migrations into and around Britain, Donnelly says. The team analysed the genomes of 6,209 people from continental Europe to understand their ancestors’ contributions to Britons’ ancestry. This confirmed the flow of Anglo-Saxons from present-day Germany into Britain after the departure of the Romans in 410 ad. They interbred with local residents instead of replacing them wholly, as some historians and archaeologists have suggested. Danish Vikings, who occupied Britain between the 700s and 1100s ad, by contrast, left little signature in most Britons’ genomes.
Now that DNA signatures linked to historical local settlement are known, Donnelly says that Britons or people with British heritage could conceivably use their genomes to trace the homelands of their ancestors.The team’s study should also help researchers to find genetic variations linked to disease by ruling out the differences that are due to geography.
Graham Coop, a population geneticist at the University of California, Davis, says it should be possible to also map the British ancestry of people from more diverse genetic backgrounds, such as Americans. However, he says, "it gets trickier the further back that ancestry is in your family tree, as less and less of your genome is from any one ancestor."Someone's watched "Catch Me If You Can" a few too many times.
Matthew Scheidt, 18, was sentenced yesterday to a year in jail for impersonating a physician assistant at a Florida hospital, where he dressed wounds, examined disrobed patients and even performed CPR.
Scheidt was arrested in Sept. 2011 at the age of 17, after he raised the suspicions of hospital workers by trying to gain access to restricted areas of Osceola Regional Medical Center.
Investigators learned that Scheidt had no qualifications to be a physician assistant, and his position was the result of a paperwork error. When he was hired as an office clerk in August 2011 and went to pick up his badge, he got one stating he was a physician assistant, and the teen just went along with the role.
While Scheidt admitted that he "messed up," he has also maintained the hospital is partially to blame.
"Let's even say that I said I was a physician assistant," he told police last August, according to CNN. "Let's even say that I was. Are you that stupid that you are just going to put me in the system as that, without any credentials or any paperwork or nothing?"
A hospital spokeswoman told Reuters that she knew of no patients who were harmed under Scheidt's care.
After his arrest, Scheidt was bonded out of a juvenile detention center, but was arrested four months later for impersonating a cop, NBC Miami reported. He was caught when he pulled over a real cop -- who was working undercover -- and tried to order the officer to fasten his seatbelt.
Scheidt has not yet been tried for a charge of impersonating an officer. In connection to the hospital charade, though, he was convicted of two felony counts of practicing medicine without a license and two felony counts of impersonating a physician assistant earlier this year.
In addition to his year in jail, he will spend a year under house arrest and eight years on probation.
According to the New York Daily News, Scheidt participated in a volunteer program at another hospital when he was 13, but was kicked out for pretending to be a nurse.RTÉ will not say how much licence fee payers' money benefited drug trafficker Michaella McCollum or her family for her first interview since her release from prison.
RTÉ will not say how much licence fee payers' money benefited drug trafficker Michaella McCollum or her family for her first interview since her release from prison.
RTE refuse to say if they paid Michaella fund as outrage over interview grows
The State broadcaster has insisted it did not pay the convicted criminal, but refused to comment on whether the McCollum family received a fee or expenses or if money was paid to the Michaella McCollum fund.
RTÉ was forced to defend last night's soft-soap interview and tweeted that it had not paid McCollum after a backlash from the public.
Members of the public reacted angrily to an interview that focused more on her new blonde look than on the drug gangs she worked for.
Michaella McCollum Connolly walking in Lima after her release from prison in Peru. Pic:Mark Condren
READ MORE: Michael O'Doherty: Michaella's drug smuggling looks like it's going to pay off for her after all
Viewers took to Twitter to question why the broadcaster was giving a convicted criminal prime air time.
Tweeters hit out at the 23-year-old Co Tyrone woman, saying they did not believe a word she said and had zero sympathy for her.
Responding on Twitter, RTÉ said it had not paid McCollum for the interview and reiterated this stance to repeated media queries.
Michaella McCollum Connolly hiding in a back of taxi with her family after running down side streets from photographers. Pic:Mark Condren
"It's an RTÉ production and Michaela McCollum was not paid," it said.
"It's an RTÉ production - the guy doing the interview, Trevor Birney, is from Fine Point Films. He's working for us.
"Nobody paid for the interview. Categorically nobody paid for the interview. Trevor Birney is just a producer/director from that part of the world and has done a lot of that kind of work."
RTÉ further refused to say if it had paid money or provided benefit to McCollum's family, who are in Lima with her.
When asked if her family had benefited, an RTÉ spokesman replied: "I won't be adding to what I said earlier.
"Michaella McCollum did not get paid for the interview and any other production and staffing costs are commercially sensitive and won't be disclosed. We won't be disclosing any production costs around the documentary."
READ MORE: Exclusive: Drug trafficker flees from our reporter after begging for forgiveness in RTE interview
Pressed on whether the McCollum family received funds, expenses or if money was paid to the Michaella McCollum fund, the spokesman replied: "I can't disclose or discuss any of the production costs around the documentary apart from the fact that Michaella McCollum wasn't paid."
Sources told the Irish Independent that RTÉ, interviewer Trevor Birney and McCollum signed a number of confidentiality agreements prior to the interview being filmed.
RTÉ also refused to divulge what other costs were involved in the interview.
"Any other staffing/production costs would be commercially sensitive and not for disclosure," it said.
McCollum sat down with Mr Birney, from Northern Ireland-based Fine Point Films. In her first broadcast interview since her conviction, she said she had been "very naive".
"I was so young, very insecure," she said.
"A lot of times I didn't know how to say no to somebody. I kind of just followed along with it."
She said she now regretted her crime. "I made a decision in a moment of madness. I'm not a bad person," she said.
READ MORE: Michael O'Doherty: Michaella's drug smuggling looks like it's going to pay off for her after all
"I want to demonstrate that I'm a good person."
McCollum has been in jail for more than two years after she was found guilty of attempting to smuggle more than 5kg of cocaine to Spain.
Now aged 23, she was arrested two-and-a-half years ago for possession of almost €2m worth of the drug.
She and young Scottish woman Melissa Reid, from near Glasgow, who she met on the party island of Ibiza, were stopped in Lima airport with the cocaine hidden in their luggage.
Reid remains in prison in Peru and is seeking to serve the rest of her sentence in Scotland.
Irish IndependentTwo WikiLeaks cables from U.S. Embassy in Colombo, released to the public last week said that four Tamil doctors who worked with the injured civilians during the last months of the war, and who recanted the casualty figures at a Sri Lanka Government organized press conference, had told the US Embassy officials that “they were heavily coached for the press conference [by Colombo], given specific lines to say, and even practiced with several members of the local media beforehand. They said they had not lied when giving their original statements during the war.”
The memo sent by the US Embassy official in Colombo was dated Monday, 24 August 2009, same day after the doctors were released on conditional bail.
Dr Varatharajah Dr Shanmugarajah Dr Sathiyamoorthy
The doctors released were Ki’linochchi Regional Director of Health Services (RDHS) Dr. T. Sathiyamoorthy, Mullaiththeevu RDHS Dr.Thurairaja Varatharajan, Dr. Ilancheliyan Pallavan of Puthukudiyiruppu government hospital and Mullaiththeevu Medical Superintendent Dr. Kanapathipillai Shanmugarajah. The fifth doctor, Dr. S.Sivapalan, was still under detention.
“The release of the four doctors is a welcome step by the GSL, but clearly they remain under investigation by the CID and now also are potentially under threat of abduction or extrajudicial killing. Post will continue to monitor the situation very closely, but for now the doctors appear to want to maintain as low a profile as possible, without undue attention brought to them either in Sri Lanka or internationally,” the Embassy memo added.
Another US Embassy cable sent on the 25th June 2009, after the doctors reacanted the casualty figures, commented: “The dead and wounded figures given by the doctors at the July 8 press conference would appear to underestimate the true number of casualties during the final months of conflict in the no-fire zone. The GSL appears to be continuing its efforts to downplay the extent of civilian suffering during the last weeks and days of the war.”
The memo said that a senior contact in the CID was demoted because he had worked to improve the detention conditions of the doctors and apparently had expressed too strong of a desire to improve their welfare.
The memo mentioned that Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary had indicated to the US Ambassador that it would probably not be safe to free the doctors until “after passions had cooled.”
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முகநூல் பின்னூட்டல்கள்You may remember that last week I shared an article by art historian and author Roland Hui regarding an image from The Black Book of the Garter attributed to Lucas Horenbout, which Roland Hui believed might well be Anne Boleyn. Roland made the following points:
The Black Book was created in 1534, while Henry VIII was married to Anne Boleyn
The large circular pendant worn by the queen consort in the image had golden letters A and R – Anna Regina, Anne the Queen.
The queen in question is not wearing medieval costume, as she would be if she was Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III, but is wearing typical dress of the 1530s and her ladies are wearing French hoods from that period. The dress is also very similar to one worn by Jane Seymour in a portrait.
Although the Lady of the Garter title had died out, Horenbout could have been “creating a backdrop where he could pay tribute to the present Queen by having her stand in for Philippa”.
You can read more in Roland’s article at https://tudorfaces.blogspot.com.es/2017/04/anne-boleyn-as-lady-of-garter.html.
An article disputing Roland’s views has just been published on QueenAnneBoleyn.com – see http://queenanneboleyn.com/2017/05/03/really-anne-boleyn-r-e-bruyere/ and the main points made are:
Henry VIII would surely have had the image removed from The Black Book if it was of Anne Boleyn
That 1534 was not a triumphant year for Anne so there would be no reason to depict her in the book.
That the title Lady of the Garter was not used in Henry VIII’s reign.
That the woman depicted has blond hair.
That the AR could stand for “Anglia Regina”, Queen of England, and could therefore be Jane Seymour or Anne of Cleves.
Some interesting points, but the one about the blond hair is irrelevant as if you zoom in on the image then it can be clearly seen that no hair is showing. The gable hood was not supposed to show any hair – as opposed to the more risque French hood – and what you can see in the image at the forehead is the band of the hood. Here are some images of women wearing gable hoods (or just a coif in one) where you can see the band clearly:
and here is a zoom-in on the head from the Lady of the Garter image:
Regarding the AR standing for “Anglia Regina”, I’ve never come across any of Henry VIII’s queen consorts |
other-sports
Indian men's hockey team had their date with history as they clinched a maiden appearance in the final of the prestigious 36th Hero Champions Trophy Hockey tournament against formidable Australia after hosts Great Britain held Belgium to 3-3 draw in a final round robin match
London: Indian men's hockey team had their date with history as they clinched a maiden appearance in the final of the prestigious 36th Hero Champions Trophy Hockey tournament against formidable Australia after hosts Great Britain held Belgium to 3-3 draw in a final round robin match.
This will be India's first appearance in the summit clash in 36 years since the inception of the blue-riband six-nation tournament. India's only podium finish until now was a bronze medal won way back in 1982 at Amsterdam.
Indian hockey team in 2014. Pic/ AFP
India would thank Great Britain, who rallied from a two goal deficit to hold Belgium 3-3 in a cliffhanger at the Lee Valley Hockey Centre late last evening. This was after India lost 2-4 to title favourites Australia in their last round robin encounter.
The draw between Great Britain and Belgium meant both of them finished behind India in the round-robin league, paving the way for India to play World champions Australia in the tonight's title encounter.
Australia topped the league standings with 13 points from five games, while India ended on seven points. Great Britain ended on six points and Belgium were left on four points. Britain will feature in the bronze medal match with dethroned title holders Germany, who outplayed South Korea 7-0. This was Germany's biggest win over the Koreans in international matches. Belgium will take on South Korea in the play-off for the fifth position.
Starting the day's proceedings with a 2-4 loss to top-ranked Australia, the Indian players went through a pensive wait for the result of the last league fixture as both Great Britain and Belgium could have scraped ahead of India. Britain simply required a victory to go past India on points, while Belgium needed to win by three goals or score at least four in a two-goal victory to finish ahead of India on goal difference.
All three possibilities were within close distance until the last stages, leaving the Indian fans in the stadium on tenterhooks. Even the last British shot at the goal with five seconds left could have taken the hosts into the final, but the ball went a few centimeters wide of the post.
The Indian team had left the ground after their match and followed the developments at the hotel, while the pendulum swung from one side to the other in a dramatic sequence. India's tentative defence and wayward shooting had left them marginally short in the past, but luck smiled on India today as Belgium squandered their chance of increasing the 3-1 lead even as Britain played without a goalkeeper for the last six minutes.
Then Belgium had two players sent off and were down to nine men, allowing Britain to score twice in the space of three minutes and drawing 3-3 parity with 75 seconds left. Britain went all out looking for that one good shot to land on target and lift them into the final, but the Belgian defence hung on grimly.
Two shots from British strikers went wide of the target and India found themselves in the final. Belgium had surged into the initial lead in the opening minute when Florent van Aubel deflected a powerful shot past British goalkeeper George Pinner.
Britain equalized on captain Barry Middleton's penalty corner conversion in the 25th minute. Jerome Luyparet fired in two successive penalty corners in the 30th and 42nd minutes to give Belgium a 3-1 lead, but the fourth goal proved elusive even when they surged forward with full thrust.
The tide turned for Britain when van Aubel got a yellow card in the 56th minute and Emmanuel Stockbroekx was sent off with red card two minutes later. David Ames sent in a five reverse hit past a crowded circle in the 57th minute to revive the home team. With the crowd egging them on, captain Middleton scored his second goal of the match by deflecting a cross from Sam Ward in the 59th, but the 3-3 equaliser was as far as they could go.By Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs / Published May 07, 2017
WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle mission 4 (OTV-4), the Air Force's unmanned, reusable space plane, landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility May 7, 2017.
“Today marks an incredibly exciting day for the 45th Space Wing as we continue to break barriers,” said Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, the 45th SW commander. “Our team has been preparing for this event for several years, and I am extremely proud to see our hard work and dedication culminate in today’s safe and successful landing of the X-37B.”
The OTV-4 conducted on-orbit experiments for 718 days during its mission, extending the total number of days spent on-orbit for the OTV program to 2,085 days.
"The landing of OTV-4 marks another success for the X-37B program and the nation," said Lt. Col. Ron Fehlen, X-37B program manager. "This mission once again set an on-orbit endurance record and marks the vehicle's first landing in the state of Florida. We are incredibly pleased with the performance of the space vehicle and are excited about the data gathered to support the scientific and space communities. We are extremely proud of the dedication and hard work by the entire team."
The X-37B is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft. Managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the X-37B program performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.
"The hard work of the X-37B OTV team and the 45th Space Wing successfully demonstrated the flexibility and resolve necessary to continue the nation's advancement in space," said Randy Walden, the director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. "The ability to land, refurbish, and launch from the same location further enhances the OTV's ability to rapidly integrate and qualify new space technologies."
The Air Force is preparing to launch the fifth X-37B mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, later in 2017.After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Washington Nationals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles NL / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.
Batters
This set of ZiPS projections for the Nationals represents the 23rd post in this offseason series. A brief examination of the 22 previous installments reveals that no field player has received as robust a forecast yet as Bryce Harper (579 PA, 6.9 zWAR) does here. The other top contenders? Josh Donaldson (6.6 zWAR), Buster Posey (6.3), and Andrew McCutchen (6.0). Conspicuous by his absence from that brief list, of course, is Mike Trout. As for when Szymborski intends to release the Angels’ projections, one can only speculate as to that heartless monster’s plans.
Apart from their outfield wunderkind, the Nationals’ collection of batters is rather ordinary. Third baseman Anthony Rendon (512 PA, 3.3 zWAR) has the benefit both of youth and also a six-win season in his recent past. Otherwise, no starting field player receives a projection that reaches even the two-win threshold, the recently acquired Daniel Murphy (606 PA, 1.9 zWAR) representing the best of the remaining six.
Pitchers
It’s rare that a projection system like the one inside Dan Szymborski’s computer will produce a win figure, on a team level, that would have represented one of the previous season’s top marks. The range of likely median outcomes — which, this is essentially what projections are, a collection of likely median outcomes — tends to be smaller than the range of observed outcomes, owing to the influence of random variation. That said, one finds here that, a season after the rotation produced a collective 18 wins — which represented the second-best mark among all teams — that the Nationals’ top five starters are forecast to produce roughly 18 wins.
Optimism is everywhere: optimism for Stephen Strasburg (169.2 IP, 4.5 zWAR) to produce an ace-like season, for Tanner Roark (141.1 IP, 2.1 zWAR) to more greatly resemble the 2014 edition of himself, and for Joe Ross (135.1 IP, 1.9 zWAR) to build upon his successful rookie season.
With regard to the bullpen, it notably lacks Drew Storen, now a member of the Toronto Blue Jays. While the club might miss Storen in the most high-leverage of situations, the team does seem to possess a rather deep collection of useful relief arms, a collection augmented by the arrivals both of Shawn Kelley (52.0 IP, 0.8 zWAR) and Oliver Perez (46.2 IP, 0.6 zWAR).
Bench/Prospects
While, as noted above, only two starters (Harper and Rendon) are forecast to cross the two-win threshold in 2016, there is a third player who, given sufficient plate appearances, is also a candidate to do that. Trea Turner (483 PA, 2.2 zWAR) doesn’t appear to possess great control of the plate, but has produced markedly above-average BABIP figures throughout the minors, giving him sufficient offensive production, in addition to the shortstop skills, to profile as an average major leaguer right now. Among rookie-eligible players, both Wilmer Difo (482 PA, 1.1 zWAR) and Pedro Severino (375 PA, 1.1 zWAR) also appear sufficiently prepared to help out the parent club in 2016. As for pitchers, the top projections omitted from the depth-chart graphic belong to prospects Austin Voth (133.1 IP, 1.5 zWAR) and Lucas Giolito (119.0 IP, 1.4 zWAR).
Depth Chart
Below is a rough depth chart for the present incarnation of the Washingtons, with rounded projected WAR totals for each player. For caveats regarding WAR values see disclaimer at bottom of post. Click to embiggen image.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site and author’s own haphazard reasoning.
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Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2016. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a.240 ZiPS projection may end up being.280 in AAA or.300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.
Players are listed with their most recent teams unless Dan has made a mistake. This is very possible as a lot of minor-league signings are generally unreported in the offseason.
ZiPS is projecting based on the AL having a 3.93 ERA and the NL having a 3.75 ERA.
Players that are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information and a computer isn’t what should be projecting the injury status of, for example, a pitcher with Tommy John surgery.
Regarding ERA+ vs. ERA- (and FIP+ vs. FIP-) and the differences therein: as Patriot notes here, they are not simply mirror images of each other. Writes Patriot: “ERA+ does not tell you that a pitcher’s ERA was X% less or more than the league’s ERA. It tells you that the league’s ERA was X% less or more than the pitcher’s ERA.”
Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, Szymborski will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on depth chart to produce projected team WAR.WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday tentatively embraced a Russian diplomatic proposal to avert a United States military strike on Syria by having international monitors take control of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons. The move added new uncertainty to Mr. Obama’s push to win support among allies, the American public and members of Congress for an attack.
In a series of television interviews with six cable and broadcast networks, Mr. Obama capped a remarkable day of presidential lobbying for military action and a dizzying series of developments at home and abroad. Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said early Monday that Syria could avoid an attack by putting its chemical weapons in the hands of monitors and agreeing to ultimately eliminate its massive arsenal of poison gas. It was an idea that was quickly praised by top officials in Syria and some lawmakers in the United States.
“It’s possible,” Mr. Obama said on CNN of the Russian proposal, “if it’s real.”
Mr. Obama’s statements about the haphazardly constructed plan appeared to offer him an exit strategy for a military strike he had been reluctant to order, and it came as support on Capitol Hill for a resolution authorizing force was slipping. Even some lawmakers who had announced support for it reversed course.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Monday evening that he would not force an initial vote on the resolution on Wednesday, slowing Senate consideration until at least next week. Democrats said they had enough votes to overcome a filibuster but possibly not enough to pass it.next Image 1 of 2
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A photo of the surface of the planet Mercury has set astronomers giggling with what appears to be Star Wars' hero Han Solo -- frozen in carbonite.
The picture, released by the Messenger spacecraft division of NASA, shows a formation in the terrain of the Caloris basin "in the shape of a certain carbonite-encased smuggler who can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs."
"If there are two things you should remember, it's not to cross a Hutt, and that Mercury's surface can throw up all kinds of surprises," the NASA website posted.
[pullquote]
The region of Mercury's surface was shaped by magma ejected during the formation of the Caloris basin. The body-shaped lumps may be remnants of what was there before.
The Messenger spacecraft is the first sent in to orbit the inferno planet closest to our Sun. During its two years of operation, it has so far taken more than 150,000 images as well as many other sensor readings.
Get more science and technology news and reviews at News.com.au.Macroeconomic Advisers has a new report out about the effects of bad fiscal policy since 2010 — that is, since the GOP takeover of the House. The way it’s written, however, might confuse some people. They say that combined effects of uncertainty in the bond market and cuts in discretionary spending have subtracted 1% from GDP growth. That’s not 1% off GDP — it’s the annualized rate of growth, so that we’re talking about almost 3% of GDP at this point; cumulatively, the losses come to around $700 billion of wasted economic potential. This is in the same ballpark as my own estimates.
And they also estimate that the current unemployment rate is 1.4 points higher than it would have been without those policies (a number consistent with almost 3% lower GDP); so, we’d have unemployment below 6% if not for these people.
Great work all around, guys.(CNN) -- It was a typical school board meeting, with members discussing typical school issues.
And then, all of a sudden, it was anything but.
"We're at a board meeting, and we're talking about technology and head lice, and next thing we know, this guy's got a gun in our face," Bill Husfelt, superintendent of Bay District Schools in Panama City, Florida, said Wednesday.
Clay Duke, 56, sat quietly through the meeting until it was time for citizens to bring up issues. Then he approached the front of the room, spray-painted a red "V" with a circle around it on the wall and brandished a handgun. He ordered the room cleared of everyone but six men.
Duke ended up firing shots but didn't hit anyone. Wounded by a security officer, Duke fell to the ground, where he turned the gun on himself. He was pronounced dead at a hospital of a gunshot wound to the head, authorities said. An autopsy was expected Wednesday.
"It was surreal," Husfelt told CNN's "American Morning." "He had already told us that he was going to die, he was prepared to die, and we were going to die as well.... You could tell by the look in his eyes there was going to be some killing going on.
"If I was killed, I knew where I was going to end up," he said. "But it's a miracle. There's no other excuse for it. God blocked those bullets."
"I think it's safe to say that somebody was watching over the school board members," Panama City Deputy Police Chief Robert Colbert said Wednesday.
He said Duke had an extra magazine and extra ammunition for the 9 millimeter handgun.
Just after the room was cleared of everyone but the six men, board member Ginger Littleton crept back into the room behind Duke and attempted with her purse to knock the gun from his hand. She did not succeed, and she and Duke struggled. Littleton wound up on the ground, and Duke cursed her and pointed the gun at her, but he did not fire and allowed her to leave the room.
Littleton said Wednesday that she thought she was going to die, but she went back inside because "I was concerned about my guys. They were lined up like ducks in a row. He was already basically standing on the same level as them. I knew something bad was going to happen. That was my only option.... My guys had three-ring binders and pencils for protection, and that's all."
When Duke knocked her to the ground, "my thought was that Plan A had failed, and I didn't have a Plan B, which was probably not one of the smartest things I ever did," Littleton said.
She said she doesn't know why Duke did not pull the trigger, but her sense was "he wanted to be killed rather than kill." As time passed, however, "it appeared he was getting more and more ready to do some real damage," she said.
Littleton said Wednesday that she has three daughters, "and they said, 'Mom, are you just stupid? What were you thinking?' " She said she didn't have an answer.
But, she noted, "the sun is beautiful, and it looks great today." She laughed as she held up her purse for the cameras.
Board member Ryan Neves said he didn't sleep Tuesday night, and he suspects others didn't either, as he got an e-mail from Husfelt at 3 a.m.
"We're still trying to get back to life as normal," he said. "This is something at changes you for life."
Members said they were sobered upon visiting the room and viewing the bullet holes and the blood on the floor. Board member Steve Moss said one bullet hit his board book, and another hit a pole inches from where he was lying.
He recalled arriving home Tuesday night and being greeted by his wife and his children, ages 4 and 5. "That put things in perspective of just how fragile life is," he said. "Hug your wife and your husband, and love on those kids."
A chilling video of the meeting, from a live Internet feed provided by CNN affiliates WJHG and WMBB, shows Husfelt attempting to reason with Duke, who began a rambling discourse that had to do with the apparent firing of his wife and sales taxes. He and the superintendent discussed possibly finding a job for Duke's wife or looking into the case. Husfelt told him that he probably signed the termination papers but couldn't recall the circumstances.
Husfelt attempted to get Duke to allow the other members to leave the room. "Will you let them go? You're obviously upset at me, so why are they here?" he asked on the video.
"As Ginger said, we were defenseless," Husfelt said. "The only thing we had, the only thing we could possibly do, was buy time.... He had us. He could have sat there and picked us off."
At one point, Husfelt told Duke, "I don't want anybody to get hurt. I've got a feeling that what you want, is you want the cops to come in and kill you because you are mad, because you said you are going to die. But why? This isn't worth it."
Duke then pointed the pistol at Husfelt, who said, "Please don't. Please don't. Please." But Duke pulled the trigger as Husfelt and the others hit the floor.
"I said to myself, 'I've been shot. It sure doesn't hurt like I thought it would,' " he said Wednesday.
"He was as close to me, almost, as this camera is, and it was pointed right at me," Husfelt said. "I was trying to turn kind of sideways.... It's just all reactionary. Who knows what you do in a situation like that? We were all scared and doing a lot of praying, I can tell you that."
Both Husfelt and Littleton said that Mike Jones, chief of security for the school system and a retired police officer, was a hero. Husfelt said he heard Jones coming into the room after Duke pulled the trigger the first time. Duke fired several more shots, and Jones could be heard shooting at Duke.
Police believe that a total of about 14 rounds were fired in the room and are conducting ballistics testing, Colbert said.
Husfelt, Littleton and Colbert said that if it hadn't been for Jones, there might have been more deaths.
"Mike Jones came in just in the nick of time, or there would have been a lot more bloodshed," Husfelt said. He said Duke can be seen on the tape attempting to reach over and fire again, even after he is wounded.
"I'm just so thankful to be able to be here and talk with you," Husfelt said. "It's not something I want to do, but I'm so thankful to be able to do it."
Colbert said Jones' heroism cannot be overstated. WJHG reported that Jones was taken to a hospital with chest pains after the incident. Husfelt said he had visited with Jones and said the security official was being kept overnight for observation and was set to be released Wednesday.
Police have talked with Duke's family, Colbert said Wednesday, and "the family was as shocked as everyone else that this had occurred." He said Duke's wife had been employed as a teacher by the school district, and her employment had been terminated within the past year. Colbert said he did not know the woman's name.
He said Duke conducted "intelligence-gathering" as he entered the building Tuesday, stopping to ask members of a student ROTC group whether their guns were real and whether they were loaded.
Husfelt said that at first, when Duke was spray-painting on the wall, he thought the man was mad about the vote the board had just taken on a technology issue.
He said the district would re-evaluate security in the wake of the incident but said he doubted security would have made a difference. "We could have had this place like Fort Knox.... There was nothing we could have done to stop him."
School officials said they were unaware of the significance of the spray painting.
But a Facebook page belonging to a Clay Duke has a profile photo of a "V" in a red circle, a logo that is used in the graphic novel and movie "V for Vendetta."
According to the Internet Movie Database, the 2006 film is about "a shadowy freedom fighter known only as "V" (who) uses terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally."
CNN could not verify whether the Facebook page belonged to the gunman, but it does list Duke as being 56 years old and living in Panama City, Florida.
A biography on Duke's Facebook page reads: "My Testament: Some people (the government sponsored media) will say I was evil, a monster (V)... no... I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95% of the population. Rich Republicans, Rich Democrats... same-same... rich... they take turns fleecing us... our few dollars... pyramiding the wealth for themselves. The 95%... the us, in US of A, are the neo slaves of the Global South. Our Masters, the Wealthy, do, as they like to us..."
Under "political views," Duke labels himself a "Freedom Fighter." Under religious views, he wrote, "Humanism."
Duke had a criminal record, according to authorities. The website of the Florida Department of Corrections shows that he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2000 for aggravated stalking, obstructing justice and throwing or shooting into a vehicle, followed by 10 years of community supervision.
According to the Panama City News Herald, after six months of stalking a former girlfriend, Duke confronted the woman outside her home October 20, 1999. He was wearing a mask and vest and holding two.22-caliber guns. He threatened to kill her, kill several others and then himself, the newspaper said. When the woman tried to drive away, Duke shot out a rear tire.
The photo of Duke on the corrections page matches the Facebook page.
"We are absolutely in state of shock," said Lee Stafford, director of student services for the school district. "I was in the third floor, and we were watching the live feed, and first we thought it was a drill. But the more that you watched it, we realized this was an actual incident and emergency situation."
Duke's Facebook page listed him as a 1972 graduate of King High School in Tampa, Florida. His favorite quotation: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth," from the movie "A Few Good Men."Not to be confused with Moldova
Molvanîa Map of Molvanîa Molvanîa: a Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry location Other name(s) Republic of Molvanîa Created by Santo Cilauro; Tom Gleisner; Rob Sitch Genre Parody Type Dictatorship Notable locations Lutenblag (Lutnblaag) (capital) Language(s) Molvanian Currency Strubl (100 Qunts)
Flag of Molvania
Molvanîa (subtitled A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry) is a book parodying travel guidebooks. The guide describes the fictional country Molvanîa, a Soviet state, a nation described as "the birthplace of the whooping cough" and "owner of Europe's oldest nuclear reactor". It was created by Australians Tom Gleisner, Santo Cilauro and Rob Sitch (locally known for The D-Generation and The Panel in Australia). The book has been criticized for promoting racial stereotypes.
History [ edit ]
The book became a surprise success after its initial publication in Australia, sparking a bidding war for the international publication rights. Qantas has even run the half-hour video segment produced in association with the book on its international flights.[2][citation needed]
About Molvanîa [ edit ]
The Republic of Molvanîa is a composite of many of the worst stereotypes and clichés about Soviet states. The exact location of Molvanîa is never specified; it is said to border Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Romania. The shape of the country with its divisions strongly suggests Moldova,[citation needed] and the name has similarities (as has the location description by the authors as "somewhere between Romania and downwind from Chernobyl"); it can also represent a composite country consisting of parts of Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, Austria, and perhaps Poland). The book mentions Bulgarians, Hungarians, and perhaps Moldovans (ethnic Romanians) as its inhabitants: "The Molvanian population is made up of three major ethnic groups: the Bulgs (68%) who live predominantly in the centre and south, the Hungars (29%) who inhabit the northern cities, and the Molvs (3%) who can be found mainly in prison."
The book describes the nation as having been a desolate wasteland for much of its history, similar to Russia since the 12th century, torn by civil war and ethnic unrest. Eventually Molvanîa's various warring factions were united as a single kingdom, ruled by a series of cruel despotic kings. In the late 19th century the monarchy was overthrown, but the royal family remained popular in exile. During World War II the country was allied with Nazi Germany, and then afterwards was occupied by the Soviet Union, who set up a Communist puppet government. After the fall of European Communism in the 1990s, the country became a dictatorship run by a corrupt government with heavy ties to the Mafia.
Molvanîa is described as a very poor and rural country, heavily polluted and geographically barren. The infrastructure is terrible, with necessities such as electricity, clean water, and indoor plumbing being rare finds, largely due to bureaucratic incompetence. Though the travel guide tries to suggest otherwise, there is little to do in the country, the hotels are tiny, filthy and dilapidated, the ethnic cuisine disgusting, and the "tourist attractions" boring and overpriced.
The Molvanîan people are portrayed as being generally rude, dirty, and at times slightly psychotic, with numerous bizarre and illogical beliefs and traditions. The country's patron saint is Fyodor.
Language [ edit ]
The fictional Molvanîan language is said to be so complicated that it takes an average of 16 years to learn. Not only is the tone in which one speaks important to the meaning, but also the pitch. It is a gendered language, with different articles being used depending on whether a noun is masculine, feminine, neutral, or a type of cheese. There are language schools for tourists to attend, which are described by the book as a "waste of time".
Flag [ edit ]
The flag of Molvanîa is called the "Trikolor" despite the fact it only contains two colours: red and yellow. During the Soviet occupation, the flag had a yellow hammer and sickle in the top left corner. After the fall of Communism, Molvanîa became one of the few ex-soviet states to retain the hammer and sickle, but added a trowel into the symbol.[3]
Anthem [ edit ]
The country's national anthem can be heard on the website Molvania.com, which sounds more like a funeral march than a patriotic tune. Its lyrics are largely Anti-Gypsy, yet when anyone leaves the country, the border security gives citizens and tourist the Gypsy Curse, and it rubs in the fact that the country is a Failed State.
Criticism [ edit ]
The book was criticized by the United Kingdom's former Minister for Europe Keith Vaz, who accused it of exploiting prejudice.
He said the book was a little "cheeky" because "it does reflect some of the prejudices which are taking root [in Europe]. He [Mr Gleisner] does try and show exactly where we are lacking in our knowledge, the sad thing is, some people might actually believe that this country exists."[4]
Sequels [ edit ]
Subsequent travel guide parodies published examine Southeast Asian nation Phaic Tăn (published in 2004) and San Sombrèro in Latin America (published in 2006).
See also [ edit ]New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday announced a new state police unit to investigate hate crimes taking place during what he called a “social crisis” following the election of Donald Trump as President.
Cuomo spoke about efforts to combat hate crimes, protect public school students and ensure legal representation for any immigrants in the state at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. The Hate Crimes Unit will include officers from across the state who have training in bias crime, and it will be able to help district attorneys with their cases in court, Cuomo’s office said in a statement.
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“I come here today with a heavy heart,” Cuomo said in his remarks at the church. “The ugly political discourse of the election did not end on Election Day, in many ways it has gotten worse, into a social crisis that now challenges our very identity as a state and as a nation and as a people.
“We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the perpetrators of any of this ugliness and divisiveness, because it’s not happening in this state,” he added.
Racist incidents have been reported across the country since Election Day, with many fearing Trump’s election after a historical bitter and divisive campaign has encouraged such incidents. Some perpetrators have invoked his name. In New York City, the rate is up 31% from this time last year, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill told a local radio station on Sunday.
Write to Julia Zorthian at julia.zorthian@time.com.Virtual Reality in Education: The Future of Learning
As technology rapidly changes the world around, many people are interested in how virtual reality will shape learning. A report from the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that up to 65% of today’s primary school students will work in fields that don’t currently exist.
It’s very likely that VR will play in big role in training these students and introducing them to difficult concepts that are more easily explained through immersive experiences. But just how much of a role will VR play defining the future of learning?
Here is how VR in education will change learning and how lessons are delivered in the classroom.
TRAIN YOUR TEAM IN VR We are experts in professional VR training. Contact us if you are interested in using Virtual Reality to train your team/employees faster. Learn more
Breaking With Tradition
One of the hallmarks of today’s top educational institutions is their commitment to tradition. With these traditions come teaching methods that have been around since the start of the Industrial Revolution and haven’t changed in many decades.
VR will change how educational institutions approach learning by delivering learning experiences that no longer depend on lectures to teach concepts or the idea of earning a degree to attain just one role in the course of person’s lifelong career. In fact, VR can help to create learning experiences that expand across several disciplines facilitating the growth of multi-disciplinary career paths.
It’s also likely that the best schools of tomorrow will be defined according to how well the school has adapted its curriculum to current and future technological demands rather than past achievements.
Learning Is Everywhere
VR is giving new life to the idea that learning is everywhere and it’s the student’s experience that counts. Students can benefit from being immersed in scenarios that will prepare them for real life on the job training. As technology evolves, sometimes the best way to explain difficult concepts is through demonstration rather than intensive lectures.
As a result, this may also encourage educational institutions to expand the opportunities for students to interact with companies, introducing them to potential career fields earlier. Instead of forcing students to seek out their own internship opportunities, VR can bring internships to students with immersive learning experiences based on real-life careers in their respective fields.
More Opportunities to Learn
With more of the world’s workers working remotely, it’s likely that time and location independence will start to apply to education at all levels, as well. VR technology facilitates opportunities for remote learning. The 2016 NMC Horizon Higher Education Report found that programs that incorporate VR facilitate interactions with off-campus students. With Virtual Reality, students will have more opportunities to learn at different times and in different locations.
Less Competition, More Learning
Competition has become one of the major hallmarks of the student learning experience. In fact, at the university level competing against one’s peers has actually become more important than the learning experience itself.
In fact, much, if not all, of the competition that defines students’ careers is driven by a focus on exams and grades rather than actual learning. Educators have complained for many years that exams simply cause students to cram and forget the material that they’ve learned previously.
With VR, study tools can be adapted to allow students to learn at their own pace. This gives the students of tomorrow even more choice when it comes to their academic experiences by creating environments driven by positive reinforcement rather than competition.
VR study tools can be created that allow students to be continuously assessed for their grasp of the material being presented without a need for cumulative exams. By continuously evaluating a student’s performance throughout the course of a project, VR can deliver learning experiences that lead to better retention of information and deeper understanding.
Final Thoughts on VR and Education
Virtual Reality is really poised to change the way that educators teach and students learn both inside and outside of the classroom. While we are just now seeing the beginnings of what will be a full-blown integration of VR into education, it’s clear that VR will deliver the study tools that students need to be successful in fields that have been difficult to teach using conventional methods, as well as, those that haven’t yet been invented.
Now the question we must ask ourselves is what kind of society do we want VR education to produce?In his first interview since announcing Officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted in the shooting of Mike Brown, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch told radio station KTRS that he allowed witnesses he knew were lying to testify to the grand jury.
McCulloch: Well, early on, I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything was going to be presented to the grand jury.
And I knew that no matter how I handled it, there would be criticism of it. So if I didn't put those witnesses on, then we'd be discussing now why I didn't put those witnesses on. Even though their statements were not accurate.
So my determination was to put everybody on and let the grand jurors assess their credibility, which they did. This grand jury poured their hearts and souls into this. It was a very emotional few months for them. It took a lot of them.
I wanted to put everything on there.
I thought it was much more |
when their car hit a tree.
Austin Wesson was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash near Clearwater. His wife, Rebekah, 19, died at around 12:30am on Monday morning in hospital, according to the Wichita Eagle. Sedgwick County sheriff's deputies responded to reports of a rollover crash near Clearwater at around 6:30pm on Saturday evening and found the car on its side resting against a tree.
The pair only met this year while doing missionary work in Wesson's native South Africa. He proposed in April and they exchanged vows at the Sedgwick County Courthouse on Friday.
They were all smiles as they posed for photos with their papers outside the courthouse, with Rebekah wearing a simple but elegant blue shirt dress and a pretty bouquet of flowers.
The short ceremony was witnessed by Rebekah's mother, Rachel Bouma, who announced the tragic news of her daughter and son-in-law's death in a Facebook post on Monday.
She described being 'unbearably shattered' but said Rebekah 'went peacefully into the arms of her loving Savior.'
'She is with the Lord that she loved so deeply and so joyfully and she is with her husband of just one day, Austin Wesson, whom she loved with all her heart,' she said.
'We thank God that they are together while grieving their loss so very deeply. Please keep both our families in your prayers and especially that Austin's family would be able to be here quickly.'
In another post, Mrs Bouma asked for prayers for both their families as they walk through the 'valley of the shadow of death.'
She shared that one of the songs that was speaking to her right now was 'What'ere My God Ordains is Right.'
Wesson was from near Cape Town, South Africa, where he worked as a surfing instructor.
According to the Daily Mail, the couple were planning to do more mission trips together after moving to Michigan where Rebekah was due to attend college.
A GoFundMe page was set up to raise money to help Austin's family travel to the U.S. for his funeral. The goal to raise $5,000 has already been surpassed.Originally designed to house a lamp post, this unassuming spot in Portland, Oregon, was left empty until a local journalist took it upon himself to declare it a park, naming it Mill Ends after his column in the regional paper.
The earthen concrete-enclosed spot, outside the Oregon Journal office of writer Dick Fagan and situated between lanes and medians, had began to sprout weeds until one night in the 1940s he declared it a park. In a fit of fancy, he claimed it was occupied by leprechaun Patrick O’Toole and began printing stories about the space and its resident.
Though only Fagan seemed to see its miniature occupant, his editorials claimed the area should be subject to the city’s park rules, including curfews. Soon enough, it was a local, then national, then international legend (though some outsiders mistakenly know it as ‘Mill’s End’).
Today, the beloved micro-park even sports a sign explaining its history and origins, also showing its original location in the context of surrounding structures.
Although frequently occupied by a single tree today, the circular anomaly has featured everything from a swimming pool and diving board (for butterflies and, presumably, leprechauns) and a miniature Ferris wheel (also clearly for small occupants of the park). It was even relocated at one point to accommodate building construction in the area. (Images by Duk, brx0, Piutus, Craig Dietrich)Google
Google is expanding the reach of its latest email application onto more platforms.
In a blog post Thursday, Google said that its Inbox email app is now available on the iPad and Android tablets. Previously, the app was restricted to the iPhone and Android smartphones, though it was also available via the Web. You can download the iPad version from Apple's App Store and the Android version from Google Play.
And in another change, users can now access Inbox via the Firefox and Safari browsers. Previously, Inbox was restricted to Google Chrome.
Unveiled last October, Inbox is a new type of email program for Google, separate and different from Gmail. Instead of placing your messages into the traditional folders, Inbox displays each email message based on categories, or bundles. Emails deemed important may be placed into one bundle in your inbox, while those related to specific areas, such as social or travel, are placed into a different bundle. The aim is to have the software organize all of your email so that you don't have to.
That means you're relying on the smarts of Inbox to determine how individual messages should be categorized. And that's always going to be a hit-or-miss proposition -- some people may like the way Inbox works and others may prefer a more traditional email client.
One thing that hasn't change is the way you get Inbox. The app is still available on an invitation-only basis. You can download it, but the app won't work without the invitation. To request access to the app, you have to contact Google at inbox@google.com, and the company promises to let you in as soon as more invites are available.BMW X1: The U.S. Gets its First Sub-Compact Premium SAV
The Globally Successful BMW X1 comes to the US in the Fall 2012.
Woodcliff Lake, NJ – May 2, 2012… Having demonstrated that it is the perfect blend of sports sedan-like driving dynamics and SUV utility in markets around the world, the BMW X1 is setting out to conquer the US. The talented Sport Activity Vehicle of the premium sub-compact segment will make its US market debut armed with state-of-the-art powertrain technology, innovative features, selective design modifications and extensive interior refinements. The new 2013 BMW X1 will arrive in authorized BMW Centers in the fall of 2012 starting at an MSRP of $31,545 (including $895 Destination and Handling).
The X1 has proven to be highly successful, with sales having already exceeded 275,000. As has been the case with other models before it, the BMW X1 finds itself in a competitive market segment that it virtually spawned. Unlike other BMW SAVs, X1s destined for the US will be built in BMW’s Leipzig, Germany plant. The popularity of the X1 around the globe has proven so great that X1s for the Chinese market will now be built in a newly opened plant at Tiexi in Shenyang Province.
The arrival of the BMW X1 to the US coincides with an update that includes exterior and interior refinements as well as a host of BMW EfficientDynamics technologies. All models feature Brake Energy Regeneration while the X1 sDrive28i and xDrive28i models also benefit from Auto Start/Stop and ECO PRO mode to further reduce fuel consumption.
Another element of the update is the availability of BMW Lines for the first time in an SAV, as an alternative to the base trim level. Both the BMW xLine and BMW Sport Line offer exclusive design and equipment features. The xLine emphasizes the robust versatility of the new
BMW X1 while the Sport Line accentuates its performance and handling. For enthusiasts who want to accentuate the sporting character of their X1 even further, an M Sport Package is also available.
Design: New touches highlight its elegance, versatility and sportiness.
Typical BMW proportions, vibrant surfaces and signature BMW X model design cues shape the appearance of the X1. A sweeping hood, long wheelbase and set-back passenger compartment emphasize its dynamic talent, while attractive light and shade effects hint at its inherent agility. The versatility and ruggedness of a BMW X model are reflected in elements such as the black bordering at the lower edge of the body and the muscular wheel arches.
Above all, the new BMW X1 conveys even more strikingly the powerful stance that distinguishes BMW’s Sports Activity Vehicles. In the case of the X1, the look reflects the unique combination of the elevated seating position and flexible utility of an SAV with the driving dynamics of a BMW sports sedan.
In addition to the inserts in the front and rear fascia and the special side skirt covers, the circular foglamps positioned under the headlights add to the hallmark features of a BMW X model. Beyond this, the new BMW X1 boasts attractive touches of sporting luxury.
Front view: Even more details in the style of a BMW X model.
When viewed from the front, the powerful stance of the new BMW X1 on the road is immediately evident. The path of the car’s lines, which converge along the sides of the BMW kidney grille, follows the V-shaped contours of the hood, forging downwards and outwards in the lower section of the bumper to create the sweeping “X” familiar from the X1’s larger siblings. The striking lines go hand in hand with a detailed execution of the body’s surface styling, signaling a sporty character. The foglamps are now level with an extra crease line that forms a discreet scoop along the upper edge of the lights and continues into the fenders. Newly designed headlights afford a detailed view of the car’s advanced light technology. In the upper area, a chrome accent strip now cuts across the top of the twin round headlights, while an LED accent light – included as part of the optional xenon light package – ensures the classic BMW focused look. The available xenon headlights also feature LED light rings for the daytime running lights.
Side view: Characteristic proportions, new exterior mirrors.
The character line that rises steadily to the rear of the car, an additional line extending the contours of the side glass graphic as it runs rearwards, and powerfully flared wheel arches allow the BMW X1 to project a very distinctive profile. The pronounced side skirts are a signature feature of BMW X models, while the directional indicators are now integrated into the exterior mirrors.
Rear view: Focused emphasis on a wide and powerful stance.
The premium feel of the new BMW X1 is also underlined at the rear by the new subdivision of fascia, bumper and undertray. Repositioned reflectors are now bordered by surfaces painted in body color. As a result, the black plastic elements are slimmer, while the silver-colored undertray has a more striking surface structure. Furthermore, the contours of the LED taillights now flow harmoniously into the line of the tailgate handle. A stronger emphasis on the horizontal lines gives the X1 both a robust and sporty appearance.
Interior: Precise lines, high-quality materials, sophisticated color scheme.
The modifications to the design of the new BMW X1 interior create an even more vivid showcase of the sporty driving pleasure and cutting-edge versatility. The side of the center console, angled towards the driver, is now shallower and boasts a particularly high-grade surface quality. This highlights the driver-focused principle of the cockpit design. The panel for the sound and climate system controls now has a high-gloss black surface to match the air vent surround.
The new BMW X1 comes with a storage compartment in the center of the instrument panel. In vehicles with the optional navigation system, this houses the central Control Display for the iDrive operating system. Chrome accents on the side surrounds of the onboard monitor highlight this feature. High-quality electroplated surrounds for the gearshift lever and the center console cup holder as well as a chrome clip on the headlight switch add the finishing touches to the interior’s exclusive ambience.
BMW TwinPower Turbo technology: Available in four or six-cylinder form.
The BMW X1 sDrive28i and xDrive28i feature BMW’s newest 2.0-liter TwinPower Turbo
4-cylinder engine (N20). This dynamic and efficient engine delivers maximum power of 240 hp at 5,000 rpm while the maximum torque of 260 lb-ft is developed at just 1,250 rpm and remains constant up to 4,800 rpm. It is mated to BMW’s latest 8-speed Steptronic automatic. This combination powers the X1 sDrive28i and xDrive28i from 0-60 mph in 6.2 and 6.3 seconds respectively. This level of responsiveness is matched with impressive efficiency. Preliminary EPA mileage estimates are 24 mpg city/33 mpg highway/27 mpg combined for the X1 sDrive28i while the AWD X1 xDrive28i has preliminary EPA estimates of 22 mpg city/
30 mpg highway/25 mpg combined.
This engine is the most powerful in a new generation of 4-cylinder engines designed in accordance with the BMW EfficientDynamics strategy, which aims to combine increased driving enjoyment with reduced fuel consumption and emissions. In technical terms, this
4-cylinder engine is modeled on the current multi-award-winning inline 6-cylinder with BMW TwinPower Turbo technology (N55), which is the benchmark in its class for dynamic power delivery and impressive efficiency. This world-exclusive technology combines High Precision Direct Injection, Double-Vanos variable camshaft timing and VALVETRONIC variable valve timing with twin-scroll turbocharging.
VALVETRONIC, Double-Vanos and High Precision Direct Injection.
The combination of a high power output and a simultaneous reduction in emissions is achieved by VALVETRONIC variable valve timing and Double-Vanos variable camshaft timing. The latest generation of the VALVETRONIC system features a faster-acting, optimized stepper motor with integrated sensor. Seamlessly variable control of intake valve lift dispenses with the need for a throttle butterfly. Instead, the air mass is controlled inside the engine, resulting in faster response. At the same time, pumping losses have been reduced to a minimum.
The excellent efficiency is also down to the High Precision Direct Injection system. Centrally positioned between the valves, solenoid injectors precisely control the supply of fuel. The fuel is injected very close to the spark plug, with a maximum injection pressure of 200 bar (2900 psi), resulting in clean and homogeneous combustion. The cooling effect of the directly injected fuel also results in a higher compression ratio than on port injection engines, bringing further efficiency improvements.
X1 xDrive35i: Exclusive to the North American market – the most dynamic X1 of all
Enthusiasts in North America will have access to the most dynamic model in the X1 line, the X1 xDrive35i featuring, BMW’s award-winning 3.0-liter TwinPower Turbo inline 6-cylinder engine (N55). The N55 has been setting standards from the start, as the pioneer of a new generation of engines in which BMW TwinPower Turbo technology with High Precision Direct Injection and VALVETRONIC variable valve timing plus a twin scroll turbo made its debut. It will be mated to a 6-speed Steptronic automatic transmission.
With a maximum power rating of 300 hp at 5,800 rpm, the 3.0-liter inline 6-cylinder reflects the sporty personality of this X1 variant and helps it deliver unparalleled performance. And the high peak torque of 300 lb-ft, on stream between 1,200 and 5,000 rpm, ensures that the power is effortlessly and instantly delivered.
In order maximize available traction so as to take full advantage of its performance potential, the X1 xDrive35i, as the name implies, will be offered exclusively with xDrive all-wheel drive. As a result, the new BMW xDrive35i can show off its prowess with a 0 to 60 mph sprint time of just 5.3 seconds. EPA mileage estimates for this model are 18 mpg city/27 mpg highway/
21 mpg combined.
Wide-ranging BMW EfficientDynamics technology, ECO PRO mode marks its debut in the BMW X1.
In line with the enhanced engines and transmissions, the new BMW X1 includes a range of technologies that boast optimized efficiency. All model variants come equipped with Brake Energy Regeneration.
An ECO PRO mode and the Auto Start-Stop function are available in the new BMW X1 sDrive28i and xDrive28i models. ECO PRO provides efficiency-optimized driving with targeted adjustments to the accelerator mapping and the shift characteristics of the automatic transmission. Moreover, the output of electrically operated functions such as the seat heating, climate control system and exterior mirror heating are regulated to ensure highly efficient energy management. A special display informs the driver of the extra range gleaned through these measures.
BMW xDrive all-wheel-drive system: Intelligent, fast and precise for enhanced driving pleasure.
Available with both powertrains, the new BMW X1 can transfer power to the road with the help of BMW xDrive intelligent all-wheel drive. An electronically controlled multi-plate clutch allows the system to vary power between the front and rear wheels, thereby guaranteeing maximum traction, the highest possible safety, outstanding handling and optimal power development regardless of weather or road conditions.
By virtue of being integrated with Dynamic Stability Control, the xDrive control system is able to analyze every driving situation with great precision. It can thus counteract any tendency towards oversteer or understeer by distributing power as required before the driver is even aware of the need.
What’s more, the collaboration between xDrive and DSC enables Hill Descent Control for safe passage down an incline at an automatically regulated speed.
As a means of sharpening the handling character, the X1 xDrive28i and xDrive35i get Performance Control as part of the available M Sport Package. Performance Control helps the X1 xDrive35i maintain a more neutral handling character by adjusting the xDrive torque split to 20% front/80% rear in steady state cornering. Performance Control can also apply the inside rear brake while also applying a little more power to the outside wheel (to compensate for the additional drag of the brake) in order to help rotate the vehicle.
New for the BMW X1: The BMW xLine and BMW Sport Line.
BMW Lines are available for all models, allowing drivers to tailor their new BMW X1 with individual style based on their personal preferences. The BMW xLine allows the sturdy versatility of the sub-compact BMW X model to be emphasized. It includes undertray elements for the front and rear fascias, side skirt covers, air intake and kidney grille slats in Titanium Silver matt finish, as well as exclusive 18-inch alloys in Y-spoke design. The distinctive charisma of the new BMW X1 is also reflected in the interior, starting with entry strips bearing the lettering “BMW xLine”, a leather-wrapped multifunction sports steering wheel, as well as exclusive interior trim strips in Dark Copper high-gloss and floor mats with color-matched piping. In conjunction with the BMW xLine, optional Nevada leather upholstery is available, with the exclusive color shades Terra and Oyster which are also used on the door trim panels and the lower section of the dashboard. The head rests feature a distinctive embossed “X”. As an additional option, interior trim in Fineline Bay matt fine wood finish is available exclusively in combination with the BMW xLine.
The stand-out agility and dynamics of the new BMW X1 within the competitive environment can also be highlighted through exclusive and meticulously matched design and equipment features. Cue the BMW Sport Line, which features a front and rear undertray, side skirt covers, air intakes and kidney grille slats in Black high-gloss, tailpipe finishers in Black Chrome, exclusive 18-inch double-spoke light alloys, and entry strips with “BMW Sport” lettering. In the interior, sport seats with coral red accents, a sports leather steering wheel and gear selector lever with red stitching, interior trim in Black high-gloss finish and floor mats with red piping all contribute to an ambience that is explicitly geared to intensive driving pleasure. The leather sports seats are available in a choice of two colors, while interior trim strips in aluminum with accent line are an optional exclusive to the BMW Sport Line.
Both BMW Lines are offered as an alternative to the entry-level version. An M Sport package is also available as an option for the new BMW X1.
Solid body structure, comprehensive safety equipment.
Like all BMW X models, the new BMW X1 boasts a body with high torsional stiffness which, thanks to intelligent lightweight design, pairs extreme robustness with optimized weight. In the interests of passive safety, the impact forces in the event of an accident are diverted along several load paths, absorbed by precisely defined deformation zones and thus kept away from the stable passenger cell.
As well as front and side airbags for the front seats, standard interior equipment includes side curtain head airbags for both rows of seats, three-point inertia-reel seat belts on all seats, belt latch limiters and belt latch tensioners in the front and ISOFIX child seat mounts in the rear. All restraint systems are controlled by a central electronic system. Immediately after its market launch, the BMW X1 was awarded the maximum 5-star rating in the Euro NCAP crash test.
Interior allows diverse uses with modern functionality.
The new BMW X1 also showcases its versatility when it comes to carrying stuff. The rear seatback can be split 40:20:40, with the three sections folding down individually or jointly according to need and can be adjusted in ten stages. The angle of tilt for the rear-seat backrest ranges from 31° – a particularly comfortable angle for passengers – all the way to a near-vertical cargo position of 1°. This facility alone means the luggage space can vary between 12.7 cubic feet (360 liters) and 17.0 cu.ft (480 liters), with a capacity of 14.8 cu. ft. (420 liters), according to European measure, when the rear seatback is in its normal position. Folding all three seat elements down fully creates a virtually flat cargo floor with a loading capacity of 47.7 cu. ft. (1,350 liters), again according to European measure. SAE volume measures are not yet available but, either way, these numbers indicate a surprising amount of cargo space for a vehicle of this size.
Two 46-inch golf bags can be stowed widthways or, after folding down the central section of the seatback, lengthwise. The through-loading aperture between the outer rear seats can also be used for two snowboards or four pairs of skis. The passenger compartment offers a wide range of storage spaces and compartments of various sizes, as well as generously sized door pockets. Additional transportation potential is opened up by roof rails and a storage compartment package.
Premium character thanks to comprehensive standard equipment and high-grade options.
The range of standard equipment on the new BMW X1 guarantees driving enjoyment and comfort at a premium level. The scope includes automatic climate control, electrically adjustable heated exterior mirrors, foglamps, LED taillights, chrome tailpipe finishers, a multi-function leather-wrapped steering wheel, an onboard computer, and a hi-fi sound system with CD player, AUX-IN connection, HD radio and a two-line display showing computer data, telephone numbers and music track titles. Other standard features include roof rails, Rain Sensing windshield wipers and automatic headlights.
Many features are standard equipment of the X1 xDrive35i which are also available on the X1 sDrive28i and xDrive28i. These include the panoramic glass sunroof, electrically adjusted front seats, Servotronic steering, Adaptive Xenon Headlights and automatic high beams.
The range of optional extras for all models includes, among other features, a Harman Kardon Surround Sound System and Sirius/XM satellite radio with a one-year subscription, as well Chrome-line exterior trim.
BMW ConnectedDrive, meanwhile, offers a wide choice of options for optimizing the convenience, safety and infotainment functions of the car.
Accurate and safe maneuvering is facilitated by the Driver Assistance Package which includes Park Distance Control and the rear-view camera, which relays its images live to the Control Display of the iDrive operating system.
BMW Assist, a globally unique mobility service, comprises among other features a telephone information service and the enhanced Automatic Collision Notification function with automatic detection of the vehicle location. BMW Assist with Bluetooth hands-free phone connectivity is part of the Technology Package which also includes the on-board navigation system.
Other innovative technologies allow the integration of the Apple iPhone and other smartphones as well as music players, including the use of Internet-based services. The Apps option enables iPhone users, among other things, to receive Internet radio stations and to display Facebook and Twitter posts on the onboard monitor. With BMW Apps, iPhone users can access and listen to music streaming services like Pandora and MOG.
Other available packages include the Cold Weather Package, Lighting Package and Premium Package. The Driver Assistance Package, Premium Package and Technology Package may be order together as the Ultimate Package.
The M Sport Package is available for all models. It consists of a Sport Suspension and 18-inch M Double-spoke wheels with mixed-sized performance tires with an available upgrade to 19-inch wheels. Interior touches include Sport Seats, an M Sport Steering Wheel, Dark Aluminum or Light Fineline Wood trim and an anthracite headliner. Exterior touches include M Aero kit, Shadowline trim, and high-gloss roof rails. The all-wheel drive X1 xDrive28i and xDrive35i models also get Performance Control as part of the package.
The BMW X1 sDrive28i and X1 xDrive28i will retail for $31,545 and $33,245 respectively while the X1 xDrive35i will start at $39,345. All prices include $895 Destination and Handling.Just throwing this out there... the Custom Browser? You could host matches with the HCS settings you're looking for. You could go to Beyond Entertainment's forums, ESL's forums, Reddit's competitive Halo discussions, and Halo Customs to coordinate a practice and advertise when you were planning to host; plus, you can seek out other like minded individuals here (on HaloWaypoint) as well as other Halo sites in hopes of getting a group of players together. Not to mention, there are Xbox Clubs that might be helpful for locating and reaching out to interested players.Admittedly, it's not the easiest thing to do but it is an option and probably your best bet to play the FFA settings you prefer since as ZaedynFel mentioned the FFA playlist has folks in it from all over the game, not just HCS types, so doing a major settings change would likely negatively impact a large portion of that audience and 343i don't want to do that nor do I imagine they'd want to create an extra FFA playlist.Beltran started feeling discomfort in his elbow while swinging in the batting cage Monday, forcing the 37-year-old to take himself out of the Yankees' lineup after three at-bats against the Mets.
NEW YORK -- Carlos Beltran was unable to dodge a stint on the disabled list with a bone spur in his right elbow, but the Yankees outfielder is still hopeful that he will be able to avoid surgery.
NEW YORK -- Carlos Beltran was unable to dodge a stint on the disabled list with a bone spur in his right elbow, but the Yankees outfielder is still hopeful that he will be able to avoid surgery.
Beltran started feeling discomfort in his elbow while swinging in the batting cage Monday, forcing the 37-year-old to take himself out of the Yankees' lineup after three at-bats against the Mets.
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A cortisone injection has helped some, he said, but not to the point where he is able to resume swinging.
"I'm getting better, but not to the point where I can swing the bat 100 percent," Beltran said.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi said that he did not believe Beltran would have been ready to play this weekend against the Pirates, so the team decided to make the DL move.
"We felt with him not being a player probably this weekend for sure, we needed a roster spot," Girardi said. "There's obviously some things he's going to have to go through once he says he feels better."
The Yankees are hoping that rest and anti-inflammatories will remedy the situation, but Beltran said that if his situation does not improve in two weeks, surgery would be on the table. Surgery to shave the spur would keep Beltran out for approximately six to eight weeks.
"They say it could be less, could be more, it depends on how serious it is when they go in there and find whatever they find," Beltran said. "I'm not thinking about that right now. I'm thinking about hopefully these 15 days giving me the time to feel better."
In a corresponding roster move, the Yankees purchased the contract of right-hander Chase Whitley; Whitley started on Thursday against the Mets, making his big league debut.
To create room on the 40-man roster for Whitley, the Yankees reinstated right-hander Bruce Billings from the disabled list and then designated him for assignment.Visited on: 1st April, 2018
Location
Thiru Vanchiyam (Sri Vanchiyam) is located at a distance of about 30 kms from Kumbakonam on the Kumbakonam - Natchiarkovil - Nannilam route. From Nannilam, it is about 6 kms and from Thiruvarur, it is about 17 kms.
Other Devara Paadal Petra Shiva Sthalams near this place are – Nannilam, Thiru Kondeecharam, Thiruveezhimizhalai, Serukudi, Thalaiyalangadu and Thiru Peruvelur.
General Information
Moolavar Sri Vaanchinathar, Sri Vanchi Lingeswarar Ambal Sri Mangalambikai, Sri Vazhavantha Nayaki, Sri Sugandha Kundalaambikai Theertham (Holy water) Gupta Ganga, Yama Theertham, Anandha Theertham, Deva Theertham, Lakshmi Theertham, Naga Theertham and Chakra Theertham Sthala Vriksham (Sacred Tree) Sandalwood tree Pathigam (Hymn) rendered by Saint Thirugnanasambanthar-1,
Saint Thirunavukarasar (Appar)-1,
Saint Sundaramurthy (Sundarar)-1
This is one of the 276 Devara Paadal Petra Shiva Sthalams and 70 th Shiva Sthalam on the Southern bank of the river Cauvery in Chozha Nadu (Thenkarai).
Shiva Sthalam on the Southern bank of the river Cauvery in Chozha Nadu (Thenkarai). Lord Shiva in this temple is a Swayambumurthi (self-manifested).
This temple is famous for Lord Yama’s shrine.
Devotees worship the lord here and seek his blessings for a long and prosperous life.
This temple is famous as a Rahu-Ketu parihara Sthalam.
This place is called as the “Mount Kailash on earth” (“Bhoologa Kailash”).
This is one of a few Paadal petra sthalams where the “Nalvar” (the four saints - Saint Thirugnanasambanthar, Saint Thirunavukarasar (Appar), Saint Sundaramurthy (Sundarar) and Saint Manickavasagar had rendered their Pathigams.
This east facing temple has 3 corridors and its main tower (Rajagopuram) has 5-tiers.
The last consecration ceremony (Maha Kumbabishekam) took place on 10.04.1989.
History of the Temple
This is one of the six Shivasthalams on the banks of the river Cauvery which are considered to be very sacred and are equivalent to Kasi (Banaras). These are Thiruvengadu, Thiruvaiyaru, Chaayavanam, Mayiladuthurai, Thiruvidaimarudur and Thiruvanchiam (this temple).
According to Hindu mythology, at the end of every “Yuga”, there is a huge flood (deluge) that leads to the destruction of all living beings on the earth. This is called the “Pralayam”. It is believed that this place was not destroyed even at the end of the “Pralayam”.
It is believed that in each of the four Yugas the idol of Lord Shiva takes a different form. It is considered to be made out of gemstone (Rathinam) in Kretha Yuga, gold in Thretha Yuga, silver in Dvapara Yuga and granite in Kali Yuga.
There are 27 stone inscriptions in this temple which date back to the periods of the later Cholas, Pandiyas and Nayakkars. This temple was originally built by Chola King Rajarajan.
The historical names of this place are Vanchiyapathi, Santhanavanam, Thiruvaraiyur, Bhukailasam and Gandhaaranyam.
This temple is under the administrative control of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of Government of Tamil Nadu (HR&CE).Want to Volunteer? Day Of - Directions
Chilirhea A Party With A Purpose
14th Annual Chilirhea Sponsorship Booklet
Chilirhea is an event for all ages. Bring the family and experience over 30 different types of chili, live music, a silent auction, and a lot of fun! It’s time that you come see why C itiscapes labeled Chilirhea the fastest growing charity event in NWA! This year is our 14th annual event, now located at the Washington County Fairgrounds. Join us on February 16, 2019.
In the past 9 years, Chilirhea has raised over $450,000 for Alzheimer’s Arkansas, UAMS Reynolds Institute on Aging, and the Broyles Academy. Last year, we raised $107,000 and this year, our goal is to hit it again and bring more awareness to this terrible disease. Help us reach our goal by sponsoring a cooking team, donating money and silent auction items, or just attending!
To learn more about cooking at the 14th Annual Chili Cookoff, stay tuned for the sponsorship packet or contact chilirhea@gmail.comIf you choose to live and work in downtown Minneapolis, you can avoid the bitter cold of the Minnesota winters or high heat of muggy summers by walking between buildings using the Minneapolis Skyway. Come the milder weather, you’ll want to go outside to take advantage of the extensive biking and walking paths that crisscross the city. Downtown West ranks very high for walkability. Most of the apartments or condos are in high rise buildings. There are some very cool new buildings that have from studio to three bedroom units for rent, and there are some smaller units in renovated brick buildings. You may also find some super chic downtown loft spaces with big windows and great views of the river.
The North Loop used to be the warehouse district, but that’s been changed by gentrification. There are lots of stylish new condos and loft style apartments here with gourmet style kitchen kitted out with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. Some of those old warehouses have been converted into open floor plan apartments with big windows. There’s super hip shopping here, it’s a good place for foodies, and it’s home to Target Field where the Minnesota Twins play their home games.Fear: How You Use It Is Your Choice
Harnessing The Power Of Your Fear
The Zig Ziglar quote below is one of my favorites. Instead of automatically allowing fear to stop you in your tracks, Zig’s quote serves as a great way to reframe and examine the reason for it.
What if you used your fear as beacon of light? What if you followed it as if it were leading you in the direction you needed to proceed, an opportunity for growth, an opportunity for taking action? With this reframing, rather than serving as a barricade, or obstacle, that blocks you from moving at all, you could harness the power of your fear as vehicle for growth.
“FEAR: Forget everything and run vs Face everything and rise.” ~Zig Ziglar Tweet That!
Sure, there are healthy fears. Those that prevent us from doing something that could harm our health or threaten our safety. But, what if it is really an opportunity for growth? Which will you choose?It’s hard not to admire minimalists. Those who are content to live with the barest of material necessities must indeed find that there is much more room in their lives for other, more important, non-material non-things. But I also think the purists might be missing out on something big: experiences made more rich by those unnecessary material objects.
For awhile, I romanticized the ideals of minimalism and began to fancy myself a minimalist-in-training, but then, one day, I took stock and realized that Laura and I would never qualify. We own far too much glassware.
There’s a rack above our kitchen sink that holds 20 glasses – five sets of four each: red wine, white wine, champagne flute, tulip and martini, each hanging elegantly upside down from its stem. We cleverly added three metal hooks to the middle section of the rack and have three Irish Coffee glasses dangling dangerously by their handles. On a shelf below the rack, there are four coffee mugs, four espresso cups, four water glasses, two Belgian beer goblets and the last three surviving Pilsener glasses we had custom-printed with the name of our imagined home brewery fourteen years ago. A pantry shelf nearby holds four tea cups. It’s just the two of us, yet we have 44 drinking vessels available for ready use and displayed out in the wide open. Still, when friends visit our home for the first time, they look around and always ask, “So how hard it was to get used to living with so little stuff?”
It’s all a matter of perspective, of course, and minimalism is no different. That’s why it’s ultimately a myth. Except for those forced into it by abject poverty, or the handful of religious devotees who have sworn to live without material comforts for piety’s sake, there are no minimalists among us. It is in our nature to derive satisfaction from owning something frivolous. I am reminded of the passage from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that describes a ritual where Francie is given a cup of black coffee by her mother each day. She dislikes the taste of coffee, so she never drinks it, always pouring it down the sink after the cradled cup has given up its warmth, but simply being given that unnecessary thing each day makes her feel that her life is not entirely bleak.
Of course, most everyone reading this blog can and does afford much more superfluity than a single cup of black coffee. Even those with piles of debt will accumulate rooms full of things not necessary to their lives.
Minimalism entered the public lexicon as an art movement in the 1960s and ‘70s and earned much more widespread recognition as an architecture and interior design style in the 1980s. It was faddishly popular for awhile, then fell out of fashion, giving way to McMansions filled with kitsch in the ‘90s. Now it’s back in fashion again, not as a style, but as a mentality.
A multitude of arguments rage online regarding what truly constitutes the so-called minimalist lifestyle. Well-known pundits and gurus bash one |
expose to the world and himself.
Stay connected: Facebook | @Shrink_TankTehran, Iran (CNN) -- The head of Iran's nuclear energy agency announced Saturday that the country had launched a "serious" nuclear fusion research program, according to state-run Press TV.
Ali-Akbar Salehi, the chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said as many as 50 scientists were participating in the research to break into alternative energy, Press TV said.
The process of nuclear fusion consists of forcing hydrogen nuclei to collide at high speed and fuse together, which releases energy, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) website.
The goal is to eventually develop fusion plants to generate electricity, the IAEA said, but research worldwide is still in the early stages. The agency called nuclear fusion a "long term, sustainable, economic and safe energy source."
Salehi acknowledged the project will take time.
"It takes 20 to 30 years before this process can be commercialized but we have to use all the capacity in the country to provide the necessary speed for fusion research," Salehi said, according to Press TV.
Iran is under fire for other aspects of its nuclear program, which Tehran claims is for peaceful purposes. However, the United States and other Western nations fear Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear weapon.
The United Nations has issued four rounds of sanctions against the country for not being more transparent about the goals and status of its nuclear program.
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama signed into law new U.S. sanctions against Tehran that he called another step in demonstrating that "the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."A proposal seeking full legalization of marijuana on religious grounds has cleared an unlikely legislative hurdle.Republican state Rep. David Simpson of Longview argues marijuana comes from God and therefore shouldn't be banned by government. The tea party stalwart has repeatedly championed what he calls the "Christian case" for legalization.Simpson's bill languished for weeks before the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. Three committee Democrats and two Republicans surprisingly voted to support it Wednesday, though, and it passed 5-2.That makes Simpson's bill eligible for consideration to reach the House floor before the legislative session ends June 1, although that's still highly unlikely."It's hard for people to take a stand on something that so controversial," Houstonian Kaitlyn Swonke said.Swonke, who suffers from epilepsy, says she's undergone five brain surgeries. Medicine hasn't helped her pain, but she thinks marijuana could."It's clear that legislatures want to have this conversation. They're fed up with these failing federal drug policies," said Heather Fazio with the Marijuana Policy Project in Austin.State law currently makes no exceptions even for medical marijuana, making outright legalization unthinkable. Still, advocates hailed the committee vote as "unprecedented progress" for Texas marijuana rights.Republicans in Houston disagree."The Republican Party is opposed to it. Constant with our party platform, I think it's dead on arrival if it reaches the House or Senate floor," said Former Rep Party Chairman Jared Woodfill.Basically, I thought of an idea of RWBY being a fighting game and I thought it would be nice to see how it'd look like. I basically learned the coloring style from (by staring at his artwork for a good half an hour so to understand how he color) so a sincere thank you for your great inspiring art. I hope this style is okay for the rest of you, feel free to critic if something looks off (I'm not perfect at this style of coloring because it's literally my first time) and maybe I might draw more of style like thisFeel free to tell me what you thinkCharacter and background by roosterteeth's RWBYFonts by Please support my patreon for the 1980x1080 wallpaper edition: www.patreon.com/ArsonicArtz Previous commissionsInterested in commissioning me? Do check out my commission infoALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- 30 minutes before John McCain was scheduled to go onstage at the Albuquerque Hotel for his Town Hall, a group of seven security guards and secret service men gathered around Chris Salas, 20.
Clutching a ticket for the event and wearing "National Abortion Rights Action League" T-shirt, Salas was escorted from the event. Leaving the hotel, Salas returned to the crowd of liberal protesters stationed outside.
"It was disappointing, but kind of empowering," Salas said of the experience. "We knew we had the right to be there. My friend got us tickets from the overflow pile, and all we wanted to do was ask Senator McCain about where he stood on pro-choice issues. So we went inside, and I guess they figured out we were too liberal for John McCain when the security cameras saw our shirts. So they kicked us out, told us we were trespassing and threatened us with arrest. We said we had tickets, but they said we falsified who we were when we got our tickets. All I did was give them my name, and I gave my real name, so I don't know what I could have falsified."
Salas said he wanted to ask the Senator about why his campaign literature seemed to boast about getting a 0.0 percent on the Planned Parenthood scorecard, and why he advocated abstinence-only education programs, programs that Salas believes only "increases the number of abortions because people are not being properly educated."
"I just wanted to go in there and learn more about his policies," he said. "I thought it was an open forum, but I guess it wasn't. That's OK, this is more my scene anyway."
The scene he was talking about -- stretching along the main drag leading to Historic Downtown Albuquerque -- was made up of about 50 sign holders, young and old, waving cardboard and plastic with slogans like "You like Bush's economy? Hire McCain," and chanting "Yes we can."
Buck Glanz, 25, the coordinator for the protest and staffer for the New Mexico Democratic Party, stood with a sign that read, "'Economics is something that I really never understood,' John McCain, December 2007."
"We're out here mostly to convey to the media, Republicans, and undecided voters that McCain is not right for New Mexico," Glanz said. "I don't think his economic policies will represent New Mexico in any way and I think his stance on the war will be detrimental to the country and to the young New Mexicans who are out there fighting and dying. Especially since they are not getting taken care of when they come back."
Glanz recognized that standing in the hot sun holding signs in protest of John McCain would not be the deciding factor in the upcoming election.
"There was a time in history, not so long ago, where protests serviced a more tangible function in society," he said as cars honked their support and bullhorns blared. "Whether it was obstruction or civil disobedience like a boycott, protest was part of the fabric of society. Nowadays its really more of a media event. John McCain's in town, the media reports that, and then they report on us, or show pictures of us standing out here holding signs. At least it evens the playing fields a little."
Still, Glanz said he was willing to do whatever it took to help get the right guy in office.
"More than anything I think that Obama thinks," Glanz said. "When I hear him speak, it's obvious to me that he is thinking hard about what he is saying. He interprets and is actually aware of what is going on, and can therefore make educated decisions. Whereas, more and more, I'm starting to feel that McCain is saying something, and he is saying something that he feels like needs to be said or that people want to hear. I want someone who will change their opinions occasionally, flip flop if you will, when evidence changes or circumstances dictate otherwise. I don't know if that is true about Obama, but that is what he is saying to me."
For some at the protest, however, this idea of flip-flopping was a major issue with protesting against.
"I'm out here against McCain because he's changed his positions, said Jesse Lifton, 22, a protester down from Pennsylvania working for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. "He was a very liberal senator and now he is a very very very conservative presidential candidate. I don't know what to trust with him. He was pretty liberal about the environment, but now he wants to drill offshore. In addition to the ecological problem, this solution won't even lower any gas price. Any economist will tell you the same, when oil companies see they can get four dollars a gallon for it, why the hell would they lower the price?"
In one sentence, Lifton then summed up two of the most common problems many of these protesters (at least the younger ones) had with McCain:
"Not only has he shown that he doesn't understand Iraq and the Sunni-Shiite divide, he said, "but the man's is 72 and I don't feel like he'll work a 12-hour day."I was stunned to read this from Time Magazine:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that births to unmarried women have reached an astonishing 39.7%. How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers’ financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation’s underclass.
I checked it out at the CDC; it isn’t a typo:
The trend in unmarried childbearing was fairly stable from the mid-1990s to 2002, but has shown a steep increase between 2002 and 2007. Between 1980 and 2007, the proportion of births to unmarried women in the United States has more than doubled, from 18 percent to 40 percent.
Iceland (66 percent), Sweden (55 percent), Norway (54 percent), France (50 percent), Denmark (46 percent) and the United Kingdom (44 percent) all have higher proportions of births to unmarried mothers than the United States. Ireland (33 percent), Germany and Canada (30 percent), Spain (28 percent), Italy (21 percent) and Japan (2 percent) have lower percentages than the United States.
Another tidbit:
The highest rates of out of wedlock births are in D.C. (59%) and Mississippi (54%) and the lowest rate is in Utah (20%).
The new equilibrium we are moving toward seems a very different world. Women free to pick a dad without expecting him to stay as a long term helper probably pick sexier men. This should create more inequality in male access to women for sex and kids, and give men more free time to compete to be the few super-sexy super-dads.
Women would get to have kids fathered by sexier men, but at the expense of raising those kids with less male help. More men would be sex-failures with more free time to pursue long-shot plans to reverse their fortunes, and without wives to moderate them. How many of those plans will be peaceful?
I guess this helps somewhat to explain the explicitly sex-aggressive men I see more of these days. When I wrote:
If you don’t signal your continued love she may well conclude that your love has in fact changed.
“Master Dogen” responded:
Hanson … seems to be thoroughly trained in thinking that the best way to long-term health in a relationship with a woman is to signal “caring more than everyone else” and “giving gifts,” etc. This, of course, is the constant position of a supplicant. … I advocate a very different way of dealing with a woman … So let’s assume you are an alpha, and you’ve trained your woman to supplicate you rather than the other way around. … You must continue signaling your dominance: gently pull her hair when you go in for a kiss, raise you voice sternly when she steps out of line, flirt shamelessly with other women in public.
I might not like it, but I can’t argue that the future doesn’t hold a lot more of this.
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loading...The JavaScript community is increasingly moving towards Streams to read, transform and write large chunks of data. One area, where multiple data transformations are needed is in frontend build processes.
Especially for larger projects, when you add linting, transforms and an uglify step, it can make sense to automate builds.
But let’s start with a small project: Automate the build of a simple browserify command.
$ browserify./app/main.js > static/bundle.js
To run this with gulp with uglify support, you need to setup a gulpfile.js.
But first, you need to install gulp:
$ npm install -g gulp
And, in your project folder you should add a local gulp runner too:
$ npm install gulp --save-dev
Next, you need to install some gulp tasks:
$ npm install vinyl-source-stream --save-dev $ npm install gulp-streamify --save-dev $ npm install gulp-uglify --save-dev
The gulp tasks are the main steps of a build, and you define those in a gulpfile.js:
var browserify = require('browserify'); var gulp = require('gulp'); var source = require('vinyl-source-stream'); var jstify = require('jstify'); var streamify = require('gulp-streamify'); var uglify = require('gulp-uglify'); gulp.task('browserify', function() { return browserify('./app/main.js').transform('jstify').bundle().pipe(source('bundle.js')).pipe(streamify(uglify())).pipe(gulp.dest('build/')); });
What happens here is: You first setup browserify to use a ‘jstify’ transform and bundle the input file ‘app/main.js’. The resulting stream is piped into ‘bundle.js’, which again is piped into the uglify transform, and saved under ‘build’.
This task is called ‘browserify’ and you can call it from the command as follows:
$ gulp browserify [gulp] Using gulpfile /.../gulptest/gulpfile.js [gulp] Starting 'browserify'... [gulp] Finished 'browserify' after 6.58 s pmu:gulp(master|76m) pmu$ ls -ltr build/ total 384 -rw-r--r-- 1 pmu staff 194062 12 Apr 17:51 bundle.js
ReferencesThe 2011 Joplin tornado was a catastrophic EF5-rated multiple-vortex tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, late in the afternoon of Sunday, May 22, 2011. It was part of a larger late-May tornado outbreak and reached a maximum width of nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) during its path through the southern part of the city. This particular tornado was unusual in that it intensified in strength and grew larger in size at a very fast rate. The tornado tracked eastward across the city, and then continued eastward across Interstate 44 into rural portions of Jasper County and Newton County. It was the third tornado to strike Joplin since May 1971.
Overall, the tornado killed 158 people (with an additional three indirect deaths), injured some 1,150 others, and caused damages amounting to a total of $2.8 billion. It was the deadliest tornado to strike the United States since the 1947 Glazier–Higgins–Woodward tornadoes, and the seventh-deadliest overall.
It also ranks as the costliest single tornado in U.S. history. Insurance payout was $2.8 billion; the highest in Missouri history, with the previous record of $2 billion being the April 10, 2001 hail storm.
Meteorological synopsis [ edit ]
The tornado initially touched down just east of the Missouri-Kansas state line near the end of 32nd Street at 5:34 pm CDT (22:34 UTC) and tracked due east, downing a few trees at EF0 intensity. Eyewitnesses and storm chasers reported multiple vortices rotating around the parent circulation in that area.[6][7] Civil defense sirens sounded in Joplin 20 minutes before the tornado struck in response to a tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service, but many Joplin residents didn't heed them.[8] The tornado strengthened to EF1 intensity as it continued through rural areas towards Joplin, snapping trees and power poles and damaging outbuildings. Widening, the tornado then tracked into the more densely populated southwest corner of the city near the Twin Hills Country Club. It heavily damaged several homes at a subdivision in this area at EF1 to EF2 strength. The tornado continued to strengthen as it ripped through another subdivision just east of Iron Gates Rd. Numerous homes were destroyed at EF2 to EF3 strength at that location, and multiple vehicles were tossed around, some of which were thrown on or rolled into homes.[6]
Destroyed area in the tornado's damage path.
The now massive wedge tornado then crossed S. Schifferdecker Ave., producing its first area of EF4 damage as several small but well-built commercial buildings were flattened. Consistent EF4 to EF5 damage was noted east of S Schifferdecker Ave and continued through most of southern Joplin. Numerous homes, businesses, and medical buildings were flattened in this area, with concrete walls collapsed and crushed into the foundations. A large steel-reinforced step and floor structure leading to a completely destroyed medical building was "deflected upward several inches and cracked". Steel trusses from some of the buildings were "rolled up like paper", and deformation/twisting of the main support beams was noted. Multiple vehicles were thrown and mangled or wrapped around trees nearby. Several 300-pound concrete parking stops anchored with rebar were torn from a parking lot in this area and were thrown up to 60 yards away. Iowa State University wind engineer Parka Sarkar was able to calculate the force needed to remove the parking stops and found that winds exceeding 200 mph were needed to tear them from the parking lot.[9]
EF5 damage to the St. John's Regional Medical Center, which later had to be torn down due to deformation of its foundation and underpinning system.
Aerial view of the St. John's Regional Medical Center campus
Damage became remarkably widespread and catastrophic at and around the nearby St. John's Regional Medical Center, which lost many windows, interior walls, ceilings, and part of its roof; its life flight helicopter was also blown away and destroyed. Five fatalities were caused by loss of backup power,[10] and the nine-story building was so damaged that it was deemed structurally compromised, and was later torn down. According to the NWS office in Springfield, Missouri, such extreme structural damage to such a large and well-built structure was likely indicative of winds at or exceeding 200 mph.[6] Vehicles in the hospital parking lot were thrown into the air and mangled beyond recognition, including a semi-truck that was tossed 125 yards and wrapped completely around a debarked tree. Wind-rowing of debris was noted in this area, and additional concrete parking stops were removed from the St. John's parking lot as well.[11] Virtually every house near McClelland Boulevard and 26th Street was flattened; some were swept completely away, and trees sustained severe debarking.[6][12]
As the tornado tracked eastward, it maintained EF5 strength as it crossed Main Street between 20th and 26th Streets. It heavily damaged every business along that stretch and several institutional buildings were virtually destroyed. It tracked just south of downtown, narrowly missing it. Entire neighborhoods were leveled in this area with some more homes swept away, and trees were stripped completely of their bark. At some residences, reinforced concrete porches were deformed, or in some cases completely torn away. Damage to driveways was noted at some residences as well. Numerous vehicles were tossed up to several blocks away from the residences where they originated, and a few homeowners never located their vehicles.[6] A large church, Greenbriar Nursing Home, Franklin Technology Center, St. Mary's Catholic Church and School, and Joplin High School were all destroyed along this corridor. The Greenbriar Nursing Home was completely leveled, with 21 fatalities occurring there alone.[12] As the tornado crossed Connecticut Ave further to the east, it destroyed several large apartment buildings, a Dillon's grocery store, and a bank. Only the concrete vault remained at the bank, and a wooden 2x4 was found speared completely through a concrete curb at one location as well.[13] No one was in the high school at the time; the high school graduation ceremonies held about 3 miles (4.8 km) to the north at Missouri Southern State University had concluded shortly before the storm. Pieces of cardboard were found embedded sideways into stucco walls that remained standing at Joplin High School. Steel beams and pieces of fencing were deeply embedded into the ground in fields near the high school as well, steel fence posts were bent to the ground in opposite directions, and a school bus was thrown into a nearby bus garage. The tornado then approached Range Line Road, the main commercial strip in the eastern part of Joplin, affecting additional neighborhoods along 20th Street.[6]
The now heavily rain-wrapped tornado continued at EF5 intensity as it crossed Range Line Road. In that corridor between about 13th and 32nd Streets, the tornado continued producing catastrophic damage as it was at its widest at this point, being nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) wide. As the tornado hit the Pizza Hut at 1901 South Range Line Road, store manager Christopher Lucas herded four employees and 15 customers into a walk-in freezer. With difficulty closing the door, he wrapped a bungee cable holding the door shut around his arm until he was sucked out and killed by the tornado.[14][15] The tornado completely destroyed Walmart Supercenter No. 59, a Home Depot, and numerous other businesses and restaurants in this area, many of which were flattened. Numerous metal roof trusses were torn from the Home Depot building and were found broken and mangled in nearby fields. Cars that originated at the Home Depot parking lot were found hundreds of yards away. Asphalt was scoured from parking lots at Walmart and a nearby pizza restaurant, and large tractor-trailers were thrown up to 200 yards away. An Academy Sports + Outdoors store along Range Line sustained major structural damage, and a chair was found impaled legs-first through an exterior stucco wall at that location. A nearby three-story apartment complex was also devastated, and two cell phone towers were found collapsed onto the remains of the apartments. Numerous cars were thrown and piled on top of each other, 100-pound manhole covers were removed from roads and thrown, ground scouring occurred, and a Pepsi distribution plant was completely leveled in this area as well. Additional calculations of the manhole covers in Joplin by Parka Sarkar revealed that winds had to have exceeded 200 mph for the manhole covers to be removed.[9][12] Many fatalities occurred in this area, and damage was rated as EF5.[6][16]
Radar image of the supercell that produced the tornado
Extreme damage continued in the area of Duquesne Road in southeast Joplin. Many houses and industrial and commercial buildings were flattened in this area as well. The industrial park near the corner of 20th and Duquesne was especially hard hit with nearly every building flattened. Several large metal warehouse structures were swept cleanly from their foundations, and several heavy industrial vehicles were thrown up to 400 yards away in this area. One of the many warehouses affected was a Cummins warehouse, a concrete block and steel building which was destroyed. The last area of EF5 damage occurred in the industrial park, and a nearby Fastrip gas station and convenience store was completely destroyed. Many homes were destroyed further to the east at EF3 to EF4 strength in a nearby subdivision, and East Middle School sustained major damage.[6][12]
The tornado then continued on an east to east-southeast trajectory towards Interstate 44 where it weakened; nonetheless, vehicles were blown off the highway and mangled near the U.S. Route 71 (Exit 11) interchange. The damage at and around the interchange was rated EF2 to EF3. The weakening tornado continued to track into the rural areas of southeastern Jasper County and northeastern Newton County where damage was generally minor to moderate, with trees, mobile homes, outbuildings, and frame homes damaged mainly at EF0 to EF1 strength. The tornado lifted east of Diamond at 6:12 pm CDT (23:12 UTC) according to aerial surveys. The tornado's total track length was at least 22.1 miles (35.6 km) long. Overall, 6,954 homes were destroyed, 359 homes had major damage and 516 had minor damage, 158 people were killed, and 1,150 others were injured along the path.[6][4] A separate EF2 tornado touched down near Wentworth from the same supercell about 25 miles (40 km) east-southeast of Joplin.[6][7]
Aftermath and impact [ edit ]
A preliminary survey of the tornado damage by the National Weather Service office in Springfield, Missouri, began on May 23. The initial survey confirmed a violent tornado rated as a high-end EF4. Subsequent damage surveys, however, found evidence of more intense damage, and so the tornado was upgraded to an EF5[6] with estimated winds over 200 mph (320 km/h), peaking at 225 to 250 mph (360 to 400 km/h).[17]
According to the local branch of the American Red Cross, about 25% of Joplin was destroyed, but the city's emergency manager stated that the number was between 10 and 20%, with roughly 2,000 buildings destroyed.[18][19] According to the National Weather Service, emergency managers reported damage to 75% of Joplin.[20] In total, nearly 7,000 houses were destroyed (most of which were flattened or blown away) and over 850 others were damaged.[7] Communications were lost in the community and power was knocked out to many areas.[21][22] With communications down, temporary cell towers had to be constructed. By May 24, three towers owned by AT&T and Sprint had been restored.[23]
Due to the severe damage caused by the tornado, the travelling Piccadilly Circus was unable to perform as scheduled. As a result, the circus employees brought their two adult elephants to help drag damaged automobiles and other heavy debris out of the roadway to make a path for first responders.[24]
East of Joplin, a Risk Management Plan facility released 3,000 to 5,000 pounds (1,400 to 2,300 kg) of anhydrous ammonia; it was contained within two days.[23]
Insurance [ edit ]
The catastrophe and risk modeling firm Eqecat, Inc. has estimated the damage at one billion to three billion USD, but noted that the true damage is not yet known, since the firm does not have access to data on uninsured losses.[25] More than 19,000 insurance claims had been filed by mid-June.[26] The impact on the insurance industry is not so much the number of claims, but the cumulative effect of such a large number of total losses. More than 2500 local people employed in insurance have been involved in some capacity. It is assumed that State Farm will assume the largest share of these losses, having market share of 27% for homeowners insurance and 21% for automobile insurance.[27]
The $2.8 billion in damage is the largest amount for a tornado since 1950.[28]
Casualties [ edit ]
Damage in Joplin one day after the tornado
As of May 2013, the official death toll from National Weather Service was listed at 158 while the City of Joplin listed the death toll at 161 (158 direct). The list was up to 162, until one man's injuries were found to be unrelated to the event.[4][29][30] In one indirect fatality,[30] a policeman was struck by lightning and killed while assisting with recovery and cleanup efforts the day after the storm.[31][32] Shortly after the tornado, authorities had listed 1,300 people as missing, but the number quickly dwindled as they were accounted for.[33][35] Many people were reported to have been trapped in destroyed houses. Seventeen people were rescued from the rubble the day after the tornado struck.[36]
The Missouri Emergency Management Agency reported more than 990 injured.[23][37] Of 146 sets of remains recovered from the rubble, 134 victims had been positively identified by June 1. Due to the horrific injuries suffered by some victims, some different sets of remains were from a single person.[37] On June 2 it was announced that four more victims had died.[38]
Six people were killed when St. John's was struck by the tornado. Five of those deaths were patients on ventilators who died after the building lost power and a backup generator did not work.[39] The sixth fatality was a hospital visitor.[40]
The Joplin Globe reported that 54 percent of the people died in their residences, 32 percent died in non-residential areas and 14 percent died in vehicles or outdoors. Joplin officials after the tornado announced plans to require hurricane ties or other fasteners between the houses and their foundations (devices add about $600 US to the construction costs). Officials rejected a proposal to require concrete basements in new houses. Officials noted that only 28 percent of Joplin's new homes had basements as of 2009 compared with 38 percent two decades before.[41]
Officials said they rescued 944 pets and reunited 292 with owners.[42]
On June 10, 2011, it was announced that a rare fungal infection, zygomycosis, had been noted to cause at least eight serious cases of wound infection among the injured survivors, confirmed by reports to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.[43]
Ratings dispute [ edit ]
In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers published a study disputing the tornado's initial EF5 rating, based on surveying damage on over 150 structures within a six mile segment of the storm's path. According to the report, over 83 percent of the damage was caused by wind speeds of 135 miles per hour or less, the maximum wind speed of an EF2 tornado. An additional 13 percent was caused by EF3 wind speeds, and 3 percent was consistent with EF4 winds. The study found no damage consistent with wind speeds over 200 miles per hour, the minimum threshold of an EF5 tornado.[44] Researchers concluded that the inability to find EF5 damage was due to the absence of construction standards that were able to determine the necessary wind speeds. Bill Colbourne, a member of the engineering team that surveyed the damage, declared that "a relatively large number of buildings could have survived in Joplin if they had been built to sustain hurricane winds."
However, the EF5 rating stood as the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri stated that their survey teams found only a very small area of EF5 structural damage and that it could have easily been missed in the survey (at and around St. John's Medical Center).[45] Bill Davis, head of the NWS station in Springfield, said that the results of the study "do not surprise me at all," adding that "there was only a very small area of EF5 damage in Joplin...we knew right off the bat there was EF4 damage. It took us longer to identify the EF5 damage and that it would take winds of over 200 miles per hour to do that damage."[46] Additionally, the basis for the EF5 rating in Joplin was mainly contextual rather than structural, with non-conventional damage indicators such as removal of concrete parking stops, manhole covers, reinforced concrete porches, driveways, and asphalt were used to arrive at a final rating of EF5, as it was concluded that these specific instances of damage were indicative of winds exceeding 200 miles per hour. The presence of windowed structural debris, instances of very large vehicles such as buses, vans, and semi-trucks being thrown hundreds of yards to several blocks from their points of origin, the fact that some homeowners never located their vehicles, and the overwhelming extent and totality of the destruction in Joplin were also taken into consideration to conclude EF5 intensity.[6]
Response [ edit ]
Immediately following the disaster, emergency responders were deployed within and to the city to undertake search and rescue efforts. Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency for the Joplin area shortly after the tornado hit, and ordered Missouri National Guard troops to the city.[21] By May 23, Missouri Task Force One (consisting of 85 personnel, four dogs, and heavy equipment) arrived and began searching for missing persons. Five heavy rescue teams were also sent to the city a day later. Within two days, numerous agencies arrived to assist residents in the recovery process. The National Guard deployed 191 personnel and placed 2,000 more on standby to be deployed if needed. In addition, the Missouri State Highway Patrol provided 180 troopers to assist the Joplin Police Department and other local agencies with law enforcement, rescue, and recovery efforts which also included the deployment of five ambulance strike teams, and a total of 25 ambulances in the affected area on May 24 as well as well over 75 Marines from the Ft. Leonard Wood Army Base.[23] Within two years the city's workers and community groups compiled and published "Joplin Pays it Forward" to give recovery advice to other places hurt by disaster.
Social media response [ edit ]
The tornado also highlighted a new form of disaster response, using social media. This type of disaster response is now known as Social Media Emergency Management. News outlets began aggregating images and video from eyewitnesses shared through social media.[47] Public citizen-led Facebook groups and web sites coordinated information, needs, and offers. The results were so effective the project became a finalist in the 2011 Mashable Awards for Best Social Good Cause Campaign.[48]
Media handling [ edit ]
President Obama greets a tornado survivor on May 29, 2011
President Barack Obama toured the community on May 29, flying into Joplin Regional Airport and speaking at a memorial at the Taylor Performing Arts Center at Missouri Southern State University about two miles (3 km) north of the worst of the devastation.[49] Obama had been on a state visit to Europe at the time of the storm. Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church were also scheduled to protest the same day in Joplin, but they did not show up. There was a massive counter protest that was organized in response to the Westboro protest, in which thousands of protesters showed up holding signs saying, "God Loves Joplin" and "We Support You Joplin."[50]
Engineers have criticized the tilt up construction of the Home Depot in which all but two of its walls collapsed in a domino effect after the tornado lifted the roof, killing seven people in the front of the store (although 28 people in the back of the store survived when those walls collapsed outwards). Home Depot officials said they disagreed with the study published by The Kansas City Star and said they would use the tilt up practice when they rebuild the Joplin store.[51] On June 1, The Home Depot said it would have a new temporary 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) building built and operational within two weeks. In the meantime, it opened for business in the parking lot of its demolished building.[52] On June 20, The Home Depot opened a temporary 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) building constructed by the company's disaster recovery team.[53]
In May 2012, the Missouri National Guard released documents showing that four soldiers looted video game equipment and a digital camera from a ruined Walmart during cleanup efforts. According to the investigative memo, they believed the merchandise was going to be destroyed. All the soldiers were demoted and had a letter of reprimand placed in their personnel file, but were never prosecuted, even though many civilian looters were prosecuted.[54]
Significance [ edit ]
Along with the Tri-State Tornado and the 1896 St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado, it ranks as one of Missouri's and America's deadliest tornadoes and is also the costliest single tornado in U.S. history ($2.8 billion).[55][56] It was the first F5/EF5 tornado in Missouri since May 20, 1957, when an F5 destroyed several suburbs of Kansas City. It was only the second F5/EF5 tornado in Missouri history dating back to 1950.[57] It was the deadliest U.S. tornado since the April 9, 1947 tornado in Woodward, Oklahoma, the seventh-deadliest in U.S. history.[58] It was also the first single tornado since the June 8, 1953 F5 tornado in Flint, Michigan, to have 100 or more associated fatalities.[59]
See also [ edit ]
Preceded by
Tuscaloosa & Birmingham, Al. (2011) Costliest U.S. tornadoes on Record
May 22, 2011 Succeeded by
Current
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
Van Leer, Kevin (2013). "Storm mergers and their role in tornado genesis during the 2011 Joplin storm". M.S. Thesis. hdl:2142/44134.
Coordinates:When I decided to join a Temperature Blanket KAL/CAL for 2016, the first thing I did was search for pretty patterns – duh! I came across this one, which basically has everything I want: sock yarn ( because I’m a masochist and ADORE the look and softness), interesting shapes and colors, and knitted, for a great drape.
Pattern here
(by the great Shelly Kang from The Heathen Housewife)
Only problem is: I’m a novice knitter, and when I did a test square I discovered it took me 4 hours just to knit one square. Even this masochistic crafter – always willing to suffer for beauty! – has her limits, so I came up with a crocheted alternative:).
Note before we start: PLEASE READ PATTERN NOTES CAREFULLY. I always like everyone to feel included, but this really is a bit of an advanced pattern. I tried several simplified versions, but none looked as good as the original. The pattern uses a few quirky/unusual techniques, so read thoroughly before diving in!
Knitted version on the left, crocheted on the right.
CROCHETED SOCK YARN SQUARE
NOTES
Size: the pattern as written here will give you a square of 14 cm (5.5 inches) corner to corner. Please check gauge if needed.
Hook: we’ll work the sock yarn with a relatively large 4mm (US G/6) hook. This will give us the same soft drape as |
authentication controls, or even integration of a key manager. Each are security controls designed to directly address a threat.
Security Controls
Moving beyond the theoretical, we take the concepts presented above and provide a list of actions you can take as a website administer to harden and improve your security posture:
Limit access: Reduce the number of people who have administrative access to your WordPress site to a minimum. You should also reduce the number of possible entry points to a minimum. You can do this by only installing web applications that you need and use. Remove any unused plugins and themes. These follows the principle of least privilege and provides administrative and logical controls to help preserve confidentiality, availability and integrity.
Reduce the number of people who have administrative access to your WordPress site to a minimum. You should also reduce the number of possible entry points to a minimum. You can do this by only installing web applications that you need and use. Remove any unused plugins and themes. These follows the principle of least privilege and provides administrative and logical controls to help preserve confidentiality, availability and integrity. Functional Isolation: Your system should be configured to minimize the amount of damage that can be done in the event that it is compromised. Where possible, avoid having a large number of diverse web applications on a single hosting account. Logical separation of applications into separate accounts with their own access will confine a compromise to that one account and reduce damage.
Your system should be configured to minimize the amount of damage that can be done in the event that it is compromised. Where possible, avoid having a large number of diverse web applications on a single hosting account. Logical separation of applications into separate accounts with their own access will confine a compromise to that one account and reduce damage. Backups: Maintain reliable backups. You should occasionally verify the integrity of backups to make sure that you can restore your website if it is damaged. Have a plan to recover your website if it is compromised and document this plan. A good guide can be found WordPress Backups
Maintain reliable backups. You should occasionally verify the integrity of backups to make sure that you can restore your website if it is damaged. Have a plan to recover your website if it is compromised and document this plan. A good guide can be found WordPress Backups Stay Up-to-Date: Do your best to stay up-to-date with your WordPress installation, including plugins and themes. You should put an administrative control in place that requires a check, with some frequency, that status of your site and it's extensible components.
Do your best to stay up-to-date with your WordPress installation, including plugins and themes. You should put an administrative control in place that requires a check, with some frequency, that status of your site and it's extensible components. Trusted Sources: Do not get plugins/themes from sources that are not trusted. (Trusted sources include the WordPress.org plugin directory.) Googling for a free version of a premium plugin is a recipe for disaster. Malicious people and organizations distribute what is known as 'nulled' plugins and themes which contain malicious code that will extend the premium plugin, but bundle it with malware that will allow them to hack your site. Do not use nulled plugins on your site.
Do not get plugins/themes from sources that are not trusted. (Trusted sources include the WordPress.org plugin directory.) Googling for a free version of a premium plugin is a recipe for disaster. Malicious people and organizations distribute what is known as 'nulled' plugins and themes which contain malicious code that will extend the premium plugin, but bundle it with malware that will allow them to hack your site. Do not use nulled plugins on your site. Security Updates and News: Security vulnerabilities is something that affects all software, WordPress is no different. To stay current, we recommend subscribing to the vulnerability database maintained by WPVulnDB.com. You can also stay ahead of the latest trends following WordPress's own Security tag.
Secure your Working Environment
Make sure your local computer, browser and routers are up-to-date, free of spyware, malware, and virus infections. Consider using tools like no-script (or disabling javascript/flash/java) in your browser and VPN's to encrypt your online communication when moving between locations and using different public WiFi hotspots.
You should also secure your mobile devices. Install any updates as soon as they are available.
Vulnerabilities in WordPress
WordPress is updated regularly, these updates account for bug and security fixes alike. When working with point releases (e.g., 4.7.1) you should consider applying as soon as it is released. Major releases (e.g., 4.7) should be applied as soon as possible, but be sure to follow a good upgrade process to avoid any potential conflicts.
Themes / Plugins
The vulnerabilities most affecting WordPress website owners stem from the platform's extensible parts, specifically plugins and themes. These are the #1 attack vector being exploited by cyber criminals to hack and otherwise misuse WordPress sites.
These vulnerabilities are usually not introduced intentionally, they are a result of mistakes and oversights during development. Many plugin and theme developers are not highly versed in security, and so they are prone to inadvertently write vulnerable code. As vulnerabilities are discovered, developers usually address them by releasing updates. If a plugin is no longer being actively maintained however, it may remain vulnerable, and should no longer be used. It's important that you take an inventory of all the plugins the website uses and subscribe to the developer's mailing list to ensure you stay current with the latest updates. Avoid plugins that are not being actively maintained.
Updating WordPress
Main article: Updating WordPress.
The latest version of WordPress is always available from the main WordPress website at https://wordpress.org. Official releases are not available from other sites -- never download or install WordPress from any website other than https://wordpress.org.
Since version 3.7, WordPress has featured automatic updates. Use this functionality to ease the process of keeping up to date. You can also use the WordPress Dashboard to keep informed about updates.
You can find the official WordPress.org blog on this page where security updates are announced.
Reporting Security Issues
If you think you have found a security flaw in WordPress, you can help by reporting the issue. See the Security FAQ for information on how to report security issues.See Submitting Bugs for how to do this.
Web Server Security
The web server running WordPress, and the software on it, can have vulnerabilities. If you are managing your own server, make sure that you install security updates for your operating system, web server, PHP and any applications. If you are using managed hosting, your hosting provider will usually take care of these security updates for you.
If you're on a shared host (one that hosts other websites besides your own) and a website on the same server is compromised, you can experience cross-site contamination. Talk with your hosting provider to better understand how they handle security on shared servers.
If you are on shared hosting and one or more sites on that shared host have been hacked, you may find that your website IP address is black-listed by spam lists. If you find you are having email deliverability problems, you can use a blacklist lookup tool like mxtoolbox.com to see what is going on.
FTP / SFTP
When connecting to your server you should use an SFTP connection. This ensure the communication between your machine and the server is protected. Most hosts offer SFTP, if you're not sure, ask them. Read more on the difference with this Explanation of the FTP and SFTP protocols.
Database Security
If you run multiple blogs on the same server, it is wise to consider keeping them in separate databases each managed by a different user. This is best accomplished when performing the initial WordPress installation. This is a containment strategy: if an intruder successfully cracks one WordPress installation, this makes it that much harder to alter your other blogs. If you administer MySQL yourself, see Secure MySQL Database Design for more information.
Hardening Recommendations
Below we propose structural changes that provide additional security hardening for your WordPress installation. Each option comes with some disadvantages and problems which you need to be aware of.
Data Backups
Back up your data regularly, including your MySQL databases. See the main article: WordPress_Backups.
A sound backup strategy could include keeping a set of regularly-timed snapshots of your entire WordPress installation (including WordPress core files and your database) in a trusted location.
Access Control
One of the top two attack vectors used by cyber criminals is software vulnerabilities and access control. To combat this you must secure any point of entry into your host, WordPress installation or server. This includes employing strong passwords and enabling some form of Multi Factor authentication.
2FA Authentication
When working with any online site, consider enabling 2FA by default. Refer to Two Step Authentication for more information.
Some WordPress plugins designed to help include:
Passwords
The goal with your password is to make it hard for other people to guess and hard for a brute force attack to succeed. A key to this is making it Complex, Long, and Unique. It is recommended to use a password generator for all passwords.
WordPress also features a password strength meter which is shown when changing your password in WordPress. Use this when changing your password to ensure its strength is adequate.
Services like 1Password and LastPass can help you manage and create random passwords.
Core Directories / Files
File Permissions
The default permission scheme should be:
Folders - 750
Files - 640
There a number of ways to accomplish this change. There are also a number of variations to these permissions that include changing them to be more restrictive. These however are the default recommendations. Check with your host before making permissions changes as they can have adverse affects on the performance and availability of your site.
Avoid having any file or directory set to 777.
You can read more about WordPress updates and file ownership on the Updating WordPress codex page.
Changing file permissions
Via command line you can run the following commands to change permissions recursively:
For Directories:
find /path/to/your/wordpress/install/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
For Files:
find /path/to/your/wordpress/install/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
You can also do this via your favorite FTP/SFTP client.
For a detailed explanation of unix file permissions, see File system permissions - Wikipedia
WP-Admin
Adding server-side password protection (such as BasicAuth) to /wp-admin/ adds a second layer of protection around your blog's admin area, the login screen, and your files.
Note: This prevents normal site visitors from accessing /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php.
See the Resources section for more documentation on how to password protect your wp-admin/ directory properly.
WP-Includes
A second layer of protection can be added where scripts are generally not intended to be accessed by any user. One way to do that is to block those scripts using mod_rewrite in the.htaccess file. Note: to ensure the code below is not overwritten by WordPress, place it outside the # BEGIN WordPress and # END WordPress tags in the.htaccess file. WordPress can overwrite anything between these tags.
# Block the include-only files. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^wp-admin/includes/ - [F,L] RewriteRule!^wp-includes/ - [S=3] RewriteRule ^wp-includes/[^/]+\.php$ - [F,L] RewriteRule ^wp-includes/js/tinymce/langs/.+\.php - [F,L] RewriteRule ^wp-includes/theme-compat/ - [F,L] </IfModule> # BEGIN WordPress
Note: This won't work well on Multisite, as RewriteRule ^wp-includes/[^/]+\.php$ - [F,L] would prevent the ms-files.php file from generating images. Omitting that line will allow the code to work.
WP-Content/Uploads
The uploads directory is the one directory that will almost need to be writable by the web server. It's where all files are uploaded remotely. You want to prevent PHP execution in this directory, you can do this by placing an.htaccess at the root of /UPLOADS using:
# Kill PHP Execution <Files ~ "\.ph(?:p[345]?|t|tml)$"> deny from all </Files>
Note: This can break your theme if it requires PHP execution in UPLOADS. If you apply it and the site breaks, remove it and the site will reappear.
WP-Config.php
If you use a server with.htaccess, you can put this in that file (at the very top) to deny access to anyone surfing for it:
<files wp-config.php> order allow,deny deny from all </files>
Disable File Editing
It is recommended to disable file editing within the WordPress dashboard. WordPress has a constant that disabled this editing via the wp-config.php file. Append the following two lines to the middle of your wp-config file, with all the other defines. The require_once line should always remain last in the file:
## Disable Editing in Dashboard define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);
Security Plugins
There are many security plugins available for WordPress that provide a wide range of security and hardening features. There are four types of security plugins, it's important to differentiate between them because each are designed to solve different problems.
Prevention: Help protect you from hacks. They often include some form of Firewall solution.
Detection: Identify and notify if something is off and requires further inspection. This can come in the form of scanners and integrity checkers.
Auditing: Track and maintain an active log of all the activity on the site (i.e., track log ins, changes to themes and plugins, updates, etc..).
Utilities: Provide a suite of options designed to empower the user to make security-focused changes to their installation
As you think through your security posture, and look to integrate a security plugin, consider what you are trying to achieve and how that plugin helps you achieve that goal.
Website Firewalls
Website Firewalls allow you to proactively mitigate external attacks like exploitation attempts that try to abuse software vulnerabilities, brute force attacks that try to break into your admin panel, or denial of service attacks that try to kill the availability of your website. All real security threats.
There are two types of Firewalls to be mindful of. You have End-point and Cloud-based Firewalls.
End-point Firewalls are applied at the web server itself, and often managed by the host (unless you manage your own Dedicated / Virtual Server, in which case you will be responsible for your own). There are also application end-point firewalls, these are found in WordPress plugins (each using their own approach for integration).
Cloud-Based Firewalls reside off your web server and application. They introduce an intermediary layer off the local origin environment. Most notable cloud-based Firewalls function as a CDN and offer a globally distributed network.
Deploying a Website Firewall is quickly becoming the best way to stay ahead of today's emerging threats. It's not however a substitute for a bad security, it's one piece of a larger framework that should be considered.
Continuous Monitoring
Deploy tools that allow you to maintain visibility into the overall security state of your site. There are a number of tools designed to help with this.
Free Online Scanners
Remote scanners look at a website as a user or search engine would.
Examples:
These can be automated by using plugins as well, examples:
Application Scanners
Application scanners look at the files locally on the server. For WordPress, this is achieved by security plugins.
Examples:
If you're running a server, you might consider:
Reputation Monitors
Reputation monitors are services provided by established brands like Google, Bing, etc... that have a vested interest in your website displaying unaltered data.
These tools is that they are free, they have a vested interest in your site being clean, and will notify you 24 - 48 hours in advance before blocking your site.
Uptime / Availability Monitoring
Services like UptimeRobot and Pingdom monitor website availability. They send you an alert via email, SMS or mobile application if your website goes down. You can monitor your site from multiple locations.
One of the features of some of these services offer is the ability to monitor web page changes. Using availability monitoring along with monitoring of page changes can give you an early warning if your website has been hacked. Often a hacker will change or deface your website and catching changes early can alert you within minutes of a hack.
File Integrity Monitoring
Monitoring filesystem changes can give you early warning of an intrusion. There are a number of WordPress plugins that will look at the application and help you identify if the integrity of files have changed.
Example:
Security Considerations
What Plugins Access
When you install a WordPress plugin, it has access to your WordPress files, directories and database. The level of access that the plugin has is the same access level as WordPress core. There is no separation of permissions between WordPress plugins. There is also no way to limit the amount of access a plugin has.
It is important for you to understand what a plugin does and what it will be accessing. You should read the plugin documentation, check it's reputation by reading reviews and check the plugin support forums for any known problems before granting a plugin access to your system by installing it.
Security through Obscurity
Security through obscurity can be a valuable layer in a multi-layered Defense in Depth security strategy, but it should not be the only strategy you use to protect your site.
There are areas in WordPress where obscuring information might help with security.
Logging
Your hosting provider will usually provide web server logging for 24 hours. Not all hosts enable by default, please consider logging for a minimum of 7 days. You may need to enable this feature or request that they enable logging for you.
There are plugins that can help you with this logging even if your host cannot. Examples:
Logs provide an audit trail of requests that occurred on your website. If your website is hacked, it allows you or a forensic analyst to determine how your website was compromised.
Advanced Considerations
These recommendations are for the more advanced users that manage their own Dedicated and Virtual Private servers.
Monitoring Traffic
If you have SSH access to your web server, you can access a command line shell on your server and view your logs as they update in real-time with the following command: tail -f /location/to/log/file. This gives you the ability to monitor your raw traffic in real-time at no additional cost.
If you would like to learn how to perform log file analysis to identify attacks, you can start by reading the Log Analysis for Web Attacks: A Beginner’s Guide.
You can also monitor your website traffic in real-time using the real-time view from Google Analytics or Piwik.
Server Integrity Monitoring
Similar to the File integrity monitoring recommendation above, it's recommended you consider a similar approach for your web server.
A couple of system that helps streamline this process includes:
A few tools that help include:
Monitoring Malicious Activity
Most WordPress security plugins and security products provide a wide array of monitoring and alerting options. These include alerts on:
Brute force login attacks and login attempts
Login attempts and successful login
IP blocking
When configuring alerting it is important to have a high signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, you should only get alerts that are important to you and that you will do something about.
Further ReadingJeremy Corbyn’s passage from antihero to premier-in-waiting is the phenomenon of modern politics. Three months ago the idea was absurd that a gauche, accident-prone backbench grump might plausibly stand before cheering supporters and declare himself “in the political mainstream … on the threshold of power and ready for government”. Yet so it is. Were Theresa May’s Tories to implode, which is at least possible, Corbyn has every chance of entering Downing Street.
Corbyn plays his greatest hits - and the crowd goes wild | John Crace Read more
So far, so remarkable. Party conferences are poor guides to the political weather, as party manifestos are to actions in government. But Corbyn’s speech in Brighton showed a man who has clearly triumphed in the first task of leadership. He was polished, confident, and comfortable in himself. And if his speech was blighted by cliches, they were cliches that his audience adored. Gone, for the time being, are doubts that the election may have been “peak Corbyn”, and that Labour was going into another cul-de-sac, in the style of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.
Corbyn must be aware that the weapon he used to silence his critics was the biggest bourgeois bribe in British electoral history: of up to £50,000 from the public purse to each member of the student half of the voter cohort. Since there is no evidence that tuition fees curb working-class access to university, and since repayments are means tested, the bribe surpassed even Thatcher’s mortgage interest tax relief. But Corbyn proved that today’s young Britons are at least capable of gratitude. The Pied Piper of Glastonbury won Labour its greatest poll surge in recent times.
Corbyn’s next achievement was politically to weaponise his giveaway, as the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg failed to do in 2010. He turned from an incompetent into a deft party manager, outflanking party sceptics on the left and right, and imposing a new discipline on those round him. This was the more considerable given his meagre reserve of parliamentary talent.
Play Video 4:19 Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech in four minutes – video highlights
At the conference, the Labour leader unleashed the red guards of the Momentum movement, authors of the dazzling Brighton “off-conference” stage, The World Transformed. He did not curb his hot-blooded colleagues, such as the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, or prove averse to savaging such traditional Labour hate figures as the City, corporate executives and the press.
Labour is apparently to become more “accountable to its members”. Tony Blair used the same language in circumventing the Labour apparat in favour of a “strong leader and followers”. It is internal democracy as atomised and distanced from parliament. At Brighton, even those political hobbits, Labour’s elected mayors, were denied a share of the limelight, until London’s Sadiq Khan understandably rebelled. Labour has a leader not just in control, but aware of how to keep it.
Corbyn got where he is through a gesture to the haves, not the have-nots, and through old-fashioned party discipline
While Corbyn’s power structure appears in place, it is less easy to detect how he means to use it. It was significant that he dared not face a conference vote on single-market Brexit – by far the biggest issue of the day. That he got away with this was a sign of his strength; that he needed to was weakness. Labour’s declared wish to “stay within the basic terms of a single market and customs union for a decent period” is hardly controversial. Beyond this transition, Corbyn degenerated into abstractions over “jobs, rights and decent living standards”. He wants “access to” but not necessarily membership of “a” single market. He jeered at the Tories for being “more interested in posturing for personal advantage than in getting the best deal for Britain”. The charge also sticks to Corbyn. We still have no idea what deal Labour would support “as best for Britain”.
Peer behind the slogans about “the many not the few” and Corbyn’s programme reeks of old Labour revivalism, as if he had been on an archaeological dig through pre-Blair manifestos. Will Corbyn’s gargantuan appetite for public spending really be met entirely from higher corporation tax? Is the answer to public services really a return to nationalisation, social housing estates, rent controls and labour laws? The evidence is that something is systematically wrong with the ordering of Britain’s health and education services. Simply promising to hurl great gobs of nonexistent money at them is hardly “a new age in politics”.
The last Labour governments privatised more public assets than Margaret Thatcher. It makes sense for Corbyn to want to draw down the curtain on these privately financed debts. But how? The same question hovers over tuition fees. If Labour intends to print public money – no bad idea in itself - it should say so. But it risks the irresponsibility trap that Gordon Brown so studiously avoided in 1997. And just when the NHS is showing every sign of terminal overcentralisation, it seems bizarre to propose the same model for a “national education service”. Will we have pupils queuing outside overcrowded schools waiting for lessons?
Like Attlee and Thatcher before him, Corbyn will completely transform Britain | Owen Jones Read more
Corbyn says he wants to “devolve” accountability to local people, but so did Blair. He makes no mention of letting councils decide for themselves on housing and planning policy. He gives no indication of uncapping council taxes, and thus truly ending austerity from the bottom up. In the terminology of the new politics, Corbyn’s accountability is to national “anywheres”, not local “somewheres”. Some of these questions will doubtless be answered in time, but it would be good to know Corbyn’s direction of travel. When he came to office as a rank outsider, sceptics as well as fans hoped he might say the unsayable. Perhaps he would inject novelty and daring into public debate. He would back CND and ban Trident. He would demand military withdrawal from Britain’s overseas entanglements. He would call for an end to counterproductive drugs laws. He would stop control-freak secondary education. There has been none of this. Instead we have support for Tory vanity projects such as HS2, Hinkley Point and Heathrow expansion.
The first obligation on the left is radicalism, not revivalism. Corbyn got where he is today through a gesture to the haves, not the have-nots, and through old-fashioned party discipline. That worked, bringing him support bordering on hysteria. As a result, we hear Henry V telling Falstaff: “Presume not that I am the thing I was … I have turned away my former self.” We have now got the point. We eagerly await the new self.
• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist"It's not easy, but obviously you have to kind of keep the focus on what you're doing and not let the nonsense have an effect on you," said Koivu, who has been at the World Cup of Hockey 2016 as an advisor to Team Finland. "It's not easy when you read these types of (negative) things, but people who work in the hockey business, and the players, know they're not true."
So Koivu, 41, a native of Turku, Finland, knows what current captain Max Pacioretty is going through these days, the latter being criticized by the media and Montreal's fan base for a perceived lack of leadership on a Canadiens team that failed to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season.
TORONTO -- Saku Koivu knows a thing or two about the pressures of being captain of the Montreal Canadiens.
Pacioretty was elected by teammates as the 29th captain in Canadiens history on the eve of last season's training camp, and now he finds himself in the same crosshairs that once were trained on Koivu.
The Canadiens won a season-opening, franchise-record nine straight games last season before injuries to goalie Carey Price and forward Brendan Gallagher derailed their season.
Many have claimed Pacioretty's lack of leadership was a large part of the reason the Canadiens skidded badly last season. And in recent days, a French-language radio commentator in Montreal claimed that he'd been told by a group of people, whom he would not identify, that Canadiens coach Michel Therrien had told them at a golf tournament that Pacioretty was the worst captain in Montreal's history.
Therrien angrily denied the claim this week at the Canadiens' annual charity golf tournament and said he has a good relationship with Pacioretty.
Pacioretty's life was made no easier at the World Cup when he was called out by Team USA coach John Tortorella for his pretournament performance, then had a turnover against Team Canada that resulted in a goal in a must-win game.
Koivu was no stranger to controversy during his time in Montreal. He played 792 regular-season games over 13 seasons for the Canadiens from 1995-2009, skating another 54 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Selected by Montreal in the first round (No. 21) of the 1993 NHL Draft, he would be elected Montreal's 27th captain by his teammates on the eve of the 1999-00 season.
Koivu, the first European to hold that honor, was captain for 563 games from 1999-2009 (interrupted by the 2004-05 lockout).
He signed with the Anaheim Ducks in the summer of 2009 and played his final five NHL seasons in California, retiring before the start of the 2014-15 season.
During his decade as captain of the Canadiens, Koivu regularly took heat from some in the media for the fact he didn't speak French, the official language of Quebec. And he was criticized at times for his leadership of an underachieving, often weakly built team that missed the playoffs four times during his decade as captain.
Yet he remains, to the vast majority, one of the most popular Canadiens in recent memory, having waged a successful public battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from which he emerged to establish a foundation that raised the funds required to purchase a vital piece of cancer-treatment equipment for the Montreal General Hospital.
"I feel that you truly find who your friends and true supporters are when you go through some tough times and adversities," Koivu said when he retired two years ago. "When times were the toughest, that's when the fans were the loudest in Montreal."
And he believes that Pacioretty has and deserves support as captain of the Canadiens.
"Those are unfortunate things to hear about Max but I wouldn't waste any time on them," he said. "I've heard nothing but good things - great things - about him and the way he's handling himself as captain."Season 13.5 has come to PC, Captains, and it’s bringing with it a ton of revelations and new experiences in the Star Trek universe.
In our newest Featured Episode, “Brushfire,” players will enter a secret prison in the Briar Patch, where House Torg holds their most hated prisoners. That can’t mean anything good for Martok, played by JG Hertzler, in his first role in Star Trek Online. You will join forces once again with Rodek, voiced by Tony Todd, on an epic Klingon adventure to rescue Martok and return him to the Alliance. There are some amazing moments, and a fantastic story being told that you won’t want to miss out on!
In addition to the story content, Season 13.5 will include an expansion of the existing Admiralty system through our new Ferengi Campaign. Captains will be able to send their ships on lucrative missions to far off locations and find out if they truly have the lobes for business. Remember Rule of Acquisition number 75, “home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum”!
We are also proud to introduce the Endeavor System, which will issue you a challenge to complete nearly every other day. You will be challenged to experience the depth and breadth of STO while earning exciting rewards with every endeavor you complete.
Season 13.5 has great story content, a fantastic update to an existing system in the Ferengi Admiralty Campaign, and the brand new Endeavor System designed to give you regular rewards.
I look forward to seeing you in game!
Stephen Ricossa
Executive Producer
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The doctor dragged from an overbooked United Airlines flight says the treatment he received at the hands of'storm trooper' police officers was more horrifying than when he fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon.
David Dao's attorney, Thomas Demetrio, revealed that the 69-year-old grandfather had been left with a broken nose, concussion and lost two front teeth as he was forcibly removed from the flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday night.
His daughter, Crystal Dao Pepper, said her father was 'healing right now' and told how 'prayers and support' had come from around the world.
Pepper and Demetrio spoke at a press conference in Chicago and revealed that the scale of his injuries meant Dr Dao was only released from hospital on Wednesday night - and is still to undergo further reconstructive surgery.
Demetrio, who confirmed Dr Dao plans to sue the airline, launched a scathing attack on United, and further wounded its crisis-hit CEO Oscar Munoz, revealing that a claim the company boss had made that it had reached out to the doctor was untrue.
And he also thrust Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's Democratic mayor into the firing line as the City of Chicago employs the unarmed cops used by the airline to drag Dr Dao from the plane.
Scroll down for video
Attorney Thomas Demetrio (pictured) launched into an attack on the airline, while defending Dr David Dao during a press conference in Chicago on Thursday morning
Crystal Pepper (pictured) also spoke to reporters in Chicago on Thursday morning, thanking those from 'around the world' who have supported her father and her family
Attorney Thomas Demetrio launched into an attack on the airline, while defending his client during a press conference in Chicago on Thursday morning.
What happened to my dad should have never happened to any human being under any circumstance. We were horrified, shocked and sickened to see what happened to him and what he had to go through. ‘We hope that in the future nothing like this happens again. Thank you so much again for your support. Crystal Dao Pepper, Dr Dao's daughter
'Here's the law – pure and simple. If you are going to eject a passenger, under no circumstance, can it be done with unreasonable force or violence,' he said.
'If unreasonable force of violence is used the common carrier – United Airlines in this case – is responsible.
'For each of us in this room… we owe each other a reasonable care standard.
'I'm not to be careless and hurt you… but in the world of common carriers, they have the highest duty of care to provide protection and safety to its fare-paying passengers.
'As we all saw on the video - that was not done.
'And I would defy anyone to suggest there was not unreasonable force and violence used to help Dr Dao disembark that plane.'
The lawyer then went onto to describe how his client, who fled Vietnam at the end of the war, had told him he was more fearful on Sunday night than he was when Saigon fell in 1975.
'He told me that he had left Vietnam in 1975 when Saigon fell and he was on a boat and he said he was terrified,' Demetrio said.
'He said that when they were dragging him down the aisle it was more horrifying than what he experience in leaving Vietnam.'
Pepper (pictured) added: 'We were completely horrified and shocked to what happened to my father when we learned of the incident'
Now he's in the firing line too: Democratic Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is the ultimate boss of the unarmed police officers who dragged Dr Dao from the plane in an incident which left him badly injured. The doctor's attorney said a statement by United that he had tried to strike law enforcement was false
Vietnamese civilians are seen being carried to safety aboard the USS Blue Ridge in April 1975 after an evacuation in Saigon. Demetrio said Dr Dao compared him experience escaping Saigon to being dragged off the United flight
He added the concussion was so severe, Dao did not remember what exactly occurred when he was removed from the flight, including when he got back on the plane.
Demetrio described the three officers as'storm troopers' and said: 'Were they doing the right thing? No.
'This was not a troubled passenger, a nutjob, this was not a threat to anybody. Should he have been unceremoniously dragged out? No. This is a 69-year-old man – is this really the way we want to treat the aged?'
He went on: 'Just because United is responsible doesn't meant the City of Chicago isn't also responsible. But more than one can be responsible for a single event.'
A focus on the City of Chicago puts Mayor Emanuel, once President Obama's chief of staff, in the line of fire over the United incident for the first time.
The three officers were not named and have been suspended - although initially only one was removed from duty. Chicago city authorities have not revealed if they had any previous disciplinary offenses.
When asked about a statement unearthed by DailyMail.com earlier this week where United stated that Dr Dao had tried to strike the officers, his attorney responded: 'He didn't try to strike anyone. He just wanted to go home.'
Dr Dao and his wife Teresa were on the flight as they returned to their home in Elizabethtown, outside Louisville, after a vacation in California. Dr Dao was ordered off the plane when his name was selected to make way for four United staff members.
Hours before the press conference, another passenger on the plane had told how one of the officers was laughing during the incident.
But the focus of the lawyer's criticism was on United. Also at the press conference was Stephen Golan, a corporate law specialist who is also representing the doctor.
'For a long time airlines, United in particular, have bullied us. They have treated us less than maybe we deserve,' he said.
'I conclude that what, based upon hundreds, literally hundreds, of tales of woe of United that here is what we want as a society: we want fairness in how people treat us, we want respect, and we want dignity.
'That's it. It seems so simple. Forget the law for a second… just treat us with respect, make us feel like you really care.
'I must say I do not believe this is limited to the airline industry. I think corporate America needs to understand we all want to be treated in the same manner they treat their own family members.
'So, our role, going forward will be to just get the facts. And to get them out. We're going to be vocal about the whole subject of what we as a society say passengers are entitled to.
'Are we going to just continue to be treated like cattle - bullied, given rude treatment?
Thomas Demetrio is pictured speaking to reporters in Chicago on Thursday morning about the Dr David Dao incident
Crystal Dao Pepper (middle) leaves a press conference at the Union League Club in downtown Chicago on Thursday morning
WHAT INJURIES DID DR DAVID DAO SUFFER?'Significant' concussion Broken nose Sinus injury Lost two front teeth Requires'reconstructive surgery'
'We all have enough angst for flying as it is... But don't treat the people who help make you the corporate entity you are like Dr Dao was treated.
He also said a lawsuit will 'probably' be filed against United, and that the airline has not'reached out' to Dr Dao in the wake of the incident.
Demetrio also spoke about United CEO Oscar Munoz's multiple press conference and apologies since the incident.
'Yesterday Mr Munoz gave an interview, he was asked point blank: 'Did Dr Dao do anything wrong?'' he told the reporters.
'You know what he did? He hesitated. Then he regrouped and said no, Dr Dao did nothing wrong. That no one should have been treated the |
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Thank you to all 355 of you who invested in Ubuntu MATE via PayPal this month!A Christian group is planning to infiltrate a Pride event to ‘cure’ people who have HIV.
Evangelical group Trinity Works is planning to infiltrate this weekend’s Twin Cities Pride in Minnesota for “Humility 2014”, in which it claims over 300 outreach workers will be involved.
The group’s leader, Steven Uggen, said: “The Lord really wanted to demonstrate his goodness to this community by releasing healing of HIV and AIDS, so we believe we’re going to see people healed of HIV and AIDS.
“That will be part of our training, just praying with boldness for the releasing of healing power, then sending them back to their doctors literally after praying for them, saying: ‘Here’s what I want you to do: go to your doctor, get tested for HIV or AIDS and when you come back negative, you’ve got a decision to make whether you’re gonna serve the God who just healed you’, and then give them some gospel materials that they can take with them.
“I’m confident that we’re going to have people healed of HIV and AIDS that are going to be contacting us.
“The funny thing is Jesus healed the 10 lepers and only one came back to acknowledge him so there may be 10 that get healed but only one come back, you know.
“This is a strategy that God wants to use so the very fruit of their sin is what he wants to, like, take away to show them his kindness and his goodness. I mean it’s just totally Jesus. I mean it’s like totally his way so we’re excited about that.”
(h/t JoeMyGod)The Vatican has announced that the Holy See’s former nuncio to the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, has been placed under house arrest inside the Vatican City State for the abuse of the minors in the Latin American state.
The decision, which appears not to have a precedent in modern Vatican history, was taken by the Vatican Criminal Court that is investigating the case. The news was broken by the Director of the Holy See’s Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, in a statement sent to the media late on the evening of September 23.
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The press communique said the Promoter for Justice of the Vatican City State’s criminal court of first instance had, today, “summoned the former nuncio, Monsignor Wesolowski, as a result of the penal investigation in his regard.” It said “he was notified of the charges in the penal case against him for the serious facts of the abuse of minors that happened in the Dominican Republic.”
The statement recalled that the former nuncio had already been condemned in the (court of) first instance by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “to reduction to the lay state, after an administrative penal canon-law trial had been conducted against him.”
This referred to the fact that on June 27 the former Archbishop Wesolowski was condemned, in a trial conducted under the Code of Canon Law, for the crimes of abuse of minors during his period as the Holy See’s nuncio in the Dominican Republic between 2008 and August 2013.
Last June a tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found him guilty and sentenced him to reduction to the lay state. He was given two months to appeal that sentence and on August 25 the Vatican announced that he had done so, adding that his appeal “will be judged without delay over the course of the coming weeks, most likely in October 2014.” It added that at the conclusion of the canonical process, Wesolowski would face a criminal trial under the Vatican’s penal code.
This new Vatican statement tonight refers to this criminal process that is being conducted under the Vatican City State’s Criminal Code. It makes clear that it has already begun, and is in its preliminary stage.
Father Lombardi announced that “the gravity of the charges” against the former nuncio had led the [criminal court’s] Investigator’s office “to impose provisions of restrictions” on the former nuncio. But, it said, “in the light of the health condition of the accused—proven by medical documentation, it was decided to put him under house arrest, with the limitations linked to this, in a building within the Vatican City State.“
This declaration would seem to suggest that Wesolowski, a Polish citizen who has been deprived of diplomatic immunity by the Vatican in the summer after he was condemned, would in fact have been put in prison if he did not have health problems.
This evening’s statement said “this initiative was taken by the judicial authorities of the [Vatican City] State as a result of the expressed will of the Pope that such a grave and delicate case be dealt with without delay, with the just and necessary rigor, and with the taking of full responsibility by the institutions that are responsible to the Holy See.”
Pope Francis has stated clearly that he would adopt a zero tolerance approach in cases of the abuse of minors by priests, and that nobody, at whatever level in the church, would be above the law. The announcement tonight is a clear instance of the Pope’s determination to deal with justice and rigor in this most serious matter. Given the gravity of the case, the former nuncio, if condemned by the criminal court, could be sentenced to jail.The Robey Public Spaces Preview View Full Caption
WICKER PARK — The Robey and The Hollander, two boutique hotels in Wicker Park's main hub, opened on Wednesday after more than three years of anticipation. The ventures from Mexico-based hoteliers Grupo Habita have brought more than 100 new jobs to the neighborhood.
RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About Both Hotels, Along with Public Restaurants, Bars, Lounges and Hours of Operation.
The 12-story art deco Northwest Tower, site of the 69-room Robey, 2018 W. North Ave., was designed as an office building by the architectural firm of Perkins, Chatten and Hammond in 1929.
The "Up & Up," a bar and lounge on the roof of The Robey, offers dramatic skyline views.
Cafe Robey, a bistro on the ground floor, has replaced a Sprint wireless store, which relocated a few doors north of the tower.
Developer Convexity Properties were responsible for the transformation of the vintage office building into a hotel.
Susan Dinko owned the office building from 1995 to 2007 and stayed on as the property's manager until 2014. Dinko said that the neighborhood has gone through a “rebirth” with the reopening of the tower as a hotel.
"The Northwest Tower is the mother ship of two communities, Wicker Park and Bucktown. The newly renovated building now guides residence, business, tourists to the now world renowned communities," Dinko said.
Dinko said the tower needed an overhaul.
"I'm glad to see the hotel plan finally having come to fruition. There are a lot of people who had offices there and have great memories. They put up with the quirks. There is not one person who walked through the door who did not love the building," Dinko said.
Work on the exterior restoration of the tower began in April 2014. Most of the office building tenants, including software developers and consultants, moved out in 2013.
The hospitality, dining and retail complex also includes The Hollander, a 27,000-square-foot, five-story industrial building adjacent to the tower at 2022 W. North Ave. that was built in the early 1900s and now is home to 20 "shared stay" rooms.
Here are a few "before" and "after" images of the transformation, including some photos Dinko snapped on her final day at work in her office on the 11th floor of the tower, overlooking the neighborhood.
Jim Pullos, a retired restaurateur who had a small office in the Northwest Tower, said in 2013 that a hotel "could be a positive" for the neighborhood.
The Entry Area in the Tower:
Victor Maslon's manually operated elevator is now automated.
What the office building hallway used to look like, in 2013. [DNAinfo/Alisa Hauser]
"Cafe Robey Upstairs," a second-floor lounge open to the public.
Loving the vibe at Café Robey @therobeychicago! Definitely see some quality time being spent in this cozy and inviting space! #therobey #caferobey #curatedesigns A photo posted by Chris Martin, Founder (@curatedesigns.co) on Nov 29, 2016 at 7:38am PST
Cafe Robey. [Adrian Gaut]
The Up & Up lounge on the rooftop of The Robey. [Adrian Gaut]
The Robey lobby. [Adrian Gaut]
The Hollander lobby. [Adrian Gaut]As a Creationist I tend to watch and read more secular material than most might expect. There is a good reason for this. Usually the secular material provides me with the best arguments against Evolution imaginable – and on many occasions, the material provides me with a good laugh as well. While watching a few minutes of the History Channel’s program entitled The Big History of Everything, a few interesting questions shot through my mind along with a few chuckles.
Evolution: sea to land and back?
The program, besides making a number of assumptions that just don’t make sense and can’t be supported by any credible data, attempted to explain how creatures that evolved in the sea made their way onto land; but then had to go back to the sea in order to reproduce; and then these creatures were able to go back onto land and live because they had figured out how to lay eggs. According to the program, figuring out how to lay eggs enabled them to take part of the sea onto land with them, which enabled them to reproduce on land. The program made a point of asserting how important a development this was. It sounds silly when you write it out this way but they present it in a manner, complete with artists’ renditions and computer-generated images that make you think they actually know what they’re talking about.
In this case their hypothesis is more than silly; it is an insult to our intelligence. Stay with me. This gets a little confusing. First of all, Evolutionists would have us believe that one phylum of animal – or whatever they were supposed to be – evolved in water; then they tried to evolve on land but couldn’t; so they went back in the water to evolve their reproductive systems; once they did this, then they came back on land and evolved again. Whew! That’s a whole lot of evolving! And the program left out one very important question: how did this animal develop a respiratory system that enabled it to live on land and not in water? Are we supposed to believe they figured out how to do that as well?
Perhaps the most silly and insulting explanation offered is that these creatures “figured out” how to produce eggs. Really? So the program would have you believe that these creatures that were significantly lower than us on the Evolutionist’s evolutionary chain were able to figure out how to change their entire reproductive system and how to produce eggs, as well as how to develop lungs. Do you know of any of us more highly evolved humans that have figured out how we can biologically produce an egg? Perhaps someone should educate these educators on how complex an egg really is. But more importantly, I would like to ask: if these primitive life forms could figure out how to lay eggs, why can’t Eskimos figure out how to grow fur?
After all, the theory of Evolution would have us believe that phyla evolve through mutation in order to adapt to their changing environment. They use the argument of survival of the fittest to support their argument. Although the fittest do survive in challenging environments, there isn’t any data to support that these “fittest” evolve into a new kind of phyla. For example, if a small cat can’t survive in the arctic but a husky can, is there any evidence that suggests that somewhere along the line the cat evolved into a husky? Of course I’m only using cats and dogs as an example. The proper question should be: if one animal phylum can’t survive in a certain environment, is there any data that supports the idea that the phyla evolved into another phyla that could survive in the harsher environment?
Evolution: reptiles to birds?
All the rage now is that reptiles/dinosaurs evolved into birds. Really? Well, here’s a few questions:
How did the scales on these creatures turn into feathers? If you think that seems like a reasonable task, look up the structure of a feather and you will be amazed at its complexity.
And since flight would not be possible with only feathers or even with feathers and wings alone but would need an entirely re-designed respiratory system and a lighter skeletal system, then how did these creatures manage to survive long enough to reproduce – especially since partial development of any of these physical attributes would turn these creatures into a new phylum, which would properly be called “Bait”?
And where, Mr. Darwin, are all the “innumerable species of transitional fossils” you predicted would be found if your theory were true? Remember, a criterion of the scientific method is that theories have to be predictable. Through the years we have heard of a few popping up here and there, but as time went on, all of them have been found to be hoaxes and frauds – although the discoveries that they were frauds never quite make it into the general public’s discourse. Perhaps it’s why Evolutionists fight so frantically for the known errors and hoaxes to be kept in textbooks.
There are a myriad of valid questions regarding the veracity of Evolution that people are too intimidated to ask, starting with:
If through mutation and adaptation one phylum evolves into another in order to survive, then would someone please tell me why observable data provides us with a record of extinction and not a record of transitions into better and more adaptable kinds?
And if Evolution is true, why isn’t there a record of transitional fossils for every family of animals known to man – starting with a simple cell which isn’t so simple after all – and all the way up the Evolutionary chain to man?
And if Evolution is true, if kinds do evolve in order to better survive in their environments, then will someone please tell me why Eskimos haven’t figured out how to grow fur?
Evolution may have convinced the general population that it is a reasonable answer to many questions regarding origins, but if it is an answer, it’s only because the right questions aren’t being asked.
[subscribe2]A New Housemate is set to walk into the Celebrity Big Brother House tonight according to reports.
A brand new Housemate will be walking into the Celebrity Big Brother House later tonight during a special live show at 9pm. No clues as to who the Housemate is have been revealed so far.
It is expected that the Housemate will be American to replace Tila Tequila – who left the House after 24 hours. The new Housemate will walk into the House with a full live outside audience, as the show was advertised on Applause Store who are responsible for tickets to the Big Brother Live Shows.
Celebrity Big Brother: A Royal Arrival starts tonight at 9pm, followed by Bit on the Side at 11pm – both on Channel 5, TV3 and 3E – and Live Streaming at 12am on 5*.To Australians, a quick drink is least fulfilling without sharing it with someone – much like corporate events.Gaining business opportunities from a trade show or webinar requires the use of a call-to-invite campaign as perfect as Queensland wine.
Have us handle your call-to-invite campaign and we will provide you with a constant stream of confirmations in no time. We make use of only the best techniques and technologies to invite people from such industries as IT, telecommunications and software development. We make sure that your database of potential participants is constantly updated with decision makers from the Australia-Pacific region and elsewhere around the globe.
We provide call-to-invite and event registration campaigns for a variety of corporate events, including:
Trade shows
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We also undertake precise campaign reporting to help you maximize your time and budget. We do not stop there. We also initiate an email campaign that supplements telemarketing effectiveness. Even after the event is finished we continue to contact participants, allowing you to nurture and maintain networks offering high opportunities.
Because your event entails a big investment, you expect it to achieve bigger results. Our 10-year experience in running impactful telemarketing campaigns guarantees we can turn that expectation into a reality.
Want to know more? Give us a call, mate.35User Rating: 3 out of 5
Review title of Chris Much needed app. Now hurting itself
This app was much needed across the windows platform. It's going to be awesome watching it grow and become more robust! IE picking the exchange for coins, looking at the market trades etc. Aim for blockfolio features, thank you devs for the app! Updated: Awesome updates came out. Devs are really doing great with the app. Simple, functional UI. Love it. Updated end of 2018: App is getting too convoluted. Having to set sell what sell price, acquisition or buy is annoyance. Would prefer the old option to set what exactly what you have as the price is real time. Don't understand why I have to exactly balance the books when the app itself is a overall assessment on what investments you have. Provide the old the format with the new one please will adjust to 5* if this gets resolvedRiviera Skateboards Announces Pikes Peak World Cup 2015
1
Riviera Skateboards and Resource Distribution have brought you incredible, unique events like the Catalina Island Classic and the Rumble at the Ranch. This season Riviera has stepped up to take on the Pikes Peak World Cup 2015 at the world famous track.
WHO: 160 of the World’s fastest downhill skateboarders will gather on the face of Pikes Peak and battle it out on a 2 mile section of this infamous highway, set amongst the clouds and colorful skies of the Southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.
WHAT: IDF (International Downhill Federation) sanctioned ‘World Cup’ skateboard race.
WHERE: PIKES PEAK HIGHWAY, Colorado Springs, Colorado
WHEN: Saturday and Sunday, September 12th & 13th
WHY: Riviera Skateboards directly supports an international community of racers through our annual events. We aim to provide skaters of all skill levels and disciplines with World Class experiences in the most unique and memorable locations. In this, our first sanctioned ‘World Cup’ event, our goal is to host the most professionally organized race, held on one of the Planets most challenging courses, and provide each racer with an opportunity to win some serious cash, doing what they love.
http://pikespeakworldcup.com
1After a head-down hit Monday night, Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier fell limp to the ground.
I usually say use of a spine board to carry a player off the field is precautionary, but there is real worry here.
It was a hit in which the force translated down the neck to the thoracic spine and lower back. The mid-back even hyperextended from the impaction force.
Shazier grabbed his mid-back after the play. He immediately began shaking and opening and closing his hands as if to check for function and healing.
The good news is he could move his hands and arms. However, that does not rule out spinal issue or a spinal cord issue lower down. Another good sign is is no cervical collar was used. Hopefully, the apparent loss of feeling and function is temporary.
My concern is with how Shazier went limp, including (temporarily) his arm. It is extremely worrisome how his legs, especially the left leg, flopped as he turned over. He did not sit up to help extricate his left arm from from being trapped behind his back.
He was placed on a spine board and transported to a local hospital.
The worry is for thoracolumbar compression or burst fracture, which could affect his spinal cord/nerves.
This is not meant to be alarmist. I really hope I am wrong. But unlike similar previous scares with other players this season, Shazier appears to have suffered a serious trauma.You’ve seen his picture, the young man in the middle shown here, next to Newtown’s Msgr. Weiss. Now, hear his story: (H/T Mark Shea and Tom Crowe)
The following comes from the priest’s sister:
My friends,
All of you, I am sure, have heard so much about the tragedy in Newtown, CT. Many of you have received emails from me about my younger brother, Father Luke Suarez, who is a priest at St. Rose of Lima parish, a Catholic church just down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary. He, and his pastor, Monsignor Weiss, arrived at the school within moments of the shooting, and have been caring for the community ever since. The picture I have included was taken at the school.
Father Luke has an impossible task before him. His diocese is without a bishop right now…. Monsignor … is personally devastated by the losses. The parish is very large…. The rectory has received serious threats, and as my brother gave the homily Sunday at the noon mass, the church had to be evacuated by SWAT teams. After experiencing identity theft and online hacking incidents, he had to erase all of his internet accounts. After a weekend of endless media requests, notifications and vigils with heartbroken families, and little sleep, he now has two wakes and two funerals every day, until the fourth Sunday of Advent. Father Luke has not even been ordained two years.
My large family has been trying to send Father Luke our love and support from afar, and one of my brothers was able to visit with him briefly a couple times. All he asks for is prayer.
I have been wracking my brain, trying to think of a way that our beautiful, loving community could tangibly reach out to Father Luke, Monsignor Weiss, and the St. Rose parish, to support them in this most awful of times. I have sent many prayer requests, and I am asking for more prayers again. But I also want to ask everyone to search their hearts, and if the Holy Spirit moves you, please consider sending one of your family’s Christmas cards to the rectory, with a few words of love and encouragement. Here is his address:
Father Luke Suarez
46 Church Hill Road
Newtown, CT 06470
My brother has said over and over again that without the prayer support he is receiving, he could not keep going. And this week is only the beginning. Everyone there is still in shock. Their peaceful home has been desecrated by violence. They will need to live with this sorrow forever.
On a hopeful note, Father Luke did say that no media coverage has even touched the deep, beautiful awakening of faith that has occurred there. Their tiny church, where my children have received sacraments and where Luke was ordained, has been full of people in prayer without ceasing since this tragedy happened. Love is stronger than death.
Please feel free to share the address with your family, friends, and community. An outpouring of love will sustain these good priests through their impossible ministry–impossible on their own, but possible with God.
I am so grateful to live in this community. We are all so blessed with one another. Every day, I see you all loving one another as Christ loved. Thank you for letting me reach out to you now.If Coney Island witnessed the birth of the hot dog, Seoul in South Korea saw subsequent generations mutate into a an entirely new genus of animal. An animal coated in a skin of batter and french fries then presented deep-fried on a stick.
After first witnessing this monstrosity on Newley Purnell‘s site, I thought that chasing it down would be difficult. That it would be the type of food that only demented South Korean carnies sold for a scant few days of a State Fair until their consumers ended up in the waiting queue for a heart bypass. The taste is about as obvious as it looks: greasy but still crispy fries glued to a hotdog with a thick, neutral batter.
It turns out that Seoul is packed full of artisan hot dog vendors. Vendors wrap them in bacon, mashed potato, corn batter or what looked to be seaweed then invariably deep fry them. I spotted three french fry-coated hotdog vendors in the narrow alleys of Myeong-dong alone and a few more in the neighbouring Namdaemun Market.
home-made budae jigae
I blame this mutation on the Korean War. When meat was scarce in the years during and after the war, Koreans made do with whatever they could scavenge from the surplus from the US armed forces bases – Spam and hotdogs. To make these items edible for Koreans, the locals mixed them together with the paste gochujang in a makeshift stew named “Budae jjigae” (부대찌개) – literally “base stew”. Over the subsequent fifty years, the locals have grown to love the processed meat-flavored soup and it now graces franchise restaurant menus, the only difference being that the stew now contains actual meat along with the mechanically-separated variety.
There seems to be no particular rules to making the stew, insofar that you need gochujang and hotdogs to start, and then whatever seems to be lying about the average Korean kitchen to continue: kimchi, frozen dumplings, greens, ramen, rice cake, actual meat. 50 years of hotdog flavoured broth has to do strange things to your palate and drive you towards experimenting with hotdogs in an obscene and deep-f |
Trump did not apologize but tried to clarify his remarks about McCain: "If a person is captured, they're a hero as far as I'm concerned. I don't like the job John McCain is doing in the Senate because he is not taking care of our veterans."
Trump said he avoided service in the Vietnam War through student deferments and a medical deferment, then said he didn't serve because "I was not a big fan of the Vietnam war." He added he wasn't an anti-war protester.
Earlier in the week, Trump had described McCain as "a dummy" who graduated at the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy. Trump's reaction came after McCain told an interviewer that the businessman had "fired up the crazies" with his inflammatory remarks about Mexican immigrants.
A spokesman for McCain, Brian Rogers, declined to comment when asked about Trump's latest remarks.
Trump leads Republican field
Several national polls show Trump leading the crowded Republican presidential field — with 15 candidates and counting — with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also in the top tier. But despite his strong showing in the polls, Trump is still considered a long shot for the nomination.
Trump's comments about McCain drew rapid criticism from other 2016 Republican hopefuls.
Trump first got into hot water in the Republican presidential primary when he described Mexican immigrants as 'bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.' (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
Former Texas governor Rick Perry said the comment makes Trump "unfit to be commander-in-chief." Bush tweeted: "Enough with the slanderous attacks. @SenJohnMcCain and all our veterans — particularly POWs have earned our respect and admiration."
Trump's outsized role in the Republican presidential primary began when, during his announcement speech last month, he described Mexican immigrants as "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people."
"It turns out I was right," Trump declared on Saturday, citing the recent murder of a California woman by an immigrant in the country illegally. "I am so proud of the fact that I got a dialogue started on illegal immigration."
Trump was not alone in his hardline approach on illegal immigration.
Once a leading advocate for an immigration overhaul that included an eventual pathway to citizenship, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio focused almost exclusively on the need to crack down on immigrants in the country illegally as he addressed the conference.
"I don't think we can make any progress on (broader immigration reform), until we bring illegal immigration under control," Rubio said. "We have to secure our borders."
Rubio's position, like most of his party's 2016 contenders, moves further away from Republican leaders' previous calls to embrace comprehensive immigration reform heading into a presidential election where Hispanic voters are expected to play a critical role.Mayor Thomas Koch wants to rezone three of the city's four MBTA stations in order to attract new mixed-use development.
Mayor Thomas Koch wants to rezone three of the city’s four MBTA stations to attract new mixed-use development.
Koch is asking the city council to approve new zoning designations called “transit-oriented districts” at the North Quincy, Wollaston and Quincy Adams T properties.
The changes would streamline the local permitting process and loosen the zoning requirements at the three T properties. The changes would be similar to rezoning downtown to allow redevelopment there.
The new districts would allow developers to build denser projects than what’s currently allowed near the three stations. For example, new buildings could go as high as 10 stories.
The T owns the four transit stations in Quincy, but the city has “air rights” over the tracks, meaning the mayor and city council must allow the T to develop on its properties. The T is the agency that must solicit proposals from developers to build at North Quincy, Wollaston and Quincy Adams stations.
Special state legislation has designated the city as the lead planning agency for redevelopment of the Quincy Center station.
Koch’s administration will introduce the zoning changes during Monday night’s city council meeting at 7:30 p.m. inside Old City Hall. The proposal is expected to be referred to a future committee hearing and not voted on Monday.
The mayor’s proposal comes just as the T is about to enter into a 99-year lease with the development team of Bozzuto Development and Atlantic Development, which has proposed building residential and commercial space and a new parking garage on the North Quincy T station’s parking lot.
Koch sees similar development projects being proposed for the Quincy Adams and Wollaston T properties in the future.
City Council President Kirsten Hughes, who represents Ward 5, where the Wollaston T station is located, said it makes sense to rezone the T properties. Except for Quincy Adams, the T stations are near walkable business districts that attract people more likely to rely on public transit and less likely to use cars.
“I think that’s appropriate,” she said.
At Monday’s council meeting, Koch’s administration will also ask the council to authorize the T to lease its air rights to the Bozzuto and Atlantic development proposal.
Projects in the new transit-oriented districts would need to go before the planning board, which would review the designs and make sure they’re consistent with the new regulations. Developers wouldn’t need to go before the zoning board of appeals for a variance unless they wanted to bypass the new zoning rules.
The transit-oriented districts would allow for taller buildings, shared parking arrangements, less stringent parking requirements and no dimensional and setback requirements.
Ward 4 City Councilor Brian Palmucci, whose ward includes the Quincy Adams station, said it makes sense to encourage development directly next to train stations.
In recent years, apartment and condominium projects have been approved in neighborhoods across the city, some within walking distance to T stations.
“I field phone calls from folks on a daily basis who are frustrated with the high-density proposals in single-family-home areas,” Palmucci said.
“This comes down to identifying areas where the infrastructure can handle higher-density developments. It makes sense to have it downtown. It makes sense to have it at the T stations. In other areas, it doesn’t make sense.”
The transit-oriented districts would include the following requirements:
• Maximum building height: 10 stories. (Currently, the North Quincy and Wollaston T stations are in zones with six-story limits, and Quincy Adams has a four-story limit.)
• Minimum lot size: 1 acre. (Currently, North Quincy and Wollaston have a minimum lot size of one-tenth of an acre, and Quincy Adams has no minimum.)
• Minimum lot area per dwelling unit: 325 square feet. (Currently there are no minimum requirements in the three T station’s current zones.)
• Dimensional and setback requirements: None. (Currently, the stations are in districts with setback and lot frontage and width requirements.)
• Parking: one spot for every one residential unit; three spots for every 3,000 square feet of gross floor retail space; one spot for every 10 restaurant seats; one spot for every 2,000 square feet of gross floor retail space; one spot for every 600 square feet of gross floor office space if total office space doesn’t exceed 10,000 square feet; one spot for every 400 square feet of gross floor office space, if total office space exceeds 10,000 square feet; and shared parking arrangements are allowed.
(Currently, North Quincy and Wollaston stations are in districts with the following parking requirements: 1.5 spots for every one residential unit, one space every 400 square feet of retail space; and one space for every 600 square feet of office space.)
In other business Monday, the city council:
• Will meet at 6:30 p.m. before their regular meeting to hear a presentation on Quincy’s new five-year housing production plan.
• Consider Mayor Koch’s proposal to amend the home-rule petition regarding the city’s downtown development project to properly reflect the latest plans.← Sidebar
This week Novak Djokovic has cleaned his coaching house, parting ways with his long-time coach, physio and fitness team members in one devastating swoop. So the big question has emerged…who will the former ATP world no. 1 hire to replace Marian Vajda?
Martina Navratilova: A longshot option for sure, but the legendary lefty knows the sport and could help Djokovic’s attacking game and his motivation issues. Navratilova was able to maintain her playing intensity and fitness through three decades. Navratilova had a failed relation with Aga Radwanska and could be eager to rebuild her lost coaching credibility.
Darren Cahill: Killer has worked wonders with a rejuvenated Andre Agassi. Could instill a rejuvenation into the stagnating Djokovic. Cahill has loads of experience working with legendary baseliners Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt. Could possibly tinker with the Djokovic game and raise it to another level.
Brad Gilbert: Has a proven record of getting the most out of Andre Agassi, Brad Gilbert and Andy Murray. It’s unknown how the personalities of these two gregarious personalities would mesh.
Marcelo Rios: Djokovic has great respect for Rios who recently turned down an offer to coach Tommy Haas. It’s an odd, quirky concept to consider Rios as a coach for Djokovic but we all know Djokovic is not your typical, traditional, normal thinker.
Pete Sampras: Sampras has said that he would not rule out coaching a top player in an interview last year despite his issues with traveling and time away from home. If Djokovic were to make the call to one of his childhood tennis heroes, you have to wonder how Sampras would react.
Andre Agassi: If anyone could help Djokovic to find his way out of this current struggle period it’s Agassi who knows a thing or two about rebuilding and reconstructing a broken tennis player. The question of course is does Agassi have the time or the interest to devote to coaching a player?
John McEnroe: The most intriguing option. McEnroe and Djokovic are good friends and have had good relations for years. McEnroe adores Djokovic as a person and a player. McEnroe has had a number of disappointments as a coach and knowing his competitive nature, it’s highly likely he is motivated to find success and experience guiding a top player to Grand Slam success.
Final analysis: I would guess John McEnroe is the favorite of this list. Djokovic needs an accomplished legend who knows what it takes to win major titles. McEnroe knows and is tune with today’s game and players tendencies. While I consider it possible and not probable, I believe Djokovic’s best option for a coach is John McEnroe.
(Photo by Henk Abbink)
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Facing McEnroe Book Interview >>A series of devices packed with ball-bearings exploded outside a provincial headquarters of China's ruling Communist Party, police and reports said.
One person was killed and eight injured in the attack in the northern province of Shanxi, according to a police statement.
"There were several explosions caused by small explosive devices near the party provincial commission in Taiyuan," the capital Shanxi, local police said on a verified social media account.
"Public security officials are currently on the scene and working all-out to investigate the incident," it added.
Ball bearings were seen scattered around the scene, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. They are often used by bomb-makers to increase the chances of blasts inflicting injuries.
"The accident is suspected to be caused by self-made bombs," it said.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that some of the explosives detonated in flowerbeds at the entrance to the party provincial commission.
Xinhua quoted two witnesses near the site who said they heard a loud noise, then saw smoke, followed by a minivan exploding.
Images showed several fire engines on a road, which had been blocked to traffic, and a large crowd on one side of the street.
About 20 cars parked 100 metres away from the site had been damaged, CCTV reported, and local firefighters and police were conducting rescue work and an investigation.
'Terrorist attack'
Chinese authorities maintain tight control over public security in the one-party state and place huge importance on maintaining social order.
While protests happen regularly, incidents of targeted violence are normally extremely rare.
But the Shanxi blasts come a little over one week after a car barrelled into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing two tourists and injuring dozens, with the three people inside dying after they set the vehicle on fire.
Authorities termed that incident a "terrorist attack" and have said that it was carried out by several people with links to a separatist group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from China's far-western Xinjiang region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
The latest incident comes ahead of a highly anticipated meeting of top party leaders in Beijing this weekend, at which broad economic reforms are among the items expected to be on the agenda.QueenElissa Profile Blog Joined November 2011 Canada 33 Posts #1
To the people that know me, you all know how much I love video games especially SC2, I enjoy playing just as much as I like watching it. So yesterday, we arrived early and since I know some of the people who organised the event, I got to help set up the computers and stuff, I even got to set up White-Ra's keyboard and mouse (for a gamer as passionate as I am, it compares to a music liver tuning Jimmy Hendrix's guitar before a show) Then he comes out from backstage and I get to talk to him a little bit. I was like, WOW, I'm talking to White-Ra.. Teeh eeh. Believe me that was only the begining because little did i know, my question was picked to be asked to him during the show. But then just before the break, they ask me to go on stage because Mr. Ra, thought that my question was the best, he shook my hand in front of the audience and gave me HIS OFFICIAL MOUSEPAD. Nerd Chills all over(that part is like having jimmy hendrix give you his guitar pick in person on stage during a show.). Then it started to get messy a bit, after the break, he asks me to go on stage to PLAY A GAME AGAINST HIM, ON STAGE, IN FRONT OF A CROWD!!!!!. The worst part is that i had stopped playing SC2 for 1 season and a half, so i was more than just a little ''rusty" plus the stress and all. For the record I'm in the Bronze league rank 72... not very intimidating. (its like going on stage to perform a guitar solo against Jimmy Hendrix but you only played guitar hero before.). So they made him do a ''special tactics'' he only used his mouse... He still beat me, He MOTHERSHIP rushed me, i GGed but then since i was using Slush's pc/setup, there was no menu and i couldn't remember how to quit, so i BMed WHite-Ra by building a bunch of Hatch in his base, the audience was screaming F10, but i couldn't hear them. I finally got out shook his hand and took pictures. Nerd chills were gone, it was like a MultipleFullBodyNerdGasm. I'll keep this replay forever. He was so kind, it was Midnight when he started signing autographs he did it with a smile, he even asked people to tag him on the pics they took with him! He is such a nice guy, I was the last person on line to get an autograph, he signed my SC2 box, I thank him for everything and said: Hope we meet again in battle someday. he said: Practice a lot and maybe you will beat me.
I'll practice a lot more now, I really enjoy playing SC2. I'm far from being good but I wish that with a lot of pratice and hard work, some day I'll be able to compete in tournaments maybe even win, who knows. I do it for the passion of the game because, as I've always said: ''Not here for the Fame, Just for the Game!!''
I'd like to thank the Cyberactiv and the Interceptor Group, team for organising such a wicked event:
http://www.cyberactiv.ca/
http://www.interceptorgroup.ca/
To: Slush Who let me fail miserably on his keyboard.
To: Charles Desaulniers, Pierre-Louis Gauthier, Jonathan Grenier, Simon Labbé and to everyone that cheered for me in the audience.
And a special big thanks to Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk for playing against me and giving me the motivation I needed to restart playing.
A wise man once said: More GG, More skills.
Elizabeth ''QueenElissa'' Chouinard
So here's the story, My boyfriend and I went to this event last night, Main Stage Series: White-Ra, Special Tactics LIVE! And I can say without a doubt that it was the most fun I ever had. Here is my story.To the people that know me, you all know how much I love video games especially SC2, I enjoy playing just as much as I like watching it. So yesterday, we arrived early and since I know some of the people who organised the event, I got to help set up the computers and stuff, I even got to set up White-Ra's keyboard and mouse (for a gamer as passionate as I am, it compares to a music liver tuning Jimmy Hendrix's guitar before a show) Then he comes out from backstage and I get to talk to him a little bit. I was like, WOW, I'm talking to White-Ra.. Teeh eeh. Believe me that was only the begining because little did i know, my question was picked to be asked to him during the show. But then just before the break, they ask me to go on stage because Mr. Ra, thought that my question was the best, he shook my hand in front of the audience and gave me HIS OFFICIAL MOUSEPAD. Nerd Chills all over(that part is like having jimmy hendrix give you his guitar pick in person on stage during a show.). Then it started to get messy a bit, after the break, he asks me to go on stage to PLAY A GAME AGAINST HIM, ON STAGE, IN FRONT OF A CROWD!!!!!. The worst part is that i had stopped playing SC2 for 1 season and a half, so i was more than just a little ''rusty" plus the stress and all. For the record I'm in the Bronze league rank 72... not very intimidating. (its like going on stage to perform a guitar solo against Jimmy Hendrix but you only played guitar hero before.). So they made him do a ''special tactics'' he only used his mouse... He still beat me, He MOTHERSHIP rushed me, i GGed but then since i was using Slush's pc/setup, there was no menu and i couldn't remember how to quit, so i BMed WHite-Ra by building a bunch of Hatch in his base, the audience was screaming F10, but i couldn't hear them. I finally got out shook his hand and took pictures. Nerd chills were gone, it was like a MultipleFullBodyNerdGasm. I'll keep this replay forever. He was so kind, it was Midnight when he started signing autographs he did it with a smile, he even asked people to tag him on the pics they took with him! He is such a nice guy, I was the last person on line to get an autograph, he signed my SC2 box, I thank him for everything and said: Hope we meet again in battle someday. he said: Practice a lot and maybe you will beat me.I'll practice a lot more now, I really enjoy playing SC2. I'm far from being good but I wish that with a lot of pratice and hard work, some day I'll be able to compete in tournaments maybe even win, who knows. I do it for the passion of the game because, as I've always said: ''Not here for the Fame, Just for the Game!!''I'd like to thank the Cyberactiv and the Interceptor Group, team for organising such a wicked event:To: Slush Who let me fail miserably on his keyboard.To: Charles Desaulniers, Pierre-Louis Gauthier, Jonathan Grenier, Simon Labbé and to everyone that cheered for me in the audience.And a special big thanks to Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk for playing against me and giving me the motivation I needed to restart playing.A wise man once said: More GG, More skills.Elizabeth ''QueenElissa'' Chouinard Not here for the Fame, Just for the Game!!
wattabeast Profile Blog Joined March 2011 United States 957 Posts #2 nice post, should go to blogs tho ;( :O
izzak Profile Joined July 2011 Canada 41 Posts #3 I get the nerd chills i got yesterday just from reading it all!
Was a heck of an evening :D Fun blog EliI get the nerd chills i got yesterday just from reading it all!Was a heck of an evening :D
QueenElissa Profile Blog Joined November 2011 Canada 33 Posts Last Edited: 2012-04-02 02:10:14 #4 It was Unbelivable, I'm still feeling weird a bit Not here for the Fame, Just for the Game!!
Kitty4Cat Profile Blog Joined November 2011 Canada 56 Posts #5
Glad you had that much fun! That seems like it was a very great eventGlad you had that much fun! "There is nothing more cool than being proud of the things that you love." - Day[9]
Siliticx Profile Joined October 2010 Canada 206 Posts #6 Insane story girl. I'm so proud of you. Next season, silver, ok? CyberActiv Productions' Chief of eSports Operations - In Canada, need sponsorship or help with an eSport project? don't hesitate to contact me!
IceBurg Profile Joined November 2011 Australia 73 Posts #7 More GG, more skill! Excellent story - thank you for sharing I got it from my momma
QueenElissa Profile Blog Joined November 2011 Canada 33 Posts #8 I'll give it my all and I promise I'll be silver and make you proud charlie. Not here for the Fame, Just for the Game!!
Torte de Lini Profile Blog Joined September 2010 Germany 30667 Posts #9 It was great meeting you and great blog.
Nice Hydra drops :D https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
G-Virus Profile Joined September 2011 Canada 2 Posts #10 [start of wall of text]
I just wanted to give you guys a good idea of how much of a great, down to earth guy White-Ra is.
Our story begins last friday around 1:30pm (the 30th of march). Me and my friends Vizion (Max) and n0sp00ne (Romeo) were supposed to go to the Peter Molydeux game jam taking place this week-end, and stop by the mssmtl event over the course of the week-end.
I get to Romeo's place, his stuff isn't ready to go we are running late and I suddenly realize he doesn't look too good: ''We're going to the hospital, I can't breathe.''. Romeo has pretty bad asthma, has cats (which he got rid over the course of the weekend) and, which is kind of ironic, stopped smoking 24 hours before having this attack.
So we rush to the hospital, his breathing becomes more erratic and inconsistent, his eyes are watery and his face is bright red. My friend Max also has asthma and told Romeo to calm down, that he will get to the hospital and they will hook him up to an oxygen supplying machine and that max 4 hours later we would be out.
Needless to say, this isn't the way things turned out.
We got there, waited about 10 minutes. They took him in for the sorting process and he wasn't coming back. At some point, a nurse comes to us and tells us we can go see him. He is hooked up to all these machines, even with the o2 mask on he could barely breathe. His osat was below 88 out of 100 (100 hundred being the normal, non-asthmatic people) and was pretty low (Where is House when you need him). An hour passes, two, then three and still no sight of when he is getting out. So I was pacing, going outside to manage Tina, his girlfriend who was very. very scared and saying their son was asking for his father (Romeo, 2 yrs old, awesome kid.) Then came the news he wasn't coming out today, they would keep him in observation until the next morning, but then he would get out. Me and Max left, but Romeo had his android tablet, a wiimote, a classic controller, and a shitload of emulators so he was in good company!
The next morning, me and Max wake up (I spent the night at his place since we decided we would pick up Romeo in the morning and go to the Molyjam after that) and we call the hospital. Romeo still can't breathe, they're analysing his blood now looking for some sort of virus and things weren't looking up. He told us to go without him, but the molyjam was pointless without him since we were going as a team. But we figured we could still go see White-Ra. The worst part was that Romeo was hoping to get out in time for the show, which was not happening. He was pretty depressed when you consider the whole situation and the fact that he was REALLY looking forward to seeing White-Ra in the flesh. His fanboi aspirations wouldn't be fulfilled on this day.
So we leave St-Anicet (google map this shit) and head towards the island. We picked up RokTrooper and TorteDeLini and some hardware and headed for the venue at Concordia. There, we meet a lot of people including Elizabeth, the hottest redhead in the gaming industry, and we just run left and right to get the venue ready to roll on time for the crowd. I crossed paths with White-Ra a couple of times, but didn't want to bother him and was focused on the task at hand (although I gotta say I walked in the staff room at some point and he was filming with his iPhone. I say priviet, guys starts talking to me in Russian and soon realizes I had used up the full extent of my russian.).
Then the show started, White-Ra was on stage, me and Max were watching thinking how much is sucks for Romeo who is a huge fan that he HAD to have this attack on friday and miss the show. I had talked my way into having him sign a bunch of stuff for us but nothing concrete was settled at that point.
Then the second break came aounrd 9pm and I went backstage with this crazy idea: ''Can White-Ra talk to Romeo over the phone? It would mean a lot to him and-'' couldn't finish my sentence and he was ready to make the phone call right away and even asked me where the hospital was! He couldn't go in person since the hospital was an hour and a half away from Concordia but I really appreciated the thought nonetheless. So I set up the phone call, talk to Romeo for a bit (getting an update on his status at the same time) and then I tell him to be ready to have a second attack - passed the phone to Mr Krupnik. He spoke with him for a bit, wishing him a swift recovery and that next time he is in Montreal, he would meet him in person to show him some Special Taktiks! When I took the phone back, Romeo's voice was breaking up (it was later confirmed that he actually cried) and he was sounding a whole lot better, emotionnally at least, then when he first picked up the phone.
After the show, the whole crew went to Reuben's for chow and White-Ra took the time there to sign a poster for Romeo, sign my tablet, Max's t-shirt and even his Domo cap! We talked a lot, he asked me about Romeo, told him he had no idea on the impact he had on someone's life with what he did earlier and that I really, really appeciated it (Romeo is my long-time best friend and the godfather of my 7 months old son, Yanni).
All in all, what set out to be a great day turned out to be awesome and White-Ra, despite his rep and popularity, is one of the greatest on the e-sports scene, and probably the greatest on a human level. Don't ever change Aleksey ''White-Ra'' Krupnik and keep being who you are, for a lot of people on the scene, or otherwise, could learn so much from you.
[end of wall of text]
QueenElissa Profile Blog Joined November 2011 Canada 33 Posts #11 Wow, that is a very touching story, it actually made me tear up a little, It's true that he is a really awesome human being!!
Hope your friend gets better really soon. sending positive brain waves :B his way.
Keep gaming and rocking! Not here for the Fame, Just for the Game!!
vizion Profile Joined April 2011 Canada 5 Posts #12
GG QueenElissa your show match was fun too watch you almost win xD keep praticing and you gonna be real good at this game. awesome nite was awesome!!! Aleksey ''White-Ra'' Krupnik and Slush were amezing i had a lot fun. :DGG QueenElissa your show match was fun too watch you almost win xD keep praticing and you gonna be real good at this game.
Ahzz Profile Joined May 2007 Finland 740 Posts #13 you go girl :p Sure was your lucky day eh
Chicane Profile Joined November 2010 United States 7143 Posts #14 Wow what a story G-Virus. Those are the types of things that will always make WhiteRa my favorite player. Thanks for sharing!
doodle Profile Joined August 2010 Netherlands 14 Posts #15 Thanks for sharing G-Virus, really hope Romeo gets better soon. All the best!
opterown Profile Blog Joined August 2011 Australia 42225 Posts #16 wow White-ra <3 Moderator Retired LR Bonjwa
Haydin Profile Joined December 2010 United States 1451 Posts #17 White ra really is the nicest guy. aka ilovesharkpeople
0x101 Profile Joined February 2012 Latvia 12 Posts #18 Touching. The war-game of Starcraft brings peace and unity.
I love all of you guys. Thank you for being friendly, no matter who our politics think is our #1 enemy, we are friends. Whine less, play more. StarCraft is A.L.I.V.E.
theatreofwar Profile Joined December 2011 Canada 59 Posts #19 G-Virus, that is so far beyond amazing I've been rendered speechless. White-Ra! <333
AzureHath Profile Joined October 2011 Bulgaria 154 Posts #20 Aleksey is one of the most well-mannered, kind and polite people you could ever wish for, he's one of those people you can look up to and preserve as a role model. Thank you, Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk. BW: iloveoov/JulyZerg/BoxeR/Midas/NaDa/Bisu[Shield] | SC2: IdrA/HuK/Grubby/WhiteRa/DIMAGA/JulyZerg/DongRaeGu
1 2 3 4 Next AllCharlie Manuel Excited About Everything, All the Time by Justin Klugh
Steve Carlton is unquestionably one of the greatest pitchers in the history of Major League Baseball, and may be the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time.
Of course, Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax and Lefty Grove may have a little something to say about that, but Carlton’s greatness can never be questioned.
Carlton won 329 games in his career, finished with an ERA of 3.22, won four Cy Young Awards, made 10 All-Star teams, and finished his career with a staggering 4,136 strikeouts.
He was great, great, great, and was rightfully inducted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
And while most of the memories of Carlton’s career are happy ones, I wanted to spend some time examining the last two years of his journey through the baseball wilderness, as a cautionary tale of what happens when a player hangs on too long.
It gets sad, folks.
In 1985, at 40 years old, time finally caught up with Steve. He started only 16 games that year, going 1-8 with a 3.33 ERA (very 2012 Cliff Lee-esque) with just 48 strikeouts in 92 innings.
The writing was on the wall.
The following year, ’86, was when the sad times began. Carlton started the year with the Phillies but struggled, going 4-8 with a 6.18 ERA in 16 starts before being released by the Phils, just 18 strikeouts shy of 4,000.
At the time, Carlton was in a heated, back-and-forth battle with Nolan Ryan for the all-time strikeout lead. Carlton, gunning for that 4,000th strikeout and status as the all-time “K King,” did all he could to stick around.
He signed with the San Francisco Giants, but his struggles continued there. He did manage to record his 4,000th strikeout against Cincinnati’s Eric Davis, but went just 1-3 with a 5.10 ERA in six games with San Francisco. Seeing the writing on the wall, Carlton retired.
However, that writing must have been written in invisible ink, because almost immediately after retiring from the Giants, he un-retired and signed on to pitch for the Chicago White Sox for the rest of the ’86 season, going 4-3 with a 3.69 ERA in 10 starts. Overall, with three teams, Carlton went 9-14 with a 5.10 ERA with 120 strikeouts in 152.1 innings.
Obviously, Carlton would gracefully retire from the game, content with his 4,000 strikeouts and his legacy as the left-hander with the most strikeouts in Major League history.
But there was one problem. Nolan Ryan was still going strong, and Carlton did not want to abdicate the all-time “K King” legacy to Ryan just yet.
So, Lefty girded up his loins for another romp in the sun in 1987. And, at age 42, he found work with the Cleveland Indians. Once again, Carlton’s age was apparent, as he went just 5-9 with a 5.37 ERA in 14 starts. Increasingly, Carlton was being used out of the bullpen, summoned for nine games in relief.
He was traded to the Minnesota Twins mid-season, where his struggles continued, going 1-5 with a 6.70 ERA in just seven starts. The biggest kick in the pants, though, was the fact Minnesota actually went to the World Series that year and won it all, but did not place Carlton on the post-season roster.
That should have been it for ‘ol Lefty. Time to get ready for the Hall of Fame and get that pitching hand ready for those high-end card show signings.
However, in 1988, at 43, Carlton wanted to give it one more go. Like a punch-drunk boxer who doesn’t know when it’s time to leave the ring, Steve came back to Minnesota in ’88, but lasted just four games, going 0-1 with a 16.76 ERA before being released by Minnesota.
Whether it was a desire to beat Nolan Ryan for the all-time strikeout record, a desire to stay in the limelight, or just a sheer love of playing baseball and the need for the competition, Carlton’s late-career odyssey was bizarre for one main reason.
Seeing him in all those different jerseys was just jarring.
Steve Carlton was a Phillie. That’s how he is remembered. And this is how I want to remember him.
Yet there exists all this documented photographic proof that Carlton actually played for, and failed with, these other, lesser organizations.
Imagine Chase Utley wearing a Twins jersey. It just doesn’t seem right, does it?
That’s basically what this was.
Perhaps it would have been best had I not said anything.Sens. Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein recently released a draft bill forcing nearly all U.S. companies to decrypt any encrypted data they may handle. Specifically, it would place a new, sweepingly broad duty on device manufacturers, software developers, ISPs, online services and others to decrypt encrypted data or offer “such technical assistance as is necessary” if ordered to do so by any court anywhere in the country.
The draft reflects an ignorance of everyday computer security practices that safeguard your devices and information from criminals. As currently written, the draft likely even outlaws forward secrecy, an innovative security feature that many major tech providers, including WhatsApp, have implemented to limit the damage to user privacy in the event encryption keys are compromised.
The draft shows how out of touch Senate Intelligence Committee leaders Sens. Burr and Feinstein are with the needs of the American people. Millions of Americans suffer the loss, theft, or compromise of intimate communications, trade secrets, and identities each year. We desperately need more security, not less. Yet this bill would strongly discourage companies from providing it. The draft should never be introduced in a bill and should never advance in the Senate.
It's also unclear why this bill was drafted for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee does not have jurisdiction over this issue, and similar bills—like the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)—were overseen by the Judiciary and Commerce Committees.
Despite being in a golden age of surveillance, the senators are pushing Congress to destroy fundamental aspects of computer security. We already use encryption every day to protect our devices from criminals, ensure the privacy of our communications, and protect routine online transactions. Forcing companies to undermine their products will stifle the very innovation that built the American tech industry. American innovators and companies will just lose out since foreign companies will still be offering these protections to their users.
We have no doubt that the Intelligence Committee will try to pass this draft out of committee behind closed doors and without any public input. That's why we urge senators to oppose cosponsoring, or otherwise voting on advancing the measure.
In the coming weeks, we'll be calling on our community of digital rights supporters to join us in fighting back against this draft bill, or one that looks anything like it. |
the principles of this nation’s Founding Fathers.
Unfortunately, the notion of the citizen’s inviolable right to liberty is vanishing from the American political landscape. Attorney General Janet Reno, in a 1995 speech vindiacating federal actions at Waco, informed a group of federal law enforcement officers: “You are part of a government that has given its people more freedom... than any other government in the history of the world.” Contemporary politicians and political scientists have greatly improved on Thomas Jefferson. Progressive thinking about government is exemplified in a new book titled The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxation (Norton, 1999), by Princeton University professor Stephen Holmes and University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein.
Holmes and Sunstein perform dazzling intellectual gymnastics that leave common sense in the dust. They begin by asserting that “the individual rights of Americans, including the right to private property, are generally funded by taxes, not by fees. This all-important funding formula signals that, under American law, individual rights are public not private goods.” Thus, it is completely up to the current government what rights—if any—today’s citizens will have.
The American Revolution was fought in large part because colonists believed the British government was violating their pre-existing rights. However, Holmes and Sunstein reveal that “rights are rooted in the most shifting of all political soils, that of the annual budgetary process, a process thick with ad hoc political compromises.” All rights are mysteriously created somewhere in the congressional appropriation process—somewhere between the first draft of a legislative bill on an intern’s laptop and the notes a lobbyist slips to a congressman while wheeling and dealing on the final version.
Holmes and Sunstein spare no effort to stomp out any notion of inviolable rights. They say, “It is more realistic and more productive to define rights as... selective investments of scarce collective resources, made to achieve common aims and to resolve what are generally perceived to be urgent common problems.” The authors also define rights as “welfare-enhancing investments, extracted by society for society’s purposes” and assert that “all legal rights are, or aspire to be, welfare rights.”
Thus when the Founding Fathers proclaimed in the Bill of Rights that “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” it was no different from contemporary congressmen’s voting for food stamps.
Freedom through Intervention
Holmes and Sunstein work overtime to attribute every freedom to government intervention, asserting that “Religious liberty is certainly no more costless than other legal rights. American citizens are more or less free to worship or not, as they wish, but their freedom in this respect makes a claim upon the public fisc, even when it is not subsidized out of public budgets (through, for example, police and fire protection of churches and other religious institutions).” If a single drop of government money could conceivably be involved in some activity, the entire activity becomes the equivalent of a government handout. And regardless of how much in taxes a person pays, if he receives any benefit at all from any government activity, he becomes the moral equivalent of a public-housing resident who never worked a day in his life.
In perhaps the book’s most creative passage, Holmes and Sunstein reveal that “Our freedom from government interference is no less budget-dependent than our entitlement to public assistance. Both freedoms must be interpreted. Both are implemented by public officials who, drawing on the public purse, have a good deal of discretion in construing and protecting them.” The fact that you can see the words on this page clearly is only because some police supervisor deterred a traffic cop from whacking you in the head with his billy club this morning. The Bill of Rights was created as a bulwark to defend citizens against government. Yet because government lawyers must occasionally interpret its clauses (usually to subvert plain meaning), any citizen not boarhogged by government officials miraculously becomes a government dependent.
Holmes and Sunstein reveal that “rights depend in practice on the going rate of taxation.” Thus the higher the tax rates, the more rights people have. Unless citizens live under the heel of the tax collector, they cannot hope to have any freedom. The Internal Revenue Service is never mentioned in the book. Instead, taxation is portrayed practically as an abstraction, as something that just happens and automatically fills up government coffers with rights fodder.
“A tax deduction is a form of public subsidy,” write Holmes and Sunstein. But to believe this is to assume that politicians are entitled to 100 percent of everyone’s income. If politicians set the tax rate at 99 percent, and allow people a tax deduction for food and clothing, then everyone’s budget supposedly becomes a government handout.
The so-called tax burden is an illusion because whatever title anyone has to own something came originally from government. In an earlier book, Sunstein stressed that “a system of private property is a construct of the state” and “governmental rules are implicated in, indeed constitute, the distribution of wealth and entitlement in the first instance.” Thus government can presumably revoke the rights to any property without violating the rights of the purported owner. This presumes that government is the equivalent of some pagan Earth Mother from whom all things come—and who thus has a right to take all things back.
The only way to justify treating tax burdens as morally irrelevant is to assume that government owns all the labor of all the citizens in society. Taxes are not an imposition but merely government reclaiming its rightful property. But did the government bequeath the sweat of the brow of the carpenter who built a house that he sold, or the muscle by which a laborer dug a ditch, or the idea that the software writer used to revolutionize computer use around the world, or the courage of a businessman who staked his life savings on a new product that made life easier for millions? A citadel of freedom cannot be built on a foundation of slave ethics.
Holmes and Sunstein argue in effect that because politicians help set the rules for economic markets, they somehow become entitled to what anyone produces. This makes as much sense as saying that federal patent clerks deserve all the rewards for new inventions, since they approve and register new patents, or that a bank security guard is entitled to carry home armfuls of money from the vaults he guards.
Citizens at Fault
Every failure of government is somehow the citizens’ fault. Sunstein notes that “The Fourth Amendment right [against unreasonable government searches and seizures] cannot be absolute unless the public is willing to invest the enormous amounts necessary to ensure that it is seldom violated in practice. The fact that the Fourth Amendment is violated so regularly shows that the public is not willing to make that investment.” Thus the only reason that police routinely carry out unconstitutional searches is that taxes are not high enough.
The one part of the Bill of Rights that Holmes and Sunstein strictly avoid mentioning is the Second Amendment, which guarantees citizens the right to keep and bear arms. The Founding Fathers saw widespread private gun ownership as a necessary check against the threat of tyranny. Even Harvard law professor and “progressive” icon Laurence Tribe recently admitted that “It becomes impossible to deny that some right to bear arms is among the rights of American citizens.” Presumably the authors believe that people must pay taxes so that government can confiscate everyone’s guns.
Holmes and Sunstein see government as the alpha and omega of all rights, all liberties, all existence: they cannot conceive of anything happening that was not first ordained by politicians and inflicted by bureaucrats. They declare that “To take the cost of rights into account is therefore to think something like a government procurement officer, asking how to allocate limited resources intelligently while keeping a wide array of public goods in mind.” Neither Sunstein nor Holmes has spent time around the General Services Administration headquarters, where real procurement officers waste billions every month.
The authors never attempt to explain where or how government got all the rights. Supposedly, government officials have them because government spends the money to protect them. But the money government spends was first earned by private citizens. How can citizens acquire rights only by government’s taking away much of their paychecks in order to protect the remainder of their income and their other rights? If rights are the result of the government budget, then the rights must originate with the person who produced the money, not with the government agents who seized it. The adulation of government turns into a tautology: in the final realm, government is the source of all rights merely because it has the power to fleece and subjugate its citizens.
Portraying all rights as dispensations of government is a scam to convey absolute power to government officials. Since rights are solely the creation of government, any limitation on government power supposedly becomes a threat to rights.
Americans endorsed the creation of the federal government over 200 years ago so that it could fulfill a handful of narrowly prescribed functions. Government was intended to be a hired clerk, not a divine master. Each person has a natural right not to be made a government pawn, a right to sovereignty over his own body, his own life, and his own peaceful actions. As Etienne de la Boéttie, a sixteenth-century French thinker, observed, “It is fruitless to argue whether or not liberty is natural, since none can be held in slavery without being wronged.”
Americans must choose between “government-issue liberty” and “self-reliant liberty.” The choice is between a concept of freedom based on government handouts and a concept of freedom based on restraint of government, between a liberty in which people are perpetually treated as children needing to be restrained and a liberty in which they are allowed to experiment, take chances, and pay for their own bloody noses. It is a choice between a freedom in which each person can make his own mistakes or a freedom in which each person becomes another statistic in the government’s mistakes. The choice between the two freedoms comes down to a question of whether people will benefit more from being left alone to build their own lives or from somebody’s confiscating much of their building material and imposing the structure he thinks best. A good definition of liberty must provide a barricade that 10,000 federal agents can’t breach.Weiner Campaign Manager Quits After Latest 'Sexting' Scandal
Enlarge this image toggle caption Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
The man in charge of Anthony Weiner's campaign is stepping aside in the wake of new revelations that the candidate exchanged lewd online messages with several women. But Weiner says he's staying in the race to become mayor of New York.
Danny Kedem, who joined Weiner's campaign in early spring, resigned over the weekend, the candidate said on Sunday.
"We have an amazing staff, but this isn't about the people working on the campaign. It's about the people we're campaigning for," Weiner said after speaking at a Brooklyn church, according to The Associated Press.
On Thursday, Weiner and his wife held a news conference to acknowledge the latest sexting scandal in which the candidate said he'd exchanged messages with up to three women since last summer, a full year after he resigned from Congress amid a similar "sexting" scandal.
"I can't tell you absolutely what someone else is going to consider inappropriate or not," he told reporters.
Weiner, who before the scandal broke had been leading his main Democratic primary opponent, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, has dropped 9 percentage points behind her in a poll conducted following last week's revelations.Meet The Man Behind The Ben Carson Rap
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Robert Donaldson Courtesy of Robert Donaldson
GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson has been having a rough couple of days. In the past 48 hours, several news organizations have raised questions about aspects of his past.
But even as he's weathered the increased media scrutiny, this week also saw Carson grab headlines for a decidedly different campaign milestone: He dropped a rap song.
It's a 60-second radio ad aimed at young black voters, which is getting air time in eight cities. The man behind it is Robert Donaldson, who goes by the performance name Aspiring Mogul.
A self-described "Republican Christian rapper," Aspiring Mogul joined NPR's Michel Martin to talk about the story behind the song — and his reaction to the often-harsh response its received on social media.
"Being a follower of Christ, you accept the good and the bad," he tells Martin. "So, whatever people's opinions are of it — good or bad — I welcome it. Now it's a conversation on a national level that we should have, and should have had a long time ago."
Interview Highlights
On the story behind his moniker
African-American males, I believe, today we need more entrepreneurship in our communities. So, when I thought about Aspiring Mogul, and I happen to be in youth ministry, happen to be a business owner, and I've been in republican leadership now for the last six years. So when I combine all of those together, I find myself in multiple worlds. So that's why Aspiring Mogul is the title. And I don't think I'll ever be a mogul — I'm always aspiring to do better or do more, so that was the reason I use that moniker, Aspiring Mogul.
On how he got on Ben Carson's radar
I wrote a song after seeing Gifted Hands, the movie that Cuba Gooding [Jr.] played Dr. Ben Carson. And I was so inspired by that, and it led me to write that song. I sent the song to Barry Bennett, who is Ben Carson's campaign manager — and he liked it, and he posted it on Facebook. After that, I was inspired and said, "Well, I can write a campaign song for Dr. Carson." And I wrote the campaign song and sent that to them, and they liked it — and there you have it.
On criticisms that the song is condescending
When Obama ran for president and the whole music industry made a song — from Will.I.Am to Alicia Keys to Common Sense and everybody — "Yes, I can! Yes, I can!" That was definitely a rap song. And so for me, I see it as the exact same thing. So [Ben Carson] did a rap ad — he did a country ad, too! Is that a knockoff to people who like country music, because he has a country song that represents him?...
What I'm basically saying is: What genre of music is sufficient to use for a presidential ad? Is it only classical music? Is it pop music? I never said that this is an ad to get the black vote. That was the way they marketed it; I wrote the song because Ben Carson inspired me.
And if they're using it for that reason, I'm now talking to you and have this opportunity to have this conversation. So the song has done, to some degree, the goal that I initially intended to begin with.
On what he hopes the ad will accomplish
It's actually a whole song that I wrote, that'll be for sale on iTunes, Rhapsody, Apple Music in the coming week or so.
But what I hope happens — my goal is not necessarily to convert everybody to being a Republican as much as it is: Let's have a conversation! The Republican party always... you know, a lot of people say, "Well, they don't reach out to African-Americans!" And I understand that.
But for me, I use Jackie Robinson as an example. I use Hank Aaron, anybody who went into an arena where black people weren't initially there, it had to be somebody who broke that mold. And I believe that African-Americans need a seat at every table: the GOP, in Silicon Valley, in Wall Street. I think we should be in every arena of life that we can be in, to have a voice that represents our ideals. That's my goal.Interacted with top CEOs. We held extensive discussions on opportunities in India. pic.twitter.com/BwjdFM1DaZ — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 25, 2017
Terrific meeting with @narendramodi. "Always impressed, energized by optimism and invention in India. Excited to keep investing and growing. https://t.co/xhQ58dik3y — Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) June 25, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were among the delegates who met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a discussion on opportunities for the leading US Businesses in India.The meeting, which took place in Washington on Sunday, also saw the attendance of Amazon CEO - Jeff Bezos, Shantanu Narayan of Adobe, Ajay Banga of Mastercard, John Chambers of Cisco and other such business personalities.As per sources, Apple CEO Tim Cook informed Prime Minister Narendra Modi of Apple’s iPhone SE facility in Bengaluru which is the Cupertino-based company’s first production facility in India. It was also noted that Apple’s operating system ‘iOS’ currently accounts for 740,000 jobs in India. Additionally, Indian app developers have created a growth of 57 percent, with almost 1,00,000 apps being created for the Apple App Store in 2016. Back in March, Apple also opened its App Accelerator facility in Bengaluru which has till date, trained thousands of iOS developers in the country. Apple is also aiming to run its business in India on 100 percent renewable energy within the next six months.Amazon Co-founder and CEO – Jeff Bezos also tweeted after the meeting, saying: Always impressed, energised by optimism and invention in India. Excited to keep investing and growing.”For Women In Korean Pop, 'Making It' Can Mean A Makeover
Enlarge this image toggle caption Haeryun Kang Haeryun Kang
Seoul is the home of Korean pop music, or K-pop, which is quickly becoming one of Korea's biggest exports. It's a multibillion dollar industry that, for the last decade, has been dominated by girl groups.
Management agencies churn out groups that look alike and embody a girlish, doe-eyed innocence. But critics say there's a dark side to the bubblegum images being spread around the world.
The industry is especially hard on Korean women. Park Boram, considered a classic K-pop success story, is in many ways a poster child for the K-pop ideal. She was a teenage girl who went through various contortions to become what she is today. Her four-year training process involved learning to dance, sing, and act. It also involved modifying her appearance. She changed her hair, her face and, most notably, her body, dropping 66 pounds.
Now she's singing about her experience. Her semi-autobiographical debut single is officially called "Beautiful," but the Korean title translates to "I became pretty." In the video, Park is shown working out and weighing her food on a scale. Lyrics include a line about eating only a banana and an egg each day, and another line about how overdoing it was worth it. Talk to her today, and she believes it.
YouTube
"I think a lot of people, after listening to this song, were motivated to exercise more, lose weight and diet," she says. "I think a big reason is because I put my story into it. Like, one banana, two eggs — eating just that, and you see the results in me, and that was motivating for people."
Park went through those changes with the encouragement of her management company. Entertainment conglomerates groom modern K-pop groups and singers, spending years scouting, training, producing and marketing them.
Heather Willoughby is a professor at Ewha University in Seoul who specializes in Korean music and culture. She and other critics worry the companies give the performers too little control over their identities, and that K-pop sends a message to women and girls that their worth comes from what's on the outside.
"There is a much more deep-rooted sense of still viewing women as objects, and I think that reflects really poorly on Korean society," she says.
Willoughby says focusing on looks is especially extreme in Korea, possibly because everything is mediated through screens. Korea is the home of the world's fastest internet speeds, and its mobile phone penetration is above 100 percent, meaning there are more phones are in use than there are people using them. She adds that we also need to account for Korea's traditional East Asian influences.
Enlarge this image toggle caption The Chosunilbo JNS/Multi-Bits via Getty Images The Chosunilbo JNS/Multi-Bits via Getty Images
"You still have a very, very collective society," she says. "In order to fit in, you have to be within a norm. Where you have a much more individual society in the US and parts of Europe, in Korea you have a lot more pressure to still fit in."
The pressure to fit in could explain why as many as one-third of women in Seoul have gotten cosmetic surgery procedures. James Turnbull, a lecturer at Dongseo University who has been blogging about Korean feminism for the last decade, explains that the strict beauty standards of K-pop reach far beyond Korean borders — in fact, the government has a ministry in charge of exporting Korean entertainment.
"Because of K-pop there's a big cosmetic surgery tourism industry, there's a huge beauty products industry," he says. "The Korean government has a big culpability and responsibility in this state of affairs because it does have a vested interest in exporting and promoting K-pop's soft power overseas."
There are some idols bucking the trend — like Amber, who branched out from her original girl group to carve out a tomboy identity, and enjoys a huge fan base. And it didn't take too many calls to find British-Korean Sophia Pae, who originally took the path of "making it" by appearing on a reality show, but is now controlling her own sound.
"I kind of have the freedom to write what I want and luckily, they're pretty okay with just going with what I do," Pae says.
They are exceptions. The market is still saturated with performers like Park Boram, who argues that molding herself into a K-pop ideal built her confidence: "I wanted to show people a more perfect me, which is why I tried to change."
Just who is behind that idea of "perfect"? That's not a subject these artists are singing about.Kaig Lightner coming out video.png
Kaig Lightner, 36, is a Portland youth soccer coach who recently came out as transgender to his players. A video of the team meeting has gone viral.
(YouTube screenshot via Portland Community Football Club)
A Portland youth soccer coach recently came out as transgender to his players and a video of the team meeting has since gone viral. Kaig Lightner, 36, is the founder and director of the Portland Community Football Club, which serves the area's poor and underprivileged youth.
In the video, Lightner calls a huddle after practice, telling players about a coaching trip he took to Washington, D.C.
"We ask a lot of you guys to show up and be yourselves and be who you are and get to be better players and I haven't totally shared something with you about myself that's sort of important — that some of you may or may not know," he said.
Lightner then came out to his players, saying it was something he's kept close to the chest because of how sports have traditionally dealt with issues of gender.
"We have a lot of rules in sports about how boys play and how girls play and that's not really fair," he said. "I got told a lot of things about being a soccer player as a girl — that I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't strong enough, or I was too strong — I acted too much like a boy."
Lightner told Buzzfeed News that he's been involved in youth sports since he was a teenager. He stepped down froma coaching position at 26 to begin transitioning. He told the outlet and his players that he felt a responsibility to come out in order to practice what he preached in his work.
"I may have this white skin and I may look like I just cruised through life with a lot of privilege — which I have had — but I have one thing that a lot of people don't know about me," Lightner said.
You can watch the full video below, which has gotten more than 35,000 as of Saturday evening and is titled "Authenticity":
--Eder Campuzano | 503.221.4344
@edercampuzano
ecampuzano@oregonian.comStory highlights David Frum says he heard about Paul Ryan pick on Twitter, didn't switch on TV for many hours
He says cable no longer has corner on breaking news; social media scooping it more and more
He says cable news must face new reality, get more personality-driven, seek upmarket niche
Frum: Cable should skip fancy effects, go deep and long in reports, find new relevance
Like many people in the media and political world, I first heard from Twitter the news that Mitt Romney had chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. The information appeared between 11 p.m. and midnight on a Friday night. The alert was quickly confirmed by multiple news sources on my Twitter feed: TV networks, newspapers, wire services. Like many journalists, I stayed up late that night to write about the decision, filing copy over the next three hours. I was so weary the next morning that I very nearly slept through the broadcast of the actual announcement event in Norfolk, Virginia.
I didn't, quite. And so it was a little less than 12 hours after the breaking of this important political story that I first switched on my TV.
Things move fast in the modern world, so let's cut straight to the point: Cable TV is no longer the place where news breaks, and has not been so for years. Social media have done to cable TV news what cable news, in its day, did to the afternoon editions of big-city papers: shouldered aside its slower and less adaptable predecessor.
In this new world, the distinction between reporters and sources, between media and everybody else, begins to fade away. The correspondent who calls an expert for analysis may find himself on hold while the expert posts her thoughts to her blog for all the world to read. For more than a century, journalists have mediated between knowledge-holders and information consumers. But the Internet is bringing producers and consumers ever more directly into contact, whether the product is steel girders, home mortgages, or breaking news.
David Frum
What cable news does do, unrivaled, is broadcast images of events to a large global audience. When there's a crowd protesting in Tahrir Square -- or a wildfire raging in southern California -- viewers still turn to cable. Yet how often do such events occur? And how much longer will even that advantage hold? In a world of camera phones, everybody becomes a video journalist. Our images of the violence in Syria all come from locals -- and are available to any media organization that will buy or barter for them.
So what should cable do in such a news environment?
Three things:
1) Accept that the days of "the news is the star" are over. Generic news moves too fast for cable. Nobody will tune to a cable news network unless there is a very compelling reason to tune to that specific network at that particular time. There's only one such reason: "People like to watch the people they like to watch." Everything else is just filler. Like it or not, TV is for personality, not only for information.
2) Go upmarket. Cable news is inescapably a niche market. There are 311 million people in the United States. Even at peak hours, 306 million of them are not watching cable news. At nonpeak hours, 309 million of them are not watching cable news. The 2 million- to 5 million-person cable news audience is made up of unusually smart and curious people, and they should be served appropriate content. The people who can be reached by "dumbing down" TV have already been successfully reached by the Kardashian family.
3) Go deep and long. "'Time, time,' said old King Tut, 'is something I ain't got anything but.'" That funny little poem by Don Marquis also aptly describes cable news. It's got acres and acres of time to fill, 52 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As it is, cable news treats that time as a problem to be overcome with sound and visual effects intended to create a feeling (almost always false) of immediacy and urgency. Those effects long ago lost their credibility.
Meanwhile, every day on YouTube some amateur documentarian shows that video can be used to convey ideas and information in interesting and entertaining ways. See the TED lectures, and the Big Think series, and the contrasting videos produced by Paul Ryan for the House budget committee and Austan Goolsbee for the Obama White House. The website SecondDraft.org uses video to correct deceptive reports from the Middle East. The Academy Award-winning documentary "Inside Job" effectively used video to unpack the 2008 financial crisis for a general audience.
Cable TV relishes the confrontation interview. But the public figures that TV wants to interview usually have the poise and practice to sidestep such confrontations. Longer and less confrontational interviews -- such as those Brian Lamb used to do for C-SPAN -- reveal much more than cable TV's mostly misfired attempts at gotcha moments.
In their business-book classic "Barbarians at the Gate," authors Bryan Burrough and John Helyar quote a lament for the Nabisco company. "Some genius invented the Oreo cookie. We're just living off the inheritance." As tough as it is to found a great industry or great company, it is -- in its own way -- even tougher to adapt that industry or company to a new era. It can be done. It has to be done.Sessionstorage is the name for a browser’s in-memory only storage. Meaning that it’s essentially a ram-disk that is just deleted when you navigate away from the website or close the browser.
Sessionstorage has also been deprecated, so you should avoid using it and go for Localstorage, or just use a raw, untyped uint8 array instead.
Or should you?
Ensuring 64 megabytes minimum
Browsers do not behave identically across devices. Try to get a concurrent reading of something as simple as drawing sprites, and you will quickly notice that even the same device families (Android, iOS and Microsoft) can behave differently between versions – and even builds (revisions).
On embedded systems or thin clients with very little memory, allocating large chunks ot uint8 arrays is not going to work. One of my test thin-client machines has only 512 megabyte ram – and it would throw an exception if I tried to allocate more than 20 megabyte of continuous memory (again, as an array of uint8 bytes).
Using the dark side of the force
While testing Smart code on this little device, I noticed that quite large images loaded just fine. So where I was not allowed to allocate more than 20 megabytes, the browser would happily load in pictures taking up over 50 megabyte of pixel data?
It then struck me that the maximum limit of a picture, which is enforced by the DIB Api (at least on Windows desktop and embedded), is 4000 x 4000 pixels. Since each pixel is 32 bits (4 bytes, RGBA) that my friend is 64 megabytes right there!
I created a new class that inherits from the virtual-filesystem that Smart Pascal uses, created an off-screen image object in the constructor – and then made a simple but effective “bytes to scan line” calculation routine. So whenever the need for more data grew, it would first grow the picture so it could hold the data (and shrink it again) on demand.
Humble but meaningful
Now 64 megabytes might not seem like much in our day and age, but if you are on holiday and want to connect to your home NAS – 64 megabytes of available ram makes a huge difference. Remember that localstorage only allows between 5 and 10 megabytes.
I should mention that using an image as a buffer makes little sense on a full Windows PC, a Mac or a Linux box. These system will page memory to disk and you will most likely never encounter the 20 megabyte barrier I experienced on this low-end Dell thin client device. But considering that hotels, motels and b&b often have thin clients setup for their customers (read: you) – The Smart desktop has to take height for it.Story highlights Among likely Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton has 69% support over Bernie Sanders' 21%
With black voters, Clinton's has a 77% lead over Sanders, who has 12% support
Washington (CNN) Hillary Clinton has maintained a nearly 50-point lead over Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley in the early primary state of South Carolina, a new poll released Tuesday has found.
A new Monmouth University survey of likely Democratic primary voters in the state shows Hillary Clinton's overwhelming support among black voters.
Overall, the poll found Clinton's support in the Palmetto State to be 69%, a 48-point lead over Sanders with 21% support. Clinton has an even greater lead among black voters, with 77% support over Sanders' 12%. O'Malley has 1% of the statewide Democratic vote, 3% of white Democrats and 0% support among black Democrats in South Carolina.
The findings are similar to a poll released last week from Winthrop University, which found that likely primary voters were leaning toward Clinton with 71% of the vote. She had an even larger lead among African-American voters with 80% support in that poll.
Read MoreDonald Trump has made more than 1,000 false claims since he entered the White House, it has been reported.
They included numerous suggestions that the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—was on its last legs and his repeated assertion that he played a key role in reducing the price of a batch of F-35 fighter jets.
The billionaire's bombastic style and frequent Twitter tirades have steered him into untruth a total of 1,057 times since taking office on 20 January, according to the Washington Post's fact-checking team.
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.
It means he makes an average of nearly five incorrect statements per day, the Post said. He has repeated more than 30 misleading claims at least three times.
Famously, the President started early by claiming several times that the crowd at his inauguration was the biggest ever, when images showed it to be markedly smaller than that at Barack Obama's in 2009.
After only two days in office, Mr Trump's administration became inextricably tied to the phrase "alternative facts", which adviser Kellyanne Conway used to describe the inauguration claims Sean Spicer, then press secretary, had been ordered to make at his first briefing.
More recently, Mr Trump used Twitter to dredge up the long-debunked tale of US General John Pershing, who it was claimed executed 50 Muslim terrorists after dipping the bullets in pig's blood. "There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!" the President said.
The F-35 claim saw Mr Trump take credit for shaving hundreds of millions of dollars off the price of a batch of the next-generation Joint Strike Fighter, which is to be flown from the Royal Navy's new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, as well as her US counterparts.
The President said: "On 90 planes I saved $725m. It's actually a little bit more than that, but it's $725m. And the reason they cut—same planes, same everything—was because of me. I mean, because that's what I do."
But a reduction in price had been announced in December 2016, a month before Mr Trump met with Lockheed chief executive Marillyn Hewson.
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 results of your actions have little to do with what you are actually doing and almost everything to do with your attitude.
Which is ironic because we spend most of our time creating lists and getting organized and listing resolutions about what we should be doing, forgetting that who we are being is much more important.
That's why we're called human beings. Not human doings.
Your life is full of things that you do.
Your business and family and community demand that you do certain things. Some things you are shamed into doing. Other things you do because it makes other people happy or it makes you feel fulfilled or you get paid to do them.
But doing can mask the hollowness of just going through the motions. Mindless repetition. Heartless action.
Which is why your attitude is so important.
If you believe that your best days are ahead of you, then you'll find a creative solution to even the worst circumstance. If you believe that people aren't intentionally trying to hurt you, then you'll tend to give more second chances and receive them. If you believe that you are worth fighting for then you'll find a way to keep going — no matter the effort required.
You can put on a happy face temporarily when you're in front of the right people, but your attitude is what determines the decisions that no one else sees until it's too late.
Your attitude is what ultimately determines if you achieve your goals or if you fall short. You can't fake it. You can't pretend like everything is okay. Your attitude colors the world around around you. It changes the sights and sounds. It makes you believe what you want to believe.
So if what you want to see and hear and feel is hate and fear and frustration then chances are you'll find it all too easily. But if you want to find the brightest parts of the universe around you, then that is what you will find. Your attitude will lead you there.
You will be delighted in spite of troubling times and unfortunate circumstances. You'll find hope and happiness while others mock and scorn.
It's your attitude the determines if you make it or if you just ended up being a loser.
Be a better you.
Watch Below: How To Find Success Under Stress
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// OO.ready(function() { OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer', 'UxM2RrNzp13TjnbhxwUOgl7SLhve0Fiz'); }); //An elderly golfer comes in after a good round of golf at the new course and heads straight to the bar/restaurant area of the club house.
As he passes through the swinging doors, he spots a sign hanging over the bar that reads:
COLD BEER: R15.00
HAMBURGER: R20.00
CHEESEBURGER: R25.50
CHICKEN SANDWICH : R18.50
HAND JOB: R250.00
Checking his wallet |
, and forget about fundamental liberties, and would be more likely to look the other way as a president amassed greater power.
The worst case, of course, would be an Erdogan-like attempt to use a terrorist attack or some other equally dramatic event as an excuse to declare a “state of emergency” and to assume unprecedented executive authority. Bush and Cheney used 9/11 to pass the Patriot Act, and Trump could easily try to use some future incident as a — with apologies for the pun — trumped-up excuse to further encroach on civil liberties, press freedoms, and the other institutions that are central to democracy.
10. Demonizing the opposition.
Trying to convince people that your domestic opponents are in league with the nation’s enemies is one of the oldest tactics in politics, and it has been part of Trump’s playbook ever since he stoked the “birther” controversy over Obama’s citizenship. After he becomes president, will he continue to question his opponents’ patriotism, accuse them of supporting America’s opponents, and blame policy setbacks on dark conspiracies among Democrats, liberals, Muslims, the Islamic State, “New York financial elites,” or the other dog whistles so beloved by right-wing media outlets like Breitbart? Will he follow the suggestions of some of his supporters and demand that Americans from certain parts of the world (read: Muslims) be required to “register” with the federal government?
Again, these are the same tactics Erdogan and Putin have used in Turkey and Russia, respectively, to cement their own authority over time by initiating a vicious cycle of social hostility. When groups within a society are already somewhat suspicious of each other, extremists can trigger a spiral of increasing hostility by attacking the perceived internal enemy in the hope of provoking a harsh reaction. If the attacked minority responds defensively, or its own hotheads lash out violently, it will merely reinforce the first group’s fears and bolster a rapid polarization. Extremists on both sides will try to “outbid” their political opponents by portraying themselves as the most ardent and effective defenders of their own group. In extreme cases, such as the Balkan Wars in the 1990s or Iraq after 2003, the result is civil war. Trump would be playing with fire if he tries to stay in power by consistently sowing hatred against the “other,” but he did it in the campaign, and there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t do it again.
This list of warning signs will no doubt strike some as overly alarmist. As I said, it is possible — even likely — that Trump won’t try any of these things (or at least not very seriously) and he might face prompt and united opposition if he did. The checks and balances built into America’s democratic system may be sufficiently robust to survive a sustained challenge. Given the deep commitment to liberty that lies at the heart of the American experiment, it is also possible the American people would quickly detect any serious attempt to threaten the present order and take immediate action to stop it.
The bottom line: I am by no means predicting the collapse of democracy in the United States under a President Donald J. Trump. What I am saying is that it is not impossible, and there are some clear warning signs to watch out for. Now, as always, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Or to use a more modern formulation: If you see something, say something.
Photo credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty ImagesLondon's mayor Boris Johnson threw his considerable influence behind the push for a British exit from the European Union on Sunday, Feb. 21. (Reuters)
London's mayor Boris Johnson threw his considerable influence behind the push for a British exit from the European Union on Sunday, Feb. 21. (Reuters)
A day after London Mayor Boris Johnson threw a bombshell into British politics by backing a British exit from the European Union, the financial world felt the ricochet Monday as the pound plunged in value.
The British currency experienced a more than 2 percent drop against the dollar, reaching its lowest level in nearly seven years. The sell-off of the pound sterling came as markets reacted to a move that analysts say has raised the odds that Britain will vote to leave the 28-member club when the country votes in a June referendum.
[Boris Johnson backs ‘Brexit,’ boosting anti-E.U. campaign]
“Sterling seems to have fallen off the Boris cliff this morning,” wrote Ranko Berich, head of market analysis at Monex Europe, in a briefing note. “This could be just the start of the great Brexit Selloff of 2016.”
The market turmoil reflected a broader apprehension that Britain could be veering toward an E.U. departure.
The British pound sank against the dollar as the defection of London Mayor Boris Johnson to the "Brexit" camp adds to concerns that a British departure from the European Union is a real risk. (Reuters)
The country is due to vote June 23, and polls have shown the two sides to be virtually tied.
But those surveys were conducted before Johnson, London’s raffish mayor, broke with expectations and announced Sunday that he would defy British Prime Minister David Cameron by backing the campaign for a British exit, or Brexit. The decision instantly gave the “out” campaign a charismatic champion and raised the stakes of the vote.
It also seemed to infuriate Cameron, who was barely able to hide his contempt over the defection during a heated debate in the House of Commons on Monday. At one point, he seemed to be questioning Johnson’s motives for backing Brexit.
“I am not standing for reelection, I have no other agenda than what is best for our country,” Cameron said.
Johnson made his case for Brexit in an article on Monday in the Daily Telegraph, where he depicted the European Union as an out-of-control bureaucracy that was eroding British sovereignty and preventing the public from kicking out “the men and women who control their lives.”
“We are seeing an alienation of the people from the power they should hold, and I am sure this is contributing to the sense of disengagement, the apathy, the view that politicians are ‘all the same,’ ” he wrote.
[What’s a ‘Brexit’? ]
British Prime Minister David Cameron rules out a second referendum on Britain's E.U. membership saying, "I won't dwell on the irony that some people...want to use a leave vote to remain" (Reuters)
If Britain chooses to leave the European bloc, Cameron is likely to come under intense pressure to resign. And Johnson, a fellow Conservative whose popularity far exceeds that of the strait-laced prime minister, would be well positioned to take Cameron’s place.
Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Johnson’s father, Stanley Johnson, denied that his son had made his choice based on political opportunism. It could, said the elder Johnson, be “a career-ending move.”
But it could also be a career-maker — while carrying Britain out of Europe in the process.
[Europe wants Britain to stay in the E.U., but not at any cost]
On Monday afternoon, Cameron laid out his case for backing the “in” campaign during his first address to Parliament since he set the referendum date, at times having to shout to be heard above the din.
Although he didn’t mention Johnson by name, he was clearly referring to him when he said the U.K. would not have a second E.U. referendum if it voted to “leave” in June.
Some people favor voting to “leave” as a way to pressure the E.U. into giving Britain a better deal. Johnson appeared to suggest this idea in his Daily Telegraph column.
“I have known a number of couples who have begun divorce proceedings, but I do not know of any who have begun divorce proceedings in order to renew their marriage vows,” Cameron said in one of his swipes.
A second referendum was “not on the ballot paper,” he insisted.
Political analysts were watching the debate closely for clues on who was lining up on what team, with some suggesting around half of Conservative Party members of Parliament could end up backing Brexit.
By contrast, the opposition Labour Party — my “new friends,” Cameron called them — is relatively united in favor of membership.
Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, dismissed Cameron’s E.U. renegotiations as a “theatrical sideshow,” but told Parliament that the Labour Party was “overwhelming for staying in.”
When it finally came time for Johnson to ask a question — as he stood up, an MP shouted, “Tuck your shirt in, Boris” — the mayor pressed Cameron on how the E.U. deal returned sovereignty to the U.K. Johnson seemed unimpressed with Cameron’s answer, muttering “rubbish” in response.
Until Johnson’s announcement Sunday, the main advocates for “out” were primarily fringe players in British politics.
But the mayor — who has won fans with his bumbling affability — is “the one figure who the political classes calculate could remove the fear factor from the idea of Brexit for the wider U.K. population,” according to Mujtaba Rahman, lead Europe analyst for the Eurasia Group.
In a briefing note, Rahman laid out what he called “the doomsday scenario for Cameron,” in which “the Boris move causes contagion” among the Tory rank-and-file, with hundreds of defections from the Conservative ranks in Parliament.
But he concluded that is unlikely.
“Despite this calamitous weekend for Cameron,” Rahman wrote, “we believe Downing Street will be able to regain control of the debate in coming weeks as it relentlessly refers to the U.K.’s new arrangement as ‘the best of both worlds.’ ”
European leaders strike deal to try to keep Britain in the E.U.
After British deal with the E.U., Cameron races to win support at home
Could Britain ban Donald Trump?Gerald Herbert/AP Images After the rollout of the House GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, many health policy experts and lawmakers scrambled to address just how the new bill would impact coverage for everyday Americans.
The new plan, called the American Health Care Act (AHCA), would roll back funding for the ACA's Medicaid expansion and shift the tax credits that help Americans pay for health insurance.
One effect of the proposals on which many health policy experts — and even some Republicans — agree is that the AHCA will result in a lower total number of people covered than under the current system.
Many health policy experts said the bill, if enacted, would lead to a significant number of Americans losing their coverage.
"Reading through the House GOP bill, it's hard to imagine the coverage loss is any less than 15 [million] versus the ACA," tweeted Loren Adler, associate director of the Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Larry Levitt, senior vice president at nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, agreed with this assessment.
"With Medicaid reductions and smaller tax credits, there's no way the House GOP bill covers as many people as the ACA," Levitt said.
Those assessments could present a major conflict with President Donald Trump's previous vows to present a plan that would cover "everyone." So far, Trump's top health official, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, has said that the administration supports the bill, but also called it a first step.
As Kaiser broke down, the block credits for insurance proposed in the legislation, ranging from $2,000 annually for people under age 30 to $4,000 for those over age 60, would amount to far less than the credits under the ACA and would likely lead to people forgoing coverage to avoid the higher cost. In addition, the current funding structure for Medicaid expansion would be repealed as of 2020. The expansion has led to coverage for more than 11 million Americans that would otherwise not have insurance.
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz told CNN's New Day that it was "fair" to say that the plan will provide more access but less overall coverage, though he said lawmakers are sill "consuming" the elements of the law.
Rep. Kevin Brady — the head of the House Ways and Mean Committee and a key architect of the law — dodged reporter questions on whether the law would cover as many people, instead saying that the law would provide "access" to Americans.
The use of "access" over the guarantee of coverage has long been a Republican argument. The GOP has long touted "access" to insurance rather than promising increased coverage. A report from Bloomberg before the bill was released said that Republican lawmakers and staffers were aware that their plan would likely result in lower coverage totals overall.
This, however, may be a feature, not a bug, as many Republicans have said the mandate from the ACA was forcing Americans who did not want coverage into getting insurance, a point echoed by Chaffetz.
"Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said that they don't want," said Chaffetz on CNN. "So maybe instead of getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars in that, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare."So he called up Seattle’s “spider guy”: Rod Crawford, the UW Burke Museum’s longtime arachnologist and curator of a huge collection of local, preserved spiders.
Did Crawford have any extra spiders sitting around that Greninger could throw in his sequencer? Crawford did. (That was the first time in his 46 years running the Burke’s spider collection that any of his specimens had been used in a virology study, Crawford said.)
Several tubes of spiders went into the virology lab. Six new spider viruses — from six different Washington state spider species — came out.
The idea that we’re all surrounded by thousands or even millions of viruses, all the time, could be mildly terrifying. But to Greninger, it’s inspiring. To him, the coolest part about the millions or billions of viruses that inhabit the world is that they’re like a carbon copy of the evolution of life itself, only much simpler. Viruses have been around since life began, and they’ve been evolving along with their hosts ever since. When the first single-celled creature eventually evolved into two different single-celled creatures, viruses were tucked away inside, quietly changing their own genes to hitch an evolutionary ride.
A fishy mystery
When he was describing his animal virus work, Greninger ticked off his local collaborators on his fingers. There was Crawford, the spider guy. There is also a “moth guy” — David Droppers, a volunteer with the Washington Butterfly Association, who would meet Greninger in the parking lot of the UW hospital with envelopes full of local moths (six new viruses found there too). Most recently, Greninger connected with Dr. James Winton, the salmon guy.
Unlike Crawford and Droppers, Winton is actually also an expert in animal viruses — in this case, fish viruses. He is recently retired from the U.S. Geological Survey and spent his career studying viruses and other pathogens in both wild and farm-raised fish. As part of his job, he helps identify viruses from wild salmon in Washington state when they return from the ocean to freshwater to spawn. This is the point in the fish’s life cycle when they are most vulnerable to infection. Because they die after spawning, the fish put all their body’s energy toward egg production, sapping the reserves used for immune defense.
Local researchers sample some of these fish to survey for any possible emerging epidemics that might affect the local wild populations. Two years ago, Winton and his colleagues had been sent a salmon virus that they couldn’t identify with the techniques they had available at the time. So the test tubes containing that mysterious virus were left sitting in their lab freezer ever since. Through a colleague, Greninger heard about the unidentified virus.
“And Alex had never met an unknown virus he didn’t like,” Winton said.
Greninger, Makhsous and their colleagues sequenced it — “literally like shooting fish viruses in a barrel,” Greninger quipped — and it turned out to be a type of aquareovirus, a virus of a class that Winton had actually discovered himself.
These viruses are typically harmless, although some types of aquareovirus found in China can be deadly to the fish, Winton said. They don’t spread to humans.
The team published a study about the new salmon virus in the Virology Journal in September. It’s more a story of collaboration and new techniques than anything that will affect local conservation efforts, Winton said. Recently, he and other USGS researchers have begun working with the Hutch’s Shared Resources teams to identify and characterize other new fish viruses.
Filling in the viral puzzle
In general, the researchers aren’t in it for the glory of discovering new viruses — of the 50 new viruses they’ve uncovered in the past two years, most haven’t even been published in scientific journals. Their sequences are immediately put in a publicly available database, though, for other scientists to use.
But the work, which Greninger has mostly been conducting on nights and weekends or whenever he can squeeze it in around his busy schedule in the hospital as a laboratory medicine resident, isn’t meant to be headline-grabbing. Rather, it’s about information-gathering.Content: Fortnite
Check pre-order price and availability in your Xbox LIVE region
Game Description: You may pre-download this game, but it will not be playable until release date (07/21/2017 – 7:00 AM).
The Storm came without warning. 98% of the world’s population vanished … then came the monsters. Lead the world’s remaining Heroes in the fight to hold back the Storm. Explore the large, destructible world where no two games are ever the same. Build huge forts, craft exotic weapons, find loot and level up your Heroes. Take on the Storm with four player online co-op. Welcome to Epic Games’ new Action Building game, Fortnite.
There are 4 versions of Fortnite available for pre-order – Click each link for more details or see below.
Xbox One Pre-Order FAQ
Fortnite – Standard Founder’s Pack – Pre-Order now to get a four-day headstart beginning on July 21 and the Storm Master Weapon Pack as an added bonus. The Standard Founder’s Pack includes: Game Access, 4 Exclusive In-Game Banner Icons, 6 Daily Loot Pinata Packs and Exclusive Founder’s Loot Pinata Pack.
Fortnite – Deluxe Founder’s Pack – Pre-Order now to get a four-day headstart beginning on July 21 and the Storm Master Weapon Pack as an added bonus. The Deluxe Founder’s Pack includes Game Access, Rare Starter Hero Pack (8 Heroes), Rare Starter Weapon Pack (Includes 4 Weapons/1 Trap), Exclusive Founder’s Pistol, 10 Exclusive In-Game Banner Icons, 24 Daily Loot Pinata Packs, 4 Exclusive Founder’s Loot Pinata Pack, 5 Immediate Loot Pinata Packs, 10 XP Boosts, 10 Giftable XP Boosts For Friends and 50 Extra Vault Inventory Slots.
Fortnite – Super Deluxe Founder’s Pack – Pre-Order now to get a four-day headstart beginning on July 21 and the Storm Master Weapon Pack as an added bonus. The Super Deluxe Founder’s Pack includes Game Access, 1 Extra Standard Edition For A Friend ($39.99 Value), 2 Exclusive In-Game Defenders, Rare Starter Hero Pack (8 Heroes), Rare Starter Weapon Pack (Includes 4 Weapons/1 Trap), Exclusive Founder’s Pistol, Exclusive Founder’s Chat Channel, 15 Exclusive In-Game Banner Icons, 36 Daily Loot Pinata Packs, 6 Exclusive Founder’s Loot Pinata Packs, 5 Immediate Loot Pinata Packs, 20 XP Boosts, 20 Giftable XP Boosts For Friends and 100 Extra Vault Inventory Slots.
Fortnite – Limited Edition Founder’s Pack – Pre-Order now to get a four-day headstart beginning on July 21 and the Storm Master Weapon Pack as an added bonus. The Limited Edition Founder’s Pack includes Game Access, 2 Exclusive Epic Heroes (for your favorite class), 1 Exclusive Epic Weapon, 2 Extra Standard Editions For Friends ($79.98 Value), 2 Exclusive In-Game Defenders, 10 Extra Backpack Inventory Slots, Rare Starter Hero Pack (8 Heroes), Rare Starter Weapon Pack (Includes 4 Weapons/1 Trap), Exclusive Founder’s Pistol, Exclusive Founder’s Chat Channel, 20 Exclusive In-Game Banner Icons, 72 Daily Loot Pinata Packs, 12 Exclusive Founder’s Loot Pinata Pack, 15 Immediate Loot Pinata Packs, 40 XP Boosts, 40 Giftable XP Boosts For Friends and 200 Extra Vault Inventory Slots.What's Up? Artist(s) 4 Non Blondes Album Bigger, Better, Faster, More! Year Released 1992 Appearance(s) What's Going On?
What's Up? is a song by American alternative rock group 4 Non Blondes. The song was from the band's 1992 debut album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!. The song was also released as the album's second single in 1993. This song also appeared in Sense8
Contents show]
Writing and Background Edit
While being in 4 Non Blondes' album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!, the title "What's Up?" does not appear in the song's lyrics. However, the phrase "what's going on?" is prominently included in the chorus.
The title was altered to avoid confusion with Marvin Gaye's 1971 song "What's Going On."
Appearance in Sense8 Edit
What's Up? was played and sung by all eight of the main cast of Sense8 during the final act of the episode What's Going On?.
The song first started to play after Riley Blue selected the song to be played on her iPod player. Being a Sensate, the other seven in her cluster started to either sing the song to themselves and/or listen to the song within their location.
Lito Rodriguez, while in bed with a sleeping Hernando and Daniela Velasquez, began to tap his foot and sing the song to himself.
Capheus Onyango, while driving to deliver a backpack for Silas Kabaka, heard the song start to play on the radio and began to sing along.
Sun Bak, after training with her punching bag, showered while humming the song to herself.
Will Gorski, while doing research on Nomi Marks, began singing the song to himself.
Nomi, while strapped on her stretcher, sang the song to herself while the doctors and nurses was preparing for her lobotomy surgery.
Wolfgang Bogdanow, while at a bar with Felix Berner and friends, heard the song play while on stage for karaoke and sang along with the lyrics on screen. Kala Dandekar was on the roof of her house the night before her wedding with Rajan Rasal and sang the song to herself.
While Wolfgang was singing at the bar, Kala visited him as well as he visited her on her rooftop as well as in her bedroom the next morning singing the song together.
With the aid of Will's ability to pick handcuffs and Amanita's nurse disguise, Nomi escaped from the San Francisco hospital and drove away in the backseat of a public taxi.
On their way back home, Nomi began to sing the song once again explaining that it was in her head all day. Unintentionally, Nomi then visited Riley, who is still on her hilltop, and began to sing What's Up? with her. Nomi continued to sing until stopping after returning back to the taxi and asking herself, "What's going on?"
Lyrics Edit
Twenty-five years and my life is still Trying to get up that great big hill of hope For a destination I realized quickly when I knew I should That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes When I'm lying in bed Just to get it all out What's in my head And I, I am feeling a little peculiar And so I wake in the morning And I step outside And I take a deep breath and I get real high And I scream from the top of my lungs What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey I said hey, what's going on? And I say, hey hey hey hey I said hey, what's going on?
Ooh, ooh ooh
And I try, oh my god do I try I try all the time In this institution And I pray, oh my god do I pray I pray every single day For a revolution
And so I cry sometimes When I'm lying in bed Just to get it all out What's in my head And I, I am feeling a little peculiar And so I wake in the morning And I step outside And I take a deep breath and I get real high And I scream from the top of my lungs What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey I said hey, what's going on? And I say, hey hey hey hey I said hey, what's going on?
Twenty-five years and my life is still Trying to get up that great big hill of hope For a destination
Trivia EditGreg Sgammato wrote a piece mocking "fat chicks" (or, in his words, "elephants" and "wildebeests") for the Johns Hopkins News-Letter. Now you can see the face of this witty social critic — and his News-Letter partner in crime.
Sgammato's "observations" — "While seeing a hot chick in only her underwear is undoubtedly a treat, seeing a blimp without the welcome shield of clothing is a much worse fate for everyone at the party" — have already prompted a kinda-sorta apology from the News-Letter. See, Sgammato's critique of "fat chicks" for wearing skimpy clothes/going to parties/drinking/existing was satire, even though it wasn't funny, and, as Hortense pointed out, it "isn't too far off from the type of nasty comments that women are faced with regularly in society." For those of us who don't go to Hopkins, Sgammato has been just another obscure source of such comments, named but not known. But now we've decided to post the pictures a tipster sent to us, so you can put a face to Sgammato's name — and to his misogynist brand of humor.
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Above, he's hanging out with some buddies — and wearing your standard-issue smartass collegiate-type shirt, but in given his recent work, it's considerably less amusing (that is, if you ever thought it amusing to begin with).
Below you've got Sgammato with Javier Avitia, author of the insightful Banging under the influence: The ups and downs, also in the News-Letter (highlight: "For guys, the appeal of this is obvious: it cuts out the hassle of having to pretend to care about a relationship and the protocols of a thing called "courtship" if they want to sleep with a girl, it gives them an excuse to think with the other head, and, as many a study has shown, girls become more submissive when intoxicated while men conversely become more emboldened").
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And here are both Sgammato and Avitia with News-Letter editor-in-chief Lily Newman.
Just to be clear, we didn't post these pictures in order to mock the appearance of Sgammato as he mocked those of his fellow students. Think of them more as a pictorial reminder, to college newspaper writers and to would-be opinionators everywhere: don't be THAT guy.
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Update: A commenter tells us Sgammato's t-shirt was part of a Johns Hopkins campaign to reduce drinking, and was handed out in the university quad.
Earlier: Johns Hopkins Student Paper Would Like Women To Know How Fat And Terrible They Are (Updated)
Johns Hopkins News-Letter Issues "Sincere Apology" For "Satirical" ArticleA statement from Madame Tussauds has been causing offence. The world's most famous collection of wickless candles announced: "We proactively encourage our visitors to interact with the waxworks should they so choose." No surprise that caused a stink, you're probably thinking. It's one of the most horrible sentences ever written. Why "proactively encourage" rather than "actively encourage" or just "encourage"? And what's that "should they so choose" doing there? If the visitors have so chosen, you're not encouraging them actively, proactively or otherwise, you're just letting them. That's the opposite of proactive: antipassive, presumably.
That's not why the statement is controversial though. It's because it defends tourists' right to stand beside a waxwork of Adolf Hitler doing Nazi salutes. An Israeli couple visiting the attraction ("attraction" is the word people use, right? Rather than "museum" or "racket". "Attraction" as in: "I really can't understand the…") were horrified both by the fact that there was a likeness of Hitler at all and that people were posing next to it doing fascist gestures. It was their complaint that elicited Tussauds' assault on the English language.
I'm not doubting for a moment the sincerity of the couple's distress. Well, all right, maybe just for a moment. There. It's over now and I've concluded they were properly upset. God knows, they'd just queued up to get into Madame Tussauds on a summer's day in London. They'd be tired, hot and £57.60 poorer. Of course they'll have been disgusted and horrified by what they saw inside. And then, to make matters worse, they notice people saluting next to Hitler's waxwork.
They wrote in their complaint: "We are the grandchildren of concentration camp survivors – the very people that Hitler tried to kill." Of course I can understand why they might consider tourists frolicking with his likeness to be a display of inappropriate levity. But their complaint went further than that, claiming that the Nazi gestures and crying of "Heil Hitler!" were "an unequivocal demonstration of antisemitism and bigotry".
I just don't think that's true. The couple actually photographed two young tourists heil-Hitlering next to the waxwork and one of them is doing the moustache with her other hand. I'm pretty sure that neo-Nazis don't do the moustache. They certainly didn't do the moustache at the Nuremberg rallies. What those kids in the picture are doing, I'm willing to bet, is taking the piss out of Hitler.
That's why I think it's a shame that Tussauds' reasonable response created a stir. Having apologised for any offence caused, Tussauds continued on the subject of interacting with the waxworks: "We absolutely defend the right of our visitors to make such choices for themselves, as long as they behave themselves responsibly." The repeated "themselves" isn't great but I completely approve of the sentiment. And I was disappointed that Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, did not. He said: "I'm appalled at Madame Tussauds' insensitive comments defending such activity, as surely they have a responsibility to ensure visitors behave appropriately and respectfully at their museum."
Respectfully of what? Hitler? Does he think the girl shouldn't have done the moustache? Or does he think Madame Tussauds should ban a specific arm gesture when people are standing next to the Hitler waxwork? Or ban it in general so they can't do it next to Margaret Thatcher, Sting or Timmy Mallett either? After all, Germany has banned it throughout the whole country. What a stereotypically German solution to a stereotypically German problem. Given the chance, they'd ban authoritarianism.
When you ban something like this, you only dignify it with significance. You spoil the harmless piss-takers' harmless fun and you justify fascists in their feelings of oppression. You take a stupid gesture out of the realm of mockery and you give it illicit cachet. Whereas, in general, freedom engenders freedom. If you let people do what they like, human decency usually prevails. Anyone doing a Nazi salute and saying "Heil Hitler" for reasons other than a joke is unlikely to garner sympathy. There are always evil, oppressive forces at work on any society but they'll be found wanting in guile if they come at us goose-stepping and shouting "Sieg Heil!" for a second time. The only thing that could make that seem attractive or worth following, even to an idiot, is if it were banned.
It appears that Lord Janner and I fundamentally disagree on the importance of solemnity where discussion of Hitler is concerned. He seems to think that, since the murder of millions isn't funny, there is nothing to laugh at about the Nazis. I think that's nonsense. One of the attributes of the British of which I am most proud is our reaction to Hitler and his regime: both during the war and subsequently, we've always found them so funny, so ridiculous.
It beggars belief, it is positively hilarious, that a whole country fell so completely in thrall to a posturing little prick like Hitler, who needed no help from our propagandists to look daft. There he is in the footage, making his speeches, all weedy and sweaty and cross – and there are the thousands of people cheering him as if he's Elvis. It makes you laugh like Titania falling in love with Bottom.
It's perfectly possible – and important to our understanding of the human condition – to find that amusing, to laugh at the goose-stepping, the shouting and the pomposity, while simultaneously holding in our heads the tragic murderous consequences of Nazi power. That's what makes the joke bite and also what reminds us that the massive disaster was human.
Churchill got this. It was no accident that he insisted on mispronouncing Nazi as "nar-zee" and referred disparagingly to "Corporal Hitler". He wasn't underestimating the scale of the threat or making light of people's suffering. But he knew it was vital to remember that the evil men who were jeopardising civilisation were also risible little twerps.
Many second world war veterans were accustomed to joking about Hitler. Spike Milligan and his contemporaries founded a comic tradition of making fun of the Nazis which has given us Peter Sellers's performance in Dr Strangelove, "The Germans" episode of Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army, 'Allo 'Allo!, endless YouTube resubtitlings of Downfall and Prince Harry's party gear. Just because the wartime generation has largely gone, we mustn't lose our comic nerve. While we must never forget the scale and severity of Hitler's crimes, we will have lost something precious if we start taking him seriously.A21 slept over last night, and awoke as A22 as it’s her birthday today. Then this morning I’m awoken with the news that S16 had contacted her by Whatsapp.
The whatsapp message merely asked if she knew me, and included my Whatsapp profile picture. I grabbed her phone and got her to block it, then I deleted the message. I explained that some crazy girl had gone through my phone and was contacting everyone on my contact list.
She was distressed and moping, but I fucked her a bit, then went out to spend a little time with S16. I didn’t let on that I knew she’d contacted A22, as A hadn’t replied. I just told her that I really like her, and that it would be sad if she started acting crazy jealous again, otherwise I’d have to dump her.
I get back home to messages from S16 that she loves me, and A22 is in a deep dark funk. I make a few overtures to get her out of her shell, but she’s throwing a “tampo”, meaning she’s completely uncommunicative. I long ago learned how to deal with tampo. There is NO “oh, honey, what’s wrong” from me. If she wants to sulk that has NOTHING to do with my mood. Let her sulk. I did not get sucked in one millimetre.
I did some business, pulling out 14 thick wads of red rupiah from the safe for a transaction, played piano, made business calls and talked to my secretaries, then took a nap, all while she was sulking. After the nap she hadn’t given up and was determined as ever to foul the air with her mood, so I told her to go home. Repeatedly. “I’m serious, if you are in a bad mood, just go home. I’ll see you some other time.”
Finally she opened up and told me that S16 had sent her a text message, asking why she blocked her on Whatsapp, and telling her that she was two weeks pregnant.
Fuck.
Again!
S16 just won’t fucking quit! Nothing I can do can get that girl to back off.
Furthermore A22 invited S16 to come over to my place to meet up.
I know that S16 is at least too afraid of me to do that. She knows I’d physically throw her out of the building if she could get in it, and I’ve told her before that if she ever comes over here again uninvited I’ll never see her again.
So I’m pissed. I’m not apologetic at all. There is no “oh honey, you’ve got to understand, that girl means nothing to me, please forgive me” nonsense. This is full on Just Be Yourself and myself is pissed. Well, with some heavy spin.
I tell her that the girl is lying about being pregnant, and that she had told the same thing to everyone on my contact list months ago. And that it makes me extremely angry that the girl is trying to ruin my life and A’s day. I’m nice to her and for that she tries to treat me like property. I tell her that I’d rather die than let any girl try to own me and bully me into living a life I don’t want to live, and that if I’m ever going to be a couple with someone and be faithful that has to come from inside me, not out of some threat or force. All of which is completely true. I would rather die.
In my irritation I tell her that fuck it I should just dump the both of them. And I’m so irritated that’s what I’m seriously considering. These two jealous young girls, one 1/3rd my age and one less than half, have the nerve to think they can own me and tell me what to do, as if they are my mother and I’m a child. Fuck that noise no more.
So I’m going on and on about how angry I am and all the reasons why, and how no girl will ever own me, when A finally changes her whole demeanour. Suddenly she’s hugging me and kissing me. Suddenly she opens up and tells me that she’s been so angry and frustrated all day because it’s her birthday and she got these horrible messages. Suddenly she’s laughing and we are some sort of couple again.
I ask her to change her phone number so S can’t contact her any more, but she doesn’t want to, so I have her help me to try to block the number, but she deleted the messages and even the phone log. So I do whatever I can to inoculate her from further messages.
“That girl is crazy and is going to contact you every day and will never give |
Research Group (U.S. PIRG), says the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) gave out $18.2 billion from 1995 to 2011 to subsidize four common food additives: corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch and soy oils (hydrogenated vegetable oil). These additives “provide a cheap dose of sweetness and fat to a wide variety of junk food products,” the research group reported.
If the average yearly amount of these subsidies (about $1 billion) over the 17-year study period were awarded to America’s 141 million taxpayers, it would come to $7.58 per person—enough for each of them to buy 21 Twinkies.
When it comes to healthy snacks, the USDA has spent only $637 million subsidizing apples since 1995. That comes out to 27 cents per taxpayer per year, which would buy less than half of one Red Delicious apple.
“At a time when childhood obesity rates are skyrocketing, it’s absurd that we’re spending billions of taxpayer dollars to make the problem worse,” said Anne Ohliger, Los Angeles campaign director for the California branch of the U.S. PIRG.
The consumer group says childhood obesity rates have tripled over the last three decades, with one in five kids aged 6 to 11 now classified as obese.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, Vicki Baker
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Billions in Tax Dollars Subsidize Junk Food Industry (by Eric Pianin, The Fiscal Times)Hundreds of thousands of agency workers could see cut in take-home pay, risking exodus from NHS and other services
Tax changes to be introduced in April could see hundreds of thousands of public sector workers lose up to 30% of their salary, sparking an exodus from already struggling sectors such as social care and the NHS.
According to internal local government analysis seen by the Guardian, planned changes to the IR35 tax system could see agency workers supporting frontline government services lose up to 30% of their take-home pay.
The documents warn that the reforms could lead to many of these workers deserting the public sector in favour of private employment, where the changes will not apply. Experts add that councils may have to fork out additional pay to prevent staff from leaving crucial roles after the changes are introduced on 6 April.
The IR35 changes do not affect employees on the payroll but will apply to agency workers in the public sector, including those in the NHS, councils, armed forces, police, Transport for London, schools and further and higher education establishments. The tax changes will not apply to the same workers doing the same or similar jobs in the private sector.
Local government analysis seen by the Guardian expresses alarm about the changes, warning that the new “two-tier” system could lead to many workers terminating work for the public sector and creating a major skill shortage in critical areas.
Jolyon Maugham QC, a leading tax barrister, expressed alarm at the consequences of the changes: “I was told by a very senior Treasury source that the government wouldn’t have got the proposals across the floor of the house if they introduced them for the private sector too. This change is going to have the effect of driving up costs in the public sector.
“The area where this is going to have the starkest effect is the NHS. Many doctors and nurses are going to seek to work more in the private sector and that’s going to create a problem in the NHS, which as we know is already struggling to fill positions.”
The IR35 tax system, introduced in 1999, is to be changed to require public sector employers to subtract tax and national insurance contributions from agency workers’ pay packets at source rather than allowing these workers to calculate their own tax contributions.
The government says it has introduced these changes because it estimates that 90% of these agency workers are not paying enough tax, leading to a loss of £400m a year to the Treasury.
A petition to parliament protesting about the issue has so far attracted more than 27,000 signatures. Gareth P Rowell, who submitted the petition, said: “This will severely reduce the income of such individuals but confer none of the rights and benefits of a staff employee.”
Neil Lupin, managing partner of Green Park, a recruitment agency providing interim managers across the public sector, said: “There is no doubt that the unintended consequences of these changes will be profound for local authorities and other public sector bodies. New assignments for work inside IR35 are already being priced 15-20% higher. Those costs will place an increased financial burden on the public sector and destabilise the recruitment market.”
Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network said: “This looks like the worst kind of populism by government. It has been badly done and badly targeted. It is not likely to make the tax system fairer and may have adverse consequences. It seems misguided and it is difficult not to think it’s politically motivated.”
An HM Treasury spokesman said: “It’s fair that two people doing the same job should pay the same taxes and these reforms will help ensure that contractors pay the correct tax.”
The government has developed an online tool to help public sector employers calculate which agency workers they need to start deducting tax and NI contributions from at source. However, there have been problems with it and it has not yet gone live.
The spokesman declined to comment on why the tool was not yet available. He also declined to comment on whether or not the government had done any assessment of the implications for public sector budgets and workforce of these changes.The pseudo-amateur webzine Salon tries to wrap around the entire Conservatives vs. Alt-Right question, and invariably gets it wrong, in large part by projecting it’s own ideological framework. They blame the rise of the Alt-Right on conservatives being too ideological and failing due to too high of an ideological purity standard:
“What drives these continual metamorphoses of perception is that for the past 50 years, conservatives have been running on economic and fiscal platforms that are literally impossible to enact. While they have had some opportunities to enact their policy preferences regarding gun rights, taxes and foreign policy, the larger goals favored by the American right have never come to fruition.”
Salon, as does the Alt-Right, conflates policy positions by various and sundry conservatives (and pseudo-conservatives, with the ideological basis for conservatism. Conservatism, at its root in the Anglospheric vein, is not an invented ideology that mandates certain specific policies be enacted; it is the broader basis from which good policies arise.
Indeed, there is much diversity in actual policy proposals. The “Flat Tax” vs. “Fair Tax” debate is one of them. Neither is, strictly speaking, axiomatic “conservative” position. What makes the proposals conservative is that they are derived from the same moral and belief system that the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, but rather have as little impact on people’s lives within the bounds that society is conducive towards that freedom.
This is not to say that there aren’t calls for conservative litmus tests, but such calls are not so much a question of insuring purity according to some per-conceived ideology, but it standing against those politicians who actively help the Left fundamentally transform America, or at the very least do not advance against said transformation when a solid opportunity arises to change things for the better.
Of course, Salon blames this ideological purity quest on conservatives losing due to their being increasingly ideologically narrow and limited in acceptability:
“Instead of adjusting their policy views to more closely track the public’s wants and needs, the conservative elite’s impulse has been to blame ‘the Republican Establishment,’ relying on the patently false pretense that the GOP’s structures of power in Washington are dominated by centrists like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “Conservative leaders tell their followers that these mythical Republican moderates are the true reason the federal budget hasn’t been slashed and burned. But the truth of the matter is that Republican voters, as Donald Trump proved irrefutably in this year’s GOP primaries, don’t particularly care for warmed-over bromides from Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ “This downward purity spiral has made it difficult for Republicans to pursue their national policy goals. It has also virtually wrecked several conservative-dominated states like Kansas and Louisiana, where dramatic tax and spending cuts have yielded dire economic busts instead of booms. It’s has also meant that GOP nominees have won the national popular vote only once in the last seven presidential elections.”
This, of course, is a silly line of reasoning. The Left did not achieve what they did by eschewing ideological goals, but by moving stepwise and “boiling the frog“. Conservatives do not have the luxury of the method, in large part because many of the politicians who claim to “conservative” tend to support moving America to the Left or at least seem not to interested in stopping it. It is this betrayal, perceived or real, that drives many conservatives to demand that politicians explicitly state “true conservative” positions and even to demand they push them when not elect orally feasible. While it has been damaging for conservatives, such effect is due to the circumstances rather than some deep-seated ideology of absolute purity.
It is not because of an ideological drive to mould America into some desired form or function—for that is the modus operandi of both the Left and of libertarians —that drives conservatives, but a reaction to betrayal and weakness. It is a difference between intelligent design of society and the state via ideologically driven policy by the sundry Left and/or libertarians (as well as the Alt-Right), and an evolutionary approach whereby a free and virtuous society will lead to good policy, with policy goals being the perceived good policy thence derived.
The Alt-Right will on occasion even accidentally make the case for conservatism, even though they ultimately will remain ignorant of their own insight:
“Let’s consider your principles. Do you dream of a traditional, religious, free-market society with small government, low taxes, and no gun control, where same-sex marriage is illegal, and abortion, divorce, prostitution, and illegitimacy are scorned? There are such places: the tribal areas of Pakistan and Somalia. “And what about countries that violate your principles – with high taxes, huge government, clogged markets, a weak church, strict gun control, and sexual license of all kinds? There’s Scandinavia. And yet if you had to leave the United States you’d much rather live in Denmark than in Waziristan. “Do you see the pattern? Even when they violate your principles, white people build good societies. Even when they abide by your principles, non-whites usually don’t.”
The Alt-right, much like the Leftists over at Salon, do not get Conservatism.
It is not the implementation of policy, no matter how wise, that builds-up a good society; it is a good society from whence prudent policy flows. It is not a question of race, be it the Left’s anti-White identity politics or the Alt-Right’s pro-White identity politics, but of the social mores, folkways, and traditions that lead to a society with concomitantly both liberty and virtue which we so preciously hold as our civic heritage.
Tweet"A police officer from Dekalb County, Ga. with a history of violent conduct kicked a heavily pregnant woman in the stomach in a recent incident that the officer�s superiors described as within department policy. The incident occurred when officer Jerad Wheeler was called to the pregnant woman�s home to settle a dispute involving the woman�s brother and his partner. When her brother began arguing with the officer, nine month pregnant Raven Dozier said that Wheeler pulled out a taser and used it on him. When Miss Dozier started crying and asking the officer why he was resorting to such actions, Wheeler kicked her in the stomach, arrested her and charged her with obstruction of a police officer. Thankfully, the child was not affected and was born healthy via an emergency C-section two weeks after the incident. The charges against Dozier were dropped. �What kind of a human being kicks a pregnant woman?� said Dozier�s attorney Mark Bullman. �I mean, forget whether or not it is a police officer that is supposedly protecting people.� In his incident report Wheeler claimed that he could not tell that Dozier was pregnant and that he kicked her out of self defense because she was acting aggressively. Wheeler described the kick as �a front push kick to the abdomen, as he was taught to do at the academy.� prisonplanetFive years ago, I’d never have picked the Honda CX500 as a target for custom bike builders. But it’s now rapidly finding favor, being a cheap and reliable platform that can be transformed into a slinky, contemporary custom—as the Wrenchmonkees discovered six months ago with their own CX500. This machine belongs to Dave Mucci, who got hooked on motorcycles three years ago.
“I studied industrial design in Detroit, and in my senior year, I took a motorcycle design class. The instructor was a phenomenal inspiration. He raced time trials in his day, and has a collection of over 60 vintage motorcycles. That class got me hooked: I’ve always been into vintage cars, but since that semester I’ve wanted a vintage motorcycle.” So in March, Dave got himself a CX500.
“It was a 1978 CX500 Standard from a guy in Michigan. I bought it in running order, but immediately tore it down.” Mucci started sketching concepts on his blog: “I wanted it to be two-up, a relatively inexpensive build, and not too pretty. Chicago has a way of destroying everything you love that’s shiny and clean.” For Mucci it was a crash course in motorcycle mechanics, but he found the bike much easier to work on than the cars he was used to.
“I taught myself as much as possible in that three-month period, and aimed to do all the work myself. I’m not yet a good fabricator, and I know nothing about upholstery, so I had Analog Motorcycles help me out with the frame modification and seat pan. The seat I outsourced to Rod’s Designs.”
Mucci finished the build in June, and had been riding his CX500 for only a few weeks when “a lady in a big ole SUV backed into it while it was parked. It got knocked over, putting a big dent in the tank, breaking some controls, bending the levers and denting the headlight. So I ended up having to fix all of that again.”
But Mucci’s pretty happy with the way the CX500 turned out. “I’m hooked for life. I plan on continuing to have a build going in the garage: I’m working on refining my fabrication skills and hope to implement them in my next build—a 1981 SR250 for my girlfriend.”
If this is Mucci’s first attempt at a custom, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
Build Sheet
Chopped and fabricated new seat frame
Custom designed seat
Clubman style drop bars
Posh natural grips
Custom 8″ Cherry Bomb muffler with turn-out tip
Front and rear fenders chopped from a Gold Wing
Dunlop K70 tires
Tank and side covers painted warm metallic gray
Wheels, fenders, forks, headlight and headlight brackets powder coated satin black
7″ Headlight and bucket from SpeedMotoCo.
Headlight mounts and tail light from Dime City Cycles
All gauges removed
Tan DEI exhaust wrap with black plated hose clamps
New stiffer rear shocks, and 20W fork oil
Bike lowered 1″ front and rear
Carbs rebuilt
NOS 70s black pistol grip levers from Japan
EBC brakes
“… and replaced a bunch of OEM parts.”Google on Thursday reported earnings of $9.56 per share on revenues of $14.11 billion, thus missing Wall Street’s second-quarter EPS consensus of $10.78 on $14.4 billion in sales. One reason for Google’s disappointing earnings was its operating expenses, which increased to 35% of its revenues on the quarter from 33% of its revenues in Q2 2012. Google’s cost-per-click on its ads also shrank by around 6% year-over-year, thus putting downward pressure on its total revenues. Although Google’s overall earnings and revenues missed the Street’s consensus, there was an unexpected bright spot on the revenue side for the company from its Motorola Mobility division, which posted revenues of $998 million on the quarter, up from $843 million in revenues it posted in Q2 2012. Motorola continued to have trouble turning a profit, however, as it still posted a net loss of $342 million. In response to the worse-than-expected earnings, Google’s shares sank by nearly 5% in after-hours trading.Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the chairman of the budget committee, told reporters on Thursday that Republicans are eyeing major changes to Medicare in 2017.
Price, who is being floated as a possible Health and Human Services Secretary in the next administration, said that he expects Republican in the House to move on Medicare reforms “six to eight months” into the Trump administration.
Privatization of Medicare has been a central feature of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s budget proposal for years, and the House GOP has voted in favor of it multiple times. Ryan himself said last week that Medicare would be on the table in the new Congress, signaling it could be taken up early in the new year. Price’s comments suggest privatization won’t be part of the first round of legislative initiatives rolled out by the Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress.
Price also noted that Republicans are eyeing using a tactic known as budget reconciliation to make the change. That process allows Republicans to pass bills with a simple majority in the U.S. Senate.
When asked by TPM about timing for changes to Medicare, Price said “I think that is probably in the second phase of reconciliation, which would have to be in the FY 18 budget resolution in the first 6-8 months.”
Republicans plan to tackle the Affordable Care Act in the first budget reconciliation process, which could take place as early as January. Tackling Medicare reform and Obamacare repeal at the same time could prove too high a risk for Republicans who have yet to reveal a clear plan to replace Obamacare with.
During his weekly press conference House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) remained vague about the timing for such reforms, saying only that those discussions are still underway.MIAMI -- The Miami Heat's sluggish play isn't sitting well with LeBron James, who vented his frustration after Monday's practice amid the team's 4-3 start to the season.
"It's simple," James said as the Heat prepared for Tuesday's home game against the Milwaukee Bucks. "These first seven games, we're playing like s--- defensively. It's that simple. We're not a sugarcoat team. We came in and got right down to it. We're terrible on defense, and we've got to change that."
James' comments came on the heels of the Heat's 111-110 loss Saturday to the Boston Celtics, who won on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Jeff Green after overcoming a four-point deficit in the final 3.6 seconds. The shot from Green capped a relentless performance by the Celtics, who took advantage of Miami's lethargic defensive effort throughout the game.
It's already developing into a disturbing trend for the Heat, who are ranked first in the league in offensive efficiency but just 25th among the NBA's 30 teams in defensive efficiency. Miami also ranks among the bottom third in the league in points allowed, yielding 100.9 per game.
The Heat opened Tuesday's practice with some harsh words from coach Erik Spoelstra and then spent the next two hours working to correct defensive concerns. After the workout, James twice used expletives during his session with reporters when asked the source of the team's poor play.
The early-season problems aren't new for the Heat, who were ranked 26th in points allowed through the end of November last season. That slow start eventually gave way to a 27-game winning streak and culminated in a second straight championship.Domestic cats originated in Near East
July 1, 2007 All domestic cats are descended from at least five common ancestors from the Near East, Oxford University scientists and their collaborators have discovered. The new research, published in this week’s Science, also suggests that the domestic cat’s ancestors diverged from the ancestors of other populations of today’s wildcats around 130,000 years ago, far earlier than previously suspected.
The scientists studied genetic material from 979 domestic cats and their wild relatives. Professor David Macdonald, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, who led the work at Oxford University, said: ‘In our studies of mitochondrial DNA from these cats we found five distinct lineages dating back a hundred thousand years prior to any archaeological record of cat domestication. These appear to come from at least five female cats from the Near East whose descendants have been transported across the world by humans.’ These five ‘matrilines’ (lines of descent from a female ancestor) were recruited at an unknown time during the last 130,000 years (possibly at different times and places in the Near East) as founders of the modern domestic cats.
Mitochondrial DNA is unusual in that, unlike chromosomes, it is held outside the nucleus of cells in specialised structures called mitochondria. In mammals mitochondrial DNA is inherited only though the mother, so it can be used to trace the female lineage.
The earliest archaeological evidence for cat domestication only stretches back to 9,500 years ago when they are thought to have lived alongside humans at sites in Cyprus. It seems that cats probably domesticated themselves, attracted by the food source of rodents that developed around human settlements when hunter-gatherers originally settled in agricultural villages in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East. The team obtained samples of contemporary wildcats carrying the ancestral genes from field studies or museums in Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Professor Macdonald, who has worked on cats around the world from barnyard cats to lions and cheetah, has devoted more than ten years to the conservation of the Scottish wildcat – Britain’s most endangered carnivore – which is blighted by cross-breeding with feral moggies. He said: ‘The most exciting thing about these genetic insights from the past is that they offer hope for the wildcat’s future. In Scotland we’ve been striving to find a genetic marker to identify Scottish wildcats, and now we have one. In terms of practical conservation our next move is to use this marker to find out how many wildcats are left in Scotland, work we are planning with Scottish Natural Heritage’.
The Wildlife Conservation Research Unit – known as the WildCRU – specialises in the science to underpin practical solutions to conservation problems. Carlos Driscoll, the molecular biologist who undertook the lab analyses, is a doctoral student at the WildCRU. He found that of 108 putative European wildcats, 28 carried mitochondrial DNA characteristic of the genotype shared by domestic cats and their Near Eastern ancestor – and the only way it could have got there was cross-breeding between domestic cats and their wild European relative.
The 21st-century problem is that such cross-breeding now threatens the existence of modern wildcats. Hopefully the team will be able to use the new genetic markers for wildcats in general, and Scottish wildcats in particular, to assist in their conservation. Professor Macdonald said: ‘this is the sort of result that excites us most: a fascinating biological insight that can be used to help solve a practical problem. And, whatever the future holds, the domestication of the cat to complement human civilisation stands out as one of the most successful ‘biological experiments’ ever undertaken by humans.’
Click to expand...• Forward is entering final year of his contract with no new deal agreed • Sánchez: ‘I have made my decision, now we wait for a response’
Alexis Sánchez has said he would like to play in the Champions League but accepts his short-term future lies entirely in Arsenal’s hands.
The forward, who is entering the final year of his contract and has been strongly linked with a move away from north London, suggested that he has made his mind up about his preferred next step but is waiting for the club to state its intentions.
“The truth is that the decision doesn’t depend on me,” Sánchez, who is on holiday in Chile, told the local Radio Sport station. “I have made my decision, but now we wait for a response from Arsenal. It depends on them, I have to wait to know what they want.”
Arsenal’s presence in the Europa League next season may prove an important factor in the player’s thinking. “My idea is to play and win the Champions League, it is a dream I have had since I was little,” Sánchez said. That could make potential suitors such as Manchester City a more attractive option for a player who turns 29 in December.
Arsenal, Alexis Sánchez and the question of who will blink first Read more
Sánchez is yet to show signs of agreeing a new deal worth around £300,000 a week at the Emirates Stadium, although Arsène Wenger, speaking during the club’s pre‑season tour of Australia, suggested some form of accord may be reached.
“Of course [he will stay],” Wenger said. “There is not a lot to resolve with the player. I have spoken through text and it was very positive. My thoughts are always positive.”
It is possible that Sánchez, who has been given extra time away after playing for Chile in the Confederations Cup, will be required to see out his final year at Arsenal. The club would then stand to lose him on a free transfer next summer, although a successful season could yet lead both parties to make a longer‑term commitment.
Arsenal have already added to their attack this summer with the addition of the striker Alexandre Lacazette and Wenger may choose to gamble that the potential gains from a year combining the France international with Sánchez would offset a potential £50m transfer fee from a rival.Borderlines explores the global map, one line at a time.
Luxembourg is about as cuddly as countries come: prosperous, picturesque and delightfully tiny. At 999 square miles, it is the smallest but one of the European Union states [1]. You could drive its length (55 miles) or its width (35 miles) in less time than it takes to watch a feature-length movie — provided you don’t stop at one of the many touristy villages or vineyards along the way. The capital, also called Luxembourg [2], is a cozy city of barely 100,000 souls; its major problem is not drugs or urban decay, but the apparently unfixable fact that it’s rather boring [3].
Luxembourg is the only country in the world ruled by a grand duke [4], which sounds more like the setup to a fairy tale than a real-world constitutional arrangement. The grand duchy is a founding member of the European Union and NATO [5], and hosts the European Court of Justice, Eurostat (the European Statistical Office), the Secretariat of the European Parliament and other supranational institutions. Luxembourg expects to be listened to and taken seriously by its international peers. And it is: of its last four prime ministers, one went on to become president of the United Nations General Assembly, another of the European Commission, and a third of the Eurogroup [6].
All that from a country less populous than Hanover, Germany’s 13th largest city. It is so small that even tiny Belgium is able to smirk about the grand duchy’s size, replicating the scorn heaped upon itself by its own larger neighbors. Why is Luxembourg so determined to punch above its weight? Could it be that it has a grander idea of itself than its neighbors have? An elevated sense of self is a useful survival tool, for countries as well as people. But Luxembourgers could argue that they don’t have delusions of grandeur, but rather memories of grandeur. Once upon a time, you see, there was a Greater Luxembourg.
Joe Burgess/The New York Times
The state’s roots go back to 963 A.D., when Siegfried, count of the Ardennes, acquired Lucilinburhuc, an old Roman fort with a Frankish name [7]. Over the next few centuries, the House of Luxembourg would choose its wars and wives wisely, and the County of Luxembourg would grow to encompass an area four times the size of the present grand duchy.
Indeed, Luxembourg’s international ambitions, mainly within the vast and chaotic German Empire, are almost as old as the house itself. It produced three Holy Roman emperors, several kings of Bohemia and a fair share of archbishops. Perhaps Luxembourg’s most lasting impression on the empire was the Golden Bull of 1365, a decree that would determine how Holy Roman emperors would be elected for over four centuries, until the empire’s dissolution in 1806. It was issued by Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia [8], who in 1354 elevated his ancestral county to a duchy.
Unfortunately, Luxembourg soon lost control of its own fate. In 1441 Duchess Elizabeth sold it to Burgundy; it later passed into Hapsburg hands and was eventually integrated into the Netherlands as one of its 17 provinces. Lack of an independent dynasty meant an end to Luxembourg’s influence in the world, and it eventually fell under the geopolitical knife. Like once enormous Poland, to the east, it suffered three partitions, resulting in the bonsai nation it currently is.
In fact, the three countries surrounding present-day Luxembourg all own territory that once belonged to the Duchy of Luxembourg, and they all at one point or another demanded its total annexation into their own territory. In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees [9] accorded just over 400 square miles (or 10 percent of its size at the time) of Luxembourg to France, which gained the fortified cities of Stenay, Thionville and Montmédy. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia got the fort at Bitburg, and all lands west of a new riverine border [10], further reducing Luxembourg by 880 square miles (or an additional 24 percent of the original). Part of these lands would go to Belgium after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
But the worst loss occurred in 1839, when the Netherlands accepted the Treaty of London, formally recognising Belgian independence. In return, the Dutch king William I got to keep the eastern halves of Limburg and Luxembourg, provinces which had nevertheless cheered on Belgium’s secession. As a result, the grand duchy lost its western half (1,687 square miles, or 42 percent of its territory at its largest extension) to Belgium, which still has a province also called Luxembourg. William remained grand duke of the eastern half of Luxembourg, establishing a personal union [11] with the Netherlands that would last until 1890.
And of course the country didn’t avoid the horrors of 20th century Europe, either: in the first half of the 20th century, Germany brutally occupied Luxembourg twice, annexing it outright the second time.
Related More From Borderlines Read previous contributions to this series.
That list of unfortunate events would be enough justification for a grand duchy to be brimming with resentment, with local politicians falling over one another demanding the return of the lost territories, a condition common to many once grand nations. But political extremism is a fringe movement in Luxembourg politics —probably so small that it can be identified as that one guy fuming behind his Weissbier in a bar in Echternach.
Instead, Luxembourg has sublimated irredentism, that unpalatable side dish of nationalism, into something much more powerful. Outwardly, the Luxembourgers are the best students of the European class. Their national motto, rendered in Luxembourgish, is: “Mir wölle bleiwe, wat mir sin” (“We want to stay what we are”), a good summary of the folksy, don’t-rock-the-boat conservatism that dominates the political scene.
But the real slogan might just as well be: “We want to become what we were”: European power brokers, as they were in the Middle Ages. Luxembourg is stealthily positioning itself as the central pivot of a new supernational zone within Europe, generically called the Grande Région.
This Greater Region of Luxembourg is one of Europe’s many cross-border cooperations called Euroregions, welding Luxembourg with the Walloon region of Belgium (including its German-speaking area), the French region of Lorraine, and the German states of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate. The Greater Region [12] is much wider than the old Greater Luxembourg, comprising an area of 25,250 square miles and counting more than 11 million inhabitants [13].
Ostensibly only a forum to discuss economic, social, cultural and tourist affairs, the Greater Region of Luxembourg could nevertheless be seen as the inchoate resurrection of an ancient European entity: Middle Francia [14], the centerpiece of Charlemagne’s empire. It’s been a long time coming: While the empire’s eastern and western parts later evolved into Germany and France, Middle Francia — extending in a narrow corridor from the North Sea to the Mediterranean — did not survive its creation at the Treaty of Verdun, in 843 A.D., for very long.
Perhaps this is Luxembourg’s insurance policy in case the European Union goes to the dogs. Plan A is to be the best student in the European class, at which is excels. Plan B is to recreate Middle Francia, but this time as a viable third way between France and Germany. Middle Francia’s undoing was its lack of cultural cohesion. Perhaps the Luxembourgers, fluently trilingual, can turn that defect around to an advantage. And maybe one day, Europeans tired of a superstate dominated by France and Germany will resolutely declare, from Amsterdam to Athens: “Mir wölle bleiwe, wat mir sin.”
Frank Jacobs is a London-based author and blogger. He writes about cartography, but only the interesting bits.
[1] And about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island, smallest of the 50 American states. Luxembourg held the distinction of being the smallest member state until the 2004 accession of Malta, which is only 121 square miles in size, about twice the size of the District of Columbia.
[2] The French and standard international name of the city and country; in German, it is called Luxemburg; in Luxembourgish, it is called Lëtzebuerg. All three are official languages, with French the sole legislative language, German used for fiscal matters and in the press, and Luxembourgish (French vocabulary grafted on a German dialect) deployed in everyday conversations.
[3] So boring that at least one local girl found no way better to spend her spare time than to correspond with an adolescent, pre-famous Morrissey: “Spending warm summer days indoors, writing / Frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg.”
[4] A grand duchy is a rare nomenclature, defining the sovereign territory of a monarch below the rank of king but above that of prince. One of the earliest, and longest-lived, examples is the grand duchy of Tuscany, which existed from 1569 to 1860. Napoleon created a handful of semi-independent grand duchies to solidify his European conquests (e.g. the grand duchies of Würzburg and Frankfurt). The Congress of Vienna, undoing Napoleon’s work, showed a curiously similar predilection for grand duchies, creating a dozen of them in and near Germany. Of these, only Luxembourg has maintained its independence, and its grand duke.
[5] There has been a contingent of about 10 Luxembourgish soldiers stationed in Afghanistan since 2003, integrated with a Belgian battalion tasked with the defense of Kabul airport.
[6] In order: Gaston Thorn (1975-1976), Jacques Santer (1995-1999) and Jean-Claude Juncker (2005-present). The Eurogroup is the council of euro zone finance ministers maintaining political control over the euro currency. Luxembourgers also have their hands on the levers of power across the Atlantic. J. Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007, is a Luxembourgian-American. That same community produced a United States governor (Richard F. Kneip, of South Dakota), an Oscar winner (Loretta Young), a Nobel Prize laureate (the chemist Paul Lauterbur) and a baseball Hall of Famer (Red Faber). For more on this tiny but fascinating community, see the archives of the Luxembourg News of America.
[7] The name was long thought to mean “little fortress,” but the prefix could also refer to a type of fortified promontory known in German as a “Letze.” In the 19th century, Luxembourg’s heavily fortified Bock hill was known as the “Gibraltar of the North.”
[8] Presiding over a Golden Age for Bohemia, Charles is considered father of the nation in the Czech Republic. He founded the university in Prague that is still named after him.
[9] Concluded between France and Spain on Pheasant Island, mentioned earlier in this series.
[10] Which was installed and still operates as a condominium, previously discussed here.
[11] One monarch ruling over two (or more) distinct countries. The personal union between the Netherlands and Luxembourg ended in 1890 when William III left only a female heir. Wilhelmina became queen of the Netherlands, but as Luxembourg followed the Salic Law (allowing only men to the throne), William III was succeeded by Wilhelmina’s distant relative, Adolphe of Nassau-Weilburg.
[12] Banality is an excellent cloak for deviousness. Hence the even more abstract alternate name for this Euroregion: SarLorLux.
[13] Larger than West Virginia and more populous than Michigan.
[14] Its northern part was later also called Lotharingia, after its king Lothair II. Its southern parts included Burgundy, the Provence and the kingdom of (northern) Italy.The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has ordered Google to remove links from its search results that point to news stories reporting on earlier removals of links from its search results. The nine further results that must be removed point to Web pages with details about the links relating to a criminal offence that were removed by Google following a request from the individual concerned. The Web pages involved in the latest ICO order repeated details of the original criminal offence, which were then included in the results displayed when searching for the complainant’s name on Google.
Understandably, Google is not very happy about this escalation of the EU's so-called "right to be forgotten"—strictly speaking, a right to have certain kinds of information removed from search engine results. According to the ICO press release on the new order, Google has refused to remove the later links from its search results: "It argued these links were to articles that concerned one of its decisions to delist a search result and that the articles were an essential part of a recent news story relating to a matter of significant public importance." The ICO " |
for the Dakar Rally in January.
The participants will cover 1991 kilometres in six days, 1441 of them in special stages. "I'm looking forward to this great adventure," Nani Roma said ahead of the World Cup event. "I really like driving the MINI ALL4 Racing on sandy dunes and also on narrow roads. It's a good practice for the Dakar Rally in January. We will do our best to get a good result."
2014 Rally Morocco MINI driver line-up.
#300 MINI ALL4 Racing.
X-raid Team
Vladimir Vasilyev/Konstantin Zhiltsov (RU/RU)
#304 MINI ALL4 Racing.
X-raid Team
Martin Kaczmarski/Tapio Suominen (PL/FI)
#305 MINI ALL4 Racing.
X-raid Team
Erik van Loon/Wouter Rosegaar (NL/NL)
#306 MINI ALL4 Racing.
Monster Energy X-raid Team
Orlando Terranova/Rolando Graue (AR/AR)
#307 MINI ALL4 Racing.
Monster Energy X-raid Team
Joan "Nani" Roma/Michel Perin (ES/FR)
#316 MINI ALL4 Racing.
X-raid Team
Aidyn Rakhimbayev/Anton Nikolaev (KZ/RU)
#328 MINI ALL4 Racing.
X-raid Team
Eddy Chevaillier/Peter van Merksteijn (BE/NL)
FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies: Classifications (Top 10).
01 Vladimir Vasilyev (RU) / X-raid Team 192 pts.
02 Nasser Al-Attiyah (QT) 136
03 Yazeed Al-Rajhi (SA) 120
04 Marek Dabrowski (PL) 99
05 Miroslav Zapletal (CZ) 94
06 Adam Malysz (PL) 89
07 Reinaldo Varela (BR) 56
08 Martin Kaczmarski (PL) / X-raid Team 54
09 Erik van Loon (NL) / X-raid Team 48
10 Orlando Terranova (AR) / X-raid Team 37
Race calendar: FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies.
14/02 â 16/02 Baja Russia
13/03 â 16/03 Baja Italy
06/04 â 10/04 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge
20/04 â 25/04 Sealine Cross-Country Rally Qatar
18/05 â 25/05 Pharaons Rally Egypt
18/07 â 20/07 Baja Aragón
14/08 â 16/08 Baja Hungary
28/08 â 30/08 Baja Poland
03/10 â 09/10 Rally Morocco
30/10 â 02/11 Baja Portugal
PaddockTalk PerspectiveAccording to the U.S. Postal Service, the volume of mail traffic more than doubles to 220 million letters and 6 million parcels per day the week before Christmas, battering a system already weakened by tens of millions of catalogs and advertisements during the previous two months. Telephone calls reach as high as 131 million per day in the month from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, according to AT&T. At many stores and post offices, there are long lines, and costly second and third shifts have to be added to handle them, which consumers ultimately pay for. All of this “peak loading” at Christmas means that airlines, mail delivery, stores, banks, warehouses, telephone systems, roads, and parking lots must be built much larger than if activities were distributed more evenly throughout the year. That wastes precious capital.
Christmas destroys the environment and innocent animals and birds. These have perhaps not been traditional concerns for economists. But when one takes account of all the Christmas trees, letters, packages, increased newspaper advertising, wrapping paper, and catalogs and cards, as well as all the animals slaughtered for feast and fur, this holiday is nothing less than a catastrophe for the entire ecosystem. According to the U.S. Forest Service, 33 million Christmas trees are consumed each year. Growing them imposes an artificially short rotation period on millions of acres of forest land, and the piles of needles they shed shorten the life of most household rugs and pets. All the trees and paper have to be disposed of, which places a heavy burden on landfill sites and recycling facilities, especially in the Northeast.
This year, according to the Humane Society, at least 4 million foxes and minks will be butchered just to provide our Christmas furs. To stock our tables, the Department of Agriculture tells me, we’ll also slaughter 22 million turkeys, 2 million pigs, and 2 million to 3 million cattle, plus a disproportionate fraction of the 6 billion chickens that the United States consumes each year. To anyone who has ever been to a turkey farm, Christmas and Thanksgiving take on a new and somewhat less cheerful meaning. Every single day during the run-up to these holidays, thousands of bewildered, debeaked, growth-hormone-saturated birds are hung upside down on assembly-line racks and given electric shocks. Then their throats are slit and they are dropped into boiling water.
Christmas introduces sharp seasonal fluctuations into the money demand. This makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to cushion the crests and falls of our economy. This is the peak season for people carrying large denominations around, and currency is a popular Christmas gift mostly among employers. The volume of currency in circulation peaks each year in December, then declines by about 4 to 5 percent.
Christmas leads to a sharp rise in absenteeism and a slump in labor productivity that is unlikely to be recaptured the rest of the year. Many U.S. companies shut down entirely for the two-week period from Christmas to New Year’s. For those that stay open, on-the-job performance often plummets because of the season’s wild parties and high jinks. Although there is no precise data on absenteeism, according to Labor Department experts, industries like manufacturing and construction are likely to have lower productivity while retailing’s productivity is likely to increase.
Far from being “the season to be jolly,” Christmas is really the season of sadness and despair. This period’s compulsory merriment, hypercommercialism, heavy drinking, and undue media emphasis on the idealized, two-child, two-parent, orthodox Christian family makes those who don’t share such lifestyles or religious sentiments feel left out, lonely, and even somewhat un-American. And even in so-called normal families, media hype about the season’s merriments often raises expectations and sets up many for disappointment. According to Dr. Quita Mullen, a psychiatrist in Boston, many women in particular exhaust themselves trying to meet both the demands of full-time jobs and the more traditional expectations about what holidays are supposed to be like—provided in part by their (non-working) mothers.
There is also a great deal of emotional stress associated with compulsory overspending and compulsory displays of affection. (Many people reportedly become highly anxious at the sight of mistletoe.) Police, psychiatrists, and hospitals all report that there is a dramatic rise in alcoholic “slips,” drug overdoses, domestic quarrels, hotline calls, and emergency medical calls at this time of year. “Any redolent setting can be very sad for people who don’t have a dancing partner,” says Mullen. “Christmas is one of those times.”
Christmas is one of the most hazardous times of the year. The combination of trees, lights, blazing hearths, yuletide passion, and other indoor festivities results in more household fires at this time of year than any other. The fire department in Washington, D.C., reports that fire calls in December are 40 percent above its monthly average; New York City had 2,800 residential fires last December, as compared with a 2,000-per-month average.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, December is the peak month for drunk driving and “DWI” arrests, which last year totaled 1.8 million. Not surprisingly, it is also the peak month for accidents—because of drunkenness, congestion, and bad weather—with more than 460,000 last year, compared with a monthly average of only 386,000. In just the three days around Christmas last year, 374 people died on the nation’s highways. The only consolation is that last year’s Thanksgiving was even worse, with 402 deaths. Of course, weather is a compounding factor—for most of us in the colder climes, life would be much easier if we could at least agree to observe Christmas in the summer, when the lutefisk is ripe.
December is also the peak month in the United States for robberies. Last year the number reached about 54,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, and it is the second highest for auto theft, with about 136,000. Police suspect that all this property crime is because criminals too are propelled by the need to fill their family stockings. December 1989 had nearly 1,900 murders, a disproportionate share. “Christmas is a crazy season,’’ says Sag Harbor, New York, Police Chief Joseph Ialacci. “It’s a potpourri of emotional extremes—either quiet or all hell breaks loose. There are more assaults, barroom brawls, and family altercations.”
Excessive eating and drinking are used to compensate for the tribulations of Christmas. According to the Distilled Spirits Council and the Department of Agriculture, in the six short weeks from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, this year we will consume $18 billion of alcohol—including 81 million gallons of hard liquor—1.1 billion pounds of turkey, and a huge quantity of ham, cookies, pies, eggnog, stuffing, plum pudding, and other trimmings. All this indulgence does little good for the nation’s waistline: Christmas is one of the single most important contributors to obesity—the average American consumes more than 3,500 calories at Christmas Day dinner alone. Naturally, January is the peak month for diet plans, many of which end up in failure and despair.
Perhaps most important of all, from a purely distributional standpoint, Christmas almost certainly aggravates inequality, since most gift-giving takes place within the family or the same social class, and doesn’t reach the people who really need our help. Salvation Army drum-beating aside, Christmas almost certainly reduces our capacity for charity by draining us of wealth that we might otherwise give to the needy, and of our charitable impulses. This is hardly what the person for whom the holiday is named had in mind.
Overall, the message is clear: Christmas imposes a huge efficiency tax on our economy, is hazardous to our health and safety, and does little to further social justice. And the efficiency tax may well be growing in real terms—an analysis of long-term changes in the seasonality of the U.S. economy suggests that the Christmas buying season has been getting longer and longer. Christmas commercialism, of course, is a modern innovation. The ancient Christians did not even observe the holiday until the fifth century, medieval Christians observed it much more modestly, and the Puritans sensibly refused to celebrate it at all. Only in the last fifty years, with the perfection of mass-market advertising and the commercialization of religion in general, has it become such a command performance.
Modern Christmas is like primitive Keynesianism, a short-run-oriented economic experiment that has been tried and found wanting. It is the flipside of the positive contribution the “Protestant ethic” once made to capitalism—Christianity’s high holiday now almost certainly makes us feel worse off. What is to be done? I suggest an experimental two- to three-year moratorium on the whole affair, to let us pay our bills and recover some of the distance we’ve lost. This may sound like tough medicine to youngsters, and to all the other interest groups that have acquired such large commercial stakes in this annual ritual—from bulb manufacturers to ambulance drivers. But the rest of us can no longer afford it. If we celebrate this holiday at all, we should do so mainly because it is over for at least one more year.Transcript for Hillary Clinton's Health Scare Raises Transparency Questions
Hillary Clinton facing political backlash tonight over what's being called her lack of transparency. After revealing her previously undisclosed pneumonia diagnosis. This after weeks of the Clinton camp dismissing concerns about her health. As conspiracy theories here's ABC's David Wright on how this will impact. The election. It's not just the fact that she stumbled or worse that makes this news word considered the time and place. Ground zero on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11. And Donald Trump both there to project strength and resolve. Worst terror attack ever on American soil an attack that hit close to home for both of them the world. So for Clinton to abruptly leave early without explanation. And then to appeared in nearly collapsed. It's bound to be a very big deal for the boxes of Florida and new questions tonight about Hillary Clinton's health moments ago because of remember parent medical up. So's I just didn't think it would. Going to be that big a deal like. Tonight clear and called in to Anderson Cooper to clear things out. There's a lot of folks are very worried about you how are you feeling. Oh thank you Anderson. I'm feeling so much better and obviously. I should've gotten some rap sooner I probably would have been better off that side. Just hold down my schedule on Friday. But the damage was done. After Clinton left ground zero a took her age ninety minutes to issue a statement that she felt overheated during the ceremony. And decided to head over to her daughter Chelsea's Manhattan apartment. Less than an hour after that she emerged still in sunglasses put all smiles ignoring reporters' questions as though nothing had happened. She even pause to hug a little girl who ran up to greeted. Then cheer for resent her advice. And zoomed home for the rest of the death. Five hours later another state this time from her doctor revealing that she was diagnosed Friday with pneumonia. Now knowing that she has pneumonia. Should she be blogging that child in the streets yet you know there are so many different types of pneumonia and some of them are contagious most of them are not. Even so today senator Chuck Schumer who stood next to her ground zero said Hilo has pneumonia. The campaign sent a number of staffers of the stricken choke the bug. Apparently going around. Clinton now following her doctor's orders hung back on schedule. Katrina tonight like anyone who's ever been home sick from work I'm just anxious to get back out there CU won the trail soon. Today Donald Trump appeared to take Clinton met her word. But I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail. And will will be secured the debate. But for weeks now his campaign has been sowing doubts about her physical stamina. She doesn't have. This drank all of this stamina to make America great again believe me. Oh. Friends letting her persistent cough that flared up again a week ago. Everett to have a thing about drop my allergic. Today given her campaign's shifting stories some tough love from a fellow Democrat. Former Obama strategist David Axelrod treated. Antibiotics. Can take care of pneumonia what's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy. The repeatedly creates unnecessary problems. I think it's clear that the campaign did not handle it well the fallout has been all those questions about her transparency about her honest about her trustworthiness. Good news for Clinton is that the health scare has taken the focus off for comments she made Friday night at a fund raiser you can put. Half of trump supporters and do what I called a basket of deplorable is. They're races sexes homophobic eggs that have followed and it. As Lama fall bag you name it. You cannot run for president. If you have sex content. In your heart for the American vote. And she does. But it's the health care issue now taking center stage and not in the policy sense. Clinton has a history of being less than forthcoming on this issue in 2012 when she was secretary of state. Clinton fainted at home while suffering from stomach bug. Banging her head and suffering what aides first described as a minor concussion. Months later at a Ben Ghazi hearing reporters noticed she was wearing present little prison glasses glasses designed to correct double vision. Only then there's her age revised their earlier disclosure admitting that the concussion was much more serious than they'd previously admitted. Speaking with Diane Sawyer in 2014. Clinton denied any lights throw them so no lingering effect no lingering effects and they can't help. The Republicans have had a field day. GOP strategist Karl Rove among the first to suggest that Clinton. Had suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury is this will be an issue in the 20s16 race and whether she likes and came. We saw. Diet others have taken it even further what honest could be the reason behind Hillary Clinton's bizarre behavior in recent weeks this viral video for instance suggests everything from seizures to STD's. Hillary on the verge of a mental breakdown. That the person has a seizure disorder business Heather David neurological problem. I think that's just nuts but it's not gonna stop people from doing it neither candidate has released full results from a physical both put out short notes from their doctors. And both now promised a more detailed disclosures sometime later this week. Personally as a voter. I'd like to know that a candidate is overall fit too impressed. That they don't have a condition that will impair their ability to carry out that job as a medical professional I know that there are conditions people could have. They will not have any bearing on that they Nino this year with the public I think that's people's right to keep that information private. There's a rich history of presidential candidates can ceiling significant medical problems most Americans had no idea FDR was confined to a wheelchair. Thanks to a complicit press corps who agreed to play down his disability from polio JFK suffered from Addison's disease a condition that can have a serious impact on the body's response to stressed. And of course Ronald Reagan's alzheimer's did not become public knowledge until well after he left office these are things it may have affected the elections. Should the public have known. I don't know. Vice president makes vice presidential vetting that much more important it does make a very important. Hillary Clinton's the most qualified person to run for president as tonight Tim Kaine prayed for Clinton's speedy recovery with questions about her health are all the more serious. Because of the larger narrative about her lack of transparency some. These questions about Hillary Clinton's health and stamina or on the dork reaches of the conspiracy theory Internet. And now is frightened finer in the campaign. Ironically Hillary Clinton has been talking for years about stumble when you're not. Right and back stumbling. Getting back up again goes to the heart of what she says would make for a good president. It's not whether you. You get knocked down that matters it's whether you get back pop. After this episode that challenge is now suddenly. Literate. I'm David Wright for Nightline in New York.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.Motorola has unveiled Project Ara, an open-source initiative for modular smartphones with the goal to "do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software." The company plans to create an ecosystem that can support third-party hardware development for individual phone components — in other words, you could upgrade your phone's processor, display, and more by shopping at different vendors.
Motorola will be working with Phonebloks, which recently showed off a similarly ambitious concept for modular smartphones; the Google-owned hardware manufacturer says that it plans to engage with the Phonebloks community throughout the development process and help realize the same idea with its technical expertise.
Project Ara's design comprises of an "endo" — the phone's endoskeleton, or basic structure — and various modules. The modules "can be anything," says Motorola, giving examples ranging from a new keyboard or battery to more unusual components such as a pulse oximeter.
"We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software."
The company will be reaching out to developers to start creating Ara modules, and expects the developer's kit to be released in alpha this winter; interested parties can sign up to be an "Ara Scout" now.Doors expected to open at 10:15 a.m.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks about her approach to defeating the Islamic State terrorist network in Syria, Iraq and across the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday in New York City. ( Seth Wenig / AP )
Hillary Clinton's campaign announced the Democratic candidate for president will hold a public event Tuesday at the Boulder Theater.
According to an invitation sent to supporters, doors are set to open at 10 a.m. Tuesday for a meeting to discuss " the issues that keep Coloradans up at night and how she'll address them as president." Clinton is slated to take the stage at 11:30 a.m.
The event is free but people wanting to attend are asked to RSVP at hillaryclinton.com/events/view/?id=898481. The Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., can accommodate between 850 and 1,000 for public events, according to its online rental guidelines.
Boulder police spokeswoman Shannon Cordingly said Thursday the department was working in concert with the U.S. Secret Service in coordinating security efforts for the visit.
Clinton also is set to appear at a previously announced private fundraiser on Tuesday at the Boulder home of Jennifer and Mo Siegel, founder of Celestial Seasonings.
That event is scheduled for 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. and her campaign is asking for a $2,700 donation from those who attend.
The former U.S. senator and secretary of state is running for the Democratic nomination for president. Colorado's Democratic caucuses are March 1.
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Clinton will be the third Democratic presidential candidate to visit Boulder this fall. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke to some 9,000 people on the CU campus Oct. 10. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley visited the campus Oct. 28, the same day that CU hosted 14 GOP presidential candidates in a debate presented by CNBC at the Coors Events Center.
The former first lady's visit will come fresh on the heels of a sobering report on her prospects in Colorado.
A new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed the Democratic front-runner for the 2016 presidential race trailing the top three leading Republican contenders by 11 percentage points or more in Colorado, which is again expected to be a pivotal swing state.
In that poll, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio led Clinton 52 percent to 36 percent, which was the biggest gap. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson would also win a head-to-head matchup, the poll indicated, boasting a 52 percent to 38 percent advantage over Clinton. Donald Trump had a 48 percent to 37 percent edge over Clinton in that same poll.
Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, termed the results a "chilly if not frigid reception" in Colorado for Clinton.
Within the Democratic field, however, Clinton's picture is far more rosy in the Quinnipiac poll. Clinton leads the pack in Colorado with 55 percent, followed by Sanders with 27 percent, O'Malley at 2 percent, with 15 percent undecided.
Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennanBody control is all the rage. A popular want is increasing active range of motion. People want to get there so they can do stuff there. Functional Range Conditioning uses slow, controlled movement to examine individual joints, build capacity in areas of weakness, and reincorporate them into larger, more able movement patterns. The system works so well that people can happily linger within it as their primary form of practice.
Taken in the context of a larger goal, strength fits very nicely into mobility work. It undoes all the excessive tightness lifting load and adding volume compounds. Within the system, you can add resistance neurologically by performing CARs ‘through thick fluid’. PAILs and RAILs expand useable end range. Lift Offs and Passive Holds build strength in those newly acquired ranges. Kinstretch combines everything into a full, exhausting workout. The process, like many aspects of strength training, is deliberate and unhurried, full tension and controlled.
Isolating, then progressively loading joints into integrated patterns, prepares the body for a broader context of movements:
Training protocols that agree in the way they are performed feed into and reaffirm one another. Range of motion that is attained through slow, controlled tension results in greater strength produced by slow, controlled tension. Could a truer analysis of effectiveness be found by pairing two opposing practices? Speed, by nature fast, less composed, and more elastic, may be an even more telling test of resilience.
Capacity can be measured by control, but it can also be measured by adaptability. Dynamic work pushes the boundaries of known competency. It challenges confident joints developed through static work to perform familiar tasks in an unfamiliar manner. The ability to perform fast what you can perform slow is an extension of control.
Joints react to muscular work when used dynamically. They are asked to move through an elastic chain of command, instinctively over intentionally. It simulates a realistic stressor. Less time and more momentum assesses how the tissues can be used in a more dynamic capacity. The goal would be to match the range of motion found/ gained under slower, more cautious and calculated conditions.
The most reasonable place to start this inquiry is the prescribed entry point to the system, Controlled Articular Rotations.
The following are examples of how to integrate dynamic work into glenohumeral and knee CARs:
It may go without saying, but I’d only attempt ‘Speed CARs’ on CARs that you have solid experience with, are pain-free, and have adequate range of motion. If any range of motion is lost between the two or pain appears, you know the joint isn’t as prepared as you hoped it to be.
From here you can branch out into novel movements, minimizing load to account for greater velocity. The more foreign a movement is, the more it can teach you about deficits in coordination and motor control:
A problem arose. Dynamics help us tease out undiscovered weaknesses AND offer up another form of problem solving. In the example above, I assumed a scapula unable to retract in a dynamic manner led to comparative dysfunction in my left side. Accordingly, I set out to purposefully bridge static control with some plyometrics:
Speed is the one kept constant throughout the Functional Range Conditioning System. Slow is analogous with control but perhaps this binding tie is also limiting. Movement skills are essentially an application of movement confidence. Without dynamic practice and success, can we really believe we are prepared to #DoAnything?Tory MP Zac Goldsmith has been accused of "smearing" Jeremy Corbyn after accusing the Labour leader of supporting "radical Islamists".
The former London mayoral hopeful made the controversial claim on Twitter as he took a swipe at Donald Trump for re-tweeting anti-Muslim videos posted by the far-right group Britain First.
The Labour leader has come under fire for attending meetings with representatives of Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas, and describing them as “friends”.
Mr Corbyn has since said he regrets using the word, but stressed that he was working to facilitate a peaceful dialogue on the Middle East.
But Mr Goldsmith himself has been the subject of fierce criticism after repeatedly trying to link Sadiq Khan to extremism during last year’s mayoral election campaign
The head of the Conservative Muslim Forum, Mohammed Amin, said he had been “disgusted” at Mr Goldsmith’s tactics, while former minister Baroness Warsi described the campaign as “appalling”.
Hitting back at the Richmond Park MP, a Labour source told PoliticsHome: "Zac Goldsmith disgraced himself last year with a racist, Islamophobic campaign based on smears.
"He should take a long hard look in the mirror before smearing his opponents again."
Mr Trump's re-tweets have sparked a trans-Atlantic row, with a spokesman for Theresa May saying he had been "wrong" to endorse Britain First.
But the president hit back overnight, insisting the Prime Minister should instead "focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom".A spiny acritarch imaged via synchrotron X-rays. (John Cunningham/University of Bristol)
The rocks of the Doushantuo Formation, in China's Guizhou Province, are sprinkled with tiny, ancient fossils. They are no more than a millimeter in length. The 600-million-year-old organisms are preserved with such detail that the fossils, when freed from the rock in a chemical bath and scanned with X-rays, reveal not only individual cells but possible cell nuclei. Some fossils are jagged and round, like wizened Koosh balls. Other orbs, among the most intriguing specimens, are split by Y-shaped seams.
When viewed from the side, the cellular clusters look a bit like pie sliced in thirds. When viewed by biologists, the clusters also look a bit like animal embryos, frozen in time.
“If they are animals, they’d be the oldest animals in the fossil records,” said John Cunningham, a paleobiologist at the University of Bristol in Britain. Cunningham is not convinced that the organisms, known as the Weng'an biota, are indeed ancient animals. In a report published Wednesday in the Journal of the Geological Society, Cunningham and his co-authors examined the best evidence for and against the case that the fossils are from animals. Their answer is: They don't know.
Ancient trilobites and other scattered specimens provide convincing evidence that animals lived 530 million years ago. Given what scientists know about the rate at which organisms branch off from common ancestors, the first animals should appear in the fossil record about 70 million years or so before those creatures — right around the time of the Weng'an biota.
Timing alone, though, isn't sufficient evidence. Nor are the Y-shaped seams. Algae cells also grow Y junctions, noted the authors of the new report. “It seems that none of the characteristics which have been used are unique to any kind of animals,” Cunningham said.
A possible embryo, with what may be nuclei in yellow. (John Cunningham/University of Bristol)
“This is a good study that summarizes the current'state of the art' on Weng'an fossils,” said David Bottjer, a paleontologist at the University of Southern California who has been studying the region's fossils since 1998. When paleontologists first described the fossils in the late 1990s, they suggested that the Weng'an biota were animals. “It is fair to say that this has been disputed since then, as no'smoking gun' for animal fossils has emerged,” said Bottjer, who was not involved with the new paper.
Shuhai Xiao, a professor of paleobiology at Virginia Tech who was among the first wave of researchers to study the Weng'an biota, expressed doubt about the algae explanation. There’s no good evidence that these fossils are photosynthetic, Xiao said, in the way that algae are. Though some species of algae grow in balls, these clumps are hollow; cells caught in the center wouldn't get enough sunlight to survive. The clusters of Weng'an biota are solid, full of cells.
Xiao maintains that an animal origin, though not definite, is more likely than the new paper suggests. “But I think that’s okay,” Xiao said. “It’s hard to interpret things that are more than half a billion years old.”
While scientists debate if the fossils are embryos, the specimens face a threat worse than uncertain taxonomy: bulldozers.
Twenty years ago, when Xiao was a graduate student, the land around the Doushantuo Formation was green and beautiful. Xiao returned two years ago to collect more samples. “Now it’s very ugly,” he said, turned gray by trucks and quarry machinery. The site is rich not just in fossils but also in phosphate, used as raw material to produce fertilizer.
Xiao said that the mining operation had already destroyed the aboveground outcroppings. To find a continuous section of rock from which to collect samples, he relied instead on the walls of mining tunnels. But because the tunnel network risks collapse, the miners plan to fill the holes with loose rock, he said, also sealing away the fossils.
“They’re being quarried at a really massive rate,” Cunningham said. “If they’re all quarried out it would be very sad. The chance to find more fossils from this deposit would be lost.” Chinese paleontologists and others around the world have petitioned the Chinese government to curb the mining operation, though one researcher told Science magazine in April that a third of the fossil sites are already gone.
By using advanced techniques like synchrotron X-ray machines — akin to medical CT scanner, but meant for much smaller targets — scientists can wring more information from fossils already collected. But there remains one question best answered by a continued hunt: If these are indeed animal embryos, might adults exist in the deposit?
The answer, again, is ambiguous. Perhaps the eggs sank to the bottom of the ocean, where conditions favored their fossilization over the preservation of squishy, free-swimming adults. But scientists like Xiao are optimistic that there are new discoveries waiting in the rocks.
“Despite its importance, there have been relatively few studies of the Weng'an biota,” Bottjer said. “So, there is every reason to think that future studies will turn up additional evidence for the existence of animal life, including larvae and adult specimens.”
Read more:
This strange fossil may show an early stage of animal life
Did you know Earth had a boring phase? Neither did these huge fossils.
Newfound 3.77-billion-year-old fossils could be earliest evidence of life on Earth
The oldest known relative of dinosaurs was a total freak, experts sayA Dutch electronics company has developed a new smartphone that’s free from the questionable mining and manufacturing practices that tech giants like Apple and Samsung have found themselves mired in for years. And they say you can fix and upgrade them yourself, which means they’ll last a whole lot longer than your typical iPhone.
Having already sold 60,000 Fairphones over the past two years, manufacturer Bas van Abel plans to release a second iteration this year that improves on the life of the device, and is built using fair-trade materials including tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold ('3TG' collectively).
Smartphones are awesome, but boy, do they leave their mark on the environment; labourers in developing countries; and yes, occasionally our sanity. Each year in the US, around 130 million of them are thrown out, 89 percent of which end up in landfill. Included in this waste is a fair chunk of what’s known as 'conflict minerals’.
Conflict minerals are used to produce 3TGs, all of which are important materials for use in the production of smartphones. The problem is that the majority of these minerals are sourced in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a number of war-torn countries that surround it, which allows valuable 3TGs to end up in the hands of violent warlords and militia groups. And then there’s the questionable factory labour practices used to construct smartphones in countries like China and Taiwan, the BBC recently reporting that the employees were "treated like prisoners".
While Apple and Samsung are now publicly committed to improving things, Bas van Abel is offering a phone that’s 100 percent free from all of that dodginess. Ben Schiller breaks down the best bits of the new version, the Fairphone One, over at Fast Company, saying that while the previous iteration included parts that had been licensed from several manufacuers, Bas van Abel is taking even more control this time around and is designing every aspect of the device itself using 3TGs that have been ethically sourced.
To make the phone more long-lasting than the ones we’re used to, the team at Bas van Abel make the guts of it completely accesible, which means the user can get in there and fix a malfunctioning part, instead of throwing the whole thing away. "We made a phone that people can open, so they can change parts themselves. If they can take care of it, they are probably going to use it longer," Van Abel told Schiller.
Yep, that means no more infuriating visits to the Apple Genius Bar every time the tiniest thing goes wrong with your smartphone. Rejoice!
The not-for-profit company donates to the phone recycling company, Closing the Loop, with every Fairphone unit sold, and seems to be genuinely interested in sending a message to the industry, rather than making a fortune. "We want to attract people who understand that you have to be an active player to make something like Fairphone possible,” says Van Able. "If we can make fairer products, we can create space for the big guys to scale their ethical business as well."
The Fairphone One will go on sale in Europe later this year, and in 2016 in the States. Good on them, we hope they can make a difference.At the same time that California has become the poster child for states with budget deficits, the Los Angeles City Council is moving to shut down one of the bright spots in the local economy — medical marijuana dispensaries.
The issue is NIMBY, not morality or a drug warrior mentality, per se.
In 2004, there were just four clinics filling pot prescriptions in the city. Today, there are over 700. The problem is that this boomlet has occured despite a moratorium imposed by the city in 2007 that would have limited the number of pot shops to 186.
Now the city council is signaling it will begin closing down the shops, despite the fact that they provide employment and generate tax revenue at a time when over 1 million Los Angeles County residents are unemployed and schools are cutting programs because of budget deficits:
The city clerk has notified 14 dispensaries that their requests for exemptions from the moratorium will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday. Most, if not all, are likely to be denied on the grounds that they were not registered with the city by the moratorium’s deadline in 2007. A denial would allow the city’s code enforcement bureau and the city attorney to take legal steps to force them to shut down.
The issue is NIMBY, not morality or a drug warrior mentality, per se:
“The city of L.A. has failed us on this issue,” said Michael Larsen, public safety director with the neighborhood council in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood with a heavy concentration of dispensaries. “There’s a huge loophole. L.A. city’s not watching. L.A. city’s not enforcing.” On Tuesday the City Council’s planning committee sent a motion to the council to get rid of the hardship provision, but it could be weeks before the motion becomes law. Committee chairman Ed Reyes said he had not brought up the hardship applications for review because he expected that the city would soon pass a permanent medical marijuana ordinance. The City Council, which approved the moratorium in order to give it time to write a comprehensive ordinance, has |
playthroughs.
Full Time Game Development : I will quit my job (!) and work full time on Approaching Infinity for 6 months. This level will see an extremely polished, complete, feature-rich game.
Also includes an ASCII Tileset at no additional charge! Amaze your friends with the proof that your imagination has the best graphics ever!
More Alien Races : I will expand the number of alien races in the game to 16, and give each a new major quest line. These races will be created based on YOUR suggestions!
Full Time Game Development, Level 2 : I will work full time on game development for ONE YEAR! I will also release a DLC pack at the end of that year for Approaching Infinity, further expanding your options.
So please, watch the video, Play the Game, and choose a reward level that lets you contribute a little bit of your own unique personality to an awesome adventure!
Thanks!
Here's something Virtual Nomad put together, of some of the things he found in the game. I just found this posted on a forum page. Super Awesome Dude!Saudi Arabia's 9 million migrants have long had second-class status in the Gulf Kingdom where a kafala system ties foreign workers to specific employers, who are able to forbid them from changing jobs and prevent them from leaving the country. The kafala system, which is used by all Gulf states except for Iraq, has faced widespread condemnation from the international community for creating slave-like conditions for migrant workers.
Many of the detainees that HRW spoke to, including those who handed themselves in voluntarily, reported being held in cramped unhygienic detention centers that lacked basic amenities such as beds, water, food, and medical care. While Yemeni detainees were typically deported within a day or so, migrants from other countries were often kept for weeks or even months waiting for an exit visa.
Since the crackdown began in April 2013, more than half a million of Saudi's estimated 2 million undocumented workers — mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen — have been detained and deported. Since November last year migrants have been deported at an average of 2,000 per month.
The 36-page document details a catalog of human rights violations including violent attacks by vigilante groups, squalid and overcrowded conditions at migrant detention centers, and severe physical abuse of detainees by guards.
An unprecedented two-year long deportation campaign on undocumented migrant workers in Saudi Arabia has involved widespread and "serious abuses," said US NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a report released on Sunday.
Read more
An unprecedented two-year long deportation campaign on undocumented migrant workers in Saudi Arabia has involved widespread and "serious abuses," said US NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a report released on Sunday.
The 36-page document details a catalog of human rights violations including violent attacks by vigilante groups, squalid and overcrowded conditions at migrant detention centers, and severe physical abuse of detainees by guards.
Since the crackdown began in April 2013, more than half a million of Saudi's estimated 2 million undocumented workers — mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen — have been detained and deported. Since November last year migrants have been deported at an average of 2,000 per month.
Many of the detainees that HRW spoke to, including those who handed themselves in voluntarily, reported being held in cramped unhygienic detention centers that lacked basic amenities such as beds, water, food, and medical care. While Yemeni detainees were typically deported within a day or so, migrants from other countries were often kept for weeks or even months waiting for an exit visa.
Saudi Arabia's 9 million migrants have long had second-class status in the Gulf Kingdom where a kafala system ties foreign workers to specific employers, who are able to forbid them from changing jobs and prevent them from leaving the country. The kafala system, which is used by all Gulf states except for Iraq, has faced widespread condemnation from the international community for creating slave-like conditions for migrant workers.
Related: World Cup Host Qatar Pledges to Improve Dire Labor Conditions for Foreign Workers.
Speaking about his 57-day detention Mohammed, a deportee from Somalia, told researchers there was so little food in one center that inmates fought each other for it. There were only two toilets for more than 1,200 people, including dozens of children, he said.
Another woman from Somalia described how she and her two young sons were held in an "extremely hot" room with around 150 people for more than a week. "My son was vomiting and his stomach was extremely bloated," she told HRW. "There were no mattresses, people just slept on the floor."
Beatings and verbal abuse of detainees were also reported to be commonplace. Nagi, a 57-year-old Yemeni agricultural worker, told researchers that he witnessed a detention center guard beat around 20 men with a cable, while telling them "dogs are better than you."
Sadiyo, a Somali woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, reported being beaten across the back with a baton by a Saudi policewoman while waiting in line at the airport, before giving birth in the aircraft's cabin during the flight back to Mogadishu just hours later.
Related: Man Who Filmed Woman's Public Beheading in Saudi Arabia Reportedly Arrested
The severity of ill treatment in detention centers meant several migrants had to seek medical treatment once back in their country of origin. The International Organization for Migration in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, said that it had treated many returnees for psychological and physical trauma as a result of prolonged detention in substandard conditions. One health worker told HRW she treated a one-year old boy, held with his father for a month, for diarrhea, malnutrition, and anemia.
Adam Coogle, one of HRW's researchers who interviewed Yemeni migrants at the Saudi border, described their condition as destitute. "These guys really had nothing," he told VICE News. "They'd had their phones confiscated, whatever possessions they had were taken. They had absolutely nothing left,"
HRW has also criticized a lack of official investigations into citizen-led violence against migrants since the crackdown began, including one incident where a crowd of vigilantes "armed with sticks, swords, machetes, and firearms" allegedly attacked foreign workers, while police either stood by or joined in. At least three Ethiopians are thought to have been killed by the lynch mob.
Coogle called the crackdown and recent violence against migrants in the kingdom unprecedented. "There is also a risk that some of those being deported are being sent back to places such as Mogadishu where they face yet further abuses," he added, noting that Saudi Arabia currently had no formalized system for making asylum claims.
Follow Harriet Salem on Twitter: @HarrietSalemJalen Rose already stole the thunder (pun intended) this off-season with some very bold predictions for the 2014 NBA season.
HoopsVibe's Very Quick Call: You want to put your money on something no one else will? Keep reading and thank me later.
In Grantland’s NBA team previews, Jalen first predicted Michael Jordan to make a comeback at age 50—something HoopsVibe’s Joseph Sobczyk analyzed in more detail. Then he followed it up with a two-part explosion in the Thunder preview: Durant will leave OKC and join his buddy, James Harden, in Houston…and Westbrook will leave for LA to join fellow UCLA alumnus Kevin Love on the Los Angeles Lakers.
Okay, so maybe I can’t predict something quite as bold as that—but here are some predictions for the 2014 NBA season that might surprise you:
5. Dwight Howard will make more than 60 percent of his free throws
The last time that Howard made more than 60 percent of his free throws was back in his rookie year…and he’s been on a steady decline since then. Every Laker fan will woefully recount his sub-50 percent shooting from the line in 2013. But with Kevin McHale and Hakeem Olajuwon helping Dwight work on his game, there might be some room for the former Defensive Player of the Year to show Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that his potential has not reached a “shelf-life.”
4. Greg Oden will play in at least 40 games
The last time that Oden played in the NBA was the 2009-10 season and the last time he actually played a full season was the year prior, 2008-09 (61 games). There’s a lot to wonder about the man who’s probably too big for his own body, but somehow LeBron James and the Miami Heat have shown that they can find something of value in players who other team give up on (see Chris Anderson).
3. The Oklahoma City Thunder will not be a top-three seed in the West
I am a huge believer in Kevin Durant. There is no doubt in my mind that he is the second best player in the NBA and probably the best scorer in the game. You shouldn't be able to do what KD can do at 6'11''. But there's this one thing nagging on such a great player, and it happens to be his teammate. Russell Westbrook has taken more shots than Kevin Durant for the past two season and I find that utterly ridiculous. A three-time scoring champion is not taking the most shots on his team. It's laughable.
I think Durant bails on OKC at the end of his contract (like Jalen Rose predicted) because of Westbrook, even though he would never say that. But he can't leave just yet, but he will endure a year that is not on-pace with the rapid growth that the Thunder had accumulated over the final years that James Harden was on the team. And I will continue to say that Kevin Durant cannot win a championship with Russell Westbrook.
2. Andrew Bogut will be a top-three center in the NBA
After recently signing a three-year extension worth up to $42 million, the Warriors have a big man that they can rely on…if he stays healthy. To his credit, both of his major injuries were flukes—not the type of thing that you worry about on every twist or tweak (unlike his teammate, Steph Curry). Now whether you take this prediction to Vegas or the best basketball betting odds at 888sports.com is up to you but I think Bogut will shine in his first healthy year in a long time and prove that he is well worth that extension. If he can improve his free-throw shooting, he might even jump ahead of Dwight Howard and/or Marc Gasol.
1. LeBron James and the Miami Heat will win a third consecutive NBA championship
This may not come as much of a surprise to people, but even NBA.com writer Sekou Smith said that he’s taking the field over the Miami Heat. I’m sticking with my guns for this year, however, because it’s hard to bet against the best player in the game, LeBron James. Even if Dwyane Wade isn’t the Flash he usually is, LeBron (and Bosh) can make up for any deficiencies. I’ve been two-for-two in predicting the 2012 and 2013 NBA champions with my pre-season picks, and I’m taking Miami again in 2014.
The scary thing about this is that another Finals MVP puts LeBron without question in the conversation for top-five greatest players of all time.
For more info, updates, and NBA gossip follow @HoopsVibe.
Photo credit: Wenn photo databaseThus, what you are about to read takes us to “the frontiers of historical imagination” (to borrow a phrase from Kerwin Klein) and serves as a reminder that for all we know about the Civil War, there is still plenty that we do not—and can never—know. To prepare us for this journey, James McPherson has graciously provided this commentary on Hacker’s work. [End Page 308]
As readers will soon discover, the practical answer is no. The use of the most sophisticated tools of quantitative analysis can certainly overturn what was once accepted wisdom, but, in the final analysis, they can only provide us with a probabilistic range of excess male deaths during the 1860s. 1 In a very real sense, however, fixating upon a precise number obscures the actual meaning of the numbers, as scholars such as William Blair, David Blight, Jane Turner Censer, Drew Gilpin Faust, Barbara Gannon, Caroline Janney, Stuart McConnell, and John Neff have clearly established the central roles occupied by loss and trauma in postbellum America. By placing the Civil War’s enormous death toll at the center of the postwar world, this generation of scholarship forces us to stop and reconsider the war’s meaning for period Americans. And since, as Hacker implies, the majority of the uncounted dead were likely southerners (thanks to deficiencies in Confederate record-keeping and the troubled postwar condition of the south), the “ghosts of the Confederacy” now seem more numerous and persistent than ever. In terms of the scale of the carnage, Richmond in 1865 was Paris in 1918.
As an exercise in the recalculation of a statistic, “Counting the Civil War Dead” might be regarded by skeptics either as a form of what Thomas Kuhn [End Page 307] described as “normal science” or as a misleading evocation of numeracy that belies the constructed nature of statistics. Such readings, we believe, miss the mark. “Counting the Civil War Dead” does more than modify a hoary bit of Civil War trivia; instead, it implicitly asks us to consider several questions that lie at the heart of the modern historical enterprise. How do “facts” emerge and become accepted by the profession writ large? How does the inevitably limited nature of historical evidence constrain our thinking about the past—and can we ever transcend these limits? Simply put, can we ever count the Civil War dead?
For more than five decades, Civil War History has served as the leading venue for scholarly publications on the Civil War era. Even in light of this impressive run, the editors of Civil War History feel that the following contribution by J. David Hacker of Binghamton University, SUNY, stands among the most consequential pieces ever to appear in this journal’s pages. Hacker, a specialist in quantitative methods, has utilized recently released microdata samples from nineteenth-century censuses to examine one of the archetypal “facts” about the Civil War—the oft-cited total of 620,000 plus deaths. Through a comparison of male survival rates between 1860 and 1870 with male survival rates in surrounding censuses, Hacker finds the traditional statistic understates the number of actual Civil War deaths by approximately 20 percent. In his estimation, the most probable number of deaths attributable to the Civil War is 752,000, although the upper bounds of his data set point to as many as 851,000 deaths.
The figure of 750,000 soldier deaths would translate into 7.5 million American deaths in a war fought in our own time by the United States, with its tenfold greater population than during the Civil War. Such a figure calls into question Mark Neely’s assertion that the Civil War was “remarkable for its traditional restraint.” 2 The Civil War did indeed result in more American soldier deaths than all the other wars this country has fought combined. [End Page 310]
When I was working on Battle Cry of Freedom, I also became interested in the question of indirect war-related deaths of civilians. We know that the mortality in contraband camps may have been as high as 25 percent. I wondered about mortality from disease, malnutrition, or exposure among the unknown but large number of white and black refugees in the South—and even among southern civilians who did not become refugees. I consulted demographic historians, asking whether civilian deaths in excess of what might have been expected between the 1860 and 1870 censuses could be calculated. The answer was no. Knowing that chaotic conditions in large parts of the South must have caused many premature deaths, I came up [End Page 309] with an estimate of fifty thousand. This number was carefully hedged, and I have been occasionally disconcerted to see it cited as gospel truth. But I am pleased that Hacker considers it a reasonable estimate.
Hacker’s conclusion that the total number of Civil War deaths was probably about 750,000—some 20 percent greater than the widely accepted figure of 620,000—seems soundly based. This conclusion involves a number of assumptions, but all of them are quite reasonable and persuasive. The methodology based on differentials in the survival of men and women between the censuses of 1860 and 1870 is carefully framed and explained. By noting that thousands of soldiers died from war-related causes within a few years of their discharges but were not counted in the usual statistics of war dead, the author makes a common-sense point that seems not to have occurred to other students of Civil War mortality. And the suggestion that a number of unrecorded deaths from guerrilla warfare swelled the total also makes sense.
I have been waiting more than twenty-five years for an article like this one. As I was working on my two syntheses of the Civil War era, Ordeal by Fire and Battle Cry of Freedom, I became increasingly aware that the standard estimate of 258,000 Confederate war dead was a significant undercount. Many Confederate records were lost or incomplete, especially for the last—and bloodiest—year of the war. The number of disease-related deaths of Confederate soldiers was clearly underreported. There were no reported Confederate noncombat deaths from “miscellaneous” causes—accidents, drownings, causes not stated, et cetera—compared with nearly twenty-five thousand such deaths recorded for Union armies. While the census data do not enable J. David Hacker to estimate Union and Confederate deaths separately, his discussion makes it clear that he believes the undercount of Confederate deaths was considerably greater than the Union undercount.
This article also includes estimates of the number of excess deaths among white males born in the southern slave states, the “border” slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, and the [End Page 312] remaining free states and territories in the North and West. 4 These estimates indicate that white men born in the southern and border states experienced proportionally greater death rates than white men born in the northern and western states and territories. Using the preferred set of assumptions, excess mortality was 13.1 percent for white males age 10–44 born in the southern slave states, 12.7 percent for white males age 10–44 born in the slave border states, and 6.1 percent for white males age 10–44 in the free states and territories. Excess mortality was greater among certain age cohorts. An estimated 22.6 percent of southern-born white males age 20–24 in 1860, for example, lost their lives as a result of the war. The article makes no attempt, however, to estimate Union and Confederate deaths. Unfortunately, the research method, which relies on place of birth, cannot be used to construct Union and Confederate estimates without incurring substantial error. Internal migration, while largely along an East-West axis and thus intra-sectional, was substantial enough across sectional boundaries to matter. Together with the potential error inherent in the estimation method, it is impossible to determine whether the undercounted deaths in the traditional estimate were the result of undercounted Union deaths, undercounted Confederate deaths, the postwar deaths of men from wounds and illness incurred during the war, or the war-related deaths of men not in the Union or Confederate forces.
Despite these limitations, there are several reasons to prefer the larger, census-based estimate of war-related deaths over the conventional figure. If the scholarly objective in estimating the death toll is to evaluate the war’s human and economic costs, all war-related deaths should be considered in assessments of those costs, not just the deaths that occurred among men in military service. In addition, as discussed in more detail below, the existing estimate of 620,000 male deaths is based on faulty assumptions and is likely too low. There is, in other words, a large and unknown error associated with the conventional estimate. A census-based estimate of 650,000 to 850,000 excess male deaths revises the probable death toll upward while highlighting the uncertainty in both the new and existing estimates.
The bulk of the article describes the data, methods, and assumptions required to construct the new estimate. Each step and assumption introduces potential error. The final estimate, therefore, has an unknown, but likely substantial, margin of error (a probable range of 650,000 to 850,000 deaths is suggested). The new estimate, moreover, is an indirect measure of excess male deaths occurring between the 1860 and 1870 censuses, not a direct count of the number of currently enlisted men killed in the war. Although excess male deaths include military men killed in the war, it also includes men who died between the date of their discharge from the armed forces and the 1870 census from wounds, infections, and diseases contracted during their service and nonenlisted men killed in guerilla raids and in other war-related violence. The number of excess deaths excludes, however, the deaths of men in military service who would have died in the absence of war. 3
This article relies on new public-use microdata samples of the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses to make an alternative, census-based estimate of white male deaths caused by the Civil War. Together with existing estimates of mortality among black troops, the new estimate indicates that approximately 750,000 men lost their lives in the conflict, 130,000 more than the commonly accepted figure. If correct, 1 in 10 white men of military age in 1860 died as a result of the war and 200,000 white women were widowed, a substantial increase from the 1 in 13 white men dying and 163,000 white women widowed implied by the earlier total. 2 [End Page 311]
On the one hand, a dry statistic, cited uncritically as evidence that the Civil War was the “bloodiest” war in American history; on the other hand, the death toll is one of the most important measures of the war’s social, economic, and demographic costs. Refining and critiquing the existing estimate should be a priority of Civil War historians.
According to the most frequently cited figure, 620,000 men died in the American Civil War. Most historians know that the century-old estimate is a crude approximation. The Union and Confederate forces lacked adequate personnel records; procedures to identify and count the dead, wounded, and missing in action; and a system to notify survivors. Postwar efforts to count the Union dead drew from battlefield reports, regimental muster-out rolls, and information brought forward by widows and orphans when applying for pension benefits. A direct count of the Confederate dead proved impossible. The destruction of the Confederate army and many of its records during the war forced late-nineteenth-century investigators to infer the number of Confederate dead from the mortality experience of Union soldiers and crude approximations of the number of men participating on both sides. 1
Neely notes the irony in the frequent citation of the war’s death toll and the failure of historians to systematically reexamine Livermore’s century-old estimate. 19 But it is not hard to see why. Despite new sources, new and exhaustively researched regimental histories, and online access to many records—including official records, unofficial reports, genealogical data, and census records—a full revision of Fox and Livermore’s work would require years, if not decades, of old-fashioned archival work. And although the product of that effort might be worthwhile, it is still likely to result in a substantial undercount of war-related deaths. Many men who died in or as a result of the [End Page 317] war left no trace in the historical record. No effort on the part of historians, no matter how exhaustive, will find them. 20 Like Livermore, historians must turn to indirect methods and assumptions to count the Civil War dead.
The rhetorical use of the number of Civil War deaths has not escaped the attention of historians. Mark Neely has recently chided historians’ “cult of violence” and “fetish” with the number of men killed and wounded. He maintains that the Civil War’s frequent characterization as the “bloodiest” or “deadliest” war in American history is obtained only by combining Union and Confederate casualties, by ignoring that approximately two-thirds of deaths were the result of noncombat causes, and by overplaying the supposed brutality of the conflict. He emphasizes instead the relative constrained nature of the conflict. In all but a few rare exceptions, civilians were not directly targeted by armies, and civilian deaths appear to have been minimal. 18
Recently, historians have shown renewed interest in the war’s death toll. Although no researcher has yet tried to reestimate the total number of war-related deaths, historians have examined the social, cultural, and economic impact of Civil War deaths. Maris Vinovskis has observed that more men died in the American Civil War than all wars in the United States from the Revolution through the Korean Wars combined. Approximately 18 percent of southern white men of military age lost their lives in the conflict, compared to just 6 percent of northern men. As a result, Civil War deaths had a disproportionate and longer lasting effect on southern society. Although much work remains to be done, historians have investigated the state, regional, and national impact of male deaths on widowhood, orphanhood, family structure, the postwar marriage market, and the federal pension system. 15 Similarly, attempts by historians to quantify the economic impact of the Civil War [End Page 316] depend in part on estimates of the number of men killed and wounded. 16 Drew Gilpin Faust’s recent monograph examines the lasting cultural impact of Civil War mortality. In their attempts to identify, count, and rebury the dead and to find meaning in the loss of so many young men’s lives, postwar Americans stressed the bravery of Civil War soldiers and the shared sacrifice needed for national reconciliation. 17
Livermore’s method of estimating noncombat mortality in the Confederate army poses a large source of potential error. The estimate was the product of the number of accident and disease-related deaths in the Union army and Livermore’s estimate of the ratio of Union and Confederate soldiers serving the equivalent number of three-year enlistments. 10 Livermore’s underlying assumption was that disease and accidental deaths had an equal impact on Confederate and Union troops. There are three reasons to question that assumption. First, because of the South’s much lower urbanization and population density, Confederate soldiers were less likely to have been previously exposed to acute infectious diseases than Union soldiers. 11 They were thus more likely to enter the war without acquired immunities and, consequently, suffered disproportionately from the outbreak of camp diseases. Chulhee Lee’s recent analysis of more than 28,000 Union army recruits—collected as part of the Early Indicators project under the direction of Robert Fogel at the University of Chicago—indicates that Union soldiers from rural areas were twice as likely to die from infectious diseases as soldiers from urban areas. 12 Second, clothing and food were often in short supply in the Confederate army, increasing the chance of death from exposure and reducing resistance to disease. Malnutrition and avitaminosis were especially rampant in the Confederate forces during the last year of the war. Third, Confederate troops suffered from a dearth of medicine and inferior medical care. Union soldiers, in contrast, benefited from a well-organized medical department, an adequate supply of medicine, and efforts of voluntary organizations to improve camp conditions. 13 As a result of these factors, Livermore’s estimate of noncombat [End Page 315] deaths in the Confederate army is probably much too low. Livermore explicitly recognized this, noting that the death rate from disease and accident in the Confederate army was “at least” as great as that in the Union army. 14
Although the long-term rise does not inspire confidence in the final figure, it is a model of precision compared to the “educated guess” of 258,000 Confederate deaths. 7 That estimate was the combined result of two former Union officers working in the late nineteenth century. William F. Fox, a lieutenant colonel in the Union army, spent several decades trying to count Union and Confederate regimental losses from official and unofficial reports. Fox estimated that 94,000 Confederate soldiers were killed in action or died from wounds incurred on the battlefield. He complained, however, that official records were incomplete, especially during the last year of the war; commanders under Robert E. Lee were pressured to underreport wounds; and battlefield reports, which Fox was forced to use in the absence of official reports, likely underreported deaths (many men counted as wounded in battlefield reports subsequently died of their wounds). Fox observed that subsequent information received through affidavits filed at the Pension Bureau increased the total number of Union men killed or died of wounds by 15,000 and clearly expected that Confederate totals would have increased a similar amount if subjected to a similar revision process. 8 Thomas Livermore, a major in the New Hampshire volunteers whose book, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America remains the single-best source of the number of men participating and dying in the conflict, used Union records of noncombat mortality and a comparison of enlistment records to arrive at a figure of 164,000 Confederate deaths from noncombat causes. Despite his concerns that Fox’s estimate of battle deaths could “be accepted only as a minimum,” Livermore combined [End Page 314] the two estimates to arrive at a total of 258,000 Confederate deaths, a total that remains unrevised more than a century later. 9
In her recent study of death and dying in the Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust noted that the existing estimate of 620,000 Civil War dead was the result of an extensive postwar reconstruction, “a combination of retrospective investigation and speculation that yielded totals that posterity has embraced as iconic.” 5 An emerging nation state, an increasingly numerate population, and the hope that quantification could somehow explain and document the unprecedented sacrifice of so many young men drove efforts to identify, rebury, and count the Union dead. Muster-out reports compiled by each regiment at the end of [End Page 313] the war ostensibly recorded the name and ultimate fate of each man serving in each regiment. Subsequent information, however, suggested that these reports substantially undercounted the Union dead. The estimated death toll of men in the Union forces increased from 279,689 in the year following the war to 360,222 in the early twentieth century, partly a result of widows and orphans bringing forward information when applying for pensions and survivors’ benefits. 6
A Two-Census Approach to Estimating Excess Male Deaths in the American Civil War
Two-census estimation methods have been a standard tool of demographers since the nineteenth century.21 The basic method is simple. If a population was fully and accurately counted in two censuses separated by a span of years and experienced negligible in- and out-migration between the two censuses (i.e., the population was “closed to migration”), then changes in the size of birth cohorts (defined by age group) can be assumed to be due to mortality. In the case of two censuses separated by ten years, a birth cohort in the first census would be ten years older in the second census. Subtracting the number of cohort members counted in the second census from the number counted in the first census results in the number of cohort members dying in the intervening ten years. Subtracting the number of men age 30–34 counted [End Page 318] by 1870 census from the number of men age 20–24 in the 1860 census, for example, yields the number of the latter who died in the intervening ten years. Typically, demographers rely on cohort survivorship ratios to construct a “life table” showing implied mortality rates and life expectancy by age and sex. When estimating the excess number of deaths from a war or catastrophic event, it is necessary to first establish a base level of “normal” mortality, perhaps by estimating mortality in adjacent intercensal periods. The excess number is obtained by subtracting the observed number of deaths from the number expected under normal conditions.22
The accuracy of the estimates derived from two-census methods is dependent on the availability and quality of the census data and the validity of the required assumptions. Censuses suffer from a variety of errors, including age misreporting and coverage errors, which spuriously create movements of individuals into and out of cohorts. To partially control for age-reporting errors, which can produce erratic results by age group, demographers may impose a model age-mortality pattern. Given the unique mortality patterns produced during wars, however, a model pattern cannot be employed. Changes in census coverage can make mortality appear exceptionally high or low. Perhaps the most critical assumption is that the population be closed to migration. In-migration between the two censuses biases mortality estimates downward, and out-migration biases them upward. Although it is possible to use in- and out-migration data to adjust the size of each cohort, these data are often not available.
The greatest challenges in the application of two-census methods to estimate mortality in the American Civil War are the lack of a population closed to migration and suspected changes in the completeness of coverage of the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses. The requisite data are not available to make adjustments for in- and out-migration. Although the number and demographic characteristics of overseas immigrants to the United States were recorded, data on overland immigrants from Canada and Mexico and on overseas and overland emigrants were not systematically recorded until the twentieth century. Fortunately, the newly released Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) samples of the 1850–80 censuses make it possible [End Page 319] to limit the analysis to the native-born white population.23 As discussed in more detail below, the native-born white population can be assumed closed to migration. By focusing on sex differentials in mortality between the censuses, it is possible to limit errors caused by changes in the level of census underenumeration. Because civilian deaths in the American Civil War were relatively small compared to military deaths, especially among white women age 10–44, excess mortality among white men age 10–44 can be inferred from changes in the expected “normal” ratio of male to female.
The following methodological description discusses each assumption needed to estimate excess male mortality and its likely margin of error.
Assumption 1: The native-born white population of the United States in the late-nineteenth century was closed to migration Table 1 shows the number of number of native-born whites by sex and age group in the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses.24 The subsequent analysis assumes that this population was closed to migration. Although a small number of native-born whites emigrated and resided abroad, and a small number of native-born whites residing abroad eventually reentered the United States, the numbers are negligible compared to the overall native-born population. Canada—the principal destination of out-migrants born in the United States—recorded 56,214 U.S.-born whites in its census of 1851 and 64,406 in the census of 1861, representing approximately 0.3 percent of the United States native-born white population in those years.25 If all U.S.-born individuals enumerated by the 1851 Canadian census were living in the United States and counted by the 1850 census before moving to Canada [End Page 320] between 1850 and 1851, and remained outside the United States at the time of the 1860 census, two-census estimates of mortality in the 1860s would overstate mortality by 56,214 individuals. Very roughly, this would represent about 3 percent of the expected 2 million deaths suffered among the native-born white population in the 1850s. Offsetting biases make this small potential bias and other scenarios that could create a measurable upward or downward bias in mortality estimates highly unlikely, however. Many U.S.-born individuals lived entirely abroad between 1850 and 1880 and thus would have no impact on two-census based estimates of mortality. Others who resided for a small time abroad but lived in the United States during census years also have no impact on census-based mortality estimates. The small minority of native-born whites who were captured by a census, emigrated, survived the following intercensal period, and remained abroad at the time of the subsequent census was to some degree offset by cohort members who lived abroad during the first census and returned to the United States in time to be enumerated by the second census. Given the small numbers and offsetting biases, in- and out-migration of native-born whites to the United States was low enough to be negligible. Assuming a closed population of native-born whites enumerated in two censuses, cohort survival ratios can be calculated without adjustments for in-and out-migration. The calculation is straightforward. The number of cohort members in the second census is divided by the number in the first census. For example, the number of native-born white men age 20–24 counted by the 1860 census (1,055,632), is divided by the number age 10–14 in the 1850 census (1,147,038), to yield a ten-year survival ratio of 0.9203. In other words, just over 92 percent of native-born white males age 10–14 in 1850 survived the ten-year interval between the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Conversely, about 8 percent died. Table 2 shows ten-year survival ratios for each five-year age group between ages 5 and 44 in the first census. Between 1850 and 1860, male survival ratios ranged from a high of 0.9374 for boys age 5–9 in 1850 to a low of 0.8164 for men age 20–24. Over the three decades shown in table 2, the lowest survival probability was the 0.7172 estimated for men age 20–24 in 1860 to age 30–34 in 1870. One of the next lowest, 0.7669, was for men age 15–19 in 1860. The reason for the relatively low survival ratios is not hard to surmise: the war dramatically lowered the survival probability of men in these cohorts. Assuming both censuses achieved the same coverage of their respective populations, [End Page 321]
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View full resolution Click for larger view Table 1. Native-born white population in the United States (1850–80) [End Page 322]
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View full resolution Click for larger view Table 2. Intercensal survivorship probabilities for the native-born white population (1850–80) [End Page 323] the survival ratios indicate that approximately 1 in 4 native-born white men age 15–24 enumerated by the 1860 census did not survive to be counted by the 1870 census.
Assumption 2: Changes in the net undercount of the native-born white population among the four c |
two other children who relied on his wages from the mines.
“He had warned us about the strike and raised fears that he might lose his job and have to come back home.
He said he had no choice but to join in the strike because everyone was involved,” his father recalled.
“I really got worried because we kept hearing on the radio there was violence at Marikana and that people were dying,” he said.
News of his death came as an enormous shock as the Mphumzeni they knew was a peaceful person.
His father said the family hoped their child had not died in vain and that life on the mines would improve for others from the villages as a result.
– Athandiwe Saba
Mvuyisi Pato (35)
Mvuyisi sweated on the mines to help give his sister a better life.
He chipped in every month to assist his parents pay for her fees at Fort Hare University in Alice in the Eastern Cape.
The 35-year-old Mvuyisi was born in Mbhobheni Village in Mbizana in the Eastern Cape and his death has left his parents with no idea where they will get the extra money they need to get their daughter through her second-year studies.
Mvuyise’s mother, Manqupha Pato, said her son was dedicated to his family and ensured that his younger siblings got a chance to get a better education.
“He was caring and not selfish. Even though he was building his own house, he made sure that his sister, who is at Fort Hare, got all the financial support she needed.
“It is very painful to us that we have lost him as you can see his father is a pensioner and I am in no position to work,” said Manqupha.
She said Mvuyisi and his two older siblings had a tough upbringing because the family was poor and this had forced him and his brother, Vuyisile, to look for work on the mines in the North West.
Vuyisile, who also works at Lonmin as a rock-drill operator, said he had just left Mvuyisi the day before the shootings to visit the family.
“The strike wasn’t ending and I told him I was going home. He said he was staying behind with the rest of the guys.
“But he told me to tell our parents not to worry,” Vuyisile recalled.
“It was a shock to get a call from the other guys telling me he had been killed,” said Vuyisile.
He will remember his brother for his bravery.
“He died for all of us in the mines.”
– Thanduxolo Jika
Mzukisi Sompeta (37)
Mzukisi’s family, from the dirt-poor kwaDiki Village in the Lusikisiki district of Eastern Cape, was expecting him home soon, bearing gifts as he always did.
Instead, the last time they saw him was when they buried him last Saturday.
Mzukisi, a rock-drill operator, died at Marikana and, like many who fell with him, his passing leaves a chasm in his rural home.
In the villages of Lusikisiki, families mark their rise from poverty by building brick homes to replace their traditional rondavels.
For the Sompetas, this was an ongoing project fuelled by Mzukisi’s earnings from Lonmin.
He was due to come home for his annual leave only a week after the day that he died, where he would have continued extending the family rondavel with brick buildings.
But those dreams died with him at Marikana.
His family remembers him as a man who loved to sing, especially popular church hymns. – Thanduxolo Jika
Ndikhokhele Yehova - even though he could never bring himself to admit that he was not a great singer.
“As you can see his father can’t do anything. He walks with a stick and has to be assisted to go anywhere. He is just a pensioner who is not well, so Mzukisi was now the one who was heading this household. None of my other two children are working so we are back to struggling because the family is big,” said Mzukisi’s mother Mabhengu Sompeta.
Dressed in her black mourning garmet and sitting on a mattress in the rondavel, Mabhengu mourned the loss of a man who had brought peace to their lives.
Phumzile Sokhanyile (48)
Phumzile was so loved by his family that his mother collapsed and died when she heard he had been killed at Marikana.
Phumzile had many nicknames in Mdumazulu village in the Transkei, but most remember him as uMshumayeli (The Preacher) who would grab every opportunity at a funeral to stand and quote Bible verses.
The nickname still makes people smile in the village as they recall a younger Phumzile, who would rather herd cattle than head to church on a Sunday with his grandfather and his siblings.
“If there was ever a funeral in the village he would be present and would take a chance and preach, which was very funny because he never used to like church,” said his sister Nozukile.
“He made us laugh and everyone in the village liked him because of his jokes and his caring nature,” she said.
Nozukile said her brother resembled their father so much he would sometimes claim to be him when teasing his mother.
“He was very close to his mother and made her laugh every time he came back home. He would say ‘umyeni wakho ubuyile (your husband has returned)’ and our mother would give him a very big smile and hug,” said Nozukile.
She said it was no coincidence their mother collapsed and died after hearing of his death. He was so central to her life.
Phumzile had hopes of taking his daughter, who is in matric this year, through university, an opportunity he had never had.
– Tnanduxolo Jika
http://www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/Remembering-Marikana-The-man-in-the-green-blanket-20120908
Mgcineni Noki (34)
Mgcineni from Thwalikhulu in Mqanduli, Eastern Cape, was “The Man in the Green Blanket”.
Mgcineni, although at the time his identity was not known, was a prominent leader known only by the green blanket he wore about his shoulders, He featured prominently in TV footage leading up to the shooting of 34 miners at Marikana.
When the guns fell silent, he was among the dead.
He was affectionately known as “Mambush” and his family say it was no mistake he was chosen by other miners to be their leader. It was an extension of who he was.
“Our parents died a long time ago. My elder brother and his wife had to take care of us, but they also later passed away. Mambush was the father here. He took care of us and this home. We have nothing without him now,” said his sibling Nolufefe Noki.
The 30-year-old miner had been working at Lonmin since 2007.
“He was a driven man who was promoted in a year and received training to become a rock-drill operator,” said his cousin Mbulelo Noki, also one of the striking miners.
“Mgcineni was a very caring young man who never gave the village any problems. He even used to buy his former teachers cold drinks when he was home,” said villager Nowathile Ngcangwe, who went to mourn with the Noki family.
“I want people to know that we are very hurt and broken by what happened. People now think my brother was a violent person.
He wasn’t,” said Nolufefe. “I remember he would be the one who would calm us down and ask that we always keep the peace among us,”
she said.
He was a great Pirates fan and also loved weightlifting. He was married and had a three-year-old child, Asive.
Mbulelo said the last time he saw his cousin was on August 13.
“He was different, I didn’t like the person I saw. We were supposed to go home to our cousin’s funeral, but he didn’t even want to speak about it.
“He was taking his role as the strike leader very seriously,” said Mbulelo.
– Athandiwe Saba
Mongezeleli Ntenetya (34)
As the only breadwinner for 15 people, Mongezeleli was the champion of his family.
At his relatively young age, the rock-drill operator had to provide for his mother, his wife, his three children and his eight younger siblings.
His was the only income for the family home which lies off a gravel road in the village of Nqabarha near Dutywa in Eastern Cape.
He had worked at the mine since the age of 22.
“He was a humble man, who took care of us all,” said Mongezeleli’s wife Nosipho, her eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying.
The family find it hard to even talk of their lost relative.
Mongezeleli’s mother, Nowathile, said her son’s only dream was to educate his siblings.
“He wanted such a better future for his sisters and brothers and they all looked up to him,” she said.
He was not a miner who would return home only once a year.
“He came home as regularly as he could because he wanted to make sure the garden was ploughed and that everything was in order,” added Nosipho.
Orlando, one of his younger brothers, said he did not know what life would be like now that his brother was gone.
“Though my brother didn’t have much, whatever we asked for he would give it to us. He was a kind man, a big man who loved making everyone laugh. But right now none of us at home can really talk about it. It hurts,” he said.
– Athandiwe Saba
Anele Mdizeni (29)
Anele from Cwede near Elliotdale in the Eastern Cape had an upbringing where laughter was treasured.
After his death, the family gathered in a rondavel lit with a single candle, made jokes and decided to remember only the good times they enjoyed with him in his short life.
Anele grew up in Cwede and started working at the mine at the age of 22.
His brother, Vuyisani, remembers Anele as a talkative young man who went out of his way to make people laugh.
“We would be in stitches all day. We’d go hungry because of laughter. When he saw his jokes had made us hungry, he would dig into his pocket and buy us bread,” remembers cousin Luvuyo Mveli.
“We were expecting so much. He was here just this past Easter. My son had big dreams. He wanted to buy a car, especially to transport me around,” said his mother, Notshovile Mdizeni.
“My brother wanted a good life for his family and he knew he had to work hard to achieve his dreams. He took great pride in his job,” said Vuyisani.
Luvuyo tries to explain the day they were told Anele had been killed. “It was a painful day. Everyone was wailing. I can’t explain further because it hurts.”
Anele, a Pirates fan, married in 2009 and has a six-year-old child, Asisipho.
– Athandiwe Saba
Mongezeleli Ntenetya (34)
As the only breadwinner for 15 people, Mongezeleli was the champion of his family.
At his relatively young age, the rock-drill operator had to provide for his mother, his wife, his three children and his eight younger siblings.
His was the only income for the family home which lies off a gravel road in the village of Nqabarha near Dutywa in Eastern Cape.
He had worked at the mine since the age of 22.
“He was a humble man, who took care of us all,” said Mongezeleli’s wife Nosipho, her eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying.
The family find it hard to even talk of their lost relative.
Mongezeleli’s mother, Nowathile, said her son’s only dream was to educate his siblings.
“He wanted such a better future for his sisters and brothers and they all looked up to him,” she said.
He was not a miner who would return home only once a year.
“He came home as regularly as he could because he wanted to make sure the garden was ploughed and that everything was in order,” added Nosipho.
Orlando, one of his younger brothers, said he did not know what life would be like now that his brother was gone.
“Though my brother didn’t have much, whatever we asked for he would give it to us. He was a kind man, a big man who loved making everyone laugh. But right now none of us at home can really talk about it.
It hurts,” he said.
– Athandiwe Saba
Bongani Nqongophele (28)
Bongani’s wife was so distraught at the news of his death that she tried to take her own life by drinking pesticide.
Nosipho Ntonga, Bongani’s sister-in-law, said: “His wife couldn’t take the news. She is so weak right now. She tried to commit suicide.”
His mother was so shocked she also required medical care.
Bongani had been working at Lonmin for a year as a driller after leaving his sparsely populated village near Elliotdale in the Eastern Cape.
There he had married his wife, Nombulelo, in 2008 and the couple were devoted to each other.
“I would trade places with my brother-in-law in a heartbeat if I could,” said Nosipho.
“He was very young and had so much he was looking forward to. My sister is at the doctor now because she is so weak.
“I don’t want her to find me in tears like this. I have to be strong for her.” She wept.
The father, husband and brother had many plans for himself and his family.
“He had just started to build his own house down the road from our home.
“He was planning to buy a car and make a good life for his wife and child,” said Khanyisa Nqongophele, Bongani’s sister.
He had a five-year-old child, Anga.
When he was at home, he loved nothing more than to play with the children and to tend to his father’s cattle.
“Every December, the whole family would come home. I don’t know how it will be this year with our father gone and now our youngest brother.
“This is very painful,” said Khanyisa, who cried as she spoke.
– Athandiwe Saba
Ntandazo Nokhamba (36)
Ntandazo had been a machine operator at the Lonmin mine since 2006.
Back at his home village of Ngcolorha in Libode, Eastern Cape, his uncle Madaka Nokhamba remembers a man who respected traditional customs and behaviour.
“Every time he came home the first thing he did was to go to every home in this village and let people know that he was home. He was a disciplined boy who followed in our footsteps,” he said.
Ntandazo’s older brother Malokwane admitted that the day he heard his brother had passed he “wept bitterly”.
He said: “He was a big part of this village. He loved the youth. Last time he was here he said he would buy the highest scoring (village) player a pair of soccer boots.
That was his last promise to the kids,” said Malokwane.
Ntandazo’s sister Nophelo said: “He spent three years in Johannesburg looking for work.
“We prayed every day that he would be finally hired. He was the father of this home.
“Though I’m widowed he still took care of me and my family. He also took care of his elder brother’s family.
“We have nothing without my brother. It has been very difficult without him.
“My mother even tried to hang herself after she heard the news. She is distraught.”
Ntandazo was married to Nosakhe Nokhamba and they had five children: Khuselwa (13), Siziphiwe (11), Liyabonga (7), Zozibini (2) and Elam (1).
– Anthandiwe Saba
Fezile Saphendu (23)
Fezile left his quiet village of Kwayimani in Mqanduli in the Eastern Cape two years ago to find work at the mine.
“He was such a hard-working boy. He passed so well in Grade 12 but, unfortunately, he didn’t have the money to study further. That’s why he decided to go work at that mine,” said his sister-in-law, Noingilane Saphendu.
Fezile was a “people person” who always had advice for others.
“He wanted to become a social worker. He would have been very good at it. He had a talent for dealing with people,“ said Noingilane.
The family members gathered on the lawn in front of Fezile’s newly painted home fondly remembered his antics.
“When he came home, he used to buy us all these sweet things.
“Anything we asked for here at home he would provide. He loved biscuits and sweets,” laughed Nokulunga Saphendu, another sister-in-law.
“I would be satisfied if my brother-in-law had been ill.
“If we at least had time to say goodbye to him...but for him to be taken away from us like this, we will never heal,” said Nokulunga.
She said although Fezile’s father had had two wives and many children, Fezile loved all his siblings equally.
– Athandiwe Saba
Nkosiyabo Xalabile (31)
Nkosiyabo worked side by side with his younger brother, Mandlenkosi (25), at the Lonmin mine.
The brothers are from Manganyela near Elliotdale in the Eastern Cape.
Mandlenkosi remembers his older brother as someone he could talk to, always depend on and who would protect him.
They stood together on strike at Marikana from day one of the labour action. Mandlenkosi remembered trying to find his brother on the day of the shooting. He was nowhere to be found.
Then all of a sudden he said he felt very cold.
“I just became so thirsty. My heartbeat became very irregular, and at the pit of my stomach I knew he was gone even before our pastor, at her house, told me she found his name on the deceased list in the hospital,” he said.
Nkosiyabo leaves behind his young wife, Lilitha, whom he married in a green-and-white wedding in July.
He was a religious man and an avid churchgoer.
He loved soccer and was a part-time coach of a team called the Eleven Strikers.
His mother, Nonezile, found it hard to talk. She said her son loved her beyond words.
Now all Nkosiyabo’s responsibilities rest on the shoulders of his younger brother.
– Athandiwe Saba
Mphangeli Thukuza (42)
In the small Transkei village of Nquba, Mphangeli had a big reputation. He was a respected Pondo man with two wives and six children living in a beautiful village home.
Local men speak of Mphangeli’s charm and smooth talking – especially with women.
He earned respect as he was able to provide for his large family and was working towards buying a car. His three brothers sang his praises.
“He was a good man and worked hard. Those two wives, whom he loved dearly, are really hurting,” said brother Jamela Thukuza.
“He did everything for them with his own money and all that is gone. It is painful because we have also lost a brother and our father has lost a son. We fear his death may have brought poverty to his house,” said Jamela.
Mphangeli’s brothers also work on mines in North West.
They demand that a relative continue their brother’s legacy by taking his job as an operator at Lonmin.
– Thanduxolo Jika
Hassan Duncan Fundi (46)
Hassan Fundi was one of the security guards working for Lonmin. He was killed five days before police opened fire on the protesting miners.
Hassan’s wife, Aisha, with whom he lived in a suburb of Rustenburg, told City Press this week that she could not reveal any information about her husband, or provide a picture of him, before a family meeting to be held at the weekend.
However, according to reports at the time, Hassan and his colleague, Frans Matlhomola Mabelane, were burned to death on the Saturday and mine officials only discovered their bodies the following Monday.
One of them had been reportedly shot dead – five times in his upper body – allegedly by striking mine workers, and the other had been hacked.
– Nicki Güles
Sello Lepaaku (45)
Warrant Officer Sello was allegedly hacked to death by striking Lonmin workers.
He was buried at Seabo Village in Siyabuswa, Mpumalanga, on August 19.
Sello’s family and his widow, Petunia, were too grief-stricken to speak to City Press.
However, at his funeral, National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega described him as a hero and a “dedicated officer with integrity”.
His commanding officer said he was a disciplined, quiet man who worked hard.
Sello, a policeman of 24 years’ standing, was attached to the public order policing unit at Phokeng, North West.
His family battled to retain their composure at the grave site during the officer’s salute and even Phiyega shed tears.
– Sizwe Sama Yende
Tsietsi Monene (47)
Career police officer Tsietsi reportedly died from gashes all over his body and two holes in his chest. His face had been hacked, allegedly by miners.
Tsietsi, a warrant officer with 21 years’ experience, was connected to the Mpumalanga public order policing unit.
His unnamed cousin – who spoke at the funeral of Warrant Officer Sello Lepaaku, with whom Tsietsi died – said he had been told by a police officer that Tsietsi died because his colleagues had been too far away to help him.
“A policeman who was in the Nyala (with Tsietsi’s group) told me he had to fight to keep the door closed because they wanted to come in and kill him too,” The Star reported the cousin saying.
Tsietsi leaves behind five children – aged between 12 and 23 – and a grandson. He is survived by his wife, also a police officer, his mother, a brother and a sister. – Nicki Güles
Makhosandile Mkhonjwa (29)
Makhosandile toiled in the mines to realise his one dream: to build his family a beautiful home in Madiba Village in Mbizana in the Eastern Cape.
Makhosandile cared for a family of 10 people, including his two children who are still at school.
His wife, Nokwanela Phakathi, said he was going to build a house for the family – including his mother – as their traditional rondavels could no longer withstand heavy rains and extreme weather.
She had no idea how they were going to survive now that he was dead.
“Things were tough even when he was still alive, but we could survive. We are left with nothing. We buried his father in March and now it is him. There is no man to take care of the family. They have taken the only person we were relying on,” said Nokwanela.
Makhosandile left his village in 2007, only kilometres away from the village home of struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, in search of a job at the mines.
The barren rooms of the family’s home tells its own story of a history of daily struggles.
Makhosandile was a staunch churchgoer who, says his family, was loving, kind and never got involved in violence.
– Thanduxolo JikaChildhood Cancer Awareness month kicks off on Thursday, and Major League Soccer is once again lending its support to the cause.
MLS’s league-wide Kick Childhood Cancer campaign is back for its second year, and in 2016 the initiative aligns with Scarftember, a social campaign launched last year for fans to show support of their MLS team.
Designer and illustrator Sophia Chang has created a Kick Childhood Cancer scarf for each MLS club with proceeds benefiting the Children’s Oncology Group, a partner of MLS WORKS – the league’s community outreach initiative – and one of the leading childhood cancer experts in the world.
Each scarf will include patterned graphics promoting the fight against cancer and soccer culture on one side, and club markings on the other. They are available for purchase at MLSstore.com and select in-stadium retailers.
In addition to Scarftember, the league is proud to back the following initiatives as part of the Kick Childhood Cancer campaign:As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.
That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.
Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn’t mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it’s only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.Although American Horror Story has been, er, inconsistent over the years, that won't stop us from tuning in next year, when, as originally reported by Entertainment Weekly, the newly-engaged Lady Gaga will be joining the cast as a series regular. Gaga confirmed the news with a very AHS-esque tweet that also revealed next season's title and setting will be Hotel.
As per usual, there are no specific details about where the show will take us next season, or which cast members will return. Only three things are certain: The incomparable Jessica Lange will not return, Gaga will step in, and it will be one of the highest-watched season premieres of all time. We do, however, have some predictions about the direction Murphy will take in his hotel nightmare: There will be both literal monsters, humans with monster-like qualities, and a mother monster; there will be a lot of sex, possibly some drugs, and maybe some cannibalism. (If it wasn't obvious, we're working off of Gaga's "Monster.") There may be some meat dresses (and, at the very least, a butcher), crazy hairstyles, and ankle-breaking heels.
There are countless theories online detailing the ways the stand-alone seasons could be connected. With this hotel theme, it feels like the perfect opportunity for the series to unite all its past characters. After all, hotels are places where outcasts and people from all different backgrounds come together. Hmm....
(via Entertainment Weekly)
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Watch Lady Gaga Take On 'The Sound Of Music'Is your pressure cooked food boring? tasteless? lacking… hip? We’ve got solutions to help your pressure cooker recipes achieve maximum velocity flavorage!!
6. You bored it to death. Boiling food in the pressure cooker is best reserved for soups, stews and stocks. Some ingredients are better steamed (held out of the cooking liquid via a steamer basket) or braised (cooked with a minimum of liquid). Change-up the cooking method and give boiling a break so your pressure cooker can reward you with boundless flavor.
5. Your herbs and spices are ancient history. Whenever possible use fresh herbs and spices. Whenever not possible, lightly crush and rub dry herbs before tossing them in the pressure cooker. Whack whole spices with something heavy and toast powdered spices to invite their flavor to the pressure cooker party.
4. Your aromatics are in hiding. How many recipes don’t start by sauteing an onion, shallot, leek or garlic clove? Yours. Aromatics and can really pack a punch. Don’t toss the onion or garlic clove raw – pressure cooking will magically preserve their pungent flavor. Saute them until soft or golden to unleash their true potential.
3. You pressure cooked an innocent by stander. Meats and veggies that would ordinarily be cooked with a quick hop in the saute pan – for example boneless chicken breasts or bean sprouts – are not appropriate for the pressure cooker. The result will either be tough and dry or liquefied beyond recognition and devoid of any taste. Pay your saute’ pan a little homage for quick-cooking ingredients.
2. You over-killed it. Overcooking is a rookie mistake – not referring to the pressure cooking time chart and trying to wing it usually leads to a pile of puree. Improvise the recipe, but not the pressure cooking times. Always refer to your pressure cooker’s time table, or our comprehensive pressure cooker time table, for the cooking time of your recipe’s main ingredient.
1. You drowned it. Pressure cooking the food in too much liquid is the number one reason your pressure cooked food is tasteless.
An open simmering pot can evaporate almost a cup of liquid in 10 minutes. Your pressure cooker: less than tablespoon.
Reduce the cooking liquid by a gazillion percent – or just use the minimum a mount of liquid your pressure cooker needs to reach and maintain pressure which is usually just a cup or two of liquid or so (check your instruction manual, to be sure).
Want more?Crucible - The Crucible is one of the first and also most important items you will use in Thaumcraft. You can create it by using a casting wand on a regular cauldron from vanilla Minecraft.
To be able to use it, you need to either light a fire or place lava directly beneath it, and fill it with a bucket of water. After a few seconds, bubbles will start to rise and you will be able to use it. You can then throw items in it to extract the aspects contained within - refer to this list to see what items contain which aspect.
You can use a tallow golem to keep the crucible refilled at all time. Connecting one or several arcane bellows to its sides will reduce the time it takes for the water to boil, and if you attach one or several arcane alembics, you can siphon off any excess aspects that would otherwise end up in the local aura, causing flux to appear.
If you keep scribing tools and some paper in your inventory while throwing things into the crucible, there is a small chance that you might make a random discovery.
Arcane Worktable - The Arcane Worktable is created by using a Casting Wand on a Table. It functions like a regular crafting table, but in addition to that, it allows you to craft some entry-level Thaumcraft items that require the use of vis. You need to place a crafting wand in its GUI for these crafting recipes to work.
Research Table - The Research Table is used to research new items and technologies. You can create it by using scribing tools on two tables that are placed adjacent to each other.
You can find a detailed explanation on how to use the research table on this page.
Infusion Altar
The Infusion Altar is created by placing four Arcane Stone Blocks in a square and performing a right-click on them with a Wand. This will use up 25 Vis and cause the stones to turn into an Infusion Altar. You can use the altar for all regular crafting recipes, all recipes requiring an Arcane Worktable and the more advanced recipes that require the use of aspects.
If one of the four stones comprising the altar is mined, the other three blocks will turn back into regular Arcane Stone Blocks. Note that you cannot obtain the Infusion Altar through NEI or other means unless you have researched Magical Building Blocks.
In order to be able to use the more advanced recipes that require aspects, you have to place a Crucible or any other source of aspects (like Warded Jars) within reach of the Infusion Altar. The altar will be able to use any sources placed around it within a 24 x 24 square with the altar in the center, and up to 5 blocks higher or lower than the altar.
The bar below the crafting grid in the GUI shows the aspects required to complete the current crafting recipe. If the required aspects are not supplied, they will be greyed out and the crafting recipe cannot be completed. If you want to create items that require the use of Vis, you have to place a wand in the slot in the bottom right corner. The number below this slot indicates the amount of Vis left in the within the wand, and the number below the crafting output slot indicates the amount of Vis necessary to complete the crafting recipe.
Brain in a Jar 66 Vis 8 8 8 The Brain in a Jar is a disembodied zombie brain that can store experience orbs of monsters and animals that were killed close to it. It can store a maximum of 1000 XP, which is enough to bring a player all the way from level 0 to level 30. If you want to access the XP stored in the brain, just perform one or several right-clicks on its jar, and it will give up the XP orbs.
The brain in a jar is a necessary crafting ingredient for the more advanced golems.
Created in the Infusion Altar.
Arcane Bellows 50 Vis 16 24 Arcane Bellows can used to improve the performance of the crucible, the Infernal Furnace and the regular furnaces from vanilla Minecraft.
If attached to the three designated sides of the Infernal Furnace, the Arcane Bellows will increase the likelikehood of receiving bonus items from smelting, lessen the emission of flux and speed up the smelting process. When the bellows are attached to a crucible, they will reduce the time the water takes to boil.
When attached to a regular furnace, they will not only speed up the smelting process, but they will also allow you to smelt more items per unit of coal - one bellows attached will allow you to smelt 21 items, two bellows will give you 26 smelting processs, three will give you 31, and a full set of four bellows will allow you to smelt 36 items per unit of coal, more than double the usual amount.
Created in the Infusion Altar.
Infernal Furnace The Infernal Furnace is a fuel-free magical furnace that allows you to smelt items efficiently and fast. It is created by placing a structure made out of 12 obsidian, 12 nether bricks, 1 iron bar, and a bucket of lava as shown in the animation to the left, and then using a casting wand with a vis charge of at least 100 on it. A pair of red eyes reminiscent of the fire demon Calcifer in Hayao Miyazakis "Howl's Moving Castle" will appear behind the iron bars, and the furnace will be operational.
In order to use the furnace, you need to throw the items you want to smelt into the opening on the top. Items that cannot be smelted will be destroyed while the smelted items, and experience orbs, will be ejected out of the front - a good spot to place a hungry chest. There is a chance that some extra meat or ore nuggets might get generated while smelting.
Attaching arcane bellows to the three designated spots increases the smelting speed, the likehood of getting bonus items, and it also decreases the output of flux.
If you destroy any block that is part of the furnace's structure, the lava block in the center of the structure will disappear and a blaze will spawn on top of the furnace. If you wish to use the furnace again, you need to renew the lava black, place the removed block back, and again use a casting wand with at least 100 vis charge on the structure.
Magic Mirror 2 100 Vis 16 Magic Mirrors always come in pairs. If you link them up, you can transfer items between both mirrors, even if they are placed in separate dimensions. Transferring items costs 1 vis per 16 items, which will be drawn out the local aura.
To link a pair of mirrors, place the first one a desired location, then equip the second mirror in your quick access bar and perform a right click on the first mirror - both mirrors are now linked. The second mirror can then be placed wherever you want. You cannot link more than two mirrors together. Magic mirrors can be placed not only on walls, but on floors and ceilings as well.
Created in the Infusion Altar.
Arcane Bore 125 Vis 32 64 16 32 24 The Arcane Bore is a fully automatic mining machine. It can only be placed below or on top of an arcane bore base (see below), and it uses both a pickaxe and a Wand of Excavation to mine all materials in the direction it is pointed to. While active, the bore will rapidly drain vis from the local aura, which might cause a large amount of Flux buildup, so you should not use it too close to your homebase.
Once a redstone signal has been applied to the bore, it will start excavating in a circular pattern with a base width of about five blocks and a total range of up to 64 blocks. All enchantments on the pickaxe and the wand of excavation will be applied on the blocks mined by the bore.
The direction of the bore can be changed with a click of your casting wand. Note that you can use two arcane bores on the same arcane bore base; you will have to supply two separate redstone signals though.
Created in the Infusion Altar.
Arcane Ear 30 Vis 8 16 8 The Arcane Ear is a magical device capable of detecting the sound emitted by note blocks from vanilla Minecraft within 64 blocks range. If it detects the sound it is configured to detect, it will emit a redstone signal. You can use this to wirelessly transmit redstone signals over a distance of up to 64 blocks.
Tuning the arcane ear is pretty much the same |
on your files.
You can use it for other stuff besides web content too. I use mine for FTP content as well as web site content.
What you will need
Two running Debian Wheezy servers for GLusterFS
Another Debian Wheezy server with Webserver, ftp server or other server software that needs to mount the distributed file system
How to setup and configure a distributed file system with high availability using GlusterFS
Servers
First you will need two servers or more.
I use Debian Wheezy 7.1 servers in my setup, and is what I will be configuring it on in this guide.
You can find a guide on creating Debian servers in this post
In this guide I will use 2 Debian wheezy 7.1 servers, with the following IP addresses (you should change these in the steps below to your own):
GlusterFS-host-1: 192.168.2.91
GlusterFS-host-2: 192.168.2.92
I will be installing GlusterFS version 3.4.1 manually!
Install and configure GlusterFS for replication
Install the server software
On all your Debian GlusterFS servers (Not the clients servers), install the GluserFS-server software by running the following commands.
(If the links no longer work, you can find the newest packages here: http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/)
Download the packages
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-server_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-client_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-common_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-dbg_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
Install the dependicies
apt-get install fuse libdevmapper-event1.02.1 libaio1 libibverbs1 liblvm2app2.2 librdmacm1
Install the packages
dpkg -i glusterfs-common_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i glusterfs-client_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i glusterfs-dbg_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i glusterfs-server_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
Introduce the GlusterFS servers to eachother
ClusterFS servers have to know about eachother. To do this you have to “probe” from one server to the other by using the following command on GlusterFS-host-1 (remember to change the IP address to the one your GlusterFS-host-2 has):
gluster peer probe 192.168.2.92
This will tell GlusterFS-host-2 that GlusterFS-host-1 exists and the other way around. If you get the output below, they are now friends and talking to each other:
If you have more than one GlusterFS server, you have to do this to every server.
If you have 4 servers in your setup, you have to make the command above with server 2,3 and 4 IP addresses on server 1.
You do not have the run the command on other servers than your nr 1 GlusterFS server.
Make sure that the servers are talking by running the following command (It doesn’t matter which server you do this on):
gluster peer status
You should get something like this:
If you have more than 2 servers in your setup, you should see all of them i the list, else there will only be 1, on server2 it will show the IP address of Server1, and on Server1 it will show the IP address of Server2.
Create the volume
Now you have to create a volume.
This is a “virtual folder” where the data will be stored, it can be anything you want, you just have to make sure that it exists on all servers running GlusterFS
In this guide I will create a distributed file system, across my 2 GlusterFS servers, and replicate the data so they are always in sync.
In this guide, I want the folder /www to be my volume, since this is where I want to store my web content, replace the folder with whatever you like, just make sure it exists or it will be silently created for you (which might result in you using the wrong disk or partition and run out of free space after a while)
I will also call the volume “www-volume”, you can change this name to whatever you like, just remember it.
Run the following command to create a replication volume across both servers, but replace my values with yours:
gluster volume create www-volume replica 2 transport tcp 192.168.2.91:/www 192.168.2.92:/www
If successful, you should see the lines in the picture below:
Start the volume
When the volume has been created in the step above, you have to start it.
You do this by running the following command (replace www-volume with your volume name):
gluster volume start www-volume
You should see this output but with your volume name instead:
Check if the volume is started
From this point on in the guide, my volume will be called www-vol and not www-volume in the screenshots. The reason for this is that I made a mistake, and had to start from scratch then I used another name for my volume, and forgot to take new pictures for the previous section of this guide.
Check if the volume is started/running by using the following command on both servers:
glusterfs volume status
There has to be a “Y” in every line under “Online”, it might take a minutes before everything turns to “Y” and not “N”, just run the command a few times.
you can also see information about your volume by using the following command:
gluster volume info
It should output “Status: Started” like in the picture below:
Mount the volume on other servers
You now have a GlusterFS volume running, with replication. But for it to do you any good, you have to mount it on your servers that need the files.
In this guide I will use my Gluster distributed file system to mount a shared /www directory on my two webservers, so they always have the same files, and always have access to them (see “Overview” at the top of this post).
Install Glusterfs client
On you webserver, or FTP server or any other server you want to use your new GlusterFS distributed File System on, install the GlusterFS-client by using the commands below (In this example, on Debian):
(If the links no longer work, you can find the newest packages here: http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/)
Download the packages
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-client_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-common_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
wget http://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.4/LATEST/Debian/apt/pool/main/g/glusterfs/glusterfs-dbg_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
Install dependencies
Some other software is needed to get this working, install it all by running the following command:
apt-get install fuse libdevmapper-event1.02.1 libaio1 libibverbs1 liblvm2app2.2 librdmacm1
Install the packages
dpkg -i glusterfs-common_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i glusterfs-client_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i glusterfs-dbg_3.4.2-2_amd64.deb
Start Fuse
In my case, I had to start fuse manually, and add it to the startup modules file, without fuse startet, you will not be able to mount the GlusterFS volume later, I recommend adding fuse to your startup modules to make it automatic by adding “fuse” (Without ” “) to /etc/modules using your favorite text editor like Nano.
Fuse can also be loaded manually using the command below:
modprobe fuse
Reboot
If you added fuse to the /etc/module script, it’s a good idear to reboot here. Just to make sure it’s working correctly.
Reboot the server by using the following command:
reboot
Mounting redundant
Once installed, you have to mount the distributed file system. Create the file /etc/glusterfs/datastore.vol (Using “nano” on debian) on the server that needs to connect to the distributed file system and add the following lines to the file.
Replace the following with your info:
[GlusterFSHOST1] = Your server number 1 (Where I use 192.168.2.91)
[GlusterFSHOST2] = Your server number 2 (Where I use 192.168.2.92)
[volume-name] = You volume name (Where I use “www-volume”)
volume remote1 type protocol/client option transport-type tcp option remote-host [GlusterFSHOST1] option remote-subvolume [volume-name] end-volume volume remote2 type protocol/client option transport-type tcp option remote-host [GlusterFSHOST2] option remote-subvolume [volume-name] end-volume volume replicate type cluster/replicate subvolumes remote1 remote2 end-volume volume writebehind type performance/write-behind option window-size 1MB subvolumes replicate end-volume volume cache type performance/io-cache option cache-size 512MB subvolumes writebehind end-volume
Add the mount point for automounting
To make sure the server automatically mounts the distributed file system as a local mount point when rebootet, you have to edit the file /etc/fstab, and add the following line to the bottom:
(Replace [MOUNT-DIR] with the directory you want to mount it to, in my case this is aso /www here. It can be any valid folder on the client)
/etc/glusterfs/datastore.vol [MOUNT-DIR] glusterfs _netdev,rw,allow_other,default_permissions,max_read=131072 0 0
Testing replication
You now have your new distributed file system with replication mounted on your server! And it’s time to make sure it’s working properly.
On the server you mounted the volume on (The client), run the following command:
replace [MOUNT-DIR] with the directory you used in the step above to mount the file system.
touch [MOUNT-DIR]/replication-test.txt
This will create a text file on the mount, so now we check if it has been replicated to both GlusterFS servers.
Open your GlusterFS-host-1, and type the following command:
replace [MOUNT-DIR] with the folder you told GlusterFS to use when you created the volume at the “Create the volume” step in this guide.
ls [MOUNT-DIR] -lah
You should see the file named “replication-test.txt” in the list. Don’t mind the “lost+found” and “..” and “.”, they have to be there too.
Now, if you have the file in the list, do the same on GlusterFS-host-2 and make sure the same file is there too. If it is, the replication is working perfectly. You can then delete the testfile on the client again by using the command below:
(Repleace [MOUNT-DIR] with the directory used in the “Add the mount point for automounting” step)
rm [MOUNT-DIR]/replication-test.txt
That’s it. You’re done!
Have fun with it. Remember to test redundancy by powering of one of the GlusterFS servers too see if it handles high availability correctly.Dr. Paula A. Johnson, chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has been named the 14th president of Wellesley College.
Johnson, 56, will be the first African-American to lead the liberal arts college for women when she takes over on July 1 for Kim Bottomly, who announced last April that she would be stepping down after nine years.
“It could not be a more exciting time for Wellesley, and the opportunity to help guide Wellesley into the future, building on its mission, vision and resolve, is one that I find deeply inspiring,” Johnson said in a statement. “I am honored and humbled to be asked to serve as Wellesley’s president, and I view this presidency as the capstone of my career, which has been devoted to the advancement of women through education and faculty development, and by working to improve their health and well-being.”
Andrew Shennan, Wellesley’s provost and dean and a member of the presidential search committee, said Johnson will, among other things, lead the 141-year-old college through the renovation of many of its buildings, while continuing its tradition of admitting students, regardless of their ability to pay. Currently, more than 50 percent of Wellesley’s 2,300 students receive financial aid from the college, Shennan said.
“All liberal arts colleges need to be ever more persuasive about why this kind of education has an enduring value, and I think she’ll do a great job making that case,” he said. “And for the president to be a person of color is a huge step for the campus and one that will be welcomed by all our faculty, students and staff.”A 9-year-old drag queen has appeared on This Morning with his mum [Photo: ITV/This Morning]
The mum of a nine-year-old boy has been criticised by other parents for allowing him to become a drag queen at the age of seven.
Nemis Quinn Golden first started adopting the female alter ego, Lactatia, after becoming hooked on the TV series ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race.’
While his age prevents him from performing in adult drag shows, Nemis has starred in benefit shows as Lactatia and will soon head to Mexico for the Man Drag Ora Festival.
During an appearance on ‘This Morning’, mum Jessica said she supports her son’s passion “100 per cent”, even helping him apply his make-up.
“I thought it was the most fantastic thing, because drag in general is super creative – you have music, there’s lip-syncing, there’s dance, there’s make-up, there’s costumes,” the Montreal-based mum explained via video link.
Jessica went on to urge other parents to encourage their children to pursue their passions, no matter what they might be.
“I think it’s extremely important to allow your children to really tap into their creative side, encourage and foster that independent spirit and being an individual,” she continued.
But after appearing on the daytime programme, Jessica was criticised by parents for allowing her son to take part in what is often considered adult entertainment, with some going as far as accusing the mother of “sexualising” her son.
“Disgusting that children that young are being sexualised by their parents, it’s not right! #ThisMorning,” one viewer tweeted.
“#thismorning Can we see more children express themselves sexually while their thick parents clap like apes from the sidelines? #dragqueen,” another added.
“This is only being encouraged by the mother for her own strange gratification! #ThisMorning,” another viewer tweeted.
[Photo: Twitter] More
A 9-year-old drag queen has appeared on This Morning with his mum [Photo: ITV/This Morning] More
But not everyone thought that allowing Nemis to be a drag queen was wrong.
“Well I love that little boy, fair play to parents for allowing him to be himself! #Lactacia #YoungDragQueen #ThisMorning,” one user wrote.
“Boys should be allowed do whatever they f***ing want as long as they’re not hurting anyone (which Lactacia is not) #ThisMorning,” another added.
[Photo: Twitter] More
[Photo: Twitter] More
Others weren’t against the principle of allowing a child to be a drag queen, but thought there was a danger of taking it too far.
“#ThisMorning I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him being a drag queen, but it’s wrong to exploit it for fame like the Mom is!!!” one viewer wrote.
Despite the backlash Nemis has no plans to give up his alter ego any time soon, telling the show presenters Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby that he plans on being a drag queen “forever”.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for non-stop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyleUK.
Read more from Yahoo Style UK:
Teenager crowned UK’s first transgender prom queen
Parents plan to sue school for allowing transgender boy to wear a dress
The inspiring reason transgender man shares images of his taped back breasts onlineThe Beachland Ballroom. Peabody's. Happy Dog. Brothers Lounge.
Just a few of the places where rock 'n' roll is made -- live, loud, cramped, sweaty -- and served with cold beer by tattooed ladies.
"These clubs are the catalyst for commercial revitalization, neighborhood revitalization," says Cleveland City Councilman Jay Westbrook. "We know the Beachland brought the Collinwood-Waterloo district back to life. We celebrate that Brothers makes the Cleveland-Lakewood edge hum."
These venues also are targets of Cleveland officials on a misguided mission to extract revenue instead of enjoying the good vibrations.
Since discovering a few years back that these small juke joints weren't paying the city's 8 percent entertainment admission tax, the Jackson administration has seemed bent on putting them out of business through draconian enforcement of the existing tax while dragging its feet on efforts to legislate a fairer tax level for smaller venues and resolve their issues over back taxes.
For several years now, Finance Director Sharon Dumas has pursued small venues such as the Beachland and Peabody's over their failure to collect and remit the admission tax.
Although the city has substantially changed its stance in the past year and tried to negotiate a deal over back taxes, it hasn't come to terms with the clubs -- and city officials have not shown much flexibility regarding efforts by City Council to legislate lower taxes for smaller neighborhood joints.
The city didn't try to collect admission taxes from the smaller clubs until a 2009 efficiency study noted the oversight. Then, instead of working with the clubs to resolve the issue in a mutually beneficial way, Dumas demanded they pay up.
Cindy Barber, co-owner of the Beachland, a Collinwood beacon, and Chris Zitterbart, owner of Peabody's by Cleveland State University, suddenly found themselves staring down the gun barrel of almost $400,000 just in back taxes, interest and penalties.
It was an impossible amount of money. These clubs operate on guitar-string budgets. The city was tone-deaf to that reality. Its stance, as articulated by Mayor Frank Jackson's press secretary, was unequivocal: "Pay your %&#$ taxes!"
"The reality is that the people making decisions within the administration don't understand the economics of the music business," Zitterbart said. "It's a break-even business."
And that's on a good night. The real benefit of such clubs -- aside from their role as incubators of what Frank Sinatra described as "the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear" -- is their ability to draw people into places they would never go.
Last fall, the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture released a study showing that the local music industry pumps tens of millions of dollars into the economy each year.
On the heels of that revelation, Westbrook and fellow Councilmen Joe Cimperman, Mike Polensek and Matt Zone introduced legislation that would have exempted venues with a capacity of 700 or less from the city's admission tax.
It was a progressive solution that recognized the crucial role independent club owners play in giving the city its rock 'n' roll cachet. The bill went nowhere. The Law Department responded with a punitive proposal that would have treated the clubs as if they were fronts for money laundering. And there the conversation stopped.
Meanwhile, the city forked over $500,000 to help stage the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in April.
"We ought to be consistent," Westbrook said. "If the music's good enough to subsidize that, then it should be good enough to subsidize the Happy Dog."
The significance of such live music joints is not lost on Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the Rock Hall. He describes them as "incredibly important to our legacy as a rock 'n' roll capital" and "a worthy investment" that not only creates jobs and attracts visitors but supports "the perception of Cleveland as being a vibrant center for entertainment and culture."
Today, the issue will be back on City Council's agenda, when Council President Martin Sweeney asks: What can we do about the admission tax on small clubs? His recommendation: Occupancy rates of 150 people or fewer, no tax; 151 to 500, 4 percent; 501 and up, 8 percent. That rate is calculated according to each stage a venue may have, rather than by the collective occupancy of its building.
It's a start -- a poor start that will likely drive Peabody's out of town, since its main stage holds 700 people, meaning the proposed legislation doesn't help at all. Zitterbart says he already is being recruited by other cities that want his business.
My recommendation: Exempt clubs with occupancy rates of 1,200 or less. And walk away from the back taxes. That money probably was never collected. It doesn't exist.
Start anew. Make Cleveland a city that celebrates its sound.It seems ironic that you will make your iPhone run on Android OS. However, for those who are bored or have nothing to do with their obsolete iPhone models, this guide may be a bit useful just to satisfy one’s curious mind.
Just like your computer, you can make a dual-boot iPhone, i.e. making it run on two operating systems alternatively. In this case, you will be using your iPhone 2G or 3G which may be lying around the corner not being attended by anyone. Just think of this guide as an experiment to see if iPhone can work using the OS of its biggest competitor, Android.
For those who wanted to check out some of the features of the Adroid system and have some access to iPhone 2G/3G, this is a great opportunity. You don’t even need a computer to do this tutorial, but we absolutely need a Cydia app for this one – Bootlace.
Article Map
To make it easier for you, I made an article map so that you can easily navigate this article without much of a trouble.
Part I: Overview of Bootlace
Part II: Pre-Installation Requirements
Part III: How to Add a Repository
Part IV: Bootlace Installation
Part V: Setting Up Bootlace
Overview of Bootlace
Basically, Bootlace is an iPhone app (jailbroken only) which enables you to install OpeniBoot and iDroid into your iPhone, 2G and 3G models only. You will also be able to configure OpeniBoot through its configuration page after the installation. Moreover, QuickBoot is also supported after Bootlace is successfully installed. QuickBoot is a feature which comes with Bootlace that will directly boot your iPhone to a selected OS without changing the default configuration settings.
Pre-Installation Requirements
Here are some of the things you should remember before performing this guide:
It will work on iPhone 2G and 3G only.
You must have jailbroken your iPhone using PwnageTool, Blackra1n and RedSnow. If your iPhone has been jailbroken using JailBreakMe and Spirit, it will not work as well.
There were some conflicts between Backgrounder app and Bootlace, so it would be better to turn Backgrounder off when using the latter.
How to Add a Repository
This step is also very important so you cannot skip this one. What we will do here is to simply add a repository; if you’ve done something like this before, it would be much easier for you to understand this time.
Step 1. Launch Cydia and tap on ‘Manage‘ tab below the screen.
Step 2. There will be three options, tap on ‘Sources‘, then tap on ‘Edit‘ button located at the top-right corner of the screen.
Step 3. Now, tap on the ‘Add‘ button on the top-left corner, and enter the following in the field; ‘http://repo.neonkoala.co.uk‘ and tap ‘Add Source‘ button thereafter.
Step 4. After you add the address above, tap on ‘Return to Cydia‘ big button below your screen. Tap on ‘Done‘ button after that and you will be brought back to Sources list.
Basically, this is the whole process of adding a repository to make it easier for you to install any app from the developer you just added; in this case it’s Neonkoala.
Bootlace Installation
This is just a continuation of the previous steps so we will continue with the count.
Step 5. After doing step 4, you will be brought back to the page wherein you can select a Source. Tap on ‘Neonkoala.co.uk‘ then select ‘Bootlace‘ to open the package.
Step 6. Now you are ready to install Bootlace. Just tap on the ‘Install‘ button on the top-right corner, then ‘Confirm‘ your action.
Step 7. The installation will take only a short while, after which you will be presented with the following screen (please see screenshot). Tap on ‘Return to Cydia‘ button below to proceed.
The installation process will be smooth following these steps. Now we are ready to set up Bootlace.
Setting Up Bootlace
This is going to be different process so we will start our count from the first step onwards.
Step 1. After the installation, just press the ‘Home‘ button so that you’ll be brought back to the Springboard. From there, you will be able to find the Bootlace icon, tap on it to launch.
Step 2. Since it is your first time running Bootlace, it will automatically start downloading and patching the Kernel.
Step 3. The patching process is short, once done you will be prompted to reboot your iPhone. You don’t have much option but to tap on that ‘Reboot‘ button.
Step 4. After a reboot, launch Bootlace again. This time, there will be a welcome message, tap on ‘OK‘ button to proceed.
Step 5. This time, you need to install iDroid. Tap on the ‘iDroid‘ tab below your screen then tap on ‘Install‘ button thereafter.
Step 6. There will be a warning message. Just tap on ‘OK‘ button to proceed with the iDroid installation, and wait until it’s done.
Step 7. When the installation is complete, tap on ‘OpeniBoot‘ tab and then the ‘Install‘ button. We also need to install OpeniBoot.
Step 8. The installation will never take long enough; when it’s done, tap on ‘Configure‘ button.
Step 9. In this screen, you will be presented with options on how you would want your iPhone to boot; either boot with iOS or iDroid. Just don’t forget to tap on the ‘Save’ button located at the top-right corner of your screen.
Anyway, it is the Android OS 2.2.1 Froyo that you will be using here. Why don’t you take time navigating and discovering this OS with your iPhone?
As always, don’t hesitate to leave us comments, suggestions or questions.The United States has long had a patchwork system of delivering health care to its citizens. Unlike most modern, Western democracies, Americans don’t enjoy a national health care system, per se, and only recently started trying to expand coverage to millions of uninsured.
For seniors, we have one system. For children, we have another. If you’re a working adult, you probably get insurance through your employer, unless you’re poor, in which case you might qualify for Medicaid – but not in every state. It’s as if the U.S. system – some of which is socialized, some of which isn’t – has come to resemble a rather unattractive quilt.
But for veterans, there’s an entirely different system, along the lines of the British NHS: it is, quite literally, government-run health care.
In light of the VA scandal, there’s apparently some chatter about privatization. Charles Krauthammer argued on Fox News this week:
“If you would suggest that we go to a voucher system where everybody will get a voucher for treatment in any hospital he or she chooses, and I were a vet, I would choose that. I would rather go to Georgetown University hospital than to a VA.”
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), himself a decorated war hero, said he’s currently working with Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on a Republican plan in line with Krauthammer’s suggestion. Though McCain didn’t specifically reference “vouchers,” he told Roll Call, “[L]et’s let our veterans choose the health care that they need and want the most and not have to be bound to just going to the VA.”
If this sounds vaguely familiar, there’s a good reason: McCain toyed with VA privatization in 2008. What’s more, Mitt Romney floated a similar idea as a presidential candidate in 2011 – on Veterans’ Day, no less. (Veterans Of Foreign Wars soon after declared, “The VFW doesn’t support privatization of veterans health care,” and Romney quickly walked it back.)
Apparently, however, the idea is starting to make a comeback. That’s not good news.
It’s worth noting that there are some credible legislative ideas on the table for addressing chronic problems plaguing the VA. The House, for example, yesterday approved a bipartisan VA Management Accountability Act, which is intended to “make it easier for the secretary of veterans affairs to fire or demote career employees and managers who are found to be involved in cases of negligence or mismanagement.”
That’s not exactly a game-changer when it comes to the systemic problems that go back literally decades, but it’s at least a congressional effort to do something constructive.
Which is more than we can say about privatizing the VA.
There may be some confusion about the difference between the quality of VA care and the quality of the VA system in delivering that care. For Krauthammer, for example, there’s an apparent belief that veterans receive sub-standard treatment at VA facilities.
The evidence shows otherwise. The editorial board of the Washington Post noted today that the VA system “as a whole outperforms the rest of the health care system by just about every metric. Surveys also show that veterans give VA hospitals and clinics a higher customer satisfaction than patients give private-sector hospitals.”
Those conclusions are bolstered by ample data. In 2012, RAND Corp. found in nearly every category, “VA patients received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and access to follow-up.” There was also Philip Longman’s 2005 report in the Washington Monthly, highlighting research from the New England Journal of Medicine, which found the quality of care in VA facilities was “significantly better” than private counterparts.
Jon Perr published a detailed Daily Kos piece on the subject yesterday, which is worth clipping and saving for future use: “Sending millions of older, sicker Americans – many of them requiring specialized care for rare and complex health problems – into the waiting arms of private insurers, private doctors and private pharmaceutical firms is a recipe for chaos and de facto rationing on a grand scale.”White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a briefing. Drew Angerer/Getty Images White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded on Friday to veiled criticisms of President Donald Trump from Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker.
Corker, who recently announced his intent to not seek reelection, took what many saw as a shot at Trump on Wednesday, noting his cabinet officials' sound and stable nature.
"I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis and chief of staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos," Corker said, referring to Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly.
In Friday's White House press briefing, Sanders said, "I think that the president is the one that's keeping the world from chaos."
"He has an incredible team around him that's helping him lead that effort," she added. "He's had tremendous accomplishments on the international stage by working with allies and confronting enemies. We're gonna continue doing that — we're gonna continue doing that as a team with the president leading that effort."
Corker's and Sanders' comments after reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mulled a resignation after referring to Trump as a "moron." The State Department denied that Tillerson made such comments.THE wait is finally over. Australia's athletes have unveiled the uniforms they will wear at the London Olympic Games opening ceremony.
And don't worry - you can breathe a sigh of relief.
It's not the usual fashion disaster.
Sure, the bottle green "heritage" blazers, neck-ties and white shirts, skirts and pants built for comfort with help from Olympians including Libby Trickett are nothing to write home about. But the real winners here are the shoes, designed by Volley especially for the athletes.
See Libby's take on the uniforms in the video above
The shoe is Volley's standard white, but with some fancier additions - a bottle green and navy trim, green laces, a gold embroidered Olympic ring motif, and my favourite part - an "AUS 2012" gold tag.
Now this is what the Australian Olympic uniforms should be all about - iconic Aussie style, comfort, and the quintessential cool factor we are renowned for.
Really, what other team could get away with wearing a sandshoe to the Olympics?
Now before you say that the Olympics have nothing to do with fashion, consider this: the AOC decided to unveil the opening ceremony uniforms before the Olympics for the first time ever, in the middle of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Sydney.
The launch itself took place in the Overseas Passenger Terminal, which is Fashion Week's hub, before the New Generation show for up-and-coming designers.
The Sportscraft uniforms have been 880 days in the making and are a "safe" offering - but after the past three Opening Ceremony uniforms, we're kind of relieved about that.
Cast your mind back to 2008, when the team was decked out in blue and white tye-dyed numbers designed again by Sportscraft. The uniforms were so heavily criticised for abandoning the classic green and gold colours that Sonia Wong from the label was forced to write a letter of defence.
AOC spokesman Mike Tancred defended the switch to blue uniforms, saying it was a deliberate measure to modernise the look and feel of the Aussie uniform.
"Every time we wear green and gold people say, 'Why are we wearing green and gold?' You can’t win," he said.
"The athletes loved it. [They say] 'It's hip'."
The Athens 2004 Olympics green star-spangled number was brushed off by the likes of designer Charlie Brown, who said "it was gimmicky, and I don't think that's what this country is about".
"People make fun of Americans for being like that, but Australia is smarter and more contemporary, and that should have been reflected in the uniforms," she said.
Designed by the Woolmark Company, the uniforms attracted headlines back home like "Oh dear, what were we thinking?"; "Outfits let the side down" and "Our mob of lawn bowlers."
And who could forget the year 2000, when Sydney hosted the Olympics and Woolmark teamed up with Mambo?
Those uniforms were meant to represent Australia's landscape, culture and youth, but instead contributed to the downward slide of the Mambo brand, which almost lost its cult status until a deal was signed with Brazilian surfwear giant Mormaii in 2011.
The outfit was described by Andrew Gaze as: "An outstanding, young uniform. The colours make a strong statement about Australia". But yet again, it was slammed back home.
The uniforms for our team for London 2012 were unveiled in March, and yes, we're going to be seeing more green and gold.
Designed by Adidas, they feature cringe-worthy rouching on tracksuits, hidden kangaroo prints, and fluorescent "acid buzz" trimmings.
Vogue's Kirstie Clements was unimpressed: "It's a bit of a mash-up. I don't mind the bright fluro, it's just that there's too much going on with the fluro touches. I think a bit more of a streamlined style wouldn't have gone astray."
Read our take on this year's Olympic uniforms here.
So compared with that, our Opening Ceremony uniforms are like a breath of fresh air. But, we've saved the best news 'til last - you can buy the Olympic Volleys at Big W for $27.84.
Are the London 2012 outfits the best yet? Loving the Volleys as well? Share your thoughts below.Microsoft will cover legal fees for employees who face deportation after the end of the Dreamers immigration program, the company says. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, made the promise in a statement condemning Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — something Smith called “a big step back for our entire country.”
Smith says Microsoft employs 39 people that are known to be protected by DACA, and that “if Dreamers who are our employees are in court, we will be by their side.” That includes providing paid legal counsel, filing an amicus brief on behalf of the employee, and seeking ways to directly intervene. Microsoft will also “work as needed with other companies and the broader business community to vigorously defend the legal rights of all Dreamers,” |
This mixing of location awareness with application-state awareness appears to make possible a number of neat actions, like sending non-iMessages SMS messages from a Mac or using your Mac like a speakerphone with a connected iOS device.
These features were all shown on stage by Federighi during his demo. Federighi pulled up Spotlight and typed in "Dr. Dre," which pulled up Dre’s contact info from OS X’s Contacts app. Federighi then dialed Dre from the Mac with his phone still in his pocket; Dre answered and the call proceeded about as well as a speakerphone call made on a stage in front of thousands of people could be expected. Quality seemed fine, and there were no apparent delays in the handoff part of "Handoff."
The Application awareness component of Continuity (also under the "Handoff" feature banner) is easy to explain: if you’re writing an e-mail or something in an app on your Mac, you can tap a button on your iOS device and the half-written e-mail will appear on that device so you can continue working. Or vice-versa—if you’re busily hammering out a Numbers spreadsheet on your iOS device while commuting home from work on the train, you can walk in the door to your home, click an icon on your Mac, and the Numbers document will appear there for you to keep editing it.
Continuity is one of those concepts that sounds simple to implement, but the devil will be in the details—if the screen switch is fast and seamless (or close to it), it could be a killer feature. However, because it’s something we’ve seen in sci-fi films many times before, imperfections in the implementation could sink it entirely. If the sharing or handoff takes more than a brief moment, the feature might alienate instead of attract users.
It's actually no wonder that this kind of feature has appeared in the past only in isolated desktop/mobile applications rather than in an entire operating system—it's likely a very hard thing to do right. That requirement of a shared application state has stymied most companies from actually implementing it; even with Apple’s Yosemite and iOS 8, the extent to which the feature will be available isn’t yet clear. Will it work only with Apple apps, or will there simply be an API available to add "Continuity" hooks to any app?
Federighi also mentioned that Continuity makes it easier to create "instant hotspots" a feature that appears to work by allowing Macs to know when hotspot-capable iOS devices (i.e., iOS devices with cellular service that allows iOS’s hotspot feature to function) are nearby. Instead of having to pull out the iOS device and manually turn on the hotspot functionality, Continuity appears to allow you to flip it on from the Mac and set the hotspot’s Wi-Fi password, enabling other devices to start joining and sharing.
Unfortunately, further details on Continuity are scarce. As we learn more, we'll be sure to share it with you.
OS X Yosemite will be released in the fall for no cost; developers will get access to the beta today. Additionally, non-developers can sign up now for Apple’s new public beta program and download beta builds of the OS themselves.Image copyright EPA Image caption Jimena Rico and Shaza Ismail are back in Spain after a three-week ordeal
Less than a month ago, Spaniard Jimena Rico, and Egyptian-born Shaza Ismail were just like any other young, gay couple in London, the city where their romance blossomed.
But after a call from Ms Ismail's father, the two set out on on a trip which they say involved death threats, escape across international borders, and a spell in a Turkish jail where, Ms Ismail says, the treatment was "unexpected, inhumane and horrible".
'Tricked'
Safe in Ms Rico's Spanish hometown of Torrox, the couple faced the cameras to reveal a nightmarish three-week ordeal which, according to Ms Rico, began after her partner's family in Dubai had tried to separate them by force.
"I really want to tell our story because I think it could help many people who live in a situation of repression for being homosexual," Ms Rico told reporters who had gathered in the room to hear their story.
It had all started innocently enough. According to the 28-year-old, the couple flew from London to Dubai on 14 April because Ms Ismail's father had said that her mother was ill in hospital.
"But it was a trick," said Jimena Rico. "He threatened to kill us and said we could go to jail for being lesbians."
Image copyright EPA Image caption Ms Rico (R) embraces her sister (C) on her return to Spain
According to her partner, 21-year-old Ms Ismail was locked up by her family. But the couple managed to escape and flew to Tbilisi, Georgia, from where they were hoping to catch a connecting flight to London.
But even putting more than 2,000 miles between them and Ms Ismail's family had not guaranteed their safety.
Ms Ismail's father appeared at the airport and the Egyptian woman's papers, including the visa she needed to return to the UK, were torn up in the altercation.
Ms Rico explained that at this point the Georgian authorities escorted the couple to the Turkish border. Spain's foreign ministry says the couple were then arrested in Samsun, northern Turkey, and taken to Istanbul.
There, they were arrested on a charge "apparently to do with terrorism", says Ms Rico, adding that they signed papers they did not understand.
Ms Rico got word to her family, who reported the situation to the Spanish police.
After three days in a Turkish jail, the Spanish foreign ministry managed to secure their release - allowing them to fly home to Spain, where Ms Rico's relieved family welcomed them with open arms.
"I thought we were not going to get out of [prison]," Ms Rico said. "They told me I could leave but she had to stay, and I said I wasn't going without her."
Ms Ismail's father, however, tells a different version of events, although he admits travelling to Tbilisi airport and forcibly attempting to retain his daughter.
"When she arrived in Dubai, I embraced her," the unnamed father told Spain's Antena 3 television station.
"She said she wanted to stay in London and I asked her to come home and talk about her being a lesbian because she told us via text message. She came out of the closet like that, sending her mother a text message."
Image copyright EPA Image caption Ms Rico (R) hopes she will be able to marry her girlfriend, who is on a temporary visa in Spain
Ms Ismail's father said that he offered to take his daughter to a psychologist and that she had agreed to stay in Dubai and study there. Then, he claimed, his daughter vanished from the family home.
"I went to the police after she had disappeared. A friend told me Shaza was in Georgia and I reported that she had run away or been kidnapped."
He explained that he had gone to Tbilisi with a lawyer, but insisted the only papers he had torn up were part of an old passport belonging to his daughter.
Jimena Rico accepts her partner's father is doing what he thinks is best: "I know that [Ms Ismail's] father loves her. But his mind is so closed that he can't understand."
She is now hoping to marry Shaza Ismail, currently staying with her on a temporary visa after the Spanish government secured the couple's release.Joan Kirner: Former Victorian premier dies aged 76
Updated
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Former premier of Victoria Joan Kirner has died aged 76 (ABC News)
Victoria's first and only female premier Joan Kirner has died aged 76 after a long battle with illness.
Ms Kirner, Victoria's premier from 1990 until 1992, was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer two years ago.
Ms Kirner was a school teacher and education activist before winning a seat as a Labor member in Victoria's Upper House in 1982.
She later moved to the Lower House as member for Williamstown and began a series of education reforms, including the introduction of the Victorian Certificate of Education, aimed at reducing what she saw as class-based inequity.
When John Cain resigned in 1990, Ms Kirner became Victoria's first female premier, but it was only two years before she was swept from office in a Coalition landslide.
She was lampooned by her critics for her fashion sense and left-wing politics but remained popular.
Ms Kirner remained active in public affairs after her resignation from Parliament.
She will be remembered for her tireless work promoting women's rights, conservation, and education, and her love of Essendon Football Club.
In 2012, Ms Kirner was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for her work in advancing equality for women, and for her political achievements in the 1980s and 1990s.
Accepting the award she said she was very proud to have been the first female premier of Victoria.
"[Now] young women and their daughters know that they can be premiers, they can be leaders of the state, and they can be leaders of the nation," she said.
"My mother used to say to me, 'you can do anything as a girl that you want to do', and I believe that," she said.
She said as a female leader, the media judged her harshly.
"They couldn't cope with the argument and the discussion, the public and the political dialogue, so they had to cope with all they could cope with, and that was what I was wearing, what I was thinking," she said.
She listed her greatest achievements as creating the land restoration network, Landcare, helping people with special needs and paving the way for women to enter Parliament.
Ms Kirner is survived by her husband Ron, children Michael, David, and Kate and their families.
In the statement, her family thanked "the wonderful doctors and staff at Peter [MacCallum Cancer Centre] for their kindness, tireless dedication and support".
Tributes flow for politician, parent and friend
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has praised Ms Kirner's education reforms, saying her introduction of the Victorian Certificate of Education made "schools fairer".
"Joan was a teacher and over the course of her life she gave us all a lesson in the meaning of dignity," he said.
"She stood proud and firm in the face of difficulty. She smiled often and she meant it.
"Education was the bedrock of Joan's life and schools were the foundation of her career. She was an ordinary Victorian parent, but she had an extraordinary vision for the future of our children."
Mr Andrews said Ms Kirner "raised a generation of Victorian Labor women", including former prime minister Julia Gillard.
"In her last years, Joan gave us so much of her time. We're thankful for every second of it," he said.
"Her humour kept us humble and her counsel was always welcome. She was a teacher to the end.
"She fought every day for fairness. Our state is stronger for her service and our lives are greater for her friendship.
"She was our first female premier and because of her work, she won't be the last."
Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Ms Kirner was a "dauntless warrior for social democracy and a leader of the march of women through the institutions of power".
He said when Ms Kirner married her husband Ron she became ineligible for a permanent teaching contract.
"It was an act of unfairness she never forgot and a marker of the inequality she dedicated her life to overturning," he said in a statement.
"Joan looked at politics and refused to accept the status quo.
"A fairer and better deal for women, for teachers, for schools and for students drove her."
He quoted Ms Kirner as saying: "If you want to change the world for yourself and your own kids, you've got to change it for and with other people, particularly women."
Career dedicated to redressing wrongs: Bracks
Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks, who worked for Ms Kirner when she became premier, called her a woman of great warmth and empathy.
"[She was] also someone who took on great leadership roles and had a determination about her as she took those on," he told 774 ABC Melbourne.
"She never flinched. She was resolute in making sure she'd do the best she could as premier of the state."
Mr Bracks said Ms Kirner would be remembered for her strong sense of social justice.
"That was really the value that Joan Kirner brought to everything she did," he said.
"She hated unfairness. She was about social inclusion, social justice, and she really set about her life and her whole career to redress wrongs."
In a statement, Ms Kirner's family paid tribute to her political career, including her work promoting women in politics.
"Joan was part of a group of progressive Labor women who established Emily's List Australia in 1996 to provide financial, personal and mentoring support to progressive Labor women candidates," the family said in a statement.
"Since then, the organisation has supported more than 400 women to campaign for office, with more than 210 elected.
"Joan was unpaid coordinator for the first seven years of Emily's List's existence."
The national co-convenor for Emily's List Australia, Tanja Kovac, said Ms Kirner said was "a truly unique public advocate and politician".
"Joan made politics more human. She embodied all the elements of good leadership and good life – a belief in love, family, sharing, participation and inclusion," Ms Kovac said in a statement.
"I am grateful that I got to know her, not just as a politician, who made my school, Mullauna Secondary College, a remarkable, progressive place to learn, or as an icon of women's leadership, but as a mentor and friend.
"We shared highs and lows of political and personal achievement together – the rise and fall of Julia Gillard as prime minister; the cancer diagnosis – she was always positive, philosophical and brave.
"I will miss that generous, wellspring of wisdom."
Topics: states-and-territories, parliament, death, community-and-society, melbourne-3000
First postedCROSSROAD PRESS DIGITAL AUDIO is proud to bring you the very first audio editions of some classic works by one of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror’s finest authors. We will be releasing – in order – the Titus Crow Novels and the Hero Series in unabridged audio over the coming months. The Titus Crow books are to be narrated by Mr. Simon Vance – and the Hero series by Jonathan Trueman.
CROSSROAD PRESS is proud to present more than 450 Audio titles for your listening pleasure. If you like our authors, and love audio – you can browse our list of available books at AUDIBLE.COM
HERO OF DREAMS:
Something vital is missing from David Hero’s comfortable, ordinary existence. One day is much like the next, simple, predictable…boring.
But the nights! Each night David Hero finds himself transported to a marvelous world where brave men and women battle terrible creatures possessed of cruel, dark powers.
Despite his fears, the Dreamworlds tempt David, drawing him farther and farther from the waking world. Here he finds noble warriors; beautiful, loving women; and challenges almost greater than he can imagine.
THE COMPLEAT CROW:
“He was tall and broad-shouldered, and it was plain to see that in his younger days, he had been a handsome man. Now…his hair had greyed a little, and his eyes, though still very bright and observant, bore the imprint of many a year spent exploring – and often, I guessed, discovering – along rarely trodden paths of mysterious, obscure learning.”
Mysterious, obscure learning….
To many thousands of listeners world-wide, Titus Crow is the psychic sleuth – the cosmic voyager and investigator – of Brian Lumley’s Cthulhu Mythos novels, from The Burrowers Beneath to Elysia.
But before The Burrowers and Crow’s transition, his exploits were chronicled in a series of short stories and novellas uncollected in the USA, except in limited editions. Now these stories can be told again. From Inception, which tells of Crow’s origins, to The Black Recalled, a tale of vengeance from beyond the grave, here in one volume, from the best-selling author of the epic Necroscope series, is The Compleat Crow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brian Lumley (born 2 December 1937) is an English horror-fiction writer.
Born in County Durham, he joined the British Army‘s Royal Military Police and wrote stories in his spare time before retiring with the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 in 1980 and becoming a professional writer.
In the 1970s he added to H. P. Lovecraft‘s Cthulhu Mythos cycle of stories, including several tales and a novel featuring the character Titus Crow. Several of his early books were published by Arkham House. Other storiespastiched Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle but featured Lumley’s original characters David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer. Lumley once explained the difference between his Cthulhu Mythos characters and Lovecraft’s: “My guys fight back. Also, they like to have a laugh along the way.”
Later works included the Necroscope series of novels, which produced spin-off series such as the Vampire World Trilogy, The Lost Years parts 1 and 2, and the E-Branch trilogy. The central protagonist of the earlier Necroscopenovels appears in the anthology Harry Keogh and Other Weird Heroes. The latest entry in the Necroscope saga isThe Mobius Murders.[1]
Lumley served as president of the Horror Writers Association from 1996 to 1997. On 28 March 2010 Lumley was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association. He also received a World Fantasy Awardfor Lifetime Achievement in 2010.Europe is not where most people would search for the common ancestor of chimpanzees, gorillas and humans. But that’s exactly where one team of anthropologists thinks the grandfather of the African apes came from.
But before we explore the origins of African apes, it helps to know how to identify a paleo-ape in the fossil record. The most distinct physical traits that all living apes share are the ones that help the animals swing through trees: long arms; a broad, flat chest; a short, stiff lower back; and long, curved fingers and toes. They also lack a tail. These traits didn’t evolve all at once, however. The world’s earliest known ape—the 20-million-year-old Proconsul from East Africa—had a monkey-like body, but aspects of the wrist and the absence of a tail indicate Proconsul did indeed sit at the base of the ape family tree.
By about 17 million years ago, apes appear in Europe’s fossil record. In a recent issue of Evolutionary Anthropology, David Begun and Mariam Nargolwall, both of the University of Toronto, and László Kordos of the Geological Institute of Hungary describe Europe’s fossil apes and why they think Europe was, in a sense, the motherland of African apes.
The ancestors of European apes probably came from Africa as part of a wave of mammals that were attracted to the continent’s subtropical forests. During the early part of the Miocene, the epoch that spans roughly 23 million to 5 million years ago, the two land masses were connected by land bridges that crossed the ancient Tethys Sea (a more expansive version of the Mediterranean). The first European apes, which lived 17 million to 13.5 million years ago, were Griphopithecus (found in Germany and Turkey) and Austriacopithecus (found in Austria). Both apes are known mainly from teeth and jaws, so we don’t know what their bodies looked like. But they did have thick dental enamel, another ape-like characteristic.
By about 12.5 million years ago, the first apes that really resemble modern great apes emerged in Europe and Asia. Those in Asia gave rise to that continent’s sole living great ape, the orangutan.
And those in Europe might have given rise to today’s African apes. A good candidate is Dryopithecus, first unearthed in France. Features of the ancient ape’s arms indicate it could probably swing through the trees like modern apes do. It also had a large frontal sinus, an air pocket in the forehead that produces mucus (also the site of dreadful sinus infections). This trait ties Dryopithecus to African apes. Gorillas, chimpanzees and humans all have a frontal sinus; orangutans, found only in Asia, do not.
Other European apes from around this time also shared characteristics with today’s African apes. For instance, Rudapithecus, an ape that lived in Hungary about 10 million years ago, also had a frontal sinus as well as a bevy of other characteristics seen in African apes, such as brow ridges and a downwardly bent face.
Begun and his colleagues think an ape like Dryopithecus or Rudapithecus returned to Africa and established the lineage of modern African apes. They point out the timing makes sense. The features that characterize gorillas and chimpanzees today evolved first in Europe, two million years before they appear in the African fossil record.
Apes may have left Europe in the later Miocene as climate change made Europe uninhabitable. The rise of the Himalayas made the continent much cooler and drier. Starting 9.5 million years ago, deciduous woodland replaced subtropical forests, and many tropical animals died out.
Luckily for us, at least some escaped before it was too late.Usually the phrase ‘dirtbag’ would be considered a derogatory term -- unless you are a ball player from Long Beach State -- then it’s just your school nickname.
There are six former Long Beach State Dirtbags participating in this year’s postseason, the most from any school. The nickname Dirtbag dates back to 1989 when former head coach Dave Snow assembled a team of nearly all new players. At the time Long Beach State didn't have a true home field and split up their home games at three different facilites. The club's practice facility was an on-campus field but the infielders also trained off-campus -- on all-dirt Pony League field. Infield coach Dave Malpass would drill his infielders mercilessly on the children’s sandlot and the players would return to campus covered in dirt and dust.
Hence, the Dirtbags were born.
The nickname also referred to the team’s gritty display -- and one person who is expected to bring some grit to the playoffs is former Dirtbag Troy Tulowitzki. The Toronto shortstop missed three weeks due to a shoulder injury, but looked sharp in his return to the Blue Jays lineup on October 2.
RELATED: NCAA Players on the 40-man MLB Postseason Roster
Former Arkansas standout Dallas Keuchel (and his beard) take the mound for the Houston Astros in a survive and advance AL Wild Card game on Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET.
The starting pitchers in the NL Wild Card Game on TBS both have college experience. Former TCU standout and current toast of Chicago Jake Arrieta takes the mound for the Cubs, while former UCLA fireballer Gerrit Cole toes the rubber for the Buccos.
There are 87 American League players with NCAA experience, while the Senior Circuit claims 73.
Take a deep dive into this year’s MLB playoffs rosters and their connection to college baseball.
Two of those former NCAA players will be front and center for the Toronto Blue Jays. David Price, the pride of Vanderbilt, will throw for the Blue Jays in Game 1. Marcus Stroman will be on the rubber for Toronto in Game 2, and he is pretty excited about it.What to Do When Your Bilingual Child Won’t Speak Your Language
Let me begin this important post with a little story…
Not long ago I bumped into another American father in town, cradling his newborn daughter. His other two children, of elementary school age, were playing nearby. As we talked about our children, and naturally touched on our efforts to support the development of their minority language—English for us—it became apparent that he was feeling some frustration over the fact that his older kids seem to understand his English, for the most part, but typically respond only in Japanese.
I’ve lived in Japan since 1996 and I’ve seen this situation over and over and over again: despite the parent’s high hopes, the child won’t speak the minority language.
Lately, too, I’ve received email from a number of parents—located in a range of countries—who have expressed concern over this same dilemma. So, clearly, this is a common and widespread challenge for parents raising bilingual kids. The question is:
Why does this happen, and what can be done to address it when it occurs?
Two key areas
Recently, I wrote a post entitled Warning to New Parents Who Dream of Raising a Bilingual Child. If you haven’t seen it yet, I urge you to read it and share it with others who are just beginning the bilingual journey. That article, I hope, can help spare some parents the frustration felt by many when it comes to the development of the child’s minority language ability.
The basic point of that post is this:
If you want your children to use both languages actively when they start to speak, you must hit the ground running, right from birth, and do all that you can—day in and day out—to ensure that they form an organic need to use the minority language and receive sufficient exposure to that language.
When a child starts speaking, yet comes to rely mainly on the majority language to communicate, her reluctance to use the minority language can generally be traced to shortcomings in these two key areas—need and exposure—during the first few years of life. This period, when the young child’s brain is building the foundation for future communication, is a vital time for firmly supporting the minority language.
The necessity of need
If the growing child discovers that the minority-language speaking parent also has ability in the majority language, her need to use the minority language will naturally diminish. And if there is little need to use the minority language outside the home, either (such as attending a minority language school), chances are the child won’t be as moved to communicate in that language as the parent desires. (Though, as always, every family situation is different and I think the odds are better when the minority-language parent is the main caregiver.)
In my case, before I had kids, I would watch how other native-English parents interacted with their children and I realized that, all things being equal, the more those parents used Japanese around their kids, the less need the children felt to use English. In essence, each time the parent used Japanese, they were sending this unspoken message: “I can speak the majority language, too, so you don’t really need to use the minority language to communicate with me.”
This is why, once my children were born—and bear in mind that I’m not the main caregiver—I was determined to speak as little Japanese as possible when they were within earshot, especially as babies and toddlers. It’s true, my own Japanese ability has suffered, but it was far more important for me to convey the idea that I could only speak the minority language. In this way, they would form a real need to communicate with me in English.
It’s odd, but even now, when I do speak a bit more Japanese around them—especially when we have guests or we’re out in the community—they still think that “Daddy can’t speak Japanese.” This is how deeply conditioned they’ve become. In their minds, “Daddy speaks English and that’s the language I have to use with him.”
If your children have already come to realize that they needn’t use the minority language with you—and that using their stronger, majority language is “easier” for them—altering the pattern of communication that has been set will likely require more than simply insisting that they speak to you in the language you wish.
I understand the deep desire to communicate with your own children in your native language (see Why Communicating in English with My Kids is So Important to Me)—and being firm may bring some results, depending on the family dynamic—but if you really want to “activate” their passive language ability, you should also vigorously address the lack of need and exposure.
Addressing the lack of need
Again, an organic need is crucial for motivating their use of the target language. If, at this point, you’re unable to create a genuine need for your children to speak the language with you, look elsewhere to shore up that need. Seek out monolingual settings and situations where they will have no choice but to communicate in that language: schools, clubs, tutors, family members, babysitters, other children, homestay guests, homestays for them, trips, etc. Be proactive about this—don’t just assume that such opportunities aren’t available to you. The more you’re able to build this real need into your children’s lives, the more they’ll start using the language.
Addressing the lack of exposure
At the same time, you should make every effort to increase the amount of meaningful exposure your children receive in the target language each day. In my experience, most families facing the problem of passive ability in the minority language aren’t providing their children with enough exposure in that language on a regular basis.
What’s “enough exposure”? I discuss this question in detail in How Many Hours Per Week Is Your Child Exposed to the Minority Language?, so I urge you to read that post. A good target, though, would be about 30% of the child’s waking hours, or roughly 25 hours a week.
Along with the opportunities for interaction that you’ll hopefully create when you address the lack of need, I strongly suggest that you increase your children’s exposure to the minority language in a wide range of ways, including books, conversation, music, media, and games.
Books
When it comes to nurturing language development, books and reading have tremendous power. If you’re not already reading aloud to your children every day in the minority language—for at least 15 minutes a day—you’re not taking advantage of the number one way to boost their language ability. Make a vow, right this minute, to build a home library of suitable books and read aloud to them each day, whatever their age.
Because I’m such a mad believer in the power of books and reading, I’ve written extensively on this subject. For all my posts on reading (including recommended children’s books), see the reading category. Here are some articles you might start with…
The Secret to Raising a Bilingual Child
How to Get Your Child Hooked on Books
What Is Captive Reading and How Will It Help My Bilingual Child?
Recommended Resources: “The Power of Reading”
Recommended Resources: Good Books on Reading Aloud
Also, at Free Report: The Power of Reading in Raising a Bilingual Child, you can download a handy PDF file which summarizes my thoughts on reading.
Conversation
Along with daily reading, make an effort to increase the sheer volume of speech you direct toward your children in the minority language. (See The Most Powerful Thing of All in Nurturing Language Development for a fuller discussion of this important principle.) Even if they aren’t responding in that language, right now, this additional exposure will help pave the way for communication.
Try telling true stories from your past (Strange-But-True-Tales: Baby Chicks in the Bathtub) and fanciful “made-up memories” (Using Made-Up Memories to Engage Bilingual Kids). Make images (photos, illustrations, etc.) a staple of your efforts (How Images Will Stimulate Your Child’s Bilingual Development). Turn to riddles, which have built-in “kid appeal.” You’ll probably find plenty of riddles in your target language online—or simply make up your own. (Here’s a collection of “Ridiculous Riddles” that I concocted in English.)
Music
You should also make persistent use of music in your target language. Playing music regularly in the background, when your children are at home, or in the car, will quickly increase their input. You may even find your children starting to sing along to a catchy song! (See How the Power of Music Nurtures Bilingual Ability and—for suitable music in English—Recommended Resources: Great Music for Kids.)
Media
At the moment, I’m pretty clueless when it comes to the latest apps, but in the past, I made use of computer games and electronic gadgets as one component of my efforts. If you investigate, you’ll likely find some enjoyable and effective resources for your target language. (The electronic device I describe in Are You Accidentally Hindering Your Child’s Bilingual Progress? might be of interest to those promoting English.)
As for TV, I’ll admit that TV programs and DVDs have long played an important role in my children’s exposure to the minority language. At the same time, I do try to limit this input since the passive exposure of TV can’t match the positive impact of more interactive experiences—and, besides, I don’t want my kids turning into glassy-eyed zombies.
Games
Over the years I’ve collected a lot of fun, useful games—board games, card games, word games, storytelling games—and I play them regularly with my children and my students. This is another area in which I would encourage some investigation and investment. I also suggest, in addition to “competitive games” (where there are winners and losers), that you seek out some “cooperative games” (where the players work together toward a common goal). (For information on cooperative games in English, see Recommended Resources: Great Cooperative Games.)
It’s never too late
In the end, activating a child’s passive ability in the minority language will depend on the actions you’re willing, and able, to make. If you can adequately address these areas of need and exposure, you’ll likely see signs of progress.
It may be, however, that in your particular situation, at this particular time, you’re unwilling or unable to take action to the degree needed. There’s no shame in that. It then becomes important, though, to modify your goal and feel at peace with the idea of supporting your children’s minority language to whatever extent you can. Never permit yourself to get to the point where, out of discouragement, you just stop trying. Remember that every effort you make can have a positive impact on your children’s language development and their longer-term future. Even if you don’t see the fruits of your efforts right away, the actions you make now could very well lead to the day when your greater goal is realized and your children come to use the minority language more actively in their lives.
In other words, it’s never too late to keep trying. At the same time, go at this as lightly, as playfully, as you can. The bilingual journey, for both you and your children, should be more joy than burden. I understand the frustrations that can come with supporting the minority language (just ask my daughter), but we can’t let those frustrations weigh on our day-to-day relationships with our kids.
After all, from the child’s point of view, being loved will always be more important than being bilingual.
To lift your spirit, and boost your success, get my free eBook Instant Inspiration for Parents Raising Bilingual Kids.Indiana Pacers forward C.J. Miles (0) attempts to block the shot by Dallas Mavericks forward Dwight Powell (7) in the second half of their game Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016, at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. (Photo: Matt_Kryger/Indy_Star)
INDIANAPOLIS – Within a new up-tempo offense, the Indiana Pacers who come off the bench don’t always have to play at top speed.
C.J. Miles explained the team's philosophical intricacies Monday. After two losses in which the reserves struggled, Miles repeated coach Nate McMillan’s message that he and his teammates need to play with better energy and intensity. How that looks, though, could be in a methodical halfcourt set where multiple players are moving before a shot is attempted. The foundation, Miles said, is Al Jefferson, the Pacers’ veteran backup center.
He felt Indiana’s bench lost contact with Jefferson last week when the Pacers lost their fourth-quarter lead against the Brooklyn Nets and when they were blown out in the second quarter by the Chicago Bulls.
“We have to do a better job of using him, even if we don’t throw it down into the post,” Miles said of Jefferson. “I would much rather have an open shot off of Al or just throw it in to Al. Those are the two best options in that scenario. We have to be patient.”
Jefferson, by a wide margin, is the Pacers most plodding player. Miles and McMillan agree that the bench needs to better turn Jefferson’s interior scoring into an advantage. The importance for the Pacers’ bench, it seems after three games, is to find the right balance in terms of their tempo once most starters sit on the bench.
McMillan wants his reserves to run to the basket when they create a turnover or have the advantage early in transition after a defensive rebound. If that running opportunity is not available, set up the halfcourt offense and find Jefferson. From there, Miles said he and his teammates have to display discipline by moving within their motion offense, not standing around. The quick shots from the bench, in particular Saturday, compromised the team’s defense in allowing the Bulls to score 38 points in the second quarter.
“I came in and I got a couple of good looks, but I just kind of rushed it because we were down,” Miles said. “You want to come in and make an impact right away because you don’t want the game to slip out. We got ahead of ourselves, which helped (the Bulls).”
McMillan used Monday’s practice to remind his players they need to give maximum effort, no matter how fast or slow the game is being played.
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“One thing you do is you talk about it and then you sub,” McMillan said with smile. “It’s simple as that. If you’re not getting it, then you put some guy out there and you search until you find it.”
Indiana Pacers center Al Jefferson (7) and Brooklyn Nets center Al Jefferson (11) reach for a loose ball during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Friday, Oct. 28, 2016, in New York. (Photo: Mary Altaffer, AP)
Aaron Brooks could bolster the Pacers’ bench production if he makes his Indiana debut Tuesday against the Los Angeles Lakers. One way the bench could successfully switch between certain speeds is by having Brooks, a nine-year veteran, run the offense, which he was expected to do when he signed in the offseason |
who defeated Barrett in 2010 by 5 points to win election as governor, was targeted for recall after successfully passing a law last year that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers.
Barrett said that proposal, which sparked massive protests for weeks and made Wisconsin the center of a national debate over collective bargaining powers, tore the state apart. Walker said his measure, which also forced most workers to pay more for pensions and health insurance, was needed to help deal with a $3.6 billion state budget deficit.
“You decided to use a budget crisis to try and divide and conquer this state,” Barrett said, speaking directly to Walker as the two stood near each other behind podiums in a television studio. “That’s what happened. That’s what led to all of this. And you succeeded. You succeeded in dividing this state.”
Walker said he was focused on moving the state forward and didn’t want to relive the past.
[...] Barrett also prodded Walker to release more information about his involvement with an ongoing criminal investigation that so far has focused on aides and associates of his during his time as Milwaukee County executive. Five people have been charged on allegations including embezzling money from a veterans trust fund and campaigning on county time.
Walker has not been charged, but he created a legal defense fund and said he would answer questions from the district attorney’s office. Walker has said he’s been told he is not the center of the probe.
Walker called Barrett’s focus on the investigation a desperate move meant to distract from other issues.
“I will continue to have high integrity,” Walker said.Lost in the media scrum about threats and counter threats from President Trump and North Korea is a very important story that was totally missed. While headlines a few days ago blared that North Korea said it would never negotiate with the US on its nuclear and missile programs, in fact, it never said that. This isn’t the first time the media missed the story. It happens all the time, whenever it covers statements by North Korea.
A big part of the blame goes to Pyongyang. It’s incredibly hard for anyone to parse its public policy statements, often filled with bluster, bluff and just plain old propaganda. It is hard for anyone except the most experienced North Korea hand to figure out the real message—if there is one. But, with that caveat the news media has a responsibility to get the facts straight. And on this story, it failed completely. That failure is particularly dangerous given the continuing mounting crisis between Washington and Pyongyang.
What is especially disturbing was the failure in this case was not a case of bad analysis. As was pointed out by Robert Carlin, who has been following North Korea and its media statements for almost four decades as a US government official and now a private expert, it a failure of getting the language straight. The media cherry-picked a part of what the North Koreans were saying in order to write a sensational story. That story focused on a statement by North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho at the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting, which was misinterpreted to mean the North Koreans would never negotiate with the United States. The English translation was:
We will, under no circumstances, put the nukes and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table. Neither shall we flinch even an inch from the road to bolstering up the nuclear forces chosen by ourselves, unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the U.S. against the D.P.R.K. are fundamentally eliminated.
This splitting of sentences raised several questions as to what was covered under the qualifier of “unless” the hostile policy is removed. The answer though could be found in the Korean language version, in which the formula was presented as one sentence, not two:
미국의 적대시 정책과 핵위협이 근원적으로 청산되지 않는 한 우리는 그 어떤 경우에도 핵과 탄도로케트를 협상탁에 올려놓지 않을 것이며 우리가 선택한 핵무력 강화의 길에서 단 한치도 물러서지 않을 것입니다.
“Unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the U.S. against the D.P.R.K. are fundamentally eliminated, we, under no circumstances, will put the nukes and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table and will not flinch even an inch away from our path of strengthening of the nuclear forces, which is chosen by ourselves.”
Indeed, this formulation just repeats earlier statement by Kim Jong Un himself (on July 4) as well as an official North Korean government statement on August 7, which is an authoritative policy pronouncement. But no one in the media mentioned either of these statements in their coverage.
In short, the North Koreans appear to be saying that the only way they will put their WMD programs on the table is if the US threat to their country ends, a very different position than described in media reports. We can argue whether the North Koreans are “sincere” about negotiations and of course whether talks can work, but first we need to get our facts straight. In this case, the media did a disservice to us all.Earlier this year in January, Kodak announced it was bringing back its popular Ektachrome film. After a period of silence and recent news that the company is laying off 425 employees after losing $46 million, there’s now some good news: Ektachrome’s return is still on track.
Kodak published a 40-minute update from its film factory on the current status of its Ektachrome reboot work, and things sound quite positive.
“The process is coming along really well,” Kodak says. “We’ve been busy testing and making sure it meets all the expectations that exist in this passionate community.”
Kodak is using “all new equipment” on a much smaller scale to make the film, bringing costs down for smaller manufacturing runs. Continuing to produce the film had been cost-prohibitive before, but now that’s becoming less of a factor.
Ektachrome was created in the 1940s and is a reversal film, meaning it’s a positive image on a transparent base rather than a negative. Kodak ceased manufacturing it in 2013.
The film was manufactured with over 80 ingredients, and when Kodak originally stopped manufacturing the rolls, they “lost” specific ingredients — many of them couldn’t be purchased anymore. A huge challenge for Kodak to overcome was simply sourcing all the chemicals and materials required for the reboot.
However, the good news is they have all been located. After that, the team had to find all of the necessary components to properly process Ektachrome.
With those steps completed, Kodak is now starting to test the film. The company has created a number of smaller rolls for initial tests. The next step is creating support rolls — large sheets of plastic material measuring 6,000 feet by 4 feet. The film rolls are unraveled in a darkroom and the emulsions and other chemicals are applied before they are rolled back up into the canisters for testing in the main Kodak film factory.
The first of these rolls will be made and sent to the factory in just a few weeks time.
Kodak is aiming to reassure fans that “this is the real deal” — the actual return of Ektachrome and not just a poor imitation with a catchy name.
Once everything is ready, Kodak will start by making 35mm film and then 16mm before packaging it and sending it out for distribution sometime in 2018.
Image credits: Ektachrome film box photo by Thistle33Katrin Himmler (born 1967) is a German author. She is the granddaughter of Ernst Himmler (1905–1945), who was the younger brother of Heinrich Himmler, one of the leading figures of Nazi Germany. Therefore, she is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler. She is the author of Die Brüder Himmler: Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte, published in English as The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History.
Book [ edit ]
Katrin Himmler's book Die Brüder Himmler: Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte was published in 2005 in Germany by S. Fischer Verlag and in 2007 in English by Macmillan as The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History.
Her book traces the lives of the three Himmler brothers (the eldest was Gebhard Himmler), the sons of a respected secondary school headmaster in Munich. Gebhard served in the German Army in World War I, but Heinrich, who at 18 was still an officer cadet when the war ended, was too young to see frontline service. Katrin Himmler speculates that it was frustration at this and envy of his brother that led Heinrich to join the extreme right-wing Freikorps in 1919. In the Freikorps he served under Ernst Röhm and was thus led into the Nazi Party.
Despite her family being told her grandfather Ernst had had no interest in politics, Katrin discovered that he was an enthusiastic Nazi who had joined the party in 1931, and was also an officer in the Schutzstaffel (SS). Ernst was killed in the fighting in Berlin in April 1945.
"Many times during my research it was quite difficult for me to go on," Himmler told an interviewer in August 2007. "As things were revealed it became more and more shocking. We descendents were left in no doubt about what Heinrich had done. But his actions cast a large shadow that the rest of the family were standing in, many of them hiding in there."[1]
Her most disturbing discovery was that her grandfather had directly caused the deportation and death of a Jewish engineer, a Major Schmidt, deputy manager of an engineering firm, who had been protected because of his expertise. Writing to Heinrich, Ernst dismissed his usefulness, knowing that he would then be reclassified and deported to a labour camp.
Justin Cartwright, reviewing the book for The Daily Telegraph, commented: "As Katrin Himmler writes, it would have been perfectly possible for him [Ernst] to have supported Schmidt without any danger to himself as the brother of the Reichsführer. For her this was a turning point: she realised once and for all just how deeply her grandfather and her great-uncle Gebhard were in thrall to their brother's murderous racial policies."[2]
Doug Johnstone wrote in The List: "Katrin’s book is admirably level-headed, a meticulous memoir of an extraordinary family, and the author never resorts to histrionics, preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. Originally written as self-therapy, the book stands as a testament to the enduring legacy of guilt the Nazis left behind for future generations."[1]
Robert Hawks, however, wrote in The Independent: "Katrin does try to turn some equivocal evidence into revelations of her family's complicity, but her prosecutorial stance gets in the way of empathy. In the end, The Himmler Brothers raises more questions about its subject than it is capable of answering, but that doesn't lessen in the slightest my admiration of Katrin Himmler for having written it."[3]
Himmler is one of the protagonists of the television documentary Hitler's Children (in German: "Meine Familie, die Nazis und Ich")[4] of the Israeli director Chanoch Zeevi about descendants of the Nazi elite, amongst them Rainer Höss.
Personal life [ edit ]
Himmler was born in Dinslaken. She is married to an Israeli.[2] Despite the opportunity to take her spouse's surname, she chose to keep the name Himmler, rather than deny her heritage.[2]
Katrin Himmler said that she researched and wrote the book so that her son would have a full understanding of his family's history. She told an interviewer: "When my husband and I had our son, it became clear I had to break with the family tradition of not speaking about the past. I wanted to give my son as much information as possible, so that when he starts asking questions about my family, at least I can answer him."[1]
References [ edit ]African Ape in Iron Age Ireland? June 19, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
So here’s a teaser. The Barbary ape is an African primate whose only toehold on the European continent is at Gibraltar, where a tiny population has survived into modern times. How, then, did a Barbary Ape get to Co Armagh in Northern Ireland in the Iron Age? Archaeologists have waxed lyrical over the find of ape remains at EM since publication of the find in 1971, and have constructed ambitious models of trade that have seen Carthaginian merchants turn up in the cold north with monkeys and other primates running up and down their rigging. And, to be fair, it is easy to understand the excitement of these archaeologists. But is everything really as it seems?
The ape appeared in phase IIIii at Emain Macha (Navan), a radical new departure for settlement in what was perhaps the capital of tribal Ulster: certainly, a fortress site that later enjoyed that status in mythology. However, the truth is that there is not the remains of a Barbary ape at Navan. There is rather the skull of an ape that was placed in a building slot, probably as a votive offering. There is a lot of misinformation out there with incorrect claims that the whole body was found; or that the skull had a chain on; or that the ape was buried at Tara: NO, NO, NO.
It is possible, of course, that no Barbary ape ever arrived in Ireland and that a skull was slowly passed from hand to hand across Europe until it arrived in this rain-swept corner of the far north. Alternatively, an ape was kept as a pet and then, at death, its skull was preserved, much as we know the ancient Celts sometimes kept human skulls as temple or domestic paraphernalia: something for which there is extensive archaeological evidence from Ireland, Britain and Gaul.
Another problem is the dating, which has been carried out on the basis of tree and radiocarbon markers. Some reports suggest the first century B.C., others the third or fourth century B.C. This lack of exactitude is worrying and though it may not sound like a big deal different dates might mean different donors. In the fourth century BC we should get all Pytheas; in the first century B.C. a Barbary Ape (or part of a Barbary ape) could have been brought, say, by Roman infiltration into the Atlantic. (There is even some unlikely muttering about the first century AD, which means Roman government in Britannia).
But let’s not spoil this too much with science. My favourite line on the subject comes from Ian Armit Head Hunting (2012, 72), ‘it is pleasing to speculate on the impact that a diminutive, hairy, tail-less, humanlike creature might have had, swinging around the timber structures of this windswept Irish drumlin.’ True or not it is an image that is difficult to relinquish.
Other animals far from home in the Iron Age? drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT comA presidential group convened to review National Security Agency practices released its report outlining forty-six recommendations that President Barack Obama’s administration should adopt in the aftermath of news stories containing revelations from documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The revelations have exposed the massive spying capabilities of the NSA, showing collection of the personal data of Americans as well as indiscriminate surveillance of citizens in foreign countries.
One of the recommendations is the “United States government should examine the feasibility of creating software that would allow the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies more easily to conduct targeted information acquisition rather than bulk-data collection.” This recommendation applies to the bulk data collection of Americans’ phone records under a provision of the PATRIOT Act known as Section 215. The data is stored and then searched later for anything relevant to investigations or operations.
Not only is this a “feasible” alternative to vacuuming the personal data of Americans in violation of their privacy but NSA whistleblower William Binney told Firedoglake that this system for “targeted information acquisition” was already developed and proposed about fifteen years ago. It was called ThinThread.
He, along with NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis and Kirk Wiebe, fought to have it adopted by the agency. However, the NSA rejected ThinThread and opted to develop another much more expensive and inefficient program called Trailblazer.
These four individuals were not merely looking to have their own program adopted so they could personally benefit. They were concerned about processes or procedures adopted at the NSA after the 9/11 attacks that involved spying on Americans and violated their privacy. They challenged the leadership and became targets of a government investigation. They had their homes raided by the FBI. Drake was even indicted for retaining classified information in violation of the Espionage Act. (For full background, read journalist Timothy Shorrock’s feature story published in The Nation this year on “Obama’s Crackdown on Whistleblowers.”)
ThinThread would have defined “up front the areas or zones of suspicion in the world,” Binney described. “That is, you would graph relationships in banking or phone calls or email or travel or anything else. All those relationships of everyone in the world and then you would have zones like groups of individuals who are active in drug smuggling, money laundering or terrorism or whatever and those groups then would show up in all these relationships.”
The NSA would only go two hops or two degrees from a known participant in any particular activity, and such a limit would make “all that content manageable.” It would reduce the “problem of all the volume in the world down to a very relevant area that has high potential for intelligence production,” which was “the whole idea from the beginning with ThinThread.” And, “It was all going to be automated so we didn’t have people doing it.”
In 2004, Binney, Loomis and Wiebe submitted a proposal to the NSA for a $250,000 contract to develop this system for data filtering and automated information processing. The system, according to the proposal submitted to the NSA and shared with Firedoglake, would have employed a “list of known entities of interest (EOI) to be selected at the point of access in order to derive information of interest, including new entities at one degree of separation from the known EOIs and all associated content.”
If a new entity were to appear to have a “one-degree relationship” with a known EOI, that entity could be added to the list of EOIs.
It would have managed bandwidth better “by filtering data at their source based on entity affinity.” Associations between an EOI and unknown entities could be “derived in a sufficiently timely manner to effect selection adjustment and drive automated tasking.”
This proposal was rejected. The NSA leadership, Binney explained, “took the philosophy they wanted to collect everything they could with the understanding that whatever was relevant they would have captured and eventually they would eventually find it or work algorithms.” This is what the White House’s Big Data initiative is about, “to try to get algorithms” that will go through all the data “they’ve collected and figure out what’s important automatically without people because the people can’t get to it.”
“That’s why I keep saying they’ve made themselves dysfunctional by collecting all this material,” Binney added.
Wiebe appeared on “Democracy Now!” to talk about the NSA review report and recounted the history of trying to get intelligence or security agencies other than the NSA to adopt the developed system, which had been rejected:
…[W]hen 9/11 happened and we failed and the project that we had been developing called ThinThread was not adopted, we felt we had no other things to do at NSA. And since three of us were eligible for retirement, we retired, formed a small company and tried to bring the concepts of ThinThread to other agencies in the government. We succeeded in demonstrating its capabilities in a government contract with Boeing Company in 2004, but a high executive in the agency that that contract serves said, “We have to stop these guys. They’re going to embarrass NSA,” because we had found things in a set of data, that two agencies had, that NSA had not, and that was embarrassing. So that contract was stopped. We then found another contract at Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Patrol. We found some news-breaking data there about an operation involving Iranian businesses importing electronics to support the building of triggering devices for IEDs. And we found that—and this is not classified. This data, this fact, was actually broadcast publicly by the Department of Commerce to U.S. businesses, putting them on alert that certain people, individuals and businesses were trying to import electronics to build triggering devices for IEDs to be used against our troops abroad and coalition forces. We simply, Bill Binney and I, sat down, used Google at home, on our spare time, to formulate a profile of these businesses, where they were, how they were functioning, and it turned out they were all false fronts to cover up the import operation. We put all the—we connected the dots for the government, reported it to Customs and Border Patrol, where we were working. They took the data and briefed it up the line. And within two weeks, we were let go from our contract. I guess we had embarrassed too many people…
Director for National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied to Congress, talks about wanting to have this “peace of mind” that all the data has been collected and nothing has been missed, but this fundamentally misunderstands that NSA is supposed to be fulfilling an intelligence role, not a police role.
Intelligence production is supposed to predict intentions and “capabilities of threats that have been happening so something can be done to stop them,” Binney explained. “Feeling comfortable that you have all the data that you can find in the forensics adds nothing to that intelligence objective.”
“They think it’s just the issue of having the data to begin with and somehow the answer will come out. They’ve failed to understand the analytic process, what drives that and they’ve lost that perspective,” Binney suggested. “They’re mostly dealing with it in terms of a computer process or engineering issue and that’s simply the wrong issue.”
Neither Binney nor Drake was contacted by the NSA review group, which consisted of: former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, former counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein, privacy law expert Peter Swire and University of Chicago law professor, Geoffrey Stone.
Yet, “Recommendation #20” outlines the following:
In the course of our review, we have been struck by the fact that the nature of IT networks and current intelligence collection technology is such that it is often necessary to ingest large amounts of data in order to acquire a limited amount of required data. E-mails, telephone calls, and other communications are moved on networks as a series of small packets, then reassembled at the receiving end. Often those packets are interspersed in transit with packets from different originators. To intercept one message, pieces of many other messages might be recorded and placed in government databases, at least temporarily. Frequently, too, it is more cost-effective and less likely to be detected by the transmitter if the collection of a message occurs in transit, mixed up with many others, rather than at the source.
It might reduce budgetary costs and political risk if technical collection agencies could make use of artificial intelligence software that could be launched onto networks and would be able to determine in real time what precise information packets should be collected. Such smart software would be making the sorting decision online, as distinguished from the current situation in which vast amounts of data are swept up and the sorting is done after it has been copied on to data storages systems. We are unable to determine whether this concept is feasible or fantasy, but we suggest that it should be examined by an interagency information technology research team. [emphasis added]
It is remarkable that the presidential review group does not appear to know that a system to “determine in real time what precise information packets should be collected” has been developed and proposed for the NSA. (Maybe the group is being coy in their report because they know institutionally the NSA rejected ThinThread.)
The review group called for bulk data collection to be terminated but proposed that private entities or a third-party provider hold on to this data and make it available to the NSA. To Binney, they shouldn’t even have the data to begin with. “Nobody should.”
Binney raised the issue of law enforcement involvement and how they use the data in the United States and around the world.
“Look at the Special Operations division in the Drug Enforcement Agency,” he said. It’s a “group that includes the FBI, NSA, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Deparment of Homeland Security (DHS). Information on relationships in data collected could be used by the IRS to “target the Tea Party because all those relationships” are “sitting there.”
“So far nobody’s really addressing how law enforcement or IRS is using this information,” Binney declared. “They’re all talking about NSA analysts and, to me, that’s not the real threat. The real threat comes from those other people who can come at you with guns and put you in a prison and take you off without due process.”
He concluded, “Collecting all this information on individuals is what totalitarian states have done down through the centuries. That’s been their business.”
It is why German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose phone was tapped by the NSA, was upset. It is like what the Stasi did, what the KGB did, what the Gestapo and SS did and what Mao Zedong’s people did in China. It is a “totalitarian procedure.”
“If we accept this, then we’re accepting totalitarianism. We have to speak up against it,” Binney concluded.About
The Duckroll is the earliest bait and switch "roll" from 4chan. It is the precursor to the Rickroll
Origin
The duckroll originated in the mid-2000s on 4chan as a response to a world filter moot had put on the site. In an interview with TechCrunch, he explained that he set up a filter to change the word "egg" to "duck." Whenever someone posted the word "eggroll," it was changed to "duckroll." After seeing the filter in action, users started posting links to an image of a duck with wooden wheels as a bait and switch, advertising the link to be to an exciting post.
While no exact date has been pinpointed, Lurkmore Wiki says the phenomenon began in mid-November 2006, but the earliest archived 4chan thread with a duckroll appeared on December 12th, 2006.
Spread
Duckroll was added to Urban Dictionary on January 4th, 2007. The first duckroll video was posted to YouTube on the same day by shinigamiwolfen. It is four and a half minutes of a still image of a mallard duck with truck tires instead of feet while DarkMateria's "The Picard Song" plays in the background.
Users would then post bait and switch links to the video. This was the antecedent to users linking to Rick Astley's video for Never Gonna Give You Up.
Only a handful of YTMNDs were created. The first was made by user Gregunit on January 25th, 2007.
Search Interest
Search for "duckroll" peaked in April 2008, due to YouTube's April Fools Day Rickroll prank executed that month.
External ReferencesWhat is it? Sort of like what would happen if a climbing frame fucked a bed. And then that resulting monster fucked just a pile of old, splintered wood. God, why are all of my analogies about monsters fucking each other? I need to talk to someone. I've been putting it off for too long. I need to just— I need to have words, with someone
Where is it? In the Bermuda Triangle between Stoke Newington, Dalston and Clapton known as 'Rectory Road', home to a two-platform station, exactly one decent coffee shop, and then just desolate rolling pavements and concrete, and large upright brown blocks of flats, and roads that lead to nowhere, and there are no boundaries, here, in Rectory Road, no idea where Rectory Road begins and where it ends, but there are like two to three shops where you can buy a big bottle of water and a £1 bowl of tomatoes.
What is there to do locally? I tried to do something once in Rectory Road once and I kept accidentally wandering outside of the boundaries of it and into Stoke Newington (like if a Godzilla made of middle class mums fucked a Mothra made of local shop owners of 35 years until they finally submitted and shuttered their family butcher so they can do another Franco Manca in there instead), then wobbling back towards Dalston (King Kong made of million-pound flat owners who are all mad that a Gamera made of chicken shops exists, and use complex council processes to fuck them to death) and then Clapton (Guilala of under-25s living in flat shares fucking a Kraken made of brunch). So in answer to the question 'what is there to do locally': just scream and scream and scream and scream and
Alright, how much are they asking? £950 pcm
I think everyone secretly dreams of living alone, don't they? Some of us not, maybe. Some of us would go mad with the solitude. Three days, alone in a flat, itching at the windows. Doing warm-up vocal exercises to no one just so you get a chance to use your voice that day. Just staring and staring, alone, into the mirror. Hold your fingers and pull beneath your eyes. Are they real? Are you real? Is your reflection real? You could die here and nobody would know. Nobody would know for days. Yell and hear it echo off the walls. They'd only find you when you seep out through the ceiling into the flat below.
But for the rest of us, I think, secretly: quite fantasise about living alone.
What about this place, then? It's in Rectory Road, and you have to live alone there because imagine subjecting another human to this, imagine, imagine it, you can't, and: yeah. Nine-hunner fifty bones per calendar month and all this could be yours:
(All photos via Spareroom
Suppose we may as well go thru this in order:
1. IS THAT A FUCKING BUNKBED
Remember bunkbeds? They were good, when you were a kid, weren't they. Always used to squabble over who would claim the top bunk at sleepovers and the like. For a while, they felt like this cosy little den, a secret sleeping space made only for you: just you, nose to the ceiling (the ceiling, when you were a child, was dotted with those stars and moons that promised to be luminescent, to absorb sunlight during the day and spit it out again as a soothing glow at night, but had long since lost the effect and just gone yellow and old, but nobody would bother to unpick them from the ceiling until your mum redecorated your bedroom six months after you went to uni). Just you and your row of teddies and your soft, pissed-on duvet. Sleeping in a bunk bed felt as electrical as sleeping in a bed, or a blanket fort: subverting the boring, grown-up trope of a bed, instead elevating it to something more, something magical. Then puberty hit you like a truck and your balls or tits came in and it never really was the same, was it. But now…
… what if you slept in a bunkbed, now?
2. MY DUDE DID YOU MAKE THIS BUNKBED EXCLUSIVELY OUT OF WOOD YOU FOUND IN A SKIP AND LADDERS YOU TOOK FROM CONDEMNED FACTORIES OR
I want to flag that this is not, like, an actual bunkbed. Like: someone who has to adhere to safety standards did not make this. This is made from mis-matched wood and a large section that appears to be reclaimed plumbing pipe. It has, for some reason, like eight different ladders attached to it. I suppose if you were designing a fun climbing frame/jungle gym for a hamster, this would be a good layout for it to have. If you are designing a way for an adult human to sleep in big, big 2017, in Rectory Road, for £950, a month: maybe not
3. THE CAGE DOESN'T ACTUALLY SAVE ANY SPACE. IT ACTIVELY TAKES IT UP SPACE. THE HELL CAGE IS IMPRACTICAL IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.
Whoever made this cage, out of debris, over a series of months, has actively fucked up. The point of a bunkbed is to reclaim precious floor space taken up by a bed, and instead raise said bed into the air so activity can go on beneath it. So like yes: there is a dreary-looking futon hidden in there. But there are also a series of structural-looking planks, ladders and tubing. Like if you move the wrong way slightly an entire bed is coming down on you. And floorspace wise, you have actually taken up more floorspace than an actual bed would take up just so you have room for a red shit rug
4. PLANKS ARE ACTIVELY FALLING OFF THE BED SPACE AND THE PERSON TAKING THE PHOTOS DID NOT EVEN HIDE THAT AT ALL
I often talk about how property agents and landlords and etc. are all carcasses awaiting hell, and that shooting them directly in the head should not – in my opinion! – be classed as a federal crime, so useless are they, those piles of vacant-minded meat, but still: whoever took this photo of this shithole could not even be bothered for one second to replace the plank that is already falling off the BedBeast™ to better sell the flat, which gentle reminder they are asking £950 per calendar month for—
5. ONE SINGLE WALL OF THE BATHROOM HAS BEEN PAINTED A CHEERFUL MINT GREEN TO DISTRACT FROM THE FACT THAT YOU ESSENTIALLY SLEEP IN A GALLOWS
For some reason the microwave is built into its own wooden cage, too. The floor is just a large varnished piece of wood I would not be surprised to learn was once just the side of someone else's wardrobe.
Microwave prison
Dip your little finger into this marinara of the London rental market, bring it to your lips and taste it. Not great, is it? Not a great dab of sauce, this one. Consider that this costs Nine-hundred and fifty pounds, to live here, for one month. Consider that "24/7 access" to your own flat is listed as a pro. That it is part of a secure gated estate, in case anyone wants to break into your flat – your flat, remember, is a small room made entirely of bin-wood, making it more a doghouse than anything else – to steal what little you have left after rent day. The agency and administrators want £175, each, in process fees to hand you the keys to this hell. Consider that this is in Rectory Road. Consider how insane you would go, confined to this hard- and ply-wood prison, for anything more than one day. I dunno, man. I dunno. Just really is starting to feel that London is a doomed city, now.
@joelgolby (h/t @abrightfar)
MORE FROM THIS DREADFUL SERIES:
Old Street!
Bloodbath!
Ghosts!Move over Rover, let Flipper take over. News from New Zealand suggests man's best friend is in fact the bottlenose dolphin.
It emerged yesterday that four swimmers were saved from a great white shark by a pod of altruistic dolphins, who swam in circles around them until the humans could escape.
Rob Howes, a British-born lifeguard, had gone swimming with his daughter, Niccy, and two of her friends off Ocean beach near Whangarei on the North Island, when the dolphins suddenly appeared. At first, he thought the mammals were being playful, but he soon realised the danger the swimmers were in.
"They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us," Mr Howes told the New Zealand Press Association.
He tried to drift away from the group, but two of the bigger dolphins herded him back - just as he spotted a three-metre [10ft] great white shark heading towards him. "I just recoiled," he said. "It was only about two metres away from me, the water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face. They had corralled us up to protect us."
The dolphins kept their vigil for 40 minutes until the shark lost interest, and the group could swim 100m back to the shore.
Another lifeguard, Matt Fleet, on patrol in a lifeboat, saw the dolphins circling the swimmers and slapping their tails on the water to keep them in place. He told the Northern Advocate newspaper that he also had a clear sighting of the shark. "Some of the people later on the beach tried to tell me it was just another dolphin; but I knew what I saw," he said.
Although the incident happened on October 30, the swimmers have only just spoken of their rescue.
Ingrid Visser, of Orca Research, an environmental group, said the dolphins' behaviour was understandable, as they attack sharks to protect themselves and their young, and similar incidents had been reported round the world. "They could have sensed the danger to the swimmers, and taken action to protect them," she said.China Leads Renewable Energy Push In Asia-Pacific, Says GlobalData
September 7th, 2015 by Joshua S Hill
These are some of the conclusions from GlobalData’s Asia-Pacific Renewable Energy Policy Handbook 2015, which finds that many countries throughout the Asia-Pacific Region “have adopted policy instruments such as Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs), Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), soft loans, and tax incentives to promote renewable energy.”
GlobalData, a global intelligence provider for the energy and healthcare industries, published its newest report late last month, in which it investigates the policy measures being used throughout the Asia-Pacific Region to tackle the growth of renewable energy.
Unsurprisingly, according to GlobalData, “Investment in renewable energy projects increased following the introduction of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997,” of which Australia, Japan, and New Zealand are all signatories. China and India, who were only faced with non-binding targets as part of the Kyoto Protocol, later signed the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, pledging to work toward binding targets for carbon intensity reduction of 20 to 25% and 40 to 45% by 2020 respectively.
GlobalData also put together the following table, outlining the policy measures currently in place for the promotion of renewable energy throughout the Asia-Pacific Region:
GlobalData also highlighted the importance of China in the Asia-Pacific Region, describing it as an emerging “major player in the global renewable energy industry” and a “leading country” in the Asia-Pacific Region.
China |
, will live on and will accomplish its mission to improve the lives of all parrots worldwide.Buy Photo Bob Youst and his friend, Jim Maroulis, gutted and then rebuilt an old business in the Showboat Hotel building on River Street to create Whiskey River Pub & Grill. (Photo: KEVIN OKLOBZIJA/@kevinoDandC/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)Buy Photo
The idea seemed so good at the time to Bob Youst.
He would take his business, Steel River BBQ & Grill, and combine it with the closed-down River Street Grill & Pub next door to create a dynamic, elegant and true-to-its-Charlotte-roots neighborhood bar and restaurant.
A bar on the south half of the building, scrumptious dining on the north half, and a party room upstairs with a view of the Genesee River and Genesee Yacht Club.
In his vision, he'd christen the new pub and eatery in the summer of 2015.
"A three-month facelift," Youst said of the renovation.
It turned out to be more like a 15-month construction odyssey filled with rotted beams, failing floors and defective plumbing. Then again, when you're revamping a building that was erected in 1853, the old Showboat Hotel, you probably shouldn't expect anything but surprises.
"We had one unforeseen nightmare after another," Youst said.
But guess who's now open for dinner?
Whiskey River Pub & Grill officially welcomed dinner guests and bar patrons on July 1, and while work on the second-floor party room is just beginning, the pride of Youst's dream has been realized. He and his wife, Tina Cipolla Youst, are co-owners.
From chestnut and mahogany trim to inlaid stone on the walls, from a meticulously crafted decor and cedar ceilings to homemade lights out of Jack Daniels bottles, Whiskey River is a dining and drinking oasis along the west bank of the Genesee at 421 River St. It's on the one-way portion of River Street accessible from Stutson Street to the south.
Whiskey River has a early 1920s feel, and whiskey barrels accentuate the design.
"The love of the prohibition era with a touch of class," Youst said.
The hickory and applewood smoked chicken wings — made in the smoker out by the bocce courts and horseshoe pit — were a staple of Steel River and still are being served. But the fine-dining menu features a variety of steaks, prime rib and seafood, and a signature whiskey bourbon gravy spices up pork and sirloin.
"Before, Steel River was a bar, restaurant, diner, BBQ house all in one," Youst said. "It was too much."
That's why he wanted to expand. The project certainly was not an easy endeavor; they had to pound through 18-inch brick walls to create the doorways.
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But the rotted support beams and frail floor Youst and his partner in craftsmanship, Jim Maroulis, found early in their renovation are just battle scars.
Youst wasn't schooled in culinary delights. He's no chef extraordinaire. He's a carpenter and has spent 25 years in the construction business. He's vice president of Excelaron, a Rochester-based residential and commercial construction firm. Whiskey River has 16 employees and Youst leaves the cooking to his chefs.
"What did I know about restaurants? I ate in them three times a day," said Youst, 42, of Greece.
Because he did the work himself, with family and friends pitching in, creating Whiskey River was possible without hitting the lottery.
Buy Photo The bar side of Whiskey River Pub & Grill at 421 River St. in Charlotte. (Photo: KEVIN OKLOBZIJA/@kevinoDandC/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Much of the materials were reclaimed from work sites or demolition projects. He bartered for some. Worked out deals for others. And then he and Maroulis sawed, crowbarred, pounded, sanded, welded and leveled their way to the finished product.
"I'd work from 7 a.m. to 3:30 or 4:30 (at Excelaron) and then be here from 4:30 to midnight," Youst said.
The savings were enormous because he did the work along with Maroulis, a retired carpenter.
"If you were in construction and you looked at this place, you'd think I put $300,000-plus into it," Youst said. He said his actual outlay was in the neighborhood of $30,000.
All from a dream that didn't involve an architect's blueprints.
"If you hire an architect, then you're building his vision," Youst said. "How often do you get to build your own vision?
"I've always built for someone else. We wanted to create something for ourselves."
KEVINO@Gannett.com
If you go
What: Whiskey River Pub & Grill
Where: 421 River St., Rochester.
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 4 p.m.-midnight or later. Friday-Sunday, noon to 2 a.m. Dinner is served from 4 p.m. to 10:30. A fairly large bar menu is available each night until closing. Saturday features a prime rib and lobster tail special.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rocne.ws/2c287qCIn general relativity, an event horizon (EH) is a region in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman's terms, it is defined as the shell of "points of no return", i.e., the boundary at which the gravitational pull of a massive object becomes so great as to make escape impossible. An event horizon is most commonly associated with black holes. Light emitted from inside the event horizon can never reach the outside observer. Likewise, any object approaching the horizon from the observer's side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon,[1] with its image becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. This means that the wavelength of the light emitted from the object is getting longer as the object moves away from the observer.[2] The travelling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time.
More specific types of horizon include the related but distinct absolute and apparent horizons found around a black hole. Still other distinct notions include the Cauchy and Killing horizons; the photon spheres and ergospheres of the Kerr solution; particle and cosmological horizons relevant to cosmology; and isolated and dynamical horizons important in current black hole research.
Event horizon of a black hole [ edit ]
Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. In some convenient coordinate systems, there are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.[Note 1]
Inside the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.
One of the best-known examples of an event horizon derives from general relativity's description of a black hole, a celestial object so massive that no nearby matter or radiation can escape its gravitational field. Often, this is described as the boundary within which the black hole's escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. However, a more accurate description is that within this horizon, all lightlike paths (paths that light could take) and hence all paths in the forward light cones of particles within the horizon, are warped so as to fall farther into the hole. Once a particle is inside the horizon, moving into the hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time, and can actually be thought of as equivalent to doing so, depending on the spacetime coordinate system used.[4][5][6][7][8]
The surface at the Schwarzschild radius acts as an event horizon in a non-rotating body that fits inside this radius (although a rotating black hole operates slightly differently). The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to its mass. Theoretically, any amount of matter will become a black hole if compressed into a space that fits within its corresponding Schwarzschild radius. For the mass of the Sun this radius is approximately 3 kilometers and for the Earth it is about 9 millimeters. In practice, however, neither the Earth nor the Sun has the necessary mass and therefore the necessary gravitational force, to overcome electron and neutron degeneracy pressure. The minimal mass required for a star to be able to collapse beyond these pressures is the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit, which is approximately three solar masses.
Black hole event horizons are widely misunderstood. Common, although erroneous, is the notion that black holes "vacuum up" material in their neighborhood, where in fact they are no more capable of seeking out material to consume than any other gravitational attractor. As with any mass in the universe, matter must come within its gravitational scope for the possibility to exist of capture or consolidation with any other mass. Equally common is the idea that matter can be observed falling into a black hole. This is not possible. Astronomers can detect only accretion disks around black holes, where material moves with such speed that friction creates high-energy radiation which can be detected (similarly, some matter from these accretion disks is forced out along the axes of spin of the black hole, creating visible jets when these streams interact with matter such as interstellar gas or when they happen to be aimed directly at Earth). Furthermore, a distant observer will never actually see something reach the horizon. Instead, while approaching the hole, the object will seem to go ever more slowly, while any light it emits will be further and further redshifted.
Cosmic event horizon [ edit ]
In cosmology, the event horizon of the observable universe is the largest comoving distance from which light emitted now can ever reach the observer in the future. This differs from the concept of particle horizon, which represents the largest comoving distance from which light emitted in the past could have reached the observer at a given time. For events beyond that distance, light has not had time to reach our location, even if it were emitted at the time the universe began. How the particle horizon changes with time depends on the nature of the expansion of the universe. If the expansion has certain characteristics, there are parts of the universe that will never be observable, no matter how long the observer waits for light from those regions to arrive. The boundary past which events cannot ever be observed is an event horizon, and it represents the maximum extent of the particle horizon.
The criterion for determining whether a particle horizon for the universe exists is as follows. Define a comoving distance d p as
d p = ∫ 0 t 0 c a ( t ) d t. {\displaystyle d_{p}=\int _{0}^{t_{0}}{\frac {c}{a(t)}}\,dt.}
In this equation, a is the scale factor, c is the speed of light, and t 0 is the age of the Universe. If d p → ∞ (i.e., points arbitrarily as far away as can be observed), then no event horizon exists. If d p ≠ ∞, a horizon is present.
Examples of cosmological models without an event horizon are universes dominated by matter or by radiation. An example of a cosmological model with an event horizon is a universe dominated by the cosmological constant (a de Sitter universe).
A calculation of the speeds of the cosmological event and particle horizons was given in a paper on the FLRW cosmological model, approximating the Universe as composed of non-interacting constituents, each one being a perfect fluid.[9][10]
Apparent horizon of an accelerated particle [ edit ]
If a particle is moving at a constant velocity in a non-expanding universe free of gravitational fields, any event that occurs in that Universe will eventually be observable by the particle, because the forward light cones from these events intersect the particle's world line. On the other hand, if the particle is accelerating, in some situations light cones from some events never intersect the particle's world line. Under these conditions, an apparent horizon is present in the particle's (accelerating) reference frame, representing a boundary beyond which events are unobservable.
For example, this occurs with a uniformly accelerated particle. A spacetime diagram of this situation is shown in the figure to the right. As the particle accelerates, it approaches, but never reaches, the speed of light with respect to its original reference frame. On the spacetime diagram, its path is a hyperbola, which asymptotically approaches a 45-degree line (the path of a light ray). An event whose light cone's edge is this asymptote or is farther away than this asymptote can never be observed by the accelerating particle. In the particle's reference frame, there appears to be a boundary behind it from which no signals can escape (an apparent horizon).
While approximations of this type of situation can occur in the real world[citation needed] (in particle accelerators, for example), a true event horizon is never present, as this requires the particle to be accelerated indefinitely (requiring arbitrarily large amounts of energy and an arbitrarily large apparatus).
Interacting with an event horizon [ edit ]
A misconception concerning event horizons, especially black hole event horizons, is that they represent an immutable surface that destroys objects that approach them. In practice, all event horizons appear to be some distance away from any observer, and objects sent towards an event horizon never appear to cross it from the sending observer's point of view (as the horizon-crossing event's light cone never intersects the observer's world line). Attempting to make an object near the horizon remain stationary with respect to an observer requires applying a force whose magnitude increases unboundedly (becoming infinite) the closer it gets.
In the case of a horizon perceived by a uniformly accelerating observer in empty space, the horizon seems to remain a fixed distance from the observer no matter how its surroundings move. Varying the observer's acceleration may cause the horizon to appear to move over time, or may prevent an event horizon from existing, depending on the acceleration function chosen. The observer never touches the horizon and never passes a location where it appeared to be.
In the case of a horizon perceived by an occupant of a de Sitter universe, the horizon always appears to be a fixed distance away for a non-accelerating observer. It is never contacted, even by an accelerating observer.
In the case of the horizon around a black hole, observers stationary with respect to a distant object will all agree on where the horizon is. While this seems to allow an observer lowered towards the hole on a rope (or rod) to contact the horizon, in practice this cannot be done. The proper distance to the horizon is finite,[11] so the length of rope needed would be finite as well, but if the rope were lowered slowly (so that each point on the rope was approximately at rest in Schwarzschild coordinates), the proper acceleration (G-force) experienced by points on the rope closer and closer to the horizon would approach infinity, so the rope would be torn apart. If the rope is lowered quickly (perhaps even in freefall), then indeed the observer at the bottom of the rope can touch and even cross the event horizon. But once this happens it is impossible to pull the bottom of rope back out of the event horizon, since if the rope is pulled taut, the forces along the rope increase without bound as they approach the event horizon and at some point the rope must break. Furthermore, the break must occur not at the event horizon, but at a point where the second observer can observe it.
Observers crossing a black hole event horizon can calculate the moment they have crossed it, but will not actually see or feel anything special happen at that moment. In terms of visual appearance, observers who fall into the hole perceive the black region constituting the horizon as lying at some apparent distance below them, and never experience crossing this visual horizon.[12] Other objects that had entered the horizon along the same radial path but at an earlier time would appear below the observer but still above the visual position of the horizon, and if they had fallen in recently enough the observer could exchange messages with them before either one was destroyed by the gravitational singularity.[13] Increasing tidal forces (and eventual impact with the hole's singularity) are the only locally noticeable effects. Tidal forces are a function of the mass of the black hole. In realistic stellar black holes, spaghettification occurs early: tidal forces tear materials apart well before the event horizon. However, in supermassive black holes, which are found in centers of galaxies, spaghettification occurs inside the event horizon. A human astronaut would survive the fall through an event horizon only in a black hole with a mass of approximately 10,000 solar masses or greater.[14]
Beyond general relativity [ edit ]
The description of event horizons given by general relativity is thought to be incomplete. When the conditions under which event horizons occur are modeled using a more comprehensive picture of the way the Universe works, that includes both relativity and quantum mechanics, event horizons are expected to have properties that are different from those predicted using general relativity alone.
At present, it is expected that the primary impact of quantum effects is for event horizons to possess a temperature and so emit radiation. For black holes, this manifests as Hawking radiation, and the larger question of how the black hole possesses a temperature is part of the topic of black hole thermodynamics. For accelerating particles, this manifests as the Unruh effect, which causes space around the particle to appear to be filled with matter and radiation.
According to the controversial black hole firewall hypothesis, matter falling into a black hole would be burned to a crisp by a high energy "firewall" at the event horizon.
An alternative is provided by the complementarity principle, according to which, in the chart of the far observer, infalling matter is thermalized at the horizon and reemitted as Hawking radiation, while in the chart of an infalling observer matter continues undisturbed through the inner region and is destroyed at the singularity. This hypothesis does not violate the no-cloning theorem as there is a single copy of the information according to any given observer. Black hole complementarity is actually suggested by the scaling laws of strings approaching the event horizon, suggesting that in the Schwarzschild chart they stretch to cover the horizon and thermalize into a Planck length-thick membrane.
A complete description of event horizons is expected to, at minimum, require a theory of quantum gravity. One such candidate theory is M-theory. Another such candidate theory is loop quantum gravity.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ [3] The set of possible paths, or more accurately the future light cone containing all possible world lines (in this diagram represented by the yellow/blue grid), is tilted in this way in Eddington–Finkelstein coordinates (the diagram is a "cartoon" version of an Eddington–Finkelstein coordinate diagram), but in other coordinates the light cones are not tilted in this way, for example in Schwarzschild coordinates they simply narrow without tilting as one approaches the event horizon, and in Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates the light cones don't change shape or orientation at all.
References [ edit ]By KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press Associated Press
MIAMI -- The governing board for Florida's state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. will consider proposals to more than triple insurance rates for sinkhole coverage in some areas next year and boost premiums for new policyholders, drawing criticism from homeowners associations.
Homeowners in some parts of the state could see significant increases in high risk areas if the sinkhole rate hike is approved, jumping premiums from $1,382 to $4,179 a year on average in Pasco County. By comparison, Alachua County would only see a small increase from $55 to $62 a year. The insurer had a net loss of $968 million in sinkhole claims between 2007 and 2011.
Citizens also said it needs a 15.2 percent increase for homeowners policies statewide and new residents, but will only ask for 7.5 percent because of the 10 percent cap currently in place. A Citizens spokeswoman said she thought the board would consider capping the rate and gradually phasing in the increase.
Homeowners who attended Monday's public meeting criticized the insurer for continuing to raise premiums while lowering coverage.
"You're supposed to be the insurer of last choice. Tell me where I can get insurance in Monroe County... nobody has an answer for me," said Edward Smith, who represents condo owners in the Florida Keys, an area vulnerable to hurricanes.
Citizens has grown to become the largest property insurer in Florida with more than 1.4 million policyholders. The threat of hurricanes has scared off many private insurers while others in many cases have raised premiums higher than homeowners and businesses are willing to pay.
Citizens' governing board, led by new CEO Barry Gilway, will vote next week on what rate increase it will request from the Office of Insurance Regulation. The board is moving toward shedding thousands of policies.
But there is heavy political dispute among state leaders about Citizens' future. Gov. Rick Scott and many lawmakers insist on having actuarially sound rates. Scott contends the company's rates are artificially low, which could leave policyholders on the hook to make up the difference if the insurer can't pay all claims should a major storm hit the state.
Other lawmakers warn such rate shocks would be detrimental to the state's economy and worry that property values could plummet if homeowners can't find insurance.
"I think it took a long time for Citizens to get to where it is and it should take a long time to wind it down. You can't wind it down overnight and I'm not going to participate in any kind of a vote on rates that are going to put people out of their homes," said board chairman Carlos Lacasa.
One of the few things all parties seem to agree is that the company must be dramatically downsized. At one point earlier this year, there was talk that Citizens' might ignore the 10 percent legislative cap on rate increases to reach actuarially sound rates.
Gilway said he wants to give independent insurance agents a larger role in placing tens of thousands of Citizens' contracts in the hands of private commercial carriers. He also doesn't foresee boosting insurance rates by more than 10 percent for existing policyholders without legislative change, with the possible exception of sinkhole policies and new business.
Florida House Majority Leader Carlos Lopez-Cantera criticized Monday's proposal, saying it was "outside the scope and power granted to it by the Legislature."
State law says Citizens should increase rates that do "not exceed 10 percent for any single policy issued by the corporation" with the exception of sinkholes and increases related to coverage changes or surcharges.
The Miami Republican said his office has received complaints that Citizens' inspectors are taking away credits that homeowners had accrued and warned that many of Citizens customers are on fixed incomes.
Barbara Zee, spokeswoman for Community Advocacy Network, read a letter from a Port St. Lucie man who lives in a $150,000 manufactured home. The letter said he was telling his friends not to move to Florida for lack of affordable homeowners' coverage.
Only a handful spoke during public comments and most were from advocacy groups or part of the insurance industry, not homeowners.
"It's going to be a significant balancing act," said Gilway, a 42-year veteran in the insurance marketplace. "I found myself nodding in agreement with most of these issues. We are certainly well aware of the impact (rates) have on current customers and additional customers."Those of you who have spent time staring at a periodic table are undoubtedly aware of the large insertions that are typically stuck below the chart, since they'd make the table unreasonably wide otherwise. The top of these two rows is typically called the Lanthanide series, and it contains the rare earth metals, like dysprosium, holmium, and praseodymium. Although these exotic-sounding metals find their way into displays and lasers, they're primarily notable for their use in powerful magnets that appear in everything from electric motors to disk drives. And, according to a new Congressional analysis posted by the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News blog, the world is using them up faster than it can produce them.
The report itself doesn't really have much information that couldn't be obtained elsewhere, but it puts it all together in a very readable package. Right now, we're using about 134,000 tons of rare earth metals a year, but mining only 124,000 tons; the difference is made up using ore stocks that have been mined but not yet processed.
Demand is expected to continue to boom, but new mines and processing facilities take on the order of a decade to come online, so supplies are likely to get very tight in the interim. Right now, most of the rare earths are produced in China, but the country has been limiting exports of late, and its domestic demand is expected to outstrip its production sometime in 2012.
Congress is investigating because absolutely none of the production comes from the US. (Some ore is supplied by the US, but it was previously mined, and is shipped overseas for processing.) This is a concern because many military technologies also rely on the use of rare earths. The US has some high-quality deposits that are estimated to hold 13 percent of the global reserves, but much of it is mixed with thorium, which creates a radioactive waste problem that has discouraged their use. Even if we did start mining it, however, we don't have any domestic processing capacity, or any companies that are converting the results into finished products, like magnets.
As a result, several pieces of legislation are pending in Congress, most of which would require the Department of Defense to evaluate whether our supplies are sufficiently diverse to prevent disruptions; some of the bills would take steps to promote domestic production. The report also lays out some additional policy options, such as challenging China's rare earth export restrictions at the WTO. Overall, the report suggests it's not time to panic, but it might be time to get a bit concerned, and plan accordingly.CHENNAI: President Pranab Mukherjee has cleared the road to the gallows for four associates of slain forest brigand Veerappan by rejecting their mercy petitions. The four were sentenced to death for killing 22 people, including policemen, in a landmine blast in 1993. Union home ministry sources confirmed Belgaum jail, where the convicts are lodged, has been told.“We have received information from reliable sources that the message has been sent to Belgaum jail authorities and apparently it has also been conveyed to the prisoners,” said S Balalmurugan, advocate and human rights activist, who defended the accused at the trial. The mercy petitions were rejected on February 11, two days after Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was hanged in Tihar Jail, sources said.Gnanprakasam, Simon, Meesaikara Madhaian and Bilavendran were sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in January 2004 for killing of five policemen, 15 police informers and two forest guards in a landmine blast at Palar in Karnataka near Tamil Nadu border on April 9, 1993. The then superintendent of police in charge of jungle patrol K Gopalakrishnan and 14 others were severely injured.Police arrested 123 men in connection with that blast and three other cases of attacks by the Veerappan gang. Veerappan, his wife Muthulakshmi and some other close associates were also accused, but declared absconders. The bandit was killed by a special task force in October 2004.Out of the 123 accused, the special TADA court in Mysore on September 29, 2001 acquitted 110 and sentenced seven, including Madhaian, Gnanaprakasam, Simon and Bilavendran, to life imprisonment. Six others found guilty were given various jail terms, but released because they had already served their time in jail. During the trial, Gopalakrishnan identified Madhaian, Gnanaprakasam, Simon and Bilavendran as part of the gang which carried out the blast.The seven moved the Supreme Court against the TADA court verdict. However, a division bench of Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice B N Agrawal on January 29, 2004 not only upheld the conviction of Madhaian, Gnanaprakasam, Simon and Bilavendran, but also enhanced their sentence to capital punishment. But the bench acquitted the three others -- Sekar, Kaliappan and Veerasamy. Immediately, the four sentenced to death sent mercy petitions to the President and these have been pending since then.“I am happy that our President has taken a strong and welcome decision. We have been suffering for a long time. I escaped with a severe head injury and had to undergo nine surgeries,” said Gopalakrishnan, who has since retired.Special security advisor to the Union home ministry K Vijay Kumar, who was heading the STF when Veerappan was killed, said, “The law has taken its due course, beyond that I don’t wish to comment on the rejection of mercy petitions. The operation against the brigand was very complex one and only with the cooperation of chief minister J Jayalalithaa that we were able to get rid of the brigand,” he said.Advocate Balamurugan, also the general secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Tamil Nadu, termed the decision as “anti-democratic’’ and said the convicts will petition the Karnataka high court against the rejection of their mercy pleas after a gap of nine years. He claimed that the four didn’t get a fair trial.Veerappan’s wife Muthulakshmi, who was arrested in connection with the case much after Veerappan’s death and acquitted, on Wednesday urged Jayalalithaa to bring a resolution in the assembly to halt the executions. “Our chief minister has taken efforts to pass such a resolution to save the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. She has to now help these innocent people,” she said.Simon is an expert bomb maker and helped the gang in setting up landmine at the site. Son of Anthonyappa, he is a native of Vaddaradoddi in Kollegal. He is named accused 18 in the case.Gnanapakash, who is named accused 30, was a close associate of Veerappan. Son of Joseph from Vaddaradoddi, he was attached to the gang for long.Mesekar Madaiah is named accused 31 and is an old associate of Veerappan. A native of Jageri, he was one of the old members of the gang.Bilvendra is from Nallur. He is named accused 32.BEIRUT/ BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Syrian Kurds welcomed the arrival in Kobani of Iraqi Kurdish fighters with their heavy weapons, hoping they might tip the balance in the battle to defend the town against Islamic State, as U.S.-led air strikes continued to bomb the ultra-hardline group in Iraq and Syria.
Air strikes have helped to foil several attempts by the al Qaeda offshoot, notorious for its beheading of hostages, to take over Kobani. But they have done little to stop its advances, in particular in Sunni areas of western Iraq, where it has executed hundreds of tribesmen.
Islamic State fighters have mocked the U.S. air strikes as a campaign against Islam that they say has angered Muslims and helped the group win followers across the globe.
The arrival of the 150 Iraqi fighters, who have yet to participate in the battle, marks the first time Turkey has allowed ground troops from outside Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurds, who have been defending Kobani for more than 40 days.
The fighters - known as peshmerga, or “those who defy death” - were preparing themselves for the battle and are expected to take part in action in Kobani later on Saturday, Kurdish officials said.
“What was lacking is the weapons and ammunition, so the arrival of more of it plus the fighters will help tip the balance of the battle,” Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister of Kobani district, told Reuters by telephone from Kobani.
“The whole issue is the weapons and ammunition. Of course more fighters will help.”
The U.S. military said it had carried out 10 air strikes against IS militants, five near Kobani and five in Iraq, since Friday.
The Kobani strikes “suppressed or destroyed” nine Islamic State fighting positions and a building. In Iraq, air strikes destroyed an Islamic State vehicle southwest of Mosul Dam and hit four vehicles and four buildings used by militants near Al Qaim, the U.S. military said in a statement.
DAUNTLESS AND EXPANDING
Undeterred by the air strikes, the Islamic State fighters continued a mass killing campaign in Iraq to wipe out resistance against the group. They executed 85 more members of the Albu Nimr tribe, according to a tribal leader and security official.
Tribal chief Sheikh Naeem al-Ga’oud told Reuters that Islamic State had killed 50 members of Albu Nimr who were fleeing the group in Anbar province on Friday. In a separate incident, a security official said 35 bodies had been found in a mass grave.
The group has executed a total of more than 300 tribe members in the past few days, Ga’oud and the official said.
Albu Nimr had held out for weeks under siege by Islamic State, but finally ran low on ammunition, fuel and food.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters celebrate atop an army vehicle carrying a heavy machinegun as they move towards the Syrian town of Kobani, October 31, 2014. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
The militants have lost hundreds if not thousands of fighters since the Islamic State was declared in June, in battles against other Sunni rebels, Islamist groups, forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and in U.S.-led air strikes.
But fighters inside the group say that it was receiving hundreds of volunteers every month, which was helping it carry our more attacks. It was also receiving pledge of allegiances from Islamist groups in the world including Pakistan, Africa and some Arab states.
In another sign of the group’s relentless efforts to expand despite the U.S.-led attacks, dozens of residents of the Libyan town of Derna have pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the group and self-proclaimed Caliph of all Muslims, according to a video posted online and residents.
Derna, a port halfway between the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi and the Egyptian border, has since 2011 turned into a gathering point for militant Islamists and al Qaeda sympathizers.
Fifteen members of Islamic State, led by an Egyptian and a Saudi national, traveled to Derna from Syria in September to try to rally support and establish an Islamic State branch in Libya, Egyptian security officials have said.
FSA IN KOBANI
On Saturday, intense gunfire could be heard in the town of Kobani and Iraqi peshmerga could be seen on the western side of the town, talking with YPG fighters - the main Syrian Kurdish armed group defending the town - and standing next to a cannon, footage from Reuters Television showed.
Also on the west of the city, fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) who went to defend the town were seen driving flatbed trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and flying the three-star green, white and black Syrian flag, Reuters TV footage showed.
Slideshow (5 Images)
But the move by FSA - a term used to refer to dozens of armed groups fighting against Assad and Islamic State - drew criticism from opposition activists, who urged the fighters to deploy on fronts where the Western-backed rebels were losing to Assad’s forces and to Islamists.
Syria’s al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front seized on Saturday the Jabal al-Zawiya region, the last remaining stronghold of Western-backed rebels in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib, after days of fighting.
Backed by other hardline Islamist groups, the Nusra Front are waging a major military campaign against the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front led by Jamal Maarouf, a key figure in the armed opposition to Assad, after accusing him of being corrupt and working for the West against them.Story highlights "Look, Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton. But what Bill Clinton did was totally, totally, totally disgraceful and unacceptable," Sanders said
A town hall attendee said Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president because of her support for her husband
Washington (CNN) Bernie Sanders said Friday that former President Bill Clinton's past sexual misconduct was "totally disgraceful and unacceptable."
Appearing at a town hall in Toledo, Iowa, on Friday, Sanders responded to an attendee who said that Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president because or her support for her husband.
"Look, Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton," Sanders said. "But what Bill Clinton did was totally, totally, totally disgraceful and unacceptable. But I am running against Hillary Clinton, not Bill Clinton."
Sanders added that this campaign should be about the issues, not Bill Clinton's sex life.
"And I believe and I gotta say this, and I thank you for your question, in this sense, I think what we need to do as a nation, certainly something the Republicans are not doing, is focus on the bloody issues facing this country -- the disappearance of the middle class income and wealth inequality," Sanders said.
Read MoreAustralian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year: Justin Gilligan wins for octopus snap
Updated
A fluke picture of a cast of spider crabs and a predatory octopus has clinched its owner the 2017 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year prize.
Justin Gilligan snapped the photo at Mercury Passage, between Maria Island and the Tasmanian coast.
"I wish I could say it took weeks of planning and days in the field to capture the shot but with this image I was fortunate it was a total surprise," he said.
"[It was] a completely unexpected encounter with a group of hundreds of spider crabs, down off Tasmania.
"In their midst was a giant Maori octopus, which is the largest species of octopus in the southern hemisphere.
"It was acting like an excited kid in a candy store, moving amongst this swirling mass of spider crabs."
Gilligan, a freelance photographer from New South Wales, was diving with researchers from the University of Tasmania who were experimenting with kelp on artificial reefs when he snapped the prize-winning image.
"I've been entering this competition since about 2008, so it's nine years now and I've never had the |
Zeman’s system, he was often deployed on the left side of Pescara’s front three. A certain position, preferred by the likes of Lukas Podolski at Arsenal and by David Villa at Barcelona. Though predominantly right footed, he is often played to the left of the field, allowing him to increase the precision of his kick. Also being deployed out of position, would often end up in favor of Insigne as he would be allowed to join the center forward in attack from behind or going up front alone to nick in the goals.
The slow nature of the Italian game means that the Insigne will be able to enhance his abilities going forward, allowing him to contribute as well as score on his own. This is mainly due to Insigne’s excellent dribbling and ability to construct key passes in the final third. The player’s tiny stature means he possesses a low center of gravity, allowing him to wiggle past defender’s easily, maintaining supreme control over the ball. This inevitably leads to him being a typical forward who hold up possession going up front, for others like Cavani to score goals.
In 32 appearances, domestic and European, Insigne has managed 4 goals and 7 assists, averaging 1.9 shots per game. Also he has made 1.2 key passes per appearance. This is pretty excellent, considering Insigne has played only 15% of the 32 appearances, for the whole ninety minutes. Though the stats might seem paltry, for a player of his age, Insigne has an amazing pass completion rate of 80% per game and puts in an average 24 passes per appearance.
Most of Lorenzo’s 20 shots on target for Napoli have come from around the box via long-range shots, with an equal number coming from a closer range too. Also Insigne is highly regarded for his tackling ability with an average of 0.6 tackles per game, with an 83% success rate. Also he has been engaged in about 110 duels, with him emerging successfully in 47 of them. Decent defensive stats for a player, who is known for going up front with swagger.
“I was surprised with his attitude: he’s young but very dedicated to his job. He trains hard and listens very carefully to Mazzarri. He obviously is less experienced than Lavezzi, but, from a technical point of view, they’re very similar. More, Insigne is more precise in front of the goal line: Lavezzi shows up quite often in the danger zone but many times he just makes the wrong choice.”
-Napoli wing-back, Christian Maggio.
One of the marked differences between Insigne and his predecessor is his inability to score goals. But as long as the likes of Cavani and Hamsik are around, Lorenzo’s drawback can be forgiven and more can be expected from him as a creator for the other two.
To develop more into Napoli’s attacking system, Insigne needs more appearances in European competitions and more playing time in domestic games. While this may not be a privilege for the young Lorenzo this season, the imminent departure of Cavani to a foreign league in forthcoming seasons, means that Insigne will be expected to challenge Vargas for the Uruguayan’s maestro’s mantle up front.
Lorenzo Insigne was handed his first call up to the national team during the games against Bulgaria and Malta, where in he made his first appearance during the second game, the World Cup qualifier against Malta.
Insigne’s latest contributions include an assist against Parma, during a 2-1 victory and a goal against Palermo at the Stadio San Paolo.
TRANSFER SITUATION
After having moved a lot within the lower rungs of the Italian football pyramid Insigne seems settled in his hometown club. There have been passing tidings of interest from Arsenal and Man City, but none of which are serious. Latest, in January, PSG were linked with a move for the forward, but it turned out to be speculation from the player’s agent, Antonio Ottaiano, who swiftly dismissed the rumor.
As mentioned earlier, with Cavani’s future at Napoli under question and Vargas’ big money move failing to impress the Partenopei faithful, Insigne is considered as a hot candidate for succeeding the Uruguayan, whenever he leaves.
Stats via whoscored.com and squawka.com. Featured image via foxsportsasia.comBusan Food Journal, Part One
Korean Cookbooks
We ate a lot of interesting new foods during our time in Busan. The city’s supermarkets are rather expensive, and eating out was almost as cheap as cooking at home, particularly when you stick to the kinds of local joints which we prefer. This is the first of our recaps on what we ate, and what it’s called
Most of Busan’s restaurants don’t have menus with pictures or English descriptions, so a lot of our meal choices will be the result of a random guess-and-point, until we learn the basics. To help ourselves, and other newbies to the food culture of Korea, we’ve decided to keep a little journal of the things we’ve consumed. Bon appetit!
Food Journal: Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six
Mulmil-myeon (월밀면)
Not sure if I’m transliterating that correctly, but mulmil-myeon is cold noodle soup. Thick noodles served in spicy cold broth, and perfect for a hot summer day… except, we had it on an unseasonably cool spring day. Brrrr. Juergen got the dry mixed noodles (???), which were also cold, and we split dumplings. It was all good; the restaurant was called Bonga Milmyeon in the Suyeong District(location). [More Pics]
Dongnae Pajeon (동래 파전)
“Jeon” means something like “pancake”, and this popular Korean dish can be made with a variety of main ingredients. When made with green onions, the name of the dish becomes “pa”-jeon. Pajeon is a specialty of Dongnae, the neighborhood we were in after having hiked around the Geumjeongsanseong Fortress, and we ordered some at a street vendor (approx. location). Our pancakes made with eggs, flour, chunks of pork and bunch of green onions. Yum (I’ve been practicing, and can now write “yum” in Korean:?) [More Pics]
Pho Bo (포보)
We tried this Vietnamese dish at a cute restaurant called Saigon, near our home at the Gwangalli Beach (location). I’m not sure what makes this a Vietnamese dish… maybe the type of noodles? But it was good. We also had spring rolls here. [More Pics]
Dolsot Bibimbap (돌조 비빔밥)
Bibimbap is both the cutest word you’re going to see today, and a delicious meal which literally means “mixed rice”. It’s one of Korea’s signature dishes, and can be served up in an infinite number of variations. At the rather pricey Well-Being Rice Cafe in Seumyong (location), I ordered Spicy Octopus Dolsot Bibimbap, while Jürgen went for Mushroom & Bulgogi. Dolsot bibimbaps are served in a piping hot stone bowl coated with oil. Once served, you have to immediately stir the rice around, so that it doesn’t burn to the bowl. [More Pics]
Kalguksu (칼구주)
We had this soup full of thick, wheat noodles at a small restaurant in Dongnae (approx. location). The name Kalguksu literally translates to “knife noodles”, referring to the fact that the noodles are hand-cut into shape. This hot and filling soup is, strangely, a summer dish in Korea. The waitress also gave us black bean noodles for free (“service”, as they say here). We weren’t about to protest! [More Pics]
Tonkatsu (돈카츠)
On the 9th floor of Shinsegae Centum City (location), there are a number of restaurants which look uniformly excellent. Before watching The Avengers in the world’s biggest 4D screen, we got dinner at Mita’s Kitchen. These delicious pork cutlets were soaked in sweet and sour sauce, and served with the usual line-up of delicious side items. [More Pics]Image caption The Burmese long-tailed macaque has developed the ability to use stone tools to crack open shellfish
Macaque monkeys that have developed the ability to use stone tools to open shellfish are in danger of losing the skill because of human development.
Scientists found that illegal palm oil and rubber plantations in Thailand are disrupting the monkeys' feeding behaviour.
Dogs brought in to protect the farms are repelling the macaques from the shoreline, which inhibits their tool-using activities.
The study is published in Oryx.
The report in the international journal of conservation comes almost a decade after the first scientific description of tool-use among capuchin monkeys in South America. It is a rare skill set.
In addition to chimpanzees in Africa, the Burmese long-tailed macaques are the only primates known to use stone tools.
If the dogs repel them, the monkeys will use the shore less and less and they will stop using tools as much Dr Michael Gumert, Nanyang Technological University
Researchers have been monitoring these monkeys on the Laem Son National Park, on the Andaman sea coast of Thailand, since 2007.
On the island of Piak Nam Yai, they found that 88% of around 200 adults use stones to crack open hard-shelled invertebrate prey, including rock oysters, sea snails and crabs.
According to Dr Michael Gumert, from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who led this latest study, it is the development of the area in the wake of the devastating 2004 tsunami that is now threatening the macaques' rare ability.
"What's been happening is that over the past six years on the island, we've just seen more palm oil and rubber farms being developed in the forest. I've begun to notice that the groups that are closest to human activities, just aren't having kids anymore," he told BBC News.
Dog days
The research team argues that one critical element is the use of domestic dogs to protect the new farms.
The macaques are forced to constantly keep an eye out for dogs on the coast, and the scientists say they are paying less attention to learning how to use tools.
"The monkeys come down to the big rocky coasts and pick up rocks and crack things like oysters and crabs. But if the dogs repel them, the monkeys use the shore less and less and they will stop using tools as much," explained Dr Gumert.
Image caption Crab-eating macaques are in demand among animal traffickers
The scientist say that all across South East Asia, there is a growing problem of macaques becoming acclimatised to living around people and becoming dependant on humans for food. They are worried that these skilled monkeys could now go the same way.
"What we're looking at with these stone-tool-using monkeys is a rare case of truly wild long-tail macaques doing their original wild behaviour, unlike most of the other macaques that have had their behaviour destroyed by human development," said Dr Gumert.
"If we develop right next to them, they will stop going to the coast to feed and go to the local rubbish bin and find food there."
There is no danger that the macaques will die out but, argue the researchers, if the monkeys lose the opportunity and ability to use stone tools then the scientific opportunity to understand why some animals develop such skills will also be lost.
The palm oil and rubber farm developments on Paik Nam Yai are illegal, but efforts to evict the settlers have so far failed.
Follow Matt on Twitter.Image caption Sevag Balikci's family say his death was connected to the anniversary of the massacre
Sevag Balikci never got to see his new bedroom.
His family, ethnic Armenians from Turkey, moved into their Istanbul apartment at the start of 2011.
Sevag was finishing his military service in the south-east. On 24 April, aged 25, he was shot dead by a fellow recruit.
The judge called it an accident, sentencing the killer to four years in prison. The family is convinced it was an intentional act by a Turkish nationalist, timed for maximum effect.
The 24th April is the date on which Armenians commemorate the darkest moment in their history: when - 100 years ago this week - they began to be rounded up in a crumbling Ottoman Empire and were deported or killed.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Armenian children at a refugee camp in 1915
Armenia says 1.5 million were systematically murdered, calling it "genocide".
Turkey fiercely rejects the label, insisting far fewer died - many of starvation or disease - and that the deaths of Turks have been ignored.
'The same fate'
As the centenary of the tragedy approaches, historical narratives are colliding.
"The genocide was being commemorated and the killer wanted to intimidate people through my son," says Ani Balikci, Sevag's mother.
"An Armenian had to die on that day - and Sevag was available.
"The authorities have leant on witnesses to change statements - it suits them to say it's an accident."
Image caption Sevag Balikci's grave lies at the heart of Istanbul's Armenian cemetery
She shows me her son's room, which she has kept as it was.
"We can't throw out his belongings because it would be like saying goodbye to him," she says, her tears flowing.
"A century ago, my family were killed in the genocide - and now one of their descendants, my son, has met the same fate."
Hushed up
Armenians had long been treated as second-class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, their sporadic revolts ruthlessly suppressed.
As World War One raged, Ottoman leaders blamed faltering national cohesion for losses in the Balkans and elsewhere, seeing the Armenian minority as a threat.
Armenian genocide dispute
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, whose empire was disintegrating
Many of the victims were civilians deported to barren desert regions where they died of starvation and thirst. Thousands also died in massacres
Armenia says up to 1.5 million people were killed. Turkey says the number of deaths was much smaller
Most non-Turkish scholars of the events regard them as genocide - as do more than 20 states including France, Germany and Russia, and some international bodies such as the European Parliament
Turkey rejects the term 'genocide', maintaining that many of the dead were killed in clashes during World War One, and that many ethnic Turks also suffered in the conflict
Find out more about what happened
From a pre-war Armenian population of two million, just 50,000 remain in Turkey today.
Around 20 countries, including France, Italy and Canada, officially recognise the killings as genocide.
But for decades Turks grew up unaware of what happened in 1915.
Textbooks omitted it; political leaders hushed it up, pursuing the "Turkification" of society.
When it was finally talked about here, the official Turkish version called it "the Armenian events".
But in the past decade, history classes at some universities have begun to address the period and a small liberal fringe has spoken out.
Image caption Professor Ahmet Insel says Turkey has a moral obligation to recognise the tragedy as "genocide"
Three hundred Turkish intellectuals signed a petition asking Armenia for forgiveness, among them Ahmet Insel, a professor at Galatasaray University.
"This was a genocide and a crime against humanity," he says, standing outside the Islamic Arts museum in Istanbul, the site where the first Armenians were rounded up.
"Turkey has a moral obligation to recognise it as such, so as to become a civilised modern democracy."
He says he does not expect formal recognition within the next 10 years.
"The charge of genocide could mean Armenians claim financial compensation from Turkey - that's one factor holding it back."
Rhetoric hardened
The current government has slowly moved forward on the issue, returning some confiscated properties to Armenians.
And, last year, the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - now President - offered his "condolences" to families of the victims, calling the killings "inhumane".
It was the furthest a political leader had gone in Turkey, but was rejected by Armenia for dodging the word "genocide".
In the run-up to the centenary, the rhetoric has again hardened.
Image caption The president is keen to maintain support among nationalists ahead of the election
When Pope Francis said two weeks ago that Armenians had suffered "the first genocide of the 20th Century" Mr Erdogan hit back, saying he "condemned" the Pope, warning him not to "repeat the mistake".
Partly the president is shoring up core nationalist votes ahead of an election in June. But partly too, Turkey, which cares so much for its prestige and strongman image, recoils at a word linked with Rwanda, Srebrenica and Auschwitz.
'Distract attention'
Perhaps no clearer example of the reluctance to mark the killings will come on the anniversary itself, when Turkey will instead lavishly commemorate 100 years since the Gallipoli campaign: the victory of Ottoman forces over invading Allied troops.
It is never remembered on 24 April but this year the ceremony will fall on that day - critics say to overshadow the Armenian anniversary.
President Erdogan invited world leaders to Gallipoli, including Armenia's president, who sent an angry rejection, calling it "an attempt to distract attention".
Most leaders have declined the invitation.
Image caption Hakan Aslan, of the far-right MHP party, insists Turkey's history is something to be proud of
On the shores of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, the far-right MHP party is campaigning for the election, repeating its unrepentant line on Armenia.
"There was no genocide," says Hakan Aslan, the party's regional head.
"All the ethnic groups who paid their taxes to the Ottoman Empire and weren't traitors lived in peace."
Image caption None of the graves at Istanbul's Armenian cemetery dates from 1915
Meanwhile at the heart of Istanbul's Armenian cemetery lies the grave of Sevag Balikci. A marble slab bears his name, picture and the date: 24 April 2011.
But among the surrounding graves, not a single one dates from 1915.
In fact, there is no cemetery in Turkey dedicated to those victims, such is the refusal to mark what happened.
A sign, say Turkey's critics, of a country still unable to face its past.Your cash and non-perishable food donations collected at the events will be distributed to local charities.
Every year, City staff and Lions Club volunteers provide Christmas tree chipping events. After the trees are chipped, they are taken to the Vancouver Landfill to be composted.
Set out your tree for collection
Live, cut Christmas trees will be collected from households with City Green Bin service during the weekend of January 12 to 13, 2019. To ensure pickup, residents should set out their tree by 7am on Saturday, January 12.
To get your tree ready for pick-up:
Remove all decorations and tinsel
Lay the tree on its side
Leave the tree loose (no bags, string, or rope)
Do not put your tree inside your Green Bin
January 12 to 13 is also a designated leaf collection weekend. Leaves should be set out in paper yard waste bags or in store-bought bins (max. 100 litres) by 7am on Saturday, January 12.
Drop off your tree at the transfer station or landfill
Bring your tree to the Vancouver South Transfer Station or Vancouver Landfill for free until January 31. Remove all decorations and tinsel beforehand.Copyright by WIVB - All rights reserved
Lancaster, N.Y. (WIVB) - Lynn Magistrale's battle with a government bureaucracy has been almost as traumatic as her battles overseas: her cancer was missed and then misdiagnosed, her medical bills got mixed up, and now debt collectors won't leave her alone.
"It has been awful. It is a rollercoaster, a rollercoaster of emotions."
After serving her country faithfully, first in the U.S. Navy, a tour of duty in Iraq, and then as an Air Force reservist, Magistrale found herself facing a host of serious medical challenges, which were exacerbated by government mistakes.
It started five years ago when Lynn got a clean bill of health from an exam at the VA Medical Center in Buffalo, operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, but a year later, the Lancaster mom learned she had cancer.
"They had missed that I had cancer cells," which was diagnosed as endometrial cancer. Lynn was referred to Roswell Park Cancer Institute, where a doctor informed her the diagnosis was wrong.
"He said you absolutely do not have endometrium cancer, and it says right here on your paperwork, 'endometrium cancer not found', and he pointed right on the paperwork those words exactly."
The correct diagnosis was uterine cancer, which led to a hysterectomy, which Magistrale said would not have been necessary if the cancer was discovered in the original exam.
In the meantime Lynn also retired from active duty, which led to a billing foul-up, "Then the bills started coming in, very expensive bills."
As active duty military, Lynn's medical bills were covered by Tricare--a medical insurance carrier--but once she retired, or was no longer active duty, the VA picks up the coverage through the Civilians Health and Medical Program, or CHAMP-VA.
Lynn said, Tricare continued to pay some of her bills, although she was no longer eligible, bills that should have gone to CHAMP-VA. As a result some bills have not been made and have been turned over to collection agencies.
Chris Kreiger, president of Western New York Heroes, an advocacy group for veterans, said these kinds of bureaucratic foul ups happen much too often, and veterans like Lynn end up becoming victims.
"With the collection agencies constantly coming after her now because these bills are in collections, because of the screw up of the Veterans Administration, this is doing way more harm to her than anybody can imagine, and it is all wrong, on every level it is wrong."
Lynn Magistrale has also learned she has multiple sclerosis, and is going to Jacobs Neurological Center for that.
Going forward, Lynn said new medical bills are going to the right place, it is the unpaid bills that have to get straightened out, and there is good news on that front.
A VA spokesperson said, by law they cannot discuss Lynn's medical issues, but Magistrale confirmed the VA has reached out to her to ascertain and offer whatever services it will take to straighten out her billing problems once and for all.
UPDATE| The day after this story aired Lynn received calls from the Washington, D.C. offices of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, who have learned about Magistrale's case.U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock is resigning from Congress with about $3.3 million in his campaign funds and several options for spending it.
The Peoria Republican controls funds for himself, the GOP and one for other candidates.
Federal law used to allow officials leaving office to keep that money for themselves. But that's no longer allowed.
Schock may use the cash to pay any legal bills he's incurred amid recent questions about irregularities in his spending. He also could return the money to donors or give it to other candidates, the GOP or to charity.
Or Schock could hold on to the money in case he tries to make a political comeback.
The 33-year-old announced Tuesday he'll resign March 31, saying the constant questions had become a distraction.
On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner said he supports Schock's decision to resign. Boehner told reporters he was stunned by the announcement. But he says members of Congress must be held to the highest ethical standards.
Boehner said the House has adequate rules aimed at preventing abuses. The Ohio Republican said if you violate those rules, "in almost every case, sooner or later, it catches up with you."Exposure to chemicals used in plastics may be linked with childhood obesity, according to results from a long-term health study on girls who live in East Harlem and surrounding communities that were presented to community leaders on Thursday by researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
The chemicals in question are called phthalates, which are used to to make plastics pliable and in personal care products. Phthalates, which are absorbed into the body, are a type of endocrine disruptor — chemicals that affect glands and hormones that regulate many bodily functions. They have raised concerns as possible carcinogens for more than a decade, but attention over their role in obesity is relatively recent.
The research linking endocrine disruptors with obesity has been growing recently. A number of animal studies have shown that exposing mice to some endocrine disruptors causes them be more obese. Chemicals that have raised concern include Bisphenol A (which is used in plastics) and perfluorooctanoic acid, which is often used to create nonstick surfaces.
However, the East Harlem study, which includes data published in the journal Epidemiology, presents some of the first evidence linking obesity and endocrine disruptors in humans.
The researchers measured exposure to phthalates by looking at the children’s urine. “The heaviest girls have the highest levels of phthalates metabolites in their urine,” said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai, one of the lead researchers on the study. “It goes up as the children get heavier, but it’s most evident in the heaviest kids.”
This builds upon a larger Mount Sinai research effort called “Growing Up Healthy in East Harlem,” which has looked at various health factors in East Harlem children over the last 10 years, including pesticides, diet and even proximity to bodegas.
About 40 percent of the children in East Harlem are considered either overweight or obese. “When we say children, I’m talking about kindergarten children, we are talking about little kids,” Dr. Landrigan said. “This is a problem that begins early in life.”
The Growing Up Healthy study involves more than 300 children in East Harlem, and an additional 200 or so children in surrounding community.
The phthalate study follows a separate group of about 400 girls in the same communities, who range in age from 9 to 11.
One thing researchers have found is that the levels of phthalates measured in children in both studies are significantly higher than the average levels that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have measured for children across the entire United States.
The findings may presage a new approach to thinking about obesity — drawing environmental factors into a central part of the equation. “Most people think childhood obesity is an imbalance between how much they eat and how much they play,” Dr. Landrigan said.
But he thinks the impact of endocrine disruptors on obesity could be more significant than many people believe. “Most people think it’s marginal,” he said, paling in comparison with diet and exercise.
But he likened it with the impact of lead on a child’s I.Q. “Lead never makes more than 3 or 4 percent difference in margin, but 3 to 5 I.Q. points is a big deal,” he said.
Of course, at this stage, researchers cannot say if the exposure actually causes obesity, simply that it seems to be linked. “Right now it’s a correlation; we don’t know if it’s cause and effect or an accidental finding,” Dr. Landrigan said. “The $64,000 question is, what is causal pathway? Does it go through the thyroid gland? Does it change fat metabolism?”
The National Children’s Study, which will follow 100,000 children from across the country from birth to age 21, will look more broadly at endocrine disruptors and other issues.
“Some of the clues that come out of East Harlem will actually be pursued in the larger one,” Dr. Landrigan said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Landrigan advised people to reduce their exposure to phthalates as a precautionary measure. “You can’t avoid them completely, but you can certainly reduce their exposure,” he said.
It’s somewhat difficult to do, since many things do not contain labels identifying phthalates, and in the case of perfumes they can simply be labeled as “fragrance.”
Phthalates are found in certain personal care products (like nail polish and cosmetics), though recent regulation has encouraged companies to reduce or eliminate them.
They are also found in common everyday objects, including vinyl siding, toys and pacifiers. A number of environmental Web sites, including The Daily Green, have advised certain strategies, including learning to recognize the abbreviations for certain common phthalates and to prefer certain kinds of recyclable plastics over others.NICOLA STURGEON is to urge politicians, business and universities to join an “all-Scotland” coalition to oppose a hard Brexit.
The First Minister will seek to bring together organisations and parties with the aim of protecting Scotland’s place in the European single market.
The Scottish Government has said it will bring forward specific proposals for a so-called flexible Brexit that would keep the nation in the single market, even if the rest of the UK was not part of the trading agreement, in the next few weeks.
Read more: UK Government 'faces £84bn Brexit-related black hole'
Opening the annual National Economic Forum in Edinburgh, Ms Sturgeon is expected to say: “Creating jobs, expanding the economy and growing tax revenues – these priorities are at the centre of everything we do. But economists have estimated a hard Brexit will cost Scotland 80,000 jobs within a decade.
“I believe a coalition can be built to keep the UK as a whole in the single market. That outcome is in the best interests of everyone in these islands. So we will work with other organisations and parties, not just in Scotland but across the UK, to achieve that outcome.
Read more: UK Government 'faces £84bn Brexit-related black hole'
“And in Scotland, regardless of the positions people take on the constitutional future of Scotland, on this central issue of single market membership there is widespread agreement. Rarely has there been such unity on an issue.
“So today let’s resolve to present to the UK Government a unified Scottish position: an all-Scotland coalition of support for the single market. An all-Scotland coalition - of politicians, business, universities and others - to resist a hard Brexit.
“We will work constructively with all relevant parties to achieve the goal of retaining our place in Europe and single market membership.”
The event takes place just days after Ms Sturgeon attended what she described as a “deeply frustrating” Brexit summit in Downing Street between Prime Minister Theresa May and devolved leaders.
Read more: UK Government 'faces £84bn Brexit-related black hole'
Speaking afterwards, the First Minister said she was not prepared to “stand back and watch Scotland driven off a hard Brexit cliff-edge”, despite a warning from Number 10 that the devolved administrations must not try to undermine the UK’s negotiating position.
Mrs May has said she will strike a bespoke Brexit deal that works for the whole of the UK, but Ms Sturgeon has warned that the Prime Minister should be under no illusion about her party’s determination to hold a second independence referendum if the SNP felt that was in the best interest of Scotland.A record number of Scottish pupils have gained a university place on exam results day.
The Higher pass rate dipped very slightly by 0.2% but the total number of passes remained above 150,000 for a third successive year.
Almost 137,000 students received results of Nationals and Highers on Tuesday.
University admissions body Ucas said more than 28,700 pupils gained places, 400 more than last year.
It said the figure included a 13% increase in placed applicants from Scotland's most deprived communities.
Scottish exam results 2017 136,889 candidates 150,010 Higher passes 77% Higher pass rate (A-C)
77.2% Higher pass rate last year
116,032 National 4 entries
122,961 National 4 entries last year
This year's results in National 4 and 5, Highers and Advanced Highers were broadly in line with 2016.
Candidates passed 150,010 Highers although the pass rate (A-C) was marginally down at 77% compared with 77.2% last year.
Advanced Higher passes fell to 19,283, with a pass rate of 80%.
The pass rate for National 4 was 92.8% and 79.5% for the National 5, also very close to last year's figures.
There was, however, a significant drop in the number of pupils taking the internally-assessed National 4 qualification - 116,032, down from 122,961.
Image copyright PA
Exam passes are high by historic standards, more youngsters are staying on at school and going to college or university.
Is this a good thing in itself? Or is the education system simply having to adapt to the fact that in the modern world there are fewer good jobs for young people, and that unskilled jobs are disappearing?
Read more from Jamie here.
Pass marks can vary each year depending on the difficulty of the exam, but there was no repeat of the situation two years ago when it had to be set at 35% in Higher maths because the paper was harder than expected.
Dr Janet Brown, chief executive of the Scottish Qualifications Authority, said the figures demonstrated stability in the system.
"One of the things that we absolutely have to ensure is that standards are maintained and we can see that candidates are reaching those standards and attaining as they have done in the past," she said.
In maths, the attainment rate rose to 74% from 73.5% last year at Higher, while in English the attainment rate dropped from 78.8% in 2016 to 77.3% this year.
There was an increase in the number of pupils taking and passing qualifications in skills for work and personal development courses.
High standards
Education Secretary John Swinney congratulated pupils during a visit to Bannerman High School in Baillieston, Glasgow
He said: "The whole country should rightly be proud of the excellence and achievement in Scottish education demonstrated by these results.
"We expect to see small variations in pass rates year on year, which demonstrate the high standards, strength and integrity of our national qualifications."
Opposition parties offered their congratulations to students and teachers but said results were achieved "in spite" of education changes.
Image caption Skills Development Scotland staff are ready to advise on exam results
Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith said: "In some key core subjects - including history and some modern languages - there is a marked drop in the number of entries. And in many subjects, we also see attainment falling, particularly at Advanced Higher level.
"The fundamental problems remain the same. We have too few teachers in classrooms. And, as the Sutton Trust recently declared, we have a school system that doesn't give enough children the opportunity to really excel and push on."
Labour's Iain Gray said: "The reality is that these results have been achieved by pupils and teachers in spite of SNP government cuts to education budgets, teacher numbers and support staff."
Ucas said almost all the Scottish applicants to win university places had chosen to study in Scotland.
'Right direction'
The Scottish Funding Council's interim chief executive John Kemp said: "This reflects the strength of the university sector in Scotland.
"I am especially pleased today to see the 13% increase in students from the most deprived areas of Scotland going to a Scottish university. Although there is more work to be done, today's figures indicate that we are taking significant steps in the right direction."
A free helpline is available on 0808 100 8000 for anyone seeking practical advice regarding their exam results.
Operated by Skills Development Scotland, it will be open from 08:00 until 20:00 on Tuesday and Wednesday and between 09:00 and 17:00 until 16 August.
The group's acting director of operations James Russell said: "Our message for those young people and their parents and carers as the results arrive is not to panic.
"Everything might seem overwhelming at that point. Our experienced advisers are there to help and have information on all the options and opportunities young people can consider."#EDC20 isn’t just about the people attending the events, but also those who have been lucky for the chance to play.
For today’s segment we are looking back at Discovery Project Alumnus, Agent Orange, who won the contest for EDC Las Vegas 2015!
Agent Orange, a veteran of over two decades of service, has spent much of his time honing his talents, playing gigs around the world and releasing some amazing music. He is not just a DJ, but also a live act, a producer and even owns his own label, Gotham Grooves. It is safe to say that he is truly dedicated to techno and house music, and that is evident through his dedication to carving his own niche. He’s received support from industry leaders from the likes of UMEK, Monika Kruse, Stefano Noferini, John Acquaviva, PVD and even 50 Cent.
Even before winning the Discovery Project Contest for EDC Las Vegas in 2015, Agent Orange was no stranger to the big stage. He’s performed at other events ranging from Ultra Music Festival in Miami to the Zoo Project in Ibiza and plenty of clubs and other parties around the world. His passion for blending cutting edge Techno, Tech-House and House beats, with groovy, soulful, deep, dark and even ethnic vibes, will leave you craving more of his music.
Stream Agent Orange at EDC Las Vegas 2015 on SoundCloud:
I had a chance to chat with Agent Orange to discuss his experience with the Discovery Project, what he has been up to since winning the contest, and where he is heading as an artist!
Had you attended EDC Las Vegas or other Insomniac Events prior to entering the contest? Have you attended EDC Las Vegas since winning the contest?
That was my first time attending an Insomniac event. This year I hope to be stopping in to check out EDC NY as well as EDC Vegas as I will already be in Vegas that weekend for a gig.
If you had to pick one stage at EDC Las Vegas, from any year, which stage would be your favorite and why?
Well that’s easy it would def have to be the Neon Garden because I’m an underground House and techno fanatic and the line ups from the Carl Cox and friends camp are exactly what I love!
Choosing a track that will impress for the competition is a must, what went into the decision process on the track that you selected?
Upon registering for the contest from the advice of my friend Durtysoxxx (aka Kactuz) who was a Discovery Project winner the year before, I had sent them the last track |
concentrate on the big picture and not get gooey over the little stuff, he reminded me of George Bush. "OK, you can think that," he says. Silence. Well, did he think he had anything in common with Bush? "No."
I tell him that I found it hard to keep up with the film. "Maybe you'll have to go back and see it again," he says. Did he find it hard to follow?
"No."
Things aren't going well. If he's this reticent about the movie, what's he going to be like on sex (four kids from three different partners), drugs (he had a problem) and rock'n'roll (he must have listened to some in his time). Better throw him a few looseners. A while ago Nelson Mandela asked Freeman if he would play him in the film of his autobiography. Freeman has said how proud he was, and since then the project has been in development. So how's it going? "Slowly. It's a 700-page book. We've got to trim that book down to something manageable. Now we've got what we think is a viable place to start script-wise."
Is he working on the script? "No, I'm the actor." Is Mandela involved? "He wrote the book, so yeah, he's involved." Why is it important for him to make the film? "It's the same as it's important for me to make any film. It's what I do, it's my work, it's what I like doing." He pauses, and concedes there is that other factor. "Mr Mandela has said he wanted me to play him, so it's important for me to do it."
I ask him if it's a funny time in America. "Yes, very," he says quietly. In what way? "I don't know. Just not good." Is this a war America should be prosecuting? "No." So what's it all about? "Unfortunately, I think it probably has a lot to do with American hegemony in the oilfields. We use more than anybody else, and we don't like to be at the mercy of anybody over that need."
It's strange the way America has conflated Saddam with the bombing of the twin towers, I say - a recent survey suggested that 50% of Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the twin towers. "I find that hard to believe," he snaps. "We're not that stupid. That's just disinformation. The CIA have already told us there's no connection. Now, we're here to talk about this movie, so let's stay with that. We're not going to solve this problem sitting and talking about it."
I've never run out of questions in an interview before, but I'm about to. His answers are so terse they verge on the non-existent. I realise that I'm not really here to ask questions, I'm here to shake hands, revel in his aura and tell my friends about it.
Why did he make the film? "I wanted to do this movie because it's gonna pay well." How much? "I'm not gonna tell you because it's none of your business."
Oh go on, Morgan, give us a hint? "Nope." A tiny clue? "Nope. But a lot. But in truth this was a chance to work with somebody whose work I really admired, Larry Kasdan." He strolls off into Oscar-acceptance spiel which takes up another couple of minutes.
It's surprising, I say, that Kasdan chose to make a horror film - after all, he is best known for buddy movies such as The Big Chill. Ah, he says, as if he's finally cornered me. "Well see, there you go. You want to block him into one movie. So you name one movie, and that's what he does. And that's not good. No. Because people can do a lot of things."
We talk about his early career. Does he miss theatre? "No." Why not? "It's a lot more work, for one thing, for a lot less pay. And aside from that all my life I wanted to be in the movies." You came to film late in life, I say. He corrects me. "I came to a prominent place in film quite late."
Freeman grew up in Mississippi, and a few years ago returned there with his second wife after spending most of his adult life in New York. Profiles of him suggest that 20 odd years ago his life was a mess. He was drinking too much, taking drugs. He corrects me again. "No, I wasn't taking loads of drugs." Then he corrects himself. "I was doing one or the other." Did he feel he was on the way to... " He finishes off my sentence "Perdition? No that's not the case."
No, I say, did he feel he was on the way to imitating the life of his father, who abandoned the family and died of cirrhosis at 47. " Nooooah," he cries. "I couldn't possibly imitate the pattern of my dad's life. My dad was an alcoholic. He didn't have a life. No, I had a period when I was unhappily successful, doing something I didn't want to do, and making enough money from it that I couldn't in good conscience leave it."
12.02pm. Last question, the PR says. We've had 17 minutes including coffee. Is it true that Colin Powell is a friend? "Yeah!" he growls. So has he ever had a word with him about the war? He looks appalled. "Colin Powell is secretary of state. I wouldn't dare call him up and say, 'Colin I don't think you're doing right'. He knows what he's doing, whatever that is he knows." For a second he sounds like Donald Rumsfeld.
The PR, whom I later discover is Freeman's sister-in-law, ushers him to the make-up room. I hover, hoping they won't notice I'm still here. He sits in a barber's chair whistling to himself as they make him up. I ask him which of his films he likes best. He looks puzzled that I'm still here, but answers. "Glory. Because it was an entertaining film, but it was also a lesson in history. When I was growing up I learned American history from the movies. But only white people were history." Now the interview is over, he seems willing to engage. "You know, you'd see a movie set in the future, after the world has been bombed out of existence, and only a few people are left and you realise those few people are white. I thought, wait a minute, where's everybody else?"
What's his favourite movie of all time? "Orfeu Negro," he answers instantly. What's that? "Aha!" He looks pleased. "Look it up." (Later, I do. It's Marcel Camus' 1958 recreation of the Orpheus myth set in Rio de Janeiro, with a black cast.)
A while ago, Freeman said he may have given up hard drugs but he still enjoyed his ganja. I ask him if he still smokes a lot. "No. I don't smoke a lot." Ganja, I say. "Oh!" his eyes light up. "Never give up the ganja." He calls it God's own weed and talks of the burning bush.
The PR closes in, and gently leads me out of the room by my shirt. I ask her if she wants me to go. "I do want you to go," she says desperately. But he seems to be enjoying himself now I've touched on a subject close to his heart. "You keep asking him about drugs and cocaine," she says. No, I explain, he doesn't do coke any more, just the ganja. What if I ask him some more questions about Mandela, can I stay then? Eamonn is taking the photo. "We're a team, he's my man," he says, coming to my rescue.
12.30pm. I'm given a stay of execution. "What would you prefer to talk more about, ganja or Mandela?" I say to him. "Well, you're going to sit down here and write this shit so it's better if we talk about Mandela."
Has he met him? "Yes, I told you."
No, I say, I don't think you did.
"Yeah, you said, 'What did you talk about?' Was it you? No, it was somebody else. I get you guys confused. No, we have an agreement that whenever we're near each other, a short drive or plane ride, we will meet and have dinner or lunch."
He talks about Mandela's moral courage; how he set his goals in prison and never strayed from them. Has Freeman ever been inside a prison? "Sure," he says. Has he done time? "Yeah, I've done some. Soft time. Jail time. I was in the military and I was hitchhiking with a friend, and he didn't have a hitchhiking pass, and they asked me where was mine and I had my class-A pass, but I told them I didn't have any money so my friend wouldn't go to jail by himself." For how long was he jailed? "Four days."
It seems an innocent, rather noble story. But the PR's not having any more of it. Again, she takes me by my shirt.
12.40pm. I shake Freeman's hand and tell him it was nice to meet him. He doesn't say a word, just stares. "If I read anything bad that you wrote about me, I'm going to kill you," he says as I'm escorted off the premises. Well, I think we know what the closing quote will be, I say. And for the first time, he laughs.Austrian drag icon Conchita Wurst, winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, is embracing her gender fluidity by going topless (save two chest patches!) on the cover of Rolling Stone Germany.
Related: Lady Gaga Tits Out And Topless On Pizza Run In New York
The “You Are Unstoppable” singer promoted herself on the July cover in a tweet yesterday, saying she was honored to be recognized by the International music authority:
To find myself on the cover of THE global music magazine is such an honour!!! @rollingstoneDE #theunstoppables pic.twitter.com/fOjM9gEQAm — Conchita Wurst (@ConchitaWurst) June 24, 2015
In the cover story, titled “Take the plunge! Conchita is living the difference,” Wurst spoke about the world’s shifting attitudes toward LGBT equality.
“I think there are many people who have internalized tolerance now, who want to understand how other people live. But it’s still a long way until we arrive,” she said. “Many people don’t have any connection to the lesbian-gay-transgender community and aren’t aware of many things. This is the root for insecurities and aggressiveness.”
Check out more photos from Rolling Stone Germany’s July issue below, including a beautiful portrait of the tattoo on Conchita’s back, a portrait of her mother Helga.
h/t Gay Star NewsIf you haven’t paid your parking tickets you may soon have a face-to-face with “the Barnacle.”
The yellow monstrosity, which latches on to the windshield and blocks the driver’s view, rendering the car undriveable, has already begun replacing the parking boot in cities like Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as part of a 60-day trial that began Sept. 23.
The peculiar device is more effective than the boot at immobilizing cars and is easier to install, Kevin Dougherty, president of the New York-based Barnacle Parking Enforcement, told Philly.com.
The Barnacle — an opaque piece of plastic held in place by two suction cups and 750 pounds of force — makes it nearly impossible for a driver to drive away, even if they think they can cleverly stick their head out of the window.
“If you ever actually try to drive that way, it’s physically very difficult,” Dougherty said.
The tech-savvy device is also sensitive to movement and will sound an alarm if it detects that a car is in use while it’s attached.
While drivers may dread the Barnacle, it’s more convenient for motorists who once had to wait hours for their boot to be removed by a parking official.
The device comes with a toll-free number so that the driver can pay fines over the phone. They are then given a code to release the device from their vehicle and then allotted 24 hours to take it to a drop-off location, according to the LA Times. The machine folds and can be easily stored in the trunk of a car.
The Barnacle also makes being a traffic enforcer safer, freeing officials from lugging around the unwieldy parking boots, which typically weight 40 to 45 pounds, and putting themselves in a dangerous position to install them.
Early models of the Barnacle weigh just 20 pounds and officials can attach it from the sidewalk instead of kneeling down in traffic to latch it on to the wheel.
The Barnacle, which sells for $600, may replace the boot in even more cities if the trials in Pennsylvania and Florida prove that it’s cost effective and easier to use.
John Haney of the Allentown Parking Authority told Philly.com that he wants to see how the Barnacle fares in winter, when snow on the windshield may make it less effective.
Monique Damiano, public information specialist for Fort Lauderdale, told the LA Times that the Barnacle has thus far been met with puzzlement in the city.
“Most of the reaction that we’re getting from violators is more of a curiosity,” she said.
More from the New York PostI see people rushing to set up Web sites and PaaS Servers that allow random people to upload Docker container images, and I feel like I am the voice in the wilderness. Remember, containers do not contain!
Containers Do Not Contain
As I stated in my posts on OpenSource.com, not all of the operating system is namespaced. Parts that are not namespaced can potentially allow containers to attack each other, or the host, or at the very least will allow leakage of information into the containers.
Another Example
I got a Bugzilla report on an SELinux issue about one container attempting to use the kernel keyring of another container. Kernel keyrings are separated based on UID. That means there is one kernel keyring for root.
The kernel’s keyring is not namespaced.
By Default in RHEL7 and Fedora 20/21 Kerberos is storing the credential cache, KEYS, in the kernel keyring.
This means that if root in one container attempts to contact Kerberos and stores its keys in the kernel keyring, the other containers can look at the content, only if you have disabled SELinux. (And I have heard that some of you do!)
If you have not disabled SELinux, the second container will not be allowed to use the keyring, meaning that Kerberos will break in the second container.
Sadly if you create a keyring as root on the host then this will leak into any container you have running on in the future. And this keyring potentially would not be blocked by SELinux.
This is a bigger problem than just root using containers. If you wanted to set up multiple Apache services each running within a container, they would run as UID=60, but only one UID=60 kernel keyring would exist. This means these would have all of the same problems.
What other parts of the kernel are we going to see this problem? I don’t know, but I figure they’re out there. Abstract namespaces would be my guess at a probable problem.
Remember, we are just in our infancy of building these container environments. Let’s crawl before we walk.In December 2012, a brutal gang rape on a moving bus in the capital of India rocked the entire nation. Nine months later, four of the perpetrators—Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, and Mukesh Singh—were sentenced to death, but they appealed the decision. After almost five years of nationwide outrage, the Supreme Court upheld the decision on May 5.
The revelry surrounding the decision was cut short when another brutal act of violence akin to the Delhi rape case occurred in Haryana. A young woman from the Sonepat district was reportedly abducted on May 9. Two days later, her mutilated body was found on the outskirts of Rohtak, 70 km from Delhi.
This wasn’t the first rape case to make headlines since 2012 but it was the most reminiscent of the torture Jyoti Singh—initially dubbed Nirbhaya (fearless)—underwent on the bus. The Haryana victim was drugged, raped and murdered. The assailants inserted sharp objects into her private parts, smashed her head, and ran over her with a car, India Today reported. By the time the body was recovered, stray dogs had bitten off parts of it.
“When the accused in the Nirbhaya case were punished, our village spoke about the verdict,” the Haryana rape victim’s distraught mother told NDTV. “We thought at least this will deter men, but unfortunately, even today, girls are not safe and men are not scared.”
So far, two men have been arrested, and six other suspects are currently being investigated, superintendent of police Ashwin Shenvi told Reuters. The prime suspect accused in the case, Sumit Kumar, was reportedly a jilted lover who stalked the woman. He and his friends committed the attack after she had refused marriage, according to Business Standard. In the majority of cases, the rapist is a known person like a relative, neighbor, or employer.
In recent years, the number of recorded rapes in India has surged. Some of the increase can be attributed to a reduction in stigma, with more women coming forward to report the crime as well as increased media vigilance. Since the Nirbhaya case, India has enacted tougher sentences for rapists and tried cases through ”fast-track” courts and yet, violence against women persists. The archaic system has yet to deem marital rape a crime.
Each day, the Delhi police registers 50 crimes against women on average, including at least four cases of rape, a senior official in the federal home ministry told Al Jazeera. “The fact that such brazen incidents are recurring only indicates that our system is sleeping,” the general secretary of National Federation of Indian Women, Annie Raja, told ANI. “Death penalty is not enough to prevent such heinous crimes.”
Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has promised to take up the case in a fast-track court. However, when the victim’s family had approached the Sonepat police a month before the incident, their concerns about Sumit harassing their daughter were met with inaction, Firstpost reported.
“The police force’s task is not just to file the First Information Reports, but to ensure that the crimes do not take place right in the first place,” women’s rights activist Shamina Shafiq told The Indian Express. “If we as the nation fail to fathom the gravity of the situation, more ‘Nirbhayas’ will keep happening and we will be the mute spectators and you will keep getting your news.”James Pilcher | jpilcher@enquirer.com
Time_Sports
A Major League Baseball umpire Monday sued baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and the league alleging racial discrimination in baseball's promotion and post-season assignment policies.
Cuban-born Angel Hernandez, 55, states in his suit that he has been passed over several times for a chance to work the World Series despite high marks on evaluations. The suit also charges that even though Hernandez was made a temporary crew chief, it has never been made permanent.
The suit accuses MLB of promoting only one minority umpire to permanent crew chief in the history of the game (a Hispanic) and that only one non-white umpire has worked a World Series since 2011.
There are just under 100 umpires currently on the MLB roster; an Enquirer review of the roster and the photos and biographies attached to it indicates about 10 are African-American or Hispanic.
"The selection of these less qualified, white individuals over Hernandez was motivated by racial, national origin and/or ethnic considerations," the lawsuit says.
The suit comes after Hernandez filed two discrimination charges in June with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Hernandez, who has been an umpire since 1993, worked a weekend series in Cincinnati between the Chicago Cubs and the Reds. Efforts to reach him were unsuccessful late Monday afternoon.
The suit seeks back pay and unspecified compensatory damages. It was filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, although the reasons for the choice of venue were not clear. U.S. District Court judge Michael Barrett will oversee the case.
His lawyer, Kevin Murphy of Fort Mitchell, did not return calls seeking comment.
MLB spokesman John Blundell said the league is aware of the suit, but declined further comment.
Officials with the World Umpires Association, the union for MLB umpires, did not return messages seeking comment.
In the suit, Hernandez states his performance ratings were solid but declined after 2011. That's when former New York Yankees manager Joe Torre was named as MLB's chief baseball officer.
Hernandez and Torre had history, with Torre calling out Hernandez publicly for some calls in 2001.
"Torre took to the media to insult him and call into question his skill as a Major League umpire," the suit states. "Though it may seem as if Major League Baseball’s problems with Hernandez begin and end with some personal animus Torre and some other individuals in the Office of the Commissioner may have towards Hernandez, an overview of how Major League Baseball has treated minorities such as Hernandez shows a much deeper and more troubling trend."
Hernandez worked the 2002 and 2005 World Series, but none since (although he did earn assignments for baseball's post-season). He was also a temporary crew chief in 2005 and 2012 but was passed over for a permanent slot even though he applied four times.
An umpire crew chief is the supervisor on the field for the other three umpires on a crew and earns more money, and has specific responsibilities during a game. The position also acts as administrative supervisor and fills out reports on the rest of the crew.
The chief also is also the main liaison between the crew and baseball's headquarters in New York, especially during instant replay challenges.
Umpires who are selected for the World Series earn more pay.
The suit is the latest in a series of occasional legal disputes between umpires and MLB.
In 2000, umpire Ron Barnes sued the league for $20 million for age discrimination. The case was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum and Barnes eventually was put in charge of umpiring in the Golden Baseball League, a now defunct independent.
The league settled with other umpires in 2004 who sued over being demoted or fired because of a newly installed computer evaluation system. And in 2002, MLB sued the umpires' union over not being able to discipline a top-level umpire.
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Retro design is like creative candy to our eyes. The correct recreation of the most successful and representative styles from the near past can end up in a design that can both usable and decorative at the same time.
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On a previous article I wrote about Home decor for absolute geeks, I was asked by many geeky visitors to place purchase links at every item I listed. So, this time, bellow each image you will find a link to the product description page and a link to different purchase options.
I would like to give special thanks to Eric Martin from Photoshop Support for helping me with this article. Photoshop Support is one of the most informative and complete Photoshop sites on the web. If you are a Photoshop user, the you must visit his site.
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Leave your vote -1 points Upvote Downvote Total votes: 1 Upvotes: 0 Upvotes percentage: 0.000000% Downvotes: 1 Downvotes percentage: 100.000000%WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major intrusions by Chinese hackers of U.S. companies’ computer systems appear to have slowed in recent months, private-sector experts say, ahead of a meeting between China’s president and President Barack Obama with cyber security on the agenda.
A man types on a computer keyboard in Warsaw in this February 28, 2013 illustration file picture. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Files
Three senior executives at private-sector firms in the field told Reuters they had noticed a downtick in hacking activity.
“The pace of new breaches feels like it’s tempering,” said Kevin Mandia, founder of Mandiant, a prominent company that investigates sophisticated corporate breaches.
A point of friction in U.S.-Chinese relations, cyber security will be a major focus of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week in Washington, D.C., Obama said earlier this week.
In the same remarks, Obama called for a global framework to prevent the Internet from being “weaponised” as a tool of national aggression, while also holding out the prospect of a forceful U.S. response to China over recent hacking attacks.
Mandia has probed major corporate breaches, including those at Sony Pictures Entertainment (6758.T), Target (TGT.N) and healthcare insurers. Experts have connected some of these to a breach of classified background investigations at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which was traced to China.
Government-supported hackers in China may have backed off recently as Chinese and U.S. officials began negotiating in earnest over cyber security ahead of the Obama-Xi summit.
“In my gut, I feel like the Chinese and the U.S. over the next couple of years are going to figure this out,” said Mandia, now an executive at Mandiant’s parent, FireEye Inc (FEYE.O).
The FBI declined to comment on Friday.
The Obama administration has been weighing bringing economic sanctions against Chinese companies that have benefited from intellectual property theft. But no sanctions have been brought and U.S. companies disagree on the wisdom of such retaliation.
U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, who leads the Justice Department’s National Security Division, has scheduled a press availability on cyber security for Wednesday in Pittsburgh.
That is the same day that President Xi is scheduled to attend an Internet industry forum in Seattle hosted by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O). Xi will depart the next day for Washington, D.C.
On Saturday, a Justice Department spokesman said Carlin will make routine remarks and answer questions. The spokesman said he expected U.S cyber espionage charges brought in May 2014 against five Chinese army officers would come up. The indictment alleged the officers conspired from 2006 to 2014 to hack into U.S. entities’ computers and steal information.
In July, the FBI said economic espionage cases it had handled in the preceding 12 months were up 53 percent from a year earlier, with China the biggest offender. Statistically, that period could have included a falloff toward the end.
While Mandia said his perception of a slowdown was unscientific and based on “how often my phone has been ringing,” others voiced similar views.
Stuart McClure, chief executive of Cylance Inc., a smaller cyber security firm, said he too had noticed a drop-off in presumed Chinese attacks going back about six months.
“He has more volume” and so has a broader perspective, McClure said of Mandia. “But we have not seen the samples of attacks like we had been.”
Mandia and McClure spoke Thursday on the sidelines of the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington, D.C.
Tom Kellermann, chief cyber security officer at large security vendor Trend Micro Inc. (4704.T), said in an interview in New York he also had seen fewer new Chinese hacks recently, though he said one campaign that compromised U.S. defense contractors years ago might be adding new government targets.
“There’s been a consolidation in activity coming out of China,” Kellermann said. “It’s down a notch.”
A spokeswoman for security investigations firm CrowdStrike said in an email that it had not seen a significant change.
The Billington conference featured White House cyber security policy coordinator Michael Daniel. After speaking on a panel, Daniel suggested to reporters that Chinese officials have been listening hard to U.S. complaints on economic spying.I thought a lot about how to characterize this movie before writing the review. I think it captures a lot but also misses a lot. The movie has short interviews with some long-term successful traders and some not so, and it seems to be able to get closer to the latter. The one thing I didn't like was that it gave too much attention to one guy who had sour grapes rather than any legitimate or significant claim to trading going electronic and away from the floor. (Perhaps this guys was just not a likable person, not sure, or the director was trying to show how this person is dealing with his livelihood slipping away.) Also, I would have thought the film could have made a more poignant social commentary and picked the low hanging fruit by getting into high frequency trading and how the big money players and a handful of prop firms can basically buy speed to get orders to the exchanges before other less well-capitalized players.
Some of the stories recalled by the traders are almost unbelievable like the no-holds barred aggression on the trading floor. Also, one of the guys who got wiped out being on the wrong side of a Yen trade, recalls while smoking a cigar and hitting a golf ball on a snowed over course how his wife subsequently left him when he got wiped out. This was well done and this person/character was well humanized. The movie, I think, did a good job of showing how the trading life can turn your life upside down, or, for some people, it can make you fabulously wealthy, as the director shows. But what I still can't figure out is who is the intended audience here? For most people close to trading, there is not really anything new and for people who really don't know much about trading, the view is really too narrow--it really mostly only gets close to locals trading their own accounts and some electronic prop guys toward the end who look like they're mostly trading news releases or the open and close.
Given that, especially recently, the prices we pay as consumers for everyday goods is partially determined by men and women at trading firms of all sizes, and that more and more equity trading volume is being churned about by computer algorithms, as examples, I think there is room in the marketplace for a documentary that has a larger scope and a larger yet specific target audience.Think your Longshot skills are fire? Prove it.
Classic One Shot One Kill is back in Gears of War 4, now including Canals and two brand new Flaming Weapon Skins to earn!
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Rewards will be granted to qualifying participants by September 25th 2017.The Bavarians' chairman upset BVB by discussing the forward's buy-out clause earlier this year but he feels that their interest in the Germany international is only natural
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge says that Bayern Munich are "obliged" to think about signing Borussia Dortmund attacker Marco Reus.
The Bavarians' chairman provoked a furious reaction out of BVB in August by publicly discussing the Germany international's contractual situation, claiming that the 25-year-old's buy-out clause will drop from €35 million to €25m at the end of the 2014-15 season.
Rummenigge has now admitted that Bayern - who have lured both Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski away from Signal Iduna Park over the past 18 months - are interested in Reus' services.
"If a German international has an exit clause and his contract is running out, Bayern is obliged to think about him," Rummenigge told Sport 1. "With Marco Reus, his release clause is known.
"Whether we deal with it, I cannot seriously predict. We've talked too little internally about the subject.
"There are many great clubs from other countries who would be interested in signing Marco Reus.
"Of course they [Dortmund] will try to extend his contract. But at the end of the day the player will decide what he wants."
Reus still has three years to run on his current deal with Dortmund and coach Jurgen Klopp is confident that the former Borussia Monchengladbach ace will commit his long-term future to the club.The Best LUCKY Dice Gambling Experience
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I recently ordered a MH-Z19 CO2-sensor that i am going to use to control the mechanical ventilation in my house. I have the sensor connected to MQTT and i can see the values coming in fine. I have also ordered a Linknode R4 relay board (it is actually a board with a ESP8266 with four relays that i flashed ESPEasy on, so it can be controlled over MQTT, very nice board) which i want to use to control the different fan speeds of the ventilation unit (Itho Ecofan).
The ventilation unit has multiple wires:
Wire 1 is always connected to phase, so the box is always on the lowest speed to ensure minimal ventilation in the house
When wire 2 is connected to phase, the unit switches to medium speed
When wire 3 is connected to phase, the unit switches to high speed
However, how would i setup my rules?
I was thinking of something like this:
alias: 038 - Ventilation medium trigger: platform: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.co2 above: 600 action: - service: switch.turn_on entity_id: - switch.relay1
alias: 039 - Ventilation high trigger: platform: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.co2 above: 800 action: - service: switch.turn_on entity_id: - switch.relay2
But i’m getting a bit confused on how i can get it to switch back to lower speeds, without rules being conflicting each other? Can i just create two other rules with below: 800 + switch.turn_off to switch back to medium and another one ( below: 600 ) to switch back to low? Isn’t this going to conflict each other?
I don’t want the relays to be on/off/on/off quickly after each other, some hysterese would be nice but i guess i can create that by expanding the ppm trigger values a bit (650 for on, 600 off etc) so the setup will get less nervous.
For someone not knowing anything about CO2-levels inside a livingroom, a basic pattern looks like this:
Nighttime: low levels, around 400-500 ppm
Someone in the room: ppm level increases to 550-650
Multiple people in the room: 800-900 ppm
A lot of |
sexism. I think the proper stand is that it’s okay to study those questions that are interesting (but make sure you ask yourself *why* you find them interesting), and realize that a). we don’t know the outcomes, and b). the fundamental equalities of all groups and all sexes don’t depend on the results of such analyses.”
– Review of A Troublesome Inheritance – ANOTHER review from jonathan marks. he really doesn’t like this book.
– Troublesome Nick and the Timid Echoes of the Blank Slate from helian – “Typical reactions among those whose moral emotions have been aroused by such truths have been denial, vilification of the messenger, and the invention of straw men that are easier targets than the truth itself. All these reactions occurred in response to what is probably the most familiar example of an immoral truth; the fact that genes influence behavior, or, if you will, that there actually is such a thing as ‘human nature.’ In that case, denial took the form of the Blank Slate orthodoxy, which perverted and derailed progress in the behavioral sciences for more than half a century. The messengers were condemned, not only with the long since hackneyed accusation of racism, but with a host of other political and moral shortcomings. The most familiar straw man was, of course, the ‘genetic determinist.’ Predictably, the response to Wade’s book has been similar. Not so predictable has been the muted nature of that response. Compared to the vicious attacks on the messengers who debunked the Blank Slate, it has been pianissimo, and even apologetic. It would almost seem as if the current paragons of moral purity among us have actually been chastened by the collapse of that quasi-religious orthodoxy.”
– What happened at the Fuentes-Wade Webinar from savage minds. the webinar is here. (i still haven’t watched it yet.)
– keep an eye out on the spectator tomorrow [05/15]! via sebastian payne:
– Race, genes and history – “DNA explains more than you think.” – nicholas wade in the spectator.
– Charging Into the Minefield of Genes and Racial Difference – Nicholas Wade’s ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ from arthur allen @the nyt. – “The central problem here is that if significant genetic-controlled behavioral differences exist among races, with scant (at most) exception they haven’t been discovered yet. To build a case with the evidence at hand requires a great deal of speculation, with the inevitable protrusion of the nonscientific worldview. Mr. Wade presents a few scattered genetic studies and attempts to weld them into a grand theory of global history for the past 50,000 years. Where Jared Diamond argued in ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ that environment and geography enabled Europe to develop a highly successful civilization, Mr. Wade says environmental pressures led to genetic differences that account for much of that advantage.”
– NYT review of “A Troublesome Inheritance” from steve sailer.
– Podcast: Race, genes and history, Nick Clegg’s war and the curious case of Mo Ansar – podcast @the specatator. – “Is there a link between race, genes and history? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, author Nicholas Wade discusses his Spectator cover feature on what the last 11 years of human genome decoding tells us about human evolution. Is it racist to combine the politics of race and genes? Is there a link between historical events, such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and genetics? And does Nicholas expect to be ostracised for writing on this controversial topic?”
– Human Biodiversity (3): Nicholas Wade, Abraham Lincoln, and Racial Genetics from larry arnhart – “The debate over Nicholas Wade’s ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ reminds me of the debate over whether Abraham Lincoln was a racist. In contrast to the myth of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, his critics insist, he was actually a racist and a white supremacist. The reason for this debate is that while Lincoln affirmed the principle of the equal right to self-government as stated in the Declaration of Independence, he also acknowledged racial differences that might prevent the races from living together on terms of perfect social and political equality, which for his critics is an expression of his racist bigotry. (This debate over Lincoln is well surveyed in John Barr’s new book — ‘Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present’ [LSU Press, 2014].) Similarly, Wade rejects the racist assertion that any race is so superior to any other as to have the right to rule others, and yet he also recognizes racial differences that are genetic, which his critics condemn as racism. The question in both debates is whether one can see the reality of racial differences without being a racist, or whether the only way to avoid the evil of racism is to deny that race is real. My answer to this question is that one can recognize racial differences, such that races will not be equal in all respects, while also recognizing that all human beings are by their nature equal in their right to self-government, so that no one has the right to rule over others without their consent; and consequently one can condemn racism as a violation of that equal right to self-government. This is clearly stated by Lincoln, and it’s implicit in Wade’s book.“
– An Interview with Nicholas Wade by bryce laliberte! (^_^) – “Social science should be the most interesting of all the sciences. So why are sociology journals so unreadable? I suspect it’s because they make no use of the theory of evolution, which should be the central unifying theory of their subject. In this sense at least, sociologists are like chemists who ignore Mendeleev’s periodic table.”
– Stretch Genes by h. allen orr @new york review of books. – “There is, however, another distinction that Wade doesn’t seem to appreciate at all. He’s right that political sensitivities shouldn’t distort scientific truth: the facts are the facts. But as Pinker notes, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be particularly careful when discussing race. History has shown that this is an especially dangerous subject, one that has resulted in enormous abuses.” – by that “logic” everybody should be equally cautious when discussing religion or politics or equal rights or territory rights or property rights or…just living on the planet! (see here.)
– Is Cultural Anthropology Really Disembodied? from monica heller president of the american anthropological association. – “But what really concerns me, in the end, is the force of theories of race and cultural evolution. The fictive naturalization of what are fundamentally relations of power is, actually, terrifying. It would be lovely to think that they are too silly to waste our time on, but Wade’s book shows that they are not going away any time soon, and that we need to redouble our efforts to show them up for what they are: attempts to justify inequality.” – yes. because that what wade has said over and over — that he wants to justify inequality. oh, wait: “I think it would be only to the good if we understood what part of our behavior had a genetic component, ’cause then we could focus our efforts, to the extent it might be relevant, on the remedial efforts that would reduce inequities.”
– Another Robert Chambers? from peter frost – “Are there questionable points in Wade’s book? Undoubtedly. But we should not wait until all issues are settled before we put pen to paper. Writing is a process where ideas are shared with a broader audience for debate. We may forget that ‘The Origin of Species’ was written without any knowledge of Mendelian genetics. We may also forget, or simply not know, that Darwin’s path to public acceptance was cleared by an earlier book: ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’ (1844). Although its anonymous author, Robert Chambers, had no understanding of natural selection, he nonetheless played a key role in familiarizing the public with the fossil record and the reality of biological change over time.”
– Selection? Let Us Compute from razib khan – “Over at The New York Review of books H. Allen Orr has put up a reaction to ‘A troublesome inheritance’. It’s very similar to Jerry Coyne’s take, the part about science (e.g., population structure being non-trivial) is deemed acceptable, but speculations in the second half of the book are not as appreciated. This is not surprising, and seems typical for working population geneticists (though do note that R. A. Fisher’s ‘A Genetical Theory of Natural Selection’ has quite a big of sociological speculation in the second half).”
– Allen Orr slams Nicholas Wade’s new book from jerry coyne.
– A Troublesome Inheritance: Wading in the Zeitgeist from fred reed.
new – The Troublesome Ignorance of Nicholas Wade – from augustin fuentes. lots wrong with this: lewontin’s fallacy, epigentics. if you read this, make sure to read Phenotypes vs genetic statistics from greg cochran.
new – “Jews are adapted to capitalism”, and other nonsenses of the new scientific racism – “Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance argues that the genetic differences between racial groups explain why the West is rich and Africa is poor – but beneath the new science lies an old, dangerous lie.” – from ian steadman in the new statesman. i haven’t read this. to be honest with you, i’ve started to lose interest in these sorts of pieces.
new – Do Hume and Smith prove Wade wrong? – “Of course, the Scottish Enlightenment was a product of the Lowland Scots, who had been settled English speakers for a long, long time. Orr is getting them confused with the Gaelic-speaking Highland Scot clans. As Thomas Babington Macaulay vividly pointed out in his 1855 History of England, his Highlander ancestors tended to be more or less barbarians into the 18th Century.” – from steve sailer.
new – A Brief Interview with Nicholas Wade – “The principal criticism of the book so far is that my arguments for the impact of evolution on human social behavior are speculative. Since I point this out prominently in the introduction, I find it hard to see what these critics think they are adding to the discussion. Nor does it seem unreasonable to give the reader one’s best guess as to the likely consequences of recent human evolution. Critics of the book seem to accept that human evolution has indeed continued to the present day, but none has said what the consequences might be, if different from those that I suggest. So far I see no reason to have written the book differently.” – @theden.
new – Political Correctness Makes Race and Genetics Taboo in the West, Which is Why China is Winning
new – Reviewing A Troublesome Inheritance – “Not many people are aware of this anymore, but the first country to demonstrate a link between smoking and lung cancer was Nazi Germany. This was not a case of research being conducted by good scientists, and being subsequently misused by racists. One of the purposes of this research, *at the time when it was being conducted*, was to support the belief that cancer was somehow linked to racial impurity, and to further the goal of creating a cancer-free and racially pure utopia. At this point in history, Nazi Germany was the only country researching the link between smoking and lung cancer, so as a scientific hypothesis this idea was inseparable from the Nazis’ racial ideology. The Nazis’ research in this area is summarized in Richard Proctor’s book The Nazi War on Cancer. Scientists in the United States and England eventually reproduced this research in the 1950s, despite the resulting moral outrage at their attempting to prove an idea originally used to support the Holocaust. The historical connection between anti-smoking research and Nazism continued to be an objection to public health measures in this area until the 1990s, as described in this paper. As the connection between smoking and lung cancer has entered the scientific mainstream, the United States seems to be slowly forgetting the racist roots of this idea, although they haven’t been forgotten in Germany. The moral objections in Marks’ review are objections that could have been made, and in some cases were made, to publicizing the connection between smoking and lung cancer in the second half of the twentieth century.”
new – Inheritance battles – “Author Nicholas Wade argues that human genetic differences have played a powerful role in the success and failure of societies.” – epigenetics. snore.
new – Why “Race” Isn’t Biological from patrick appel @the dish. – “I disagree with Khan calling ‘phylogenetic clustering of human populations’ races, but Razib is far more intelligible here than Wade is in most of his book. Nevertheless, the biological definitions of race outlined above are problematic because they are not the same as the social definitions of race. There is significant overlap between the biological and social definitions but defining ‘race’ two ways only confuses matters.”
new – and from razib:
social & scientific definitions race are not isomorphic. but same is true of species. — Razib Khan (@razibkhan) May 20, 2014
new – Nicholas Wade: Genes, culture, and history from mark liberman @language log. not much new here — just rehashing other people’s reviews.
_____
see also:
– jayman’s recent post JayMan’s Race, Inheritance, and IQ F.A.Q. (F.R.B.)
– an older post from razib: Why race as a biological construct matters
– steve sailer’s The Race FAQ
– Roundup of Book Reviews of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance @occam’s razor.
_____
and some relevant tweets:
The day of its release, evil nasty people aside, only @edwest, @RAVerBruggen, and @charlesmurray have reviewed Nicholas Wade’s book. — J. Arthur Bloom (@j_arthur_bloom) May 6, 2014
Disagree w much of Wade (goes beyond data, gets some wrong) but he explodes race-is-only-a-social-construction myth. http://t.co/RabdNBbffh — Steven Pinker (@sapinker) May 3, 2014
“Knowledge is usually considered a better basis for policy than ignorance,” Nicholas Wade concludes, in A Trou… http://t.co/XS5uClFDWp — Isegoria (@Isegoria) May 5, 2014
"Whether or not a thesis might be politically incendiary should have no bearing on the estimate of its scientific validity…" Nicholas Wade — Outsideness (@Outsideness) March 15, 2014
"The rise of the West is an event not just in history but also human evolution." -Nicholas Wade — Bryce Laliberte (@AnarchoPapist) May 6, 2014
"Human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional." Awkward, but should be understood. http://t.co/CiF2Lz85ym — John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) May 6, 2014
social institutions are "largely cultural edifices resting on a base of genetically shaped social behaviors…." #ATroublesomeInheritance — hbd chick (@hbdchick) May 6, 2014
@hbdchick @MikeAnissimov @aylwyn_scally He who says intelligence not a well-defined concept is ignorant of 120 years of psychometrics. — Mangan (@Mangan150) May 5, 2014
"Most of the ideas of evolution are very intuitive if we could just set our minds free." W. D. Hamilton — Erwin Schmidt (@Schmidt_Erwin) May 5, 2014
.@StatModeling "…Wade’s quickness to assume a genetic association for any change in social behavior." pretty sure wade doesn't think that. — hbd chick (@hbdchick) May 8, 2014
@bswud The same thing has characterized all the reviews, even positive ones. The genetic evidence is what makes the book important. — Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) May 8, 2014
NBA announces new interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers, NYT genetics correspondent Nicholas Wade — John Durant (@johndurant) May 9, 2014
Found this review just horrible: "Denisovans aren't mentioned." The kind of non-sequitur that would impress ignorant. http://t.co/a4KkM5fsIj — Billare (@Billare) May 9, 2014
Just got the book. Will report after reading, but jacket flap says "Rejecting unequivocally the notion of racial superiority…" — Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) May 11, 2014
I have yet to see a critic of Nicholas Wade make a logically sound case. Is logical thinking really that hard? — JayMan (@JayMan471) May 10, 2014
@charlesmurray: Social scientists' refusal to come to grips w/ "A Troublesome Inheritance" = proof of this era's intellectual corruption. — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 12, 2014
_____
Nicholas Wade joins us this week on @CBCDay6 RT @sapinker Disagree w much of Wade but he explodes race-is-only-a-social-construction myth. — brent bambury (@notrexmurphy) May 8, 2014
See Nicholas Wade discuss A TROUBLESOME INHERITANCE: Genes, Race, & Human History at the UES B&N tonight! http://t.co/cgIctbKEnw @BNBuzz — The Penguin Press (@penguinpress) May 8, 2014
Nicholas Wade will discuss his book "A Troublesome Inheritance" on Tuesday. http://t.co/yGGfhR6U1Z — DCist (@DCist) May 9, 2014
(note: comments do not require an email. races of the world.)
AdvertisementsTuring Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli (CBS/screen grab)
Martin Shkreli, the price-gouging pharmaceutical company executive, was arrested early Thursday morning on securities fraud charges.
The 32-year-old CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG became known as the most hated man on the Internet after buying the rights to a life-saving medication and jacking up the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
Federal investigators charged Shkreli with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., another biotech firm he founded in 2011, to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings, reported Bloomberg.
RELATED: ‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli gets ‘schooled by a real f*cking doctor’ during disastrous Reddit interview
He was “unceremoniously dumped” from that company in September 2014 and sued by its board.
The lawsuit alleges that Shkreli used a series of “extra-legal maneuvers” to essentially turn Retrophin into his personal bank — and now the company seeks every bit of money he made off the company.
A filing made in November 2014 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed Shkreli pulled in nearly $3 million in gross proceeds as he continued selling company stock while simultaneously urging investors to buy into Retrophin — which the rapper-quoting then-CEO hyped on his Twitter account.
Shkreli began plundering Retrophin after his hedge fund — which eventually collapsed — made a “disastrous” investment in Orexigen, reported FierceBiotech.
MSMB Capital Management lost more than $7 million and went “virtually bankrupt” after the 2011 investment.
Shkreli finally told investors he was dissolving the hedge fund to focus on Retrophin — and he offered to redeem their investments in cash or stock in his new company.
The suit accuses Shkreli of using complex financial maneuvers to conceal the payments, such as reclassifying a $900,000 equity investment that MSMB made in Retrophin as a loan and then having the company pay off that loan to settle an unrelated legal dispute.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which launched an investigation of Shkreli in 2012, is expected to file a parallel civil complaint against him, according to Bloomberg.
Shares of KaloBios, which named Shkreli its CEO and board chairman last month, plunged 50 percent in pre-market trading before trading was stopped.
The lawsuit also points out that Shkreli was accused in December 2013 of threatening a former MSMB employee and his family on social media and in written letters.
“I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this,” the former employee Timothy Pierotti, claimed his old boss had written in a letter to his wife.
That former employee, Timothy Pierotti, had reached an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit filed against him by Retrophin, said Shkreli contacted his children on Facebook and accused their father of betraying him and stealing $3 million from him.The FCC will vote on a measure today that would repeal net neutrality and pave the way for the end of the free, open internet as we’ve always known it. Librarians aren't happy about it.
Yesterday, The Verge published an op-ed written by the heads of the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Library, and the Queens Library systems, which called the measure “appalling,” and argued that the end of an open internet would contribute to inequality of education and opportunity, widening “the already yawning digital divide.” Later, in a phone call, the New York Public Library’s CEO and president Anthony Marx and associate director of information policy Greg Cram broke the issue down further, explaining exactly which library resources an open internet protects, who would be hurt the most by net neutrality’s rollback, and why handing the internet to ISPs could threaten the basic foundation of American democracy.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What stake do public libraries have in this issue?
Greg Cram: So, for fiscal year 2017 [the New York Public Library] provided 3.1 million computer sessions — and that’s sessions across all of the branches — using 4,700 computers. And in addition to that, we provided 3 million wireless sessions. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2018 we had 16.2 million pageviews on our digital collections.
Anthony Marx: That gives us a little bit of the sense of the scale of how much of the library goes across wires, and the simple fact is that the poorest of New York rely on the library as the only place they can go and get free use of computers and free Wi-Fi. It’s one of the reasons why the library is the most visited civic institution in New York. We have also, in recent years, been lending people what we call hot spots, which are Wi-Fi boxes they can take home, typically for a year. That gives them digital access at home — broadband access — which something like 2 million New Yorkers can’t afford and don’t have. We’re still doing thousands of those. We’d like to do more and we’re exploring how to do more, because in this day and age, if you don’t have internet access that works and goes fast enough, you can’t do your homework, you can’t do research, you can’t apply for jobs, you can’t find jobs.
“if you don’t have internet access that works and goes fast enough, you can’t do your homework, you can’t do research, you can’t apply for jobs.”
We live in a world where access to information is essential for opportunity, for learning, for success, for civic life, for checking facts. Anything that reduces that, particularly for people who can’t afford alternatives, is a body blow to the basic democratic principles that the library stands for. Whether people or the library are shoved to the slow lane, and / or forced to pay to be in the fast lane with resources that are already stretched thin, is really sort of shocking. To put it sort of bluntly, the Federal Communications Commission should be defending communications.
More broadly speaking then, what you’re saying would also apply to other public libraries, as well as libraries in publicly funded educational settings. High schools, community colleges, etc.
AM: There are libraries in pretty much every community in this country. We happen to be the biggest one. And they are a vital resource. Libraries have never been used more. It’s partly because of internet access that people are coming in and benefiting from them, and all of this gets seriously whacked [without net neutrality guarantees]. That’s true not just for us but, as you say, across the country.
What exactly, as far as resources that libraries provide, would be affected by killing net neutrality?
GC: Our users depend on the library, and libraries in general, for things like completing homework assignments, locating e-government resources, e-government services, accessing oral histories and primary source materials. Things that are resource-intensive like video and audio and image collections are dependent on a free and open internet. Also things like applying and interviewing for jobs. More and more jobs involve a first round of interviews that are done over the internet. If we have to put things in the slow lane, we’re worried about those interview services being downgraded. In a research library capacity, we’re thinking about large datasets, the use of high-power broadband is needed to access those large datasets.
[Places] like the National Library of Medicine have huge data sources that need resource-intensive access to be able to use that data. Even things like interactive broadband classrooms, where there’s high-speed access to that classroom so the teacher or professor can use the classroom as a window into the world. All of those things, all of those uses, require high-speed access that’s dependent on a free and open internet.
Can you speak to how this would affect resources for people with disabilities? The American Library Association has pointed out that people with hearing loss, for example, have a particular need for videos with captioning.
AM: An obvious example is that the New York Public Library runs the Andrew Heiskell Library for the visually impaired. I believe it is a three-state depository, so it plays a role in getting access in all the ways you described — not just in New York City but way beyond. A lot of that now happens online and it could simply stop working, which means they’re gonna cut people off completely.
Can you explain exactly how the rolling back of net neutrality would threaten these resources, as simply as possible?
GC: I should say, the rollback of net neutrality opens the possibility for ISPs to start to play with how we pay for the internet, but because [it hasn’t] been rolled back yet, we don’t have evidence that they will in fact do those things. It’s a little speculative at this point. I think everyone is speculating a little bit in this. But the indications we got from the ISPs are that there will be paid prioritization and for us, there are specific things that would likely end up in the slow lane.
From the content side, the NYPL serves a lot of content through its networks. We serve a lot of video content, audio and image content, both from kind of a cloud server to our meeting rooms and also to the general public when they access the collections off-site. We know that if there is paid prioritization, we’ll have to pay to have that content delivered at a similar rate that the larger media companies will be able to. That for us, means slower and worse access to our collections. We don’t know exactly what it will cost to stay in the fast lane or be in the fast lane if paid prioritization is implemented by the ISPs, but it seems like that’s the way the ISPs are gonna go once this rollback happens.
Is that something libraries have to plan for preemptively, as far as worst-case scenarios in budget planning?
GC: We don’t know what the timeline would be, what the fees would be, but it’s something we’re starting to keep in mind as we’re thinking about the budget. We suspect that if this rollback happens and it’s not blocked by the courts, then it will mean increases or requests from ISPs to put our content in the fast lane. The other side of that is from the user standpoint. [We’re] also worried about the ISPs instituting an à la carte menu that would either block access to certain content, move it to lower service tiers, or charge users more on that menu of options.
“We are a foundational part of the first amendment. All libraries are.”
All users should be able to access, to seek, and receive information from all points of view, without any kind of restriction. I think both of those aspects are worrisome and troublesome to us. We don’t know yet how the ISPs are gonna react once these rules go away, but we’re certainly worried about it in terms of planning.
That brings us to the more fundamental idea of information access, where, theoretically, ISPs might be able to block or downgrade publishers or content providers they don’t agree with.
AM: Well, we happen to believe in the First Amendment. We are a foundational part of the First Amendment. All libraries are. And you know, if you curtail people’s access to information, not only will they not be able to do their homework or look for a job or use our collections, they will not be able to inform themselves as citizens. And in this day and age, when accusations of false news are flying every day, the citizens need to be able to check facts and gather facts and argue about facts.
And they do that online, from the library. If we don’t continue to ensure that, our democracy is at risk. Not just the First Amendment.
Are you seeing library patrons expressing concern about this vote?
AM: I fear, as is often the case, people don’t really focus on what’s at risk until they’ve lost it. And that would be a tragedy. I’m sure there are many of the library’s users who are aware and have joined us, but I fear there will also be some number who will wake up one day and realize that something essential has been lost.Not gonna lie, I’ve had my share of food go bad. Chicken, spinach, chocolate mousse, mushrooms, milk — you name it and it’s probably happened. Thankfully, I’ve never eaten rotten food (knock on wood), though I’ve cooked and tasted it before tossing my entire meal.
It’s a waste of time and food when your main ingredient is expired and you don’t realize until it’s cooked — it’s really disappointing when you realize that the chicken you’ve been marinating and baking for the last hour has gone bad and you’re now without a dinner.
Save yourself the effort by checking for bad chicken before you start cooking. Here are 4 ways to tell if your raw chicken has gone bad.
1. It looks gray.
If it looks gray or the fatty parts have yellow spots, it’s bad and you should chuck it immediately. Raw chicken should be a light pink color, and the fat should be white.
2. It smells funky.
Your nose is your best friend when it comes to finding bad food. If it smells out of the ordinary (think diluted, slightly sweet, rotten eggs), it’s probably bad.
3. It feels slimy.
Raw chicken should feel moist, not slimy. If it feels slimy and sticky even after washing, it has to go.
4. You’ve had it for a long time.
If the chicken has been sitting in your fridge for over 4 days or in your freezer for over 4 months, chuck it.
At the end of the day, if you’re even slightly scared that your chicken has gone bad, you should throw it out. It’s not worth getting an upset stomach, or worse — food poisoning.On Wednesday, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio met face-to-face with Donald Trump in the president-elect's eponymous tower, becoming the first Democratic leader, save President Barack Obama, to convene with Trump since his victory.
According to the New York Times, the one-on-one meeting, unaccompanied by aides, lasted for a total of 62 minutes — and according to de Blasio, none of those minutes were wasted on mincing words.
In a string of tweets Wednesday evening, de Blasio — who Trump once called the "worst mayor in the United States" — shared some of the main talking points he brought to Trump. He'd emphasized his concerns about the president-elect's plans to cut taxes for the rich, deport undocumented immigrants and rely on racist policing practices to crack down on crime.
I told the President-elect something a lot of people don't know, and that is that there are 900 Muslim members of the NYPD protecting us all
Trump has certainly heard these arguments before. But de Blasio left him with one final kernel of truth that may have never occurred to him.
"I told the president-elect something a lot of people don't know," wrote de Blasio. "And that is that there are 900 Muslim members of the NYPD protecting us all."
Throughout his campaign, Trump has portrayed Islam as being an inherently violent religion, lumping all Muslims together with the violent extremists who make up ISIS. What's more, Trump's policy proposals — to ban all Muslims from entering the United States or, at least, to make all Muslim immigrants register via a database — reflect his overarching view that Muslims, as a group, are enemies to the U.S. and are threats to national security.
Yet, as de Blasio alluded to during his Wednesday meeting with Trump, these harmful characterizations of Muslims ignore the Muslims who work to protect our country every day. In June, former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton pointed out that many of the Muslims working in the NYPD had been assigned to the Trump Tower security detail at the time, working to keep Trump safe — Bratton called it "ironic."
As for de Blasio, he left it up to Trump to let that irony sink in.
"The ball's in his court," de Blasio said at a press conference outside Trump Tower following the meeting, according to the New York Times. "People in the city and all over the country are looking to see what he's going to do."[Editor's note: This post is Part III of an essay by Michael Johnson--Developing a Democratic Praxis. In it he focuses on the key educational factors necessary for building cultures of "small 'd' democracy" in communities and regions across the country. In Part I he argues that culture is a powerful factor in political and economic dynamics, but currently almost all strategic thinking focuses just on structures and systems. In Part II he outlines an alternative cultural/structural strategy for cooperative/solidarity economic and other democratic movements for deep change. His essay has been submitted to The Next System's essay contest. An overview of the whole essay is on his blog.]
Building deeper and more resilient local democratic cultures through ongoing civic/popular education programs
Here I will be laying out what I consider to be the core elements and principle guidelines for civic/popular programs for democratic praxis. First, some definitions.
The Center for Civic Education provides this short description of “civic education:”
Civic Education in a democracy is education in self government. Democratic self government means that citizens are actively involved in their own governance; they do not just passively accept the dictums of others or acquiesce to the demands of others… Membership implies participation, but not participation for participation's sake. Citizen participation in a democratic society must be based on informed, critical reflection, and on the understanding and acceptance of the rights and responsibilities that go with that membership. [36]
The Popular Education News provided this brief description of popular education from Bob Hale’s College for Social Justice : Participants' Handbook:
“The idea of popular education (often described as "education for critical consciousness") as a teaching methodology came from a Brazilian educator and writer named Paulo Freire, who was writing in the context of literacy education for poor and politically disempowered people in his country. It's different from formal education (in schools, for example) and informal education (learning by living) in that it is a process which aims to empower people who feel marginalized socially and politically to take control of their own learning and to effect social change.” [37]
For me the meaning and significance of praxis is more complicated and needs a more elaboration. In a word, praxis is people acting together as committed thinkers and actors. This is the primary objective of the civic/popular education component of a cultural/structural strategy for cooperative/solidarity economics and other democratic change movements.
In Wikipedia we find two references that are particularly useful. First, praxis as a learning process:
Praxis may be described as a form of critical thinking and comprises the combination of reflection and action. Praxis can be viewed as a progression of cognitive and physical actions: taking the action
considering the impacts of the action
analyzing the results of the action by reflecting upon it
altering and revising conceptions and planning following reflection
implementing these plans in further actions.
This is how democracy, at its best, works.
Second, for Hannah Arendt praxis was essential to human life and democracy. This speaks to the depth of culture’s central role in political and economic life:
For Arendt, praxis is the highest and most important level of the active life…which she sees as the true realization of human freedom. According to Arendt, our capacity to analyze ideas, wrestle with them, and engage in active praxis is what makes us uniquely human.
…by viewing action as a mode of human togetherness, Arendt is able to develop a conception of participatory democracy which stands in direct contrast to the bureaucratized and elitist forms of politics so characteristic of the modern epoch. [38]
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for Arendt expands on her thinking on “action:”
The birth of every individual is thus the promise of a new beginning: to act means to be able to disclose one's self and to do the unanticipated; and it is entirely in keeping with this conception that most of the concrete examples of action in the modern age that Arendt discusses are cases of revolutions and popular uprisings. Her claim is that “revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning,” (OR, 21) since they represent the attempt to found a new political space, a space where freedom can appear as a worldly reality. The favorite example for Arendt is the American Revolution…
Other examples of this kind of original beginning follow. Then:
In all these cases individual men and women had the courage to interrupt their routine activities, to step forward from their private lives in order to create a public space where freedom could appear, and to act in such a way that the memory of their deeds could become a source of inspiration for the future. In doing so, according to Arendt, they rediscovered the truth known to the ancient Greeks that action is the supreme blessing of human life, that which bestows significance to the lives of individuals. [39] (Emphasis added.)
The job of the civic/popular education component is precisely to create and sustain these kinds of public |
ism, mutual aid, and ethical personal conduct. My attackers have accused me of "moralizing," and in a sense they're right. I consider ethical behavior to be the bedrock of anarchism. For without ethical behavior trust becomes impossible. Without trust there is no basis for free association or mutual aid. And without free association and mutual aid, the possibility of an anarchist society vanishes. Those who have attacked me totally discount the importance of ethics. They proudly proclaim themselves "egoists" and renounce ethics of any type. In other words, they proudly proclaim that they've swallowed the worst authoritarian lies about anarchism, hook, line, and sinker—that anarchism consists of rejection of ethics, rejection of all forms of organization, and the embracement of an extreme form of egoism, or individualism, which recognizes no one's rights other than the egoist's. They've swallowed the lie that Anarchy equals chaos. Given their rejection of ethics, it was entirely predictable that they would react to my writings with personal trashing rather than discussion of issues. This is entirely in line with their history of engaging in or condoning such practices as making anonymous death threats, vandalizing the offices of political opponents, using the state legal apparatus against political opponents, and violently physically assaulting political opponents. Those who commit or condone such acts see nothing inherently wrong with them when directed at those of us whom they see as obstacles to the achievement of their screwball conception of Anarchy—if, in fact, they're interested in achieving anything beyond ideology-driven howling. They believe the end (chaos/amoral egoism) justifies the means. Thus they end up not only proclaiming the worst authoritarian lies about anarchism (that it consists of unbridled egoism and rejection of organization), but they also end up adopting the philosophical foundation of the capitalist society they profess to hate so much, as their guiding principle—that the ends justify the means. The belief that the ends justify the means is the cornerstone of authoritarianism. It's the antithesis of anarchism. The cornerstone of anarchism is the belief that means determine ends. If anarchism is ever to be a real force in this society it must be based on ethical behavior—not on that sick parody of anarchism, amoral individualism. Primitive Thought (1) 0ne of the hottest topics in "progressive" circles these days is the Earth First! controversy. Prominent members of Earth First!, such as Dave Foreman, the organization's founder and the editor of its newspaper, have recently undertaken polemics in favor of famine and AIDS. In the Australian magazine Simply Living, Foreman stated that, "the best thing would be to just let the people there [Ethiopia] starve..." He has made similar statements to the local media in Tucson, where Earth First! (the organ of Earth First!) is published. [This was in 1988; the paper and its editorial collective have changed radically—and for the better—since then.] In a similar vein, "Miss Ann Thropy," a regular contributor to Earth First!, has argued that AIDS is a "good" thing, because it will reduce population. In the May 1, 1987 issue of that paper, "Miss Throp" stated: "... if the AIDS epidemic didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one [an epidemic]." In the Dec. 22, 1987 issue of Earth First!, he or she adds that "... the AIDS epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population." The connecting thread between the arguments in favor of AIDS and starvation is a crude Malthusianism. (The 19th-century British parson Thomas Malthus argued, in his Essay on the Principle of Population, that unlimited population growth was the primary danger to humanity; that population increased geometrically while food supply increased arithmetically.) A latter day disciple of the good parson, Daniel Conner, a "deep ecologist," self-aggrandizingly expressed his faith in Malthus' principle in the Dec. 22, 1987 issue of Earth First!: "Population pressure, they ['thoughtful environmentalists'] claim, lies at the root of every environmental problem we face." Contrary to what Conner would have us believe, there is nothing "thoughtful" in the belief that population "lies at the root of every environmental problem." That idea is on a par with the simplistic belief that "technology" is the sole cause of environmental destruction. It ignores the key element in environmental destruction: profit. For example, coal-burning power plants are a primary cause of acid rain, yet utilities have invariably put up resistance to installing scrubbers, which would greatly reduce the amount of pollutants emitted by their plants. The reason? Installing scrubbers would reduce their profits. Another example: Plastic beverage containers become non-recyclable trash, are a visual blight, take hundreds, if not thousands of years to break down, and a particularly toxic type of plastic, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), is often used in their manufacture. (PVCs leach into beverages.) Why are they used? The answer is what you'd expect: It's cheaper and involves less hassle for beverage manufacturers and distributors to use plastic bottles rather than recyclable glass. Still another example is the toxic waste problem. One reads almost daily reports of companies dumping dangerous wastes into streams and rivers rather than going to the expense of treating and properly disposing of them. This tendency of the capitalist, profit-based system toward environmental destruction exists regardless of the size of the population. In terms of the profit-motive tendency toward environmental destruction, it would make no difference if the population of the United States was 24 million rather than 244 million [in 1988, when this was written]. At the lower population figure, the motivation for beverage manufacturers and distributors to use plastic bottles, for example, would be the same as it is now. A large population magnifies the damage rooted in the profit motive, but population size itself is not "at the root of every environmental problem we face." The conclusions the misanthropic "deep ecologists" draw from their faulty premises are breathtaking. They want us to return to our "natural role" as hunter-gatherers, because, according to their faulty reasoning, "Earth simply cannot support five billion large mammals of the species Homo sapiens." This argument has been demolished elsewhere; the best work on the subject, is Frances Moore Lappe's and Joseph Collins' Food First. For our purposes, suffice it to say that there is actually a huge surplus of food at present. According to Lappe, approximately 3600 calories of grain alone is produced on a daily per capita basis.(2) That doesn't even take into account fruits, vegetables and grass-fed meat. This is enough food that, if the grain alone were equally distributed and all—or even two-thirds—of it consumed, most of us would be as fat as pigs. It should also be emphasized that production of this amount of food does not "necessarily" involve environmental degradation: Non-environmentally harmful, organic methods of agriculture can produce at least as much food as destructive, chemically-based methods in the short run; and in the long run, they can increase the "value" of land and preserve high levels of production. In some of the European countries, notably Germany, population "decline" through lowering of the birth rate has already begun. In his article "Fertility in Transition," in the Spring 1986 issue of World Focus (journal of the American Geographical Society), James L. Newman traces the causes of the decline in fertility in the European countries. He concludes that there were three reasons for a decline in the birth rate. One was industrialization: "Out of it came the public health discoveries that reduced mortality, followed by a new lifestyle which no longer necessitated large families.... Whereas on farms and in cottage industries children contributed their labor to the family enterprise, in the city they became consumers. Only a few offspring could be afforded if the family was to maintain or... improve its standard of living."(3) The second reason for the decline in fertility was birth control. It "was the answer to these new social and economic realities." The third element in lowering the birth rate was the relative emancipation of women. In the developed countries, birth rates tend to be high only among economically deprived groups with little hope and relatively little access to birth control devices and information, and among patriarchal religious groups whose members believe that it is a woman's "duty" to have a large number of children. (A case in point is the Mormon church; among active Mormons, nuclear families with "at least" four children are the norm.) If there were a more equal distribution of wealth and income, and if misogynistic, patriarchal religions declined, the birth rate in the developed countries would almost certainly be lower than it already is; and if there were relatively rapid development in the "underdeveloped" countries, accompanied by redistribution of wealth and abandonment of misogynist religions and attitudes, fertility there would certainly decrease, probably quite rapidly. The primitivists at least have the honesty to accept some of the conclusions of their Malthusian arguments. They acknowledge that reversion to our "natural role" of hunter-gatherers would require a massive depopulation of the Earth. For "Miss Ann Thropy," "Ecotopia would be a planet with about 50 million people who are hunting and gathering for subsistence."(4) Other primitivists have postulated a population of only five to ten million as the maximum, and in Atlas of World Population History, Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones state that the prehistoric population of huntergatherers was probably in the neighborhood of four million. Other "neo-primitivists" (it sounds classier with the prefix) have advocated an agrarian society using no technology beyond that of simple hand tools. Reaching a "no-tech" agricultural society would involve almost as many deaths as reaching a hunter-gatherer society. The last period in which a large majority of the population lived a pastoral existence, using for the most part nothing beyond hand tools, was the Middle Ages, when the world population was about 300 million. Let's assume a technological level of the year1500 (perhaps acceptable to no-or low-tech advocates, and at which point world population was roughly 400 million), and that, due to improved agricultural techniques, enough food could be grown and distributed to support five times the population that lived then. That would leave us with a population of 2 billion people (which would require a modest 60 percent reduction in population to achieve). [Today, it would require a 67% reduction.] Whether even this population figure could be maintained at that level of technology is highly questionable. Historically, the ability to grow food has not been the limiting factor in population growth. The limiting factors have been disease and the related problem of infant mortality. Returning to the preindustrial technological level of 500 years ago would not only eliminate the "means" of combatting disease but also (relatively) safe, effective means of birth control. The birth rate would soar, and many women would die at an early age, worn out from childbearing. But not to worry—population balance would be maintained the way it was in the good old days: Most children would die from disease before adulthood; and if "enough" of them didn't die, population would increase to the point where famine would stabilize the population. Still another question never addressed by neo-primitive romantics is whether a majority of the population (let alone the entire population) would ever want to renounce the many benefits of technological civilization. I for one would not, whether we speak of music, food, medicine, or books. I doubt that my feelings are atypical. Considering that most people almost certainly enjoy the benefits of living in an advanced technological society, and want to continue to do so, returning to a low-tech or no-tech society would necessarily involve the use of coercion against large numbers of people, probably against a large majority of the population. These are the implications which the primitivists and "neo-primitivists" have dodged until now, usually by insisting upon "natural" checks on population growth, such as the AIDS epidemic and famine, to achieve their desired huntergatherer society. They haven't dared advocate what would really be required to achieve their vision: wholesale coercion and mass murder. If any good is to come from this controversy it will be that it has provoked many people to take a closer look at the questions of technology and population growth, and their relation to the prevailing politico-economic systems. One hopes that environmentalists will go beyond the crude theories and intellectual posturing of "deep ecologists" and those who blindly hate "technology." The questions of population and technology require a more sophisticated approach than primitivism. The only way in which population growth can be checked in a humane manner is through social justice—through abolition of (private and state) capitalism with its inherent tendencies toward environmental degradation; through fairer distribution of resources; through the emancipation of women and the abandonment of patriarchal religions; and through the utilization of appropriate technologies to provide cheap, easy access to birth control and to provide a comfortable level of material wealth for everyone.(5) 1. First published in Processed World #22, Summer 1988, pp. 16-17 2. "The Politics of Food," TV Documentary 3. Newman, of course is not implying that all aspects of European industralization were beneficial. He's merely noting that the rising standard of living attributable to industrialization was instrumental in lowering the birth rate. 4. "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First!, December 22, 1987 5. Of course I am not implying that all technologies are desirable—far from it. "Technology" is not a monolith. It is composed of a great number of separate technologies, all with different environmental and social effects. Some are beneficial, such as medical and sewage disposal technologies; some are neutral (in that they lend themselves to both socially useful and socially damaging uses), an example being radio communications technology, which can be used to dispatch ambulances or for political surveillance; and some technologies, such as nuclear technology, are inherently destructive. Even these classifications are gross simplifications, though, as even the most useful technology will have some negative effects; and even the worst technology might have some beneficial aspects. And the various technologies (steel production and semiconductor production, for example) used in supporting other technologies (such as automotive and computer technologies) will all have their own positive and negative aspects. Blind rejection of "technology" is, to put it mildly, simplistic at best.We’ve been here before. Last year we glimpsed the atrocity that is Sky’s mesh skinsuit. Well, yesterday we got quite an eyeful – something we quite honestly never ever wanted to witness.
Now, before I get accused of hypocrisy, as in, “you wouldn’t be saying this if Cancellara was wearing that”, I say, “Oh yes I would!” Imagination, my friends, is the key to attraction – and these mesh skinsuits leave nothing to that, therefore they should be STOPPED. But what has brought this New Year tirade? Well …
Nothin’ but net
Here is what Chris Froome posted yesterday.
And here is what happened immediately after he tweeted that.
Don’t get strung out …
This thought stream was inevitable.
And a little musical interlude, courtesy of Tim Curry.
While we’re on the subject of saucy suspenders.
And a birthday suit conversation which I think we all wish hadn’t ever happened.
And this was another inevitable comparison.
How about another little musical interlude?
And speaking of Cher, she did a (bad) film called Burlesque a few years ago, did she not? [Yes, she did, with Christina Aguilera. Don’t bother – Ed the film critic.] Must have been where Rapha got their inspiration. (I won’t torment you with the musical interlude for that reference…)
Which brings us neatly back to where we started with Rocky Horror.
Let’s net us an Austrian demigod
For all the shock and horror that the picture evoked, there was a subgroup who thought that, on the right person, it might not be so bad. But remember, keep your eyes on the modesty panel!
This was taken by Jered Gruber and while I never want to use Jered’s pictures for evil, I had to share the pain.
There was the inevitable Fabs question as well. I prefer the #SacredHaunches sheathed in lycra, not playing peek-a-boo with mesh panels.
But funniest of all was a case of mistaken identity.
Panache however has a knack for turning pain into profit. Oh, that makes him sound sleazy. Anyway, here’s his new idea!
And on that note, let’s have …
The Last Word"We don't have any euphoria" about a Trump presidency, Ryabkov was quoted by Interfax news agency saying, beating back the theory Moscow had actively supported the Republican who has been outspoken in his praise for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday (Nov 10) dismissed reports the Kremlin was "euphoric" about Donald Trump's election win, saying it was not certain the US president-elect would be any friendlier to Moscow than his predecessor.
Deputy Foreign Sergei Ryabkov also confirmed that members of Trump's inner circle had "kept in contact" with Russian officials during the election campaign, in apparent contradiction to remarks made by Trump's own staff.
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"We don't have any euphoria" about a Trump presidency, Ryabkov was quoted by Interfax news agency saying, beating back the theory Moscow had actively supported the Republican who has been outspoken in his praise for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
"Positions he voiced, positions on Russia voiced by people in Trump's campaign and in his circle, are rather harsh," Ryabkov said.
"We have not seen any reason to depart from our assessment of the campaign that there was a bipartisan consensus in the United States that has an anti-Russian basis."
"We don't expect anything special from the new US administration," Ryabkov added, saying Moscow did not give the impression of being "full of rosy hopes."
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Ryabkov's cautionary tone marked a contrast with the enthusiastic reaction from Russian state media and Russian politicians.
Putin was notably among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Trump on his stunning upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton, saying he was ready to work together to rebuild bilateral ties, which have fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War.
The Russian leader has tacitly supported Trump during the campaign, leading US commentators to speculate on Trump's private dealings with Moscow.
After an FBI investigation into possible Russia-Trump ties reportedly turned up no direct link, Trump's staff denied any direct contact, according to media reports last week.
But Ryabkov said both sides were in touch in the run-up to Tuesday's vote, without giving names.
"There were contacts," he said. "I won't say that everyone, but several (people in Trump's circle) kept in contact with Russian representatives."
Russia's lawmakers broke into applause during Wednesday's session of the State Duma upon learning that Clinton - frequently portrayed as particularly anti-Russian in the media - had been defeated.The present El Niño event, on the cusp of attaining “strong” intensity, has a chance to become the most powerful on record.
The event — defined by the expanding, deepening pool of warmer-than-normal ocean water in the tropical Pacific — has steadily grown stronger since the spring.
The powerful 2015 #ElNino is continuing to strengthen, just behind the pace set by the record 1997 event #climate pic.twitter.com/LqQf9Ltpae — Eric Blake (@EricBlake12) July 20, 2015
The presence of a strong El Niño almost ensures that 2015 will become the warmest on record for Earth and will have ripple effects on weather patterns all over the world.
A strong El Niño event would likely lead to enhanced rainfall in California this fall and winter, a quieter than normal Atlantic hurricane season, a warmer than normal winter over large parts of the U.S., and a very active hurricane and typhoon season in the Pacific.
[A strong El Niño could flourish by fall: Five ways it could affect our weather]
Some of these El Niño-related effects have already manifested themselves and, over the U.S., will become particularly apparent by the fall and winter.
Frequent and persistent bursts of wind from the west, counter to the prevailing easterly direction, have helped this year’s El Niño sustain itself and grow. Warm water from the western Pacific has sloshed eastward, piling up in the central and eastern part of the basin.
From much-needed California rain to a quiet hurricane season, Capital Weather Gang's Jason Samenow explains how a strong El Niño could affect U.S. weather. (Gillian Brockell and Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)
The sprawling area of warm waters has proven to be a boon for Pacific tropical cyclone activity, near record levels through mid-summer. Through a positive feedback mechanism, these cyclones have likely helped to reinforce the westerly push of warm waters, Slate’s Eric Holthaus reported.
The 2015 El Niño event is now neck-and-neck with record-setting event of 1997-1998 in terms of its mid-summer intensity.
Chart shows sea surface temperature difference from average (in degrees Celsius) in central and eastern Tropical Pacific in 2015 (orange line) compared to 1997 (blue line). By definition, El Nino becomes established when the sea surface temperature difference from average in this region is 0.5 Celsius for at least one month. It becomes a moderate El Nino event at 1 degree Celsius, strong at 1.5 degrees, and very strong or “super” at 2 degrees. In mid-July 2015, the sea surface temperature difference from normal was around 1.5 degrees, on the cusp of a strong El Nino event and comparable to the 1997 event at the same time, which eventually became a super El Nino. The red dots represent the average model forecast for the rest of 2015 which shows the sea surface temperature difference from average climbing above 2 degrees, achieving super El Nino strength, but it is not forecast to be quite as strong as the 1997-1998 event. (Jan Null)
That 1997-1998 event was notorious for its winter flash floods and mudslides in California.
[Why a ‘super El Nino could still mean a bust for California drought relief]
Michael Ventrice, a meteorologist for the Weather Company, said the atmospheric footprint of this year’s event — given the time of year — is statistically extremely rare and has a less than one in 1,000 chance of occurrence:
Colossal El Nino forcing during late July.. AEI rising to >+3.5 sigma!! How rare is a +3.5 sigma event? <0.1% pic.twitter.com/flBn4X9dos — Michael Ventrice (@MJVentrice) July 19, 2015
Although the El Niño is still officially classified as a “moderate” strength event, Tony Barnston, one of the world’s leading El Niño experts, explained it could well become a “strong” event by the end of the month.
“The strength of the departure from normal sea surface temperatures was enough to call it a strong event for just last week,” Barnston, of Columbia’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), said. “But to call it an officially strong event, we need for it to stay at that level or higher for a full month. And the average for July could make it.”
The large group of El Niño models, both dynamic (based on physical processes) and statistical (based historical data), mostly forecast at least a strong event — likely to peak in the fall. Collectively, the IRI described the model simulations as “off-the-charts”:
#ElNino forecast is off the charts! Both dynam & stats models calling for stronger event than last month #IRIforecast pic.twitter.com/tcQMJceM0M — IRI (@climatesociety) July 16, 2015
“[El Niño] is growing and the prediction models say it’s going to get stronger,” Barnston said. “And that’s our prediction, that it will become a strong event, most likely.”
A few models, notably the European model and the National Weather Service CFS model, point to the possibility of a near-record event in which a very strong or “super” El Niño develops.
Recent biases in ECM SST forecasts suggest max of 2.2-2.3 deg anoms, close to 82-83 & 97-98 strength pic.twitter.com/fJo2yOvavI — Todd Crawford (@tcrawf_nh) July 15, 2015
The only two super (or very strong) El Ninos in the historic record occurred in 1982-83 and 1997-98.
Perhaps hinting at an El Niño rivaling history, models have been trending stronger with their forecast month after month after month — as they absorb more data reflecting the true state of the current event and how it’s evolving:
#ElNino forecast getting stronger. Comparison of April-July dynamic model means, now peak at very strong +2.2 ONI. pic.twitter.com/FvI9q7PQ8M — Jan Null (@ggweather) July 16, 2015
While some models show El Niño possibly maxing out in record territory, NOAA climate analyst Michelle L’Heureux expressed some skepticism about such projections in an interview with Mashable’s Andrew Freedman. “L’Heureux noted that none of the major forecasting centers responsible for monitoring El Nino are predicting a record event at this time,” Freedman reported.
NOAA says the “forecaster consensus” is for a strong event but doesn’t specify how strong. Its forecast calls for El Niño to persist through the winter (90 percent chance) and early spring (80 percent chance).WINCHESTER
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Cases of a deadly plant disease known to kill roses have been popping up in several Virginia counties.It is called the Rose Rosette Disease; it has become a big worry for nurseries and home gardeners as it targeted all types of roses such as the Multiflora Rose and Knock Out Roses.The Knock Out Roses were planted outside of the Habitat for Humanity building in 2007 by David Shore, a volunteer for the organization and landscaper. However, there is evidence of presence of the virus such as red pigment on the leaves, and a clustering of small branches."Normally, this is an example of a bloom that should be a nice, large bloom. It's stunted in size," said Shore.The disease is caused by a microscopic mite carried by the wind, which makes it easy for them to fly from one rose bush to another."Well, it's a shame. Anyone that likes flowers and gardening, and these are such prolific bloomers. They'll bloom from March or April until the frost so I mean, it's something that was just very dependable, very beautiful plant," added Shore.Shore has been planting for 20 to 30 years and he said he has also seen it in Stephens City as well.Once the roses are infected, it becomes too little, too late.Shore added, "The only way it could be prevented from being shared with other roses is the plant be cut down, the roots dug out, and the surrounding soil dug out."It is something every gardener calls a nightmare.If your rose bushes are starting to show symptoms of the Rose Rosette Disease, experts said a miticide can kill the mites as a preventative treatment.For more information about the disease, click hereTeam led by Polish diver Krzysztof Starnawski says 404m Hranice abyss may be even deeper after test using robot
A team of explorers say they have found the world’s deepest underwater cave, in the Czech Republic.
The Polish cave diver Krzysztof Starnawski, who led the expedition, said he felt like a “Columbus of the 21st century” to have made the discovery of the cave, which is at least 404 metres (1,325ft) deep, near the eastern town of Hranice.
On Tuesday, Starnawski dived to 200 metres down the flooded limestone Hranice abyss, then used a remotely operated underwater robot to reach a further 204 metres, the total length of its cord. However, he said, the robot did not seem to have hit the bottom of the abyss.
In 2015, Starnawski dived to 265 metres at Hranice, which required him to spend more than six hours in a decompression chamber.
Speaking on the phone from his home in Kraków, Starnawski said Hranice abyss, which divers have explored for decades, was 12 metres deeper than the previous record holder, a flooded sinkhole in Italy called Pozzo del Merro.
The Czech Speleological Society said it believed the cave was deeper than 404 metres. “It [the robot] was as deep as its rope could go, but the bottom was still nowhere in sight,” the society said in a statement.
Mud and a water temperature of 15C (59F) make diving in the cave difficult. The water’s mineral composition damaged both equipment and exposed skin, Starnawski said, “but that is the only price to be paid for this discovery and it was worth paying”.
On Saturday, he planned to dive to 200 metres again to bring the robot back through the narrow passage leading to the bottom of the abyss. The device was made for the expedition and operated by the Polish company GRALmarine.
Starnawski said National Geographic, which first reported the discovery, covered some of the cost of the operation.In the new "Muppets" film, Europe is portrayed as a hodgepodge of clichés, including the snobbish French Interpol agent who, despite having plenty of work to do, goes on an eight-week summer vacation. Or the sexy Siberian bride who wants to lock Kermit the Frog up in a gulag forever.
Is Europe a place caught between decadence and totalitarianism the way it is portrayed in the new Disney film?
Or is this a tolerant Europe, one in which an Austrian drag queen can win the Eurovision Song Contest. Boundaries between countries and genders are relative, and it seems as if all the wars and killing of the last 2,500 years have led to Europeans taking a more relaxed view life and its abysses than people in other parts of the world.
One thing is true: Somewhere along the line, between Plato, Medici and colonialism, 1914, 1933 and 1989, the beautiful and the gruesome, Europe's identity has become an ongoing question.
What is Europe capable of doing, what does it want to be, what are its values and how does it defend those values? These questions will be raised, at least theoretically, during the European election on May 25. But these questions are also being addressed in a more hands-on fashion, with clubs and guns, in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Odessa.
Keeping Out of History
There is an odd discrepancy to the current situation. On the one hand, there is a dubious sense of calm, a paralyzing passivity. The European election campaign is unfolding in precisely the way Europeans have come to expect, in the wake of world history. In fact, it is practically the European Union's raison d'être, to keep out history, with all of its unpleasant side effects, and it is one of the reasons the EU was founded after World War II, a product of the individual nations' fears of one another.
On the other hand, reality is poking its head, once again, in this darkened room with Brussels-blue walls. Governments have managed to somewhat effectively gloss over the public protests, youth unemployment and growing inequality as a consequence of European policy. But with his aggressive approach in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the vaguely Muppet-like supreme villain, is drawing attention to the fact that the EU is relatively clueless when it comes to defining which values, other than the euro, it represents.
So does Europe need a bogeyman like Disney-Putin to understand itself? Does Europe need a figure like Conchita Wurst to be reminded of its ideals and strengths?
According to a study conducted for SPIEGEL by Infratest, an opinion research institute, Germans disagree over the question of whether resistance to Putin's policies will make Europe more unified. Overall, the majority is dissatisfied with the way the EU member states have behaved in the Ukraine conflict. On the other hand, respondents feel that Conchita Wurst's victory is a sign of tolerance, and that European culture is neither decadent nor in decline.
A Laboratory of the Present
The continent is certainly multicultural, if only out of necessity. It has no choice, and it was never anything but multicultural. From the Romans to the Germanic tribes, the Huguenots and the Poles, the continent has always been in motion, although it sometimes seemed to be suffering from vertigo, as historian Philipp Blom noted in his book about Europe before World War I. But his vertigo eventually led to the modern age, between psychoanalysis and Expressionism. Europe has always been a laboratory of the present.
What began then as the discovery of female desire now encounters the unholy troika of resentment: homophobia, anti-feminism and xenophobia.
So what is Europe in 2014? Is it closer to 1913 or 1938? Is it a continent that received its face in 1945 or 1989? And if the postwar era came to an end in the year in which the Berlin Wall was brought down, what began after that?
The Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago. Twenty-five years is an epoch. Were those the European years, and did we simply fail to notice? With America's decline, the attacks of 9/11, the war in Iraq, Guantanamo, Obama's drones and whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations, the West, in the form of the United States, has lost some of its sparkle.
But what about China, whose rise is as rapid as it is troubling? Will the Asian century follow the American century? What are the premises on which this coming century is based? What role will Europe play? What is the value of ideals like freedom and tolerance?
We have to revise our perspective. Surprisingly, much of what was tested in the European postwar period seems very appealing, humane and still valid today.
A Machine Designed to Eliminate Politics
An economy, for example, that adheres to rules. A society oriented toward fairness and justice. Human rights that apply to everyone. "After the experiences of the years from 1914 to 1945," writes historian Tony Judt in his history of Europe, people yearned for a "functioning state."
But what else? What was Europe supposed to be? This question was postponed, partly because of the sense of guilt over half of the continent being excluded from this debate, because it was separated from the West by the Iron Curtain.
As Judt writes, the European institutions were founded out of fear and uncertainty. They were never a symbol of strength or optimism. Instead, they represent a power whose decisions are largely exempt from the influence of the people. In Europe, politics is execution and promulgation, without process or discussion. In fact, the EU is a machine designed to eliminate politics.
The economy and prosperity replaced politics as the most important goal of the community. Not even specialists were overly interested in the democratic deficits of European institutions. The consequences are evident today. Europe, attacked from the outside by Putin and from the inside by right-wing populists, is rattled and doesn't know how to react.
Perhaps we know what kinds of values we want, but we don't know what we are prepared to do for those values. Europe is a little like the shy boy in glasses, who is pushed by bullies during recess.
'Europe's Original Sin'
Judt calls it "Europe's original sin:" The inability to learn from the crimes of the past, a nostalgia that makes us forget, and the constant temptation to return to the passive policies of 1938, when Hitler was allowed to do as he pleased.
Some of this attitude still exists today. It seems that many would prefer it if Europe were an island, far away from the world's problems. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama promised this, to a certain extent, when he declared the West the winner in his 1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man," suggesting that the future held nothing but relaxation.
But that didn't happen. History simply continued, unwilling to go away. However, Europeans had already abandoned politics as a means of shaping policy for so long that they reacted helplessly, again and again, to the abrupt unfolding of history. The important questions of war and peace became debates of introspection and doubt in the wave-like rhythm of the decades. In the early 1990s, it was the Bosnian war and the massacre of Srebrenica, in 2003 it was the Iraq War, and today it is the conflict in Ukraine.“This mission just got a lot more complicated.” — Spoilers for Mass Effect follow.
Yaroslev Tartakovsky Binary Helix Researcher Race Human Gender Male Voice Actor Lex Lang Appearances Mass Effect
is a human researcher for Binary Helix at Peak 15, on Noveria. He works in the hot labs and was assigned to one of Binary Helix's classified projects. One of his journal entries can be found in the dining hall if the Asari Diplomacy assignment has not been completed; he expresses his concern over this mercenary group.
If Commander Shepard enters the hot labs at Peak 15, Yaroslev Tartakovsky is sitting on a chair, and has an unidentified condition that appears to weaken him. Why he is still there despite working elevators, or how he survived the rachni attack, remain unanswered questions.
Tartakovsky tells Shepard about Binary Helix's finding of a rachni egg aboard a drifting rachni ship. Binary Helix planned to clone the rachni and mass-produce an army: the egg they found was, however, a queen, and they chose to separate her children from their mother in order to make them more obedient. This did not work, with the rachni being driven insane without her presence.
Yaroslev has the codes that Mira can use to activate a neutron purge, but as soon as he rises to give them to Shepard, he is impaled through the chest by a Rachni Soldier. Shepard kills the rachni, then takes the codes from Tartakovsky's body. As Tartakovsky says wryly not long before he dies, "mother always said I would come to a bad end."
Trivia EditXiaomi Inc., China’s largest smartphone maker, will |
of phase 1 with articles on BuzzFeed and CNN’s community pages:
/b/ also created a Tumblr blog called The 4th Wave Feminist Manifesto to help fool people even more.
For phase 2, /b/ created fake Twitter accounts, like @j_betham and @kwatermalone, to goad real people into getting upset.
As with other recent operations—fooling people into trashing their Xbox Ones and dunking their iPhones in water—this one doesn’t have unanimous support.
Why the bikini bridge and why now? Considering the term has been around for more than five years, who knows why this is /b/’s latest obsession. Chalk it up to a bunch of bored, horny, chilly teenagers who are well-versed in manipulating social media. Who can blame them for missing summertime?
Photo by m00by/FlickrYou might not give it more than a passing thought, but groundwater is a vital freshwater resource. In Australia alone, the reserves of groundwater help to earn the nation a steady A$34 billion a year from mining, food production and manufacturing.
But it’s also a vulnerable resource. Worldwide, about 1.7 billion people live in regions where groundwater is under stress, 60% of them in India and China.
US and Canadian researchers recently calculated the total amount of the world’s groundwater and estimated that it is equivalent to a lake 180 metres deep covering the entire Earth. This makes groundwater the largest active freshwater resource on the planet.
Groundwater is often referred to as a hidden resource, as it is not often seen and is hard to visualise. Water is stored between pores in the rock, or in fractures, known as aquifers. The amount of groundwater at a particular place therefore depends on the local geology. Geological history determines the extent to which a rock is porous and fractured, and therefore whether it can store groundwater.
We still know very little about this precious resource, particularly about how it may be affected by increasing pressure and a warming world. But scientists are starting to figure out the answers.
How do you find out the age of water?
The same research team that calculated the amount of groundwater also investigated its age. How did they do this?
Humans introduced a convenient time signature on the Earth when we started testing atomic weapons. This leaves a time stamp which can be found in water, rocks and living organisms.
By seeing if radioactivity from atomic bomb testing was present in the groundwater, the researchers could estimate that 6% of this groundwater is younger than 50 years old.
If this water was spread evenly over the continents, then there is just three metres depth of “modern” groundwater spread equally over the continents.
It could be argued that if we use only this “modern” groundwater, then this is sustainable, as we know that it has been replaced (or recharged) by natural processes over the last 50 years. But how quickly groundwater recharges changes over time.
Water has to reach the pores and fractures within rocks, either now or in the past. This means that the amount of rainfall has to be more than the amount of water evaporating from the land surface, and more than the amount of water used by all the vegetation. When this occurs, fresh water can recharge the groundwater from either water “leaking” from the beds of rivers or from rainwater that passes through the soil.
In many parts of the world we know that groundwater recharge varies due to natural climate variability such as El Nino. Groundwater recharge will also change with global warming.
Recharging water: you can’t just plug it in
Other recent research has measured how the amount of water stored on land has changed. The researchers did this by measuring changes in Earth’s gravity field, using GRACE satellite data from NASA collected between 2002 and 2014.
The gravity field is affected by the amount of groundwater, as well as water in lakes and rivers, with groundwater being by far the largest of the three. Changes in the amount of this water cause small but measurable changes in the Earth’s gravity field. The data show that water stored on land increased from 2002 to 2014.
The increase in stored water on land is enough to affect global sea levels. So although global sea levels are rising due to global warming, over the last few years a decrease in the rate of sea-level rise is explained by more water being stored on land as groundwater.
Gravity data can show us where groundwater storage has increased over time: for example, due to large flooding events in the upper Missouri in the US, and Zambezi and Niger basins in Africa. The recharge of groundwater by rivers is important and is one of the main ways that fresh groundwater is replenished – the other being direct recharge from rainfall.
The gravity data also showed where the land water store was decreasing. These corresponded well with regions of groundwater depletion such as California and the Middle East.
Most importantly, these data identify where groundwater is being affected by natural climate variability, by human over-use (or over-abstraction) and by changes in groundwater recharge due to global warming.
Groundwater and climate
Our research group at the University of New South Wales has considered what the implications might be for the carbon budget when groundwater is abstracted. In our recent paper in Scientific Reports, we show that the harder you pump groundwater, the more organic carbon is brought to the surface.
Organic matter, which is normally found in films on the surface of rock fractures, is mobilised by pumping groundwater. Pumping groundwater can therefore move organic carbon from an underground store to become a surface carbon source. This could, potentially, be released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.
We don’t know, but with groundwater over-used in regions affecting approximately 1.7 billion people, we think it’s worth seriously investigating.
Andy Baker, Author provided
Our work is the first of its kind and it has considered only one experimental research site in a fractured rock aquifer. Over the next three years, we will extend this research using a series of bore fields funded by the Australian National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to better understand the groundwater organic carbon store.Guests: Adam Conover Adam Conover Guests: Chris Fabricant Chris Fabricant
If it weren't for the Innocence Project's Chris Fabricant, we might not even have an Adam Ruins Everything Podcast! After he and Adam met of the set of Adam Ruins Forensic Science, Adam found his work so fascinating that he felt he had to talk to Chris in a longer format, and thus the original idea for the podcast was born.
As the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Litigation, Chris develops and executes strategies to address the leading causes of wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification, the misapplication of forensic sciences and false confessions. His cases take him all across the country to help exonerate the wrongfully accused.
On the podcast, Adam and Chris discuss outdated forensic science techniques such as bite mark analysis, why DNA analysis works, and Chris' bizarre deposition with bite mark "expert" Michael West, which was recently profiled in The Washington Post.
Adam is on Twitter @AdamConover and you can find past episodes and bonus content from the TruTV show at AdamRuinsEverything.com.
Produced by Shara Morris for MaximumFun.org.These last few months I have been working really hard on creating my first stone setting piece. Our tutor Michelle gave us the option to submit our piece to The Scottish Gemmological Association s’ competition, GemSet15. The competition is for all jewellery students across Scotland, including University students. Considering I have only been doing jewellery for 6 months, and this is my very first stone setting piece, I didn’t have high expectations. Nevertheless, I worked as h...ard as I could on the piece and I am stunned to find out I have won 3rd in Scotland!
As many of you will know, my health has been far from great and I have faced many challenges with this project. Almost everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. I struggled my way to college on crutches, I went in every extra day I could manage and I was still working up until the very last minute. I have overcome these problems to gain more skills and experience than I could ever have hoped for.
My piece of jewellery was inspired by bioluminescence in the insect kingdom. I researched many jewellers from the Art Nouveau era to influence the style of my piece. It is comprised of polished and oxidised sterling silver, photoluminescent pigment, resin and 3 cubic zirconia stones. One 20x15mm pear cut stone, and one 2.5mm round brilliant in each end of the T-Bar catchment. If you ‘charge’ the piece under direct, natural or artificial light for 1 hour, it will glow vibrantly for 10 hours. It is intended as an eveningwear piece.I received my first gift a few days before the rest (more pictures to come if I can manage it). I love to write and have been wanting to snag a proper Moleskine journal for quite some time. I read a few reviews and tried a knock off and it pretty much fell apart immediately. I mentioned that I was looking at this one and poof there it was.
This exchange has been such a pleasant experience. I also received two t-shirts, a Doctor Who t-shirt (YAY) and a Beatles t-shirt. But it doesn't stop there...in the box there was a card, a mix CD (because I mentioned I love indie music), and two gifts for my daughter.
The best gift in the bunch was definitely the new friends I've made by talking to both the person that got me as a match and the match I received.
Thanks for everything! I can't wait to get signed up for the Magnet Exchange. :)Nearly 5,500 years ago, prehistoric human civilizations in the Fertile Crescent were flourishing, horses and chickens were being domesticated, and a population of island-dwelling woolly mammoths was surviving — thousands of years later than their mainland cousins — on a remnant piece of land once part of the Bering Strait land bridge.
According to a new study led by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), these mammoths were the second-to-last known surviving population in the world. The study provides clear evidence for their extinction around 5,600 years ago, likely driven by a lack of fresh water and changing environmental conditions on tiny St. Paul Island.
John “Jack” Williams, professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his graduate student Yue Wang, were significant contributors to the study and both say the information is relevant to small oceanic islands today and the people and animals that live on them. Wang says the study also has implications for understanding other prehistoric extinctions of large animals in other parts of North America, including the Great Lakes region.
“It’s a cool story in multiple ways,” says Williams, who is also director of the UW–Madison Nelson Institute’s Center for Climatic Research. “I can’t think of any other case where freshwater availability was the driver of extinction. On small oceanic islands, freshwater can be a limited resource.”
For their part of the study, Williams and Wang examined vegetation changes that may have contributed to the mammoths’ extinction as well as fungal spores associated with the animals’ presence on the 110 square kilometer island off the coast of Alaska.
Williams traveled to the island in March of 2013 and stayed for 10 days. Strong storms whipped across the tundra and he and collaborators from across the U.S. hunkered down in a cabin with no phones and limited internet service.
They rode snowmobiles to one of the few sources of freshwater on St. Paul Island, a crater lake surrounded on three sides by steep rock walls. Wearing as many layers as possible, but thin gloves or none, Williams and his fellow scientists drilled through the frozen lake surface to take samples of sediments beneath the lake floor.
These sediments are snapshots of the lake environment through time, with each horizontal layer capturing a different period, and they allow scientists to study whatever materials settled into the lake hundreds or thousands of years ago, including fungal spores found in mammoth dung.
Their instruments kept freezing as they used them, Williams says, and they had to warm the meter-long steel tube apparatus used for taking sediment cores with rags dipped in boiling water. Other instruments had to be kept in the water to keep them above freezing.
“(Study lead) Russ Graham and I would push the sediment mud into cling wrap and PVC tubes and wrap them up to keep them as clean as possible,” Williams says. “It was muddy and wet.”
Wang visited later, in July, and described the island as foggy and continuously saturated. “I wore my rain jacket the entire time,” she says. While there, she and her colleagues took vegetation and soil samples and visited with people in the small Aleutian fishing village on the island.
“There is a small school and a museum,” Wang says, adding that many people talked about the mammoth bones they’d found. The museum had several mammoth bones in its collection.
From their surveys, Wang and Williams learned that the vegetation — the grasses and small shrubs associated with arctic tundra — had changed little over the millennia, so was unlikely to have played a strong role in the animals’ disappearance. However, the lake sediments provided information that agreed with the findings of colleagues who were also on the scientific hunt for the animals’ extinction date.
“No single lab can do all of the analyses,” says Williams.
Overall, the study looked at five different indicators, or proxies, that showed when mammoths lived on — and disappeared from — the island. These included radiocarbon dating of mammoth bones on the island, Williams’ and Wang’s examination of three types of fungal spores associated with mammoth dung found in the lake sediments, and analysis of ancient DNA from mammoth remains on the island.
All of the proxies converged on an extinction date of roughly 5,600 years ago. Meanwhile, mainland mammoths went extinct from mainland Asia and North America by roughly 10,000 years ago.
“Every proxy has ambiguity and challenges and no single one is a certain truth,” Williams explains. “We had five independent indicators. That’s pretty remarkable.”
The research team, through other proxies, found evidence of dwindling freshwater on the island, including clues that water became more brackish around the time of extinction, the lake became more shallow, more water was evaporating from the island, and the watershed experienced increased erosion — perhaps caused by the mammoths themselves.
Elephants, relatives of the woolly mammoth, consume as much as 200 liters of water per day, so mammoths likely also required large volumes of clean, fresh water to survive.
Williams says there is nothing to indicate humans lived on or came into contact with the island, and even today, Wang says with a laugh, there are more seals than people.
Wang is now working with Warren Porter, UW–Madison professor of zoology, on reconstructing the environment and landscape of St. Paul Island in the time of the mammoths, using data from the new study and other sources.
“We want to model the island as it was when the mammoths existed on it,” says Williams. “We want to learn the carrying capacity of the island, their population numbers, their dietary and water requirements.”For the past eight years, Bernard Hinault has acted as ambassador for the Tropicale Amissa Bongo event in Gabon and admits that over that period he has witnessed a rapid rise in the level of competition at what is Africa's biggest stage race. In the wake of a second victory in a row by an African rider, with Tunisia's Rafaa Chtioui succeeding Eritrea's Natnael Berhane, Hinault believes African riders are getting ever closer to capturing the biggest titles on the calendar, including the Tour de France. Related Articles Hinault fears for Tour de France in light of doping drama
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In an interview with Ouest France conducted during the 10th edition of the race, which concluded at the weekend, Hinault suggests that the day when an African or a Chinese rider wins the Tour is not too far away. "They're athletes, they're there to win! Why should it only be white riders who win?" he says.
"These guys have perhaps got something else on their side, and that's their hunger to succeed! They really want to get out of the difficulties they find themselves in, just as we did 60 or 70 years ago. If you become a high-level athlete, that gives you the chance to better yourself, to make a better life for yourself."
Although disappointed that MTN-Qhubeka, Africa's leading pro team, were absent from the Gabon race, Hinault insists the level of competition was still extremely high.
"They are closing the gap and some of them are already at the same level as European riders," says Hinault. "That was already evident last year with the victory of Natnael Berhane, who was then riding with Europcar. I'll say again, this continent has riders of real talent, and they've now got the equipment they need, that's no longer a problem. What they need now are good coaches and federations that truly want to support them."
Hinault points to MTN-Qhubeka's selection for the Tour de France as the most obvious evidence of the progress African cycling has made. "It's a South African team, but within its ranks there are Eritreans and Rwandans, riders who first emerged here at the Tropicale. They are real climbers and we will be able to see their talent this summer at the Tour. I think it says everything that this team reminds me a bit of the Colombian climbers who came to the Grande Boucle in the 1980s," says the legendary French rider.Even for professional hockey players who are used to being on the road, the arrival of Thanksgiving is sure to provoke thoughts of going back home.
But as millions of people around the country embark on trips back to their hometowns, hundreds of hockey's best players will be hitting the road for the NHL's slate of games on Black Friday.
And two of the teams that will headline the league's Thanksgiving Showdown, the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks, just happen to reside in areas that have grown a wealth of talent for the league.
In fact, exactly half of the teams in the NHL would look pretty good if they could only feature starters who were born in their areas.
Just how good? Well, that's up to you to decide.
Check out this list of NHL homegrown teams.
Boston Bruins
Buffalo Sabres
Calgary Flames
Chicago Blackhawks
Detroit Red Wings
Edmonton Oilers
Minnesota Wild
Montreal Canadiens
New York Islanders
Ottawa Senators
Pittsburgh Penguins
St. Louis Blues
Toronto Maple Leafs
Vancouver Canucks
Winnipeg Jets
Bonus: Hartford WhalersShare this post
A trend is taking over web design and it isn’t creating clean, tidy websites which are easy to use; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. The UX isn’t even second priority in these bold, in-your-face collages of text and images, where the layout is analogous to chaotic, paint-splattered artwork. However, that isn’t to say it cannot be done well. In this guide we will take a look at the dos and don’ts of this back-to-basics style, nicknamed “brutalism,” and explore the best ways to utilise it.
Brutalism is the way it’s written.
Brutalism comes from the French phrase for “raw” or “raw concrete”, so keep that in mind when you’re writing your code.
A website doesn’t have to be a horror show of unordered images and clashing font colors; the way the code has been written is also symbolic of the style. Embedded CSS, untabbed code, HTML tables, the list goes on.
First impressions count.
So, you’ve handwritten your website code, but it looks polished? Unfortunately, you can’t get away with a beautiful website and call it “brutalism”, if it was that easy then everyone would be doing it. You’re going to have to accept that your website might be called “ugly” by some.
Think big, bold blocks of web safe colors, gradients, large amounts of “white space” (though it doesn’t have to be white) and you’re on the right track.
Get inspiration from architecture.
Some people say that brutalism is based on architecture from the concrete era of the 1950s to the 1970s: harsh, square blocks of immovable, grey buildings. They’re designed to do a job and nothing else; no fancy archways or stained glass windows.
Forget everything you know about UX.
Hamburger menus will be the least of your concerns. Don’t be afraid of using the color combinations you were dying to try; blue with pink, yellow with grey. Pictures covering half the paragraph are not unheard of and hard-to-find links are the norm.
Know your audience.
Brutalism isn’t for everyone; you’re likely going to detract anyone who isn’t your target audience, even a few of those may be put off by the look. But if Bloomberg can get away with it, then full steam ahead.
Is brutalism right for you?
Only you can decide this. No matter which style of web design you choose, stick with it and be proud of what you have. Supporters of mobile friendly, plugin packed, WordPress themes may not be shouting from the hilltops to declare their love for the style, but the same people may have also turned their noses up at minimalism. Web design started with pixelated gifs, brash colors and misaligned text, so maybe it has just come full circle.
More web design trends:
The video at the top of this article was created using After Effects template ‘Dynamic Intro‘, with music by PONYMUSIC, and video creation by Envato Studio freelancer doru.
Correction: this article originally stated that the etymology of the word ‘brutalism’ comes from the French word for ‘raw’. It may actually originate from the phrase béton-brut – literally “raw concrete”.A report released today by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project revealed the extent of marijuana prohibition in Colorado and its devastating costs to our communities.
In the last 25 years, 210,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession. More than half of these arrests took place from 2001-2010. Marijuana possession arrests in Colorado rose sharply over the past 25 years -- from 4,000 in 1986 to 10,500 in 2010. Despite the increased show of force over the last decade, Colorado's crackdown has not decreased use or availability -- the stated goals of prohibition.
Young adults bear the brunt of marijuana enforcement measures. Eighty-six percent of those arrested were age 34 or younger, 79 percent were 29 or younger, and 69 percent were 24 or younger. Science has now conclusively debunked the theory that marijuana is a gateway to other drugs, but these numbers show that marijuana arrests are indeed a gateway into the criminal justice system for many otherwise law-abiding young people.
The resources invested by Colorado to maintain this approach comes at a stern cost to taxpayers. Reports estimate that Colorado spends $40 to $60 million on marijuana prohibition every year,
Colorado -- like many other states across the country -- funnels disproportionately high numbers of blacks and Latinos into the criminal justice system, and even jail in certain jurisdictions. Black people are arrested at three times the rate of whites, while Latinos are arrested at 1.5 times the rate of whites. Even in Colorado counties where the black population is less than 5 percent, the arrest rate was double that of whites.
The mostly young, poor adults who receive the label of drug offender understand all too well why many are now referring to the war on drugs as "the new Jim Crow." Marijuana possession arrests create easily-accessible criminal records, which can be found on the Internet by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies, licensing boards and banks. As a result, the consequence of being labeled a drug offender is a lifelong barrier to employment, housing and education for those who already have a tough road ahead.
California NAACP President Alice Huffman describes the hypocrisy of marijuana prohibition well:
"Our recent history is filled with elected officials (including our current president), business leaders and others who have admitted using marijuana and was nonetheless able to lead productive lives. How many would have been able to do so if they were subjected to current law enforcement practices?"
These very practices distract and divert limited law enforcement resources from combating serious, violent crime. Many law enforcement professionals agree that marijuana prohibition is detrimental to overall public safety and that it destroys the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
Marijuana prohibition is counterproductive to the health and public safety of our communities, fuels a massive, violent underground economy, wastes billions of dollars in scarce law enforcement resources, and makes criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens. It's time to bring marijuana out of the shadows and under the rule of law -- and Colorado is suited to lead the way.
Art Way is the Colorado Manager of the Drug Policy Alliance.The Wizards went 3-2 in this year’s Las Vegas Summer League tournament getting knocked off in the semi-finals by the eventual champions, the Chicago Bulls. As expected, Kelly Oubre Jr. was the star of the show for the Wizards earning him a spot on the All-NBA Summer League Second Team.
There will be some final jockeying for the final two roster spots amongst many of these summer league players come October. But first, this is what we learned about the Wizards during their time in Vegas.
Kelly Oubre Jr. is making progress but still has a ways to go.
Oubre does not lack confidence, that’s for sure. Oubre averaged a team-high 16 shots per contest but shot just 37.5 percent over the course of those five games. Oubre knew that he was the leader and best player on the team and acted accordingly. He often brought the ball up, was very vocal after scoring tough baskets around the rim in traffic and was the leader in huddles. It’s great to see that Oubre crought it upon himself to lead this team that ultimately landed him a spot on the All-NBA Summer League Second Team.
In addition, he looked much more confident when rising up to shoot jump shots and three-pointers. Although his three-point field goal percentage won’t reflect it as shot just 25 percent from range; his jump shot looked way better than it did last year. Often times last year, it seemed as if Oubre was shot-putting the ball which often resulted in his shot coming up short and to the left. That was not the case this summer league as Oubre’s shot looked much crisper.
However, there were some growing pains. Oubre averaged 2.8 turnovers per contest. He often tried forcing the matter especially when the Wizards were in a bit of a scoring drought. Oubre would penetrate all the way to the hole where there were often 7-footers waiting for him or he’d force up a contested shot. Oubre would have been better suited pulling up in the 10-12 foot range for an uncontested jumper rather than trying to get all the way to the hole.
His rebounding was a bright spot as he averaged 5.6 rebounds per game. But it would have been nice to see him act as more of a distributor with the ball in his hands as he averaged just 1.8 assists.
Oubre has shown improvement in a few key areas but still has a ways to go if he’s going to have an impact on this upcoming season.
Jarell Eddie likely played his way into a roster spot.
Eddie was the second-highest scorer for the Wizards during Summer League play averaging 13.2 points per contest. The front office and Eddie’s camp agreed to push contract negotiations back which all but guarantees Eddie to be a lock for a roster spot this upcoming season.
Eddie mainly played in garbage time this past season and would often hoist up three-pointers when in the ball game. The Wizards got to see a different side of Eddie this Summer League as he was attacking the hole and curling off of screens in addition to shooting threes. Eddie shot an impressive 48 percent from the field during Summer League play as well as an equally impressive 46 percent from three-point range. Eddie single handily kept the Wizards in their final game versus the Bulls as he shot 5-7 from three-point range scoring a game-high 22 points.
Eddie was the veteran amongst this group of players and played like it. He showed poise and that he has way more in his arsenal than just an impressive three-point shot. If the Wizards don’t have a roster spot for Eddie, he shouldn’t have a problem finding a home somewhere else.
Danuel House went from an unknown to earning himself a spot at training camp.
Danuel House was an undrafted rookie out of Texas A&M. But after a week in Las Vegas, House played his way into an invite to camp and has an outside shot of making the team. House is a tenacious player and plays the game as if he’s got something to prove.
Not in his House. Danuel playing for a camp invite. #WizSummer pic.twitter.com/7Fd8XkRZmQ — Hoop District (@HoopDistrictDC) July 14, 2016
House averaged 11.2 points per game off of the bench, the most of any Wizards’ reserve. The highlight of House’s Summer League campaign came in the second meeting against the Hawks when he scored the first eight points of the fourth quarter for the Wizards en route to their 71-60 comeback win over the Hawks. House scored 12 points in the quarter including a nifty step-back three-pointer.
The Wizards currently have just two small forwards on the roster (Porter, Oubre). As mentioned, House has an outside shot to make the team. The Wizards better take a long hard look cause their third small forward may be sitting right in front of them.
Aaron White has a long way to go to make the NBA.
I was hoping to see some improvement from White but that wasn’t the case. Although he averaged 7.2 points and 5.2 rebounds per contest; the game looked way too fast for him. When drafted, the Wizards thought that White might eventually morph into their stretch-4 of the future. The problem is, he’s not very stretchy. White hit just 29 percent of his three-pointers with most of his baskets coming on dunks or put-backs from close in.
White must count on others as creating his own shot isn’t a strength of his:
Although his stats looked alright, White looked slow out on the court. That doesn’t bode well for White as most of the competition was coming against players who won’t even make an NBA roster.
White doesn’t do anything outside of himself nor does he force shots. However, he has an uphill climb if he’s going to get that call from the Wizards to come play in the NBA.Note: if you’d like to read a shorter version of this cake without the swearing, go check out my wife’s take on it over at flourarrangements. Plus, hers has corndogs.
A few years ago, when my daughter was about three and had a big enough vocabulary to say some really funny stuff, she was babbling in the backseat of the car. Suddenly, she pops out with “I want to build a gingerbread…” and then gets lost in thought for a half beat. It was long enough that I thought she was searching for the word, so I was about to fill in with “house” when she finishes decisively with “computer.”
A gingerbread computer? It blew my mind. While I was cracking up, all I could think to ask was, “What OS will you boot on that?” Which was not the sort of arcane technical detail she gave a shit about. I think she really was thinking about all the candy she would use to lay out the keyboard.
Anyway, flash forward, and she’s got an eighth birthday coming up. I like birthdays. I like going over the top on cakes. Really, the cakes are my wife’s deal, but I like staying up ’til 4:00 am drinking beer helping to wrap fondant around a volcano wondering if I can make it blow up. This year she had her heart set on a dolphin cake which seemed like an okay idea except that she had visions of a leaping dolphin with all sorts of overhanging bits that were probably going to be impossible to execute in cake and marshmallow fondant. Somehow I managed to brag that if she wanted to skip a cake and go for gingerbread, I could make anything. What the hell… did I just paint myself into a corner trying to show off for a seven-year-old? Apparently.
The definition of “anything” that we end up with is a Ferris wheel. I even boast I can make this shit go ’round and ’round. My wife has a sort of horrified look on her face that’s part “don’t you dare fuck up a little girl’s birthday with some of your Mankitchen shit,” part “holy crap, can you really do that?” She’s pure practicality though. She wants to know what part we’ll eat.“Oh, we’ll put cupcakes going around and around on the wheel.” Now there is stunned silence; maybe everyone else had been thinking of some rinky-dink gingerbread cookie about the size of a cupcake, but I just upped the game. Eliza absorbs this craziness for about 10 seconds before she is on board 100 percent.
I’ve got this idea like one of those Fisher Price toys I remember from when I was a kid… creepy, round-headed dolls going around on their cupcakes with candles poking out of their heads. Of course, a cupcake is going to set the scale for the whole thing. It’s got to be big enough for a bunch of cupcake cars to look legit. I grab a cupcake and a big scrap of cardboard and start laying out a model. I need to move this idea from craziness to vision fast, because I’m pretty excited about it. Plus, I don’t want to fall back to having to cantilever a leaping dolphin. Full steam ahead.
The more I think about this, the more stoked I get. I start thinking about gingerbread houses I used to make and how strong the crap is. I can do it; I’m not content to think about doing the wheel, but the whole support structure out of gingerbread. This isn’t a birthday cake, this is poetry. Think about a haiku; you’ve got to say something, but there are rules about syllables or whatever, so you have to keep mulling over words to say whatever it is and still have it be right. Everything has to be edible (I grant myself that the motor can be toxic, though I toy with using a lemon for a battery). I’m picturing one of those obscenely large candy canes as the axle, smaller ones for spokes. This cake is pure haiku.
Actually, it’s more like a sonnet. We’ll be in for the long haul on this one. I fire up Sketchup and start laying shit out. I actually hate Sketchup, but it’s the only thing I’ve got on my laptop that can do this. I’m going to have to do a lot of baking, so I need to break it down to manageable chunks. I plan a bunch of wedges and size them so they can fit on 8 1/2 x 11 paper so I can print them out. I plan on little cars that can hold the cupcakes on their ride, printed out on Adam’s Makerbot. This thing is going to be epic.
When I describe the plan to Adam, and show him the cut diagram, he flashes brilliance. Why roll out gingerbread and cut it, he asks? Instead, let’s make a custom pan that will make perfect pieces every time. I export my diagram as an STL file and take it over to Adam. We dig out a grungy piece of 3/4-inch aluminum, fire up the Tormach CNC mill, and away we go.
I mix up a batch of gingerbread dough out of the Joy of Cooking, press it into the pan and bake it. It mostly works, but it needs more butter and flour to get it to pop out of the pan, but it tastes good, and looks awesome. A cool aspect of this custom-cut pan is that I put in little nubs to mark where I want the cross braces to connect. This ought to ensure they line up. It takes a few tries, but I eventually get it down: butter the pan (better than oil… I didn’t try cooking spray), add some flour and shake it around. Press the dough in firmly, and squish it a lot to fill in any trapped pockets. Then I rolled it flat (Adam suggested cutting a new pan with a sharp edge that would self-trim the dough, but I don’t really need two of these pans. I’ll be damned if I’m making another one of these things). It turns out a lot better if I stick in the fridge for 10 minutes to let the dough relax after the squishing. Then I pop it into the oven at 375° F for 25 minutes. Once it comes out, I let it sit for five minutes and run a knife around the edges of the pan. After that, I give it another 20 minutes and carefully work it out of the mold. Crap, I’m tired just typing this, and I had to make about 25 of these damn things. A few broke. A few stuck before I worked out this schedule. They took about an hour each.
Okay, so I finally had eight good ones and decide to start gluing the wheel together. The secret of this whole thing is royal icing: 155 grams of powdered sugar, one tablespoon powdered egg whites and two tablespoons water. This stuff sets up like concrete. I once made a gingerbread house and got a little nervous that it was flimsy, so I filled all the corners with a wedge of gingerbread and a crapload of royal icing. Later on, I couldn’t break the corner pieces down. I think I might have stepped on them, although I might be making that up.
The glue-up went well: I butt-joined the wedges together and then added a one-inch wide strip on top of the seam. If my recollection serves, this thing should be stiff enough to roll like a wagon in a day or so. Not so much, it turns out. My previous experience with gingerbread is all from California; here in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve got this humidity thing going. The first wheel feels like a bike tire without the spokes |
concluded that
“It is not in itself illegal to sympathize with violent ideologies.”
“Government agencies in charge of national security, in other words, are going out of their way to protect the “integrity” of possible jihadists out of concerns for a “democratic society” — the society that these jihadists want to subvert and destroy. Meanwhile, these agencies are using their government platform to smear non-mainstream media for matters as small as the use of quotation marks. What about the “integrity” of Swedish citizens and their right to not be blown up?” she asks.
As we previously reported, Sweden’s migrant ghettos are now so dangerous that police are installing microphones to pick up the sound of women screaming.
However, while actual ISIS recruitment propaganda is being broadcast on Swedish radio stations, the government appears to be more concernedabout milk being used as a symbol to radicalize white racists.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.Update: this post has been updated on 11/21/2016 to reflect the official name of Visual Studio 15 Preview announced during Connect() 2016, which is Visual Studio 2107
In the previous post we have seen how, by using the Desktop App Converter tool, it’s possible to convert an installer (like a MSI file) into an AppX, that can be side loaded or published through the Store like a regular Universal Windows Platform application.
In this article, instead, we’ll see the conversion from another point of view: we don’t have an installer, but we have an executable or our own Visual Studio project (like a Windows Forms or a WPF application) and we want to package it as an AppX, so that we can distribute it through the Store. The main reason why we would do this is that, probably, we don’t simply want to publish our installer on the Store as it is, but we want to start changing a bit the code to leverage some of the UWP features, like having a live tile or sending a toast notification.
But let’s take a step back and, before discussing how you can integrate UWP features in a Win32 app (which will be covered in the following posts), let’s see the basics on how to convert an application that doesn’t have an installer to an UWP package.
The manual conversion
We’ve already seen the manual conversion process in the previous post, even if it wasn’t explicated. Do you remember when, after manually changing the content of the Assets folder to replace the standard tiles, we had to use the two tools makeappx.exe and signtool.exe to recreate and sign the.appx package with a valid certificate?
This is exactly what we need to do when we want to convert our application that relies on a single executable file and it doesn’t have an installer process. The only difference is that, in the previous article, we started from a package folder created for us by the Desktop App Converter tool: we already had a folder with an Assets subfolder, a manifest file, etc.
In this case, instead, we need to manually create everything from scratch. So let’s start by creating, on our computer, a folder, where we’re going to recreate the same package structure. The first thing we need to is to take our executable (for example, our.exe file which launches the Windows Forms application) and copy it into the folder. For this demo we’re going to reuse the same Windows Forms application we’ve used in the previous article, which you can find on GitHub at https://github.com/qmatteoq/DesktopBridge/tree/master/1.%20Desktop%20App%20Converter/HelloCentennial
You may be wondering why I keep using a Windows Forms app for my demos: there isn’t a specific reason, it’s just to show you that the power of the Desktop Bridge isn’t limited to applications written with more recent technologies like WPF (which has many things in common with the Universal Windows Platform, like relying on XAML to define the UI and C# or VB.NET to define the logic), but it works with any kind of Win32 technologies, even the oldest ones like VB6 or Windows Forms.
If you open the project with Visual Studio and you build it, you’ll get an executable file in the /bin/Debug folder called HelloCentennial.exe. Just take it and copy into the folder you’ve created in the previous step.
The next step is to create a subfolder called Assets, where to place all the images that we need to use as iconography: tiles, start logo, Store logo, etc. The minimum requirement is to have at least two square images: 150x150 and 44x44.
If you want to get a better results and cover all the supported assets and scales, you can refer to the previous post, where we have talked about a Visual Studio extension that is able to generate, from a single image, all the required Assets images.
The last step is to add a manifest file, by manually creating (using whatever editor you prefer, like Notepad, Visual Studio Code or the full Visual Studio version) a file called AppxManifest.xml. We can also copy the one the Desktop App Converter tool created for us in the previous article. No matter how you prefer to proceed, here is how your manifest should look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/foundation/windows10" xmlns:uap="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/uap/windows10" xmlns:rescap="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/foundation/windows10/restrictedcapabilities"> <Identity Name="***YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME_HERE***" ProcessorArchitecture="x64" Publisher="CN=***COMPANY_NAME***, O=***ORGANIZATION_NAME***, L=***CITY***, S=***STATE***, C=***COUNTRY***" Version="***YOUR_PACKAGE_VERSION_HERE***" /> <Properties> <DisplayName>***YOUR_PACKAGE_DISPLAY_NAME_HERE***</DisplayName> <PublisherDisplayName>Reserved</PublisherDisplayName> <Description>No description entered</Description> <Logo>***YOUR_PACKAGE_RELATIVE_DISPLAY_LOGO_PATH_HERE***</Logo> </Properties> <Resources> <Resource Language="en-us" /> </Resources> <Dependencies> <TargetDeviceFamily Name="Windows.Desktop" MinVersion="10.0.14393.0" MaxVersionTested="10.0.14393.0" /> </Dependencies> <Capabilities> <rescap:Capability Name="runFullTrust"/> </Capabilities> <Applications> <Application Id="***YOUR_PRAID_HERE***" Executable="***YOUR_PACKAGE_RELATIVE_EXE_PATH_HERE***" EntryPoint="Windows.FullTrustApplication"> <uap:VisualElements BackgroundColor="#464646" DisplayName="***YOUR_APP_DISPLAY_NAME_HERE***" Square150x150Logo="***YOUR_PACKAGE_RELATIVE_PNG_PATH_HERE***" Square44x44Logo="***YOUR_PACKAGE_RELATIVE_PNG_PATH_HERE***" Description="***YOUR_APP_DESCRIPTION_HERE***" /> </Application> </Applications> </Package>
The items highlighted with asterisks are the ones you need to change to give an identity and a meaningful look & feel to your application, like the name, the package, the logo, the assets to use, the description, etc. However, the most important entry is the one in the Application entry, which is the path of the Win32 executable you want to package (in our case, it’s the.exe of the Windows Forms app).
Here is how the manifest for our sample application looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/foundation/windows10" xmlns:uap="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/uap/windows10" xmlns:uap3="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/uap/windows10/3" xmlns:rescap="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/foundation/windows10/restrictedcapabilities"> <Identity Name="HelloCentennnial" ProcessorArchitecture="x64" Publisher="CN=mpagani" Version="1.0.0.0" /> <Properties> <DisplayName>Hello Centennial</DisplayName> <PublisherDisplayName>Matteo Pagani</PublisherDisplayName> <Logo>Assets\SampleAppx.150x150.png</Logo> </Properties> <Resources> <Resource Language="en-us" /> </Resources> <Dependencies> <TargetDeviceFamily Name="Windows.Desktop" MinVersion="10.0.14393.0" MaxVersionTested="10.0.14393.0" /> </Dependencies> <Capabilities> <rescap:Capability Name="runFullTrust" /> </Capabilities> <Applications> <Application Id="HelloCentennnial" Executable="HelloCentennnial.exe" EntryPoint="Windows.FullTrustApplication"> <uap:VisualElements DisplayName="Hello Centennnial " Description="Hello Centennnial " BackgroundColor="#777777" Square150x150Logo="Assets\SampleAppx.150x150.png" Square44x44Logo="Assets\SampleAppx.44x44.png" /> </Application> </Applications> </Package>
At the end, here is how your folder should look like:
For your convenience, if you don’t want to recreate everything manually just for the sake of testing, you can download a full copy of the package structure from GitHub: https://github.com/qmatteoq/DesktopBridge/tree/master/2.%20Manual/PackageLayout
A first important thing to highlight is that, with this architecture in place, you’ll be able to test your desktop app running as converted without necessarily having to create an AppX package from it and install it. In fact, it’s enough to open a Powershell window in this folder and launch the following command:
Add-AppxPackage -Register ".\AppxManifest.xml"
The application will be installed like if it would have been downloaded from the Store or directly from the AppX and you’ll find it in the application list of your Start menu. This is an easy way to test changes in the package: just change the files (like an asset or an updated executable), then register it again and you’re all set to test the new version.
Now, instead, let’s see how we can turn this folder into a real AppX package thanks to the exact same manual approach we’ve seen in the previous article, when we have manually replaced the assets and recreated the package.
First, we’re going to open a Visual Studio Command Prompt and leverage the makeappx.exe tool to create the.appx file:
makeappx pack -d "C:\Centennial\PackageLayout" -p "C:\Centennial\Output\HelloCentennial.appx"
You should already know the meaning of the various parameter, thanks to the previous post: -d is the path to the package folder, while -p is the path and name of the AppX file we want to create.
At the end of the process, we’ll get a file called HelloCentennial.appx which, however, we won’t be able to install because it isn’t properly signed. Again, we need to use another tool we’ve covered in the previous article, which is signtool.exe. You can choose to leverage the auto generated certificates from the Desktop App Converter or to create your own, by following the steps described in this article: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop-to-uwp-signing
No matter which is your choice, in the end you’re going to launch a command similar to the following one:
signtool.exe sign /a /v /fd SHA256 /f "auto-generated.pfx" /p "123456" "HelloCentenniall.appx"
Again, the important parameters are:
/f, which is the path to the PFX file to use for the signature
, which is the path to the PFX file to use for the signature /p, which is the password used to protect the PFX file (if needed)
, which is the password used to protect the PFX file (if needed) the path and name of the.appx file to sign
We’re done! Now we have an AppX package that we can install on our machine or, eventually, publish on the Store that will launch our Windows Forms app, which we have included as executable inside the package.
Important! In the manifest file, we just need to specify the entry point of the Win32 application (in our case, the file called HelloCentennial.exe), but in the package folder we need to remember to add also all the DLLs which the app depends from (no matter if they have been created by you or if they’re third party libraries), otherwise we’ll get exceptions at runtime.
For example, let’s say that we want to add a new feature in the Windows Forms app: we want to serialize some data using the JSON format and store it into a text file saved on the desktop. To simplify our job, we add the third-party library JSON.NET to the Windows Forms application using NuGet and, in the user interface, we add a button that invokes the following method:
private void OnSerializeData(object sender, EventArgs e) { Person person = new Person(); person.Name = "Matteo"; person.Surname = "Pagani"; var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(person); string userPath = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.DesktopDirectory); string fileName = $"{userPath}\\person.txt"; File.WriteAllText(fileName, json); }
If we build again the project in Visual Studio and we copy inside the PackageLayout folder just the updated HelloCentennial.exe file, but we forget to copy also the Newtonsoft.Json.dll one (which is the JSON.NET library installed through NuGet), we’ll get an unhandled exception when we’ll try to call this method in the UWP app, which will simply crash.
This example shows you some of the limitations of the manual approach:
Every time we make some changes to the Windows Forms application, we need to remember to copy all the updated files in the package folder before creating a new version of the AppX file or manually registering it using Powershell. In this sample app, the operation is quite easy, since it’s made just by an executable and a third-party library. We can’t say the same if we’re working on a more complex app, which may contain dozens of class libraries that can be modified and updated every time we rebuild the project. When we have added the new method to serialize the data, we’ve created a dependency from the JSON.NET library, which we need to remember to include in the package folder. If we forget to do it, it can be hard to debug and identify the problem, because when we launch the Windows Forms app everything works as expected. However, as soon as we launch the converted AppX package, we would just notice that the app crashes but, without adding proper logging, we won’t be able to immediately identify the cause. In the end, there’s one last caveat: every time we need to deploy an updated version of the package for testing, we need to repeat the package creation and signing process or the Powershell script.
Is there a way to improve the overall conversion experience?
Introducing Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio 2017 (previously known as Visual Studio 15) is the name of the next version of Visual Studio, which will ship in the near future and, at the time of writing, has reached the RC milestone. Visual Studio 2017 adds a lot of new features and improvements and some of them will be particularly appreciated by Universal Windows Platform developers (like the XAML Edit and continue feature, which allows to change the content of a XAML page while the app is running and to see the changes live in real time). Additionally, Visual Studio 2017 comes with a new installer, which will allow you to install only the feature you need for your environment: this way, a basic installation can take just a few minutes to be completed, which is a huge improvement compared to the past. Then, dynamically, you can start adding new modules as you need, based on your requirements.
Visual Studio 2017 comes with an extension which is specific for the Desktop Bridge, which makes the conversion and debugging experience much easier. In this section, we’re going to achieve the same goal of the previous exercise (taking the HelloCentennial.exe application and converting it into a UWP app), but using Visual Studio 2017 and the Desktop Bridge extension.
The first step is to install Visual Studio 2017 RC: it has a go-live license but it’s still in preview so, if you don’t feel confident, you can install it side by side with all the other Visual Studio installationsEventually, if you prefer not to mix production environment and testing environments, you can choose to install it on a virtual machine hosted on your own PC or on Azure. You can download the preview from https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-2017-rc/
The next step is to download and install the extension dedicated to the Desktop Bridge from the Visual Studio gallery: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=797871
After we have installed everything, let’s start by creating a new Win32 app. For our demo, we’re going to reuse the HelloConverter project we’ve previously converted, which source is available on GitHub: https://github.com/qmatteoq/DesktopBridge/tree/master/3.%20Convert
As you can see, it’s the same Windows Forms app we’ve used in the previous articles: it’s made by a single form with two buttons, which creates some text files on the user’s desktop.
If we take a look at Solution Explorer, however, we can notice that, other than the Windows Forms project, there’s also another project, called Convert.DesktopToUWP. This project has been created thanks to the new template added by the extension. To add it, just right click on the solution in Visual Studio and choose Add -> New Project. You’ll find the template under Other Project Types -> Setup and deployment and it’s called Desktop to UWP Packaging Project.
By default, the new project will look like this:
As you can see, it contains a single file, called AppXPackageFileList.xml. This is the file that does all the deployment work for us: it describes which are the files of the original Win32 project that need to be embedded into the UWP package. Here is how the default file looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project ToolsVersion="14.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <!-- <PropertyGroup> <MyProjectOutputPath>C:\MyProject\MyProject\bin</MyProjectOutputPath> </PropertyGroup> <ItemGroup> <LayoutFile Include="$(MyProjectOutputPath)\x86\Debug\MyProject.exe"> <PackagePath>$(PackageLayout)\MyProject.exe</PackagePath> </LayoutFile> </ItemGroup> --> </Project>
The content of the file is commented, since you need to change it with the real info about your app, but it gives you a glimpse of the information needed to get it working:
The MyProjectOutputPath entry contains the path of the folder where Visual Studio deploys the files that need to be included into the package. Typically, it’s the output of the build operation of the Win32 app, which is stored inside the bin folder of the project.
entry contains the path of the folder where Visual Studio deploys the files that need to be included into the package. Typically, it’s the output of the build operation of the Win32 app, which is stored inside the folder of the project The ItemGroup section contains one or more LayoutFile entry, one for each file that needs to be packaged into the AppX. Typically, you’re going to have one entry for each.exe and each.dll file needed by the Win32 app to properly run.
Before moving on, it’s important to do a step back and highlight an important information: this extension doesn’t remove the requirement of having to manually create a package folder with the assets and the manifest file, like we did with the manual approach. You’ll still have to do this operation: the difference is that, this time, instead of creating the package folder in a random position on your computer, you’re going to include it into the new deployment project we’ve just created, as you can see in the following image:
The PackageLayout folder is exactly the same folder, with the same Assets subfolder and the same AppxManifest.xml file, we’ve created at the beginning of this article. The only difference is that, this time, we don’t have any more to manually add the HelloCentennial.exe and the Newtonsoft.Json.dll files, but the project will take care of it for us every time we build it.
Once you’ve added the PackageLayout folder to your deployment project, you’ll need to set its path in the Package Layout field in the Start section of the project’s properties, which you can find by right clicking on the project and choosing Properties. As you can see, the project supports relative paths, so it’s enough to specify the name of the folder (in this case, PackageLayout).
After you’ve done this operation, you should be able to choose from the Start Up Tile dropdown the name of the Win32 application that will be launched by the UWP package (in this case, it’s Convert).
The last step is to configure the AppXPackageFileList.xml to configure which files from the Windows Forms project are required by the UWP app to run properly:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project ToolsVersion="14.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <PropertyGroup> <MyProjectOutputPath>$(PackageLayout)\..\..\Convert\bin</MyProjectOutputPath> </PropertyGroup> <ItemGroup> <LayoutFile Include="$(MyProjectOutputPath)\Debug\Convert.exe"> <PackagePath>$(PackageLayout)\Convert.exe</PackagePath> </LayoutFile> <LayoutFile Include="$(MyProjectOutputPath)\Debug\Newtonsoft.Json.dll"> <PackagePath>$(PackageLayout)\Newtonsoft.Json.dll</PackagePath> </LayoutFile> </ItemGroup> </Project>
As you can see, in the MyProjectOuputPath entry we’re leveraging the $(PackageLayout) keyword, which is automatically mapped with the path we’ve specified in the project’s property as Package Layout. This way, instead of specifying an absolute path, we can use a relative one to point to the folder where Visual Studio deploys the app executables every time we build the project (the bin one of the Windows Forms project).
Then, by leveraging another keyword ($MyProjectOutputPath) (which, as you can imagine, is a reference to the entry we’ve just declared above), we create a LayoutFile entry for each file stored in the bin folder that we need to include in the UWP package: in our case, we need to include the executable (HelloCentennial.exe) and the JSON.NET DLL (Newtonsoft.Json.dll).
Now, if we build the deployment project and deploy it, Visual Studio will take care of automatically copying the required files from the desktop app. We can notice this by simply opening, in File Explorer, the PackageLayout folder: other than the Assets folder and the manifest file we’ve previously created, we will find also the Windows Forms executable and the JSON.NET library.
If we set the deployment project as the startup one, we should immediately see another one of the benefits of using VS15 with this extension: we’ll be able to simply press F5 and deploy and launch the desktop app inside the UWP container, without having first to create the AppX and sign it with the command line tools.
Another additional benefit is that now we have a true debugging experience: despite we have launched the UWP packaged version of the app, we can add breakpoints in the Windows Forms project and hit them, like if we were regularly debugging the standard Win32 app.
Another advantage is that we can easily identify errors that don’t happen in the Windows Forms app, but only in the UWP packaged version. Do you remember the crash scenario we mentioned in the beginning, in case we forget to include in the package the JSON.NET DLL? Thanks to VS15 it’s easy to identify and solve it because, in this case, instead of an unexpected crash, we get a full debugging experience, with all the details about the exception:
At the moment of writing, however, VS15 still doesn’t include an automatic process to convert the deployment project into an AppX package: as such, once you have finished testing and debugging and you want to prepare the.appx file for distribution, you still have to go back to the manual approach and use the makeappx.exe and signtool.exe tools that we have previously described on the PackageLayout folder.
Wrapping up
In this article, we’ve learned how to leverage another approach provided by the Desktop Bridge: instead of converting an installer, we have converted an executable, in this case a Windows Forms project that we own. To achieve this goal, we have created a folder where we have included all the files that we need to include in the AppX package: assets, manifest and the Win32 application.
However, we have discovered that there are two ways to accomplish this task:
A manual approach, which requires to manually copy into the package folder all the executables and DLLs every time we change the source code of our Win32 app. An automatic approach, which is based on a special extension available for Visual Studio 2017. Thanks to this extension, every time we apply a change to the Win32 app, the required files are automatically copied in the UWP package. Additionally, we get a full debugging and deployment experience, without having to create and sign an AppX package every time we need to do some testing.
As usual, you can find all the samples on my GitHub repository: https://github.com/qmatteoq/DesktopBridge. Specifically, the projects used for this article are:
https://github.com/qmatteoq/DesktopBridge/tree/master/2.%20Manual for the manual approach
https://github.com/qmatteoq/DesktopBridge/tree/master/3.%20Convert for the automatic approach (remember that this solution, to be properly opened, requires Visual Studio 2017 RC, otherwise you’ll get an error trying to load the UWP deployment project).
In the next article, we’re going to expand this sample app and see how we can start integrating UWP APIs and features.
Happy coding!In a complete team effort, the No. 12 Stanford women’s volleyball team defeated Pacific, 25-21, 25-22, 25-17, Saturday at the Alex G. Spanos Center.
Stanford (6-2) hit a season-best.355 in its final tune-up before Pac-12 play starts on Tuesday. The Cardinal recorded 47 kills with just eight attack errors, while holding Pacific (6-6) to a.179 clip. Stanford also held an edge in blocks (7.0-1.0) and digs (53-47).
Jenna Gray Jenna Gray
Redshirt senior Inky Ajanaku and redshirt junior Merete Lutz each tallied eight kills for the Cardinal while hitting.300 or better. Freshman opposite Kathryn Plummer added seven kills on.438 hitting and four blocks.
Setters Kelsey Humphreys (26 assists) and Jenna Gray (17 assists) controlled the offense, while freshman libero Morgan Hentz once again led the team in digs with 17.
Stanford opened the match with a 7-2 lead in the first before the Tigers battled back to tie it 13-13. In total, there were six tie scores and five lead changes in the first until the Cardinal outscored the Tigers 8-4 down the stretch. Stanford never trailed in the second or third sets.
Up next, Stanford opens Pac-12 play on the road at Bay Area rival California on Tuesday. First serve is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Pac-12 Network.Story highlights Lee Heist says he thought his former wife had died "not in a very pleasant way"
Brenda Heist, 54, disappeared from her Pennsylvania home in 2002
Heist turned herself in to Florida police on Friday as a missing person
She was distraught over an impending divorce and finances, a detective says
A Pennsylvania woman who mysteriously disappeared 11 years ago has resurfaced in Florida, saying that she just walked out on her family, her life and her problems.
Brenda Heist, 54, turned herself in to authorities in Key Largo, Florida, on Friday, informing them that she thought she might be wanted in another county.
The responding officer checked her name and saw that she was listed as "missing and possibly deceased" from Lititz, Pennsylvania, according to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office in Florida.
Authorities in Monroe County immediately contacted the Lititz Borough Police, informing them that Heist was in their custody.
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After exchanging pictures and details, Detective Sgt. John Schofield confirmed that it was indeed the Brenda Heist he had been searching for since 2002. He met with her in Florida two days later.
"She left just on a split-second whim and decided to just leave, and turn her back on her family and on her life, and pursue a life with these homeless people to hitchhike down to Florida," Schofield told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Thursday.
An invitation to hitchhike
Heist disappeared February 2002, after last being seen dropping off her children at school.
She was going through a divorce from Lee Heist and was applying for housing assistance so that she could get her own apartment.
She worked as a bookkeeper for a car dealer and hoped to receive some financial aid.
However, her request was denied, Schofield said earlier.
"She was very upset, she was sitting in a park crying, thinking about how she would raise her children, feeling sorry for herself," he said.
It wasn't long before she was approached by two males and a female who asked her what was wrong. After she told them what had happened, they invited her to hitchhike with them down to Florida.
"At a whim, she decided at that very moment, she would go along with them," Schofield said.
Schofield spoke to Heist at length, and she explained where she had been for the past 11 years.
"She was very emotional; she hung her head; she's ashamed. She was crying when I met with her. She knows what she did was completely wrong, but all that while, she'd never made one effort to call or contact her family at all," Schofield said.
A hard life
For the first two years, he said, she was homeless.
She lived under bridges, eating food thrown out by restaurants after they closed.
For the next seven years, she lived in a camper with a man she had met. They made money as day laborers, cleaning boats and doing other odd jobs for which they didn't have to show ID and were paid in cash.
After that relationship soured, Schofield said, she lived on the street again for another two years.
"Everything seemed to be going against her while she was on the street. She was just worn out and at the end of her rope. She didn't want to continue on with her secret life down there," Schofield said.
Meanwhile, her family remained in Pennsylvania, searching for answers.
A long wait
"I remember my children calling me and saying that mom wasn't home," Lee Heist told CNN. "I thought she just got tied up somewhere."
He was at work at the time and planned to head to his mother's birthday party afterward.
When his two children called a second time, this time after dark, he decided to return home.
"I went to the house and there wasn't anything out of place. Everything was right where it was supposed to be. I waited and waited. Around 8 o'clock or so, I called the police," he said.
An exhaustive investigation followed. For months, local, state and federal investigators interviewed dozens of family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers to no avail, said the Lititz Borough police news release.
Four days after she disappeared, Brenda Heist's car was found legally parked in a parking spot in a nearby city.
There was no damage to the car, but it was parked near a bus station.
When police scoured bus and airline schedules, they couldn't find any bookings for Brenda Heist, according to case details provided by the Monroe County Sheriff's Office.
Under suspicion
Lee Heist even became a suspect, though he was eventually cleared.
"The police always asked me if I wanted to have an attorney present, I said 'No, I don't need one.' I gave them total access to the house, to the computer, whatever they needed. I wanted answers," Lee Heist said.
The investigation continued for several years.
Six years after Heist went missing, Lititz police invited the Lancaster County Major Crimes Unit to join them in conducting a cold case investigation.
Detectives from all over the county interviewed several old and new witnesses, poring over every bit of evidence collected during the original investigation, said the Lititz police news release.
"We couldn't overlook anything, so it went in many different directions. We would have calls every so often where somebody would say that they saw her. Many people became persons-of-interest," Schofield said.
"We'd get a call from someone who said she was buried in the woods, only to find out it was only a dirt mound when we went to investigate. Individuals were acting suspicious, calling saying they knew where she was. We'd just find out later that they were mentally unstable."
While police did find some new information, all of their leads came up short.
"I won't even get into the number of psychics who called in, saying they knew where she was. Obviously that didn't pan out," he said.
Despite years of dedicated investigation, it seemed like an answer to Heist's whereabouts would never be found.
Not without her children
Friends and family were convinced that something bad had happened to her.
While they couldn't determine how she disappeared, they all agreed on one thing: There was no way Heist would ever leave her children, or so they thought.
"When the investigation first began, after interviewing all of her family and friends, neighbors, co -workers, the one consistent thing they all said was that she would never leave on her own. She would never leave her children behind," said Schofield.
"The fact that she left on her own was one of the theories, but it was at the bottom of the list," he said.
In 2010, Lee Heist filed a petition with the county court to have Brenda declared legally deceased, according to the Lititz police news release. It was a measure necessary for closure, he said.
He later remarried.
The call
When Schofield got the call from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office on Friday, he thought they had found her remains somewhere.
He was shocked to find out that all these years, she was alive and in Florida.
He contacted Lee Heist immediately and told the family the news.
"It was very emotional," Schofield said of his meeting with Lee and his two children, now grown.
"It hit the daughter that nothing horrible had happened to her mother, but it instantly dawned on her that her mother chose to leave. That's got to be extremely difficult."
Lee Heist said Thursday he was surprised to learn his ex-wife was alive.
"I really did think that she had died and unfortunately, probably, not in a very pleasant way."
LaDonna Meredith, president and co-founder of Let's Bring Them Home, an organization whose mission is to "provide safety education for children and adults as well as critical resources to families with missing loved ones" said a missing person case in which the adult chooses to leave is rare.
"It happens less than 5% of the time," Meredith wrote in an e-mail to CNN.
"When a missing person doesn't appear after weeks or months, the added psychological stress on the families increases. Psychologists call this phenomenon 'complicated grief' due to the traumatic nature of the death or disappearance and the obstructions to its resolution," she said.
Feeling of confusion
For Lee Heist, the news that his ex-wife had been found alive in Florida was one of confusion and ambiguity.
"My reaction was extremely mixed. Several reactions went through me. They all raced through me, and I couldn't grab one. It was just confusion for the first hour of so," he said.
Still, he also felt vindicated. Those who believed he was involved in Brenda Heist's disappearance now know the truth.
"The hardest thing I had to deal with was, the families of some of my children's friends would not let them play with them, because of what they thought of me. That just tore me apart. I hope they've learned a lesson not to prejudge," he said.
Brenda Heist is currently in "protective custody" said Becky Herrin, spokeswoman for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, who added that she could not offer any further information.
CNN's attempts to reach Brenda Heist were unsuccessful.
No charges have been filed in the case.
"There's nothing illegal about her walking away from her family," Schofield said. "I'm happy she's all right. I'm happy for the family, but now we're forced to think about the wasted manpower that went into this, the hours and money spent on this investigation, the time and effort."
Heist's missing person flyer has remained posted on the wall in Schofield's office for 11 years. Now he can finally close a case that has been open for more than a decade.
Life goes on
For Lee Heist and his two children, life goes on.
Their daughter, 20, is now a sophomore in college.
Their son is a college graduate and is applying to a police academy, said the Lititz police news release.
While neither he nor his children have contacted Brenda Heist since she was discovered, Lee Heist said he would not have a problem with it.
"I don't see where my communicating with her would be productive for either one of us. But if she's healthy and wants to talk to the kids, and they want to talk to her, I will make sure they can visit her," he said.
Such a reunion, especially after 11 years, will likely prove challenging for both Brenda Heist and her estranged children |
component:
But we can improve Progressive Loading even more! When application is initially loaded we can schedule loading of additional component on background, so it is possible that they will be loaded before user toggled checkbox
And loader.js will be something like this:
Also, we can define components that will visible on the first screen, but in fact loaded asynchronously later and a user may see beautiful placeholder while a component is loading. Please note that placeholder is not for API call. It is exactly for loading component’s module (its definition and all its dependencies).
Card component will be loaded later.
const renderPlaceholder = () =>
<div style={{textAlign: ‘center’}}>
<CircularProgress/>
</div>
export default (props) =>
<AsyncComponent
{…props}
loader={loader}
renderPlaceholder={renderPlaceholder}
/>
Conclusion
As a result of all improvements:
Initial bundle.js has a smaller size. That means a user will see some working UI components faster. Additional components can be loaded asynchronously in the background. While a component is loading it can be replaced with some placeholder components. For exactly this approach Webpack is required. But you can use it not only with React, but with other frameworks too.
Take a look https://github.com/lavrton/Progressive-Web-App-Loading for full source and webpack configurations.If you’re a Facebook friend you’ve been waiting for this post. You see, I’ve been teasing them with pics of a tree I worked on at Dragontree Nursery down in Palm City Florida.
The owner, Robert Pinder, sent me some pics of four different trees I might be interested in working on.
Here they are:
Robert sent two more pics of the last tree; I think he wanted me to work on it:
I told him to pick the hardest tree.
I’ll tell you what, he did indeed.
The last tree was definitely the hardest.
Here he is, the sadist himself:
And the crowd, a bunch of voyeurs if there ever was one.
They truly enjoyed my squirming and discomfort.
Actually, Robert is a very nice man with an amazing nursery and the audience was great, considering they stayed after that first bad joke.
You know the one, explaining the difference between Hustler and Playboy and how that difference is applicable to bonsai.
Not one of my best jokes (the best ones get more groans than laughs btw), and it’s becoming a less relevant joke as print publications are disappearing and the “centerfold” picture is just not in today’s modern lexicon of smut purveyors anymore.
Ahhhh….to youth and indiscretions.
At this point Robert was wondering what kind of demo this was actually going to be.
I told him that he should have probably read my blog a little bit more.
Let me show you the tree.
Lots of height to work with.
This is the hard part.
That’s a weird growth, isn’t it? It’s almost like the tree is callousing over itself.
A growth like this is called a burl or a gall. Sometimes they’re caused by bacteria and sometimes by a virus. It won’t hurt the tree unless it occurs at a place that could cause the tree to break or such.
There is a theory out there that cypress knees are actually just root burls and they serve no actual purpose.
There were no knees on my tree.
It has nice roots radiating out from the entire base though. As the tree gets older they will thicken and make a real nice nebari.
The real challenge of the tree is to position that growth so that it is visible (because it’s a feature that makes this tree unique) but not so overpowering that it takes away from the illusion of the tree.
I think I have an idea.
First I should do a little branch selection.
Here we go, that’s better.
Now, to the real work….the reason I’m here…mayhem (which is actually a legal definition meaning to chop off limbs. And I guess I did that already with my scissors).
Let me introduce you to my leettle friends:
I didn’t get any pics of the carving process because there could have been real mayhem if I tried.
So, sincerely, I apologize for skipping ahead to the torch process (and to the spectators who, as with all risky behaviors such as motorcycle racing and tightrope walking, were looking for some kind of tragedy).
Burn baby burn!
I use the torch to get rid of all the annoying fibers that carving on a bald cypress make.
The wood is very fibrous but not very dense. When carving on fresh wood the moisture content mixed with the fibrous quality make for a carved surface that just will not accept fine detail.
The burning dries out the wood enough so that when I get to the wire brush stage, the grain and fine details show up.
The carving is done.
Now for the wiring.
I had to break out the #6 aluminum for this baby.
Here is the before pic.
And the finished demo tree-
Side.
Other side-
I gave the tree a middle aged cypress look; not quite a flat top yet and not a Christmas tree anymore.
It has both deciduous tree characteristics with a coniferous style and branch dispersal.
The carving-
The winner of the tree was glad it wasn’t so tall anymore
It certainly is a unique tree and I think it looks pretty cool.
I wish I had won it in the raffle, it would look good in my nursery.
Hopefully I’ll see you soon at a demonstration near you.
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedJust days after the Wall Street Journal and others reported that Trump's new Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, had taken steps to "control" the flow of information on the President's twitter feed, America will wake up this morning to one of his longest tweet storms yet. Not surprisingly, this latest rant started off by ripping into the "Failing NYTimes" and other "24/7 Fake News" outlets...
The failing @nytimes, which has made every wrong prediction about me including my big election win (apologized), is totally inept! The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before (despite some phony Fake News polling). Look at rallies in Penn, Iowa, Ohio and West Virginia. The fact is the Fake News Russian collusion story, record Stock Market, border security, military strength, jobs, Supreme Court pick, economic enthusiasm, deregulation & so much more have driven the Trump base even closer together. Will never change! Hard to believe that with 24/7 #Fake News on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTIMES & WAPO, the Trump base is getting stronger!
The failing @nytimes, which has made every wrong prediction about me including my big election win (apologized), is totally inept! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before (despite some phony Fake News polling). Look at rallies in Penn, Iowa, Ohio....... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
...and West Virginia. The fact is the Fake News Russian collusion story, record Stock Market, border security, military strength, jobs..... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
... Supreme Court pick, economic enthusiasm, deregulation & so much more have driven the Trump base even closer together. Will never change! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
Hard to believe that with 24/7 #Fake News on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTIMES & WAPO, the Trump base is getting stronger! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
...but then quickly moved on to the "phony Vietnam con artist," Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Interesting to watch Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut talking about hoax Russian collusion when he was a phony Vietnam con artist! Never in U.S.history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal. He told stories about his Vietnam battles and conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie. He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child. Now he judges collusion?
Interesting to watch Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut talking about hoax Russian collusion when he was a phony Vietnam con artist! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
Never in U.S.history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal. He told stories about his Vietnam battles and.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
...conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie. He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child. Now he judges collusion? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
All of which kind of makes you wonder whether General John Kelly has already lost control of the White House and what that might mean for his future.Russian and Chinese leaders are making their stand about military conflict and their combat readiness against America. They back these statements up with aggressive military demonstrations, bordering on open conflict.
Coming from a South-East Asian city-state which has built cordial relations with the above-mentioned countries over the past few decades, be it through governmental/political links or through the workforce itself. I would safely say that open conflict is not in the best interest on all sides unless sufficient reasons and justification is given. As Sun Zi's Art Of War stated, the country must have the support of its people when it goes to war. And from experience, at least on China's part and Asia, there is little civic support for the open conflict. I think the threats will continue and stay as threats at least until Russia or China can find a suitable economic justification for war internally, and a military justification publicly, like being on the receiving end of direct violence. Again from the Art Of War, direct physical war is just a tool, and there must be sufficient reason to justify using such a powerful tool (in today's context, mostly economical-risk vs. reward), most of the other parts of warfare are mostly deception (in this context, use of military threats and perceived power to undermine and obtain concessions).Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved (Photo: WKRN)
WKRN web staff - NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) - A group of people were robbed Monday night while having a bonfire in a backyard in East Nashville.
Metro police told News 2 it happened in the 900 block of McFerrin Avenue around 9:30 p.m. when the suspects walked through the yard's side gate.
The suspects, who authorities say were young black men, had two handguns among them. The victims were robbed of their purses, cell phones, and wallets.
The suspects then left down a back alley. People reported noticing two cars in the area that may or not be connected: an older, beige SUV and a smaller white two-door truck.
Metro police say there has not been a robbery like this so far this year and it's very concerning.
Anyone with information is urged to call Nashville Crime Stoppers at 615-74-CRIME.
Overall, authorities say robberies are down in the East Precinct. From January until October in 2015, there were 208 robberies. For the same time period this year, there have been 165.UPDATE 4/26: The layoffs at ESPN are said to be closer to 100, according to sources. Here is an updated list of the biggest names laid off by ESPN.
PREVIOUS:
The layoffs at ESPN might turn out worse than predicted, sources tell Sporting News.
The Worldwide Leader in Sports could cut around 70 TV/radio anchors, reporters, analysts and online writers over coming days and weeks, sources said.
That would be worse than the 40 to 50 on-air talents predicted by ESPN book author James Andrew Miller during a podcast with Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated.
The higher numbers may reflect the inclusion of online writers like respected Titans beat reporter Paul Kuharsky who tweeted Monday his contract is not being renewed.
"This could be a bloodbath," warned one source.
ESPN's corporate campus was "eerily silent" Tuesday, said another source, as staffers anxiously waited to see who'll survive what management is euphemistically describing as a "right-sizing."
"It's like the dead calm before a horrible storm," said the source.
MORE: Jason Whitlock sounds off on 'liberal' sports media, Bill Simmons
ESPN management would argue that salaries for on-air talent have gotten out of control.
Some ESPN stars are earning from $1.5 million to $3 million, according to Miller. They're not going to make that kind of scratch at other networks. To save their jobs, some of these talents are accepting pay cuts to stay with the network, said sources.
It's no coincidence the layoffs are taking place before ESPN parent Disney's release of its 2nd quarter financial results on May 9.
With ESPN losing 12 million subscribers over the past five years, the brass in Bristol have to show Disney management and Wall Street its willing to bite the bullet on costs.
"They’re not growing. So the only way to show fiscal responsibility is to lay people off," said a TV insider. "This is all Wall Street-driven. This is all about Disney ordering a Code Red."
ESPN declined to comment.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Some ESPN anchors fearing the loss of their jobs are proactively asking management if they can cut their salaries, sources tell Sporting News.
The move to renegotiate existing contracts makes some sense. ESPN is poised to lay off or buy out dozens of your favorite ‘"SportsCenter” anchors, reporters, commentators and online writers over the coming days and weeks.
Rather than waiting for the Turk to come knocking on Cutdown Day, some on-air personnel, and/or their agents, are asking if they can keep their job in exchange for reduced pay.
MORE: Greeny discusses biggest regret about breakup
Their pitch: They love ESPN. They don’t want to leave. They’re willing to accept deep pay cuts to stay with the Worldwide Leader in Sports.
It's worth a shot, but it remains to be seen how successful this negotiating move will be. ESPN has lost 12 million subscribers over the past five years, reducing its footprint to 88 million homes from a high of 100 million. The days of half-measures are over. The layoffs are beginning.
On Monday, Paul Kuharsky, the respected ESPN staff writer covering the NFL's Titans, confirmed he'd been given his walking papers. He could be the first among 30 or so staff writers whose contracts won't be renewed, said sources:
Knew cuts were coming. Sad to say nine great years at ESPN end for me in July. Please stay tuned to @Midday180. — Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) April 24, 2017
With parent Disney and Wall Street looking on, ESPN management is playing hardball.
The network is looking to slash tens of millions of dollars in salary costs. Unlike October 2015 — when ESPN pink-slipped 300 behind-the-scene producers, directors and staffers — this downsizing will target the 1,000-plus TV/radio anchors, reporters, commentators and online reporters who constitute the public face of ESPN.
MORE: ESPN exec rips FS1 head for taking 'cheap shot' at network
The cuts could kick in before Disney's fiscal second quarter earnings call on May 9 and ESPN's glitzy upfront presentation to Madison Avenue ad buyers on May 16.
That's where the company is expected to announce the new Mike Greenberg solo show on ESPN that will end the 17-year TV partnership between Greenberg and "Mike & Mike in the Morning" partner Mike Golic on ESPN2.
“ESPN is calling this a ‘right-sizing,'” said one source. “They’re trying to focus on their core on-air talent and get the maximum amount out of them, just like everybody else does."
The looming layoffs have set off a "panic of biblical proportions" among on-air talent. Many of the anchors/analysts in danger of losing their jobs are under contract, some for multiple years, said sources.
ESPN is making some of these employees an offer: They can accept 50 percent of the money remaining on their deals and walk away free as birds, or they can hold out for every penny owed, in which case they’ll probably benched and rendered largely invisible on ESPN TV/radio/digital media platforms moving forward.
MORE: ESPN may give Sage Steele role on Mike Greenberg's show
That's a tough call for on-air talent used to guaranteed TV/Radio exposure and annual raises, said sources. Their decisions may depend on their age and experience, said one source.
"The 30-somethings may look at being off TV/radio as a fate worse than death," said another source. "The 50-somethings, on the other hand, might enjoy a couple of years' vacation courtesy of ESPN."
Even while ESPN is in cost-cutting mode, it's still on the hunt for new talent, especially at the expense of rival Fox Sports 1, led by ex-ESPN phenom Jamie Horowitz.
No less than ESPN president John Skipper himself has tried to recruit FS1 rising star Katie Nolan, host of "Garbage Time," sources told Sporting News. ESPN also tried to hire back ex-ESPNer Charissa Thompson for Chris Berman's anchor post on "Sunday NFL Countdown" before handing the job to Samantha Ponder.
MORE: Jay Harris is ESPN's utility player in ever-changing industry
It's easy to forget that ESPN's famous anchors are in our home and on our TV screens almost every day. The suspense around who will stay and who will go has generated enormous national interest among sports media reporters and readers.
Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated was first to report that ESPN would launch "significant" cuts on the "talent side." ESPN book author James Andrew Miller then told Deitsch on an SI podcast he expected 40 to 50 on-air personalities to lose their jobs.
Last week, Daniel Roberts of Yahoo Finance reported the axe would mostly fall between May 1 and May 9. His story has drawn nearly 3,000 comments, testifying to fan passions about ESPN and its talent.
man, like 50% of the 3,000 comments on our story about ESPN layoffs are people saying get rid of Smith and Hill.. https://t.co/w7y8JcLXhb — Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) April 24, 2017
Some of the ESPN veterans facing the layoffs are remarkably sanguine. Anchor John Buccigross, whose contract expires July 1, told Sporting News in an exclusive interview that he's ready for whatever decision management hands down.
"I'm not stressed," said Buccigross, 51, who joined ESPN in 1996. "Whatever happens, happens."
Politically conservative media outlets such as Breitbart have attacked ESPN as a bunch of flaming liberals. They argue the layoffs are proof the WWL's politically correct chickens are finally coming home to roost.
A personal note: Having lived through many layoffs in the newspaper/magazine business, I hope many of these people can save their jobs. What's surprising, and saddening, is that this is happening at ESPN.
For years, we thought those at ESPN were the lucky few, immune from the cyclone battering the media industry, but now it's their turn. Unfortunately.
My best wishes to all of them in this rotten media environment.Coaches, rookies, front-office execs, free-agent signings and more: NFL Nation covers the single most important offseason addition for every team.
AFC East | AFC North| AFC South | AFC West
NFC East | NFC North | NFC South | NFC West
AFC EAST
Coach Sean McDermott
Time will tell if McDermott is the best pickup for the Bills this offseason, but there is no doubting he was the most important addition to the organization. Owners Terry and Kim Pegula have seemingly consolidated the power of their football operations under McDermott, whose strong standing within the organization was evident in the Pegulas' decision to fire general manager Doug Whaley after the draft. The Bills' marketing slogan for the 2017 season will be, "It starts with one," and they have made it clear that McDermott is that one leader. -- Mike Rodak
MLB Lawrence Timmons
Signing Timmons in free agency wasn't a huge splash, but those who watched Miami's atrocious run defense (30th in the NFL) know he was a key pickup. The 10-year veteran adds a much-needed physical presence in the middle of the Dolphins' defense. -- James Walker
WR Brandin Cooks
Acquired from the New Orleans Saints along with a fourth-round pick in exchange for first- and third-round selections, Cooks brings youth (he's 23), speed, the ability to beat man coverage, and dynamic playmaking ability to a Tom Brady-led offense that showed some deficiencies in the first half of Super Bowl LI. Owner Robert Kraft is on record as saying Cooks is the only receiver the team has acquired in his tenure with the potential to make as big of an impact was Randy Moss. -- Mike Reiss
S Jamal Adams
After a low-budget approach to free agency, the Jets needed to hit a home run in the draft -- and they did. Not only will Adams help shore up a weak position, but his strong intangibles will improve the locker room culture. His reputation preceded him. When team officials gave him a tour of the facility the day after the draft, staffers emerged from their offices and applauded. -- Rich Cimini
AFC NORTH
Senior offensive assistant Greg Roman
Roman's challenge is to get the Ravens' slumping running game on track. In his past five full seasons as an offensive coordinator, his teams ranked in the top five in rushing four times. How important is the running game to Baltimore? When the Ravens gain over 100 yards rushing, their record is 60-22 (.732), the sixth-best mark over that span. -- Jamison Hensley
WR John Ross
There's a big question as to whether Ross will be healthy enough to contribute early, but for an offense that lacked speed on offense, Ross' 4.22 40-yard dash speed could open things up enough that A.J. Green is no longer drawing so much coverage by himself. That could go a long way to patching up the Bengals' offense this season. -- Katherine Terrell
DE Myles Garrett
The draft's first overall pick steps in to a defense that suddenly includes LB Jamie Collins and improving DT Danny Shelton and LB Christian Kirksey. That group give Gregg Williams plenty of talent to work with as the Browns build a defense. -- Pat McManamon
DE Tyson Alualu
This understated value acquisition will pay off for Pittsburgh in the 2017 season. Once a top-10 pick, the Steelers signed Alualu at $3 million per year as a swing lineman to help starters Cameron Heyward, Javon Hargrave and Stephon Tuitt. Alualu has started 87 games in his career, so his presence essentially gives Pittsburgh a fourth starter and eliminated the need to draft defensive line help last month. Draft picks T.J. Watt and JuJu Smith-Schuster should prove capable, but with a depth chart mostly cemented, Alualu provides the most immediate help for a team ready to win now. -- Jeremy Fowler
AFC SOUTH
QB Deshaun Watson
The first-round pick might not start in 2017, but the Texans hope he is their quarterback of the future and can end their franchise-long quarterback carousel. Unless Watson blows the Texans away during training camp -- or starter Tom Savage struggles early -- expect Watson to spend most of his rookie season on the bench. But, even if he doesn't play this season, Houston has high hopes he will be ready for 2018. -- Sarah Barshop
General manager Chris Ballard
Owner Jim Irsay finally sealed the divorce between GM Ryan Grigson and coach Chuck Pagano when he fired Grigson in January. Ballard has put an emphasis on defense to try to give quarterback Andrew Luck and the offense help this offseason. Ballard has acquired 13 new defensive players in the draft and free agency to help improve a unit that was 30th in the NFL last season. -- Mike Wells
Executive vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin
After winning only 17 games over the past five years, the Jaguars needed to move in a new direction, and owner Shad Khan turned to the man who originally built the franchise into one of the AFC's best in the mid- to late '90s. Coughlin has injected some much-needed discipline and accountability into the franchise, and several players have said publicly that the locker room needed the changes. Winning is now the only thing that matters. Previous coach Gus Bradley's philosophy was that players should strive to be their best and the victories would come if that happened. -- Mike DiRocco
CB Logan Ryan
Ryan has been part of two Super Bowl-winning teams in New England, so he knows what it takes to win at the highest level. He's an outspoken leader who might blossom in an environment where there is more room for that. And he should work against the bigger receivers the Titans face, while first-round pick Adoree' Jackson works against the smaller, faster types. -- Paul Kuharsky
AFC WEST
G Ronald Leary
Sure, an interior offensive lineman is not always cause for confetti -- there are many personnel executives in the league who believe a team should never use a first-round draft pick on a guard. But there's a reason the Broncos paid top dollar for Leary: They need direction up front, they need some additional leadership and, after three years of trying to find the combination, they need stability. -- Jeff Legwold
QB Patrick Mahomes II
The Chiefs have been held back more often than not since their Super Bowl victory 47 years ago by their limitations at quarterback. That's why they made the bold trade to move up and draft Mahomes in the first round. He's their first serious attempt in decades at solving the long-term quarterback problem, and how he fares will eventually determine the fate of the franchise. He won't play much, if at all, as a rookie, but he'll carry some heavy expectations starting in 2018. -- Adam Teicher
Coach Anthony Lynn
After finishing 9-23 over the past two seasons, the Chargers needed an infusion of new energy at Chargers Park. And Lynn's no-nonsense approach has gone over well with both players and the front office. The team is also hoping Lynn's hiring of strength coach John Lott will curb the rash of injuries this team has experienced over the past two seasons. -- Eric D. Williams
RB Marshawn Lynch
Sure, acquiring Oakland's favorite football-playing son serves as an olive branch, of sorts, to East Bay fans upset over the team's pending move to Las Vegas. And even Raiders coach Jack Del Rio wonders how much the erstwhile Beast Mode has left in his tank. But this much is true: Even if the tank is three-fourths full after a year off in retirement, Lynch adds some much-needed physicality to a running game that was already the No. 6-ranked attack last season. The ultimate goal in Oakland with Lynch? Give him the ball on the 1-yard line with time running out in the Super Bowl. Too soon, Seattle? -- Paul Gutierrez
NFC EAST
Cap space
The Cowboys did not make any splashy free-agent additions, although keeping wide receiver Terrance Williams was a surprise. The biggest acquisition of the offseason will come June 2, when they add $14 million in cap space with Tony Romo's release becoming official. Romo will count $8.9 million against the cap next season, but that is a pittance compared to the $25.2 million he was scheduled to count. With Dak Prescott on his rookie deal through 2019, the Cowboys will have a flexibility they did not have because of Romo's prodigious cap figures. Don't expect the Cowboys to immediately shell out for free agents, though. They'll save the cap space for the future to avoid restructuring as many contracts as they have done over the past few years. -- Todd Archer
WR Brandon Marshall
Marshall will make the biggest impact of all the Giants' newcomers this season, specifically with his red zone presence. The only wide receiver with more red zone touchdowns than Marshall's 19 the past three seasons is Antonio Brown. That will open things up for Odell Beckham Jr. and for the running game, where Marshall will also be an asset as a high-end blocker from the receiver position. Marshall will lead to more points for the Giants; they ranked 26th in the NFL last season at just 19.4 points per game. -- Jordan Raanan
WR Alshon Jeffery
Per ESPN Stats & Information, Eagles receivers dropped a league-high 5.8 percent of their targets and finished second-to-last in receiving yards (1,849). Jeffery, when healthy, gives QB Carson Wentz a legitimate No. 1 wideout. "He's exciting to watch," head coach Doug Pederson said. "He's a big target, obviously, and we've just got to get him and Carson continuing to stay on the same page as we go throughout the whole offseason." -- Tim McManus
Defensive line coach Jim Tomsula
The Redskins needed to fix the line and wanted to improve their defense, which led to Greg Manusky's being promoted to coordinator. But if the line doesn't improve, the defense won't and that's where Tomsula comes in. The Redskins probably will have three new starters up front, including first-round pick Jonathan Allen. The energetic Tomsula earned a strong reputation as a line coach in San Francisco before a one-year stint as head coach. Now he must incorporate new starters and develop depth with some inexperienced reserves. Tomsula will have a big say in the overall defensive growth. -- John Keim
NFC NORTH
QB Mitchell Trubisky
There's not even a close second. Trubisky was drafted second overall to be Chicago's quarterback of the future. The city hasn't had a true franchise quarterback since Sid Luckman in the 1940s, so to say the fan base is anxious is an understatement. If Trubisky develops into the quarterback GM Ryan Pace envisions, the Bears probably will end their long playoff drought in the not-so-distant future. If Trubisky doesn't pan out, the Bears better hope Mike Glennon is the real deal; otherwise they'll remain stuck in the football abyss. -- Jeff Dickerson
RT Rick Wagner
The Lions were quick to target Wagner in free agency, and they landed him for a premium among right tackles. Detroit struggled to run the ball and protect Matthew Stafford consistently last season. The team thinks the addition of Wagner and right guard T.J. Lang will go a long way toward fixing their woes up front. -- Michael Rothstein
TE Martellus Bennett
This could be one of the biggest-impact acquisitions in the NFL. Bennett should give Aaron Rodgers what he had last year in Jared Cook and more. Unlike Cook, who had never made the playoffs before he came to Green Bay, Bennett comes to the Packers after winning the Super Bowl with the Patriots. At 6-foot-6, Bennett is a gigantic, athletic target for Rodgers. The addition of another veteran tight end, Lance Kendricks, should make the Packers' double-tight-end sets difficult to defend. -- Rob Demovsky
RB Latavius Murray
The Vikings needed a running back they could trust to carry the ball, catch it out of the backfield and protect Sam Bradford. And they wanted one who wouldn't break the bank after years of Adrian Peterson's being the highest-paid back in the league. Murray doesn't have Peterson's dynamism, but he's a versatile fit for the Vikings' offense and it was a low-risk bet for the team. If he doesn't work out, the Vikings can get out of Murray's contract with just $1.2 million in dead money after this season. -- Ben Goessling
NFC SOUTH
DT Dontari Poe
The two-time Pro Bowler sounded relieved to play in a system that is likely to showcase his complete defensive skill set more so than the scheme in Kansas City. Coach Dan Quinn already said he planned to use Poe both at nose tackle and the 3-technique, and Poe has untapped pass-rush ability that Quinn certainly will help unleash. Now the question is, will Poe also be the Falcons' goal-line back on offense? -- Vaughn McClure
RB Christian McCaffrey
There was a temptation to go with Captain Munnerlyn, signed in free agency to fill a key role as the nickel back. He also can play outside in a crunch, so this solidifies the secondary. But there's no denying that McCaffrey, the do-it-all running back out of Stanford who was selected No. 8 in the draft, was the biggest acquisition. It's like getting four players in one with his ability to play running back, slot receiver and wide receiver and return punts. He's unlike any weapon Cam Newton has had since arriving in 2011. -- David Newton
CB Marshon Lattimore
I don't want to lump too many expectations on the rookie right away -- especially after he played only one full year at Ohio State. But Lattimore's falling to the No. 11 pick in the draft was the Saints' biggest "win" of the offseason after they considered much pricier options at cornerback over the past year (Josh Norman last summer and Malcolm Butler this spring). The Saints' most expensive new addition was free-agent guard Larry Warford, and their most high-profile newcomer is running back Adrian Peterson -- both of whom could make an earlier impact. But Lattimore has the best chance to be a long-term game-changer. -- Mike Triplett
WR DeSean Jackson
Jackson will stretch the field, giving the Bucs speed they've lacked since Joey Galloway departed and more explosive-play opportunities. The Bucs averaged just 4.03 yards after the catch last season, 31st in the league. Jackson has gained 2,861 yards after the catch since 2008, ninth-most among WRs during that span. The Bucs were also the only team in the NFL without a 50-yard pass play last season, according to Elias. Jackson leads active NFL receivers with the most 50-yard catches (37), per ESPN Stats & Information. -- Jenna Laine
NFC WEST
K Phil Dawson
The Cardinals lost three games last season at the foot of their former kicker, Chandler Catanzaro. Arizona replaced him with Dawson, who has been consistent throughout his 19-year career. Having a kicker with experience making big kicks could be the difference between Arizona going to the playoffs and sitting at home. -- Josh Weinfuss
Coach Sean McVay
McVay is only 31, the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, but a significant amount of people believe he is a star in the making. McVay is exceedingly energetic and positive, a natural leader with a magnetic personality who is something of a prodigy when it comes to the way offenses work. The Rams, organizationally, needed a jolt. And they needed someone who could finally make something of an offense that finished last in the NFL in yards each of the past two years and among the league's worst for much longer than that. McVay has already assembled what appears to be a very good coaching staff. And he should do wonders for second-year quarterback Jared Goff, the No. 1 overall pick in 2016. -- Alden Gonzalez
Coach Kyle Shanahan
Shanahan was widely regarded as the top coaching candidate available, and his offensive acumen should help turn around an offense that has been stagnant for the past few years. Shanahan's relationship with GM John Lynch is off to a great start, and they seem to be on the same page with what it takes to rebuild the Niners. While San Francisco also added some key pieces in terms of players, nobody is more important to the future of the franchise than Shanahan. -- Nick Wagoner
RB Eddie Lacy
In both 2015 and 2016, the Seahawks were left scrambling at times because of injuries at running back. Lacy is on a one-year deal and should receive a nice paycheck -- either from the Seahawks or another team -- if he turns in an impressive 2017 campaign. He has the bruising style Pete Carroll likes and has averaged 2.15 yards after contact since entering the NFL, sixth-best among running backs. Seattle's offense is at its best when the run game is clicking. With Lacy, Thomas Rawls and C.J. Prosise, the Seahawks have given themselves multiple options for 2017. -- Sheil KapadiaIn an interview on Sharyl Atkisson’s new Sunday show Full Measure, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson seemed to suggest the world could be approaching the biblical End of Days.
When discussing Carson’s belief that there should never be a Muslim president, Attkisson asked him about his own beliefs. “What is your view on what’s happening around the globe and in the U.S., in terms of what’s in the Bible? Do you think we’re at the End of Days?” she asked.
“You could guess that we are getting closer to that,” Carson said. “You do have people who have a belief system that sees this apocalyptic phenomenon occurring, and that they’re a part of it, and who would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they gain [possession of] them.”
Attkisson asked Carson if he thought the apocalypse could be prevented, if it really was prophesied. “I think we have a chance to certainly do everything that we can to ameliorate the situation, to prevent — I would always be shooting for peace,” he said. “You know, I wouldn’t just take a fatalistic view of things.”
Watch above, via Full Measure.
[h/t Buzzfeed]
[Image via screengrab]
——
>>Follow Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comCo-written by Amy Studdart
On the eve of North Korea's Unha-3 rocket launch, Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) were on high alert. They installed interceptors in Okinawa and sent destroyers to the East China Sea -- maneuvers that haven't been seen for a decade. In the end, the rocket didn't even make it into the field of the SDF's radars, and the damage to Japan came not from the rocket, but from the fact that it took an embarrassing 45 minutes for Tokyo to announce that the launch had taken place at all.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world was, and continues to be, preoccupied elsewhere. The United States has been unable to escape the Middle East, where the most urgent challenges to global security |
. This side-effect of capitalism has created – or probably more accurately fed into – a kind of gun owner who won’t settle for less than the best, regardless of how irrelevant “the best” is to him or her.
Many of these people are vocal, taking to aforementioned social media outlets like forums and comments sections to spread the word of whatever their interpretation of “the best” is, which can in higher concentrations stifle or crowd out those who don’t think the same way. As a natural consequence, we’ve seen a reaction to this “only the best” cadre, which has manifested as defensiveness on the part of those who favor those older weapons. A recent video about the host’s dislike of lever-actions by TFBTV put this defensiveness on display: Legions of lever action fans took to the comments to prove that the type was still not only relevant, but in fact the best choice for some tasks. These arguments – however valid they were – all seemed to accept the premise that these rifles needed to be the best to still do their jobs (which they have been doing for a century and a half!); an assumption that when spoken aloud seems as though it can only originate from marketing pamphlets and gunrag advertisements. Why on Earth should it matter if a certain kind of gun is “the best” at what it does to any enthusiast of the type? What is the purpose for internalizing this attitude of “the best or bust”, especially when one finds their greatest affinity in old, storied artifacts that have been steeped in a hundred or more years of history and culture?
One of the words that comes up regularly in this extended conversation about the levergun and other older kinds of firearm is “viable”, a word that has since the rise of the besters become a talking point for virtually any old firearm that still has utility. “Leverguns are still viable!” the lever fan shouts, metaphorically beating his fists against the chests of the bester mafia goon he imagines standing there, ready to take his Winchester ’94 and replace it with a cold, dark lump of aluminum and polymer that reads “BCM” on the side. “Viable” used this way is a sort of weasel word, originating from who knows what gunrag article that proclaimed the “viability” of whatever Trapdoor replica whose maker had paid for the ad space that month. Literally, the word “viable” means “feasible” or “capable of living”; in the medical field the word is used to describe a patient who is expected to survive, and in that context it doesn’t seem like the most flattering adjective to apply to a firearm. Yet, in the gun world, “viable” is used as a soft stand-in for “competitive” in conversations where the speaker feels he must prove the worth of a weapon that has existed and been used for close to or often over a century!
The answer to the question “is [insert gun here] viable?” is of course “yes”; these seasoned designs are the most time tested and proven weapons that exist today! Just because a newer weapon is – naturally – improved, doesn’t make the older weapon any less deadly than it was on the day it was invented. These questions and the thumping answers that follow them don’t seem like real statements about the weapons they concern, but rather shields against the inevitable torrent of molle-wearing, WSM-shooting besters whom many fear will show up to purge the heretics and burn anything with a wood stock in a pyre to the gods of polymer and black. But, this whole war of words is false; neither is the latest and greatest rifle “too much” for decent men, nor are the weapons of our grandfathers any less capable than they were in their day. In the march forward, we’ve made such awesome progress, but in some ways we’ve also left behind what our fathers knew: That “good enough” is more than enough. Let’s hear, just a little bit, the words of the snaplock-armed Mongolian hunter:Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
June 2, 2017, 4:19 PM GMT / Updated June 2, 2017, 5:32 PM GMT By Saphora Smith
A Belgian man has been charged with being a leader of the terror group that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015, Belgian officials said Friday.
The Belgian prosecutor’s office said that a man identified as Yassine A. was charged Wednesday with “terrorist assassinations” and of being “a leader in the activities of a terrorist group.”
New lettering appears on the facade of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2016. Apaydin Alain / Sipa USA
Prosecutors said the suspect will be remanded in custody for one month, but declined to share any more information.
The attacks left 130 dead when militants targeted a concert hall, a stadium and restaurants and bars in the French capital. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Yassine A. is the brother of the supposed mastermind of the Paris plot, Oussama Atar, and the cousin of brothers Ibrahim and Khalid Bakraoui, who carried out attacks at a Brussels airport and subway station in March 2016, killing 32 people, according to the Associated Press.
The November 13 attacks rattled France as militants appeared to target youngsters out having fun on a Friday night.
It came months after a gun assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and an attack on a kosher grocery store killed 17 people. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the January 2015 attack, saying it was in revenge for Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
The country has since been victim to a series of low-tech terror attacks. In July last year a truck plowed into pedestrians celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing dozens and injuring many more.
As a presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron pledged to lead the fight against Islamist terrorism if elected to the Elysee. Chesnot / Getty Images File
Weeks later an elderly priest was killed as he conducted a Mass in a church in northern France. Then-President Francois Hollande blamed the "cowardly acts" on ISIS-linked terrorists.
The terror threat played an important role in the run-up to last month's French presidential election and the country remained on high alert to the possibility of attacks.
On the eve of the first round of voting in April a police officer was killed and two others wounded when a gunman ambushed the trio on the Champs-Elysees.
France remains in a state of emergency which is set to expire on July 15. But newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron has said he will ask parliament to extend it until November.Davin Bellamy, a defensive end/outside linebacker recruit out of Chamblee (Ga.) High School, has a new leader, he told ESPN:
"We have a new leader in the house," Bellamy said. "I definitely think with this scheme and [Todd] Grantham, the years he has been here, that position has led the SEC in sacks. So the proof is in the pudding. He coached Demarcus Ware, so I feel like with my skill set, he can take it here and I can be like Jarvis Jones and a top-10 pick."
Bellamy is extremely concerned about early playing time, though the 6'5, 230-pound end likely needs to redshirt to add size and learn the game.
Despite naming Georgia as his new leader, Bellamy remains committed to Florida State. Fans and members of the respective coaching staffs involved in his recruitment will likely have their own opinion on the status of his commitment.
Follow @SBNRecruitingSome view the wild-card games as an extension of the regular season, but Wednesday night’s showdown at Citi Field between the Mets and Giants is as costly as a playoff game, if not more so.
As of Monday afternoon, second-hand tickets for the elimination game, featuring a pitching showdown between Noah Syndergaard of the Mets and Madison Bumgarner of the Giants, cost an average of $314.01, the most expensive wild-card game ever, according to TicketIQ, a ticket-search site. Last year’s National League wild-card game, between the Cubs and Pirates in Pittsburgh, was the second-most pricey at an average of $264.68.
Both far surpass the average price of the Yankees’ wild-card game last year against the Astros, which was just $174.83 a ticket. Even standing-room-only tickets are expensive at $162 a pop. The most expensive seat is in Delta Platinum Row 2 at more than $3,500.
“That people are willing to stand, to pay $162 to stand, kind of speaks for itself,” said Chris Matcovich of TicketIQ.Bruce Dell is the brain behind Euclideon, the Australian start-up that has been in and out of the news for many years now with updates on their Unlimited Detail technology, a technology which uses a point search algorithm to produce stunning computer graphics at a fraction of the system resource cost of the current polygon system that is hegemonic to computing worldwide. It’s revolutionary stuff, although critics say it’s only potentially revolutionary and really harsh critics even say it’s a hoax! Most recently, the company released a video titled Euclideon SOLIDSCAN – Capture Reality. The video shows footage of the real world scanned using their SOLIDSCAN technology and then reproduced. It’s enticing to think what game developers, building construction and other industries can do with this technology. But not everyone’s convinced and there is a pattern to the questions and comments being posted on YouTube, social media and forums. So, Bruce Dell has kindly agreed to answer some of those common questions …
Johnny Gatt: Hi Bruce thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a bit about Euclideon?
Bruce Dell: Sure, thanks for having me, Euclideon is an Australian company that is trying to rebuild every part of 3D graphics in a better way. Most graphics we use in the world today are made of polygons, which are like little flat pieces of cardboard. This system is very limited and it’s not very good at doing certain tasks. We are making 3D graphics out of little xyz atoms instead, this allows us to make graphics that are much better and a lot more like the real world.
Johnny Gatt: A lot of people say your system can’t do animation, what’s your response to this?
Bruce Dell: When a company says it’s going to rebuild all of graphics that’s a really big task. Remember the existing polygon graphics system is 20 years work from thousands of people, we are only a team of 30 yet we are trying to rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. The reason people say we can’t do animation is because we haven’t shown any animation, and the reason we haven’t shown any is because we don’t show things until they are finished otherwise people always criticise the elements that aren’t yet complete. Animation is working at 80% and we will be releasing two games next year.
Johnny Gatt: This is an image of a tiger animation that bruce has shown me under NDA, but with permission to post this screenshot. The animation not only shows a very fluid moving creature but also fully demonstrates lighting and shadows and everything else people have been demanding that Euclideon demonstrate. The model was actually built out of Blu Tack. This allows them to properly scan in natural stretches and movements between joints without the model falling apart. This is amazing news for sculptors and artists whose talents will still be highly sought after in future gaming. When you look at the Star Wars series of movies, everyone agrees that the Empire Strikes back Yoda was far better than Yoda in Episode 1 which was computer generated and not scuplted. If you are able to take that natural looking artistry, then scan it and then animate it, we’re in for a real treat.
Johnny Gatt: Can you tell us what platforms the games will be on?
Bruce Dell: So I’ve checked regarding what I can and can’t say and apparently I can say two things. The first is they will be released on a new hardware platform that comes out in 2015, and the second thing is it’s not Oculus Rift but it is fully 3D.
Johnny Gatt: Can you tell us the genres?
Bruce Dell: Yes the first is an adventure game with a sword, solid scan forests, and a lot of alien type monsters. The second is a cute, clay scanned adventure where you ride giraffes. Can’t say more than that I’m afraid.
Johnny Gatt: Your latest video shows a way of copying the real world into computers, how does this work?
Bruce Dell: If you have ever seen laser scanned data before, it looks like a cloud of little points with lots of holes. We worked on a way to seal up all the holes and re-blend the colours according to the different angles.
Johnny Gatt: Having the ability to make 3D copies of real world environments is pretty useful technology that opens up a lot of new markets. Why do you think no one has created this before?
Bruce Dell: As difficult as it is to do it right, the bigger problem is it makes so much data, far more than a computer can display or load in to RAM if you are using polygons. There is an inferior system called polygon meshing out there that runs great with flat walls, but it doesn’t know what to do with plants or grass and it murders the model afterwards by down scaling the detail to what a computer can handle. It’s great for single objects but can’t do full environments, forests or cities that is why we built this better technology. Basically if you aren’t using unlimited voxels ( little floating computer atoms) then you can’t copy the complexity of the real world.
Johnny Gatt: Two years ago you brought out a video that showed an island where even the dirt on the ground was made of voxels. At the time a lot of people said the video was a hoax. It seems pretty clear now that the technology is real as you’ve been selling it in the Geospatial industry for the last year can you tell us who is using it?
Bruce Dell: Some very big companies have licensed the right to use our technology but we are under NDA so only they can make the announcement, apart from that we have our geoverse product that a lot of railroads, governments and construction companies now use to manage multi-terabyte laser scans.
Johnny Gatt: Among the objectors one of the most vocal was “Notch” Markus Persson the creator of Minecraft. He said that your technology was a scam, you were lying and you were a snake oil sales man. Now that the technology has progressed to the next stage of being able to copy the real world, do you have anything to say to him?
Bruce Dell: Notch might have been strong in his language but he wasn’t wrong for doubting our claims. If Minecraft suddenly announced they would make their islands down to the grains of dirt and scan in their graphics from the real world, I would have said exactly the same thing about him, as these really are very big claims. He states very correctly that it must be impossible because if it was real it would use terabytes of data and take an unusable amount of time to load. Whilst his calculations are a bit off, he still is right about the problems he points out, that’s why last year we released our new technology that streams straight from the hard-drive or from an external server. Basically loading is gone for us and memory size virtually doesn’t apply either. RAM is expensive, hard-drive space is cheap ($40AUD a terabyte) if you run straight from your hard-drive you have about a thousand times more memory to play with and that’s why we can copy the real world and run it on laptops.
Johnny Gatt: Do you think he should apologise?
Bruce Dell: No. Notch is no fool he left plenty of room in his posts for the fact that this could be real and he would love for it to be so but the numbers just don’t add up. I don’t think “Notch is wrong” and needs to drop ten honour points, he might not like the way we market but I’m sure he cares about technology just as much as we do and he doesn’t mind who makes it better. His issue was he won’t tolerate the public being deceived and that is as he interpreted the situation at the time. I don’t normally care too much for the bible but there is a proverb I like, it says “Correct a fool and he will hate you, correct a wise man he will love you”. I think Notch is more of the latter then the former.
Thank you Bruce for your time.
And some 2k shots from the video :Since September of last year, Truth in Media has reported on the the plight of Jeff Mizanskey, a 62-year-old grandfather who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for three non-violent marijuana convictions under Missouri’s since-repealed, three-strikes style Prior and Persistent Drug Offender statute. After a rising chorus of supporters begged for his release, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon unexpectedly commuted Mizanskey’s sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole last May, qualifying him for an August 6 hearing before Missouri’s Board of Probation and Parole.
[RELATED: MO Governor Jay Nixon Commutes Grandfather’s Life Sentence for Pot]
At the hearing, Mizanskey, who has already spent over 21 years in a maximum security prison, was granted parole and, according to ABC 17 News, he is set to be released within 10 to 25 days of the parole board’s decision.
A message posted on August 10 on the Free Jeff Mizanskey Facebook page read, “Great news everyone… Jeff is coming home this month! We want everyone to know how greatful[sic] we are for all the support received throughout this whole ordeal. There is a lot of people to thank but I don’t wanna forget anyone so I need to make a list but we are so thankful to everyone that had a part in helping us bring him home.” The post contains a link to a GoFundMe page dedicated to raising funds to help Mizanskey get back on his feet after decades of incarceration.
Jeff Mizanskey’s son Chris summed up his experience in lobbying for his father’s release for all these years in comments to KCRG-13, “It really does go to show you that people being together on one voice can change a lot of issues.” Chris Mizanskey said that supporters who had pressured officials on his father’s behalf deserve credit for his release.
Watch the Truth in Media Project’s Consider This video, embedded below, which exposes some lesser-known and important facts about non-violent inmates serving hard time under the War on Drugs.Today’s saint is St. Anthony the Great/of Egypt/of the Desert/the Abbot. No, this isn’t the St. Anthony you pray to in order to find your lost remote control. If anything, I guess St. Anthony would be the one you pray to in order to become lost – lost in the love of Christ.
St. Anthony of the Desert was one of the most influential men in the early Church, but not for the typical reasons. He wasn’t a great writer, a great speaker, or a martyr – he was the greatest of the Desert Fathers, a movement of people who sought solitude from the busy and corrupt life of the world to embrace simplicity and prayer. Today, we would call this movement “monasticism” – monos is the Greek word for “alone.” St. Anthony was far from alone; he just sought different company.
Most of what we know about St. Anthony comes from The Life of Anthony, a biography written by St. Athanasius, who knew and followed Anthony himself. Anthony was born in Lower Egypt in 251 to wealthy landowners. He was born and raised a Christian. His parents died at an early age, and left him the wealth of the family, along with custody of his sister.
One day during Mass in 313, Anthony heard the famous quote of Christ speaking to the rich young man in the Gospel of Matthew: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The young man in the story turned away sad, but Anthony felt compelled to take his place and do as Christ asked. He gave away part of the family estate and sold the remaining 207 acres, donating the funds to his sister and to care for the poor. He entrusted his sister to a community of Christian women, and went off to follow Christ in the solitude of the Nitrian Desert, where he spent the remainder of his life. Anthony wandered the deserts, living in an abandoned Egyptian fortress, absorbed in prayer and entirely dependent on God. He spent his days practicing discipline (imagine a life-long Lent!), and with fasting and purity of heart, he faced his temptations.
Even though he longed to be alone, such an extreme example of asceticism, prayer, and dependence on God attracted a lot of followers. People followed him out into the desert for a number of reasons. Some came to ask him questions and seek spiritual counsel. Some sought to follow his example, and he encouraged others to form supportive monastic communities. Some travelled all the way out into the desert just to argue with him about the faith. At one point, a group bishops even journeyed into the desert to summon him to the Council of Nicaea in 325 to give witness to his faith and inspire the Church.
St. Anthony, in drawing so close to Christ in solitude, chose to leave his earthly life the same way. He wanted to die alone – not out of a loneliness or depression, but to be in his uniquely intimate relationship with the one who created him. Two other monks, Macarius and Amatas, were helping to take care of him by this point, and Anthony left what few belongings he had to them and his followers. He then gave them a blessing, they left him, and he died in 356 at the age of 105.
The truth is, not all of us are called to be monks – some are, but not all. Still, there is something admirable and inspiring about St. Anthony’s radical dedication to prayer and love of Christ.
AdvertisementsChristian Bale just dropped out of the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, leaving what can reasonably be considered the role of a lifetime vacant. The Danny Boyle-directed film is now once again without a star. So who can step into Jobs’ tennis shoes? Boyle may be meeting with potential replacements this week, but we had some thoughts we think he should consider:
Photo Credit: Flickr / DFID
Idris Elba: For so many Apple aficionados, Elba is the obvious choice. He’s accustomed to playing figures in authority, having portrayed ambitious drug kingpin Stringer Bell in The Wire and Nelson Mandela himself in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. As we saw in Pacific Rim, he has boatloads of charisma and can give the kind of reality-distorting speech that can send men to their deaths. And he looks good in business attire. If revisionist histories are what you’re after, Idris Elba is the man to sell you a Mac.
Benedict Cumberbatch: Why set yourself up for disappointment by voting for anyone else? If you think a flagship geek film is going into production without the aloof, imposing, and vaguely alien visage of Benedict Cumberbatch attached, I'm surprised you even know there's a Steve Jobs movie coming out. The inevitable casting of Cumberbatch may seem like a bit of a downer at first, if you've already gotten your fill with Sherlock, Star Trek into Darkness, The Hobbit, The Fifth Estate, and (it's now rumored) Doctor Strange. But you're not looking at the big picture. A single, measly biopic is but a dot of paint on the glorious canvas of the Cumber-epoch, the great cinematic meta-movement in whose shadow we will all soon exist. And if that doesn't win you over, just think of the crossover fanfiction opportunities. Steve Jobs will be solving locked-room murders with his level-headed partner Wozniak (played by Martin Freeman) within minutes of the casting announcement.
Liam Neeson: Dudes love Liam Neeson, right? In this adaptation, Steve Jobs suddenly remembers the daughter he told a court wasn’t his. Full of remorse, he calls her, only to find she’s going to Europe for spring break. When her plane is greeted by wolves, Jobs must fight off the wolves and the terrorists they’ve teamed up with in operation Lisa. The personal computer Lisa was a fiasco, but operation Lisa can’t be — not if Jobs ever wants to see his daughter again.
Photo Credit: Flickr / Vincent Luigi Molino
Meryl Streep: In her storied career, Streep has been nominated for 18 Academy Awards and 28 Golden Globes. She is one of just three living actors to have won an Oscar three times; in 2010, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts. Despite this success, one honor has eluded Meryl Streep her entire life — the honor of playing iconic Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on film. This is a travesty. Now that she is 65, this may be Streep’s final chance to play Jobs in a movie. The time is now; the moment belongs to her. If you thought Streep’s Margaret Thatcher was amazing, wait until you see her in a black turtleneck and dad jeans introducing iPod to the world.
Photo Credit: Flickr / Casa de America
Daniel Day-Lewis: This isn’t a particularly inspired casting choice: Daniel Day-Lewis is just a consistently great actor, and it’s hard to imagine this movie going poorly with him in the lead. Day-Lewis is also famous for putting on some dramatically transformative performances, and with how well known Jobs’ look and personality are, that might be necessary if Boyle wants to bring audiences along.
Photo Credit: Flickr / Siebbi
Cate Blanchett: Cate Blanchett has already been here before. In the trippy pseudo-biopic I’m Not There she not only out Bob Dylan-ed Christian Bale, she also blew away the performances of four other actors who all played the folk singer at different stages of his career. This time around Bale has left the production before it even started filming, so the idea of Blanchett sinking her teeth into playing another male pop culture icon with no competition is too tantalizing to pass on. Her complete absorption of Dylan’s temperamental mannerisms, judgemental stare, and disdain for the press not only displayed her transformative acting abilities, but makes her perfect for capturing what made Jobs such a polarizing figure.
James Franco: I don’t know, what isn’t James Franco doing these days? It can be hard to take him seriously sometimes, but with good direction, Franco can do serious really well. That’s particularly true of his work with Boyle, who directed him on 127 Hours — he even picked up an Oscar nomination for it. Plus, Franco looks great in a sweater.
Kanye West: Kanye has already declared himself the "Steve [Jobs] of internet, downtown, fashion, [and] culture. Period. By a long jump." He may as well just be Steve Jobs next.An organization called the Global Commission on Drug Policy issued a statement Friday addressed the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) set for April 19th through 21st to examine existing international drug control policy. Calling the special session “an historic opportunity to achieve more humane and effective drug policy,” the Global Commission refers to current negotiations on a draft document for for consideration at the special session “long on rhetoric, but short on substance.”
The Global Commission proposes five “fundamental aspirations” that it claims put people’s health, safety, and human rights first:
Ending the criminalization and incarceration of drug users;
Abolishing capital punishment for drug-related offences;
Empowering the World Health Organization (WHO) to review the scheduling system of drugs on the basis of scientific evidence;
Ensuring a broad spectrum of treatments for dependent people and services designed to reduce the harms of drugs; and
Allowing governments to apply different approaches to drug regulation in order to maximize public health and disempower organized crime.
Members of the Global Commission include former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Portugal, and Brazil and the former prime minister of Greece. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker have also signed on. The Global Commission was founded in 2011 and has so far produced five reports and three documentary films.
Here are excerpts from other recent cannabis-related news stories.
Marijuana: Polls Show Support Growing To Legalize Pot
There are increasing signs that 2016 might just be the year the largest state in the nation legalizes recreational marijuana.
Polls have shown that up to 60 percent of California’s likely voters in the November presidential contest support legal pot. And due in part to hefty financial backing from a Silicon Valley billionaire, the leading pro-marijuana measure – the Adult Use of Marijuana Act – is off to one of the strongest starts among dozens of proposed initiatives on different topics being pitched for the Nov. 8 ballot.
“We believe that AUMA has a very strong chance of passing in 2016,” said Chris Beals, chief strategy officer for Weedmaps, which has donated $500,000 to the campaign. “While there is still much work to be done to further educate voters on the issue, support for ending prohibition is strong in California.”
Read more at [Riverside, California’s] The Press Enterprise.
Twelve Central Michigan Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Raided in 48 Hours
In central Michigan at least a dozen medical marijuana distribution centers and many homes have been raided by various police agencies over the last 48 hours.
It began on Wednesday with police cars descending on a pair of centers where sick people certified by a physician and registered with the state obtain their medical marijuana. These centers, often called dispensaries, were located in Mio and Lewiston.
On Thursday the raids continued. Nine dispensaries in Gaylord and one in Vanderbilt were raided by police, resulting in two arrests for charges related to illegal distribution and possession of marijuana and THC products. The raided businesses are accused of having illegal forms of THC products, alleged independently by officers involved in both Wednesday and Thursday’s actions.
On Wednesday, STING raid teams, MSP troopers and Oscoda County Sheriff deputies seized “marijuana; growing equipment; other paraphernalia that is conducive for making edibles, which is illegal; THC wax; THC butter,” said Det. Sgt. Priest of STING.Despite Losses, Cable & Broadcast Execs Making More Than Ever Despite the rise in cord cutting and a notable decline in cable viewership, broadcast and cable industry executives are making more money than ever. Light Reading has compiled a list of broadcast and cable executive salaries, with Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav topping the charts with $156 million in 2014 compensation.
According to an SEC filing, Zaslav's compensation "shows a large one-time equity award to drive immediate shareholder alignment and encourage long-term ownership of stock." Of course some of that money's well-deserved from a bean-counter's perspective, since Discovery is among the only cable networks not seeing floundering ratings, thanks to Shark Week and programs like Naked and Afraid. Among cable CEOs, Time Warner Cable tops the list with 2014 total compensation of $34.6 million. 2015 (or 2016) should be even better for Marcus, who stands to personally net an additional $97 million should Charter's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks be approved. These numbers may (or hey, may not) change as the cable industry is forced to adapt to the growth of Internet video and the steady decline in cable viewership totals. The Internet video revolution may eventually require the cable and broadcast industry to do something utterly unfamiliar: seriously compete on price. These numbers may (or hey, may not) change as the cable industry is forced to adapt to the growth of Internet video and the steady decline in cable viewership totals. The Internet video revolution may eventually require the cable and broadcast industry to do something utterly unfamiliar: seriously compete on price.
News Jump Tuesday Morning Links Monday Morning Links TGI Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links - Valentines Edition Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links ---------------------- this week last week most discussed
Most recommended from 30 comments
Flyonthewall
@teksavvy.com 10 recommendations Flyonthewall Anon It doesn't matter how bad it gets CEOs never take cuts. They lay off employees, lay off middle management, reduce maintenance, anything and everything to avoid tightening their own belts. They would watch the company burn first.
You have to boot them from their jobs, and then prove they screwed up to avoid paying out the huge Bonus, scuse me, severance package (Golden Parachute).
CEOs NEVER get bit.
XNemesis
join:2002-11-16
Kitchener, ON 7 recommendations XNemesis Member They surely deserve it right? Amazing how commentors in forums are so quick to blast people in jobs who may earn between 30-60K/yr and go on strike for more equitable and fair treatment, yet somehow will say that these Exec's DESERVE this compensation. How fucked up and screwed up are our priorities?
Simba7
I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Fromberg, MT 2 recommendations Simba7 Member The bubble will burst....eventually.. Then the real storm begins. Slyster
join:2015-01-08
Sugar Grove, VA 2 recommendations Slyster Member Where is that graph? That compared how much executive / ceo pay has skyrocketed compared to company workers? Figured someone would have posted that by now.Actress-producer-director Jessica Cameron is actively breaking gender stereotypes in the horror genre. Her multi-award-winning directorial debut, Truth or Dare, is set for distribution this year, and her new film, Mania, is in its final editing stages. She has too many films to count in various stages of production, all while traveling to film festivals and actively connecting with her fans through social media.
Jessica took some time out of her busy schedule to talk with us about her experience as a woman in horror and some of the projects she’s looking forward to this year.
Dread Central: You started your career in fashion before jumping into acting and are now producing and directing films. How has your background shaped where your career is heading?
Jessica Cameron: Honestly, my fashion background has shaped very little related to my career in film. I was raised in a family who ran their own successful company, and that has shaped every element of who I am today, including my work ethic. I was raised in a home where everyone living under the roof was expected to work seven days a week in some form or another. Growing up, I would go to school Monday through Friday and work the evenings and weekends, so working sixteen hours a day on a film set feels oddly normal to me. My father always said that the key to success was being the first to arrive every morning and the last to leave every night. Words that guide me to this day.
DC: What are some of the challenges you face as a woman filmmaker?
JC: I think it would be a shorter list to name the things that are NOT a challenge. Honestly, it’s tough. Every room I walk into, I have to prove that I deserve to be there as much as the male counterparts. So many still in our genre don’t want to take women seriously. I have even had other directors and producers assume that I could not possibly be a real horror fan, to the point that they have quizzed me! (Yes, I pass every time, silly boys.) Even managing a set, when I am the one paying people, there are always a few men that take issue with that and who don’t give me the respect that they give their male co-workers. You would think if they took a job from a woman that they would not have this issue, but alas, some do. Needless to say, I don’t work with people like that a second time. Even the press can be so sexist at times. I cannot tell you how often I see personal attacks in articles related not only to myself, but other women filmmakers, usually in reference to their looks, dress, opinions, etc. Meanwhile, I never see male filmmakers getting attacked for their looks, outfit, etc. I have pointed it out to a few of them, and in one case the writer’s response was literally that I was being a “princess” for complaining. More people need to step up and respond when they see sexist and derogatory comments in articles. It’s not acceptable.
DC: You’ve definitely earned your title as a “scream queen.” Does that title make you feel limited to acting in the horror genre?
JC : Not at all. I feel honored that people care enough to give me the title! I love the horror genre so I am pleased to work so much in it. I personally don’t find the other genres as fun to work in either, and at the end of the day I need to love what I am working on to give it my all. Any day that I get to act is a great day; if it’s in a horror film, that just means that it’s going to be even better! I have worked in other genres, but horror will always be my favorite to watch and act in!
DC: Let’s talk about your weaponry experience. You are a badass.
JC: Thanks! I have been blessed to have worked in more then a few films that have required weapons training. I love the educational aspect of it so I jump in every chance I get to do any type of training. It really helps me connect with my character. The whip is probably my favorite weapon to play with, and if you don’t think that it’s a weapon, let me assure you that it’s quite dangerous if you know how to use it. I can toss lightweight objects from one side of the room to the other, I can cut you, immobilize you, etc. And it’s a lot of fun. I have also received sniper training, various gun training, various sword fighting training, some hand-held combat, tumbling, and kicking training, too.
DC: The LGBT community is very underrepresented in the horror genre. Your upcoming film, Mania, is a “fucked up lesbian love story.” How can other horror writers involve LGBT characters without stigmatizing them?
JC: Honestly, I think just by living without judgement and then writing without judgement. Your characters should be who they are meant to be, and they should be well developed and realistic, at least in my opinion. I also think it’s important to tell original stories – ones that have yet to be told and ones that connect to current audiences. I was blessed to get to meet some active members in the LGBT community when we toured with Truth or Dare, and they are some of my favorite people to this day. With Mania, I just |
Torrent — an app used by over 100M people, which had similar perception issues — called Grooveshark ‘a pirate service’ in his blog response to Taylor Swift today, we had to comment on that element,” Pearson said.
On the history, Pearson is correct. In the early days of uTorrent Ek worked with uTorrent creator Ludvig ‘Ludde’ Strigeus before the pair sold up to BitTorrent Inc. in late 2006 and disappeared into the moonlight to create Spotify. Strigeus is a Spotify developer to this very day.
Of course, mentioning uTorrent in retaliation to “pirate service” remarks doesn’t really help calm things down and only drags other third parties into the controversy. However, when looking at the spat from Ek’s perspective it’s not difficult to see why he’s irritated by Grooveshark.
Search Spotify today for Taylor Swift’s 1989 and the only results returned are for cover versions by former cruise ship musician Robert W. Weber, aka Molotov Cocktail Piano. Search Grooveshark for the same and it’s an entirely different story.
The odd situation here is that while Swift put her own music on Spotify and will get millions back this year as a result, she has now stopped that revenue stream by removing it entirely. On the other hand she didn’t put her music on Grooveshark but it’s there for anyone to stream, until she has someone pull it down with a DMCA complaint of course.
Why the Spotify retraction came before the Grooveshark deletion is anyone’s guess. In a 2013 interview, Grooveshark CEO Sam Tarantino reported that in 2009-2011 his service had 35 million users. Today Spotify has an estimated 50 million so calling the services ‘competitors’ is probably fairly accurate, despite the differences in their business models.
Spotify say they have paid $2 billion to artists while Grooveshark claims that licensing deals in place with thousands of artists has resulted in “million” in payments. However, up to now neither the company nor Swift have mentioned a specific licensing deal for the singer’s music. Until they do, Daniel Ek is unlikely to withdraw his statement.Ross Eaton takes us through the tactical changes that Pep Guardiola has enforced at Machester City during this initial phase of his tenure.
An emphatic victory in the Manchester Derby, saw Manchester City’s strong run of form under new manager Josep Guardiola come to a peak. With their new Catalonian boss, City have enjoyed a 100% record in the Premier League this season without mentioning a couple of impressive performances in the Champions League. With the help of fellow writers, I analysed a number of Man City games so far this term, including all competitive matches:
Bayern Munich 1-0 Man City // Man City 2-1 Sunderland // Steaua Bucharest 0-5 Man City (password: 321) // Stoke 1-4 Man City // Man City 1-0 Steaua Bucharest (password: 321) // Man City 3-1 West Ham (password: 321) // Man United 1-2 Man City
As predicted, Guardiola has begun coaching City with a focus on his philosophy Juego de Posición. The 45 year-old coach has somewhat surprisingly enjoyed relative success throughout his short time at the club so far, in terms of tactical work, with what some would consider a squad not tactically aware, nor talented enough to successfully implement Guardiola’s favoured concept.
With six new additions to the first team squad, a spend of £143 million, as well as a number of others still to join the club in the coming months after being bought this summer, Pep has shown his willingness to stamp his authority on the team not just tactically, but also in terms of personnel.
The formation selection of Pep Guardiola has remained consistent so far, with him clearly identifying a ‘W-M’ 4-1-4-1/4-3-3 as the shape which allows for him to fit in the strongest members of his squad, whilst also implementing the tactical approach he wishes at its optimal level.
Perhaps the most spoken about position of Man City’s team this season has been the goalkeeper role. Fan favourite Joe Hart has clearly been seen as not good enough by Guardiola, particularly with the ball at his feet (key ability required for Pep’s GK), which has meant Willy Caballero has started the majority of City’s matches so far this season. He too though, is obviously viewed as not good enough, as Claudio Bravo, a master of the sweeper-keeper role, has been bought from Barcelona and is set to become first choice goalkeeper.
The back-four has varied throughout the matches though Pep does seem to have found six guys he likes playing, with a few of them capable of playing in a number of roles across the backline. At right-back has been Sagna, up until a hamstring injury ruled him out, with Zabaleta taking over since. 47 million man John Stones plays as the right central defender, while Otamendi or Kolarov partner him as the LCB, depending on the opposition. At left-back, Gael Clichy seems to own the first choice spot there, though again, Aleksandr Kolarov is capable of filling in when needed.
Fernandinho, for the moment at least, is the pivot of the side, operating in a 6 role in front of the centre-backs. On the right of midfield, Sterling has often started, though Navas has been given a couple of opportunities on the wing too. The right interior has been De Bruyne, the left David Silva. On the left wing Nolito has been the usual starter, though when Navas has started, Sterling has switched flanks, seeing Nolito drop to the bench. On the return of Gundogan to full fitness, things will become interesting. The German midfielder will surely be a starter, but the question is who will be replaced? Former key player Yaya Toure hasn’t seen much action, and has come under some criticism from Pep, while Leroy Sane remains out, he will also look to challenge for a starting berth on his return.
Argentinian Sergio Aguero is clearly the first choice centre forward, though off the bench, youngster Kelechi Iheanacho has excited fans with promising performances, and looks capable of at least being back-up striker.
Complex Full-Back Movements
Since taking charge of Manchester City in their English Premier League’s opening match against Sunderland, the most talked about aspect of Pep Guardiola’s City team has been the increasingly complex movements and positioning of his full-backs. Particularly during the early stages of build-up, the movements of City’s full-backs have modified according to the tactical instructions from their manager.
In the opening match of the season, versus Sunderland, Guardiola deployed full-blown inverted full-backs, with Bacary Sagna and Gael Clichy coming into the centre and halfspaces during City’s build-up and circulation of the ball. The frequency of the inverted movements of Sagna and Clichy were to the extent of Phillip Lahm from the right-back position under Guardiola, rather than the variable movements of Rafinha at Bayern which saw him able to occupy either the halfspace or the wing, still an inverted full-back, though not making as many inverted movements as Lahm was often instructed to.
We can see above that Lahm’s movements were more focused around connecting with the centre from the right halfspace, or even connecting with the opposite halfspace from central spaces. Rafinha however, was primarily based in the right halfspace and focused on connecting the centre with the right winger. Sagna and Clichy’s roles were far more similar to Lahm’s, in terms of the proximity of their movements to the central spaces. Despite this, the pair were not restricted to the centre, and often only moved into their halfspaces, providing connections to the wings.
Against Sunderland, City’s ball-near FB would position himself in the halfspace, while the ball-far FB would be in the centre, close to the opposite halfspace. With Fernandinho dropping in between the CB’s, this situationally formed a 3-2-4-1. One impact of the full-backs moving inside, against Sunderland’s man-orientation, was the creation of 1v1s on either wing. Due to Moyes implementing a man-orientated reference at Sunderland, Watmore and Gooch would follow Clichy and Sagna into the centre. Sterling and Nolito would remain wide, right on either touchline, against their single-markers, Van Aanholt and Love.
In these 1v1 situations on the wing, City had clear qualitative superiority. If superiority is not achieved in the seconds leading to the 1v1 taking place, as well as in actual the 1v1, these situations are pretty useless. Qualitative superiority is fundamental in a 1v1. By having qualitative superiority, this automatically puts the defender in a negative position. To make full use of this though, spatial superiority in other zones on the field must be achieved in order to smoothly connect with the zone where qualitative superiority is held. The positioning of Sagna and Clichy in the halfspaces meant connectivity with the wings was extremely smooth and quick the majority of the time. During ball-circulation, City would often slowly, horizontally circulate over to one flank, to manipulate Sunderland’s shape into overcompactness, then quickly switch the ball through the IFB in the centre/halfspace, who then connected with his near wing. This method of horizontally circulating onto a wing, to manipulate the op position’s shape and open the other wing, creating 1v1s in a situation of qualitative superiority was often used by Guardiola at Bayern. His Bayern team would often position players in either halfspace against man-orientations to ensure the closest player to the opposition’s full-back was unable to support them in defending the wing, as they had to mark in the halfspace. A 1v1 was therefore created on the wing.
As the gameweeks have gone on, we have already seen a few different variations of complex tactical movements from Guardiola’s full-backs. In the first Champions League match against Steaua Bucharest, there was a modification made from the Sunderland game to the full-backs’ positioning. Rather than both FB’s always moving inside, the ball-near FB would remain closer to the touchline, while the ball-far would come into the halfspace. By doing so, this allowed a wider range of zones to be occupied at once, this manipulating the at-times high press of Steaua, whilst maintains connections through the opposite halfspace to the opposite wing, by using the IFB in the halfspace.
In matches other than these, the full-backs have been instructed to make more variable and free movements, usually decided by the way they interpret a situation themselves, rather than set movements from the coach. Inverted movements into the halfspaces are frequent, while longer movements into the central space can sometimes be seen, though aren’t as common as they were in the first gameweek.
Wing-Play, Combinations and Cutbacks
Following a successful reign of quick, short passing with a focus on attacking through the centre, Guardiola modified his approach to suit the talented squad at Bayern to work to the best of their abilities. A heavy wing-orientation was often in place, with the degree of focus and effectiveness of it varying depending on the opposition. At Manchester City, it seems he has found his comfort zone somewhere in the middle. Though City have utilised 1v1 situations on the wings frequently in the early weeks, with strong connectivity to the wings being a large factor in the team’s game model, but City don’t have such a heavy wing-orientation as Guardiola instilled at Bayern.
Manchester City’s play isn’t restricted to only their wingers. Despite them creating lots of 1v1 situations for their wingers through movements away from the wings, City players also make movements onto the wings, to support the wingers in a number of ways. First of all, I will talk about the horizontal and diagonal movements of City’s interiors onto the wings. When City’s wingers are on the ball, if it is a slow attack that looks like it isn’t going anywhere, De Bruyne/Silva will move closer to the ball. By holding the ball up without advancing close to the touchline, this will draw the opposition FB towards the wing out of position, this opens up space behind him. Due to being close to the wing, De Bruyne/Silva will make a quick movement which due to their dynamic superiority, due to their previously purposely slow movement, is difficult to track.
Remaining on the topic of dynamic movements from De Bruyne and Silva towards the wing, the pair not only exploit large open spaces on the wing, but also moved into small spaces near the wing to use their nimble abilities to combine with the wingers and access space in dangerous areas. Again, when an attack seems to be dead on the wing while Sterling/Nolito is in possession, De Bruyne/Silva will move over to create a strong possessional structure in close proximity to the ball in order to escape the situation and connect with an area where City have better spacing and dynamics.
In the short training videos we have seen from the official Manchester City YouTube channel, it is clear that Guardiola will be utilising similar, previously proven training methods to ones he used at previous clubs. The famed ‘Rondo’ drills can already be watched online, enjoy this video below;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhEU2hqRVE8&feature=youtu.be
These Rondos develop a number of qualities, both individually and collectively. In a tight space where touches of the ball are limited, technical ability and combination play in tight areas are developed. As well as this, tactical elements such as taking advantage of numerical superiority and generating and finding the free man in sub-areas are are briefly looked at.
One chance creation method which City have frequently utilised under Guardiola has been the use of cutbacks. Due to the lack of aerial ability in City’s main striker, Sergio Aguero, low, driven balls into the box are far more effective than a high cross where Aguero is required to challenge a tall, strong, typical English Premier League centre-back. From the byline, where the wingers, as well as the interiors will often make darting runs to following a one-two to open space in behind, low cutbacks to a late runner around the penalty spot can be a method used to create some of the most simple goalscoring opportunities.
The benefits of a cutback can be huge, if executed correctly, at the correct moments. Not only is a flat pass typically easier to control and work with than a high cross, it also often provides dynamic superiority. With opposition defenders naturally being dragged towards the ball, or closer to their goal line, in anticipation of defending a floated cross, this opens space for the receiver as well as meaning they are moving away from the eventual receiver, expecting it to be crossed closer to their goals and with some height. With the defenders moving away from the receiver, when the cutback is played to a different receiver expected by them, they are unable to readjust their body position and body weight to react quickly enough to effectively defend the ball, giving the attacker a valuable second to carefully place the ball.
Roaming 8’s – ‘The Space Investigators’
In Kevin de Bruyne and David Silva, Pep Guardiola possesses two dynamic 10’s not typical or similar to the central-midfielders Guardiola has had in the past. Two world-class players, De Bruyne more of a ‘false 10’ type, Silva a dynamic, yet intricate needle player. Pep Guardiola has altered the roles of the pair to more variable, dynamic roles from the 8 positions in order to fit his ideal style of play.
Playing as left interior, David Silva has found himself in perhaps the most variable role he has ever played in despite his legs seemingly being in decline at the age of 30. Perhaps the most unfamiliar new duty adopted by the Spaniard is his dropping movements to aid the early phases of build-up from deeper positions. Starting from 8 or even 10 positions, Silva often makes dropping movements onto the same vertical line as the full-backs. He must be careful as to not drop too deep, as he cannot impact the game in advanced areas if he starts from such a deep position. As well as Silva making dropping movements, he often makes vertical movements to help occupy the opposition backline. This is done so less frequently, as it leaves De Bruyne to help build through the centre, not the Belgian’s strongest area. In terms of finding pockets of space, a key aspect of Silva’s performance due to his tactical and technical intelligence, operating between the opposition backline and first midfielders lines is important to his own and his team’s performance.
In order to create space for Silva to work in, Aguero makes lots of vertical movements to stretch the opposition backline. De Bruyne too helps by making horizontal movements into the right halfspace, to open the centre more for Silva, should an opponent follow him towards the right. Inverted movements from the full-backs can also be helpful for generating some space in between the lines, as their central positioning may draw opposition midfielders out of position towards the IFB’s, leaving Silva free between the lines.
“I have to help in build-up play more often and sacrifice a bit more in defence.” – David Silva on his new role.
Silva’s midfield partner Kevin De Bruyne has a role similar to Iniesta’s at Barcelona under Guardiola, though as right interior rather than left. Rather than being tasked with making dropping movements to aid the early phases of build-up, De Bruyne plays a more horizontally-orientated role, making alternating movements with Sterling to and from the right wing, with the objective of generating a free man due to the quick, confusing movement.
As well as these horizontal movements, De Bruyne also works in between opposition lines, making short horizontal movements from centre to halfspaces or vice versa, in search of an open passing lane. Another role De Bruyne shares with Silva is the occupation of the opposition backline. Due to De Bruyne’s lack of quality in early phases of build-up he is often the CM tasked with finding space between the lines or pushing up alongside Aguero onto the last line.
Pushing up onto the last line while Silva drops deep can cause a few issues with the possessional structure, largely down to the lack of central occupation. Though not too noticeable due to City’s territorial dominance within Steaua’s half, in the first leg against the Romanians, City encountered some issues in terms of progressing through the central areas from a build-up beginning with Caballero. When the ball was in the centre and there was no inverted movements from the FB’s, David Silva often dropped deep. With Silva vacating the 8 position, this left De Bruyne as the sole City player occupying the 8 or 10 spaces. Lacking some intelligence in terms of spacing, De Bruyne often occupied the 10 space during phase one. Though he attempted to move horizontally to find an open lane, this left the CB’s with no viable option as even if a lane opened up, De Bruyne was too large a distance away, making the line breaking pass very difficult to play, and easier to intercept.
Implementation of Juego de Posición
Arriving slightly earlier in Manchester than expected is Pep Guardiola’s favoured footballing philosophy of Juego de Posición. After just a couple of months at the helm of Manchester City as well as considering just a single month of this was working with his full squad, Pep Guardiola has had some surprisingly very positive results in terms of the implementation of his positional play game.
At Barcelona it took around three months before clear signs of Juego de Posición being successfully implemented showed, at Bayern between three and four months for signs with it being over a full season before it was being utilised with excellent effects and now at Manchester City, it seems as if either Pep has streamlined his training methods in order to make the transition into the method of play smoother or his Man City squad have simply adapted very well, better than his Barca and Bayern squads. As always, the training drills used by Pep Guardiola are football-specific, and to as much of a degree as possible, game-realistic. In order to make it as easy as possible for his players to take the positional play instructions from training into a game, drills must be set-up in a way that the situation could occur in a game situation and the players must be able to deal with it effectively using the instructions given.
Preventing isolation by getting numbers around the ball to support it, particularly in the first phase where losing the ball is most dangerous, is a principle of positional play. This has been worked on in training, where City have practiced vertical passes to escape immediate pressure on the ball with the closest players making supporting movements towards the ball to create a strong structure to escape the second pressing wave. City have practiced doing so by generating triangle and diamond shapes close to the ball.
More importantly than structures within sub-areas in terms of Juego de Posición is the spacing and occupation of zones. An issue that Manchester City have encountered before, it will certainly be one Pep will have to do serious work upon if his side are to effectively play Juego de Posición.
In the early weeks, things have looked promising, more so than expected at least, with a number players adapting excellently to the concept. Alongside their more effective levels of penetration and progression through smoother build-up, is the improved spacing and occupation of a greater range of zones.
By staggering the horizontal and vertical lines being occupied with adequate distances between each player, the opposition are forced to either adapt their defensive shape to mark the positional play, which leaves them stretched, or choose to stick with their shape and ignore the positional play, leaving the underloaded side of the field free for exploitation should the team be able to switch the ball quickly enough. As well as this, the staggering creates pockets within the opposition defensive block which can allow attacking players to position themselves between the lines. Finding space between the lines and generating and finding superiority from these positions are a key aspect of Juego de Posición. Though instructed to position themselves in specific zones in relation the ball, these positions should not be static and movement must be constant and fluid in order to open passing lanes and find penetrative lanes where the ball can be received.
Guardiola’s Juego de Posición does not often rush vertically and ensures that prior to progressing into advanced areas the structure is stable in preparation of both an attack and a defensive transition. Control is the key for some moments here, as the ’15-pass rule’ kicks in. Prior to the majority of Guardiola’s team’s attacks, we will see slow, controlled possession in unthreatening positions for a few seconds. This time gives players the chance to move into positions in relation to the ball, considering both the offensive and defensive possibilities as verticality begins. Once the player in possession believes a strong possessional structure has been achieved, progression may take place. From here, fluid movement and circulation should occur, in order to manipulate the opposition’s defensive shape and generate and search for superiority. Weak spots within the opposition defensive structure are likely to be found here, which will allow for early penetration, though this isn’t always the case. If the defensive structure is very strong and seemingly inpenetrable then longer passes may be used to escape the compactness and immediately in the subarea of the ball, to an underloaded area. Positioning players, ideally needle players, within the opposition block may also be used in an attempt to take advantage of qualitative superiority. If however, there are weak spots or frequent gaps within the block, the positional play will look to dominate the game using the weak spots. This area will be constantly attacked throughout the match, explaining why we commonly see Pep’s team’s with a heavy focus on a particular area (ie-wing focus).
Improved Structure Aids Defensive Transition
The principles of Man City’s positional play are having great benefits offensively, though the impact defensively is also significant.
Though a wide spacing to occupy a range of zones is key to achieving a strong possessional structure, the distances between the players cannot be too long, for both offensive and defensive reasons, with the reasons being relatively similar. In terms of attacking, isolation against a defensive overload is a difficult situation, which is why players should be positioned in the subareas around the receiver of a pass, to provide immediate support to the ball. Defensively, support is needed around the ball to counterpress effectively. Counterpressing is the immediate, intensive pressure of the ball following loss of possession. By having adequate numbers in the subareas around the ball, large distances aren’t required to be covered in order to counterpress, meaning pressure can be put on the ball at the most vulnerable time, when it has just been gained. The inverted full-backs have enhanced City’s counterpressing as the congestion of the centre makes it difficult to escape the immediate pressure. By having extra numbers in the centre, City are able to congest the location of the ball and the subareas around it in great numbers.
The possessional structure was a major flaw in City’s game under Pellegrini which had a negative impact in possession, but more so in the defensive transition. Due to the poor spacing with either too small or too large gaps in between each player’s positioning, there was often space left to penetrate on the counter for opposition attackers, through either dribbling or passing. With such an emphasis on positional play though this has been an aspect of Man City’s game which Pep Guardiola has looked to improve since taking over. Though City already look to be positioning themselves in a more effective structure, there remains some problems which Pep will have to work on to iron out. As already spoken about, De Bruyne’s low tactical intelligence can mean under-occupation of the centre, which poses large problems in the defensive transition. In the defensive transition the centre is an area where vertical passes are likely to be played through on the counter, hence why cover is necessary in the centre.
Other than ensuring the central midfielders cover the centre appropriately during circulation, another variation we have seen is inverted openers from the full-backs for their impact defensively, rather than offensively. Though the IFB’s positioning stopped opposition counter-attacks a few times when in use for attacking reasons, the first time we saw IFB’s coming inside for the primary reason of defending against counter-attacks was in the Manchester derby.
When Sterling or Nolito were in possession of the ball on their wing, rather than making a supporting movement such as an overlap or underlap, Sagna and Kolarov pinched inside into their respective halfspaces, on a similar line as Fernandinho. This allowed them to focus on defending their halfspaces on the counter, particularly against Mkhitaryan and Rooney, who love countering through these zones rather than the wings. By being initially positioned in the halfspace, Sagna and Kolarov were also able to counterpress more effectively, due to their positions typically being closer to the area of the majority of turnovers. United really struggled against the counterpressing of City, especially in the first half, when Pogba was the only player from deep who was able to offer much resistance to the pressure. This led to waves of attack on United, as the transition to attack wasn’t smooth enough for United to keep possession comfortably.
Gaining Defensive Access High Up the Pitch – The High Press
After operating in a mid block with light pressure at a low intensity under Manuel Pellegrini, it would be very arguable that the transition into more of a high-intensity pressing game under Pep Guardiola would be a difficult, slow and rough one. This hasn’t been the case however, as City’s work rate and intelligence of pressure and positioning has been superb.
We have seen a range of pressing schemes depending on the shape required to maintain defensive access against specific opposition shapes, with the main variations being the intensity and height which the central midfielders press at. Though David Silva isn’t renowned for his defensive work, whilst De Bruyne is slightly better though not amazing, the pair’s work in supporting Sergio Aguero in pressing the opposition backline has been excellent. Aguero usually presses from the centre of the pitch, arcing his run to block a pass back to the goalkeeper, whilst the ball-near CM presses from the halfspace. The ball-near winger then springs into press to either prevent a pass out to the full-back, or to press him as he receives it. This is in an option-orientated zonal coverage scheme.
Conclusion
Following an excellent start to the season, Manchester City put any potential questions over their squad’s ability to bed after a brilliant win at Old Trafford over rivals Manchester United.
The tactics of Pep Guardiola have not only been amazing to watch but they have also been effective, helping City gain results but also play in a dominant fashion. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of their control of matches has been the quick success of Pep’s implementation of Juego de Posición. Normally a lengthy process which has ineffective results early on, City seem to have adapted very nicely and are beginning to carry out some of the key principles of Pep’s philosophy to a degree of success at such an early stage in his reign.
As applies to any team though, there remains flaws in City’s game, particularly in terms of penetration and chance creation at the final ball, where Pep has openly admitted in the press that if Man City are to compete strongly in Europe this season, they must improve upon.
Taking all things into consideration though, the rapid rate of progression is extremely promising and if it is to continue at a rate anything similar to the current, Manchester City may be on their way to huge successes under their new hero, Pep Guardiola.Radical British preacher Anjem Choudary has come under heavy criticism for controversial remarks regarding Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Paris.
London based Choudary wrote a letter, published by US news outlet USA today, claiming that Muslims “did not believe in the concept of freedom of expression,” and that the Sharia (Islamic law) was more important than the legal systems of liberal democracies.
“Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires,” he wrote.
“Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”
READ MORE:'Anti-Muslim bias, police failures': Mending France after Charlie Hebdo attack?
Choudary is a controversial figure in the UK. While he attracts a small following of hardline Muslims associating themselves with the ‘Salafist’ school of thought, he is not considered a mainstream preacher among the majority of British Muslims.
Last year, the preacher expressed his support for the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and supported Muslims traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight. One of his loyal followers, Abu Rumaysah, left the UK while on police bail to join the militia group.
Additionally in the letter, Choudary blamed the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for provoking Wednesday’s attack.
“Why did France allow the tabloid to provoke Muslims?” he asks.
“Western governments are content to sacrifice liberties and freedoms when being complicit to torture and rendition — or when restricting the freedom of movement of Muslims, under the guise of protecting national security.”
Choudary’s views are likely to conflict with other prominent figures, such as Dr Taj Hargey, director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Dr Hargey says the Paris killers “loathe the liberal values of open, pluralistic societies.”
“[They are] Driven by their willfully perverted misinterpretation of the Muslim faith, they want to establish theocratic, authoritarian rule across Western Europe, complete with all the instruments of dogmatic oppression, including Sharia courts and the compulsory wearing of the face veil for Muslim women.
“When Muslims are finally able to move away from clerically-manipulated theocracy and return to the uncorrupted, divine text of the religion, they will clearly see through all the horrific posturing of the jihadi militants,” he added.
The statements come as British intelligence agency MI5 warns of similar attacks taking place in Britain, while Downing Street confirmed on Thursday that it had increased its security in British ports and UK passport control.Labor Day is the time that some Americans get an extra day of weekend to recharge. In celebration, we're running features on great games that you can start and finish on your day off.
These games were selected personally by each Game Informer editor. All of them can easily be completed in one day. You'll even have some extra time left to barbeque. These games prove that, when it comes to video games, longer isn't always better. We're kicking things of with a classic – Super Metroid. Check back here as the day goes on to read more of these features.
Here are the links to all of today's stories:
MadWorld by Matt Bertz
Gone Home by Kim Wallace
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes by Bryan Vore
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons by Kyle Hilliard
Mirror's Edge by Andrew Reiner
Heavenly Sword by Jeff Cork
Mark of the Ninja by Matt Miller
Ico by Joe Juba
Shadow Complex by Ben Reeves
Shovel Knight by Daniel Tack
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon by Tim Turi
Journey by Matthew Kato
Portal by Matt Helgeson
Super Metroid by Jeff Marchiafavarotinegg Profile Blog Joined April 2009 United States 1719 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-22 18:18:26 #1 EDIT: FEELING HESITANT ABOUT VISITING KOREA AFTER READING THIS? READ THIS; THIS BLOG BY MIGHTYATOM IS MUCH MORE RELEVANT TO YOU FOREIGNERS, WHILE 99% OF WHAT'S WRITTEN IN MY BLOG WILL NEVER AFFECT YOUR VISIT TO KOREA EXCEPT YOU HAVE A SMALLER FACE THAN THE AVERAGE KOREAN AND PEOPLE WILL COMPLIMENT YOU ON HOW YOUR FACE IS THE SIZE OF THEIR FIST
* This blog was inspired by a very misinformed post about Korean culture and its looks, and while I don't deny that we are a sensationalist culture focused on the superficial, I felt it was my duty to shed some light on the far-eastern ways of life. I will be leaving the underlying issue of morality at bay, and focus on giving you as in-depth of a tour of the Korean mindset as I can. I will be focusing on looks in particular in this blog.
For those of you not familiar with Korean history, let me give a you a brief snapshot of the more recent part of it, so you have enough historical context before diving into this blog. Post WW2, our country was shit. And by that I mean literally shit-shit. 99% (Source: my brain, probably lower, but not by much) of the population consisted of farmers. They planted shit to feed themselves and their families each year, and bartered whatever was left, which was usually not much, if any. The majority of the population was malnourished, and there were still people living in these 초갓집's that are houses made of mud and wood, with straw for their roofs (surprisingly they didn't leak... much).
The stereotypical 초갓집, which still exist to this day in rural areas
Fast forward 60ish years, and you get modern day Korea where it is arguably the most technologically advanced country in the world. GDP is up, economy is booming, and living standards are much higher to say the least. The thing you should take away from this brief introduction is that Koreans haven't had this sort of lifestyle for very long at all, and things are still moving at a rapid pace. We, as a whole, are still struggling to find cultural identity in this world that is so different from 60 years ago. A huge generational gap exists between the older and younger population, and a lot of old cultural elements, such as sexism, still remain in today's society, so balancing the old elements from our 5000-year-old history with the new is another puzzle for us to solve.
Night-time view of Seoul city
So what does all this have to do with looks in Korea? Well, I promise it all ties into what I'm about to say, but for now just keep all that in your mind as you read on.
For those of you not familiar with Korean history, let me give a you a brief snapshot of the more recent part of it, so you have enough historical context before diving into this blog. Post WW2, our country was shit. And by that I mean literally shit-shit. 99% (Source: my brain, probably lower, but not by much) of the population consisted of farmers. They planted shit to feed themselves and their families each year, and bartered whatever was left, which was usually not much, if any. The majority of the population was malnourished, and there were still people living in these 초갓집's that are houses made of mud and wood, with straw for their roofs (surprisingly they didn't leak... much).Fast forward 60ish years, and you get modern day Korea where it is arguably the most technologically advanced country in the world. GDP is up, economy is booming, and living standards are much higher to say the least. The thing you should take away from this brief introduction is that Koreans haven't had this sort of lifestyle for very long at all, and things are still moving at a rapid pace. We, as a whole, are still struggling to find cultural identity in this world that is so different from 60 years ago. A huge generational gap exists between the older and younger population, and a lot of old cultural elements, such as sexism, still remain in today's society, so balancing the old elements from our 5000-year-old history with the new is another puzzle for us to solve.So what does all this have to do with looks in Korea? Well, I promise it all ties into what I'm about to say, but for now just keep all that in your mind as you read on. Looks: a Brief Introduction
Outward looks play a huge role in any culture; you would be lying to refute that. For example, I know when I step into a job interview, the (usually Caucasian) interviewer has already developed a mental image of what kind of person I am based on my looks: Asian, male, average height. If I had to guess, the mental image would be somewhat along the lines of, 'Good at math, bad at English, and lacks confidence.' The whole interview I battle with that ghost using a slew of techniques: I add a slight southern drawl to my English, make sure to have a firm handshake and great eye contact, and project my voice. The moment they realize I don't have an Asian accent, I see their eyes |
the village, including Lynch and his son. When they arrived, another member of their expedition approached them. “What’s happening?” Lynch asked. “They’re surrounding our camp.” “Who?” Lynch cried. But he could already see dozens of Indian men, presumably from neighboring tribes, encircling them. They, too, had heard the sound of the arriving plane. Many wore black and red streaks of paint across their naked bodies. They carried bows with six-foot arrows, antique rifles, spears, and clubs. As the expedition was being surrounded, five team members ran toward the plane. The pilot was still in the cockpit, and the five men jumped in the cabin and told him to take off, though the plane was designed for only four passengers. As the pilot started the propeller, several Indians hurried toward the plane, aiming their bows and arrows. They grabbed onto the wings, trying to keep the plane grounded. The pilot, concerned that the plane was dangerously heavy, started to throw supplies out the doors. The plane began easing down the runway; just before the wheels lifted off, the last of the Indians let go. Lynch watched the plane disappear, red dust from its wake swirling around him. The Indians herded the remaining team members into small boats. “Where are you taking us?” Lynch asked. “You are our prisoners for life,” one man responded in Portuguese. Lynch’s son looked ashen. As they floated upriver, Lynch surveyed the surroundings—the clear river filled with colorful fish, the increasingly dense thicket of vegetation. It was, he thought, the most beautiful place he had ever seen.
Last February, I decided to see if I could retrace Fawcett’s route and unravel a mystery that had only deepened with each ill-fated attempt to solve it. It was not easy to find a guide willing to make the journey, and it was even harder to find someone who had ties to the indigenous communities in Brazil, which function almost as autonomous countries, with their own laws and governing councils. In Brazil, the history of the interaction between brancos and indios—whites and Indians—often reads like an extended epitaph. Tribes were wiped out by disease and massacres; languages and songs were obliterated. As late as 1920, an English missionary reported that many Indians had told him, “It is better to fall into the power of our spirits than into the hands of the Christians.” On one occasion, a tribe buried its children alive to spare them the shame of subjugation. The interior of Brazil was so forbidding, however, that some tribes managed to insulate themselves, for a time, from the age of airplanes and telephones. The Brazilian government didn’t officially approach many Amazon tribes until the nineteen-forties, and there are still some forty tribes that have had no recorded contact with outsiders. In recent decades, the Brazilian government has stopped trying to “modernize” indigenous peoples, and has worked to protect them. As a result, many Amazon tribes, particularly those in the Mato Grosso (“Thick Forest”) region, where Fawcett disappeared, have flourished. Their populations, after being decimated, are growing again; their languages and customs have endured. The guide whom I eventually persuaded to accompany me was Paolo Pinage, a fifty-two-year-old former professional samba dancer. We met in Cuiabá, the capital of the Mato Grosso region, along the southern edge of the Amazon basin. Though Pinage was not of Indian descent, he had worked for the government agency set up to protect the rights of Indians. Its motto is “Die if you must, but never kill.” During our initial phone conversation, I had asked Pinage if we could penetrate the same region that Fawcett had, including part of what is now Xingu National Park, Brazil’s first Indian reservation, which was created in 1961. (The park, along with an adjoining reservation, is the size of Belgium and is one of the largest swaths of jungle under Indian control on the planet.) Pinage said, “I can take you there, but it’s not easy.” Entering Indian territories, he explained, required elaborate negotiations with tribal leaders. He asked me to send him medical records, attesting that I carried no contagious diseases. Then he began approaching various chiefs on my behalf. Many of the tribes in the jungle now had shortwave radios, and, for weeks, our messages were relayed back and forth, as Pinage assured them that I was a reporter and not a garimpero, or “prospector.” Last year, twenty-nine diamond miners trespassed onto a reservation in western Brazil, where members of the Cinta Larga tribe, which in the past had endured massacres by brancos, shot or beat the prospectors to death with wooden clubs. On my way to Cuiabá, I had stopped briefly in São Paulo to chat with the man I thought would understand better than anyone the obstacles that Pinage and I might encounter: James Lynch. When I found him at his financial consulting firm, I asked him what had happened in the Xingu. “The Indians held us hostage for three days,” he said. “Several threatened to tie us over the river and let piranhas eat us.” As he spoke, James, Jr., who works for the company as well, entered the room. Lynch glanced at his son and said, “I was afraid what might happen to him.” He advised me that tribes had traditionally expected small tokens from visitors—a sign of good intentions. Today, they often demanded thousands of dollars from outsiders. “If we didn’t give them something, they threatened to kill us one by one,” Lynch said. “The only way we could get out was to give them our boats and offer to buy them a truck.” In the end, Lynch’s team paid a ransom that amounted to thirty thousand dollars. “Just remember: once you go into their territory, you are on your own,” he said. “No one from the government can come in and get you.” When I arrived in Cuiabá, two days later, none of the tribes had agreed to my visit. Still, Pinage seemed optimistic when he greeted me at the airport. He was carrying several large plastic containers, instead of a suitcase or a backpack, and had a cigarette dangling from his lip. He wore a camouflage vest with myriad pockets, filled with supplies: a Swiss Army knife; a Japanese anti-itch medicine; a flashlight; more cigarettes. He resembled someone returning from an expedition, not embarking on one. His vest was ragged, his face was bone thin and covered with a gray-tinged beard, and his bald head had been seared by the sun. Although his English pronunciation was shaky, he spoke as fast as he smoked. “Come, come, we go now,” he said. We took a taxi into Cuiabá, which was founded during a gold rush in the early seventeen-hundreds. In 1920, Fawcett described it as an “impoverished and backward” place that had degenerated into “little better than a ghost town.” Today, the city, which has undulating paved roads and a few modest skyscrapers, serves primarily as a staging ground for the latest pioneers—farmers and ranchers—hoping to find riches in the surrounding countryside. We checked into a hotel named El Dorado (“A funny coincidence, isn’t it?” Pinage said) and began making preparations. Our first challenge was to divine, as closely as possible, Fawcett’s secret route. Pinage asked me what I knew, and I told him that Brian Fawcett, who was nineteen when his father disappeared, had tightly guarded Fawcett’s private papers; in 1953, he published some of them in a book, “Exploration Fawcett,” which contained one of the few clues to his father’s final course. The book quotes Fawcett saying, “Our route will be from Dead Horse Camp, 11° 43’ south and 54° 35’west, where my horse died in 1921.” Many subsequent explorers had started off from these coördinates. Fawcett’s family, however, recently acknowledged what others had learned to their despair: Fawcett had provided false coördinates, in order to throw off would-be seekers of the City of Z. Before coming to Brazil, I explained to Pinage, I had visited the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, in London, and sifted through stacks of letters that Fawcett had sent to the institution through the years. The letters, old and brittle, released yellowish flakes when I opened them. Fawcett had scribbled in a hasty, feverish manner, the words run together like code. After a few days in the archives, I noticed, in the corner of a frayed packet of papers, a single word: “confidential.” The document was dated April 13, 1924, and, unlike most of the other letters, it was typed, though Fawcett’s small, slanting signature was visible at the bottom. It was entitled “Case for an expedition in the Amazon basin.” In earlier letters, Fawcett had raised his usual objections to providing specifics about his final trip. “These things leak out,” he wrote. Recalling how the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott had been beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen by only weeks, Fawcett added, “There can be nothing so bitter to the pioneer as to find the crown of his work anticipated.” Fawcett, however, was desperate for funding, and in the document he seemed to relent to a demand by the society that he be more forthcoming. Fawcett contended that in the southern basin of the Amazon, between the Tapajós and the Xingu tributaries, lay what he called “the most remarkable relics of ancient civilization.” A few adventurers had traversed the major tributaries of the Amazon, including Theodore Roosevelt, but Fawcett claimed that no explorer had dared to enter the forests between them, for fear of starvation, disease, and hostile natives. To bolster his case that the ruins of Z would be found in the region, he cited carvings that he had seen on rocks in the area, and documents that he had uncovered from Portuguese conquistadores in Brazilian archives. He quoted a Brazilian scholar, who declared, “My studies have convinced me that... there may yet be found in our forests, as yet penetrated in few places, ruins of ancient cities.” In the same materials were several brown parchments on which Fawcett had sketched maps of the region, based on previous expeditions. And there was one more document—seemingly, a detailed account of his intended route to the City of Z. After copying these materials, I told Pinage, I made one last stop, in Cardiff, at the house of Fawcett’s granddaughter, Rolette de Montet-Guerin. All of Fawcett’s immediate family is dead, and Montet-Guerin, who is the daughter of the youngest of Fawcett’s three children, Joan, acts as the guardian of the family estate. A petite, energetic woman in her fifties, with short black hair and glasses, she took me into a back room and opened a trunk. Inside were Fawcett’s diaries and logbooks. Montet-Guerin allowed me to examine each one for details that might help in my search. In the log from 1921, I spotted coördinates for Dead Horse Camp that were conspicuously different from those which had appeared in “Exploration Fawcett.” On another page, I noticed jottings about a place that members of the Botocudo tribe had described to Fawcett as “enormously rich in gold—so much so as to blaze like fire.” Fawcett wrote, “It is just conceivable this may be Z.” I went through the books, carefully making notations. I thought that I now had enough information to retrace his route. Montet-Guerin said that she wanted to show me one more thing. It was a photograph of Fawcett’s gold signet ring, which was engraved with the family motto, “Nec Aspera Terrent”—essentially, “Difficulties Be Damned.” In 1979, an Englishman named Brian Ridout, who was making a wildlife film in Brazil, heard rumors that the ring had turned up at a store in Cuiabá. By the time Ridout tracked down the shop, the proprietor had died. His wife, however, searched through her possessions and emerged with Colonel Fawcett’s ring. Montet-Guerin, who had since put the ring in safekeeping, said, “It’s the last concrete item we have from the expedition.” Montet-Guerin had been desperate to learn more, she said, and had once showed the ring to a psychic. I asked her if she had learned anything. She looked down at the picture, then up at me. “It had been bathed in blood,” she said. In the hotel room in Cuiabá, as Pinage leaned over my shoulder, I spread the copies of Fawcett’s papers on a table. Fawcett had been an accomplished artist—his pen-and-ink drawings were exhibited at the Royal Academy—and many of his original maps were meticulous, recalling pointillist paintings. He had printed “unexplored” in bold letters atop one image, which depicted the forests between the Xingu River and two other major tributaries of the Amazon. On another map, he added several notations: “small tribes... believed to be friendly”; “very bad Indian tribes—names unknown”; “Indians probably dangerous.” Pinage and I agreed that the documents confirmed that Fawcett and his team, after leaving Cuiabá, had proceeded north, to the territory of the Bakairí Indians. From there, they had gone to Dead Horse Camp, and then, presumably, deep into what is today Xingu National Park. In the route that Fawcett had supplied in confidence to the Royal Geographical Society, he wrote that his party would turn due east around the eleventh parallel south of the equator, and cross the Xingu River. He noted that it was preferable to maintain an eastward trajectory, toward Brazil’s coastal regions, since it “would preserve a higher level of enthusiasm than one proceeding farther & farther into the wilds.” Pinage, who had become as curious about Fawcett as I had, excitedly drew a black pen across a clean map, ticking off each of our intended destinations. Finally, he took his cigarette out of his mouth and said, “On to Z, no?”
Percy Harrison Fawcett was always searching for something beyond his Victorian world. The son of a British aristocrat who had squandered two family fortunes, he recalled his childhood as “devoid of parental affection.” In 1886, at the age of nineteen, he received his commission in the Royal Artillery, and was stationed in the British colony of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). He often took long walks through the forests, entranced by the strange local customs. Though he married Nina Paterson, the daughter of a colonial judge, he remained, as he put it, a “lone wolf,” and continued to wander the island, investigating archeological ruins and even hunting for buried treasure. It was the peak of the British Empire, a time when the English were constantly confronting and colonizing new, exotic civilizations; when imperial explorers such as David Livingstone were trying to map the so-called “dark continent” of Africa; and when the Allan Quatermain novels by Fawcett’s friend H. Rider Haggard, which chronicle the intrepid adventurer’s discovery of ancient civilizations in Africa, were wildly popular. In 1901, Fawcett, hoping to become an explorer himself, enrolled at the Royal Geographical Society to study surveying and mapmaking. The British government often tried to recruit mapmakers as spies, their vocation being an ideal cover, and, that year, Fawcett went to Morocco, where, while surveying, he also served as a secret agent. Five years later, the president of the Royal Geographical Society approached him for a different kind of mission. According to “Exploration Fawcett,” the president showed Fawcett an atlas of South America and exclaimed, “Look at this area! It’s full of blank spaces.” He explained that the boundaries between Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil were ill-defined, and that the three countries had asked a disinterested party to survey the area. “What it really amounts to is exploration,” the president said. “It may be difficult and even dangerous.” Fawcett didn’t hesitate. “Here was the chance I had been waiting for,” he later wrote, adding, “Destiny intended me to go!” Leaving behind his wife and three-year-old son, Jack, he headed off with little more than a sixty-pound pack, a handful of recruits, and a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Explorer.” (“Something hidden. Go and find it.... Go!”) As he trekked with a small group for hundreds of miles, across mountains, swamps, and jungles, he detected signs—arrowheads buried in trees, smoke from fires—that they were being watched by Indians. The indigenous people in the area, having been enslaved or massacred by rubber tappers in the past, were known to kill trespassers, and a few were believed to practice cannibalism. Fawcett, convinced that the only way to survive was to establish friendly contact, ordered his men never to open fire. Once, when his expedition was ambushed, Fawcett had his men stand and play musical instruments, singing “Soldiers of the Queen” and “Suwannee River” as arrows rained upon them. At other times, Fawcett would hold his hands in the air and march directly toward the Indians, in order to demonstrate his peaceful intentions. His tactics succeeded, and, with maps in hand, he returned triumphantly to England. He soon grew restless. “Deep down inside me a tiny voice was calling,” he wrote. “At first scarcely audible, it persisted until I could no longer ignore it. It was the voice of the wild places, and I knew that it was now part of me for ever.” He added, “Inexplicably—amazingly—I knew I loved that hell. Its fiendish grasp had captured me, and I wanted to see it again.” In 1908, Fawcett went on an even more dangerous expedition: tracing the source of the Rio Verde, in Brazil. During the trip, his team ran out of food. One of the men lay down and begged Fawcett to leave him, but Fawcett insisted, “If we’ve got to die, we’ll die walking.” Though the team eventually made it out, on other trips more than half of Fawcett’s men died from sickness. The Royal Geographical Society noted in its journal that Fawcett was prepared to “fare harder than most people would consider either possible or proper.” As Fawcett completed his maps of the Amazon, he became fascinated by the tribes populating the region. Like many Victorians, he held views of indigenous Americans that were often blinded by racism. “There are three kinds of Indians,” he wrote. “The first are docile and miserable people.... The second, dangerous, repulsive cannibals very rarely seen; the third a robust and fair people who must have a civilized origin.” He shared the widely held notion that any advanced civilization in South America, if it had ever existed, must have had a European origin—in Phoenicia, say, or even Atlantis. John Hemming, a distinguished historian of Brazilian Indians, has called Fawcett a “Nietzschean explorer” who spouted “eugenic gibberish.” Yet some anthropologists have also found in Fawcett’s writings a sensibility that was more enlightened than that of many of his contemporaries. He was an outspoken opponent of the destruction of Indian culture through colonization. “My experience is that few of these savages are naturally ‘bad,’ unless contact with ‘savages’ from the outside world has made them so,” Fawcett wrote. He studied many Amazonian dialects, and immersed himself in the rich legends and artistic traditions of the local tribes. He was amazed by shards of delicate ancient pottery that he had seen along the mouth of the Amazon, and by mysterious raised mounds of earth that were scattered through the rain forest. And he read early histories of South America, which revealed that the first Spaniards who visited the Amazon had described “numerous and very large settlements” and “many roads and fine highways inland.” All this suggested to Fawcett that there had once been a large, complex civilization in the Amazon which had been decimated over the centuries. Moreover, he theorized, remnants of that civilization might have survived in areas that had remained isolated from Westerners. One day, during a visit to a colonial archive in Rio de Janeiro, Fawcett discovered a document, partly eaten by worms, that was titled “Historical account of a large, hidden, and very ancient city, without inhabitants, discovered in the year 1753.” A Portuguese bandeirante, or “soldier of fortune,” described how, “after a long and troublesome peregrination, incited by the insatiable greed of gold,” he and his men had ascended a mountain path and seen a spellbinding vista: below them were the ruins of an ancient city. The men climbed down, and discovered stone arches, a statue, wide roads, and a temple with hieroglyphics. “The ruins well showed the size and grandeur which must have been there, and how populous and opulent it had been in the age when it flourished,” the bandeirante wrote. Fawcett was certain that he had found proof that the interior contained an ancient civilization, which he christened the City of Z. He was mapping out a route to find it when the First World War erupted. Though he was approaching fifty, he volunteered for the front, in Flanders, and led a brigade in the Artillery. The savagery of the fighting repelled him, and he became even more entranced by the idea of a lost civilization. After the war, he tried to raise funds for an expedition to find Z, but he met resistance from the new professionals of archeology, who were supplanting the role of explorers, and who considered Fawcett an anachronism. Moreover, many of these academic experts believed that the Amazon—with its oppressive heat and nutrient-poor soil, which resisted modern attempts at farming—could simply not sustain large settled populations. As the archeologist Betty Meggers later put it, the Amazon was a “counterfeit paradise.” The colonial records that Fawcett had cited were seen as akin to the old stories of towering Amazons: tall tales invented to impress royal patrons. “To get the elderly gentlemen of the archaeologists and museum experts in London to credit a fraction of what I knew to be true was a task altogether beyond my powers,” he wrote. In 1920, hoping to find the City of Z on his own, Fawcett embarked on the expedition that ended at Dead Horse Camp, where, delirious with fever, he shot his ailing pack animal and retreated in defeat. He was determined to return, but he could not get anyone in England to back him. In a letter to the Royal Geographical Society, he wrote bitterly, “It is of course bound to come out eventually that a modern Columbus was turned down in England.” Four years later, nearly destitute, he looked to the United States, where he began to tap into enthusiasm for what he referred to as his “romantic quest.” He received backing from various scientific bodies, including the American Geographical Society and the Museum of the American Indian. He also made agreements with news organizations in India, South Africa, Australia, Britain, and the United States, promising to file dispatches in exchange for funding. Even the Royal Geographical Society lent some support. According to Fawcett’s letters, his final expedition departed from Cuiabá on April 20, 1925, assisted by two Brazilian laborers, eight mules, two horses, and a pair of dogs. As the team moved quickly northward across the cerrado, or dry forest, Fawcett forged a path with a specially designed, eighteen-inch machete, and often walked far ahead of his group, inspecting rock formations for possible inscriptions, while Jack, his son, and Raleigh, Jack’s friend, struggled to keep up with him. Fawcett was fifty-seven years old, nearly three times as old as Jack and Raleigh, and his hair was gray and thinning, yet he was strikingly fit. He was over six feet tall, and his long, lean legs were unusually strong. His blue eyes burned like a preacher’s. He wore baggy, lightweight, tear-resistant pants, riding boots, and a broad-rimmed Stetson hat; in photographs taken soon after the trip began, he eerily matches the descriptions of Lord John Roxton, a protagonist of “The Lost World.” At one point, Conan Doyle writes of Roxton, “Something there was of Napoleon III, something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence of the English country gentleman.” The first days of the expedition were relatively easy—the terrain consisting mostly of short, twisting trees and savanna-like grass, where a few ranchers and prospectors had established settlements. Yet, as Fawcett told his wife in a letter, it was “an excellent initiation” for the inexperienced Jack and Raleigh. (Fawcett once wrote proudly of his son, “He is big, very powerful physically, and absolutely virgin in mind and body.”) In a black-and-white photograph taken before the 1925 trip, Jack, with his luminescent skin, oiled hair, and crisp mustache, resembles a movie star—which is what he planned to become after the mission. Raleigh, who was the son of a British naval surgeon, was equally tall and robust, but with a more playful nature. On the first day, the three explorers and their two Brazilian helpers travelled seven miles from Cuiabá; the next day, another ten. Even in the shade of the buriti palms, it was hot—so hot, as Fawcett wrote in a particularly fervid dispatch, that in the Cuiabá River “fish were literally cooked alive.” After they marched from sunup to sundown, they set up camp, wrapping themselves in nets to prevent mosquito-borne infections, drinking cups of tea, and eating biscuits. Fawcett would try to compose letters to his wife or dispatches to the newspapers, which, editors’ notes explained, were “relayed to civilization by Indian runners over a long and perilous route.” An article introducing the installments, which were published with such headlines as “three men face cannibals in relic quest,” said of the explorers, “If they enter the grim region... and come out again, they will achieve something which no other man has done.” One day, as the explorers approached the Manso River, some forty miles north of Cuiabá, the two younger men became separated from Fawcett. As Jack later wrote in a letter to his mother, “Daddy had gone ahead at such a pace that we lost sight of him altogether.” The boys spent the night alone, listening to the screeching forest; the next morning, Fawcett appeared on his horse, as if returning from a leisurely jaunt. The area was infested with ticks, and Raleigh was bitten by one on his foot, which swelled so much that he had to ride with his shoe off. To help him recuperate, Fawcett stopped for five days at a cattle-breeding ranch on the edge of the frontier—a place where Brazilian laws were considered irrelevant. The ranch was owned by Hermenegildo Galvão, one of the most powerful and ruthless farmers in the Mato Grosso. According to Hermes Leal’s biography “Colonel Fawcett: The Real-Life Indiana Jones,” which was published in Portuguese in 1996, Galvão had a posse of hired gunmen who were charged with killing any Indian who threatened his vast feudal empire. Fawcett’s team stayed in Galvão’s red brick manor for several days, eating and resting. At one point, Galvão later told a reporter, Fawcett removed from his belongings a strange object covered in cloth. He carefully unwrapped it, revealing a ten-inch stone idol with almond-shaped eyes and hieroglyphics carved on its chest. Rider Haggard, Fawcett’s friend, had obtained it from someone in Brazil and given it to Fawcett, who believed that it was a relic of Z. Then the three Englishmen were on their way again, heading east, toward Bakairí Post, where in 1920 the Brazilian government had set up a garrison—“the last point of civilization,” as the settlers referred to it. Occasionally, the dense forest opened up, revealing the blinding sun and blue-tinged mountains in the distance. The trail became harder, and the men descended steep, mud-slicked gorges and crossed rock-strewn rapids, where they had to check their skin for traces of blood, which might attract piranhas. They also had to remain alert for a pernicious eel-like fish called a candiru, which, as Fawcett once wrote, “seeks to enter the natural orifices of the body, whether human or animal, and once inside cannot be extracted.” Fawcett had seen one specimen that had been removed from a man’s penis. “Many deaths result from this fish, and the agony it can cause is excruciating,” he wrote. A month after they left Cuiabá, and after what Fawcett described as a “shockingly difficult passage,” they arrived at Bakairí Post, a small settlement of about twenty huts. The Bakairí tribe was one of the first in the region which the government had tried to “acculturate,” and Fawcett was appalled by what he called “the Brazilian methods of civilizing the Indian tribes.” In a letter to one of his sponsors in the United States, he noted, “The Bakairís have been dying out ever since they became civilized. There are only about 150 of them.” He went on, “They have in part been brought here to plant rice, manioc... which is sent to Cuiabá, where it fetches, at present, high prices. The Bakairís are not paid, are raggedly clothed, mainly in khaki govt. uniforms, and there is a general squalor and lack of hygiene which is making the whole of them sick.” Members of other remote tribes occasionally visited Bakairí Post, and Jack and Raleigh soon saw something that astonished them: “about eight wild Indians, absolutely stark naked,” as Jack wrote to his mother. The Indians carried seven-foot-long bows with six-foot arrows. “To Jack’s great delight we have seen the first of the wild Indians here—naked savages from the Xingu,” Fawcett wrote to his wife. Jack and Raleigh hurried out with the camera and took photographs of the men. In one, Jack stood beside them, to demonstrate “the comparative sizes”; the Indians came up to his shoulders. Later, the three explorers went to the hut where the Indians were staying. Fawcett carried a ukulele and Jack carried a piccolo, and they performed a concert around a fire. On May 19th, a fresh, cool day, Jack woke up even more excited—it was his twenty-second birthday. “I have never felt so well,” he wrote to his mother. The three explorers made their final preparations. To the north of the post, they could see several imposing mountains, and just beyond them, as Jack wrote with a hint of awe, was “absolutely unexplored country.” They headed straight for terra incognita. Before them there were no clear paths, and almost no light filtering through the hundred-and-fifty-foot trees. Branches snapped back at them; creepers entangled their legs. The heat was oppressive, and they were encircled by swarms of piums—stinging insects that left splotches of blood on their skin. There were vampire bats and scorpions and anacondas. Even Fawcett, at times, felt his age. As he wrote to his wife, “Years tell, in spite of the spirit of enthusiasm.” After nine days, Fawcett wrote, they hacked their way to Dead Horse Camp, where they could still see the “white bones” from his old pack animal and where they were attacked by “the wickedest fly on earth, almost invisible, biting like a mosquito, and very active.” They covered themselves in nets, but the bugs slipped through them. Fawcett sent his Brazilian helpers back to Cuiabá, along with many of the animals. The jungle would soon be so thick that the explorers could proceed only by carrying equipment on their backs. Raleigh’s foot remained swollen and ulcerous—the skin was now peeling off—and Fawcett urged him to return with the guides. Raleigh, unwilling to leave his best friend, said that he was fine, and Fawcett relented. Fawcett folded up various letters and a dispatch and gave them to the Brazilian guides. He said that he would try to get out other communiqués in the coming year or so, but added that it was unlikely. As he noted in one of his final articles, “By the time this dispatch is printed, we shall have long since disappeared into the unknown.” The explorers said their farewells to the Brazilians, then headed deeper into the jungle. In his last words to his wife, Fawcett wrote, “You need have no fear of any failure.”
“Can you get the G.P.S. to work?” Pinage asked. I was sitting in the back seat of a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi truck, fiddling with a Global Positioning System, in an attempt to obtain readings of our coördinates. We were heading north—that much I knew—with a driver whom we had hired when we rented the pickup. Pinage had told me that we would need a powerful truck and a professional driver if we were to have any chance of completing our journey, especially in the rainy season. “This is the worst time of year,” he said. “The roads are—how do you say in English?—shit.” When I first explained my mission to our driver, he asked me when the British colonel had disappeared. “Nineteen twenty-five,” I said. “And you want to find him in the jungle?” “Not exactly.” “Are you one of his descendants?” “No.” He seemed to think about this for a long moment, then said, “Very well,” and began cheerfully to load our gear, which included hammocks, rope, mosquito netting, water-purifying tablets, a satellite phone, antibiotics, and malarial pills. On our way out of Cuiabá, we also picked up a friend of Pinage’s, a descendant of a Bakairí chief named Taukane Bakairí. (In Brazil, the last names of Indians are typically the same as that of their tribe.) Taukane, who was in his mid-forties, and had a handsome, round face, wore Levi’s and a baseball cap. Though he now lived mostly in Cuiabá, he continued to represent his tribe’s political interests. “I am what you might call an ambassador,” he told me. And, in exchange for a “gift” of two tires for a communal tractor, he had agreed to take us to his village, the last place Fawcett had incontrovertibly been seen. (“If it were up to me, I would take you for free,” Taukane said. “But all Indians must now be capitalists. We have no choice.”) Upon leaving the city, we entered the central plains of Brazil, which mark the transition from dry forest to rain forest. After a while, a plateau came into view; Martian red in color, it spanned more than two thousand square miles, an endless tabletop that reached into the clouds. We stopped at its base, and Pinage said, “Come, I show you something.” We left the truck and climbed a steep, rocky slope. The ground was moist from a recent rainstorm, and we used our hands and knees to ascend. “Where are we going?” I asked Pinage, who had another cigarette clamped between his teeth. “You see,” he said. Lightning streaked the sky and a thin mist descended, making the ground more slippery. Rocks gave way under our feet, clapping as they hit the ground, fifty yards below. “Almost there,” Pinage said. He helped to pull me up a ledge, and as I got to my feet, covered in mud, he pointed at another ridge, a few yards away, and said, “Now you see!” Jutting into the sky was a cracked stone column. I blinked in the rain—in fact, there was not just one but several columns in a row, as in a Greek ruin. There was also a large archway, both sides of it still intact, and behind it was a dazzlingly large tower. They looked like what the bandeirante had described in 1753. “What is it?” I asked. “Stone city.” “Who built it?” “It is—how do you say?—an illusion.” “That?” I said, pointing to one of the columns. “It was made by nature, by erosion. But many people who see it think it is a lost city, like Z.” Ever since the first Europeans arrived in the New World, explorers had been seduced by their own visions of Z. As John Hemming, the historian, recounts in “The Search for El Dorado” (1978), these visions were based on an astounding precedent: In 1519, Hernán Cortés and his band of soldiers found a causeway that led into the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán—a city laden with gold, with advanced architecture and engineering. Twelve years later, Francisco Pizarro discovered and conquered the equally wealthy Incan empire, and the search for golden cities became a European obsession. In 1541, a Spanish traveller wrote of el indio dorado, or “the golden Indian,” in reference to tales he’d heard of a chieft |
hl 1998a, Martinez 2006), contemporary immigration flows are vastly different compared to the turn of the last century: “After a period of mass immigration from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States experienced a relative lull in immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s. But the past few decades have ushered in a new era of large-scale immigration which has accelerated since the 1980s. This time the flows have come largely from Latin America and Asia, not from Europe. Over the past 15 years, the number of immigrants—both legal and illegal—coming to the United States has been the largest in its history in absolute terms” (Rumbaut & Ewing 2007, p. 3; see also Bean et al. 2006). Such differences underscore the need to investigate how the immigration-crime nexus may shift, if at all, over time.
Other appreciable differences are relevant in a new era of mass immigration. Unlike in previous decades, immigrants in the United States are now “heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas, are predominantly nonwhite, speak languages other than English, reflect a wide range of class, religious, and cultural backgrounds, and arrive with a mix of legal statuses” (Kubrin 2013, p. 447; see also Alba & Nee 2003, Portes & Rumbaut 2006, Rumbaut 2008). This latest wave of immigrant incorporation also has coincided with a period of deindustrialization, rising inequality, and mass incarceration, during which the returns to education have sharply increased (Lee & Martinez 2006; see also Rumbaut et al. 2006). These transformations raise important questions; for example, how have the restructuring of the US economy, the decentralization of cities, the growth of suburbs as major employment centers, mass incarceration, and other major transformations affected the longitudinal immigration-crime relationship (Kubrin 2013)?
Another question of interest requiring a dynamic approach relates to the crime decline in US cities during the past quarter-century: What role might immigration have played in America's crime drop? The vast majority of research on the crime decline has not considered the role of immigration, focusing instead on more conventional contributors such as changing police practices, increased incarceration, shifting drug markets, gun control efforts, and economic opportunity (Kubrin 2013, Ousey & Kubrin 2014). However, ten years ago, Robert Sampson published an op-ed in the New York Times raising the possibility that immigration and the increasing cultural diversity that accompanies it may be what drove, in part, the crime decline, a position he elaborates on in greater detail elsewhere (Sampson 2008).
Sampson's claims have only recently been put to the test. As discussed earlier, only a handful of scholars have considered the possibility that changes in immigration may be associated with changes in crime rates, and of these studies, just a few explicitly test whether increases in immigration were responsible for the crime drop. These studies find some support for Sampson's thesis, yet much more research is needed to reach a definitive conclusion.
Theory testing and modeling a dynamic immigration-crime relationship are just two of the many next steps necessary for future researchers. Recognizing the limitations of this review, future research should extend our efforts to synthesize knowledge in this area in a number of additional ways. First, although we focus only on studies of the immigration-crime association within the United States, concern about immigration, and its connection to crime and security, is evident in countries around the globe. Examining the nature and magnitude of the immigration-crime relationship within other nations or between countries would serve as an informative comparative lens to aid our overall understanding.
Second, given our focus is limited to the association between immigration and crime across macrosocial units, another complement to the current review would focus on the body of research that has examined, at the individual level, the connection between immigrant generational status and involvement in offending. As we noted earlier, the individual-level literature has established that second- and later-generation immigrants exhibit higher offending rates than their parents. A meta-analysis of this literature would provide a sense of the consistency and strength of this immigrant generation effect as well as provide insight into whether this finding varies systematically across studies.
Third, because the meta-analytic portion of our review relied primarily on evidence explicitly reported in published studies, it did not completely ensure that the immigration-crime relationship is assessed in statistical models with exactly comparable specifications. This limitation, common to other meta-analyses in criminology (see Pratt et al. 2014), could be addressed in future research through efforts to acquire the original data sets from authors or to obtain the statistical information necessary to facilitate meta-analyses that impose strictly comparable analytic models.
Challenges Moving Forward
In addressing these important areas of inquiry, scholars will confront several obstacles, perhaps the greatest of which involves data limitations. Although these limitations take several forms, the most problematic stem from an over-reliance on official crime data. Official crime data do not provide sufficient information to address many of the broader questions of interest to crime and immigration scholars.
For example, these data do not capture an individual's immigrant status (e.g., native born versus foreign born), which makes it all but impossible to ascertain the true distribution of criminals (and victims) who are immigrants, at least on a national scale. Some countries use nationality identifiers in their crime and justice system data, but many—including the United States—do not. As Tonry (1997, pp. 9–10) notes, this was not always the case: “Through the 1930s, U.S. and Canadian data often recorded nationality, but as ‘crime and the foreign born’ declined as a controversial political issue after large-scale immigration stopped in the mid-1920s, use of nationality identifiers stopped.” Official data collected by jurisdictions today thus virtually ignore differences in immigrant status (Reid et al. 2005), and, as a result, researchers are unable to ascertain from the data whether immigrants are perpetrators or victims of crime (Lee et al. 2001). Beyond this, this limitation renders impossible the task of identifying which groups contribute to reductions (or gains) in crime rates (Kubrin 2013). In line with our earlier discussion, this makes theory testing on the immigration-crime nexus challenging, as some arguments propose changes in immigrants’ behavior, some propose changes in natives’ behavior, and some propose changes in the behavior of both groups.
Also problematic, official crime data do not distinguish between documented and undocumented immigrants, obscuring an important distinction (Kubrin 2013). This limitation exists not only in official crime data but in all national data sets that researchers employ. Undocumented residents do, in fact, respond to government surveys such as the decennial census, but these surveys do not ask the foreign born about their (un)documented status. As a result, “…we lack reliable and accurate data about inflows and outflows of immigrants as a whole, much less along ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ dimensions” (Mears 2002, p. 285).
Exacerbating these data limitations is the issue of underreporting, which is a serious concern for those who study immigration and crime (Kubrin 2013, Trager & Kubrin 2014). Domestic violence, sexual assault, and gang violence constitute the bulk of crimes that go underreported among immigrants (Davis & Erez 1998). Reasons for underreporting include fear of becoming involved with the authorities, possible embarrassment to families, language difficulties, cultural differences in conceptions of justice, and lack of knowledge of the criminal justice system (Davis & Erez 1998). To truly advance research on the immigration-crime nexus, critical data limitations must be overcome, including incorporating information about nationality in official data collection efforts, further distinguishing between documented and undocumented status in the data, and addressing the problem of underreporting, especially with respect to immigrant victims.
These limitations and future directions aside, this review provides some much-needed clarity on what has become one of the most commonly debated questions today: Are immigration and crime related?
disclosure statement
The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.PAYDAY 2 Tournaments - design discussion
Hey heisters!
As a part of the Hype Train event, a tournament with a prize pool of 250,000$ was announced. We're happy to announce that we're partnering with DreamHack in creating tournaments in PAYDAY 2. We received a lot of feedback from the community that lead us to make the decision of splitting the prize pool into several events. This will allow more people to participate than having one event with a single prize pool. We will continiously improve and change the design the tournament format and we'll try different formats as we go along. We now invite the community to discuss this with us here.
Going forward, we'd like to hear what you guys think is the best format to compete in PAYDAY 2. What do you think would be a good tournament concept for PAYDAY 2? How would you like to compete in it?
Here are the events we have scheduled for so far:
DreamHack Winter, Jönköping Sweden. 26-29 November
DreamHack Moscow, Moscow Russia. 5-6 December - Moscow event cancelled by DreamHack, will be switched to antother event later in the year.
DreamHack Leipzig, Leipzig Germany. 22-24 January
DreamHack Austin, Austin USA. 6-8 May
Please note: We plan to have many more events than the four listed above.
More information about the first event will come soon.
Thanks!
AlmirOn This Day in History -
April 23, 1778
John Paul Jones attacks Whitehaven, England
On this day in history, April 23, 1778, John Paul Jones attacks Whitehaven, England, the only attack of the American Revolution on the British homeland and the first successful invasion of England in more than 700 years.
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John Paul Jones sailed from Brest, France on the USS Ranger on April 10, 1778, on a mission to harass British shipping. He first sailed to the Irish Sea and captured or sunk a few ships. Then he decided to make a bold attack on the city of Whitehaven, a major port he used to sail from as a boy (he was born in nearby Scotland).
Click to enlarge John Paul Jones by George Bagby Matthews
Click to enlarge John Paul Jones by George Bagby Matthews
On the evening of the 22nd, Jones sailed to Whitehaven with the intention of burning a gigantic fleet of over 400 merchant ships grounded in the harbor due to the low tide. The ships were stuck in low water and anchored very close together. A fire could easily be spread by the wind through the rigging of the ships and burn the entire fleet.
Jones put 30 men into two small boats and rowed toward the shore. Two forts guarded the entrance to the harbor. Jones' boat headed toward the southern fort, while the other ship headed to the northern fort. Each ship was supposed to capture its fort, then set the nearby ships ablaze.
Heavy winds caused the short journey to shore to last for hours. The sun was already coming up on the 23rd when Jones reached his fort. He quickly captured the small security force and began to spike the cannons to prevent them from being used against them on their retreat. He sent the others to burn the ships, but their only light had gone out and they were forced to get a light from a nearby house. The small force boarded the nearest ship, called the Thompson, captured its crew and set the ship on fire. The under parts of the ship were soon in flames and Jones' sailors threw "matches" made of canvas and sulphur onto other nearby ships.
Click to enlarge Attack on Whitehaven by Charles Waterhouse
Unfortunately, one of Jones' crew snuck off and warned the townspeople, who soon came running to put out the fire. Jones and his men escaped with several prisoners, but the townspeople were able to put out the fire on the Thompson before it spread to other ships. None of the "matches" thrown on the other ships successfully caught fire either.
When the other boat from the Ranger landed at the northern fort, the sailors went into a nearby pub and helped themselves to the liquor. By the time they came out, the sun was already shining and their light had also gone out. Rather than getting another light and trying to set the ships ablaze, they abandoned their mission and rowed back to the Ranger.
After both boats arrived back at the Ranger, Jones sailed to the opposite side of the small bay and landed at Kirkcudbright, Scotland where he hoped to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk. The Earl was gone, however, so he took the Earl's silver dishes right off the breakfast table of the Earl's wife, just to prove he was there.
The entire Whitehaven raid caused little damage to the British mainland in the end. It did, however, have a major impact on the British consciousness. Britons realized their island was not safe from attack and that their navy was not invincible. Great strides were made across England to strengthen harbor defenses and increase the size of local militia groups to deal with future attacks. John Paul Jones was celebrated in America after the attack, but excoriated as a villainous pirate in England. He would go on to perform other exploits in the war, including the taking of the HMS Serapis at the Battle of Flamborough Head, and be celebrated as one of America's greatest naval heroes.
Read what happened on other days in American history at our On This Day in History section here
This Week in History
Published 4/23/13
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Revolutionary War and Beyond HomeNorth Korean man executed for calling a friend in South Korea on mobile phone
A North Korean man has been executed by firing squad for calling a friend in South Korea on his mobile phone.
The brutal communist regime, which is technically at war with South Korea, has warned its 24 million population that any contact with the nation south of its borders is a crime punishable by life in prison or death.
News of those who have been caught and punished for making contact with the south rarely leaks out - because anyone disclosing information about punishment also risks imprisonment.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (C) visits the newly-built Kumjinggang Guchang Juvenile power plant. The country bans citizens from contacting the south
But a radio station in Seoul, South Korea, said it had learned that a man identified only as Jung has been executed after security officials raided his home and found a Chinese-manufactured mobile phone.
He was taken away and subjected to extreme torture, when he confessed that he had told a defector friend in South Korea about the harsh living conditions in the communist state.
He revealed that he had given his friend details of how people were struggling to live and had also passed on information about the price of rice.
The friend had defected to South Korea in 2001, according to the Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea, which has found a way of allowing individuals and private groups to broadcast to North Koreans through shortwave radio.
The station said Jung was a munitions worker living in the north east port of Hamhung.
Defected: Jung had rung a friend in South Korea on the mobile phone, which is illegal in the communist state, according to Open Radio for North Korea in Seoul
He is believed to be the first person to be shot since the capital, Pyongyang, tightened a crackdown on illegal mobile phones last month.
North Korea does allow mobile phones to be used, but they have to be registered and their range is limited to Pyongyang.
However Chinese mobile phones with pre-paid cards that make international calls possible have been distributed through the black market.
It is the owners of these phones who have been targeted by the country's secret police.
The execution of Jung is expected to be deliberately leaked by the regime as a warning to others who own similar phones.When it comes to planning manned missions to Mars, we’ve been so preoccupied with how to ferry humans 225 million km through the Solar System, that we might be missing a really serious problem - are we sending astronauts to the Red Planet to have their brains fried?
A new study based on mice has found that the amount of cosmic rays expected to bombard astronauts during this extended trip could lead to severe cognitive side effects that will stick around long after they’ve returned to Earth, including memory loss, anxiety, and chronic dementia.
The study follows similar research published last year that suggested the damage from galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) - particles with immensely high-energy radiation that travel through space at nearly the speed of light - can damage the brain, but only in the short-term.
Now researchers have evidence to suggest that even six months after returning from an extended spaceflight, astronauts could still be experiencing significant levels of brain inflammation and neuron damage.
"This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two-to-three-year round trip to Mars," said one of the team, Charles Limoli, a radiation oncology professor at the University of California, Irvine.
"Exposure to these particles can lead to a range of potential central nervous system complications that can occur during and persist long after actual space travel - such as various performance decrements, memory deficits, anxiety, depression, and impaired decision-making," he said.
"Many of these adverse consequences to cognition may continue and progress throughout life."
Just to put galactic cosmic rays into perspective, they're such a huge problem for long-term spaceflight because they can easily penetrate the hull of a spaceship, so you can imagine what they can do to a person's brain when they're penetrating it non-stop for weeks on end.
Astronauts in the International Space Station are protected from this kind of damage, because they're still protected by Earth's magnetosphere.
Limoli and his team tested the effects of cosmic radiation on mice that had been exposed to low doses at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory in New York. They were then given several behavioural tasks to complete 12 and 24 weeks after the irradiation period.
They found that the mice progressively displayed poor performance on tasks designed to test learning and memory in humans, and even appeared to affect the animals' 'fear extinction' - a decline in conditioned fear responses caused by the brain suppressing negative or stressful associations or memories.
The researchers suggested that the decline in fear extinction is what led to the elevated anxiety they recorded in the mice.
"These new data reveal additional detrimental effects related to fear extinction and anxiety, where charged particle irradiation compromises the ability to dissociate adverse events and outcomes," the team reports.
"The inability to moderate reactions to certain unpleasant stimuli could elicit elevated stress, anxiety and otherwise disadvantageous responses in unexpected or emergency situations."
Just like the results from last year's experiment, the mice had also slower response times, were forgetful, and sometimes even appeared to be confused - symptoms of the progression of chronic dementia.
Brain scans taken six months after exposure backed up these findings, revealing significant levels of brain inflammation and damage to neurons.
The researchers explain that the neural networks in the mouse brains were impaired through the reduction of structures called dendrites and spines on the neurons, which disrupts the transmission of signals among brain cells.
They linked this physical damage to the increase in cognitive impairments displayed by the mice after cosmic radiation exposure.
What's perhaps even more concerning is the fact that the researchers think the signs won't be so obvious in astronauts until about the six-month mark, which could be devastating for our prospects of colonisation.
Of course, we should reiterate that these effects have so far only been found in mice, and there's no guarantee that they will be replicated in humans.
But it wouldn't be such a surprise if something similar does befall the brave souls who volunteer to be on the first manned spacecraft to the Red Planet, because as astronaut Tim Peak recently said of his six-month stay on the International Space Station:
"[T]o be quite frank, you feel pretty terrible. It can only be described as something akin to the world’s worst hangover in terms of the everything that is going on in your head."
And Peak had the protection of Earth's magnetosphere that whole time.
It'll be a phenomenal achievement if scientists can figure out how to get us to Mars in mere days, but knowing how to protect our colonies from long-term space exposure will be even more impressive.
The research has been published in Scientific Reports.Party: Tim Vollmer, Joshua Hill, Kosta Seiler, Jeremie Rossy and Dave ‘Fritz’ Lee — photos
A couple years back, as I abseiled down beside the massive 150m waterfall at the start of Kanangra Main, I remember looking across to the other side at the dark, ominous slot. I didn’t know anything about the route, or what it involved, but peering into its shadowy depths I knew I’d like to experience it one day. So when Joshua said he was keen to finally visit Kanagra Main, The Slot immediately jumped to mind.
I asked Fritz about it, as he was only only member of the group who’d descended this route, and his reaction was nervous. He described the challenges — a slippery waterfall to access it, lots of loose rock, sharp edges, awkward abseils. His summary: it’s a trip you only do once. Despite that description (and the fact that when he’d done it one of the sharp rocks had sliced half way though his rope), he didn’t take long to talk around.
A bunch of SUBW folk — complete with two babies — had spent the Saturday out at Kanangra, so the rest of us joined them for a night around the campfire. In the morning Joshua, the last member of the group, arrived and we set off to our starting point. It was about 8.30am, which was a little later than we’d have liked, but conditions looked pretty good so we didn’t worry much.
The walk out was typically enjoyable, with pretty scrub, a friendly local snake who refused to budge from the track, and then stunning views over Kanangra Gorge. We scrambled down the loose scree to the bottom of a small waterfall where we put on our gear.
This is the point where the two routes separate. Just below us was the first anchor of the normal route, which takes you down beside the massive waterfall in three impressive pitches. Instead we made our way across the insanely slick, sloping wet rocks, on which any slip would almost certainly be fatal, and through a little patch of scrub to the top of The Slot.
Right from the start we could see things would be challenging. The anchor was deteriorated, and we needed to replace the slings, while the steep scree slope above us confirmed just how much jagged rock tumbles down this narrow crack. With the rope rigged, but not thrown, I descended to the lip where it was clear some serious gardening was in order. After kicking down a huge amount of rubbish the edge finally looked safe enough to descend.
With the ropes thrown it was over the edge. I don’t think I’ve ever been this careful on an abseil — even the slightest touch of the walls seemed to send small bits of rock tumbling down — so thankfully most of it was free-hanging.
At the bottom there was nowhere to hide from the falling rock. We ended up huddling against the most protected wall, chatting, trying to ignore the pinging sounds of pebbles ricocheting down the slot as the final people descended.
We set up a short handline off a fallen log, ignoring the fixed rope that is there due to the huge number of nicks and cuts in it from the constantly falling rocks. It took us down to a tiny ledge — only big enough for one person at a time — where there are some old bolts. These were covered by a shallow layer of fallen rocks, which I again kicked off, but thankfully the slings seemed to have avoided much damage. We only replaced one.
This abseil is even more awkward than the last, requiring you to lower yourself off the edge onto a small foothold before you even load the rope, which is a good test of faith. From here it is another stunning, free-hanging drop down the dark crevasse.
At the bottom I scrambled up and deeper into the slot, behind the ropes, allowing me to watch my fellow canyoners silhouetted, with the waterfall behind them and the walls of The Slot tight on either side. It was a truly amazing sight.
When it was Joshua’s turn, his delay coming down started to worry us. When he eventually reached the bottom it turned out he’d gotten tangled in the handline, and ended up inverting. Not an enviable position to be in! Thankfully he was able to right himself, and his whispered pleas for help from Kosta could simply become fodder to tease him with. In fact, if I had a dollar for every time the words “help me Kosta” where quietly called out over the course of the day I’d be a very wealthy man.
The next drop is either a long abseil in two parts, with a pool in between, or two separate drops. We wanted to try doing it in one go, but a test of the pull down quickly proved that it would be a recipe for stuck ropes.
Fritz set about replacing the next sling — also off bolts — while the rest of us shivered in the darkness, as the mist from the waterfall blew across us. Despite being so rugged up that he looked like he was planning an assault on Everest, Jeremie was probably the happiest to get down this drop and into the sunshine. There is something funny about it being a Swiss bloke who most felt the cold!
From here the two routes rejoin, but as anyone who has done Kanangra Main know, the excitement has only just begun. The creek continues to tumble down, with waterfall after waterfall. All up we did about a dozen abseils — four in the slot and about eight in the canyon below.
Each one was unique. The first small one came complete with its own little rainbow, while the next two-stage drop carried added solemnity thanks to the “Alexia” plaque — a reminder of the inherent dangers of canyoning. Anna Alexia Langbein, who was doing the canyon with a group of cavers, was just 17-year-old when she died after falling down this drop, apparently after failing to properly clip in to the rope.
Not all the drops were memorable just because of nature. At the short chockstone abseil someone has added a massive — and completely unnecessary — bolt setup.
The next short abseil took us to an impressive sunny ledge, high above an impressive part of the gorge, where we decided it was a good time for lunch.
The following abseil is another classic of this trip, and with a healthy flow of water and some gusty winds it was more exciting than usual, with the flow of water striking almost at random as we abseiled past it.
At the second last abseil we decided to make the throw easier by tossing the rope bag, which worked a treat (even if it did make an almighty boom as it hit the water). The one problem was that we’d forgotten that the end of the rope wasn’t tied to the bag, and the bag had sunk. Fritz, the somewhat-nervous owner of the bag swam out into the pool — which is quite deep in the middle — but thankfully the bag was shallow enough to be reached.
After the final abseil, into a great deep pool, there was a pause for a few water-jumps before the final creek bash to the exit.
It is the exit that I’d been least looking forward to. It isn’t called Murdering Gully for nothing, and my last trip up there had involved fighting off a small army of leeches.
Thankfully Fritz offered up a better alternative. He’d previously climbed the ridge just to the right of the gully, which runs up to the main lookout, and said it was much better.
Clearly we’re not the only ones who’ve had this thought, and there was a reasonable foot pad in places. The only downsides to this route — other than the steepness — is that there is a lot of loose rock. We tried to stick close, and tread carefully, so it wasn’t an issue.
The positive was the views. As we climbed we got regular glimpses of Kanangra Walls, glowing in the afternoon sun, and Thurat Spires towering on the other side.
Looking up, there did still appear to be a slight issue, with some impressive cliffs above us. Amazingly, only a slight amount of skirting to the left had us easily up and into the open forest, joining the main track just a couple hundred metres back from the lookout.
Here we found the rest of the SUBW crew, enjoying the impressive views following a much more relaxing day of bushwalking. All up it had only taken us a bit over 8 hours, which was pretty impressive given we hadn’t rushed, and the alternative exit definitely felt like it had shaved some time off the trip.
Back at the cars Joshua and Fritz both pulled out some celebratory home brew, which provided the perfect finish, before we set off for a well deserved pub dinner.
For anyone who hasn’t done this trip, I do have three pieces of advice: 1) Kanangra Main is an incredible canyon, well worth making a priority; 2) The Slot is incredible, but as Fritz had said, probably best done only once; and 3) Murdering Gully is for chumps. As long as you are a reasonable scrambler and route-finder, the ridge exit is by far the better option.Adam Schefter says Ezekiel Elliott suffered no significant injuries since being involved in a car accident, but Dallas is still treading lightly with the RB. (0:36)
FRISCO, Texas -- Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott missed his second straight day of organized team activities after being in a car accident Sunday.
The Cowboys said Elliott suffered a hit to the head in the "minor accident" and is being evaluated. Elliott is doing conditioning work off to the side, the team said.
Garrett said the team learned of Elliott's accident on Monday morning. He said the running back was coming back from a charity event Sunday night when the car in which he was riding was involved in the accident.
"When he came in on Monday he had some body stiffness and some neck stiffness, so we got him checked out," Garrett said. "We felt like it was the right thing to do to keep him out. He's done the dynamic warm-up over the last couple of days, but we kept him out of the practice portion of it."
Elliott, who led the NFL with 1,631 yards in 2016, will not practice Thursday, but Garrett said he expects his star running back to practice when the OTAs resume next Tuesday.
Running backs coach Gary Brown and offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said Elliott appears fine. During the early portion of practice, Elliott ran along the sidelines and returned to watch the final portion of 11-on-11 drills.
"He's fine," running backs coach Gary Brown said. "He's good. Everything's good."
The week before the Cowboys' playoff game against the Green Bay Packers in January, Elliott was involved in a minor accident on his way to the facility.
With Elliott not practicing, Darren McFadden took the first-team snaps.
Elliott's representatives declined comment.
The Cowboys opened up Phase 3 of their offseason program Monday and had their first 11-on-11 work Tuesday. The Cowboys hold their OTAs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for three weeks. The offseason concludes with a mandatory minicamp in June.Druid wars: How a drunken row over 4,000-year-old bones is causing chaos in pagan circles
Druid dispute: King Arthur Pendragon is mightily annoyed
The last time I met King Arthur Uther Pendragon — at a summer solstice ceremony at Stonehenge — he was staggering about blind drunk, sword in one hand, warm can of Stella in the other, his long white robes rather worse for wear.
He proudly told me that he had loads of children, but couldn’t remember exactly how many — ‘the King’s a bit of a tart, you see’ — and very thoughtfully invited me to join his harem if I ‘fancied a bit’. He then made a great show of pretending to grab my right breast.
So as I park on a stretch of muddy grass next to his very small and tatty caravan which overlooks the famous pagan site, I am a little nervous.
Not just because he’s a randy old lush, but because he has a pretty fearsome reputation as a self-styled warrior, political activist, new age militant, very enthusiastic demonstrator — he’s camped out here on some sort of protest about the Stonehenge Visitor Centre — and Battle chieftain of the Council of British Druid Orders, or COBDO.
Happily, this year, he’s sober (if very keen to get down the pub) and extraordinarily chatty, with a tendency to ramble.
‘I’m a spiritual warrior. I’m here to bang heads together to get everyone on the same side and I’m prepared to fight for what I believe in...
‘Like this huge row over the skeletons — don’t whatever you do listen to that other bunch of idiots who make up COBDO West. No one bothers with them, I’m Battle chieftain, I decide the policy and what I say goes — I think we should let those who lay at rest, stay at rest. You wouldn’t want someone digging up your grandma from the churchyard, would you?’
It’s difficult to know where to start...
The ‘skeletons’ are the 4,000-year-old remains of a young girl called ‘Charlie’ and seven other sets of prehistoric bones, excavated near the ancient stone circle in Avebury, Wiltshire, and now on display at the Alexander Keiller Museum in the village.
The ‘row’ concerns a small breakaway group of druids (known to some as COBDO West) who’ve requested the museum release the remains so they can rebury them where they came from. King Arthur and mainstream COBDO want the same thing — but are upset that COBDO West have taken matters into their own hands. ‘COBDO West are just a joke — three men and a dog, without even the dog,’ splutters King Arthur. ‘I’ve got thousands of members in my Arthurian War Band all round the world and loads more in the UK. I could field hundreds of activists at the drop of a hat. Bunch of idiots.’
Gosh. Silly me, I thought druids were just a bunch of tree-huggers who wore flowing robes, paid homage to the sun and were full of peace and love. I couldn’t be more wrong. Because the Council of British Druid Orders is at war.
Or, more accurately, a few key members are at war, after a punch-up in a pub and a horribly acrimonious split back in 2006.
Today, no one seems able to remember exactly what it was all about but for the past two years, they’ve been busy slinging mud, insults and the odd fist at each other.
The bones at the centre of the row were found at Stonehenge
On one side is my old friend King Arthur, an ex-soldier, ex-builder and ex-Hell’s Angel who changed his name by deed poll to King Arthur Uther Pendragon in 1976. He sports long grey locks, a big grizzly beard and a slew of tattoos.
On his ‘team’ are Rollo Maughfling, alias the Elder Arch Druid of Stonehenge, and his COBDO supporters.
On the other, the breakaway COBDO West, is Paul Davies, Druid Chief Reburials Officer, who lives on a narrow boat in Bath and started all this fuss about the skeletons, and the very hirsute Archdruid of Exmoor, who merely identifies himself as ‘Steve’.
The latter, now 53, is teetotal and claims King Arthur is a drunken, self-invented, aggressive fraud who has a nasty tendency to throw up in sacred circles and is a hazard with his faithful sword — ‘I’ve seen him wave it about when he’s p***ed and nearly decapitate people.’
‘A lot of people are embarrassed by it all — very embarrassed,’ says Emma Restall Orr, a druidic teacher and priestess from Warwick-shire. ‘They’re feisty, burly lads who are very much on the edge of druidism but are rowing in public and giving druids a bad name.’
And there are an awful lot of druids out there — according to Professor Ronald Hutton (a leading authority on paganism) there are more than 10,000 in the UK. There are countless cults, covens and orders, and with meetings (or moots) just as likely to be down the pub now as in a moonlit wood, this 9,000-year-old branch of paganism is becoming more and more mainstream.
Peacemaker: Terry Dobney, aka Chief Druid of Avebury, is calling for a Druid code of conduct
But the definition of druidism is also pretty vague. It has been described alternately as the ‘nature religion of Albion’; ‘the sacredness of the earth and nature and all living things’; and a ‘natural spiritualism’.
Terry Dobney has been a druid for 50 years and has been Chief Druid and Keeper of the Stones at Avebury for the past 11. He wears long white robes and an antler on his belt, clasps a hazel staff and has a rook’s feather in his cap.
‘Druids are supposed to have a balanced view and see both sides of the argument,’ he explains. ‘But there are some strong egotistical characters who need keeping in check. We’re drawing up a code of conduct for being a druid.
‘There are very few actual time-served druids. It takes a minimum of 21 years before you can call yourself a druid.’
According to Terry, it starts with a year and a day learning all the ceremonies with a mentor druid. The next seven practising what you’ve learned — ‘it’s an oral tradition, so you’re not supposed to write it down’. Seven more dressed in blue, getting a handle on the poetry and music. And, finally, the white robes and a political role.
Which, if you believe King Arthur as he sits nursing a pint of Strongbow in the pub with his girlfriend Kazz, 49, is where he is now.
‘I work out the political tactics for the druids. My order is the political arm. We’re the guys in white frocks, up the trees. We’re the ones trying to stop the Newbury by-pass.’
Hasn’t that been open for a few years?
‘Whatever — we’re at the sharp end. We’re the political arm of the whole spiritual movement.’
But it’s tricky to get a handle on what this lot actually believe in. Terry’s take |
we have fun together. He starts laughing at the most ridiculous sounds, and when everything is quiet he starts to cry. That's when we sit on the bed with propped pillows and I read to him in a very low and soothing tone. He calms down in no time and goes to sleep!"
— wajiha06
Wants more stimulation
A "demanding" baby may be outgoing and eager to see the world. And often the only way to stop the crying and fussing is to stay active. This can be exhausting for you!
Try wearing your baby facing out in a front carrier so he can see all the activity around him. Plan plenty of activities. Hang out with other parents with babies. Go on regular outings to kid-friendly places, such as your local playground, a children's museum, or the zoo.
"My 7-month-old wants constant activity going on around him. If I put him on the floor with his toys while I work on the computer, he fusses. He's happiest when I pop him in a baby carrier while I wash dishes, do laundry, and other housework. He's also especially peaceful in stores and other public places because he's so interested in and curious about the world."
— A BabyCenter member
Not feeling well
If you've met your baby's basic needs and comforted him and she's still crying, she could be coming down with something. You may want to check her temperature to rule out a fever and be alert for other signs of illness.
The cry of a sick baby tends to be distinct from one caused by hunger or frustration. If your baby's crying just doesn't sound "right," trust your instincts and call or see a doctor.
What to do if your baby's still crying
Full tummy? Check. Clean diaper? Check. No fever? Check. So why is your baby crying?
Babies have their own good reasons. But they don't have the words to tell us what's wrong, and even the wisest parents can't read their baby's mind. However, you can still comfort your baby, even if you don't know why he's upset. Find out what to do when your baby cries for "no reason."
Learn more:
The basics of baby schedules
What I wish I'd known about soothing a fussy baby
Pacifier pros and consImage from cleggster83
In what is not a terribly big surprise considering that they started shipping at the beginning of the week, free iPhone 4 bumpers have begun arriving into the hands of customers. As with the first wave of shipping notices, the arrivals appear to be limited to the UK for the time being, although customers in other countries who have received shipping notices can expect theirs to quickly follow.Recipients report that the bumpers come in the standard Apple packaging for the product. And while customers who ordered bumpers are beginning to see theirs arrive, those who opted for third-party cases through the free case program have still seen no sign of movement on their orders, with shipping estimates pushing out well beyond a month for many customers. Those customers should keep their eyes peeled, however, as orders for Apple bumpers similarly showed lengthy initial shipping estimates before suddenly beginning to ship earlier this week.When Radiohead first got together at their Oxford school, they named their band, “On A Friday” because they rehearsed on Fridays in the music room. After they were signed in 1991, they decided to change their name to the title of a song that was a band favorite, reggae tune called “Radio Head” off of the Talking Heads 1986 album True Stories.
That’s right another band with the word “head” in it…
The Talking Heads song “Radio Head” was track number 6 on the album.
The lyrics pretty much repeat the words “Radio Head” throughout. Check out the song below…
Transmitter!
Oh! picking up something good
Hey, radio head!
The sound…of a brand-new world.
Surprisingly, Radiohead’s debut album “Pablo Honey” took it’s title from a Jerky Boys skit. Click below to hear it…Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver wants to go from a one-man band in the B.C. legislature to something bigger, although he's been cautious in saying how many seats he'd like to see his party win.
Instead, he's talked about the momentum he's encountered on the campaign trail, the virtues of Green Party candidates and the Green Party platform.
That document includes measures to create a "green economy" as well as proposals related to education, health care and mental health and addictions.
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Costs are covered, too. The Green Party says it would balance the budget over a four-year mandate, using revenues from an increased carbon tax and other sources.
The Globe and Mail asked economists to weigh in on the plan.
The Green Party is "much more serious about environmental policy than the NDP or Liberals," said James Brander, a professor at UBC's Sauder School of Business.
Current research suggests environmental policies should incorporate a driving tax, a carbon tax and transit funding – all of which are covered in the Green Party platform, Prof. Brander says.
But he doesn't like other proposals outlined in the platform, such as half-price ferry fares for electric vehicles, saying such measures add unnecessary complication and are difficult to implement successfully.
(The reduced ferry fares are among "possible initiatives" the Green Party lists to promote choices with a lower-carbon footprint.)
Asked about whether the platform is fully costed, Prof. Brander noted that the party's proposals – like those of the Liberals and the NDP – are based on projections.
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"They are all made up and they are all optimistic – that is not a criticism of the Greens, that's true of all parties," he said.
The Green Party platform calls for covering increased expenditures through a number of actions, including personal and corporate taxes, a "tax shift," a carbon tax and tax-restructuring initiatives.
It is difficult to determine whether the additional revenues that would result from such sources could cover the programs outlined in the Green platform, Prof. Brander said.
Keith Head, also a professor at UBC's Sauder School of Business, singled out the Green Party's carbon-tax plan as the centrepiece of its platform.
"Economists have remarkably high agreement that the best way to fight climate change is for as many jurisdictions as possible to implement broad-based, gradually escalating carbon taxes," Prof. Head said in an e-mail.
"The Green Party platform very much embraces this approach. We see an end to the BC Liberals' freeze on the carbon tax and a series of $10-a-tonne increases. Also, categories of emissions that were not covered start being taxed," he added.
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"One can argue about how meaningful it is for B.C. to proceed alone in the fight against climate change. However, if that is the direction voters want to go, then doing it via carbon taxes is the best approach. It sends the right incentives to all economic actors and it also raises revenue that can be used to help pay for the Greens' aggressive plans to expand public transport," Prof. Head said.
During the campaign, parties have sparred over the costs of various programs and commitments.
The Liberal Party commissioned a report that looked at the NDP's platform. That report, released in April, found the "NDP fiscal plan embodies the same degree of prudence as the Liberal budget" but flagged several revenue-raising proposals – including a growing economy – as "questionable" and concluded that the NDP platform was "not financially viable."
The NDP dismissed the report, saying it was based on premises that were not part of the NDP platform.Thiruvananthapuram: A 9-year-old girl suffering from blood cancer has tested positive for HIV allegedly after getting a transfusion of infected blood, the police said Thursday.
The girl was being treated at the Medical College Hospital, Alappuzha, and Hospital from where she was referred to the Regional Cancer Center (RCC) here.
Noticing swelling in one of her eyes, the doctors there carried out various tests, including a blood test, which revealed she was HIV positive, the police said.
The girl's father said in his complaint that she contracted the dreaded disease after a blood transfusion, but the police said they were still investigating how she got infected.
Meanwhile, Health Minister K K Shylaja has sought an immediate report from the RCC Director on the matter.
Read more at: Latest in Kerala | Rain gods finally smile on Kerala, but wreak havoc in Idukki and KottayamCharleston, SC – There’s no doubt that Bobbie Rose was glad to hear the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act this morning. All one had to do is hear the first word out of her mouth after learning of it.
“Amen!” Rose says in response to the 5-4 ruling that upholds the Act, which she calls “one of the most important decisions the Supreme Court will make in our lifetimes.”
It’s a fantastic decision for three key reasons, says Rose, the Democratic candidate for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District: “First, we have an overwhelming number of citizens in our state who lack adequate healthcare. Second, that high number of uninsured is affecting others; the uninsured were adding to the coverage costs and medical expenses of those with insurance. Lastly,” she concludes, “our current representative’s effort to overturn this needed law has just been stopped.”
Offering details of those three points, Rose offers “One of out of every five citizens in South Carolina is without health insurance because they can’t afford it. This Act provides them with a needed avenue to receive the care they need at a cost they can afford.”
“Their lack of insurance has had fatal results, too,” Rose notes. “Every year, about 300 uninsured South Carolinians die from treatable causes, but are unable to afford treatments. Lack of insurance alone is their cause of death.”
Rose also notes the benefits of the Act to those who already have insurance. “No more ceiling on coverage, no more pre-existing exclusions,” she offers as examples.
She also points out another key benefit of ACA: without it, those with health coverage have been paying the medical bills of the uninsured directly through their own insurance premiums.
The amount uncollected by medical providers from uninsured patients is traditionally added to the bills of those with insurance, for a total annual increase of over $1,000 in individual insurance policy costs to families and employers.
The Act helps us with insurance save quite a lot more in a quite a few other ways, says Rose.
“Just so far in its implementation, it’s already saved senior citizens in our state over $60 million. And over a quarter-million South Carolinians already with private insurance will be getting rebates from their insurance companies this year, totaling almost $20 million back in their pockets.”
Had the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Act, the costs of insurance premiums were projected by experts to increase shortly after the decision. Even hospitals and medical offices would have a tax increase if the Act had been repealed, according to recent reports.
“While my third reason for supporting today’s decision is nowhere near as important as the first two,” Rose says, “I have to say I’m mighty glad to know that Representative Scott’s efforts to remove our right to affordable health care have just been stopped.
“He’s been trying to do this for quite a while, after all, even before the Act passed into law.”
While still a state representative in November 2009, Scott was the primary sponsor of two bills (H 4171 and H 4181) to block the use of the Act in South Carolina, and while it was still under debate in U.S. Congress.
After the Patient Protection & Affordable Health Care Acts passed in March 2010, Scott tried to block it again with a new bill (H 4825).
“He’s continued this fight against our rights to affordable health care since moving on to D.C., too,” says Rose.
Scott’s first bill to U.S. Congress was H.R. 698, which would “deauthorize and rescind funding” for the healthcare act.
“Maybe he forgot he’s no longer in the insurance business, and is supposed to be representing his constituents instead of his lobbyist donors,” Rose says.
Allstate Insurance Company, which Scott represented until winning the 2010 election, sells supplemental health insurance, which is supposed to help with medical costs that ordinary health insurance doesn’t cover. The Affordable Care Act can substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the need for this secondary format of insurance because of the Act’s removals of many policy limitations.
“Those insurance lobbyists are his biggest donors, too,” Rose quickly points out.
Over the last two election cycles, Scott’s received $164,125 in campaign donations from the insurance industry; over $100,000 was donated in this 2012 election cycle alone, making that industry Scott’s top current donor.
“Hopefully,” Roses adds, “Scott will stop spreading that ‘17,000 IRS agents’ falsehood, which was proven false long ago, but which he’s still telling his constituents.”
At a recent Town Hall meeting on May 23, Scott told attendees that the Affordable Care Act requires the IRS to hire 17,000 agents to enforce its law.
He made this claim in his last campaign, too. During a radio interview of August 2010, for example, he criticized the Act by stating it will “create 17,000 new bureaucrats in the IRS(.)”
However, that premise had been proven false five months before the 2010 interview.
In March 2010, a Republican report from the House Ways and Means Committee claimed that the Act would require the IRS to hire 16,500 “agents.” Less than two weeks later, the non-partisan FactCheck described the claim to be “wildly inaccurate” and “partisan.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact continues to label this claim to be of “pants on fire” invalidity, too.
“Now that this is a closed subject for him,” Rose says, “maybe he’ll start paying attention to this upcoming election!”
In conclusion, Rose adds, “Obamacare – fair, affordable healthcare for all Americans. Oh, happy day!”Carlton celebrate premiership success in 1995. But it has been slim pickings for the weakened superpowers of yesteryear with Carlton having not tasted the ultimate success since 1995. Next season their premiership drought will balloon to a club record-equalling 23 years. In 2018, Essendon will not have won a flag for 18 years, which will equal the second longest drought in their history. The Bombers have now gone the longest of any club without winning a final (13 years) after Richmond's incredible September this year. What was once one of the league's fiercest rivalries has become a shadow of its former self.
Bomber glory: Captain James Hird and coach Kevin Sheedy lift the 2000 AFL premiership cup. Credit:John French Sure, the two clubs and their supporters maintain a healthy dislike for each other, but it has become largely irrelevant in the context of the AFL. In recent years, Essendon and Carlton have resembled a couple of hobos fighting each other in the corner of a dingy bar room with none of the other patrons paying any attention to them. Their past six meetings have failed to attract a crowd of more than 60,000. Eleven of their previous 16 did. But is all of that about to change?
Having returned to the finals this year for the first time since the doping scandal crippled them for four seasons, Essendon's transformation from pariah to destination club has been dramatic. Already boasting one of the most exciting young lists in the competition, the Bombers have now added to the mix talented trio Devon Smith, Adam Saad and Jake Stringer. Given the Bombers already have a swag of senior regulars who are 24 or under in Joe Daniher, Zach Merrett, Orazio Fantasia, Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Andrew McGrath, Darcy Parish, Conor McKenna, James Stewart and Marty Gleeson, the additions of Smith, Saad and Stringer to that age bracket are daring the Essendon faithful to dream. Add established stars Michael Hurley, Cale Hooker, David Zaharakis, Dyson Heppell and Brendon Goddard and the Bombers could be quite formidable for the next few years. While Essendon have aggressively attacked the trade period to fast-track their development, Carlton have taken a more long-term approach with the national draft their major avenue to potential success.Hog rider stands so strong among the cards that the entire deck can win on his sole contribution. All he needs is a minor support for the distractions. He is a very fine balance of building targeting troop with good hit points and damage. As he attacks only the buildings all you need is light cards to distract opponent troops off his way. Once he reaches the tower there is no chance of escape.
Having no legendary card on your deck might sound scary but with Hog rider rolling the drums you just need basic cards on your side. The top 2 decks that gave me 12 wins are the center of this discussion. These low average elixir decks are possible only because the Hog rider is there so it can be planned without those legendary cards.
No Legendary Hog Rider Deck 1:
A Hog Rider with Elite Barbarian and two strong spells do I need to tell you how strong the deck is:
Hog Rider: A fast unit that does very good damage to the building it is actually a building attacker tank that moves fast. Being a high damage card it’s combined with high hitpoint Elite barbarians to ensure the attacks on the crown tower to clear it out. The zap and Goblin protect the hog rider from the troops who come in groups like the skeleton army or the minion hordes.
Cannon: It is actually deadly within a short range but no air attacks it can handle. Its so strong that it will take down the opponents Hog rider too. The Crown Tower protects the cannon by taking care of the air troops while the cannon would not let anyone budge near the Crown Tower.
Elite Barbarian : A harder and better pair of barbarians with high hit points and very high damage. You can split them on the two lanes to create pressure while the Hog Rider marches ahead. They do not get affected by the splash units. As they are very fast so the Hog rider and Elite Barbarian combo are the best to match up. When you can see your opponent is running low on elixir just push the Elite barbarians as they are quick, they reach fast and attack the tower in nick of the time. Just support them with goblins so that they can absorb the damage intended for low health Elite barbarians.
Goblin: Goblins are conjoined with the Hog rider to form what is called a “Pig Push”. You should drop the Goblin closest possible to Hog Rider they form a shield around him and save him from getting distracted by the troops. Goblins attack all other towers while the Hog rider makes concentrated power hits on the Crown Tower.
Ice Spirit: The Ice Spirit buys you more elixir and time as it slows the movement of troops with its Ice shards. It supports the push of Hog rider and Goblins by dealing the distractors. It reduces the attack speed of opponents significantly. Archer: Archers patch in where Goblins are weak as they are very resistant to spells. If you see the opponent has spell infested arena then in place of Goblins with Hog rider use the Archers. They can be split on both the lanes to create a split push so use them with the Elite Barbarian split.
Zap: A medium radius spell that can clear the entire skeleton army and stun its opponents building troops or unit for 0.5 seconds reducing any unit damage per second and speed.
Fireball: Use it to attack the building or troops that are low in health and the fireball will wipe them off entirely
Also Check out: Royale Gaint Deck
No Legendary Hog Rider Deck 2:
Did you notice the average elixir cost of the deck? It’s super cool with the elixir being so low. The Hog Rider ensures nothing goes off the way and you get a clean win. A dual icy deck having Ice Golem and Ice Wizard. The Ice Golem a death damager supports the Hog rider.
Hog Rider: A very fast unit that does good damage to the building it is actually a building attacker tank that moves fast. Being a high damage card it is combined with high hit point Elite barbarians to ensure the attacks on the crown tower to clear it out. The zap and Goblin protect the hog rider from swarms of troops like skeleton army or the minion hordes.
Cannon: A companion to Hog rider turns deadly when used for short-ranged attacks. The opponents Hog Rider also stands no chances in front of it. The Crown Tower will take care of the cannon by handling the air troops while the cannon being there near the Crown Tower nothing comes up.
Musketeer: This replaces the Archers of the above deck. They also support the Hog Rider and creates a deadly push to your opponents. It outranges the cannon and can support her well. Also, kills the opponent’s cannon.
Fireball: Use it to attack the building or troops that are low in health and the fireball will wipe them off entirely.
Ice Golem: A cheap mini tank that does area damage like the Golem. The death damage of Ice Golem helps the Hog rider as he gets more hits to do.
Ice Spirit: The Ice Spirit slows the movement of troops with its Ice shards so they give you more time to deploy stronger troops. It supports the push of Hog rider and Musketeer as he makes damage to approaching by dealing the distractors. It reduces the attack speed of opponents significantly.
Zap: A medium radius spell that can clear the entire skeleton army and stun its opponents building troops or unit for 0.5 seconds reducing any unit damage per second and speed.
Skeleton: These low elixir troops work as the distractors even for all the hit point cards. They take the damage and clears ways for your tanks.
The above two winning decks work too well to give you those desired wins without those legendary cards. Go ahead confident for that seamless win!!My entry for the BlizzCon 2011 Fan Art Contest.
It's a Demon Hunter from Diablo 3, fighting a couple of Fallen Ones.
After having a look at the other fan art in Blizzard's fan art gallery, I get the feeling I don't stand a chance, hah. But I'll never win if I don't at least try, right?
Oh, and about the throwing knives... They've got fire damage, so they're actually glowing hot metal, and not cheap plastic, believe it or not. I initially wanted to do some fire effects, but it got really messy really fast, and I opted for the glowing hotness instead. I honestly don't know if that was a better choice, but there you go.
Edit: Daily Deviation! That's cool! This is when I should be making the double-D boob joke, right?Google
It's hard being misunderstood.
Sometimes you have to ask yourself: "Is it these desperate ingrates who don't see my genius? Or might it be me?"
Why did this thought enter my troubled day? Oh, because Google has just released a guide to help its Explorers behave.
In the past, Google has been happy to let its pioneers do their thing. Now, after one or two got a pie in the ear, Google is keen to help the nerds assimilate with the world as it sadly is.
The guide is a series of dos and don'ts. Naturally, the don'ts are more interesting.
The first seems something of a reaction to fears that prolonged use of the device might not be wise. Last week, Google Glass enthusiast Chris Barrett told me how he'd experienced severe headaches when he wore it for any length of time.
The first of Google's new don'ts tells users not to "Glass-Out." It explains: "Glass was built for short bursts of information and interactions that allow you to quickly get back to doing the other things you love."
And "things you love" shouldn't include eight hours of creepy photography.
Still, this guide doesn't mention health reasons. Rather: "If you find yourself staring off into the prism for long periods of time you're probably looking pretty weird to the people around you."
As if you don't already look pretty weird to the people around you.
While it's helpful of Google's guide to remind people not to wear Glass when playing contact sports, it's clear the company is most concerned about social reaction.
Its third don't reminds Explorers that they will, indeed, be stared at and begs them to be polite.
The last don't seems like the most significant. Don't "be creepy or rude (aka, a "Glasshole")."
This might remind the owners of the Lost Lake Cafe in Seattle of the customer who didn't appreciate being asked to take his device off and the fuss that ensued.
Not only was he asked to leave, but the restaurant then described him and his kind as "man children stinkin up the joint."
Google seems concerned that Glassholes are stinkin' up the company's hopefully addictive joint. As the guide explains: "Breaking the rules or being rude will not get businesses excited about Glass and will ruin it for other Explorers."
What next? Google Glass Finishing School For Nerds?While many continue to greet Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican party with hysteria, confused as to why anyone could support him, what I find even more puzzling is why any alleged conservative continues to breathe life into the senseless “Never Trump” movement.
As conservative editor Bill Kristol continues to waste time flipping through the phone book dialing up anyone who will answer to run against Trump, and as conservative columnist George Will eagerly attempts to generate headlines with his melodramatic announcement that he’s leaving the Republican party over Trump. I wonder if either of these allegedly intelligent thinkers, or if any of the supposedly principled “Never-Trumpers,” actually understand what it means to truly be a conservative. Let me politely enlighten Mr. Kristol and Mr. Will about one of the basic foundations of the political philosophy for which they both claim to pledge loyalty: free markets.
Conservatives believe that individuals should be empowered and given the freedom to make their own choices, and guess what, the people have spoken. And in this case, the Republican primary voters have chosen Trump as the Republican party’s nominee. It’s such a simple and obvious point that it seems insane it even needs to be defended, but Trump competed fairly in the free market of ideas and won. Be angry at Trump the individual all you want, but any attempts to deny the movement behind him their chosen nominee or efforts to sabotage the party’s chances in the general election are entirely anti-conservative in their implied need for individuals to be saved from their own foolish decisions.
Since the will of the people is not enough to convince these Sore-Losers… ahem, I mean, Never-Trumpers, to silence their futile protests, then let me offer some more conservative reasons that should. The most apparent, repeated, and true reason is that conservatives who refuse to unify behind the Republican party’s standard-bearer will in effect strengthen Hillary Clinton’s prospects of moving into the White House. And although Kristol and Will unjustifiably seem to think sacrificing the Presidency for just four more years and extending the Obama legacy is no big deal, what is undisputed is that with Hillary as Commander-in-Chief, the Supreme Court would be guaranteed to be lost to the progressive movement for a generation. Despite how unpalatable Trump might be, no serious conservative would prioritize their own ideals for what they believe the Republican party should be, ahead of the realistic result of what the country will be under the direction of a liberal President.
Furthermore, the search for the “ideal” Republican candidate is a quaint idea, but idealism is not a philosophy often associated with the more pragmatic principles of conservatism. And given that both Mitt Romney and John McCain, the most recent Republican candidates for President, weren’t accused by anyone of being an ideal candidate, let alone a truly conservative one (see: RomneyCare or McCain-Feingold, just to start with the anti-conservative issues that bear each candidate’s name), it seems unwarranted that Trump, and his set of beliefs antithetical to conservative orthodoxy, are a bridge too far for Never-Trumpers to cross. Especially when there were so many “Anyone-But-Romney” and “Anyone-But-McCain” Republicans who eventually swallowed their complaints and begrudgingly supported both when each became the nominee.
If for some reason, though, Kristol and Will believe Trump poses such a unique threat to America and to the Republican party’s legacy, then one final and admittedly simple point should have put them at ease long ago. Trump is not running for dictator, but instead for President of a country with a strong system of separation of powers and checks and balances in place. The Republican party that Will foolishly and haphazardly abandoned will, at all times, be in Congress to reign in any of Trump’s outlandish proposals.
Therefore, all “Never-Trumpers” should take a deep breath and realize that whether Trump wins or loses in November, there will be no long-term damage done to the Republican party that cannot be undone by a future charismatic candidate. Voters are more intelligent than Will and Kristol assume and can distinguish Trump from being a typical Republican. In fact, the only permanent damage I see is to that of the reputation of Will, Kristol, or any “typical” Republican threatening to protect the purity of “their” Republican party by withholding their support of Trump. And since their narcissistic view has blinded them to the fact that the party belongs not to them and their ideals, but instead to the voters and the voters’ priorities, I have two words for them upon their graceless exit from support of the GOP nominee: “Good Riddance!”
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.NYPD brass sent around a mayoral directive Tuesday to keep ICE agents off school grounds unless they have a “valid” warrant — one day after the US attorney general threatened to cancel funding for local governments that harbor illegal immigrants.
The move came despite Mayor de Blasio’s recent admission that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have never once tried to enter a city school.
An NYPD “Administrative Bulletin” sent to top brass — and obtained by The Post — says “non-local law enforcement officers” from agencies such as ICE or the FBI “will not be permitted to proceed” past the front desk without a warrant.
And even if the feds produce paperwork, cops must confer with NYPD lawyers to ensure it’s legit, according to the directive.
The memo, authorized by Chief of Department Carlos Gomez, says a precinct patrol supervisor should respond to make sure the mayor’s orders are carried out.
In addition, a commanding officer, executive officer or duty captain should be called to the scene “if there is a disagreement between a principal and non-local law enforcement officer regarding access to the school or an officer insists/demands access.”
When de Blasio last week announced his plan to keep the keep the feds out of city schools, he said: “I know it sounds outlandish, but we are seeing things we have not seen before, and there is a tremendous amount of fear out there.”
An NYPD source called the policy “ridiculous,” noting that “federal law supersedes the city.”
“We work with law enforcement. That’s our job,” the source said.
“We’re supposed to work together..”
The head of the union that represents school safety agents said he had yet to be formally notified about de Blaiso’s directive, “probably because I would have told him the opposite of what he wants to do.”
Teamsters Local 237 President Greg Floyd said “ this comes down to the mayor posturing,” but also said he was worried his members were being placed “in a no-win situation.”
“If they try to resist ICE they may be arrested,” he said.
“The other side of the coin is if they don’t keep ICE from coming in the schools without the proper paperwork the mayor wants now, they face disciplinary action.”
On Monday, Sessions said the Justice Department would withold funding — and “claw back” cash that’ s already been doled out — from cities and states that give sanctuary to illegal aliens.
New York City agencies and non-governmental organizations received more than $40 million in grants during fiscal 2016, records show.
ICE said it currently prohibits agents from entering schools, hospitals or houses of worship “unless they have prior approval from an appropriate supervisory official or in the event of exigent circumstances.”
Department of Education spokeswoman Toya Holness called Floyd’s comments “flat-out wrong” and said that “our focus is on keeping students safe, and in response to concerns from families, we shared clear guidelines on our protocol so that schools could be prepared should a situation arise.”
Additional reporting by Shawn CohenTim Gibson’s murder mystery Moth City is a genre-spanning digital comic that draws from the Western, Kung Fu, zombies and historical fiction. The slippery ink line work and muted palette is combined with an instinctual approach to digital-native comics creation, made of hundreds of swipes per issue, animating and exposing sections of the page. The New Zealander, whose tale is based in a place similar to 1930s Hong Kong, joins us today to preview his latest issue.
Clay N. Ferno: Hi, Tim. Moth City returns to ComiXology today. When we last spoke in June, you said you wrote this first as a narrative piece. Issue #6 is bringing all of the story lines to a head. Is the pacing on point to end at issue #8?
Tim Gibson: Yes, the story is definitely ramping up. A lot of the characters are reaching breaking point, having already made some decisions that they can’t come back from. The last few pages of Issue #6 imply that the characters are going to be coming back together again. Last time they were in close proximity, a man got his throat cut. This time there’s a heck of a lot more teetering on the edge. Issues 7 and 8 are going to play that out, and not many characters are going to be happy with the result (evil grin).
Going through the issues, almost each added a new twist or an entirely new genre to the book. Can we expect genre exploration in the home stretch?
We’ve had mystery and crime/detective, a bit of thriller, some horror, this issue has some Western tones with the showdown on the roof, so yeah, it’s a nice little gumbo. The story dictates a lot of conflict and drama to wrap it all up so the remaining issues are moving towards all-in action. Which is great because previously we’ve only had moments interspersed here and there.
This issue was particularly gory! Were these scenes fun and appealing or difficult to draw?
You’re right, 6 is a gory issue. I’m not a big fan of hospitals, and I had a particularly unsettling appendectomy carried out in India a few years back that influenced those scenes. So I guess the artist in me had fun drawing all the gore, and the human in me was uneasy, which is probably a good combination for making comics.
It seems choices from major characters are being made fast and loose. Is this because of a sense of urgency or impetuousness?
There’s a lot of pressure on these characters now, so some of them are definitely pushing on and damn the consequences. McCaw in particular makes some big calls this issue (not helped by copious amounts of whiskey), and Shuang’s impending birth is obviously pushing her and Jun into taking some action in a dangerous environment.
With the support of Thrillbent and social media and your funding, you’ve been able to promote the book in different ways. This was the first issue I’ve read on an iPad. What have you learned about digital comics from Issue #1 until now?
Digital comics are great on tablets aren’t they? Best business expense I ever had, that iPad of mine. What have I learned — that digital comics take a lot of work.
I had two options for Moth City: One, don’t tell anybody and quietly work on it until it’s finished (no webcomic, no ComiXology issues, no reviews, etc.), or Two, do the work and the release at the same time. Obviously I went with Two. I think it was the right decision, but heck, you can see why mainstream comics normally have art teams, writers and editorial, support staff and marketing people.
After Moth City, what next is on the horizon? A sequel … or something really different?
I’m doing some work on a really amazing WWI animation project at the moment. It really drops you into the minds and situations of New Zealand’s soldiers 100 years ago. I’m doing the art and the writing for that, so it has a lot of my comic stylings in there, but a very different aesthetic. I think people will dig it. I want to convince the producers that we could repurpose the art into an e-book or comic format, but we’ll see.
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For more on Moth City, Gibson also has a Twitter feed.
Clay N. Ferno is @ClayNFerno on Twitter and writes Comics At Earth Prime Time for DigBoston. He can also be found at LeaguePodcast.com.The Baltimore riot of 1861 (also called the "Pratt Street Riots" and the "Pratt Street Massacre") was a civil conflict on Friday, April 19, 1861, on Pratt Street, in Baltimore, Maryland, between antiwar "Copperhead" Democrats (the largest party in Maryland) and other Southern/Confederate sympathizers on one side, and members of the primarily Massachusetts and some Pennsylvania state militia regiments en route to the national capital at Washington called up for federal service, on the other. The fighting began at the President Street Station, spreading throughout President Street and subsequently to Howard Street, where it ended at the Camden Street Station. The riot produced the first deaths by hostile action in the American Civil War and is nicknamed the "First Bloodshed of the Civil War".[1]
Background [ edit ]
In 1861, most Baltimoreans were anti-war, and did not support a violent conflict with their southern neighbors.[citation needed] Many sympathized passionately with the Southern cause. In the previous year's presidential election, Abraham Lincoln had received only 1,100 of more than 30,000 votes cast in the city.[2] Lincoln's opponents were infuriated (and supporters disappointed) when the president-elect, fearing an infamous rumored assassination plot, traveled secretly through the city in the middle of the night on a different railroad protected by a few aides and detectives including the soon-to-be famous Allan Pinkerton in February en route to his inauguration (then constitutionally scheduled for March 4) in Washington, D.C. The city was also home to the country's largest population (25,000) of free African Americans, as well as many white abolitionists and supporters of the Union.[3] As the war began, the city's divided loyalties created tension.[4] Supporters of se |
motoring along.''
The Mets attract a lot of attention because of the high-profile players they've lost to injury. According to Nathan Currier of ManGamesLost.com, the Rangers and Mets lost more wins above replacement to the DL than any other teams between 2010 and 2016. Only the Rangers lost a higher percentage of their payroll to the disabled list during that period.
Team payroll lost to DL (2011-2016) Team Payroll DL days DL dollars % of salary on the DL Texas Rangers $619.5 million 8,365 $179.5 million 29.0% New York Mets $652.4 million 6,561 $160.5 million 24.6% Cincinnati Reds $465.1 million 5,620 $105.5 million 22.7% Los Angeles Dodgers $1.19 billion 8,466 $258.5 million 21.7% St. Louis Cardinals $716.5 million 5,367 $147.5 million 20.6% Philadelphia Phillies $910.9 million 5,776 $182.9 million 20.1% New York Yankees $1.08 billion 7,777 $218.1 million 20.0% San Diego Padres $468.1 million 8,111 $90.7 million 19.4% San Francisco Giants $880.8 million 5,026 $160.7 million 18.2% Boston Red Sox $1.032 billion 6,700 $183.4 million 17.8% Sources: Cot's Baseball Contracts, Man-Games Lost and Major League Baseball
Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight's Rob Arthur used a different set of calculations and determined that the Dodgers lead the majors with 42.8 games in WAR to injury from 2010 to 2017, and the Mets are eighth at 32.8.
The damage varies from year to year. In 2014, the Mets lost 426 games to the DL. They fired strength and conditioning coach Jim Malone and named Barwis as their new senior adviser for strength and conditioning, a position he still holds today, and their DL days more than tripled from 426 to a National League-high 1,332 in 2015 before dipping to 886 in 2016.
Through the end of the past week, the Mets had amassed a total of 179 games lost to the 10-day disabled list this season, according to ManGamesLost.com's weekly report. That total was the fifth highest in baseball behind the Dodgers, Rockies, Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels.
The Mets' most effective hitter since joining the team in 2015, Yoenis Cespedes has been on the disabled list with a hamstring injury since April 27. AP Photo/Laurence Kesterson
A PHILADELPHIA NATIVE, Barwis made a name for himself as strength and conditioning coach for Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia and Michigan before his college football ties led him to the Mets. Fred Wilpon, the Mets' chairman of the board, is a devoted Michigan alumnus. According to a 2014 New York Times story, his son Jeff met Barwis on the sidelines during a Michigan football practice in 2008. The two struck up a friendship, and Barwis joined the Mets as a consultant in 2011.
Barwis has a big personality. His personal pep talks are long on motivation, and he has been at the forefront of the use of "neuropriming'' headphones that stimulate the part of the brain responsible for muscle movement. In 2014, Barwis attained a heightened profile by training Seattle Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman and other football players on a show called "American Muscle'' that aired on the Discovery Channel.
"I think Mike does a good job of training athletes -- especially football, because that's his background'' said an industry associate who asked to speak on the condition of anonymity. "But that doesn't mean it always translates to baseball.''
Within the strength and conditioning community, Barwis is a lightning rod because of some of his methods and his unorthodox arrangement with the Mets. In the winter of 2014-15, a mini-controversy erupted amid reports that Mets players were required to pay to work out at Barwis' facility in Florida. While the Mets insisted that players were under no pressure to use Barwis' gym and the money went toward his rent rather than into the team's pocket, some professionals questioned the appropriateness of the arrangement.
"It's an unusual setup, to be sure, but I'm not against it just because it's different,'' Carroll said. "My question would be whether it's effective. I actually think baseball should do a lot more experimentation, but it all comes down to results. When those aren't there, everything else has to be questioned. I think the Mets have to be at that point now."
Barwis has a flair for showmanship that some of his peers find off-putting. In one segment of his show "American Muscle,'' former big-leaguer Nick Swisher emerges from a garage, stands in the snow and flings a beer keg more than 12 feet. The camera then shifts to Barwis, who observes that Swisher has been having difficulty hitting because he's not properly loading with his hips.
Even strength and conditioning professionals who are loath to critique their peers look askance at that particular video.
"I am unaware that visual inspection of a keg toss has ever been shown as a valid tool to comment and intervene upon a major league baseball player's swing,'' Dr. Charlie Weingroff, a physical therapist who has worked extensively with NBA teams, said in an email. "Using a more ergonomically efficient tool like a [medicine ball], sandbell, discus, shot put, even a hammer could provide a much safer environment to train rotary power.''
Boyle, who has worked in the field at the professional, collegiate and Olympic levels since the 1980s, was similarly taken aback by the sight of Swisher throwing a keg in the snow amid freezing temperatures.
"If you look at the techniques you see in 'American Muscle,' they're unusual for baseball players,'' Boyle said, "and some of them might not be safe with multimillion-dollar athletes. I don't know Mike Barwis. I haven't met him. But the internet videos do not paint a real flattering picture.''
Barwis was unavailable for comment for this story, but several people in the Mets organization say there's a different, more caring and committed side to him beyond the self-promotional side displayed in his videos. Barwis works with disabled children at his Florida facility and was active in helping Al Jackson after the former Mets pitcher suffered a stroke in 2015.
"We don't rely on Mike for hitting mechanics,'' Alderson said. "We do rely on Mike for the physiology of the relationship between the hips, the back, the shoulders, etc., etc. Those are all kinetically connected.
"Mike is one of the best additions we've made the last two to three years. There's always somebody on the outside who's going to bitch and moan about somebody on the inside because they don't like the fact he's new. You can talk to our old strength and conditioning coaches, and they're good guys. But my guess is they're going to have something nasty to say about Barwis or the current people we have here. That's the way things are.''
When Jeurys Familia was placed on the disabled list on May 13, it left the Mets without their Opening Day starter, their best hitter and their closer. Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports
THE METS ARE navigating the same changing landscape as teams in all professional sports. Baseball has been especially challenged to come to grips with the strength and conditioning surge, which keeps pushing players to be stronger and faster in ways that can test their physiological limits.
Syndergaard's winter workout regimen produced considerable second-guessing. While he claims to have added 17 pounds of muscle, the Mets said he actually reported to spring training a mere 3 pounds heavier than the previous season.
The hysteria went up several notches when Syndergaard passed on a request to undergo a precautionary MRI three weeks ago. On April 30, he threw 34 pitches in a 23-5 loss to the Washington Nationals before departing with a lat injury.
Could the Mets have taken a harder stance and told Syndergaard he wouldn't be allowed to pitch unless he consented to the test?
"That's a fair question to ask,'' Alderson said. "It mirrors a statement that I made to Noah himself. I said, 'OK, if you don't want the MRI, we'll decide when you pitch next.' Then we had him pitch a side session, and his symptoms had diminished, and we allowed him to pitch.
"Some people think this got to be a confrontation, and it really wasn't. In retrospect, it would have been nice to have the MRI. Would that have shown the lat was subject to a potential tear? We'll never know. Any time there's an injury, you can go back and second-guess everything. We try to go back and see if there needs to be some systemic change in what we're doing. That certainly has happened over the last few weeks.''
As the disabled list stints by Syndergaard and Cespedes drag on, it's only natural to ask how much responsibility players assume for their individual training regimens. Was it admirable for Syndergaard and Cespedes to keep pushing when they might have been better served taking a step back and admitting they weren't 100 percent? And what's the balance between teams babysitting players and giving them the latitude to train their own way?
"It's all suggestions,'' Mets outfielder Jay Bruce said. "Nobody's putting a gun to your head. In the offseason, I semi-follow what the team says. But I have my own work regimen that I've built for 10-12 years now. It's a team sport, but there's so much individuality that it's tough to put anything on one person or one way of doing things.''
If Wilpon, Alderson and the Mets decide to take a comprehensive look at their operation and make changes, they have plenty of examples to follow. In 2013, Baltimore Orioles vice president of baseball operations Brady Anderson oversaw what the team described as a shift in their strength and conditioning "culture." Later that year, the Yankees made some sweeping changes in response to a disappointing season. Two years ago, the Nationals overhauled their own medical structure after an injury-filled season.
In recent years, the Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates are among the teams that have hired directors of performance or sports scientists to help facilitate the flow of information between departments. Alderson said the Mets are exploring that possibility.
"Having a director of performance sciences is a relatively new idea that's been adopted by a handful of teams,'' Alderson said. "It makes sense to have someone who coordinates all of the various training and rehabilitation disciplines. That's something we certainly are looking at on an ongoing basis and may be considering in the future. In the meantime, that coordination is being done with the personnel we have, and I feel that coordination has worked well.''
In Weingroff's experience with NBA teams and Canada's national basketball team, successful franchises devise strategies that account for six variables: medical treatment, fitness, sleep, nutrition, psychology and load management, which gauges how much strain athletes can handle as they recover from injury. For an NBA player, that might mean minutes in a game. For a pitcher, it could mean a preordained number of pitches.
"The teams that do this well have a staff that acts as a single organism, that asks the right questions and finds the solutions,'' Weingroff said. "There are ways of measuring the fatigue or readiness of the body on a daily basis, and that's how we predict things. If the sum of the parts is going to be greater than the whole, everybody has to think in a similar way.''
Similarly, when the process breaks down, it's beyond the power of a single person to correct.
"You can have the best people in place and they can all be doing the right thing,'' Carroll said. "But if you're not all rowing in the same direction, you're just going to get conflicting information and do the wrong things. Until you're on the same page, you're going to waste the effort and hurt the players.''
The Mets' 2017 season is in jeopardy, in part, because of the damage they've suffered through injuries to their best pitcher, hitter and closer. Will they attribute the loss of Syndergaard, Cespedes and now Familia to more bad luck, or use the setbacks as motivation to take an exhaustive look at their operation? If they want to come up with the right answers, they might have to start asking themselves some more probing questions.A new installment in the Paranormal Activity series opens this fall, and the first images from Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension are now online. The film is called the “final installment” of the series, and promises to close the book on the story begun in 2009.
You read that right. This is, for now at least, the last Paranormal Activity film. “We made this movie like it’s the end of this Paranormal line for sure,” says Jason Blum. And that title promises quite a few revelations.
USA Today has the images, and quotes producer Jason Blum saying,
It’s coming to an end. This is it, the finale. We’re saying it before the movie opens. We’re not going to grind this horror franchise into the ground. This will keep Paranormal Activity as part of this culture and this particular time in a really fantastic way… All the questions that everyone has asked from the past ‘Paranormal Activity’ films: What does Toby look like? What’s the backstory to the families? These questions have been teased out. Now they will be answered.
Yeah, they’re going to show Toby this time. Oh, and the film will be released with 3D used for parts of the movie, but not all. (See the synopsis below.)
Will this really be the last one? Plenty of other horror series have trotted out “final” chapters only to later continue with many more installments. (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter effectively turned the concept of declaring an end into a joke. That was the fourth film, and six more followed, not counting a spin-off and reboot.) Blum is saying this is it. We’ll see how long that holds.
Here are the images.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension opens on October 23. Gregory Plotkin directed from a script by Adam Robitel and Gavin Heffernan.ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You wouldn’t think that mechanical force — the simple kind used to eject unruly patrons from bars, shoe a horse or emboss the raised numerals on credit cards — could process nanoparticles more subtly than the most advanced chemistry.
Yet, in a recent paper in Nature Communications, Sandia National Laboratories researcher Hongyou Fan and colleagues appear to have achieved a start toward that end.
Their newly patented and original method uses simple pressure — a kind of high-tech embossing — to produce finer and cleaner results in forming silver nanostructures than do chemical methods, which are not only inflexible in their results but leave harmful byproducts to dispose of.
Fan calls his approach “a simple stress-based fabrication method” that, when applied to nanoparticle arrays, forms new nanostructures with tunable properties.
“There is a great potential market for this technology,” he said. “It can be readily and directly integrated into current industrial manufacturing lines without creating new expensive and specialized equipment.”
Said Sandia co-author Paul Clem, “This is a foundational method that should enable a variety of devices, including flexible electronics such as antennas, chemical sensors and strain detectors.” It also would produce transparent electrodes for solar cells and organic light-emitting diodes, Clem said.
The method was inspired by industrial embossing processes in which a patterned mask is applied with high external pressure to create patterns in the substrate, Fan said. “In our technology, two diamond anvils were used to sandwich nanoparticulate thin films. This external stress manually induced transitions in the film that synthesized new materials,” he said.
The pressure, delivered by two diamond plates tightened by four screws to any controlled setting, shepherds silver nanospheres into any desired volume. Propinquity creates conditions that produce nanorods, nanowires and nanosheets at chosen thicknesses and lengths rather than the one-size-fits-all output of a chemical process, with no environmentally harmful residues.
While experiments reported in the paper were performed with silver — the most desirable metal because it is the most conductive, stable and optically interesting and becomes transparent at certain pressures — the method also has been shown to work with gold, platinum and other metallic nanoparticles
Clem said the researchers are now starting to work with semiconductors.
Bill Hammetter, manager of Sandia’s Advanced Materials Laboratory, said, “Hongyou has discovered a way to build one structure into another structure — a capability we don’t have now at the nanolevel. Eight or nine gigapascal —the amount of pressure at which phase change and new materials occur — are not difficult to reach. Any industry that has embossing equipment could lay a film of silver on a piece of paper, build a conductive pattern, then remove the extraneous material and be left with the pattern. A coating of nanoparticles that can build into another structure has a certain functionality we don’t have right now. It’s a discovery that hasn’t been commercialized, but could be done today with the same equipment used by anyone who makes credit cards.”
The method can be used to configure new types of materials. For example, under pressure, the dimensions of ordered three-dimensional nanoparticle arrays shrink. By fabricating a structure in which the sandwiching walls permanently provide that pressure, the nanoparticle array will remain at a constant state, able to transmit light and electricity with specific characteristics. This pressure-regulated fine-tuning of particle separation enables controlled investigation of distance-dependent optical and electrical phenomena.
At even higher pressures, nanoparticles are forced to sinter, or bond, forming new classes of chemically and mechanically stable nanostructures that no longer need restraining surfaces. These cannot be manufactured using current chemical methods.
Depending on the size, composition and phase orientation of the initial nanoparticle arrays, a variety of nanostructures or nanocomposites and 3-D interconnected networks are achievable.
The stress-induced synthesis processes are simple and clean. No thermal processing or further purification is needed to remove reaction byproducts.
This work was funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Other authors of the paper are from Cornell University and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.
Sandia news media contact: Neal Singer, nsinger@sandia.gov, (505) 845-7078Targem Games and Gaijin Entertainment have announced that the duo will launch their post-apocalyptic free-to-play action MMOG Crossout on May 30th, 2017 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Crossout is set in 2047 after a mysterious viral epidemic known as the ‘Crossout’ has laid waste to most of the population on Earth. The road warriors that survived must now battle for precious resources using deadly vehicles crafted from millions of possible permutations (body shape, armor, weapons, support systems and cosmetic enhancements).
“Crossout blends high-octane MMO gameplay with the unique ability to customize vehicles. In the Closed Beta, our players have crafted vehicles we never imagined possible, terrifying in design and deadly in their execution," said Stanislav Skorb, CEO, Targem Games. "They have designed hundreds of thousands of never before seen machines, and more than 65,000 of them have issued blueprints for road warriors to emulate. We cannot wait to see what they craft when we launch the game on PC and consoles."
The game will launch on Xbox One on May 30th, and will be free-to-play.This article is about the animal. For the disease known as crab lice, see Pediculosis pubis
The crab louse or pubic louse (Pthirus pubis) is an insect that is an obligate ectoparasite of humans, feeding exclusively on blood.[1] The crab louse usually is found in the person's pubic hair. Although the louse cannot jump, it can also live in other areas of the body that are covered with coarse hair, such as the eyelashes.[2][3] It is of the order Psocodea.
Humans are the only known hosts of the crab louse, although a closely related species, Pthirus gorillae, infects gorilla populations. The human parasite diverged from Pthirus gorillae approximately 3.3 million years ago.[4] It is more distantly related to the genus Pediculus, which contains the human head and body lice and a louse that affects chimpanzees and bonobos.
Naming
Infestation with crab lice is also called phthiriasis or phthiriasis pubis. The disease (like the name of the order to which the louse belongs, Phthiraptera) is spelled with phth, but the scientific name of the louse, Pthirus pubis, is spelled with pth, despite this being based on a misspelling that was nevertheless fixed as the official spelling in 1958.[5]
Description
An adult crab louse is about 1.3–2 mm long (slightly smaller than the body louse and head louse), and can be distinguished from those other species by its almost round body. Another distinguishing feature is that the rearmost two pairs of legs of a crab louse are much thicker than the front legs and have large claws.[6]
Life cycle
The eggs of the crab louse are laid usually on the coarse hairs of the genital and perianal regions of the human body. Crab lice may also be found on other areas of the body that have coarse and relatively sparse coverings of hair, such as the beard, moustache, eyelashes, and underneath the arms. They do not generally occur on the finer hair of the scalp.[6][7]
The female lays about three eggs a day. The eggs take 6–8 days to hatch, and there are three nymphal stages which together take 10–17 days before the adult develops, making a total life cycle from egg to adult of 16–25 days. Adults live for up to 30 days.[6] Crab lice feed exclusively on blood, and take a blood meal 4–5 times daily. Adults are 1.5–2.0 mm long and flattened. They are much broader in comparison to head and body lice. Adults are found only on the human host and require human blood to survive. If adults are forced off the host, they will die within 24–48 hours without a blood feeding. Pubic lice are transmitted from person to person most-commonly via sexual contact, although fomites (bedding, clothing) may play a minor role in their transmission.[8]
Infestation of humans
Infestations of crab lice are known as pediculosis pubis or phthiriasis pubis (which, unlike the generic name of the louse, is spelled with a phth). Infestation of the eyelashes is referred to as pediculosis ciliaris or phthiriasis palpebrarum.[9]
The main symptom of infestation with crab lice is itching, usually in the pubic-hair area, resulting from hypersensitivity to louse saliva, which can become stronger over two or more weeks following initial infestation. In some infestations, a characteristic grey-blue or slate coloration appears (maculae caeruleae) at the feeding site, which may last for several days.
Crab louse egg on human body hair
Current worldwide prevalence has been estimated at 2% of the human population, but accurate numbers are difficult to gauge because crab lice infestations are not considered a reportable condition by many governments, and many cases are self-treated or treated discreetly by primary physicians.[10]
Crab lice usually infect a new host only by close contact between individuals, usually through sexual intercourse. Adults are more frequently infested than children. Non-sexual transmissions may occur among family and roommates through the use of shared towels, clothing, beds or closets. They can only survive a short time away from the warmth and humidity of the human body.
It has been suggested that an increasing percentage of humans removing their pubic hair has led to reduced crab louse populations in some parts of the world.[11][12] Other lice that infest humans are the body louse and the head louse. The claws of these three species are adapted to attachment to specific hair diameters.[13]
Crab Lice
Pubic lice are not known to transmit disease. Adult pubic lice are 1.1–1.8 mm in length. The pubic hair can typically host up to a dozen on average. Pubic lice typically are found attached to hair in the pubic area but sometimes are found on coarse hair elsewhere on the body (for example, eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, mustache, chest, armpits, etc.). Crab lice attach to pubic hair that is thicker than other body hair because their claws are adapted to the specific diameter of pubic hair.[14] Pubic lice infestations (pthiriasis) are usually spread through sexual contact.[14][2][3] The crab louse can travel up to 10 inches on the body. Pubic lice infestation is found worldwide and occurs in all races and ethnic groups and in all economic levels. Pubic lice usually are spread through sexual contact and are most common in adults. Occasionally pubic lice may be spread by close personal contact or contact with articles such as clothing, bed linens, and towels that have been used by an infested person.[8][15] Pubic lice found on the head or eyelashes of children may be an indication of sexual exposure or abuse. Pubic lice do not transmit disease; however, secondary bacterial infection can occur from scratching of the skin. They are much broader in comparison to head and body lice. Adults are found only on the human host and require human blood to survive. If adults are forced off the host, they will die within 24–48 hours without a blood feeding.[8]
Symptoms of crab louse infestation in the pubic area include itching, redness and inflammation. These symptoms cause increased blood circulation to the skin of the pubic region creating a blood-rich environment for the crab louse. Pubic lice infestation can also be diagnosed by identifying the presence of nits or eggs on the pubic hair. When clinicans find the crab louse on one family member they often request to examine other members of the family for similar symptoms of infestation. If a clinician suspects the presence of the louse, they may be able to identify the nits or eggs under magnification.[14]Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have shown the ability to turn scar tissue that forms after a heart attack into heart muscle cells using a new process that eliminates the need for stem cell transplant.
The study, published online April 26 in the journal Circulation Research, used molecules called microRNAs to trigger the cardiac tissue conversion in a lab dish and, for the first time, in a living mouse, demonstrating the potential of a simpler process for tissue regeneration.
If additional studies confirm the approach in human cells, it could lead to a new way for treating many of the 23 million people worldwide who suffer heart failure, which is often caused by scar tissue that develops after a heart attack. The approach could also have benefit beyond heart disease.
"This is a significant finding with many therapeutic implications," said Victor J. Dzau, MD, a senior author on the study who is James B. Duke professor of medicine and chancellor of health affairs at Duke University. "If you can do this in the heart, you can do it in the brain, the kidneys, and other tissues. This is a whole new way of regenerating tissue."
To initiate the regeneration, Dzau's team at Duke used microRNAs, which are molecules that serve as master regulators controlling the activity of multiple genes. Tailored in a specific combination, the microRNAs were delivered into scar tissue cells called fibroblasts, which develop after a heart attack and impair the organ's ability to pump blood.
Once deployed, the microRNAs reprogrammed fibroblasts to become cells resembling the cardiomyocytes that make up heart muscle. The Duke team not only proved this concept in the laboratory, but also demonstrated that the cell conversion could occur inside the body of a mouse -- a major requirement for regenerative medicine to become a potential therapy.
"This is one of the exciting things about our study," said Maria Mirotsou, PhD, assistant professor of cardiology at Duke and a senior author of the study. "We were able to achieve this tissue conversion in the heart with these microRNAs, which may be more practical for direct delivery into cells and allow for possible development of therapies without using genetic methods or transplantation of stem cells."
The researchers said using microRNA for tissue regeneration has several potential advantages over genetic methods or transplantation of stem cells, which have been difficult to manage inside the body. Notably, the microRNA process eliminates technical problems such as genetic alterations, while also avoiding the ethical dilemmas posed by stem cells.
"It's an exciting stage for reprogramming science," said Tilanthi M. Jayawardena, PhD, first author of the study. "It's a very young field, and we're all learning what it means to switch a cell's fate. We believe we've uncovered a way for it to be done, and that it has a lot of potential."
The approach will now be tested in larger animals. Dzau said therapies could be developed within a decade if additional studies advance in larger animals and humans.
"We have proven the concept," Dzau said. "This is the very early stage, and we have only shown that is it doable in an animal model. Although that's a very big step, we're not there yet for humans."
In addition to Dzau, Mirotsou and Jayawardena, study authors include: Bakytbek Egemnazarov; Elizabeth A. Finch; Lunan Zhang; Kumar Pandya; J. Alan Payne; Zhiping Zhang; and Paul Rosenberg.
Funding for the study was provided by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; the Edna and Fred L. Mandel Jr. Foundation; the Foundation Leducq; Mirotsou is supported by the American Heart Association National Scientist Development Award; Rosenberg is supported by the NIH.Yesterday, YouTube Help published a video countering widespread claims by YouTubers that the platform is screwing them over. In an explainer that can only be described as 3:27 minutes of “actually,” YouTube reps claim that the streaming platform is not unsubscribing people from channels, an accusation hundreds of YouTubers have full-throatedly complained about for weeks.
In the video, YouTube says “YouTube doesn’t unsubscribe people from channels.” Two reps say YouTube “looked at over 100 individual cases and haven’t been able to find an underlying glitch.” Several of the video’s explanations echo language relayed to me by YouTube press contacts.
For the past few months, YouTubers have been pointing out critical fluctuations in their subscriber counts. Huge channels like PewDiePie, JackSepticEye, h3h3Productions, DramaAlert, Boogie2988 and hundreds of smaller channels posted videos relaying fans’ complaints that they were randomly unsubscribed from their channels, or didn’t see the YouTubers’ videos in their subscriber feed.
Ethan Klein of h3h3Productions accused YouTube of “not being honest” when a representative told him nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Others have accused the platform of lying. On November 30th, JackSepticEye called YouTube a “broken fuckin’ website.” A week later, he told me that his contact at YouTube and a YouTube analytics representative spoke with him personally about issues he’d faced. In a follow-up video, he added that “I don’t like that YouTube just trying to focus on their bigger creators and trying to appease them.”
In an e-mail to me two weeks ago, YouTube insisted that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
The YouTube video, which comes off a little condescending, says that closed and spam accounts don’t count toward subscriber numbers. But YouTube isn’t unsubscribing spam accounts. Accounts that YouTube has flagged as bots are still getting videos in their subs feed. And those videos appear in the subs feed, on average, 30 seconds after they’re posted. This line of reasoning, commenters allege, evades the question of why meat-based humans widely report being automatically unsubscribed or not seeing videos from their favorite content creators.
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YouTube directs them to the app’s feedback button. Comments under the new video are scathing:
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YouTubers have directly forwarded me several messages from their subscribers alleging they’ve been unsubscribed. They’ve also forwarded charts describing wildly erratic changes in subscriber counts. The evidence is out there that something is up—and even if something isn’t up, YouTube should be able to explain to its content creators why their channels are suffering.It has been an eventful year for Fort Kent race car driver Austin Theriault.
He said in some ways, it hasn’t been eventful enough.
The 20-year-old landed a three-race series in the Nationwide Series for JR Motorsports, and it didn’t go as well as he had hoped. Theriault finished 15th at Iowa Speedway, 21st at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and, last Saturday night, he wound up 18th at Kentucky Speedway.
He also has been in five Pro All-Stars Series Super Late Model North races and won his first ARCA race at Michigan International Speedway.
“In looking back, I was at a racetrack less than I’ve ever been,” said Theriault. “I need to be racing more often. That’s my main goal for next year.”
He will probably conclude his season Saturday afternoon in the Ripley and Fletcher Ford 150 PASS SLM North race at Oxford Plains Speedway. He has four top-five finishes in his five PASS races but is looking for his first win of the season.
He will then hit the road seeking sponsors and a ride for next year.
Theriault made his debut in the Nationwide Series in the No. 5 car, which has gone to victory lane five times this season — four with Kevin Harvick and one with Kasey Kahne. They are among the 16 drivers involved in the Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship.
But there were at least two months between each of Theriault’s three races.
“It’s hard enough to race every week. It’s even harder when you haven’t been in the car for a while,” said a sympathetic Ernie Cope, the crew chief for the No. 5 car.
“It’s hard to learn something and not be able to apply it for two months,” said Theriault, whose car last weekend was decked out in a Maine theme after Gov. Paul LePage’s administration donated $50,000 to promote the state and its business climate.
Theriault was disappointed as his car was so loose, he had to slow down to avoid wrecking it. That enabled the leaders to eventually put him two laps down.
He explained that once Cope and the crew tightened up his car, it was much faster. He wound up passing several of the top 10 finishers. But he couldn’t compensate for being two laps down.
“The guys made some good adjustments. It was good to know we kept improving and getting faster. But we had nothing to show for it,” said Theriault.
He is taking everything in stride.
“I’m going to stay positive. I know things take time. Hopefully, things are happening for the right reasons,” he said. “I’m not going to dwell on it too much. You look at what happened, you make mental notes and you move forward.
“If you stay in the past too long, you’re going to miss what’s ahead of you,” Theriault added.
“Everyone wants to run up front and be in contention to win races. That time will come. I have to think that or else I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.
He said he does want to continue racing and would prefer “the bigger [3,400-pound] cars with the radial tires.”
That would mean the Nationwide, Camping World Trucks or ARCA series.
But he also knows he has to be a realist and take the best opportunity to get seat time, even if it isn’t in one of those divisions.
Theriault said he learned a tremendous amount and made some valuable contacts this year.
“I’m excited about the next couple of months [seeking a ride for next year],” he said.
Cope said Theriault has a promising future and said he enjoyed working with him.
“He didn’t pick any easy tracks [for the three-race deal], that’s for sure,” said Cope. “He definitely has potential. He just needs more seat time. He’s a good kid, and he comes from a great family.”If the federal government won’t fight climate change by putting a price on greenhouse-gas emissions, Canada’s two biggest provinces will do it themselves, the premiers of Ontario and Quebec announced Friday.
The agreement was one in a set of deals finalized by premiers Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard in a joint cabinet meeting, culminating in a news conference at Toronto’s Royal York hotel that was practically affectionate.
The two provinces will:
swap electricity at different times of year to try to keep prices down (Quebec’s needs peak in winter and Ontario’s peak in summer, so each has needs when the other has power to spare);
lower trade barriers to each others’ wine and beer;
work together to promote tourism;
present a common front on pipeline projects to move oil from the west to the east coast via central Canada; and
unite to promote French in francophone-minority communities, taking particular issue with cuts to the CBC’s French services outside Quebec.
“We’re recreating a bloc of influence that’s always been at the heart of Canada,” Couillard said in French. “A bloc in which Ontario and Quebec speak together on issues of common importance.... When Ontario and Quebec speak with the same voice, everyone has to listen.”
When the two provinces work together, Canada wins, he said. When they’re divided, Canada loses.
“We believe that from the centre of the country, we’re giving leadership that is much needed,” |
for Internet Explorer is being put together. The update policies of Opera and Apple currently remain unknown.
The incident is further proof that the entire concept of SSL and of users' trust in the Certificate Authorities are standing on feet of clay. After all, a certificate is also considered trustworthy even if it is issued by a CA reseller based in a country to which users probably wouldn't even go on holiday for security reasons. And the promised technologies don't even work when a compromised certificate is made public. It is time to come up with a new concept – and "EV-SSL" certificates, at least, should not be a part of it.
(crve)The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Tuesday said the number of people displaced inside Ukraine has doubled in the past three weeks since the ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine is driving more people from their homes.
As of Sep. 1, UNHCR estimated that 260,000 people were displaced in Ukraine, compared to 117,000 in the first week of August, Xinhua reported.
The UN refugee agency said the displaced are from eastern Ukraine and are remaining in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kiev regions.
The actual number of displaced people is even higher as many are staying with families and friends and choose not to register with the authorities, it added.
"The number of those using the three corridors set-up by the Ukrainian authorities to flee conflict areas is decreasing, mainly due to recent incidents when civilians have lost their lives in attacks. Reportedly 6,000 people have left through these corridors since the end of July," Adrian Edwards, UNHCR spokesperson told a press conference.
Meanwhile, the number of Ukrainians is seeking refugee status or asylum in the Russian Federation increased by almost 66,000 during August.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said the steep rise in the number of displaced over the past three weeks was a deep concern.
"If this crisis is not quickly stopped, it will have not only devastating humanitarian consequences but it also has the potential to destabilize the whole region. After the lessons of the Balkans, it is hard to believe a conflict of these proportions could unfold in the European continent," he said.Today, the KOffice team presents a contest to create great KPresenter slide templates, offering t-shirts for the winners and of course inclusion in the next KPresenter releases for all good submissions. Read on for information on the contest!
KPresenter is making great progress on the way to KOffice 2.3. Among other things, there will be hardware accelerated slide transitions -- and Google Summer of Code student Benjamin is now working on shape animations. Jean-Nicolas is working on a slide sorter, and Thorsten has implemented a feature that imports multiple pictures to multiple slides in one go.
But we are still lacking good templates for creating new presentations. That is where we need your help and that is why we are happy to announce the KPresenter template contest. Create new templates for cool presentations, be it KDE themed, Free Software themed, business themed or school project themed -- or whatever tickles your fancy, and your work could be part of the next release of KPresenter. So sharpen your digital pens and get started!
The rules for submission:
The template needs to be in ODP or OTP format
The template should have a descriptive name
The template needs to be BSD licensed
Final submissions must be send to kpresenter-contest@kde.org no later than midnight (UTC) on 15 September 2010
So let's be creative and create templates for KPresenter. You can create your template in KPresenter any other application that can create ODP -- like OpenOffice Impress. If you need help transforming your design into an ODP file, Thorsten (zachmann at kde dot org) will be glad to help you with that!
The top 3 entries will receive a hip KOffice t-shirt designed by KDE artist Eugene Trounev. However, all reasonably good submissions will be made part of the upcoming 2.3 release of KPresenter, which will see the light of day in October of this year. Your work will reach millions of desktop and mobile phone users! And all entries will be collected at kde-files.org.
The jury consists of the following members:
Aaron Seigo (Plasma maintainer and well-known KDE developer)
Eugene Trounev (KDE artist)
Thorsten Zachmann (KPresenter maintainer)
Thanks to KDE e.V. for sponsoring the t-shirts.Given the current economy, job seekers have the upper hand in 2019. If you’ve been searching for a job, getting an offer can be a huge relief.
So why would you consider turning a job down?
Here are five reasons that you may want to rethink accepting a job offer, even if you’re desperate:
1. The job interview process is less-than-professional.
You can get a good idea in the interview process about how the company is run. You should expect professional communication, on-time appointments and good interview questions and answers. If something feels off, it could be that the company just isn’t in a good place to hire people. Expect that the hiring MO is how things are run internally. It’s not always that way, but it can be a good warning sign.
2. The salary isn’t what you’d hoped for.
Maybe you can live with the salary because the benefits make up for it. But if the company refuses to negotiate, it could be a red flag that they feel like they hold all the cards. Their stance on salary may not change once you get to your first performance review. It’s likely the company will continue to lowball you, giving you small raises, no matter how much work you perform.
3. The offer seems too good to be true.
On the other hand, getting an offer with more benefits than expected and a huge salary that seems out of line for your industry can also be a red flag. Why are they offering to pay you more than average? It could be because the job duties aren’t what they’re advertising. They may expect more of you than they’re willing to admit. Do some digging before you hire on.
4. You have concerns about the company culture or office environment.
During your interview, you should have asked questions about your managers, the office and company culture. If it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a good fit for you, listen to your gut. Don’t work for a company that will stress you out mentally, physically and emotionally.
5. The commute is way too long.
Test the commute before you accept a job offer during the morning and afternoon when you’d be getting to work and getting home. You may not want to tack on an extra hour or more each way to your day.
If you’re looking for a job and want some great advice about beefing up your cover letter and resume, read Ask a Manager. Alison Green has some great columns about standing out in the interview process professionally while making sure the you’re getting the information you need to make a good decision.
A job search should end with you finding a position that suits you and is a good fit for both you and the company. Even though you may be feeling the pressure, it pays to really take your time and make sure that you’ll be happy with the company for a few years.
You shouldn’t feel stuck in a job just to get a paycheck. You may not get your dream job, but you should be taking steps toward career fulfillment.LONDON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The struggles associated with a credit crunch have been suffered by other societies in history -- just look at the Roman republic, a British historian says.
Oxford University historian Phillip Kay said the first-ever recorded credit crunch took place in 88 B.C., when a civil war decimated the Roman economy and credit system, The Guardian (Britain) said Friday.
Kay noted comparisons between the current credit crunch facing Britain and other parts of the world and such historical struggles.
"The essential similarity between what happened 21 centuries ago and what is happening in today's U.K. economy is that a massive increase in monetary liquidity culminated with problems in another country causing a credit crisis at home," he said.
While Kay has found a link between the historic crisis and today's current economic situation, he admits there is little to learn from the Roman debacle.
There's very little information about what happened over the next 20 years I'm afraid," Kay said, referring to how the Roman republic rebounded from its credit crunch. "We just don't know."OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - March 26, 2015) - Today, Industry Minister James Moore and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Astronaut Jeremy Hansen joined students at Elgin Street Public School to talk about Canada's proud history in space and the future of space exploration.
Minister Moore announced that the Government of Canada, through the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), is investing an additional $2.6 million towards Canada's contribution in the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever built.
This next-generation space telescope will observe the most distant objects in the universe, study planets around distant stars and provide images of the first galaxies ever formed. The observatory's images will serve thousands of astronomers worldwide, including Canadians, over the coming decades, including helping them to determine if there are other planets capable of supporting life.
The investment will help integrate Canadian instruments into the telescope and directly support all test activities with the instruments in preparation for the telescope's launch in October 2018.
Canada's contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope is aligned with the principles of Canada's Space Policy Framework: it positions our domestic space industry at the forefront of cutting-edge space activities; it strengthens strategic relationships with international partners in the interest of science and technology; and it advances Canada's excellence in the key capability of space optics.
Quick facts
The James Webb Space Telescope is a joint project between NASA, the European Space Agency and the CSA.
The Government of Canada's investment in the Canadian science and technology for the telescope is supporting the jobs of 15 highly trained specialists: seven astronomers and eight full-time employees at COM DEV.
Canada is contributing the Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) and the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) science instruments. This contribution guarantees Canadian astronomers a share of observing time on the telescope.
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is adding $2.6 million to its contract with COM DEV International Ltd. to assist with the integration of FGS and NIRISS to the Webb telescope.
Both instruments were designed, built and tested by COM DEV International Ltd. in Ottawa and Cambridge, Ontario, with technical contributions from the Université de Montréal, the National Research Council of Canada and the CSA's project team.
Quotes
"Canada is world renowned for our contributions to space innovation and exploration. Today's announcement to increase Canada's role in the James Webb Telescope will position Canada for continued success in space exploration. Data from the telescope will help astronomers from around the world, including leading Canadian scientists, make discoveries beyond our imagination."
James Moore, Industry Minister
"After well over a decade of working on the James Webb Space Telescope, in close collaboration with the CSA and the science team, our team is very excited to see it through these final stages of integration. This has been the single largest program in COM DEV's history, and we have been proud to contribute to an observatory that will enable such important advances in our understanding of the universe."
Mike Pley, CEO of COM DEV
"The James Webb Space Telescope is arguably the most complex machine currently under construction by humanity. The Canadian instrument onboard Webb represents Canadians' know-how at its best with COM DEV as the industrial pillar of this exciting project. COM DEV's expertise and devotion to this project is inspiring."
Professor René Doyon, principal investigator for the FGS-NIRISS science team
"Canada's contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope builds on our long history of innovative contribution to the international space community and to human exploration of space. We are proud of the Canadian expertise that has gone into this project, which will significantly enhance our understanding of the universe. We congratulate COM DEV and the science team on today's announcement, and thank the government for their support."
Jim Quick, President and CEO, Aerospace Industries Association of Canada
Related products
Backgrounder
Associated Links
Images: http://jwst.nasa.gov/multimedia.html
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/jwst/default.asp
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov
http://www.comdev.ca
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/publications/space-policy/default.aspThe Huawei Mate 20 runs the Android 8.0 Oreo operating system out of t
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"This is 1994 all over again," Frank Luntz, a famed Republican communications consultant, told The Huffington Post. "I was there. I saw it firsthand. The Republicans of 2008 are behaving exactly like the Democrats of '94 and making exactly the same mistakes. It's pathetic."
Indeed, even the leadership team responsible for shepherding the GOP's election efforts acknowledged that the party's political vital signs were depressing. Rep. Tom Cole, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, didn't bother to try and put a good spin on the loss in Mississippi -- where Democrat Travis Childers won with an eight percent margin in a district that Bush carried by 25 percent in 2004.
"We are disappointed in tonight's election results. Though the NRCC, RNC and Mississippi Republicans made a major effort to retain this seat, we came up short," Cole said in a statement. "I encourage all Republican candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall by building the financial resources and grassroots networks that offer them the opportunity and ability to communicate, energize and turn out voters this election."
For good measure, talk immediately flared, following the election returns, of the possibility of a Republican leadership shakeup, with Rep. John Boehner -- the House Minority Leader -- and Cole taking the fall. No firings or resignations occurred on Wednesday, but a meeting among GOP members commenced early in the morning with Rep. Tom Davis, a former NRCC head, offering a 20-page memo to shore up the party's hopes.
And yet, some Republican officials are concerned that Washington may bring more harm than help for the down ticket candidates
"Really the mistake they have made is to nationalize these elections when the national image is poisonous for Republicans right now," explained Craig Shirley, a Republican strategist with Shirley Bannister Public Relations. "What they should do is focus on local affairs. When you are sending in big time politicians from Washington and cater to the national media, you are reminding people why they are upset with the Republican Party in the first place."
Indeed, the GOP was hardly fighting the Mississippi battle with one hand tied behind its back. As a diarist on the Daily Kos noted, the party had a serviceable candidate in Greg Davis; the NRCC spent $1.3 million on the race, with Independent groups spending even more; national figures such as Mike Huckabee and Dick Cheney made cameos; and the GOP tried as best it could to tie Childers to the "liberalism" of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barack Obama.
And yet, victory remained elusive. This was the third special election in as many months in which the Democrats have grabbed a traditionally Republican seat. In March, Bill Foster beat Jim Oberweis -- a Republican endorsed by Sen. John McCain -- to take over former Speaker Dennis Hastert's old seat. Earlier in May, Louisiana Democrat Donald Cazayoux won over a heavily Republican district despite big spending from the GOP.Update, September 2018: The R Journal recently published an interesting review of the state of data structures and collections in R: Timothy Barry (2018), “Collections in R: Review and Proposal”, vol 10 no. 1, pages 455-471.
R is the lingua franca of academic statistics. Many papers introducing new statistical methods are accompanied by a package posted on CRAN, R’s repository of useful packages and tools. Undergraduate programs often teach R and use it throughout their courses, as do most graduate programs—most PhD students I know are implementing their work in R as they do their research. R’s popularity is exploding, and even Microsoft has their own R distribution these days.
But R is an unusual language. It was designed by statisticians for statisticians, and has a number of convenience features—for example, there are no scalars. The number 17 is just a vector of length one, and the + operator can add arbitrary vectors elementwise by dispatching to fast C code. On the one hand, this means I can write foo + bar for two large vectors and get an efficient sum, but on the other hand, it means 1 + 2 has to go through the same loop instead of being converted to a fast addition.
There are other curious features of R, like Ross Ihaka’s famous example of a function whose return value x is randomly local or global:
Ihaka says “No sensible language would allow this,” and misfeatures like this seriously limit R’s performance by making it difficult to efficiently run R code. (How can an optimizer deal with a variable that is randomly local or global?)
But the performance of a program depends on more than just how quickly the interpreter can execute the instructions. For a program doing vectorized operations on large arrays of numbers, sure, but what about a program that needs different data structures, like sets, graphs, or trees? What about a hash table? Do we have the tools to efficiently store and search data in appropriate data structures?
Lists: powerful but inflexible Lists are flexible and widely used in R. They’re the basis of S3 classes, they can store heterogeneous and deeply nested data, and the default vectorization machinery (like apply and lapply ) produces lists. There’s extended list subsetting syntax with the [ and [[ operators, along with $, and useful features like record types (or structs) can be emulated by simply using a list. But the next problem with R’s approach to lists is the names: they may only be strings. In Python (or Racket, or many other languages), on the other hand, I could use any immutable type as a key: foo = {( 1, 2 ): 7, "bar" : "baz" } foo[( 1, 2 )] # 7 Any immutable type can be hashed, so there’s no reason it can’t be used as a key in a dictionary. But R only supports strings as list keys. This may seem like a minor niggle, but it turns out that arbitrary keys can be amazingly useful for O(1) lookups of things other than strings. They’re also useful for storing sets, collections of items for which every item appears only once and which support efficient unions and intersections. I often make use of sets in my own code: Finding duplicates in sets of data other than strings.
Storing sets; for example, my Conway’s Game of Life code (in Racket) keeps track of which cells are live by storing the current set of live cells, in terms of their (x, y) coordinates. (This way, I don’t need to store a matrix of all the grid cells—I can just store the live ones, and hence support an infinitely large grid. This trick came from Chris Genovese.) But in R, I couldn’t use this trick: there’s no way to look up if a cell is live without an O(n) search, and I’d have to convert the coordinates to “x,y” strings instead of using more natural c(x,y) vectors. Code that tries to get around these restrictions has to use convoluted workarounds. The sets package, for example, offers native set data structures in R, but stores them as sorted lists. (Sorting is necessary to make it easy to check if two sets are equal.) For sets containing non-numeric elements, the elements are sorted by their string representation, so every object has to be converted to a string. To perform set intersection operations, or others that would require O(1) access, the list is converted to a hash table by converting all its elements to strings and using an R environment. All these convolutions cost efficiency and complexity. Of course, the user of the sets package need not worry with the details, but if they care about performance, they’ll notice the cost.Abu Dhabi: Motorists who turn on their hazards lights while driving during foggy weather conditions will be fined Dh500 with four black points, Abu Dhabi Police said on Monday.
The police asked light vehicle drivers to stop driving when visibility level drops to zero and park their cars in a nearby safe area. When they park their cars then drivers can turn on their hazard lamps to alert other motorists.
Also, public transport and workers’ buses having a capacity of 14, 24 and 60 passengers are required to stop driving on all roads of the emirate during foggy weather conditions and when visibility level drops to less than 50 metres.
Violating bus drivers will be fined Dh500 with four black points, the police said.
Recently the police said as per the road traffic rule No. 178 for 2017, truck drivers will be fined Dh1,000 with four black points for violating traffic rules during foggy weather conditions.
Both bus and truck drivers were asked to avoid taking to the roads until the visibility is clear.
Brigadier Khalifa Mohammad Al Khaili, Director of the Traffic and Patrols Department of Abu Dhabi Police, said both bus and truck drivers will be fined, if they are found violating the road traffic rules during the foggy weather conditions.
The police have issued warning due to unstable foggy weather conditions in the emirate, particularly on the internal and external roads where visibility level dropped significantly during the morning and night.
He urged motorists to exercise extra caution while driving during the fog and maintain distance between vehicles, avoid overtaking and use headlamps.
The police also warned three and four-wheeled quad bike riders to exercise caution while driving in deserts and avoid taking to the roads and areas where tents are erected.Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal stars feature prominently in our list of top players set to become free agents.
The transfer window may have closed last month but the Bosman ruling means clubs can already negotiate to sign players who will be out of contract this summer.
There are a number of high profiles names who fit into this category, including Premier League and Champions League winners.
We have compiled and ordered a list of the top 50 free agents to be, including a couple already without a club.
There are names on the list who are expected to sign new deals at their current clubs who are yet to do so, and those who are set to be cut loose for new chapters in their careers.
#1 Manchester United striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic is on a one year deal at Old Trafford. The Red Devils are keen to renew his contract for an extra season but he is yet to put pen to paper on an extension. The 35-year-old has scored 24 goals in all competitions this season already.
#2 Italian midfielder Daniele de Rossi is expected to renew his contact at AS Roma, but has been subject of interest from MLS clubs. The 33-year-old has made 23 starts for his club already this season.
#3 Xabi Alonso, Bayern Munich. It says everything about Bayern's strength in depth that they can afford to let Alonso's contract run down. Retirement has been suggested but an ambitious project could yet sway the Spaniard.
#4 Michael Carrick may be 35 but he is as important as ever to Manchester United. It would not be a surprise to see him pen a new deal to stay at Old Trafford for another year.
#5 Santi Cazorla has missed most of Arsenal's season with injury and he has been a big loss. The Gunners are keen to re-sign the 32-year-old but are yet to announce an extension.
#6 Yaya Toure, Manchester City. The Ivorian has bounced back to play a surprise role under Pep Guardiola in recent months but is likely to leave the club this summer. Finding a club in Europe willing to match his City salary could be tough.
#7 Klaas-Jan Huntelaar has barely been used by Schalke this season and is heading for the exit. The 33-year-old netted 12 goals in the Bundesliga a year ago and could prove a shrewd free transfer for somebody willing to take a punt.
#8 Keisuke Honda is letting his AC Milan contract run down after several seasons being linked with an exit. At just 30-years-old the Japanese playmaker should have plenty more still to offer.
#9 Pepe. The Portuguese ace's contract is running down but teams will find it hard to lure him away. His options are likely to extend with Real Madrid or sign a huge deal with a Chinese side.
#10 Mario Balotelli was a player nobody wanted a year ago so Liverpool released him. He has rebuilt his reputation at Nice after signing a one-year deal and is a very intriguing option for the bravest of managers.
#11 Fernando Torres, Atletico Madrid. The former Liverpool and Chelsea striker signed a one year deal last summer but is yet to earn another extension. He is 32 and has netted seven goals so far this season.
#11 Dominic Solanke. The England youth international is tipped for the very top after prolific form for Chelsea's academy teams and has scored previously on loan at Vitesse. Liverpool are interested along with Newcastle United and Celtic.
#13 Sead Kolasinac, Schalke. The left-back has been linked with Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea and is in demand after letting his contract run down. The 23-year-old Bosnian will be one of the best bargains of the summer.
#14 Gael Clichy is one of a number of high profile players who Manchester City have allowed to run down their contracts. The 31-year-old has been around so long he won the Premier League with Arsenal.
#15 Lucas Leiva, Liverpool. The Brazilian was one of Rafa Benitez's signings at Anfield and has proven to be a major asset for the club, able to play in central midfield and central defence. He has recently been linked with a return to Brazil with Gremio.
#16 Bacary Sagna could make his exit from Manchester City after three seasons at the club. The former FA Cup winner has been linked with a switch to West Ham.
#17 Charlie Taylor of Leeds United is one of the Championship's most coveted players and several Premier League sides are interested. Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough, West Brom, Liverpool and Everton have all been linked with the 23-year-old left-back, who Leeds are still hoping may decide to re-sign if they win promotion.
#18 Versatile Schalke star Dennis Aogo was once coveted by Liverpool and was linked to Sunderland last summer. He can play at left-back, on the wing or in central midfield and is 30-years-old.
#19 Jimmy Briand is in the final year of a two year deal at Guingamp and has had an impressive campaign in Ligue 1. The 31-year-old has scored seven goals and provided four assists, and is able to play as a central striker or on the wing.
#20 Pablo Zabaleta was once regarded as the best right-back in the Premier League but his time at Manchester City is coming to an end after falling out of favour under Pep Guardiola.
#21 Ibrahim Afellay, Stoke City. The former Barcelona and Ajax winger has made only eight league appearances for Stoke this season and remains a case of 'what if?'. The 30-year-old has a big reputation and big upside if he can stay fit, but needs a big end to the season.
#22 Chelsea captain John Terry's career may be winding down but at the right club he could still be a major asset if motivated.
#23 Miguel Veloso, Genoa. Once Portuguese football's golden boy, the 30-year-old has had an unusual path, leaving Sporting Lisbon for Genoa before spending four seasons at Dynamo Kiev. After a successful time in Ukraine he signed back at Genoa on a short term deal in January and will be a free agent in June as it stands.
#24 Gonzalo Rodriguez, Fiorentina. The centre-back is 'listening to offers' according to his agent as he plots his next move. The 32-year-old has been capped seven times by Fiorentina, where he has been since 2012 after joining from Villarreal.
#25 The first goalkeeper on the list, Norwich City goalkeeper John Ruddy has been with the club since 2010. The Canaries have an option to activate a one year extension but have not yet done so.
#26 Jesus Navas. The 31-year-old is out of favour at Manchester City and out of form. In 23 appearances the winger has no goals or assists, and looks in need of a fresh start.
#27 Sebastian Larsson, Sunderland. The 31-year-old has had an unproductive season, making nine starts and failing to score. He could make a smart addition for a Championship team if he is prepared to step down a level.
#28 Former Swansea City defender Chico Flores plays for Qatari side Lekhwiya. The 29-year-old centre-back is out of contract in the summer and could favour a return to Europe.
#29 Dimitar Berbatov is already a free agent and is on the look out for a new club. The veteran striker once lit up the Premier League with Tottenham, Manchester United and Fulham, and is currently 36.
#30 Charlie Adam, Stoke City. The veteran midfielder is 31 and has made 14 Premier League starts this season. He has one goal and three assists this season.
#31 Robbie Keane, free agent. The Republic of Ireland legend is without a club after his LA Galaxy contract expired. He is 36 and looking for a new challenge, but could decide to wait until the summer before deciding his future.
#32 Vurnon Anita, Newcastle United. The former PSV defender has been forced out of the Newcastle side by DeAndre Yedlin and Rafa Benitez is yet to make a decision on his future. The Dutchman can play in midfield and defence and is just 27.
#33 Jefferson Farfan, Lokomotiv Moscow. The Peru international striker was linked with a switch to Sheffield Wednesday in January before signing a short term deal in Russia. He is set to become a free agent again this summer.
#34 Alan Judge, Brentford. The winger came close to a move to Newcastle a year ago but his career has gone off track due to injury. The 28-year-old is yet to appear this season but managed 14 goals and 11 assists in 2015/16.
#35 Celtic midfielder Kris Commons has been out of favour this season and looks likely to leave this summer. He has played five games and scored twice, and a return to England is possible.
#36 Youssouf Mulumbu, Norwich City. The central midfielder is known mostly for a six year stint at West Brom but has spent the past two seasons for the Canaries. The 30-year-old has been in and out of the side this season, making only 13 league appearances.
#37 Peter Whittingham, Cardiff City. The 32-year-old has made more than 400 appearances for the Bluebird and the smart money would be on him renewing his deal. Manager Neil Warnock says he expect the midfielder to do so, but there is no agreement in place yet.
#38 Mirko Vucinic, Al Jazira. Montenegro's record scorer is an intriguing case, formerly representing Juventus and Roma. He signed with UAE side Al Jazira and hit form scoring 23 goals in 21 games, but has missed this entire season with injury, making him a gamble, but one with high upside.
#39 Sunderland midfielder Jan Kirchhoff was better under Sam Allardyce than David Moyes and is in another relegation fight this term. The 26-year-old has made just five starts and it is unlikely the Black Cats will decide to retain him.
#40 Salomon Kalou, Hertha Berlin. Former Chelsea forward Saloman Kalou could be a smart signing for a Premier League side on a free transfer. He is 31 and scored 17 goals last season, although has only six this campaign.
#41 Fraizer Campbell, Crystal Palace. Once capped by England, the former Manchester United starlet needs the summer to hurry up after his career stalled at Palace. A move to a Championship side could be a smart move for the 29-year-old.
#42 Glen Johnson, Stoke City. The former England international is still only 32 and should have two to three years left in him. The right-back has made 13 Premier League starts for Stoke this season so far.
#43 Martin Kelly, Crystal Palace. The 26-year-old full-back has made 16 starts for his side this season, who are stuck battling relegation.
#44 Dorlan Pabon, Monterrey. The former Valencia striker has been prolific in Mexico over the past three seasons, scoring 50 goals. The 29-year-old is a Colombian international but is out of favour with his country so a work permit may not be straightforward.
#45 Junior Hoilett, Cardiff City. The Canadian winger has Premier League experience with Blackburn and QPR and has performed well at Cardiff this season, becoming a regular for Neil Warnock's side. The 26-year-old winger scored and provided an assist in his last game against Rotheram.
#46 Cuco Martina, Southampton. Former Twente right-back Cuco Martina has struggled for playing time this season making only six Premier League starts. An exit looks inevitable for the 27-year-old.
#47 Yoan Gouffran, Newcastle. The Frenchman has been a revelation in the Championship this season but do Newcastle trust him to lift his game if they return to the Premier League? So far no extension is in place. He has seven goals and three assists to date this campaign.
#48 Emiliano Izaguirre, Celtic. The left-back has been pushed aside due to the brilliance of teenager Kieran Tierney and is on course to leave this summer. He has more than 80 international caps for Honduras and was recently linked with a move to the Championship.
#49 Michael Mancienne, Nottingham Forest. Once a promising Chelsea starlet, Michael Mancienne has been at Nottingham Forest since signing from Hamburg in 2014. The centre-back has been a regular for his side over the past three seasons but the 29-year-old may want a new challenge.
#50 Joey Barton, Burnley. Everybody's favourite villain, the controversial midfielder has performed well since re-signing at Turf Moor. The sensible move would be for him to sign an extension if one is offered, but teams may try and tempt him away. Just don't bet on a move back to Scotland.
Full list: Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Daniele de Rossi, Xabi Alonso, Michael Carrick, Santi Cazorla, Yaya Toure, Klaas Jan Huntelaar, Keisuke Honda, Pepe, Mario Balotelli, Fernando Torres, Dominic Solanke, Sead Kolasinac, Gael Clichy, Lucas Leiva, Bacary Sagna, Charlie Taylor, Dennis Aogo, Jimmy Briand, Pablo Zabaleta, Ibrahim Afellay, John Terry, Miguel Veloso, Gonzalo Rodriguez, John Ruddy, Jesus Navas, Sebastian Larsson, Chico Flores, Dimitar Berbatov, Charlie Adam, Robbie Keane, Vurnon Anita, Jefferson Farfan, Alan Judge, Kris Commons, Youssouf Mulumbu, Peter Whittingham, Mirko Vucinic, Jan Kirchhoff, Salomon Kalou, Fraizer Campbell, Glen Johnson, Martin Kelly, Dorlan Pabon, Junior Hoilett, Cuco Martina, Yoan Gouffran, Emiliano Izaguirre, Michael Mancienne, Joey Barton.Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Manchester United will target Tottenham’s John McDermott to become their academy’s new boss.
Derek Langley, United’s head of youth player recruitment, is set to leave Old Trafford after 16 years after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the set-up.
United want to make a big appointment after seeing their academy go into decline recently which has led to them missing out on top youngsters.
Tottenham academy coach McDermott is hugely respected within the game, has played a massive role in development and Spurs will fight to keep him.
McDermott is credited with bringing through the likes of Harry Kane while United’s academy has struggled since losing a number of key staff with the latest set to be Langley this summer.
READ MORE:President Donald Trump does not have plans to visit Charlottesville, Virginia in the wake of the the white-supremacist and neo-Nazi gathering that took place in the city over the weekend.
“No stop planned at this time,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders emailed The Daily Beast on Monday afternoon.
The president is still technically on vacation, though he decamped back to Washington D.C. on Monday.
Though presidents are often hypersensitive towards appearing to be on top of national crises, it is not entirely surprising that the president is currently passing on a trip to Charlottesville. On Monday, Trump finally, and specifically, called out white supremacists and white nationalists in prepared remarks from the White House, after days of brutal, bipartisan criticism for his initial, response that chided “many sides.” Two senior Trump aides, speaking on |
62.12% (41 votes)
B) I admire this person. 24.24% (16 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 12.12% (8 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 1.52% (1 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
30) How do you feel about Clarence Thomas?
A) I greatly admire this person. 58.21% (39 votes)
B) I admire this person. 35.82% (24 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 5.97% (4 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
31) How do you feel about Fred Thompson?
A) I greatly admire this person. 11.94% (8 votes)
B) I admire this person. 41.79% (28 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 35.82% (24 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 7.46% (5 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 2.99% (2 votes)
32) How do you feel about Donald Trump?
A) I greatly admire this person. 5.97% (4 votes)
B) I admire this person. 23.88% (16 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 19.40% (13 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 29.85% (20 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 20.90% (14 votes)
33) How do you feel about Scott Walker?
A) I greatly admire this person. 65.15% (43 votes)
B) I admire this person. 30.30% (20 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 4.55% (3 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
34) How do you feel about Allen West?
A) I greatly admire this person. 31.82% (21 votes)
B) I admire this person. 46.97% (31 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 10.61% (7 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 6.06% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 4.55% (3 votes)
35) How do you feel about George Will?
A) I greatly admire this person. 20.90% (14 votes)
B) I admire this person. 43.28% (29 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 25.37% (17 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 8.96% (6 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.49% (1 votes)
36) How do you feel about Mitch McConnell?
A) I greatly admire this person. 4.55% (3 votes)
B) I admire this person. 21.21% (14 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 24.24% (16 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 31.82% (21 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 18.18% (12 votes)
37) How do you feel about John McCain?
A) I greatly admire this person. 6.06% (4 votes)
B) I admire this person. 13.64% (9 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 12.12% (8 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 27.27% (18 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 40.91% (27 votes)
38) How do you feel about Megan McCain?
A) I greatly admire this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
B) I admire this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 15.38% (10 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 30.77% (20 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 53.85% (35 votes)
39) How do you feel about Dick Morris?
A) I greatly admire this person. 4.55% (3 votes)
B) I admire this person. 18.18% (12 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 25.76% (17 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 34.85% (23 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 16.67% (11 votes)
40) How do you feel about Grover Norquist?
A) I greatly admire this person. 9.09% (6 votes)
B) I admire this person. 34.85% (23 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 28.79% (19 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 15.15% (10 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 12.12% (8 votes)
41) How do you feel about Mike Huckabee?
A) I greatly admire this person. 4.48% (3 votes)
B) I admire this person. 22.39% (15 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 25.37% (17 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 32.84% (22 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 14.93% (10 votes)
42) How do you feel about Laura Ingraham?
A) I greatly admire this person. 13.64% (9 votes)
B) I admire this person. 46.97% (31 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 22.73% (15 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 15.15% (10 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.52% (1 votes)
43) How do you feel about Darrell Issa?
A) I greatly admire this person. 22.73% (15 votes)
B) I admire this person. 48.48% (32 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 24.24% (16 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 3.03% (2 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.52% (1 votes)
44) How do you feel about Bobby Jindal?
A) I greatly admire this person. 17.91% (12 votes)
B) I admire this person. 62.69% (42 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 14.93% (10 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 4.48% (3 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
45) How do you feel about Alex Jones?
A) I greatly admire this person. 2.99% (2 votes)
B) I admire this person. 8.96% (6 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 26.87% (18 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 28.36% (19 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 32.84% (22 votes)
46) How do you feel about Charles Johnson (gotnews.com)?
A) I greatly admire this person. 5.97% (4 votes)
B) I admire this person. 10.45% (7 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 46.27% (31 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 22.39% (15 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 14.93% (10 votes)
47) How do you feel about Megyn Kelly?
A) I greatly admire this person. 26.87% (18 votes)
B) I admire this person. 52.24% (35 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 13.43% (9 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 7.46% (5 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
48) How do you feel about Anthony Kennedy?
A) I greatly admire this person. 1.49% (1 votes)
B) I admire this person. 22.39% (15 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 49.25% (33 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 17.91% (12 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 8.96% (6 votes)
49) How do you feel about Peter King?
A) I greatly admire this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
B) I admire this person. 16.67% (11 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 30.30% (20 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 24.24% (16 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 28.79% (19 votes)
50) How do you feel about The Koch Brothers?
A) I greatly admire this group. 28.79% (19 votes)
B) I admire this group. 50.00% (33 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 19.70% (13 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 1.52% (1 votes)
51) How do you feel about Charles Krauthammer?
A) I greatly admire this person. 50.75% (34 votes)
B) I admire this person. 34.33% (23 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 4.48% (3 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 7.46% (5 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 2.99% (2 votes)
52) How do you feel about Mike Lee?
A) I greatly admire this person. 40.91% (27 votes)
B) I admire this person. 28.79% (19 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 30.30% (20 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
53) How do you feel about Mark Levin?
A) I greatly admire this person. 36.36% (24 votes)
B) I admire this person. 37.88% (25 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 16.67% (11 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 6.06% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 3.03% (2 votes)
54) How do you feel about Dana Loesch?
A) I greatly admire this person. 23.88% (16 votes)
B) I admire this person. 46.27% (31 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 19.40% (13 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 5.97% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 4.48% (3 votes)
55) How do you feel about Mia Love?
A) I greatly admire this person. 41.79% (28 votes)
B) I admire this person. 47.76% (32 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 8.96% (6 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 1.49% (1 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
56) How do you feel about David Limbaugh?
A) I greatly admire this person. 29.85% (20 votes)
B) I admire this person. 49.25% (33 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 20.90% (14 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
57) How do you feel about Rush Limbaugh?
A) I greatly admire this person. 46.27% (31 votes)
B) I admire this person. 35.82% (24 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 11.94% (8 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 5.97% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
58) How do you feel about The NRA?
A) I greatly admire this group. 38.81% (26 votes)
B) I admire this group. 52.24% (35 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 5.97% (4 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 2.99% (2 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 0.00% (0 votes)
59) How do you feel about The National Republican Senatorial Committtee (NRSC)?
A) I greatly admire this group. 5.97% (4 votes)
B) I admire this group. 14.93% (10 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 29.85% (20 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 25.37% (17 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 23.88% (16 votes)
60) How do you feel about Michelle Malkin?
A) I greatly admire this person. 50.77% (33 votes)
B) I admire this person. 36.92% (24 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 10.77% (7 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.54% (1 votes)
61) How do you feel about The Heritage Foundation?
A) I greatly admire this group. 40.30% (27 votes)
B) I admire this group. 44.78% (30 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 8.96% (6 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 5.97% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 0.00% (0 votes)
62) How do you feel about Erick Erickson?
A) I greatly admire this person. 16.39% (10 votes)
B) I admire this person. 42.62% (26 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 27.87% (17 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 13.11% (8 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
63) How do you feel about Freedomworks?
A) I greatly admire this group. 16.13% (10 votes)
B) I admire this group. 38.71% (24 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 38.71% (24 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 6.45% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 0.00% (0 votes)
64) How do you feel about David Frum?
A) I greatly admire this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
B) I admire this person. 9.84% (6 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 36.07% (22 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 39.34% (24 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 14.75% (9 votes)
65) How do you feel about Jonah Goldberg?
A) I greatly admire this person. 31.75% (20 votes)
B) I admire this person. 50.79% (32 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 11.11% (7 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 4.76% (3 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.59% (1 votes)
66) How do you feel about Newt Gingrich?
A) I greatly admire this person. 8.06% (5 votes)
B) I admire this person. 48.39% (30 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 9.68% (6 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 24.19% (15 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 9.68% (6 votes)
67) How do you feel about Trey Gowdy?
A) I greatly admire this person. 42.86% (27 votes)
B) I admire this person. 31.75% (20 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 22.22% (14 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 3.17% (2 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
68) How do you feel about Lindsey Graham?
A) I greatly admire this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
B) I admire this person. 12.90% (8 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 17.74% (11 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 33.87% (21 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 35.48% (22 votes)
69) How do you feel about Greg Gutfeld?
A) I greatly admire this person. 27.42% (17 votes)
B) I admire this person. 38.71% (24 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 27.42% (17 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 4.84% (3 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.61% (1 votes)
70) How do you feel about Sean Hannity?
A) I greatly admire this person. 18.03% (11 votes)
B) I admire this person. 37.70% (23 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 24.59% (15 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 18.03% (11 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.64% (1 votes)
71) How do you feel about Glenn Beck?
A) I greatly admire this person. 9.84% (6 votes)
B) I admire this person. 40.98% (25 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 21.31% (13 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 26.23% (16 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.64% (1 votes)
72) How do you feel about John Boehner?
A) I greatly admire this person. 3.23% (2 votes)
B) I admire this person. 19.35% (12 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 14.52% (9 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 27.42% (17 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 35.48% (22 votes)
73) How do you feel about George W. Bush?
A) I greatly admire this person. 29.03% (18 votes)
B) I admire this person. 46.77% (29 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 9.68% (6 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 12.90% (8 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 1.61% (1 votes)
74) How do you feel about Jeb Bush?
A) I greatly admire this person. 1.59% (1 votes)
B) I admire this person. 28.57% (18 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 11.11% (7 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 33.33% (21 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 25.40% (16 votes)
75) How do you feel about Ben Carson?
A) I greatly admire this person. 27.42% (17 votes)
B) I admire this person. 53.23% (33 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 9.68% (6 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 9.68% (6 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
76) How do you feel about The Chamber of Commerce?
A) I greatly admire this group. 0.00% (0 votes)
B) I admire this group. 22.58% (14 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 43.55% (27 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 14.52% (9 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 19.35% (12 votes)
77) How do you feel about Dick Cheney?
A) I greatly admire this person. 40.32% (25 votes)
B) I admire this person. 38.71% (24 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 11.29% (7 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 6.45% (4 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 3.23% (2 votes)
78) How do you feel about Chris Christie?
A) I greatly admire this person. 3.23% (2 votes)
B) I admire this person. 20.97% (13 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 17.74% (11 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 40.32% (25 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 17.74% (11 votes)
79) How do you feel about Ann Coulter?
A) I greatly admire this person. 19.35% (12 votes)
B) I admire this person. 29.03% (18 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 20.97% (13 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 20.97% (13 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 9.68% (6 votes)
80) How do you feel about Ted Cruz?
A) I greatly admire this person. 50.00% (31 votes)
B) I admire this person. 32.26% (20 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 11.29% (7 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 3.23% (2 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 3.23% (2 votes)
81) How do you feel about Jim DeMint?
A) I greatly admire this person. 30.65% (19 votes)
B) I admire this person. 35.48% (22 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 25.81% (16 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 3.23% (2 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 4.84% (3 votes)
82) How do you feel about Matt Drudge?
A) I greatly admire this person. 43.55% (27 votes)
B) I admire this person. 40.32% (25 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 16.13% (10 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
83) How do you feel about Americans for Prosperity?
A) I greatly admire this group. 29.03% (18 votes)
B) I admire this group. 46.77% (29 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this group. 20.97% (13 votes)
D) I dislike this group. 3.23% (2 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this group. 0.00% (0 votes)
84) How do you feel about Michele Bachmann?
A) I greatly admire this person. 21.31% (13 votes)
B) I admire this person. 34.43% (21 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 16.39% (10 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 24.59% (15 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 3.28% (2 votes)
85) How do you feel about Justin Amash?
A) I greatly admire this person. 12.90% (8 votes)
B) I admire this person. 27.42% (17 votes)
C) I don’t have an opinion about this person. 54.84% (34 votes)
D) I dislike this person. 4.84% (3 votes)
E) I greatly dislike this person. 0.00% (0 votes)
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You Might LikeIt all started about a two years ago. I had a weird bump on my face. It looked sort of like a pimple, but a very persistent one. It lasted a couple months, and then went away into what looked like a raised, slightly-discolored scar. Fred had been nagging me to go get it checked since he first saw it, but I sort of shrugged it off.
Well three weeks ago I finally made a visit to the dermatologist. Despite me not saying anything about that spot, the doctor saw it right away and wanted to do a biopsy. He took a razor to my face right then and there and shaved a big chunk off. Then he sent me home with a bandaid on my cheek.
A week later I got a call that the sample had tested positive as a Basal Cell Carcinoma, and they would have to do Mohs surgery on my face. Basically they remove one layer of skin, about 2mm thick all around the spot, and then put it under a microscope. They keep doing layer after layer until there is no more sign of cancer cells.
I was super lucky that they only had to remove one layer. It is bad enough as is! I can’t imagine doing more. After I was all clear they had a plastic surgeon come in and stitch me up. They had to stitch quite a ways on either side of the circle in order to keep the skin from puckering.
I’m currently on the mend. Just like when I had a broken foot, dealing with the repetitive questions is the worst part. I like that a lot of people have looked worried though, and asked me, “What did it look like?” or, “How do I know?”. My answer is, if you’re worried, get it checked out. I had no idea anything looked funny.
Currently in search of the perfect hat if anyone has suggestions.
And most of all, my message to you is ALWAYS WEAR SUNSCREEN!Image copyright Thinkstock
We should not expect education to be simply left to teachers, or the state, argues the philosopher Roger Scruton.
Since the Middle Ages, education has been regarded in this country as a public duty. Originally the duty did not fall on the state. It was a general charitable duty, to which wealthy people responded by establishing schools and colleges, setting up the trusts that would fund them, and providing scholarships for poor pupils. A statute of Elizabeth I defined education as a charitable purpose, entitled to certain legal and fiscal privileges. Over the following centuries new schools proliferated, often established by the Anglican and non-conformist churches. In 1833 the government introduced an annual grant to two charities that provided both church schools and non-denominational schools for poor children. As a result of those and similar moves education rapidly expanded during the first half of the 19th Century, to the point where it was unusual for a child not to acquire sufficient numeracy and literacy to survive in the competitive environment of the industrial cities.
Image copyright Getty Images
Eventually Parliament passed laws compelling all children aged five to 13 to attend a school, beginning with the Education Act of 1870, which obliged the state to step in and pay the fees for families who could not afford them. Since that time the state has increasingly taken the initiative, establishing primary and secondary schools, raising the school-leaving age and, in due course, creating new universities and colleges designed to make a full education available to everyone. But while the state extended our educational system, it did not create it. As the system expanded in the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was private individuals, charitable trusts and religious foundations that took the most important steps. The state inherited well-funded, long established and dedicated institutions and a tried and tested curriculum that large numbers of people knew how to teach. Of course, there were barriers of wealth and class that could not be easily crossed, as the Victorian novelists remind us. But there was also a culture of respect for education, and an eagerness to teach and to learn.
Find out more Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher
A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 GMT and repeated Sundays, 08:50 GMT Listen to A Point of View on the iPlayer BBC Podcasts - A Point of View
I was a child from a poor background who was lucky enough to attend the local grammar school. Our school had been established by royal charter in 1562, and had inherited the standards and traditions associated with the public schools. Like most of the grammar schools it was funded by the state, and I received the best possible education for free, leading to a scholarship to Cambridge. But to enter grammar school I had to pass an examination, which I took at the age of 11, and those of my classmates in primary school who failed that examination had to go to the local secondary modern, where inevitably standards were not so high and the long-term prospects less favourable. Not surprisingly it seemed to many people unjust and politically unacceptable that the prospects of poor children should be decided at the age of 11. Hence there was a long-standing and eventually successful campaign to abolish that examination and to amalgamate the grammar schools and the secondary moderns into comprehensives.
The intentions behind that reform were the best. And when Anthony Crosland, education minister under a Labour government, called on local authorities to submit plans to go comprehensive, the response was largely positive. The policy was pursued under both Labour and Conservative governments and as a result most of the grammar schools were either absorbed into comprehensives or deprived of state funding. Thereafter only people with money could obtain the kind of education that I once obtained for free. This was hardly an advance from the point of view of social mobility, and certainly not a way of rectifying the inequalities that had inspired the reforms in the first place.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Anthony Crosland was education minister under Harold Wilson
The response of many egalitarians to the widening gap between state and private education is to call for the removal of all privileges from the private schools - then all children really would be equal, and nobody could obtain a better education than average merely by being wealthier than the rest of us. But, besides being a vast trespass on the freedom of citizens, such a reform would have the same effect as the abolition of grammar schools. Rich people would bypass the schools, establishing home schooling networks as they do in America. Or they would ensure that their children are provided in the evenings with the resources of which they are deprived during the day.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Harrow schoolboys observed by locals outside Lord's, 1937
The history of education in this country since 1870 shows us that the state is better at placing obstacles in the way of teaching than encouraging people to take it up. Teaching qualifications, once regarded as a badge of merit, became obligatory during the post-war period, to be imposed by law as the sole route into the state system. Knowledge was no longer a sufficient qualification. And soon it wasn't a necessary qualification either. After a hundred years of domination by the state our education system, which was once one of the best in the world, fails to make the top 20 on the scale issued by the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa). The answer, it seems to me, is not to go further down the path of state control - closing down this school and meddling in that one - but to encourage people to do what they did in the early 19th Century, which was to take charge of schooling for themselves. Education, we must remind ourselves, is not about social engineering, however laudable that goal might be. It is about passing knowledge from those who have it to those who need it.
Image caption BBC's Tough Young Teachers showed graduates in the Teach First programme
Our country is full of people who know things, and of children who want to learn things. A successful education system is one that brings the two together, so that knowledge can pass between them. In every village there are people with knowledge that would be useful to the young - retired accountants and lawyers, musicians and singers, those who speak a foreign language, writers, plumbers, farmers, engineers and amateur historians. And many of those would welcome the opportunity to teach what they know. Somehow we have failed to harness this capital, letting it go to waste while our children drift in search of it. Gradually our governments have begun to wake up to this fact. We are seeing a revival in government circles of the old idea of education as a charitable gift from one generation to the next, rather than a form of state-controlled social engineering.
One encouraging development has been the establishment under a Labour government of the Teach First programme, which allows people with knowledge to learn the art of teaching as one learns to ride a bicycle - namely by doing it. This removes the obstacle created by the old state qualifications and helps to resurrect the idea of teaching as a vocation. The establishment of academies, which enables some specialist schools once again to set standards for entrance, has created for poor children some of the opportunities enjoyed by the rich. And the present government is allowing citizens to start schools within the state system. A free school can settle its own curriculum and contracts of employment. It can therefore open the way for those with unused knowledge to impart it in the classroom, and for volunteers to help with extra-curricular activity. Anyone can apply to set up such a school, provided they have sufficient educational and financial expertise within their core team, and the willingness to make a substantial time commitment. Parents, local businesses, and volunteers can all join in the enterprise, whose goal is to rescue children from disadvantage and once again to open the channels through which the social and intellectual capital of one generation can flow into the brains and bodies of the next.
In the past the British people have solved their problems in precisely that way - not by handing them over to the government and then forgetting about them, but by sorting things out for themselves. The philanthropic middle classes, who created our education system and made it one of the best in the world, have been for too long excluded from it. But they possess the knowledge that we need, as well as the time and the energy to hand it on to our children. Bring them back into the system, allow them to do whatever is needed to impart their assets to the young, encourage them to raise funds, to recruit volunteers, to expand the curriculum, and all children will benefit. In the conflicts over education all sides have claimed to be extending opportunities to the poor. But the politicians are at last beginning to recognise that opportunities are not increased by closing things down, but by opening things up.
A Point of View is broadcast on Friday on Radio 4 at 20:50 GMT and repeated on Sunday at 08:50 GMT. Catch up on BBC iPlayer
Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on FacebookThe chickpea – or garbanzo bean, if you prefer – is a legume that needs little introduction these days. Chickpeas, which are actually a bean, have a distinct but mild flavor, and they can be used to make a wide assortment of dishes, ranging from hummus to falafel to gluten-free brownies. Even the liquid of chickpeas – aquafaba – can be used as an egg substitute to make vegan alternatives to classic treats, like meringue.
So, without any further ado, we proudly present you this roundup of vegan chickpea recipes.
21 Plant-Based Chickpea Recipes
#1. Crunchy Spiced Chickpeas
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#2. Moroccan Chickpea Wraps
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#3. Chickpea Dumplings in Curry Tomato Sauce
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#4. Chickpea Shawarma Salad
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#5. Curry Chickpea Salad Sandwich
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#6. Chickpea Pot Pies
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#7. Flourless Chickpea Pumpkin Blondies
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#8. Crispy Green Chickpea Sandwiches
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ary as lawmakers try to find the money to support President Donald Trump's other military priorities, like building a bigger Navy.
"Congress still doesn’t seem to have any answers as to how we will pay for this effort, or what the trade-offs with other national security efforts will be if we maintain an arsenal of over 4,000 nuclear weapons and expand our capacity to produce more," Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that praised the report as a "thorough, credible analysis."
But supporters insisted that spending what the Pentagon projects could amount to 6 percent of Pentagon’s budget to upgrade the nuclear arsenal over the next three decades is a fair price for what one called the “cornerstone of America’s national security."
“The price is affordable and the mission is imperative,” Claude Chafin, the spokesman for Republican members of the Armed Services panel, said in a statement. “Those who might argue otherwise ignore the enormous cost of facing an increasingly insecure world with an eroding and uncertain deterrent.”
Morning Defense newsletter Sign up for Morning Defense, a daily briefing on Washington's national security apparatus. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
And the country’s top nuclear officials have defended the modernization effort’s cost. “We’re now at a point where we must recapitalize every leg of the nuclear triad,” Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee in March. “We have squeezed about all of the life we can out of the systems we possess.”
The new report comes as Trump pledges to make the nation's nuclear deterrent “far stronger and more powerful than ever before," and as his administration reassesses the nation's nuclear weapons structure. That so-called Nuclear Posture Review is expected to be completed by January, and could propose new programs.
A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, asked to comment on the report, noted the Trump administration's nuclear review is ongoing and that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is due to present his recommendations to the president by the end of the year.
But the new CBO estimate shows that even the current plan poses significant challenges for a strained federal budget outlook. It updates a previous analysis that concluded the nuclear modernization plan would cost more than $400 billion between 2017 and 2026.
“If this goes through this will be the biggest increase in U.S. spending for nuclear weapons since the Reagan administration in the early 1980s,” said Stephen Schwartz, a nuclear policy consultant. “It is not penny-wise. It is likely that Congress, the Air Force and the Navy are really going to get spooked by the looming bill. It is not affordable.”
The new budget estimates reinforce the concerns of those who have long insisted the plan is not viable.
Indeed, the new government cost estimate is in line with a one previously published by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., which estimated that updating the nuclear triad could cost more than $1 trillion over 30 years. That assessment has been widely criticized by advocates of nuclear weapon spending as an exaggeration.
But in actuality the costs could even be higher than even the CBO is now estimating, according to a number of nuclear policy experts.
Tom Collina, director of policy at the nonprofit Ploughshares Fund, which advocates for having fewer nuclear weapons, pointed out that the new report does not take inflation into account. He said the real cost could be more like $1.5 trillion.
“The price of the nuclear arsenal rebuild is skyrocketing and it’s unsustainable,” he said in an interview. “This is now a spending spree.”
In addition, the costs of the nuclear arsenal are almost sure to fluctuate as weapons programs and spending on new facilities and communications systems mature. And they could grow substantially if the Trump administration's nuclear review results in an even more robust upgrade plan.
“If the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review by the administration does not scale-back current nuclear weapons spending plans — or worse, accelerates or expands upon them — expenditures on nuclear weapons will endanger other high priority national security programs,” Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said in a statement.
“This also only looks at the current plan,” Schwartz added. “If the NPR comes back and it turns out they want a new sea-launched cruise missile or a new warhead or a more bombers, all this stuff goes out the window.”
The CBO report is already being used to try to force a new debate on nuclear needs.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the upgrade plan "nothing more than a budgetary boondoggle" and in a statement urged "cutting unnecessary and destabilizing nuclear weapons systems."
“There has never been a serious debate in Congress over the comprehensive cost of the nuclear weapons program,” added Schwartz. “We have a golden opportunity. I do not have a great deal of optimism that there are enough people in the Trump administration that are interested in this and looking at this closely.”
But Reif said reality is bound to set in eventually.
"Unless the U.S. government finds a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," he said, "the nuclear weapons spending plan inherited by the Trump administration will pose a crushing affordability problem."
Bryan Bender contributed to this report.The listing agent for the Flintstone House in Hillsborough notified us this morning that the price will be cut by $420,000 later today, taking it from $4.2 million to $3.78 million. Judy Meuschke of Alain Pinel Realtors says that the home has drawn good interest from buyers. "I think the price reduction may entice those buyers who would love this house," she says.
The house that is well known to generations of Bay Area residents went on the market last fall. The three-bedroom, two-bath home presents as a series of amorphous shapes perched on the hills over I-280 in Hillsborough.
It was built in 1976 by architect William Nicholson as an exercise in using innovative building materials. The current owner lived there for 19 years and gave it its distinctive rusty orange shade in 2007.
Echoing earlier statements, Meuschke said: "Everyone loves this house, it is like a piece of valuable modern art."
· Hillsborough's Flintstone House On Market, Asks for $4.2M [Curbed SF]
· Past Flintstone House Coverage [Curbed SF]This promotion is not some lame gift card, store credit, or rebate designed to get rid of an overstock of our t-shirts.
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The promotion is automatically applied to all suppressors purchased through amtacsuppressors.com from May 23, 2017 through October 31st, 2017.Here’s something you might find refreshing: I don’t have an opinion on the Mad Men finale. For seven seasons, watching Mad Men was the rare pleasure in my life that I enjoyed in an uncritical fashion. It’s not that Mad Men didn’t make me think — I just felt no obligation to shape those thoughts into grand theories and deeply entrenched positions. I do enough of that already. I’d rather appreciate Mad Men as one would a sunset off the coast of Big Sur.
I figured it would be a bad idea to pore over the reactions on Twitter, as I didn’t want strangers ruining my Zen-like, post–Mad Men serenity. I’ve mostly avoided the recaps as well. However, there was one tweet from my friend Scott Tobias, a film critic for The Dissolve, that somehow wormed past my defenses and into my brain. While it didn’t “ruin” the Mad Men finale for me, the tweet did point out how far off it was from the very best series finale ever.
Do people still remember The Shield? It was sort of a thing when it debuted on FX in 2002, back when centering a TV drama on an amoral antihero was still a novel concept. As the Golden Globes are wont to do, they rushed to honor The Shield early on, awarding it Best Television Series–Drama after the first season. The show’s star, Michael Chiklis, also won a Golden Globe (and Emmy) for his portrayal of Vic Mackey, the smug commander of a corrupt corps of L.A. cops known as the Strike Team. Tony Soprano might have been TV’s most famous “likable” SOB, but Mackey upped the ante. Whereas Tony’s badness was embedded into his profession as a gangster, Mackey’s ruthlessness was justified as a necessary guard (or “shield”) against the terrifying underworld he was required to traverse and nullify each day. The veneer of legitimacy that Mackey had as a police officer — and the ease with which he perverted it — was the very thing that made the character so unsettling.
Three months after The Shield premiered, another show about complicated cops started airing on HBO. We all know what The Wire became, but for a few years, The Shield was better known and more celebrated. A decade ago, The Shield was routinely mentioned among the best TV dramas, along with shows like Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and The West Wing that over time have been similarly relegated by critics to TV history’s junior varsity squad. (Meanwhile, 20th-century phenomena like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue might as well no longer exist.) For those inclined to compare The Shield to The Wire, the latter’s elegant storytelling style and progressive politics jibes better with the tastes of the modern TV aesthete than does the gritty grindcore of The Shield, with its screaming nu-metal theme song and coterie of macho character actors who bust heads and ask questions later.
But what I think really diminished The Shield in the view of history was the emergence of Breaking Bad, the most action-oriented of modern TV’s four-sided A-list canon (with The Sopranos, The Wire, and Mad Men). Like Breaking Bad, the drama on The Shield usually hinged on putting the protagonist in an impossible situation and then watching him squirm his way out. For Mackey, this mainly involved slipping out of IAD investigations into his various crimes, the most egregious of which was committed at the end of the pilot episode. What elevated The Shield (and Breaking Bad) beyond standard genre fare was the acting, the cinema-level quality of the filmmaking, and the writing, which infused Greek tragedy into the barrage of shootouts and screaming matches.
I’m still a huge Shield fan, which I was reminded of Sunday night when I rewatched the series finale, “Family Meeting,” right after the last Mad Men episode. Now, I hadn’t seen “Family Meeting” since it first aired in 2008, nor have I watched any Shield in several years. Nevertheless, “Family Meeting” plugged me right back into the dread and catharsis that had been built up over the preceding episodes. When “Family Meeting” was over 75 minutes later, it was 1:30 a.m. and I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping well that night. My serenity was gone. Once again, The Shield had chewed me up and spat me out. Watching The Shield after Mad Men was like chasing an amaretto sour with several shots of Everclear.
♦♦♦
What do we want from a series finale? Is it a feeling of closure, so we can walk away feeling as if the story in which we’ve invested our time has been settled in proper fashion? Is it ambiguity, so we can pick up the story from the storytellers and play out possible scenarios in our imaginations and online arguments for years afterward? The answer is, “Yes, both.” It’s a near impossible demand, and no finale delivered both closure and ambiguity better than The Shield.
I’m about to discuss the end of a series that many people still haven’t seen. Here’s my problem: I would love for more people to watch The Shield. But in order to entice those people, I have to divulge details that might dampen their enjoyment. So, if you don’t want spoilers, I’ll just say this: The Shield is awesome. The cast is great. The guest stars are great. Have I mentioned that Anthony Anderson plays a drug lord and it’s incredible? I swear that’s not a spoiler. Just watch the show already.
The motivating incident of The Shield occurs in the pilot, which ends with Mackey and the Strike Team setting up a new member (played by Reed Diamond of Homicide, The Shield’s spiritual forebear) working undercover for IAD. In the midst of carrying out a raid, Mackey and his sidekick, Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), murder their fellow cop, a crime that will haunt them both right up through “Family Meeting.”
For all the awfulness that Vic and the Strike Team commit during the run of The Shield — they rob an Armenian “money train,” profit from various drug deals, and mentally torture Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker, among a multitude of other transgressions — that murder at the conclusion of the pilot is never quite set aside. Rather, the sin festers and grows more inflamed over the next 86 episodes, until Vic and Shane receive their punishments in “Family Meeting.”
For Vendrell, it’s closure. On the run from the police with his pregnant wife and young son, he winds up in a rundown hotel with few options and no hope of escape. Goggins solidified his cult status as a regular on Justified, but his performance on The Shield as a wild-eyed redneck who grows a conscience too late remains a personal favorite, particularly in the final episodes, when his hopped-up desperation reaches a poignant breaking point.
Telling you how Vendrell’s story ends — he puts a bullet into his head while his family lies dead in an adjacent bedroom, poisoned by Vendrell’s hand — technically counts as a spoiler. But the impact of the scene only registers if you’ve seen everything that comes before it. If you know the characters, it’s truly one of the most gut-wrenching scenes to ever appear in a TV show. For a show as loud as The Shield often was, the deathly quiet of the camera’s slow pan across the bed roars loudest of all. It wrecked me the other night just as much as it did when I first watched it.
For Mackey, it’s ambiguity. After he’s cut a shady deal for immunity with the feds, he’s the only member of the Strike Team to avoid prison or an early death. But based on the twisted logic of The Shield’s world, Mackey’s fate is perhaps the worst of all. No longer allowed out in the wild to brutalize gang members or barter with drug kingpins, Mackey is forced to work in an office, where he analyzes crime reports while wearing an uncomfortable, ill-fitting gray suit. His family has left him, as have all of his friends. He looks shrunken at the end of “Family Meeting,” though it’s also implied that he’s about to break the stifling conditions of his plea agreement. Somewhere in my mind, Mackey is lurking the streets of Los Angeles in search of one last bit of trouble.
“None of it is done,” Jon Hamm told the New York Times in response to criticism that the Mad Men finale was too pat. “Matt [Weiner] had said at one point, ‘I just want my characters to be a little more happy than they were in the beginning,’ and I think that’s pretty much true.” On The Shield, which wrapped in much grimmer fashion, the story didn’t feel “done,” but the finale did implant itself with a certain definitiveness on what came before. For a show that might seem oppressively testosterone-heavy, The Shield foreshadows the end of the man’s man “antihero” era in TV that Mad Men has officially closed. It remains the most unsparing portrait of a bad person whose inner rot is exposed to the world, and the finale has a lot to do with that. On Mad Men, Don Draper achieved enlightenment and restored his career. Breaking Bad concluded with Walter White receiving a measure of redemption by saving his surrogate son, Jesse. Even The Sopranos ended with Tony surrounded by his family. But at the end of The Shield, there is only desolation. And it still has the power to destroy you.IDEAS Paul is the junior U.S. Senator for Kentucky.
President Donald Trump said in his inaugural address: “We’ve defended other nation’s borders, while refusing to defend our own.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Today, the question is: Will we add yet another commitment to defend yet another foreign country?
For decades, NATO has been an organization where the U.S. disproportionately spends our blood and treasure. The other NATO countries have largely hitched a ride to the U.S. train that subsidizes their defenses and allows them to direct their revenues to domestic pursuits.
Adding a country with fewer than 2,000 soldiers to NATO is not in our self-interest. There is no national security interest that an alliance with Montenegro will advance. If we invite Montenegro into NATO, it will be a one-way street with the U.S. committing to defend yet another country.
Advocates of allowing Montenegro to join NATO admit as much. The Senate hearing on admitting Montenegro to NATO was really just a Russia-bashing session. Not one word was said of how allowing Montenegro into NATO would advance our national security. Even the citizens of Montenegro are divided on entry into NATO. Fewer than 40% favor joining NATO and approximately the same percentage of Montenegrins oppose joining NATO.
Those who want to allow Montenegro into NATO believe that unless the whole world joins NATO, Russia will conquer the world. The truth is, as always, more complicated.
During the Cold War, the myth of Russian might was endlessly circulated here at home and the effect was the production of endless munitions and ever-expanding debt. The Cold War ended and the Soviet Union failed, not because our military might overcame them but because their economic system was fundamentally flawed and our economic system outlasted them.
Now, we are told we must fear the Russian Bear once again. But if you look closely you will see that Russian aggression around the world, particularly among the former Soviet satellites, is an attempt to mask a weak economy that runs the same risk of over-extension. Without question, Russia is an adversary, a country that ignores international norms and does not respect the territorial integrity of its neighbors. But Russia is weak because of corruption, oligarchy and human rights abuses. If Russia continues on this path, they may well encounter the same cataclysm that brought down the Soviet empire.
This debate today is not just about Montenegro but about NATO expansion in general. The same cheerleaders for admitting Montenegro also recklessly pushed to admit Ukraine and Georgia; if they were still members, we could right now be at war with Russia.
From the very beginning, our republic was founded with a deep suspicion of entangling alliances. Our founders wanted to do everything possible to avoid the chronic wars of Europe, where, for centuries, kings from one nation fought their brothers or cousins in other nations. The endless, meaningless wars of fratricide continued even into the 20th century.
Washington wrote that “our true policy is to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.” Jefferson famously wrote, “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
In modern times, such military heroes as President Eisenhower opposed intervention in Hungary, even when the naked aggression of the Soviets was appalling. Eisenhower likely had no real opportunity to militarily intervene before 200,000 Soviet troops with 4000 tanks rolled into Hungary. But at least part of the decision was a realpolitick decision that risking a nuclear confrontation with Russia did not justify war.
Fast forward to today. For 16 years the US has been at war in the Middle East. Our justified response to the attacks of 9/11 has dragged on and on. The vote Congress made to authorize military force against the planners and attackers of the World Trade Centers is now used to justify all military action anywhere around the world.
That vote is now used to justify war around the globe in dozens of countries. It is a lie and a disservice to our young men and women in uniform to have them fight under false pretenses. No active war involving the U.S. anywhere around the globe has been approved by Congress.
Our unrestricted, un-voted upon involvement in war everywhere informs my opposition to expanding NATO. Everyone likes to talk of NATO’s Article 5 obligation to come to the defense of any NATO ally that is attacked. Many in Congress believe that Article 5 of the NATO alliance farms out the power to declare war to an international body.
David Fromkin put it this way: “If it is now agreed by treaty that an attack on a… NATO ally is deemed an attack on the United states, then it can be argued that the President is empowered without Congressional authorization to send us war.”
This is the crux of the debate: Congress abdicating its role in declaring war.
So, NATO. Should we expand it? Perhaps what we should do is make it clear that the NATO treaty is not a blind, open-ended promise to go to war anywhere and everywhere.
I continue to believe and will advocate for always having an official vote in Congress before we declare war.
Contact us at editors@time.com.This may seem surprising. I'm surprised myself. But I heard the news that Silvio Berlusconi had resigned with more sadness than good cheer.
Why so, when Europe's fourth largest economy finds itself on the brink of bankruptcy, brought there by the leadership of a man seemingly more concerned with his libido than sorting out some fairly fundamental issues with the nation's finances? Shouldn't we all be delighted to be saying farewell to "The Great Seducer"?
Well, I'm not wasting tears on the billionaire media mogul. But his departure does mark yet another nail in the coffin of the democratic rights that we all seem to take for granted and yet wave goodbye to with such abandon when it suits us.
Berlusconi hasn't gone because the Italian people have decided that it would be better if he was given the chance to spend more time with his party organiser. Indeed, constitutionally, he didn't need to resign even now.
He's stepped down because the markets thought that it would probably be for the best if one of their own was given the chance to run things for a while. Given the markets are made up of the same bankers who got the world economy into this mess in the first place, I am not entirely convinced they are the best placed group to be making leadership decisions on behalf of the Italian people.
Also, the new leader doesn't exactly have a democratic mandate, does he? Selected mainly because he would be seen as acceptable to the Group de Frankfurt, Signor Monti is an unelected lifetime Senator, a former European Commissioner and a member of that shadowy cabal, the Bilderberg group.
If what's happened in Italy were repeated in the UK, Peter Mandelson would be kissing the Sovereign's hands by the end of the month. Now, there's a thought.
And so we find two of Southern Europe's democracies being run by unelected technocrats -- Greece's new Prime Minister appears to be the Hellenic equivalent of Sir Mervyn King -- with no set date for when either country's people may get asked the question of who they would like to be in charge.
With contagion very much on the cards, how many more of our European partners will be being run by technocrats by the end of the year?
I guess it at least demonstrates that voting does change things. So they've abolished it.
Richard Morris blogs at A View From Ham Common, named Best New Blog at the 2011 Lib Dem Conference.Charles445
[Gero's Another]
00:08:109 - Stream here doesn't make sense, 00:08:177 - should be at 00:08:041 - I'm following the vocals if you listen it with 25% of speed you can notice that there are something.
00:14:655 (1) - Huge speed hiccup in the slider, usually these are fun for visuals but this one really gets in the way of gameplay surprisingly It's just x1.30 so I really thing that it is fine as is.
00:19:564 (3) - Since it's under the 8 this repeat can be obscured by a lot of skins. Try increasing the slider velocity just for this slider, it'll make the repeat pop out more. Fixed.
00:26:655 (1,2,3,4,5) - Automatic stacking pushes this into the HP bar, making the approach circles very hard to see. Try moving these farther down and avoid any automatic stacking errors. Fixed.
00:30:609 (5,1,2) - A huge jump into a spaced stream is usually a bad idea. If the jump is missed, the rest of the stream is too. Compressed streams avoid this problem because if they missed the jump the first time they are right in place for the rest of the circles. You know I did this for symmetry and to be honest there are huge jumps in the others difficulties so this one also fix the gap between the others.
00:32:655 (4,1,2) - These are not as bad because the slider's leniency lets you set up for the stream. Alright.
00:37:427 (6,1) - Again, jumps into spaced out streams are a problem, and this one especially since the player will be moving to the left for the jump, but suddenly has to start moving upwards and only a little bit to the left. It's basically a right angle, the most painful angle. Same as above but in this case is a blanket what I did.
01:02:689 (1,2,3) - Huge readability hazard, (1) is implied to be on a white tick, there's no indication that this is 1/8. It's most likely a player thinks it's 1/4, or 1/3, when in fact it's neither. Repeats will save you from pissing off players. Yeah, I agree with you so I tried something different.
01:03:404 (2,1) - And the rhythm isn't even continued... yeah this is not a readable section, you should definitely try something else. Same.
01:04:973 - Stream starts at 01:05:109 - so the (2) is out of place. Plays better with a triple here in my opinion.
01:05:109 - Check the automatic stacking and make sure you're okay with how it looks. ^Blog Archive Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (5) Feb 21 (5) Feb 20 (5) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (6) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (6) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (3) Jan 23 (3) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (5) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (7) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (6) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (5) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (4) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (6) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (3) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (5) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (7) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (6) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (6) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (6) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (6) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (5) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (5) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (4) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (5) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (5) May 18 (6) May 17 (6) May 16 (4) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (4) May 10 (5) May 09 (2) May 08 (4) May 07 (4) May 06 (4) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (6) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (6) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (7) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (5) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (6) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (5) Feb 24 (8) Feb 23 (7) Feb 22 (8) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (6) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (5) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (7) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (6) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (5) |
is another [2:02 PM] [CO2] gigX: Tomorrow CO2 is doing full deployment [2:02 PM] [CO2] gigX: against FCON [2:03 PM] [CO2] gigX: in Tenerifis [2:03 PM] [CO2] gigX: I warned FCON to stay away from this [2:03 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: TRI attacked FCON [2:03 PM] [CO2] gigX: but after few days they were proud to say that they joining DRF [2:03 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: how can they stay away from getting attacked [2:04 PM] [CO2] gigX: stay away from SOLAR things [2:04 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: how does that stop them from getting attacked by TRI? [2:04 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: TRI and solar aren't allies anymore [2:06 PM] [CO2] gigX: "we were obligated to shoot TRI" [2:06 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: yeah, the thing that sort dragon leaked to reddit remember [2:06 PM] [CO2] gigX: Im not reading reddit [2:06 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: TEST got a deployment in MTO, in return the DRF got our pledge to support them against TRI and their allies if they attacked first [2:07 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: it was kind of burried in a sort dragon madpost but that's more or less what it was [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: If TRI atack DRF [2:07 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: or FCON [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: TRI didnt atack DRF [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: oh no [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: cmon [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: now fcon to [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: you are funny guy [2:07 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: FCON was specifically in the agreement, even before they joined the DRF [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: just creating new shit [2:07 PM] [CO2] gigX: Im done talking with you [2:08 PM] [CO2] gigX: fly safe [2:08 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: dude, this is not new information [2:08 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: and even if it were, FCON was in the DRF when TRI attacked [2:08 PM] [CO2] gigX: dont give a shit [2:08 PM] [CO2] gigX: And FCON is gonna die [2:08 PM] [CO2] gigX: they will be evicted [2:08 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: why are you so hellbent to evict your allies? [2:08 PM] [CO2] gigX: because they are shit [2:09 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: because they tried to get help when someone bigger tried to evict them? [2:09 PM] [CO2] gigX: FCON are not my allies [2:09 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: you did that with us up north remember? [2:09 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: asked for help from someone bigger to try and fight panfam [2:09 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: there's no shame in having allies [2:09 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: everyone is bigger than someone else [2:09 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: and smaller than someone else [2:10 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: allies and politics are how you stay alive [2:10 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: and part of that is being true to your word so people trust you [2:11 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: I don't want a reset, but if you want to do it to shoot our allies cleanly we can do that [2:12 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: how long do you want? [2:12 PM] [CO2] gigX: how long what? [2:12 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: before we reset [2:13 PM] [CO2] gigX: Like I said [2:13 PM] [CO2] gigX: I was right [2:13 PM] [CO2] gigX: you want me to do reset so you can be good guy [2:14 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: you asked me for it [2:14 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana: do you not want to do it anymore? [2:14 PM] [CO2] gigX: and then you can continue sucking xix dick [2:14 PM] [CO2] gigX: go fuckyourself retard [2:14 PM] [CO2] gigX: peace of shit [2:15 PM] [TEST] Dran Arcana:...does that mean now?Note
Quote During Kickstarter back in March, people asked for Linux version and since porting doesn’t require that many resources now thanks to Unity we decided to give it a go and now we’re going to have the alpha build on 25th August.
Planet Nomads looks like the survival game to really get me interested in the genre, the developers emailed in to let me know that the game is coming to Linux and will release in alpha form this month on the 25th of August.: It will currently be limited to alpha backers only, with Early Access due sometime in Spring next year.From their email to me:You can also see public confirmation in their news post here I should be getting a key from the developer to check it out, very excited!- Creation, survival and exploration are equally important- Planet Nomads supports lego-style building on a large scale- Building a spaceship capable of interplanetary travel is the first end goal- Procedurally generated strange worlds with intricate biomes- Open design - to easy add new mechanics and features as the game growsPlanet Nomads is a sandbox game of survival through building. As a lone scientist crash-landing on a beautiful, but unforgiving alien planet, your wit and craftiness will determine your fate in the upcoming days. Salvage all you can from the shipwreck and build something useful. A shelter for protection against the elements and curious creatures. A vehicle to expand your reach. When you've covered your basic survival needs, start a journey towards those strange monuments shining on the horizon, explore lairs of dangerous beasts and discover places with rare materials. All in the pursuit of building a spaceship that will take you to other planets.Wei Han Xu, or Wei Wei, a McDonald’s employee, is the latest working woman to go viral because of her stunning good looks. See: Mexico’s weather woman Yanet Garcia and Brazilian street sweeper Rita Mattos. Wei Wei has men traveling to Taiwan to get a look at her, and to shoot videos of her waitressing in adorable sailor outfits and maid costumes (as one *Rick James voice* supercreep did.) The “McDonald’s goddess,” whose age is unknown, is a college student and model who’s been working at Mickey D’s for five years. Her looks have made her famous enough to land a couple of talk show appearances as well as 86,000 Facebook likes and 32,000 Instagram followers.
進去乾貨間補貨 以為進到了條 小河😱😱😱 #差點#滑倒 #媽媽咪呀 A photo posted by 徐薇涵 (@pppig) on Aug 11, 2015 at 12:45am PDT
第一次戴這浮誇的帽子 有很好笑嗎？ 但很喜歡這樣的穿搭 有成熟的感覺😁 @jo6usaleniu #雖然無袖很害羞 A photo posted by 徐薇涵 (@pppig) on Aug 10, 2015 at 6:24am PDT
兩個失眠的小孩 還是要來聽姊隱居 練習的吉他 #天空是綿綿的糖 #就算塌下來有我擋 A photo posted by 徐薇涵 (@pppig) on Jul 14, 2015 at 12:20pm PDT
這兩天的天氣 也太像夏天了吧 不想變黑啦😭 A photo posted by 徐薇涵 (@pppig) on Apr 1, 2015 at 5:38am PDT
[via Uproxx]The state of Maryland has awarded the city of Baltimore more than $2 million grants for work on bike lanes and pedestrian projects, city officials said Thursday.
The State Highway Administration awarded nearly $2 million to construct a protected bicycle track along Potomac Street in Baltimore and implement safety improvements around the Inner Harbor, including enhancements to the Jones Falls Trail.
In addition, more than $300,000 was awarded to the city to fund the installation of a protected bicycle track along W. Pratt Street from Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to Light Street. The grant will also fund a new "pop-up" cycle track along E. Pratt Street.
Jon Laria, chairman of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's Bicycle Commission, said biking promotes "sustainability, good health, and economic development" in Baltimore.
lbroadwater@baltsun.com
Twitter.com/lukebroadwaterHordes of gypsy moth caterpillars are currently ravaging parts of the Northeastern United States. Newly released images from space show the alarming damage being done to New England forests by these leaf-munching insects.
Incredible as it may seem, insects and disease damage 45 times more forest area annually than wildfires. A single caterpillar or bug can’t do much damage, but it’s a different story when they number in the millions. Collectively, they’re a true force of nature.
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Parts of New England and the mid-Atlantic states are witnessing a population explosion in European gypsy moth caterpillars, an insect that was introduced to the region in the 1860s. Soon after hatching in early summer, these bugs start feasting on the leaves of deciduous trees. Newly released satellite images show the extent of this defoliation in parts of Rhode Island. In the image below, healthy forests appear green, while the leaf-stripped areas feature a gray-brown tint.
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The image below shows a closer view of forests near Barden and Scituate Reservoirs in western Rhode Island on June 30, 2016. The remaining green patches belong to coniferous trees trees, which the caterpillars avoid.
Ecologists partly attribute the infestation to a decline in population of white-footed mice (a key predator of gypsy moths), which has shrunk in recent years owing to poor acorn production by oak trees. But the true culprit driving the caterpillar boom are the drought conditions currently ravaging the region. Dry weather tends to holds back pathogens that normally keep the caterpillars in check.
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It looks awful, but the effects of this infestation aren’t terrible—at least not yet. Trees can survive one or two years of defoliation by caterpillars. But should this continue for the next three or more years, that would be a different story.
[NASA Earth Observatory]ELIZABETH -- Police found an Irvington man who apparently got an early start to his New Year's Eve celebration and fell asleep behind the wheel of his car at the entrance to the Goethals Bridge, authorities said Sunday.
Mathias Estime, 26, was found sleeping in his 2004 Acura in the right lane of the approach to the toll plaza in Staten Island Port Authority of New York and New Jersey when police approached him at 3 a.m. on Saturday, said Joseph Pentangelo, a Port Authority Police Department spokesman.
Pentangelo said Estime had the keys in the ignition and the car was running and in gear.
When police roused him, Estime got out of the car and started to walk away before officers stopped him, Pentangelo said.
He was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated, Pentangelo said.
MaryAnn Spoto may be reached at mspoto@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @MaryAnnSpoto. Find NJ.com on Facebook.The European planemaker is delaying deliveries of a dozen A380 superjumbo jets over the next two years to Emirates.
Airbus Group’s struggles with its A380 superjumbo jet are deepening as the planemaker delays deliveries of a dozen aircraft over the next two years to Emirates, the double-decker’s biggest customer.
To make up for the financial drag from the tardier handovers, Airbus will accelerate cost cuts, according to an emailed company statement Tuesday.
The delay stems from an agreement between Emirates and engine supplier Rolls-Royce Group Holdings, the release said.
Handovers of six A380s that were originally planned for 2017 and another six for 2018 will be shifted to a year later following a subsequent agreement with Emirates and Airbus, the planemaker said, adding it still plans to deliver about 12 A380s per year as of 2018.
Emirates and Rolls-Royce reached a settlement earlier in December over the airline’s A380 engine performance and maintenance concerns, after the carrier had revealed technical shortcomings a few weeks earlier. The delays compound Airbus’ efforts to turn around the fortunes of the A380, the world’s largest commercial jetliner, which lists for $433 million before the discounts customary in the industry.
The announcement caps a year of negative news for Airbus’ flagship model. An order for A380s from Iran never materialized when that country announced purchases from Airbus earlier in December, meaning the company hasn’t received any advance contracts on the model this year.
As a consequence of slack demand, Airbus cut its delivery target for the A380 in July. U.S. competitor Boeing is also having trouble selling its competing 747-8.
Emirates is by far the biggest buyer and operator of the A380, with orders for more than 140 of the plane. The Dubai-based carrier recently switched to Rolls-Royce engines for its latest batch of A380s, after relying on General Electric’s Engine Alliance joint venture with Pratt & Whitney for the four powerplants that propel the airliner.
Rolls-Royce said in an emailed response to questions that it will “continue to work with Airbus and Emirates to meet their requirements.”
Winning Emirates as a customer for its Trent 900 engine to power the A380 was a major commercial victory for Rolls-Royce when it was announced in 2015, and the contract for a total of 50 aircraft remains the largest in the history of the U.K.’s prime manufacturer. In November, Emirates President Tim Clark revealed that feedback on the powerplants indicates “technical issues” that needed to be resolved before the first plane was delivered to Emirates, which had been due this month.On first glance, a Londoner will likely pick out something locals have been discussing for decades: the boroughs of Southwark and Hackney both need more Tube stations. These areas aren’t hard to find; they’re the purple patches due south and northeast of the city center, respectively. The purple shading shows that most people here commute by bus or coach (the British term for a long-distance bus).
Public transit enthusiasts will be pleased to see that the city is mainly a great sea of orange, denoting areas where people use trains or subways. A closer look at the map, which zooms out to reveal commuter habits across the U.K. and can be viewed in full here, also reveals some highly specific quirks and pitfalls in the way the city’s transit network functions.
These are some of the interesting conclusions to be drawn from an unexpectedly beautiful, incredibly detailed map of London’s commuter habits. Created by Oliver O’Brien, a researcher for the Consumer Data Research Centre based at University College London, the map uses data from the U.K.’s 2011 national census (the most recent) to provide an almost street-by-street breakdown of how Londoners get to and from work.
Londoners as a whole take the train to work. East Londoners love their bikes more than anyone else in the capital. And a large share of the city’s walking commuters seem to come from a religious minority.
These options may be better for congestion and pollution than private car use, but as a former resident of both areas, I can vouch that commuting this way is slower, and too often means crawling through traffic—an experience made more uncomfortable by the tendency of London’s double decker buses to vibrate heavily when not driving at reasonable speed.
To be fair, both these areas have benefited from one of London great recent transit successes, the Overground network, which has pieced together closed or underused pieces of track to create a speedy, well-connected alternative to the Tube. But the lines the network uses still typically circle Central London rather than connect to it, which explains why most commuters are still stuck on the bus.
Central London, meanwhile, is a dense thicket of green, showing that residents who walk to work are the largest group here. The intensity of the green patch still might mislead you into thinking that walking to work is more common than it is. The heart of the green block here is in fact the City of London, London’s financial district, where barely more than 7,000 people live in streets dominated by offices.
Beyond the city’s heart, there’s one notable exception to the rule of foot commuters living centrally. If you scan to the north of Central London, you’ll notice another patch of dense green around the neighborhood of Stamford Hill, where most people seem to walk to their places of employment. Anyone with local knowledge could tell you the reason for this: the area is home to a 30,000-strong community of Hasidic Jews, many of whom work in businesses that are located almost on their doorsteps.
When it comes to bike commuters, the map shows how far London still has to come in making people feel safe. In a sea of orange, green, and purple, there’s only one area that has many streets shaded red, signifying that most people here commute by bike. That area is East London’s Hackney.
There could be several factors in play here. The area is near enough to jobs to make commuting by bike relatively brief. Also, this is a gentrifying area, popular with younger middle-class residents who tend to be early adopters of cycling. The area does have some quieter back street routes into town, but its cycling infrastructure isn’t notably better than elsewhere. In itself this is inconclusive, but it might suggest that, when it comes to getting people on two wheels, location and social habits can have more influence than an excellent lane network, per se.
While the map uses the most up-to-date figures available, the five years since they were gathered is still a long time. London has some major transit changes on the way, including Crossrail, a 73-mile long heavy rail link tunneled across London that should ease pressure on the Tube and attract some people in the London region away from their cars. (Current Tube expansions, however, are routed neither to Hackney or Southwark.) The city is also building some properly protected cycle highways.
If all goes well, an updated version of the map may soon show more people using bikes and trains and, on the outskirts, far fewer cars.UFC president Dana White, coaches Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen were very critical of the production team of The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 3 in 2014, and the UFC decided to change a few things for the next season of the reality show.
During tryouts in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, UFC announced that the filming of the fourth season will take place out of Brazil for the first time. Like in the TUF: Latin America season, the filming will take place in Las Vegas.
Dana White said at the UFC 179 post-fight press conference on Saturday night that they already chose the next coaches for TUF: Brazil 4, but can’t announce yet.
TUF: Brazil 4 will feature bantamweight and lightweight contestants. The previous seasons of the reality show in Brazil crowned Rony Jason (featherweight), Cezar Ferreira (middleweight), Leonardo Santos (welterweight), Warlley Alves (middleweight) and Antonio Carlos Junior (heavyweight).Net income rose to 82 cents a share, far surpassing analysts’ estimates for the third quarter. The bank reported a profit of $527 million, or 9 cents a share, in the third quarter of 2008.
“The revenue growth was very impressive,” said Anthony Polini, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates. “They’re benefiting from a turn in the economy, and they’re asserting their dominance.”
The results also reflected the broader rebound in once-stymied financial markets, with companies again issuing stock, raising money from bond markets and signing merger deals. After being forced to take huge write-downs on the value of some its assets a year ago, JPMorgan said it booked about a $400 million gain on the sale of mortgage securities and buyout loans.
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chairman and chief executive, said the earnings reflected growth across several business lines, but he gave only a cautious outlook. “While we are seeing some initial signs of consumer credit stability, we are not yet certain that this trend will continue,” he said in a statement.
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Consumer loss rates remain high, but there were upbeat signs in the bank’s numbers. Bank officials said they saw “a little bit of stabilization” in home values, especially for lower price properties and in states like California. And while delinquencies remain high, fewer borrowers were falling behind on mortgages.
Michael J. Cavanagh, the bank’s chief financial officer, called that a “hopeful sign” but stopped short of declaring that heavy losses were over. “We have to watch the economy and see where it heads,” he said in a conference call with reporters.
JPMorgan was the first of the nation’s biggest banks to report third-quarter earnings. Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs also release results this week. As one of the first major banks to warn of troubles with subprime mortgages, home equity loans and credit cards, JPMorgan is seen as a bellwether for the financial industry.
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Although the housing market and economy remain weak, analysts expect to see a slowdown in consumer loan losses at the biggest banks and for them to start setting aside less money in their reserves. Meanwhile, the troubles are quickly moving to commercial real estate loans, which will place a heavier burden on smaller lenders.
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Mr. Dimon still must contend with several problems. His decision last month to replace the two co-heads of the investment banking division with a single leader, James E. Staley, raised concern within the ranks. JPMorgan’s credit card division is unlikely to turn a profit until 2011, and, like most of the industry, its consumer franchise has seen a fall-off in new mortgage lending.
Mr. Dimon also faces obstacles in Washington. He must balance paying bonuses to JPMorgan investment bankers based on blow-out earnings with public furor over Wall Street pay. New regulations on credit cards threaten to lower the profitability of that business, and lenders face other legislative efforts to curb bank fees and derivatives trading.
Despite repaying its $25 billion taxpayer investment in June, JPMorgan is still waiting for the government to sell warrants it was given last year. Their value, now at nearly $2 billion, has risen almost $800 million since rivals like Goldman Sachs cut deals to buy them back this summer, according to Linus Wilson, a finance professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. That could be a windfall for taxpayers but would not affect the bank’s capital.
Even so, JPMorgan is emerging from the crisis with renewed confidence. Its investment bank, which posted a $1.9 billion profit, reported strong trading revenue, though short of the record levels earlier this year when the markets were in constant flux and prices skyrocketed.
The bank’s consumer businesses are still bleeding from bad loans. Its mortgage and consumer banking operations posted a narrow $7 million profit, while its credit card division lost $700 million in the quarter. By next year, charge-offs could reach 11 percent of loan balances.
“You are seeing the underlying earnings power is there, albeit challenged by the need in this quarter to add to reserves,” Mr. Cavanagh said. “Stabilization is just the first phase; we need losses to return to more normalized levels.”Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha, Medal of Honor winner. Image: U.S. Army
A former Army staff sergeant who helped repel one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan will receive the Medal of Honor. Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha, 31, becomes only the fourth living recipient of the nation's highest award for valor from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House announced Friday that on Feb. 11 Romesha will receive the medal for his actions in repelling the deadly attack on Combat Outpost Keating on Oct. 3, 2009. At the time Romesha was serving as a Section Leader with Bravo Troop, 3d Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.
The attack by hundreds of Taliban fighters on the remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan killed 8 American soldiers and left 22 others wounded. The attack was profiled in the book "The Outpost" by Jake Tapper, formerly of ABC News.
Romesha will become the 11 th veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be awarded the medal. Seven of them have been awarded posthumously.
Combat Outpost Keating was a small base in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province, located at the bottom of a valley surrounded on all sides by steep mountain ridges. Plans to close the base had been delayed for months when the attack was launched by 300 Taliban fighters, hiding in the rugged terrain.
According to the citation accompanying his award, Romesha took out an enemy machine gun team and was injured by a rocket propelled grenade as he engaged a second one.
"Undeterred by his injuries, Staff Sergeant Romesha continued to fight," says the citation, "and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers. "
Now leading a five-man team, Romesha used a with a sniper rifle to fight back Taliban attackers, including three who had breached the outpost's perimeter.
"With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Romesha continually exposed himself to heavy enemy fire, as he moved confidently about the battlefield engaging and destroying multiple enemy targets," says the citation.
Maintaining radio communication with the tactical operations center at the base, Romesha identified a main point of attackers and directed air support that killed "over 30 enemy fighters."
"After learning that other Soldiers at a distant battle position were still alive, Staff Sergeant Romesha and his team provided covering fire, allowing three of their wounded comrades to reach the aid station. " Romesha and his team then " pushed forward 100 meters under withering fire, to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. "
The citation says "Staff Sergeant Romesha's heroic actions throughout the day-long battle were critical in suppressing an enemy that had far greater numbers. His extraordinary efforts gave Bravo Troop the opportunity to regroup, reorganize and prepare for the counterattack that allowed the Troop to account for its personnel and secure Combat Outpost Keating."
After the battle, Outpost Keating was finally closed down.
Romesha enlisted in the Army in September 1999 and served until April 2011. Married and a father of three, he currently lives in Minot, North Dakota.This recipe is a vegan version of the Indian spinach curry, Palak Paneer, that uses tofu instead of the typical Indian cheese paneer: Palak Tofu. It’s rich, creamy and delicious!
I loved eating Palak Paneer at Indian Restaurants, because of the delicious and creamy spinach curry. But I stopped eating it because of the Paneer, which is a traditional Indian cheese. I don’t need that! I can make my own Palak Paneer, a vegan Palak Paneer. Firm tofu is actually consistency-wise very similar to Paneer, so it’s the perfect substitution!
Spinach is rich in iron and calcium. The Palak Tofu uses 3 cups of spinach, so I’d say this dish is the most delicious way of getting an iron boost.
Serve the Palak Tofu with …
I’ve had this Palak Tofu with homemade Naan and fluffy Basmati Rice. The combination was soooo good.
Palak Tofu This is a vegan version of the indian spinach curry "Palak Paneer". It uses tofu instead of the traditional indian cheese. The spinach curry is creamy & delicious and rich in iron! 5 from 3 votes Print Pin Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 50 minutes Servings: 2 people Calories: 363 kcal Author: Elephantastic Vegan Ingredients 3 cups spinach fresh
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 cup coconut water
6 oz firm tofu
2 teaspoons canola oil
1/2 teaspoon kala namak
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika powder
1/2 teaspoon ginger powder
1 inch piece ginger root
1/4 cup full-fat canned coconut milk
1/4 cup tomato purée*
salt to taste Instructions Place the cashews in a bowl and pour 1/2 cup of hot water over them. Let them sit for about half an hour to soften them. Pour the cashews along with the water in a blender and blend as smooth as possible.
Wash the spinach and add it into the blender along with the coconut water. Blend again. You can blend until the spinach is completely fine, or you can leave some spinach pieces in there.
Cut the tofu in cubes. Heat a large pan with 2 teaspoons of canola oil.
When hot, place the tofu in the pan and season with the kala namak, curry powder, paprika powder & ginger powder. Sear the tofu for about 5 minutes.
Peel and mince the ginger root.
Add the ginger (minus a few pieces for topping later) in the pan along with the tofu.
After like 2-3 minutes, pour the spinach-sauce over the tofu.
Add in the coconut milk and tomato purée.
Let it cook for about 15-20 minutes and add salt to taste.
Once the curry thickened, it's ready to serve. Add thinly cut strips of ginger on top. Notes
*I used store-bought tomato purée (with salt, no additional herbs) for this recipe - it's often canned or in cartons, not to confuse with tomato paste which is thicker in consistency.
The Palak Tofu is best served with some Adapted from Vegan Richa *I used store-bought tomato purée (with salt, no additional herbs) for this recipe - it's often canned or in cartons, not to confuse with tomato paste which is thicker in consistency.The Palak Tofu is best served with some Homemade Naan and Basmati Rice. Estimated Nutrition Info Calories: 363 kcal | Carbohydrates: 20 g | Protein: 14 g | Fat: 27 g | Saturated Fat: 8 g | Sodium: 731 mg | Potassium: 984 mg | Fiber: 3 g | Sugar: 6 g | Vitamin A: 92.7 % | Vitamin C: 21.3 % | Calcium: 10.9 % | Iron: 35 % Tried this recipe? Mention @elephantasticvegan or tag #elephantasticvegan Rate the recipe! A recipe rating helps other users to figure out if they should try a recipe. Please leave a good rating, if you like the recipe!
Did you make this vegan Palak Tofu? Tag @elephantasticvegan on instagram and use the hashtag #elephantasticvegan. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Elephantastic Vegan Newsletter to see Reader Remake Features!
Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that I have recommended. While clicking these links won't cost you any extra money, they will help me keep this site up and running!He's disparaged his own Republican leader as a liar and dismissed fellow senators as part of the "Washington cartel." But now, with his presidential prospects hanging in the balance, Ted Cruz is moving closer than ever to the D.C. establishment.
Directly and through surrogates, the Texas senator is aggressively reaching out to his Senate colleagues as he prepares for the possibility of a convention floor fight against Donald Trump. And Cruz’s emissaries on Capitol Hill are now signaling to senior Republicans that Cruz would be willing to work with them as the GOP nominee in a way Trump would not.
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So far, Cruz can tout only two Senate endorsements, from conservative Mike Lee and the deal-making centrist Lindsey Graham. But Senate Republicans are now at least listening to an intensified pitch from Cruz and his allies: That he’s a far more stable choice for the top of the ticket and for the GOP's hopes of keeping the Senate.
His trouncing of Trump in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday night could bolster Cruz's case to senators.
“With Cruz we can win the election, hold the Senate,” said former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), who was tapped by Cruz to lead outreach to members of Congress. "I think with Trump we almost certainly lose the Senate, lose the election for president, even lose the House.”
With a big win in Wisconsin, Cruz may finally draw the establishment support from Congress he’s so far lacked in his cage match with Trump. But he and his scant supporters on the Hill have their work cut out for them: The Texas senator is still perceived by many fellow GOP senators as an uncompromising hardliner willing to do anything to further his own ambitions, but nothing to help the party.
But Lee said in an interview that after talking to more than two dozen of his colleagues, he believes the bulk of Republican senators no longer hold a grudge toward the Texas firebrand.
“I hope and expect a lot of them will end up endorsing Sen. Cruz. It hasn’t happened yet … but I do think it’s going to be coming,” Lee said Tuesday. “A lot of them have some real concerns with Mr. Trump. That resonates. And for that reason I think most of them will come around.”
Cruz himself has directly spoken with influential conservative Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and traded voicemails with Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, whose late-voting state could be critical to blocking Trump’s path to the nomination. Cruz’s campaign acknowledges that at this key juncture in the election, he must broaden his support within the party.
“We’re in a situation where we’re trying to galvanize Republicans behind us,” Cruz communications director Alice Stewart said Tuesday. She declined to say whether Cruz still considered Senate leadership to be part of the “Washington cartel,” but insisted that engaging fellow senators wouldn’t compromise his conservative record.
That the Cruz campaign is doing outreach at all is a turnabout from three weeks ago, when his campaign manager Jeff Roe told reporters that “it’s not like we have some phone tree of United States senators" to seek out for endorsements.
Much of the effort underway is being left to his surrogates. Gramm has spoken with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), as well as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), he said. The former senator explained to them why he's backing Cruz, and noted that Cruz, unlike Trump, lines up with Republican leadership on fiscal and national security issues.
Lee and Graham have been calling and meeting with Republican senators to gauge their level of enthusiasm for a colleague who's called McConnell a great leader for Democrats and devised the tactics that resulted in the first government shutdown in two decades.
Graham has even been on something of a comedy tour, taking his quick wit to venues such as "The Daily Show” to explain why he’s backing Cruz after joking a few weeks ago that there would be no conviction if the Texan were murdered on the Senate floor.
“People have asked me why I did what I did,” Graham said in an interview. “I think we can form a party with Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and others. I think that’d be a strong, viable Republican Party.”
Largely absent from the Capitol as he campaigns nonstop, Cruz made a key step toward his colleagues last month by bringing onboard Gramm, a longtime Texas senator who ran for president in 1996 and was backing Marco Rubio before he dropped out. Gramm has stressed that Cruz, as the nominee, would actively work to highlight areas of agreement with the rest of the ticket, while Republicans can count on no such thing from Trump.
“When this is over, we need to be together on a set of issues we agree on,” Gramm said, characterizing the message he relayed to McConnell and others in Senate leadership. “The good news is, while people may have had conflicts with Ted, our basic leadership totally agrees with him on the issues. It’s a huge difference with Trump, but basically we’re all together.”
Gramm said, however, that he's not making a hard sell with senators. And Cornyn confirmed that in an interview, saying the former senator merely explained his own reasoning for publicly backing Cruz and pushing his candidacy. A spokesman for McConnell confirmed that Gramm has spoken with the majority leader but said the conversation was not centered around prodding the GOP leader to endorse Cruz.
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comfortable leather club chairs surrounding his desk. There’s a conference room down the hall where the team holds weekly meetings with Busch on Tuesdays and technical partner Richard Childress Racing on Monday.
Around the corner sits another well-sized office where the team engineers work in concert with crew chief Todd Berrier, affectionately called “The Mad Hatter” by one of his staff for continually searching for techniques to make the cars faster.
Although FRR receives chassis and engines from RCR, there are the typical motorsports work stations throughout the 20,000-square foot structure — shocks, springs, suspensions, drive shafts, transmissions, tires, wires, sandblaster, a paint booth plus a chassis dyno and a seven-post shaker rig.
Despite all the tools FRR has at its disposal, Garone points to the 2010 season as the turnaround for the team. After running a limited 18-race season in 2009 with Regan Smith, the company acquired the services of Garone’s former PPI Motorsports teammate Mark McArdle, who had been laid off from his role as competition director at Richard Petty Motorsports.
McArdle enlisted Rondeau to become the car chief on the No. 78 Chevy. Rondeau was promoted to crew chief later that year and was named director of competition at the start of this season. He has assumed greater responsibilities since McArdle moved back to North Carolina to be with his family and work for Richard Childress.
But Rondeau credits McArdle’s organizational skills with righting the ship.
“Mark is a great organizer,” Rondeau said. “With any of these little teams, that’s a big part of the organization. We have that now. And it’s a big part of any team. We have a lot of that now, and it’s getting better on a daily basis.
“We have to stay ahead of the game. And we’re ahead. We’ve already chassis-dyno’ed our Dover car and it’s Tuesday — and it hits the plate tomorrow. It’s normal now. We just work two weeks out.”
Streamlining the process enables the 64-man operation to perform so efficiently. Once the FRR transporter arrived back in Denver on Monday from last weekend’s activities at Chicagoland Speedway, the team was able to clean the truck, remove the cars, run data on Busch’s race car and reload by Tuesday afternoon to make the 34-hour trip to New Hampshire.
There are economies of scale that also benefit the team, whether that means the weekly parts that come on “two black boxes” each week when the Furniture Row trucks drop consumer goods across the country or taking a new car to the wind tunnel while bringing back a chassis from RCR in Welcome, N.C. on the return.
While working outside the traditional confines of the motorsports community in North Carolina might be appear daunting to some, Rondeau knows it’s what separates the racers from the pretenders.
“People who come here have to be committed to the team,” Rondeau said. “When you come to Colorado, you’re not going to be running down the street to another race shop for $50 a week, because there are no other race shops.
“If someone moves out here, we know they’re serious.”
Over the last few years, the transition of workers originally from the area has dwindled down to seven or eight. With the investment that Visser has made in engineering, and last year with bringing Busch into the fold, most of the specialized motorsports personnel came from the Carolinas.
“You have to have the right people in place, and that includes the driver,” Garone said. “A few years back we started a technical agreement with RCR. Then we brought our motor program to ECR (Earnhardt Childress Racing Technologies in 2011).
“Then bringing Todd on board — and you put him with Cole (Pearn, head race engineer) and Pete and Phil (Jimenez, team engineer) — putting them in key positions and giving that a little time to gel.
"And then enter Kurt into that mix for six races last year. The first race was a little rocky. The second race got a little better and communication got a little better. Kurt began to understand what we were doing with the race cars. We began to understand what he wanted out of our race cars — it just all came together last year.”
Garone said that through testing and time together with the team, Busch’s results “snowballed.” He credits the tight-knit organization with providing an environment in which Busch could thrive.
If there has been an Achilles heel for Busch, it has been the pit crew. Although there had been discussions of borrowing a team from RCR for Richmond, the plan didn’t materialize. However, after a miserable execution of the second stop at Richmond, the driver shrieking, “(WTF), Joe Garone,” proved to be the catalyst for change — and a new ring tone for most of the FRR crew.
By Chicagoland, Busch had a new front-tire changer and the average time of the pit stops dropped to 12.9 seconds.
After Busch’s fourth-place finish on Sunday, his ninth of the season, the team is a career-high sixth in the point standings. Busch has led 441 laps — more than all of Visser’s other drivers combined.
While Busch recognizes the geographical challenges that Furniture Row faces operating out of Denver, he doesn’t discount the team from being “a bona fide program.” And after working with multi-car operations such as Roush Fenway Racing or Penske Racing, Busch can appreciate the advantages and “freedom” that a team such as Furniture Row can provide.
“One thing that is a strong suit that I’ve noticed with this whole situation is the independence and being able to navigate through some of these waters a bit more aggressively, as well as we can steer our ship in a quicker direction and not have to report back to a big mother ship, so to speak,” Busch said.
“So being able to just navigate and get things implemented into the cars quickly is so refreshing. We have all the right people, and it was just a matter of having everything fall into place with the performances on track, and we’ve been able to do that. It’s been a very successful season,and we’re in the Chase and we don’t want it to stop there. We want it to keep going.”
And the more successful Busch is with this title run, the higher caliber of candidates FRR can hope to attract as his replacement for 2014.
Garone contemplated a variety of drivers earlier in the week, but it might be time to clear the dry erase board in his office and start from scratch. Thursday’s news with NAPA could have other dominos falling before FRR has to make a final decision.
“Where we’re at right now is deciding what exactly our direction should be,” Garone said on Tuesday. “If you look at where you are today and say, ‘I might not be able get back to the level because of the experience the driver you have already’, then do you look at another veteran driver that can get the job done?
“Do you look at a mid-level driver that’s caught in between where they were and where they could be? Or do you go with a rookie and put a first-class effort behind him to try and grow a long-term relationship with a driver?”
With the latest developments, Furniture Row Racing could take on a whole new look from what might have been imagined when Busch first announced he was leaving last month. No, it’s unlikely that the Denver-based shop will ever blossom into a showplace such as its Carolina counterparts. And it’s unlikely that FRR will be able to replace Busch with another NASCAR champion.
But for the right racer who is willing to buy into what Visser and the No. 78 crew have developed, it could provide a platform for a successful future.Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, has voiced his strong opposition to a controversial proposed new law that would define “national rights” in Israel as reserved for Jews only.
The “Jewish nation-state” bill would recognise Israel’s Jewish character, institutionalise Jewish law as an inspiration for legislation and possibly de-list Arabic as a second official language. It is being promoted vigorously by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and was approved by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday, but has attracted fierce criticism from opponents inside Israel as well as from the US and the EU.
Critics contend that the law – whose final form of words has yet to be settled and whose language seems likely to be softened – threatens to undermine Israel’s declaration of independence, which gives equal rights to the country’s minorities, including Israeli Arabs, by promoting the idea of Israel as a “Jewish state” above one that is “democratic”.
In an emotional critique of the proposed new legislation, which would become part of Israel’s basic laws, Rivlin said those who had drawn up Israel’s declaration of independence “in their great wisdom, insist that the Arab public in Israel not feel like the Jews felt in the diaspora”.
Speaking at a conference in the southern city of Eilat, Rivlin, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, asked: “What is the point of this bill?”
“Does this bill not in fact play into the hands of those who seek to slander us? Into the very hands of those who wish to show that even among us, there are those who see contradiction between our being a free people in our land, and the freedoms of the non-Jewish communities in our midst?
“The declaration of independence, in its depth and greatness, bound together two components of the state as Jewish and democratic, democratic and Jewish.”
For his part, Netanyahu has argued that individual civil rights would be guaranteed under existing laws for all, but that “national rights” should be reserved for Jews.
Rivlin’s comments came as the bill becomes mired in the fractious politics of Netanyahu’s increasingly divided coalition, with centrist parties threatening to vote against it when it comes before parliament next week.
It has also drawn the opposition of some on the right – like Rivlin, as well as commentators – who argue it is an unnecessary law that gives ammunition to Israel’s critics internationally.
On Wednesday, former defence and foreign minister Moshe Arens condemned the new legislation in a comment piece for Haaretz.
“We don’t need legislation to make Israel a Jewish state, and you cannot make it a Jewish state by legislation,” he writes.
“It is a Jewish state because the majority of the population is Jewish, because the dominant language spoken is Hebrew, because most of the books published here are Hebrew books, and most of the songs sung here are Hebrew songs … But most important, because of the Law of Return which enables any Jew, anywhere in the world, seeking refuge or desiring to live in Israel, to come here and become a citizen of the country.
“But not only is the proposed law unnecessary, it is harmful. A quarter of Israel’s population is not Jewish, and probably the most important item on the nation’s agenda should be their integration into the fabric of Israeli society and their participation in the Israeli economy. Giving them the feeling of being at home, of being equal citizens.”
Other critics of the new law include Jamal Zahalka, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, who has said it will make the state “less democratic and more racist”. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has described the law as a potential impediment to the peace process.
Rivlin’s intervention follows international warnings from the US and the EU.
A US state department spokesman said on Monday that it expected Israel to “continue [its] commitment to democratic principles”.
“The United States position, which is unchanged, has been clear for years – and the president and the secretary [of state] have also reiterated it – is that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state in which all citizens should enjoy equal rights.”A UK Car Insurance company has proposed that the government create pink 'women only' driving lanes to ensure the safety of female drivers.
'PinkZones', a concept developed by female focused car insurance company Sheila's Wheels, would see the creation of pink car lanes in which only female drivers could drive.
The proposal came as a result of reports that suggest female drivers were more vulnerable on the road.
Figures from the UK Department for Transport in 2012 show men were involved in 114,190 traffic accidents compared to just 70,470 for women, but 53 per cent of women involved in a traffic accidents are badly injured, compared to just 38 per cent of men.
It also reports that male drivers are four times more likely to be convicted of a motoring offence on British roads than women.
Sheila's Wheels
The PinkZones design concept proposes demarcating lanes for women drivers on the existing road network and the the creation of women-only flyovers above some of Britain’s busiest roads to ehance the 'quality of life' of female drivers.
Sheila's Wheels spokesperson Andy Sommer defended the proposal saying 'Sheila's Wheels is the UK’s leading car insurer for women, Sheilas’ Wheels is serious about creating a safer road network for female drivers and we believe a discussion about how best to achieve this is long overdue.'Posted on Nov 22, 2016
The struggles of the last Shaykh Al-Islam of the Ottoman Caliphate
Upon the destruction of the Caliphate in 1924, a wave of oppression was meted out by the new secular Turkish order on famous ‘ulema from the Ottoman Caliphate. Several were executed for resisting the new order, and several were exiled ignominiously. One of the most saddening instances of this was the exile and treatment meted out to the last officially designated Shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Caliphate, Shaykh Mustafa Sabri. This article briefly looks at this important personality, his learning, contribution, and refusal to accept the secular order that had dawned upon the new Turkey.
Education
Shaykh Mustafa Sabri was born in Tokat in 1869 (1286 H). He memorised the entire Quran at a young age, after which he traveled throughout modern day Turkey in search of more knowledge. His study took him to the cities of Kayseri & Istanbul, where he gained the respect of his peers with his quick mind and sharp insight.
The Shaykh went on to become one of the great figures of 20th century Muslim philosophical theology, mastering logic and philosophy in addition to attaining an expertise that encompassed the traditional Islamic sciences.
His aptitude did not go unnoticed. It was not long before the Shaykh was delivering lessons to Sultan Abdul Hamid II himself, a practice that was customary in the Ottoman Caliphate as many of the Caliphs and high officials sought ongoing religious education and advice from prominent ‘ulema.
Shaykh Sabri quickly elevated through the ranks of the ‘ulema until reaching the prestigious position of “Shaykh Al-Islam” – the highest religious authority in the state.
Tokat Province in Turkey
Exile
The Shaykh attained his position at a time when the Khilafah was under fierce ideological, and indeed physical, attack both from without and within. He had the foresight to publicly voice his opposition to the secularist administration which sought to end the Khilafah, a goal which they ultimately succeeded in, which painted the target firmly on his back.
The new government was aware of the ideological threat that Mustafa Sabri posed, and feared that his zeal, activism and mental capacity could result in a rising tide of sentiment against the nascent political order. His persistent criticism and rebellion against this regime endangered him to a point where relocation was crucial.
He first escaped to Romania but it was not long before his location was discovered. News of his whereabouts reached the new secularist government in (the newly declared republic of) Turkey and they ordered his capture and incarceration.
The Shaykh was caught and extradited to Istanbul. His trial at the Military Tribunal saw a 5 hour deliberation by the jurors. The Shaykh was convinced that he was about to face his end, and prayed what he thought would be his final prayers with the most sombre of dispositions, in a state that quite literally reflected the hadith of Rasulullah ﷺ:
“When you stand for your prayer, then pray as if you are saying farewell…” Sunan Ibn Majah 4169, Sahih according to As-Suyuti
Much to his surprise, the Jury decided to exile the Shaykh, with the judge quoted as having said “I cannot bare to sentence this man to death, because his struggles are in the cause of his beliefs and ideologies.”
It was a blessing from Allah that the Shaykh escaped with his life as the administration of Atatürk had murdered countless ‘ulema in their undertaking to make Turkey lose much of its Islamic heritage and pedigree.
Nonetheless, he was the target of a few failed assassination attempts. He was forced to settle in a non-Muslim land, Greece, as his safety was threatened in any Muslim land by both the Turkish government’s minions and other anti-Islamic forces and agencies in other countries.
He could have quite conceivably have lived out his days in Greece, content with the security, but he could not bear the thought of dying and being buried in non-Muslim land. He penned a letter which he distributed to several surrounding Muslim countries which read:
“I am Mustafa Sabri, the recent Shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Caliphate. I do not have a passport. Whether as a guest or as a refugee, I want to enter your country, in any way you accept.”
He was, unfortunately, rejected by these fledgling governments, which were by now largely proxies of foreign powers. In a last-ditch effort he approached the Egyptian Consulate in Athens and was met with a better response. The consul-general was incredulous at the Shaykh’s situation, granting him and his family a visa to Egypt and stating:
Were this situation to afflict the Pope, what would the relevance of the Christian world be like? I am taking all the responsibilities. If they like, they can sack me from my job, imprison me or sentence me to death for committing a political crime… In risking everything I am granting you a visa!
Settling in Egypt
Finally settling in Egypt, the Shaykh was now in a position where he could apply his knowledge in a way which he could not since the fall of the Caliphate. He led a life of poverty and hunger, but did not let this compromise his faith or zeal. He said of his poverty:
That is much better for me than being a supporter of the oppressors
In Egypt he authored his monumental 3-volume Mawqif al-‘Aql which was an intellectual response to the huge attack on Islam at the time from modernists, atheists and others. In the book, the Shaykh critiques the foundation of Western thought in a comprehensive manner, shaming Kant’s (d. 1804) “naive and presumptuous attack on the validity of metaphysics”, demonstrating inconsistencies and absurdities in the theory of evolution, amongst numerous other studies.
Shaykh Mustafa Sabri also arrived at a time when the modernist, liberal reformist teachings of Muhammed Abduh (d. 1905) were gaining support among people. He penned numerous intellectual responses to undo the damage that Abduh had wrought, and confidently asserted
My success is solely due to my perseverance of advocating the Truth.
This era was also witness to the renowned hunger strikes of Mahatma Ghandi. The fasts received global attention, with even Muslim news-agencies regurgitating the news. The Shaykh was startled at the enormity of the recognition Ghandi had received, lamenting the Muslims’ concern for Gandhi while ignoring the state of their own mufti and Shaykh al-Islam. He said:
Gandhi decides to start a hunger-strike, and the whole world has shaken from its place. While the Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam, with his family, has been starving for years and the Islamic world remains unaware. The Ottoman dynasty is in such a miserable state, its Shaykh al-Islam would eat dry beans for months and nobody would be aware of this.
The Shaykh also wrote a solemn poem of his reflections:
Except that between the two fasts is an astonishing difference, which I shall clarify without hesitation; He has fasted while having food to eat, while I fasted because I have nothing to eat, which has been my state since arriving as a visitor to Egypt; And his fast became the talk of everyone, while my fast is something only known to me; It is for the sake of Islam, that which I am facing.
Death
Most of what the Shaykh faced throughout his life was because he refused to be silent in the face of the greatest tragedy of the past 1400 years – the downfall of Muslim political unity manifested in the form of the Caliphate.
He refused to compromise the truth out of taqwa and refused to become a government mouthpiece. He suffered exile, assassination attempts, constant upheaval of his and his family’s lives and extreme poverty but bore it all with fierce, uncompromising conviction in the promise of Allah. He died in Egypt in 1954 and was buried there, leaving behind numerous works which continue to benefit the ummah.
He left behind many students, of them Shaykh Muhammad Emin Er who continued teaching up until his death in 2012. The Shaykh was quoted as having said:
This cause is in need of such a sacrifice, that one must be prepared to sacrifice this life for the life hereafter.
May Allāh grant the last appointed Shaykh al-Islam Mustafa Sabri mercy, forgiveness and peace, and bless him with the highest of ranks in Paradise. Ameen!
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CommentsOne in 12 men and one in 200 women are affected by colour blindness, and The Football Association has published guidance notes on the condition to raise awareness of its impact on football.
The detailed guidance publication – complete with visual examples – has been produced by The FA in conjunction with Colour Blind Awareness, the leading UK organisation devoted to the issue. It also has the full support of UEFA, who intend disseminating the guidance to all the football governing bodies under its umbrella.
As well as spectators, players, coaches and referees who are colour-blind face everyday problems. Former Charlton Athletic and Ipswich Town midfielder Matt Holland, who is colour blind, said: “In one particular match when we were in red and the opponents were in dark green I couldn’t tell the colours apart.
Issues in Football Kit clashes - between players, goalkeepers, match officials, the playing surface
Equipment - balls, bibs, training cones, line markings
Venues - facilities, way-finding, safety signage, lighting
Information - digital, ticket purchasing, matchday programmes
TV coverage - graphics, long-distance camera angles
“I had to really concentrate in that game looking at socks, because they were easier for me to distinguish. There was nothing else I could do.”
Norway national team manager Lars Lagerback added: “If the play moves very quickly it's easy to end up in a situation where you have a hard time telling if the other player is an opponent or a member of your own team.”
The guidance explains the different types of colour blindness, answers common questions and provides suggested positive interventions with those who may be affected.
It gives best-practice visual examples to avoid kit clashes, and includes a series of simulations to show the normally-sighted what colour-blind people are likely to see.
The guidance notes are available to download below.George Mitchell: If Trump rolls back Iranian nuclear deal, he has limited leverage The former senator and diplomacy expert talks to Salon about Iraq and Afghanistan, and why Obama was wrong on Syria
Distinguished diplomat George Mitchell, a former Democratic Majority Leader who also brokered peace in Northern Ireland and served as a special envoy to the Middle East for President Obama, said he hopes that incoming President Trump doesn’t fulfill his campaign promise to scrap the Iranian nuclear deal designed by the Obama administration.
“I believe if he does that, that it would be a tragic mistake that will have serious, adverse consequences for the United States and all around the world,” Mitchell said in a Salon Talks interview about the book, "A Path To Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East."
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“The United States joined with five other countries — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — in reaching a negotiated agreement with Iran over their nuclear program. It is supported by almost every country in the world. The reason the agreement was reached was because sanctions were imposed on Iran that adversely affected their economy. The reason the sanctions worked is because they were universal. They were not just United States sanctions," Mitchell continued.
"When the agreement was reached, those five countries made it clear that they would not continue the sanctions if the United States rejected the treaty. So the argument by the President’s critics, in Congress and elsewhere that we should have just walked away and increased the sanctions was a false argument," he added. "Because the sanctions were effective, primarily because they were universal. We could have upped the sanctions but the other countries who joined us made clear that they would not continue.”
As liberal critics decry Trump’s cabinet selections for defense and national security as Islamophobic, these critics also fail to grasp the long-term historical view of Islam. Mitchell, a more moderate Democrat who served as Senate Majority Leader, offers a more tempered understanding, citing Pew data showing how there are now 1.7 billion Muslims in the world, or roughly one out of five people, yet by 2060, when the world’s population edges towards 10 billion, one in three will be Muslim.
“Islam is now torn by internal conflict,” he said. “The best known, of course, is the Sunni-Shia divide, which goes back 1,400 years to the death of the prophet Muhammad. It was not a religious difference, it was a political struggle for power, between two factions."
"There are many internal conflicts now: internal to Sunni, internal to Shia, Islam. Overlapping intersections. There is going to be difficulties for decades to come. For the past five hundred years, they have largely lived in political systems that were to some extent created by others. The Ottoman Turks dominated the Middle East for 425 years. Then, you had the peace after the first world war by the British and the French. And so now they’re going through a period of turbulence," Mitchell added. "I think they’ll be some successes. You’re seeing some modest successes in some of the countries, some failures, continues turmoil and difficulty and the President will deal with all of that on an ongoing basis.”
Mitchell said he would “categorically disagree” with critics who argue that the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq was premature, that ISIS filled a vacuum created by the Obama administration’s failure to sign a new Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.
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“First off, ‘he could’ve gotten an agreement if he tried’ is the slogan of all those who don't want to agree with you,” he said. “The fact is, if Obama had acceded to the Iraqi government's insistence that American forces not be protected from legal action, to extend their deployment, and then an American had been dragged before an Iraqi court, those very people who attacked him for not reaching an agreement would have attacked him on those grounds. Secondly, there is not a shred of evidence, none whatsoever, that if we would have stayed in Iraq for five years, or ten years or twenty years, the outcome would have been any different."
"Go back to the British experience there," Mitchell continued. "It’s the same thing a hundred years ago. And that’s what's happening in Afghanistan now and that’s what’s happening in a lot of other countries. You have to ask yourself the question: do we want to remain permanently in these countries? And when is a withdraw premature and when is it not? The fact is, these are long-standing hostilities, deep divisions and the notion that if the United States had stayed there, oh, just another year or two, the outcome that we could have been withdrawn, I think it’s a complete fiction.”
Even as Mitchell defended his former boss on Iraq and Iran, he also parted ways with President Obama in the ongoing Syrian conflict.
"I disagree with him in a lot of things," Mitchell said. "I think he made a mistake drawing a red line in Syria. I think he made a mistake not acting on the red line once it was crossed."Two 12-year-old girls are accused of plotting their friend's murder and attempting to kill her by stabbing her 19 times in a local park. Courtesy: Fox6.
TWO 12-year-old girls who stabbed their friend 19 times during a game of hide and seek apparently wanted to prove that a mysterious horror figure called Slenderman was real.
The Wisconsin girls from Waukesha in the US, had become obsessed with a website called CreepyPasta, where people can discuss and post horror stories.
Police believe the girls plotted for months to kill one of their classmates so they could become “proxies” of the website’s leader Slenderman.
Chilling details of the girls’ plot were contained in a criminal complaint, which describes how they initially wanted to stab their 12-year-old school friend during a sleepover.
The two girls planned to kill their friend and then walk to a mansion in a national park where they thought Slenderman lived.
The Slender Man is a fictional character that has been attributed to an internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (also known as Victor Surge). It went viral and has inspired online fiction known as “creepypasta”, fanart and cosplay.
One of the girls explained to police that just below Slenderman was the killer, just below the killer was the proxy. In order to be a proxy, you have to kill someone to show your dedication to Slenderman.
“Many people do not believe Slenderman is real,” one of the girls told police, and she wanted to prove the sceptics wrong.
The girls plotted to kill a classmate, inviting her over for a sleepover and eventually stabbed her 19 times.
“Based on our investigation, it is believed that the suspects had planned to kill the victim for several months. The Waukesha Police Department is deeply saddened that this 12-year-old girl had to suffer through this horrific crime,” Waukesha Police Chief Russell Jack said.
“One suspect held the victim down while the other suspect stabbed her 19 times in the arms, legs and torso,” he said.
“Many of the stab wounds struck major organs. But, incredibly and thankfully, the victim survived this brutal assault.”
Police Chief Jack said the incident was “a wakeup call for parents”.
“The internet can be full of dark and wicked things. Unmonitored and unrestricted access to the internet by children is a growing and alarming problem.”
According to the complaint, the girls went to Skateland with the father of one of the girls before heading home for a sleepover. Originally the two accused planned to kill the victim about 2am while she was sleeping but this changed.
Instead the girls decided to go to a nearby park the next morning and one of the girls grabbed a knife from the house before they went to the park.
They took the victim to a bathroom in the park but both girls lost their nerve, one apparently said she “couldn’t do it”. Later they decided to play a game of hide and seek in the woods and this was when the stabbing occurred.
One of the girls sat on the victim so the other could stab her, but then they were worried that her yelling would attract attention so they let her up.
Then one of the girls tackled the victim and started stabbing her, before giving the knife to the other girl who also stabbed her.
Afterwards the girls left the scene and walked to Walmart. The victim was able to crawl out of the woods onto a road where a cyclist found her.
Police found the two accused later and recovered the knife from a purse.
Family of one of the accused attended a court appearance on Monday and broke into tears several times during her appearance.
“The family is very horrified at what has happened,” attorney Donna Kuchler said.
On Monday both girls were charged as adults for attempted first degree intentional homicide, if convicted they face 60 years in jail.
Waukesha County District Attorney General Brad Schimel told reporters that he expected attorneys would attempt to “reverse waive” them into juvenile court but he would resist this.
“A prosecutor doesn’t have to charge a 12-year-old in adult court. They could charge an offence that doesn’t have direct adult-court jurisdiction. Given the nature of this particular crime, I just don’t know how we could call it anything other than that,” he said.
If convicted in juvenile court, the girls would be out of jail by the time they were 25.
“Right now, I don’t enough about the psychological make up of these two girls, their history,” Mr Schimel said. “That information just isn’t available to us yet.”
The girls are due back in court on June 11.Image copyright PA Image caption Madeleine went missing in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007, aged three
A retired police officer in Portugal has won his appeal against a court ruling that he libelled the parents of Madeleine McCann.
Kate and Gerry McCann sued ex-police chief Goncalo Amaral, who led the search for their daughter, following claims he made about them in his book.
The verdict means his book criticising the McCanns can now be sold again.
They were awarded £358,000 damages by a Portuguese court after the libel case. They plan to challenge the new ruling.
Last year a court ruled against Mr Amaral, the retired detective who first led the investigation into three-year-old Madeleine's disappearance from a holiday apartment in the Algarve in 2007.
It ordered the seizure of all copies of a book he wrote suggesting that Kate and Gerry McCann were involved in Madeleine's disappearance.
Book ban
On winning that libel action, Mr and Mrs McCann pledged to plough the 500,000 euros awarded to them into the search for their daughter.
They welcomed the accompanying ban on the book which they said was undermining that search.
After the appeal court decision, the book is now set to be back on the shelves soon.
In a statement, its publisher welcomed the verdict, noting that it cited Mr Amaral's constitutional right to express his opinion.
A lawyer for the McCanns said they intended to appeal against the latest decision and seek to bring the case before Portugal's Supreme Court.In what is a testament to Hinduism’s assimilative capacity, the elusive Higgs-Boson or God particle has been admitted as a full fledged God into the Hindu pantheon and a temple in His honor has been built in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district.
Confirming the development, Swami Vajranand Sarwasti, head of the decade old Higgs-Boson consciousness sect dedicated to the propagation of devotion to Lord Higgs-Boson and attainment of spiritual salvation by chanting His name, said, “Ever since CERN confirmed that they had discerned the Lord’s temporal presence after detecting a bump in the mass range based on the data generated from collisions of trillions of sub-atomic particles, we have been inundated with calls by eager devotees seeking a darshan of Higgs-Boson bhagwaaan. So we decided to build a temple in His honour to satisfy the cravings of His devotees.”
In addition to the sanctum sanctorum housing the idol of Lord Higgs-Boson, the temple’s walls will feature murals and carvings depicting data from CERN’s experiments involving over 500 trillion collisions between protons and anti-protons since 2001 in the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider (LCH), so that devotees can feel His divine presence at a more spiritual, metaphysical level.
But how will He be represented in idol form since thus far only His presence has been validated, not visual form? “Dude, most Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon are anthropomorphic so why should Lord Higgs-Boson be any exception unless CERN tells us otherwise. We have asked devotees to send in their submissions from which we will finalize the Lord’s image. The only guideline we venture is that He should be imbued with classical Aryan features. For the time being, we’ll just go with a notional Google search generated image of the Lord,” replied Swami Vajranand.
“However, let me make it clear at the outset that we will not accept pictures of Rajnikant, Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Bose. We are very clear about this,” he hastened to add.
Swamiji has also requested the Government to subsidize the annual pilgrimage of devotees to CERN headquarters to pay obeisance at the Large Hadron Collider where the Lord’s divine presence was first detected.
In related news, upcoming Godman Swami Brahmanand has claimed that he is an avatar of Higgs-Boson and CERN can stop conducting any more experiments to validate His presence. “Once they submit to me with full faith and experience the divine rays of spiritual energy emanating from me, their lingering doubts will melt away and they will go back with 10 sigma proof that Swami Brahmanand and Higgs-Boson are one and the same,” claimed the Swamiji.Last Friday Uber reduced prices by 15% in Taipei, Taoyuan, and Taichung, forcing drivers to earn less per ride, Apple Daily reported.
The ride-hailing app also increased the percent per ride that drivers return to the company. One driver said that on a NT$100 fare, he used to earn NT$80 but now can only receive NT$68.
Uber drivers in the affected areas have threatened to go on strike during the inauguration of Taiwan’s new president Tsai Ing-wen on May 20 as they claim the decision to reduce fares was unilateral.
Of course, drivers are unlikely to have much legal recourse as Uber was deemed illegal in Taiwan in 2014. The company has appealed, but the courts have thus far upheld the ruling and fined the company. As of April, Uber has accumulated NT$38.9 million in fines while its drivers have been hit with NT$12.4 million in fines for 290 violations, according to Focus Taiwan.
Earlier this month, Uber announced that it expanded its partnership with Alipay, Alibaba’s mobile payment app, to allow users worldwide to request and pay for their rides via the app. Users in Taiwan had been able to use Alipay for Uber rides since February of the year, The Wall Street Journal noted.Kimi Raikkonen's contract for 2013 is dependent on him finishing in the top eight of the driver's championship this year, according to a report from Autosport. It was announced by Lotus that Raikkonen had signed a two-year contract with the team but it is rumoured that he will be free to leave the team after the 2012 season if the car is not up to scratch.
However, a top eight finish for Raikkonen in the driver's championship should not be too difficult of a task, assuming that the Lotus can build a strong |
, which is the opposite of the previous example. The mixin itself does all the heavy lifting. Again, you’ll have to check out the mixin’s source to really understand how it works.
Associating objects with ListCtrl rows
This subject comes up a lot: How do I associate data (i.e. objects) with my ListCtrl’s rows? Well, we’re going to find out exactly how to do that with the following code:
import wx ######################################################################## class Car ( object ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self, make, model, year, color= "Blue" ) : "" "Constructor" "" self. make = make self. model = model self. year = year self. color = color ######################################################################## class MyPanel ( wx. Panel ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self, parent ) : "" "Constructor" "" wx. Panel. __init__ ( self, parent ) rows = [ Car ( "Ford", "Taurus", "1996" ), Car ( "Nissan", "370Z", "2010" ), Car ( "Porche", "911", "2009", "Red" ) ] self. list_ctrl = wx. ListCtrl ( self, size= ( -1, 100 ), style=wx. LC_REPORT |wx. BORDER_SUNKEN ) self. list_ctrl. Bind ( wx. EVT_LIST_ITEM_SELECTED, self. onItemSelected ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 0, "Make" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 1, "Model" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 2, "Year" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 3, "Color" ) index = 0 self. myRowDict = { } for row in rows: self. list_ctrl. InsertStringItem ( index, row. make ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 1, row. model ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 2, row. year ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 3, row. color ) self. myRowDict [ index ] = row index += 1 sizer = wx. BoxSizer ( wx. VERTICAL ) sizer. Add ( self. list_ctrl, 0, wx. ALL |wx. EXPAND, 5 ) self. SetSizer ( sizer ) #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def onItemSelected ( self, event ) : "" "" "" currentItem = event. m_itemIndex car = self. myRowDict [ currentItem ] print car. make print car. model print car. color print car. year ######################################################################## class MyFrame ( wx. Frame ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self ) : "" "Constructor" "" wx. Frame. __init__ ( self, None, wx. ID_ANY, "List Control Tutorial" ) panel = MyPanel ( self ) self. Show ( ) #---------------------------------------------------------------------- if __name__ == "__main__" : app = wx. App ( False ) frame = MyFrame ( ) app. MainLoop ( )
The list control widget actually doesn’t have a built-in way to accomplish this feat. If you want that, then you’ll want to check out the ObjectListView widget, which wraps the ListCtrl and gives it a lot more functionality. In the meantime, we’ll take a minute and go over the code above. The first piece is just a plain Car class with four attributes. Then in the MyPanel class, we create a list of Car objects that we’ll use for the ListCtrl’s data.
To add the data to the ListCtrl, we use a for loop to iterate over the list. We also associate each row with a Car object using a Python dictionary. We use the row’s index for the key and the dict’s value ends up being the Car object. This allows us to access all the Car/row object’s data later on in the onItemSelected method. Let’s check that out!
In onItemSelected, we grab the row’s index with the following little trick: event.m_itemIndex. Then we use that value as the key for our dictionary so that we can gain access to the Car object associated with that row. At this point, we just print out all the Car object’s attributes, but you could do whatever you want here. This basic idea could easily be extended to use a result set from a SqlAlchemy query for the ListCtrl’s data. Hopefully you get the general idea.
Now if you were paying close attention, like Robin Dunn (creator of wxPython) was, then you might notice some really silly logic errors in this code. Did you find them? Well, you won’t see it unless you sort the rows, delete a row or insert a row. Do you see it now? Yes, I stupidly based the “unique” key in my dictionary on the row’s position, which will change if any of those events happen. So let’s look at a better example:
import wx ######################################################################## class Car ( object ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self, make, model, year, color= "Blue" ) : "" "Constructor" "" self. id = id ( self ) self. make = make self. model = model self. year = year self. color = color ######################################################################## class MyPanel ( wx. Panel ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self, parent ) : "" "Constructor" "" wx. Panel. __init__ ( self, parent ) rows = [ Car ( "Ford", "Taurus", "1996" ), Car ( "Nissan", "370Z", "2010" ), Car ( "Porche", "911", "2009", "Red" ) ] self. list_ctrl = wx. ListCtrl ( self, size= ( -1, 100 ), style=wx. LC_REPORT |wx. BORDER_SUNKEN ) self. list_ctrl. Bind ( wx. EVT_LIST_ITEM_SELECTED, self. onItemSelected ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 0, "Make" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 1, "Model" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 2, "Year" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 3, "Color" ) index = 0 self. myRowDict = { } for row in rows: self. list_ctrl. InsertStringItem ( index, row. make ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 1, row. model ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 2, row. year ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 3, row. color ) self. list_ctrl. SetItemData ( index, row. id ) self. myRowDict [ row. id ] = row index += 1 sizer = wx. BoxSizer ( wx. VERTICAL ) sizer. Add ( self. list_ctrl, 0, wx. ALL |wx. EXPAND, 5 ) self. SetSizer ( sizer ) #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def onItemSelected ( self, event ) : "" "" "" currentItem = event. m_itemIndex car = self. myRowDict [ self. list_ctrl. GetItemData ( currentItem ) ] print car. make print car. model print car. color print car. year ######################################################################## class MyFrame ( wx. Frame ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self ) : "" "Constructor" "" wx. Frame. __init__ ( self, None, wx. ID_ANY, "List Control Tutorial" ) panel = MyPanel ( self ) self. Show ( ) #---------------------------------------------------------------------- if __name__ == "__main__" : app = wx. App ( False ) frame = MyFrame ( ) app. MainLoop ( )
In this example, we add a new attribute to our Car class that creates a unique id for each instance that is created using Python’s handy id builtin. Then in the loop where we add the data to the list control, we call the widget’s SetItemData method and give it the row index and the car instance’s unique id. Now it doesn’t matter where the row ends up because it’s had the unique id affixed to it. Finally, we have to modify the onItemSelected to get the right object. The magic happens in this code:
# this code was helpfully provided by Robin Dunn car = self. myRowDict [ self. list_ctrl. GetItemData ( currentItem ) ]
Cool, huh? Our last example will cover how to alternate the row colors, so let’s take a look!
Alternate the row colors of a ListCtrl
As this section’s title suggests, we will look at how to alternate colors of the rows of a ListCtrl. Here’s the code:
import wx import wx. lib. mixins. listctrl as listmix ######################################################################## class MyPanel ( wx. Panel ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self, parent ) : "" "Constructor" "" wx. Panel. __init__ ( self, parent ) rows = [ ( "Ford", "Taurus", "1996", "Blue" ), ( "Nissan", "370Z", "2010", "Green" ), ( "Porche", "911", "2009", "Red" ) ] self. list_ctrl = wx. ListCtrl ( self, style=wx. LC_REPORT ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 0, "Make" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 1, "Model" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 2, "Year" ) self. list_ctrl. InsertColumn ( 3, "Color" ) index = 0 for row in rows: self. list_ctrl. InsertStringItem ( index, row [ 0 ] ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 1, row [ 1 ] ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 2, row [ 2 ] ) self. list_ctrl. SetStringItem ( index, 3, row [ 3 ] ) if index % 2 : self. list_ctrl. SetItemBackgroundColour ( index, "white" ) else : self. list_ctrl. SetItemBackgroundColour ( index, "yellow" ) index += 1 sizer = wx. BoxSizer ( wx. VERTICAL ) sizer. Add ( self. list_ctrl, 0, wx. ALL |wx. EXPAND, 5 ) self. SetSizer ( sizer ) ######################################################################## class MyFrame ( wx. Frame ) : "" "" "" #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def __init__ ( self ) : "" "Constructor" "" wx. Frame. __init__ ( self, None, wx. ID_ANY, "List Control w/ Alternate Colors" ) panel = MyPanel ( self ) self. Show ( ) #---------------------------------------------------------------------- if __name__ == "__main__" : app = wx. App ( False ) frame = MyFrame ( ) app. MainLoop ( )
The code above will alternate each row’s background color. Thus you should see yellow and white rows. We do this by calling the ListCtrl instance’s SetItemBackgroundColour method. If you were using a virtual list control, then you’d want to override the OnGetItemAttr method. To see an example of the latter method, open up your copy of the wxPython demo; there’s one in there.
Wrapping Up
We’ve covered a lot of ground here. You should now be able to do a lot more with your wx.ListCtrl than when you started, assuming you’re new to using it, of course. Feel free to ask questions in the comments or suggest future recipes. I hope you found this helpful!
Note: All examples were tested on Windows XP with Python 2.5 and wxPython 2.8.10.1. They were also tested on Windows 7 Professional with Python 2.6
Additional Reading
The official wxPython wx.ListCtrl documentation
The ListControls wiki page
ListCtrl Tooltips wiki page
The ObjectListView website
The UltimateListCtrl, a pure Python implementation now included with wxPython
Source CodeJoe McComb, relating a story told to him by his son, told NBC News on Monday that the house struck a bridge and smashed apart, sending the nine people in different directions.
"He said there were several times where he was under water and he didn't think he was going to come up," Joe McComb said.
Jonathan McComb could be released from the hospital as early as Tuesday, according to a message posted to Facebook by his church:
Laura McComb’s sister, Julie Shields, told NBC affiliate KXAN that the phone call ended when Laura thought she saw a light from a helicopter that had come to rescue them.
"And I just expected to go to the Wimberley High School the next day and find her," Shields said. "And then when she wasn’t there, I knew something was very, very wrong."
Shields described her sister as "a wonderful wife and mother." Shields told NBC News she texted Laura McComb at around 9:30 p.m. that night as they worked out details for a family outing planned for the end of June.
Laura McComb texted that she was going to bed, and called back at around 1 a.m. with a disturbing message: The water of the Blanco River was rising fast. Laura McComb told Shields to call 911, Shields said.
Then Laura McComb called back, and said in a remarkably calm voice that the house was floating away, Shields said.
"She has a very strong faith in God, and the strength in her voice as she said it — is something I can't stop thinking about," Shields said.
Carissa Smith told posted by The Austin American-Statesman newspaper that Ralph Carey and his wife have lived in the house 30 years.
Smith said that her husband went to check on the Careys. He found the house gone and Carey’s Suburban smashed against a tree, the motor still running.
"And so my husband contacted 911 and started to search, but they’re nowhere to be found," she said.
During the flood, she said, neighbors were yelling at everyone to get out, and Carey went back inside the house. "So we think that they got in there and just decided to go up to the second floor and just wait it out," she said.
Neighbor Dan Pollard, who lives about 100 yards away from the Carey home, said the popping and cracking noises as the house apparently broke free "sounded like fireworks." The river that night was the highest he has ever seen.
Pollard said Ralph Carey was a retired dentist from Corpus Christi. “It’s unimaginable. We cannot believe that they’re not here anymore,” he said.
Shields said 6-year-old Andrew loves going fishing and playing baseball with his dad. Andrew’s sister, 4-year-old Leighton, looks up to her older brother, she said. "She adored him," Shields said.
Joe McComb told NBC News that he was holding out hope for his family. The family dog, Maggie, was found safe. Shields said that Jonathan McComb did all he could before the cabin broke apart and separated the people inside.
"The blessing in all of his is that she is with her children and is with her babies," she said. "And she will be with her babies always."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.A shocking clip of a dog being cooked alive in a wok in China went viral (video below).
In the disturbing video, the terrified dog can be seen sitting in a wok and crying out in pain as locals watch and laugh while the dog is seemingly cooked alive. The person cooking the animal pokes at it, moving the dog around the wok like a piece of food.
The dog barks and cries loudly as it is seemingly burned severely while being cooked alive, and bystanders continue to laugh as the butcher prevents the animal from escaping the wok.
Many readers expressed horror over the incident, calling for the people who cooked the dog and allowed the abuse to happen to be punished.
"The dog was suffering and they were laughing and joking about it that was the most disturbing video i have ever seen," one Mad World News reader commented on the site's Facebook page. "I will never get the sound of the dog crying in agony out of my mind that was so fucked up.That has to be stopped."
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we'd all be vegan," another wrote. "60 billion land animals die at the hands of less than 10 billion people a year. It's not just China. Look on your own plates and backtrack to where your 'food' came from. You'd throw up knowing you were responsible for their torture before they got slaughtered."
"I tried to watch but I couldn't, it makes me so mad to see someone so cruel to do something like that," one reader commented. "The ones laughing tie them up and put them in boiling water and see if they laugh."
In a similar incident, a dog was filmed being boiled alive by men at a Chinese market.
"This animal died the worst death imaginable," animal rights advocate Michele Brown told Mirror of the incident.
"You can see raw fear in the dog’s eyes as its carried towards the boiling water. As they drop the dog into the water it screams for help, skin burning and blistering. It flails around so much, two strong men have to hold on to the lid. The young boy is an innocent child and he appears to be repulsed by what he saw. He was scared but unfortunately this probably won’t be the last time he will see a dog being boiled alive."
Warning: This video contains graphic content.Media playback is not supported on this device All you need to know about Jurgen Klopp
Jurgen Klopp has been appointed Liverpool's new manager on a three-year deal worth £15m.
The 48-year-old German replaces Brendan Rodgers, who was sacked on Sunday after three and a half years in charge with the club 10th in the Premier League.
Klopp has been out of work since May, when he ended a seven-year spell at Borussia Dortmund to take a sabbatical.
He will earn £5m a year, rising to £7m with bonuses for a Premier League title or Champions League qualification.
Klopp is expected to bring Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz - his former assistants at the Bundesliga club - to Anfield.
Sean O'Driscoll, who was Rodgers' assistant, has left the club, while Gary McAllister has been moved from first-team coach to a new "ambassadorial position".
Klopp will be officially introduced by Liverpool at a news conference at 10:00 BST on Friday.
After seven years as Mainz boss, Klopp joined Dortmund in 2008 and led them to two Bundesliga titles.
Media playback is not supported on this device Archive: Klopp's philosophy
They lost to Wolfsburg in last season's German Cup final - his final game - at the end of a campaign in which they struggled domestically, finishing seventh in the league.
Klopp takes over a Liverpool side who have won only four of their 11 games in all competitions this season.
The international break means his first game in charge is a trip to Tottenham in the Premier League on 17 October.
Klopp will have to work within the existing structure and what has become known as Anfield's 'transfer committee'.
Klopp facts Born: 16 June 1967, Stuttgart Playing career: Mainz (1989-2001) Managerial career: Mainz (2001-08), Borussia Dortmund (2008-15), Liverpool (2015- ) Honours: (with Dortmund) Bundesliga 2010-11, 2011-12, DFB-Pokal 2011-12, DFL-Supercup 2008, 2013, 2014 Individual honours: (with Dortmund) German manager of the year 2011, 2012
It is the group that plans and carries out transfer strategy and up until Sunday night consisted of Rodgers, scouts Dave Fallows and Barry Hunter, the man in charge of analysis Michael Edwards, FSG's Anfield representative Mike Gordon and chief executive Ian Ayre.
Northern Irishman Rodgers, who took over in June 2012, led the Reds to second place in the Premier League in 2013-14.Image caption Safeguards are not applicable to security personnel working in the tribal areas, Amnesty says
Pakistan is failing to address thousands of human rights abuses taking place in its tribal areas in the north-west, Amnesty International has said.
In a new report, the campaigning rights group says people are being terrorised by both the Taliban and the military.
It claims that abuses are allowed to take place with impunity as constitutional safeguards do not apply.
The Pakistani military has emphatically rejected the report, which it has described as "a pack of lies".
An army spokesman told the BBC that the report was "biased and sinister propaganda" against Pakistan's armed forces, based on fabricated stories to serve an agenda.
There has been no response to Amnesty's claims from the Taliban.
The report says that militants have been driven out from some of the tribal areas but these districts are not yet fully secure.
"After a decade of violence, strife and conflict, tribal communities are still being subjected to attack, abduction and intimidation, rather than being protected," said Amnesty's Polly Truscott.
'Legal wilderness'
The report, entitled The Hands of Cruelty, describes how what it calls the region's "legal wilderness" is fuelling a human rights crisis.
It details cases where men and boys have been arbitrarily detained by armed forces for long periods with little or no access to due process or proper safeguards, as well as documenting multiple cases of deaths in custody.
Many of those detained have made allegations of torture, claims which have rarely investigated, it says.
Amnesty says that, because constitutional safeguards are not applicable to the tribal areas, armed forces are using broad new security laws to commit violations with impunity.
"By enabling the armed forces to commit abuses unchecked, the Pakistani authorities have given them free rein to carry out torture and enforced disappearance," Ms Truscott said.
Locals describe living in fear of being tortured and killed by the Taliban if they are accused of being a spy, or of being picked up by the army who accuse them of links to militants.
An army spokesperson previously told the BBC that deaths in custody are one-off incidents. Some argue the military needs sweeping powers to deal with terrorism on the border with Afghanistan.
Amnesty is urging the Pakistani government to reform the legal system in the tribal areas which, it says, is perpetuating the cycle of violence.FILE - In this June 11, 2015, file photo, a hexacopter drone is flown during a drone demonstration in Cordova, Md. An appeals court has struck down a Federal Aviation Administration rule that required owners to register drones used for recreation. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court on Friday struck down a Federal Aviation Administration rule that required owners of drones used for recreation to register their craft.
The ruling was a victory for hobbyists and a setback for the FAA, which cited safety concerns as it tried to tighten regulation of the fast-growing army of drone operators.
Some pilots of commercial airliners have reported close calls with drones flying near airports.
About 760,000 hobbyists have registered more than 1.6 million drones since 2015, and sales have skyrocketed. The FAA estimates that hobbyists will buy 2.3 million drones this year and 13 million by the end of 2020. Commercial operators from photographers to oil pipeline and cellphone tower owners were forecast to buy another 10 million through 2020.
The FAA decided in 2015 to require hobbyists to register their drones, or model aircraft. Violators could be sentenced to prison.
The registration requirement was challenged by John A. Taylor, a drone hobbyist in the Washington, D.C., area.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with Taylor, saying that a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in 2012 barred the FAA from imposing new regulations on model aircraft.
The three-judge panel said that safety was obviously important and making hobbyists register “may well help further that goal to some degree,” but it was up to Congress to repeal the ban on FAA rules for model aircraft.
A spokesman for the FAA said the agency was reviewing the decision.
The ruling demonstrated the schism in the drone world. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, whose members include big commercial drone operators and manufacturers, expressed disappointment with the court’s ruling. The group’s president, Brian Wynne, said registration “helps create a culture of safety that deters careless and reckless behavior.” He vowed to seek a legislative fix in Congress.
A lawyer for China’s DJI, the world’s biggest drone maker, said registration was reasonable and fostered “accountability and education to drone pilots.” Brendan Schulman said he expected more discussion between industry and governments over the program.
Some model aircraft enthusiasts had complained that the registration requirement was too burdensome.
“On balance this is probably a good thing,” said Vic Moss, a commercial photographer and drone operator in Colorado. “The FAA definitely overstepped their boundaries with the registration, and the fact that they called it an emergency action didn’t help them look good.”
Moss was worried, however, that the issue was so contentious that the FAA might successfully lobby Congress for clear authority to regulate hobbyists.
Registration cost $5 and had to be renewed every three years. It required owners to mark aircraft with an identification number and imposed civil and criminal penalties on those who did not comply.
Taylor also challenged FAA restrictions on where drones can operate in the Washington area. The court said that appeal was filed too late.
___
Koenig reported from Dallas.Supreme Court Chooses SOPA/PIPA Protest Day To Give A Giant Middle Finger To The Public Domain
from the ridiculous dept
But Congress has not put petitioners in this bind. The question here, as in Eldred, is whether would-be users must pay for their desired use of the author’s expression, or else limit their exploitation to “fair use” of that work. Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf could once be performed free of charge; after §514 the right to perform it must be obtained in the marketplace.
The statute before us, however, does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work. By definition, it bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works -- works that have already been created and already are in the American public domain. At the same time, the statute inhibits the dissemination of those works, foreign works published abroad after 1923, of which there are many millions, including films, works of art, innumerable photographs, and, of course, books--books that (in the absence of the statute) would assume their rightful places in computer-accessible databases, spreading knowledge throughout the world.
We've been talking about the Golan case, and its possible impact on culture, for years. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's the third in a line of cases, starting with the Eldred case, to challenge aspects of copyright law as violating the First Amendment. The key point in the case was questioning whether or not the US could take worksand put them under copyright. The US had argued it needed to do this under a trade agreement to make other countries respect our copyrights. Of course, for those who were making use of those public domain works, it sure seemed like a way to unfairly lock up works that belonged to the public. It was difficult to see how retroactively taking works out of the public domain could fit into the traditional contours of copyright law... but today, on the day of the big SOPA/PIPA protests... that's exactly what happened (pdf).The ruling is ridiculously depressing. The Justices basically just keep repeating the mantra they first set forth in Eldred, that as long as Congress says it's okay -- and that the "fair use" and the "idea/expression" dichotomy remain -- all is just dandy. They also claim that since the very first copyright law took works from the public domain and gave them copyright protection, clearly there's nothing wrong with removing works from the public domain. This decision reinforces why the Eldred decision was a complete disaster, and just keeps getting worse. The Eldred ruling basically ignored the fact that copyright had changed entirely in a way that went against the First Amendment... by retroactively granting copyright extension. Now that ruling is being used to take works out of the public domain as well.First, as with Eldred (and the second case in the trilogy, the Kahle case), I believe that the Court is greatly mistaken in its analysis of copyright law. First it claims that there's little fight between copyright and the First Amendment because the two things were put in place at about the same time. That's a specious argument for a variety of reasons. First, the original copyright law was significantly limited in a way that it was unlikely to really come into conflict with the First Amendment. It was limited to just a few specific areas, and for a very short period of time. It's only now that (1) copyright law has been totally flipped to make just about everything you create covered by copyright, (2) the law has been massively expanded in time and (3) changes in technology make us all create tons of "copyrighted" material all the time -- things have changed an entirely. It's hard to see how the Court can reasonably argue that the traditional contours of copyright law have not changed... but that's exactly what it does. Stunningly, the majority decision here, written by Justice Ginsburg, seems to suggest that there's no First Amendment issue here, because if people want to make use of the works that were previously, but are no longer, in the public domain, they can just buy those rights:It's a really frustrating decision, because it appears to lack any recognition of just how much copyright law has changed and expanded. It seems to lack -- as it did in Eldred -- any sense of how overreaching copyright law is, in fact, stifling free expression everyday. It's a tone deaf response to what's actually happening.The dissent, by Justice Breyer (with support from Alito), seems to actually understand this. The rest of the Justices (excluding Kagan, who recused herself due to her role in the case prior to joining the court) just don't seem to want to bother to understand. The dissent, however, kicks off with a quote from Thomas Macaulay's famous speech on the problems of copyright, noting that copyright is,, "a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers." They then note that the decision to remove works from the public domain fails to uphold the basic premise of copyright law:Breyer -- who has always had a much stronger grasp on copyright than his colleagues -- notes that the whole point of copyright law is to encourage new works, and that the Founders themselves recognized that "monopoly is a two-edged sword, that must be wielded carefully. Breyer quotes the early words of James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, that copyright should be granted, but only "in certain cases.... with caution and guarded with strictness agst abuse" and solely such that it acts as "compensation for a benefit actually gained to the community... which the owner might otherwise withhold from public use."How taking works out of the public domain accomplishes that goal mystifies Breyer (and me and many others).Separately, he notes that Congress and the Court have both made it clear in the past that copyright is for the benefit of the public, and not solely to grant rights to authors. The granting of monopolies to authors is theby which the public might benefit, but not the purpose of copyright law. Retroactively seizing works out of the public domain does not benefit the public. And thus, is unconstitutional. Except... to the six justices who chose not to understand copyright law.That the Supreme Court released this on the same day of widespread protests against overreaching copyright law is a bit of unfortunate irony. The truth is that Congress is the one who could fix this by actually fixing copyright law and making it clear that the Court's interpretation was wrong. But, instead, because Hollywood pays the bills, they only make copyright law worse. While it's easy to blame this ruling on the Supreme Court, it really implicates Congress. And, thus, it's actually depressingly fitting that this ruling came out today.
Filed Under: copyright, culture, first amendment, golan, public domain, supreme courtEXCLUSIVE / Romania will not ratify the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada which was concluded in 2014, as an angry reaction to the refusal by Ottawa to lift the visa requirement of its nationals, but also for the lack of EU solidarity for solving the issue.
The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a position regarding Canada maintaining the visa requirement for Romanian citizens, expressing disappointment that Ottawa had not delivered on its promise to solve the issue, contained in the Statement of the 2014 EU-Canada summit.
Canada has a visa-free regime with all EU countries except Romania and Bulgaria.
“In this situation the Romanian authorities will reassess, at EU level, the approach to the relationship between the EU and Canada so as to secure the goal of having obligatory visas for Romanian citizens eliminated”, the Position of the Romanian foreign ministry reads.
Asked to explain this text, a Romanian high official who asked not to be named said that Romania would “veto” the CETA ratification.
Normally the ratification of CETA should conclude by the end of 2016 or 2017. Romania however will not ratify the agreement, EURACTIV was told.
Commission blamed
The official also expressed anger at the way the European Commission had handled the issue.
On 12 April, the College of Commissioners met exceptionally on a Tuesday, not on a Wednesday. This is because 12 April was the deadline for the Commission to propose how EU countries should “react in common”, as an EU regulation requires, in cases where foreign countries “subjects [EU] citizens to differing treatment”.
Based on an in-house made assessment, the Commissioners decided that the consequences of the EU imposing visas to Canada and the USA would be so dire, that the EU legislation requiring reciprocity was impossible to be applied.
“According to the assessment, it is highly unlikely that member states would be able to process the increased number of visa applications in accordance with the Visa Code within 90 days following the entry into force of such visa requirement decision and moreover such visa requirement could result in a decrease in the number of travellers from Canada and the US,” the Commission stated.
“The Commission therefore recommends to the Council and the Parliament not to apply the EU legislation,” the Romanian official said, adding that this amounted to “treachery”.
EURACTIV contacted the Bulgarian authorities for their position on the issue. It appears that Sofia has not yet decided what position to take.
More work to do
There is still more work to be done before the visa dispute between Canada and the European Union can be resolved, Canada’s Immigration Minister John McCallum was quoted as saying by the Toronto Sun.
“We have not offered full visa lift but we have offered something called Canada plus, which is easier access for regular travellers,” McCallum said.
The minister also said he’s not concerned how the dispute might affect CETA, adding that it was a separate issue.
According to the Canadian press, the authorities in Ottawa have been aware that the unsolved visa issue may inspire unspecified member states to block the ratification of CETA.China has outlined a massive spending plan worth 4.7 trillion yuan ($725 billion) to provide more reliable transport to some of the country’s more remote regions.
According to People’s Daily, more than 300 new projects have been proposed, including a significant number to connect China’s more isolated and impoverished areas with regional transport hubs using road and rail.
Zheng Jian, a member of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that the spending plans are part of a pledge to bring the entire population above the poverty line by 2020.
“We think access to more reliable forms of movement is the linch-pin to helping people out of poverty. This is why we’ve incorporated rural road construction in our new plans, which will link these remote areas to regional hubs in the next 3-years,” said Zheng.
While China’s size often means that huge numbers can be thrown around without any real sense of perspective, the plan will require an amount equal to nearly 10 percent of the government’s 2015 annual expenditure to be invested each year for three years.
The amount is larger than the 4 trillion yuan stimulus which was pumped into the economy following the financial crash in 2008, leading to a massive surge in Chinese debt levels.
While many economists over the past year have cautioned that China should move away from its dependence on debt-fueled infrastructure spending, Bloomberg quotes a former adviser to China’s central bank as recently speaking out in favor of more investment.
“If China does not increase infrastructure investment now, it may miss a historical opportunity,” said ex-PBOC adviser Yu Yongding. “It is absolutely necessary for the Chinese government to support infrastructure investment to offset the negative effect of declining real estate investment.”
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With Rick and Morty being just days away from its third season premiere, Justin Roiland and Cartoon Network have been dropping a series of weird, unsettling shorts to get everyone back in the mood, as it were. This new trailer for the show’s upcoming third season, however, takes it about 1800 steps further.
In it, Morty drops some acid (literally) and goes on the type of mindfuck journey that normally requires tagging along with your alcoholic mad scientist grandfather on one of his madcap adventures. In nearly each of his terrifying, drug-induced visions, Morty imagines himself being murdered by Rick in all sorts of fun and unusual ways, like being eaten alive or sacrificed in a Mayan temple by his entire family.
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Remember, the safest way to consume Rick and Morty is to do it with an experienced guide who will sit with you throughout your experience and make sure that you don’t become overwhelmed by the madness of it all. So please plan appropriately when Rick and Morty comes back to Adult Swim on July 30.Because Colorado prohibits marijuana use in public, and hotels ban smoking, savvy ‘ganjapreneurs’ are catering to tourists looking for a cozy place to toke
Joel and Lisa Schneider’s bed and breakfast in Silverthorne, Colorado, has all the trappings of a traditional B&B (stone fireplace, home-cooked meals, an alarmingly cute dog), with one significant addition: a complimentary bar of seven marijuana strains, and more than a dozen different implements to smoke them out of.
Travelers visiting Colorado from all over the world seek out specialized lodging like the Schneiders’ Bud+Breakfast. That’s because when pot was legalized in the state in 2012, lawmakers forbade its use in public – including bars, parks or concert venues. And with most hotels banning smoking of |
of 2014, the principles of Sharia are the main source of legislation in Egypt. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Mahmoud Kabish, a law professor at Cairo University, said that abolishing the death penalty is incompatible with the principles of Sharia, which allows for the execution of murderers based on the religious rule saying “whoever kills shall be killed.”
Abbas Shoman, a representative of Al-Azhar, told Al-Monitor that amending the Egyptian penal code to abolish the death penalty is a legal matter that concerns the state, and Al-Azhar will not interfere unless its Sharia-based opinion on the issue is requested, which in that case would only be a recommendation. Regarding the Sharia-based opinion and the extent to which abolishing the death penalty complies with the principles of Sharia, Shoman said that its abolition is incompatible with the principles of Sharia, as noted by Kabish.
It is worth noting that the National Council for Human Rights raised the issue of abolishing the death penalty in a 2010 report sent to the Egyptian government and parliament. However, a large number of Al-Azhar scholars rejected the Council’s report, and it was likewise rejected by then-Minister of State for Legal Affairs Mufid Shehab and the Human Rights Commission of the Egyptian parliament.
Khaled Okasha, a retired Egyptian military general and chairman of the National Center for Security Studies, said that the death penalty is the only punishment deterring murderers, and replacing it with life imprisonment could bring about security unrest in Egypt. “Someone who has been sentenced to life in prison could commit crimes from inside prison, because he is transformed into a hopeless person, and life imprisonment is the maximum penalty he could face regardless of the crimes he commits,” he added.
Khaled al-Badr, professor of social psychology at Cairo University, told Al-Monitor that those sentenced to life in prison become desperate people with nothing to deter them. “This could be a reason for them committing more crimes from within prison, because they will not be seeking to improve their behavior to shorten the sentence, as other prisoners do. They also will not seek to avoid committing new crimes, because they realize that they will not leave prison anyway,” he said.
Eid Salama, the father of a victim of a November 2013 terrorist attack in Egypt, told Al-Monitor that he rejects his son’s killer being given any sentence other than the death penalty. Meanwhile, Hossam Abdel Azim, the brother of a victim, told Al-Monitor that crimes of terrorism can only be stopped through death sentences, and that no other punishment can appease the families of victims of terrorist attacks.
“Egypt is not expanding its use of the death penalty," Kabish said. "Moreover, there are controls on the death penalty, most notably that it requires the consensus of all members of the court. Those sentenced [to death] have the right to appeal twice, not to mention that the presidency pardons some of them, which the president has the authority to do. Most of the death sentences issued in the recent period, like those in Minya, were in absentia. In such cases, the accused is given the maximum sentence so he can come back and be re-investigated.”
It could be argued that abolishing the death penalty is a difficult matter — not because it is a tool of the state to intimidate opposition, as claimed by human rights organizations, but rather because its abolition could be met with rejection. The latter could use constitutional, religious or humane arguments to reinforce their rejection."I wish everyone could feel this way."
“Beautiful As I Want To Be”: Two Young Trans Friends Discuss Transitioning Together
Logo’s Beautiful As I Want To Be continues with an all-new episode featuring the journeys of Jenny and Aria, two transgender friends who built a friendship on the mutual support they gave each other during their respective transitions.
Each week, the new series will have trans model/activist Geena Rocero pairing transgender youth with a trans role model to help them express their authentic selves in a stylized photoshoot.
In the latest episode, Jenny and Aria are joined by their mentors, I Am Cait series regulars Angelica Ross and Jen Richards. Before they participate in the photoshoot, the four friends sit down to discuss what it’s like having support while transitioning.
“Hopefully after this experience, you can move out into the world and be as beautiful as you see yourselves, as beautiful as you are, and as beautiful as you want to be,” Angelica says.
“I wish everyone could feel this way,” Aria responds.
Today on Twitter, you can chat with Geena Rocero, Angelica Ross, and Jen Richards in Logo’s Beautiful As I Want To Be Twitter chat, between 3-4pm EST. Submit your questions to the cast using the hashtag #BeautifulAsIWantToBe.
Below, check out the second episode of Beautiful As I Want To Be:The good design of UI is very important for any website. The user interface design has the following aspects:
• Highly responsive: The website should have highly responsive features. It is very important that the website has the responsive user interface. The users only like the highly responsive websites. All the features should be easily used by clicks. The responsive website UI design is first choice of every user.
• User friendly interface: The website should have user friendly interface so that every user can use the website easily. The UI design company should understand that the website will have lot of new users’ everyday and they should be able to understand the user interface and options of the website.
• Attractive graphics: The graphics is most important aspect of any UI. When any user opens the website, first thing he observes is the graphics of the website. The attractiveness of the user interface is observed by the color scheme used, text format, and placement of logo, images and templates. All these considerations are very important for the good user interface design.
• Intuitive and consistent design: It is very important that the website has Intuitive and consistent design. These are very important aspects of any user interface. The placement of the options and pages should be proper. The navigation should be easy so that users can use it without any confusion.
These are the aspects of good user interface design of the website. It is very important that the user interface of the website can be designed well. It is not only important to attract the users but also very important for the SEO of website. The website with good UI design will get more web traffic and then will get the higher search engine ranking. If you want to get the website for your business, you have to contact the good UI design company so that you can get the best services of UI designing.
The websites are used by every company and business to get more customers for the business. it is very important that the website has a good design so that you can get more web traffic on it. The good web designing has many aspects. If you want to design a good website, the UI is most important in web designing. The UI is used for user interface and the user interface is the way in which the users see the website.
For any assistance regarding web designing and development of your websites, you may visit Octaspectrum at http://octaspectrum.com or call at +919674381354.What do these numbers tell you: 72, 47, 96, 45, 49, 82? A on a good run? These are actually team scores in Test Are you thinking Kenya, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe? Wake up, these innings totals were scored by the biggies of Test - England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, respectively - all in the past three years. You could cheerily reply, "Well, it seems their opponents bowled really well then." But would you have a reply if we asked, "Tell us the names of who these bowling heroes could have been?" You would begin with Dale Steyn of South Africa, promptly recall James Anderson of England too, perhaps his teammate Stuart Board, probably scratch your head and say Lasith Malinga before we point out that the streaky-haired Sri Lankan no longer plays Test cricket, and finally mention Umar Gul of Pakistan. More questions: who are the other bowlers in their teams? And can anyone please help with the names of bowlers from West Indies and New Zealand?
Here is another quiz for you. Till the end of the second Test match of the current Ashes series, which two Australian batsmen had the most runs and the best average? Michael Clarke? Shane Watson? Phil Hughes? Oh, you didn't know they had a called Phil Hughes in their team? It doesn't matter; the with the most runs was a - the two-Test-old Ashton Agar who comes out last to bat. And the best average belonged to another bowler, pacer James Pattinson.
Has cricket, especially the purest variety played in Tests, hit rock bottom? The evidence is startling. Only seven batsmen playing today have an average of above 50, compared to 9 five years ago; and none of the seven have come into Test after 2004. No one has the class of Brian Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq or Ricky Ponting. Only two bowlers, Steyn and Anderson, have over 300 wickets. There is only one genuine all-rounder in the world: Jacques Kallis, the old South African warhorse. And how many crowd-puller superstars can the game boast of, the kind who would make advertisers go weak in their knees? Only one: Mahendra Singh Dhoni of India. And it's not just the standard of batting, bowling and fielding; spot-fixing scandals (even an umpire, Pakistan's Asad Rauf, is under suspicion), drunken brawls, partisan commentators, name calling - it's hardly the gentleman's game it was supposed to be. In a poll conducted by Business Standard over the past week, 63.9 per cent of the respondents felt that cricket was at its lowest in the past five years (see chart).
Country after country has seen a sharp decline in its cricket. Najam Sethi, interim chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, recently told the media: "Our cricket has reached the lowest ground. We are not winning matches." Former greats like Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne have publicly commented on how the once mighty Australians have fallen to their lowest ever. Says former Australian star Mark Waugh: "We were the dominant team for two decades; now we look like also-rans." Even in the victorious ranks of the English team playing the current series against Australia, not all is well. "Do not be fooled by the heroics of (Ian) Bell and (Jonny) Bairstow; this order has failed to deliver consistently for over a year," wrote columnist Scyld Berry in The Telegraph. He added that despite winning matches, England isn't a dominating team: "Some precious ingredient has gone missing since 2011 when England batted India and, before them, Australia into submission."The West Indian team, once adored and feared in equal measure, today shines only in the leagues, leaving the unofficial historian-spokesman of Caribbean cricket, Tony Cozier, to sadly note, "Why would a player fancy a grind over five days for less money, fame and adulation over the glamour of the Indian Premier League?" Sri Lanka, though it can boast of batsmen like Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, has been unable to fill the void left by the departure of Muttiah Muralitharan and Sanath Jayasuriya. New Zealand looks lacklustre. "New Zealand doesn't have a big enough talent pool," admits the country's all-time great, Martin Crowe. South Africa (with two stars, Hashim Amla and Steyn) and India (with no settled and a half-classy batsman, Virat Kohli) look good in this mediocrity. Digest this: apart from Sachin Tendulkar, only one Indian has an average of above 50; that's Cheteshwar Pujara (65.65), who's played only 13 Tests. Kohli, the great hope of Indian cricket, has an average of 41.96 from 18 Tests.
* * *
The advent of the shortest form of cricket - the carnival - has robbed cricket of the gritty men who played their game with brawn and brain in conditions tough and pleasant, enjoying not the glamour, but the nervous combat of it all. Men like Warne and Muralitharan, Tendulkar and Steve Waugh, Wasim Akram and Allan Donald, Daniel Vettori and Kevin Pietersen ground out stellar performances year after year. Where are such Test stars today? Age is slowing the reflexes of whoever still remain on that high perch. From Kallis (37) and Sangakkara (35) to Misbah-ul-Haq (39) and Graeme Swann (34), the names that are synonymous with excellence are now in their autumn. And the truth is that there are no ready takers for their mantles. India's Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman have already hung up their boots. Tendulkar soldiers on, but the man has turned 40!The West Indies, with their history of ferocious pace, today have Kemar Roach as the with the most wickets - 85. He has for company, as frontline bowler, Darren Sammy with 77 wickets. They are not even a shadow of Courtney Walsh (519 wickets) or Curtly Ambrose (405 wickets). Sri Lanka's Rangana Herath is the country's top bowler at the moment with 200 wickets, 595 less than Muralitharan and 155 short of Chaminda Vaas. India's current best is Ishant Sharma with 144 wickets. Even discarded Harbhajan Singh had touched greater heights with 413, which itself was 216 less than Anil Kumble's 619 scalps. Tim Southee from the land of Sir Richard Hadlee is the best of New Zealand's playing crop with 83 wickets. Pakistan is slightly better off, with Umar Gul having 163 in his bag. But put that in its perspective alongside Akram's 414 and Waqar Younis' 376.
The batsmen who have scored the most runs for their countries in the last four years are on their last legs, but have no young men snapping at their ankles. Clarke, Alistair Cook, Tendulkar, Ross Taylor, Amla, Sangakkara, Azhar Ali and S Chanderpaul are the leading run getters for their countries. Taylor's average over 31 Tests is a measly 43.47, while Ali's for Pakistan is a sorrier 42.26 in 27 matches. Even the prolific Cook of England has a regular average of 52.77 in 48 matches, which is still better than India's best, Tendulkar's 51.06 in 39 matches (not counting Pujara, who has played 13 Tests).
* * *
No wonder, instability in the teams is at a high. Players enter and exit the team, as they fail to impress the selectors and the fans with their skills. In Reportage Online, columnist Daniella Doughan noted: "The (Australian) selectors gave out 29 new Test caps between 2000 and 2009, including Clarke, Watson, Mitchell Johnson, Brian Haddin and Peter Siddle; 22 caps have already been handed out between 2010 and 2013. As a result, players are making their debut, playing about three tests, and then getting dropped from the side as it 'under-performs'." India has blooded 17 players since July 2010, Pakistan 16, New Zealand 16 and Sri Lanka 12. The most consistent teams in the past three years, South Africa and England, have inducted 10 new players each.
It's easy to see why those being elevated to Test ranks have not been able to hold their places in the team. "Cricket is not a game that can thrive within the canvas of the lowest common denominator. The skills that are necessary to play over four and five days are the foundation of the enterprise that makes the short form so appealing," writes Mark Nicholas, former Test cricketer and commentator. Crowe says has to cop the blame. "The batsmen can play and have decent techniques but they lack the mentality to play long innings." Bishan Singh Bedi, former India captain, is more scathing. "From the length of the pitch, weight of the ball to height of the stumps, nothing has changed," says the irrepressible Sikh. "The change is in the producers, directors and actors of the game. The tamasha is that they come to be seen. It was not there earlier."
Keiron Pollard is a prime example of what Bedi is talking about. The West Indian is a dream T20 cricketer - a good fielder, a decent bowler and a batsman who can whack the ball out of the park. But the fact is Pollard played only two first-class games in West Indies domestic cricket before he became a "star." Nicholas doesn't grudge Pollard his success but feels therein lies the problem. "Everyone - administrators, players, fans - are seeking instant gratification whereas is about patience, grafting your way to success," he says.
* * *
The fall in quality is drawing fewer and fewer people to the matches. As far back as 2009, former England batsman and commentator Geoffrey Boycott had said, "We're all seduced into believing is fine…. you could sell Test match cricket twice over for huge amounts of money because it's the oldest form of Test match cricket and has history and tradition. But (in) every other series around the world there are declining attendances." Where are the crowds? Except for the current Ashes series, where ebullient home crowds have been thronging the stadiums to sing their team to victory over an emaciated Australian side, crowds have kept away. A crucial Test match between South Africa and Australia at Cape Town in the 2011 series drew a handful of spectators. The stands are embarrassingly empty in other countries too, particularly in the West Indies and New Zealand. Test matches in India too struggle to fill the stands.
With diminishing statures, cricketers are no longer the sought-after names for endorsements. On Indian TV screens, the home of the commercial cricketer, the only celebrity is Dhoni, and some distance behind him is his national deputy, Kohli. Even the likes of Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh have faded away from the small screen. Because cricket draws eyeballs but there are no big stars - domestic or foreign, like Brett Lee or Ricky Ponting - the ad spots are monopolised by Dhoni with 20 brands and Kohli with 15. The Sehwags, Gangulys and Dravids no longer inspire. Shailendra Singh, the CEO of Percept, says that lack of star power is evident. "Earlier brands were signing cricketers on the back of a good series that created'stars'," he says. But now, advertisers are cautious. "Companies too spend the majority of their ad money during IPL, where stars are created every second day."
Things may not improve anytime soon. A generation of new stars requires role models and inspirational performers, who are now missing in action. In the West Indies, youngsters are no longer enthused about cricket. They would rather play basketball, which has now become the most popular sport there. There is no sign the fearsome West Indian pace battery may revive. "There's a dearth of quality fast bowlers," says Javagal Srinath. The world's fastest vegetarian bowler can be forgiven for his understatement - he always had a genteel demeanour. The real truth lies in a bigger reality. There's a dearth of quality cricketers. Period.Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes has signed a new one-year contract at Old Trafford.
Earlier this month United boss Sir Alex Ferguson confirmed Scholes, 37, had agreed to extend his deal after coming out of retirement in January.
"I am delighted. He knew he had made a mistake. He now realises if he plays 25 or 30 games next season, they will be of real quality," said Ferguson.
"I think this will be Paul's last season. We know how to use him."
Paul Scholes' career 697 Man Utd appearances, 154 goals
66 England caps, 14 goals
Premier League winner: 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011
FA Cup: 1996, 1999, 2004
Champions League: 2008
League Cup: 2009, 2010
PFA Team of the Year: 2003, 2007
Scholes announced his retirement in May 2011 after making 676 appearances for United.
He joined the United coaching staff, but subsequently came out of retirement to help Ferguson's side through an injury crisis.
"I'm delighted the manager feels I can still make a contribution to the team," said Scholes who made his return in the FA Cup win against Manchester City in January and made a further 20 appearances, with 14 starts and four goals.
Despite playing only half the season, Scholes came third in the vote for the footballer of the year award, behind Arsenal striker Robin van Persie and United team-mate Wayne Rooney.
Meanwhile, promising Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Amos, 22, has signed a new three-year deal which will run until at least 2015.A civil liberties group says it’s being kept in the dark as a federal watchdog begins looking at whether the Canadian Security Intelligence Service went too far in eyeing environmental activists.
CSIS has disclosed very little information heading into three days of Security Intelligence Review Committee hearings about the complaint from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, said Paul Champ, lawyer for the association.
“It’s going to make it very difficult,” Champ said in an interview. “This kind of process is always shadow-boxing for a complainant. But here you’re shadow-boxing with the lights turned out. There’s not even shadows there, because we don’t know what CSIS’s case is.”
The association filed a complaint with the review committee in February 2014 after media reports suggested that CSIS and other government agencies considered opposition to the petroleum industry a threat to national security.
This kind of process is always shadow-boxing for a complainant. But here you’re shadow-boxing with the lights turned out. There’s not even shadows there, because we don’t know what CSIS’s case is
The complaint cited reports the spy service had shared information with the National Energy Board about “radicalized environmentalist” groups seeking to participate in the board’s hearings on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, which would see Alberta crude flow westward to the B.C. coast.
The passage of government security legislation that gives CSIS new powers to disrupt extremist activity has only heightened concerns about monitoring of environmental and aboriginal protesters who oppose oil pipelines.
The initial review committee hearings begin today in Vancouver behind closed doors and there likely will be additional sessions that exclude the association and its counsel for national-security reasons. It could take months or well over a year for the committee to conclude its probe.
The parties were given deadlines to produce bound books of evidence they will rely on as well as detailed summaries of what witnesses will say, Champ said.
The civil liberties association intends to present activists’ witness statements and information about CSIS gleaned from Access to Information documents.
CSIS has provided “just a bunch of printouts from their website,” Champ said. In addition, a senior spy service manager from B.C., known only as Robert, will testify.
“They haven’t given us any indication of how they respond to our specific allegations whatsoever,” Champ said. “They haven’t given us any indication even confirming that they were monitoring some of these groups.”
Champ raised the concerns during a July 24 teleconference with review committee member Yves Fortier, who is hearing the complaint, and counsel for CSIS.
During the call, the CSIS lawyer said the spy service would provide the committee “with all of the necessary information” to investigate the complaint. But she added CSIS would not confirm in the presence of association counsel whether it investigated a particular group or subject.
The civil liberties association says it might press harder by asking the review committee to issue summonses for CSIS employees whose names appear in Access to Information documents.
Fortier urged Champ to wait until the first phase of the hearings have wrapped up.
CSIS did not immediately respond to questions from The Canadian Press about the process.
The association will continue to pursue the complaint despite its concerns, Champ said in the interview.
“Some process is better than no process,” he said. “We do think this is an important issue. We’re hopeful that some light will be shed on what CSIS was doing in following or monitoring environmentalists.”This article is about the mental state and medical condition. For other uses, see Delirium (disambiguation)
"Cognitive impairments" redirects here. For other forms of cognitive impairment, see Cognitive impairment
Delirium Synonyms Acute confusional state Specialty Psychiatry
Delirium, also known as acute confusional state, is an organically caused decline from a previously baseline level of mental function. It often varies in severity over a short period of time, and includes attentional deficits, and disorganization of behavior. It typically involves other cognitive deficits, changes in arousal (hyperactive, hypoactive, or mixed), perceptual deficits, altered sleep-wake cycle, and psychotic features such as hallucinations and delusions. Delirium itself is not a disease, but rather a set of symptoms.
It may result from an underlying disease, over-consumption of alcohol, from drugs administered during treatment of a disease, withdrawal from drugs or from any number of health factors. Delirium may be caused by a disease process outside the brain that nonetheless affects the brain, such as infection (urinary tract infection, pneumonia) or drug effects, particularly anticholinergics or other CNS depressants (benzodiazepines and opioids).[1] Although hallucinations and delusions are sometimes present in delirium, these are not required for the diagnosis, and the symptoms of delirium are clinically distinct from those induced by psychosis or hallucinogens (with the exception of deliriants.) Delirium must by definition be caused by an organic process, i.e., a physically identifiable structural, functional, or chemical problem in the brain (see organic brain syndrome), and thus, fluctuations of mentation due to changes in purely psychiatric processes or diseases, such as sudden psychosis from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are (by definition) not termed delirium. Like its components (inability to focus attention, mental confusion and various impairments in awareness and temporal and spatial orientation), delirium is the common manifestation of new organic brain dysfunction (for any reason). Delirium requires both a sudden change in mentation, and an organic cause for this.
Delirium may be difficult to diagnose without the proper establishment of a person's usual mental function. Without careful assessment and history, delirium can easily be confused with a number of psychiatric disorders or long term organic brain syndromes, because many of the signs and symptoms of delirium are conditions also present in dementia, depression, and psychosis.[2] Delirium may newly appear on a background of mental illness, baseline intellectual disability, or dementia, without being due to any of these problems.
Treatment of delirium requires treating the underlying cause, and multi-component interventions are thought to be most effective.[3] In some cases, temporary or palliative or symptomatic treatments are used to comfort the person or to allow other care (for example, a person who, without understanding, is trying to pull out a ventilation tube that is required for survival). Delirium is probably the single most common acute disorder affecting adults in general hospitals. It affects 10-20% of all hospitalized adults, and 30-40% of elderly who are hospitalized and up to 80% of those in ICU. Among those requiring critical care, delirium is a risk for death within the next year.[4] Antipsychotics are not supported for the treatment or prevention of delirium among those who are in hospital.[3][5][6] When delirium is caused by alcohol or sedative hypnotic withdrawal, benzodiazepines are typically used.[7]
Definition [ edit ]
In common usage, delirium is often used to refer to drowsiness, disorientation, and hallucination. In medical terminology, however, a number of different symptoms, including temporary disturbance in consciousness, with reduced ability to focus attention and solve problems, are the core features of delirium. Occasionally sleeplessness and severe agitation and irritability are part of "delirium." Hallucination, drowsiness, and disorientation are not required, but may be contribute to the diagnosis.
There are several medical definitions of delirium (including those in the DSM-IV and ICD-10). However, all include some core features.
The core features are:
Disturbance of consciousness (that is, reduced clarity of awareness of the environment, with reduced ability to focus, sustain, or shift attention) [8]
Change in cognition (e.g., problem-solving impairment or memory impairment) or a perceptual disturbance (hallucination) [8]
Onset of hours to days, and tendency to fluctuate. [8]
Behaviour may be either overactive or underactive, and sleep is often disturbed, with loss of the normal circadian rhythm. [8]
Thinking is slow and muddled but the content is often complex.[9]
Other clinical features include disorganized thinking, poor memory, delusions, and mood lability.[8]
Signs and symptoms [ edit ]
Delirium is a syndrome encompassing an array of neuropsychiatric symptoms, including a disturbance in consciousness/attention and cognition that develops acutely and tends to fluctuate.[8] The change in cognition (memory deficit, disorientation, language disturbance) or the development of a disturbance, must be one that is not better accounted for by a pre-existing, established, or evolving dementia.[10] Other symptoms can include disorientation, thought disorder, memory problems, language disorder, sleep disturbance, delusions, mood lability, psychomotor changes (changes in rate of activity/movement), and hallucinations.[8]
Delirium occurs as a stage of consciousness in the continuum between normal awakeness/alertness and coma. During the 20th century, delirium was described as a ‘clouding of consciousness’ but this rather nebulous concept has been replaced by a better understanding of the components of phenomenology that culminate in severely impaired higher order brain functions. Lipowski described delirium as a disorder of attention, wakefulness, cognition, and motor behaviour, while a disturbance in attention is often considered the cardinal symptom.[8] Disrupted sleep-wake cycles can result from a loss of normal circadian rhythm.[8]
Accumulating evidence indicates three core domains of delirium phenomenology: cognition, composed of inattention and other cognitive deficits; higher level thinking processes, including impaired executive function, semantic expression and comprehension; and circadian rhythm, including altered motor activity and fragmented sleep-wake cycle.[11] Phenomenology studies suggest that core symptoms occur with greater frequency while other less consistent associated symptoms may reflect the biochemical influence of particular aetiologies or genetic, neuronal or physiological vulnerabilities.[11]
Delirium may present in hyperactive, hypoactive, or mixed forms. In its hyperactive form, it is manifested as severe confusion and disorientation, developing with relatively rapid onset and fluctuating in intensity. In its hypoactive form, it is manifested by an equally sudden withdrawal from interaction with the outside world. Delirium may occur in a mixed type where someone may fluctuate between both hyper- and hypoactive periods. Delirium as a syndrome is one which occurs more frequently in people in their later years. However, when it occurs in the course of a critical illness, delirium has been found to occur in young and old patients at relatively even rates.
Inattention and associated cognitive deficits [ edit ]
Inattention is the cardinal and required symptom to diagnose delirium and is noticeable on interview by distractibility and inability to shift and / or sustain attention.[12] More formal testing can include the months of the year backwards, serial sevens or digit span tests. Disorientation (another symptom of confusion, and usually a more severe one) describes the loss of awareness of the surroundings, environment and context in which the person exists. It may also appear with delirium, but it is not required, as noted. Disorientation may occur in time (not knowing what time of day, day of week, month, season or year it is), place (not knowing where one is) or person (not knowing who one is).
Memory impairment occurs[8] and is linked to inattention. Reduction in formation of new long-term memory (which by definition survives withdrawal of attention), is common in delirium, because initial formation of (new) long-term memories generally requires an even higher degree of attention than do short-term memory tasks. Since older memories are retained without need of concentration, previously formed long-term memories (i.e., those formed before the period of delirium) are usually preserved in all but the most severe cases of delirium.
Higher level thinking [ edit ]
Delirious patients have diminished comprehension as evidenced by reduced ‘grasp’ of their surroundings and difficulties in connecting with their immediate environment, executive dysfunction affecting abstraction, initiation/perseveration, switching mental sets, working memory, temporal sequencing and organization, insight and judgment. Though none of these cognitive deficits is specific to delirium, the array and pattern is highly suggestive.[citation needed]
Language disturbances in delirium include anomic aphasia, paraphasias, impaired comprehension, agraphia, and word-finding difficulties. Incoherent or illogical / rambling conversation is reported commonly. Disorganised thinking includes tangentiality, circumstantiality and a proneness to loose associations between elements of thought which results in speech that often makes limited sense with multiple apparent irrelevancies. This aspect of delirium is common but often difficult for non-experts to assess reliably.[citation needed]
Sleep changes [ edit ]
Disruption of sleep-wake cycle is almost invariably present in delirium and often predates the appearance of a full-blown episode. Minor disturbances with insomnia or excessive daytime somnolence may be hard to distinguish from other medically ill patients without delirium, but delirium typically involves more substantial alterations with sleep fragmentation or even complete sleep-wake cycle reversal that reflect disturbed circadian rhythm regulation. The relationship of circadian disturbances to the characteristic fluctuating severity of delirium symptoms over a 24-hour period or to motor disturbance is unknown.
Motor activity alterations are very common in delirium. They have been used to define clinical subtypes (hypoactive, hyperactive, mixed) though studies are inconsistent as to the prevalence of these subtypes.[13] Cognitive impairments and EEG slowing are comparable in hyperactive and hypoactive patients though other symptoms may vary. Psychotic symptoms occur in both although the prevailing stereotype suggests that they only occur in hyperactive cases. Hypoactive cases are prone to non detection or misdiagnosis as depression. A range of studies suggest that motor subtypes differ regarding underlying pathophysiology, treatment needs, and prognosis for function and mortality though inconsistent subtype definitions and poorer detection of hypoactives impacts interpretation of these findings.[14]
Psychotic symptoms occur in up to 50% of patients with delirium. While the common non-medical view of a delirious patient is one who is hallucinating, most people who are medically delirious do not have either hallucinations or delusions. Thought content abnormalities include suspiciousness, overvalued ideation and frank delusions. Delusions are typically poorly formed and less stereotyped than in schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s disease. They usually relate to persecutory themes of impending danger or threat in the immediate environment (e.g. being poisoned by nurses). Misperceptions include depersonalisation, delusional misidentifications, illusions and hallucinations. Hallucinations and illusions are frequently visual though can be tactile and auditory. Abnormalities of affect which may attend the state of delirium may include many distortions to perceived or communicated emotional states. Emotional states may also fluctuate, so that a delirious person may rapidly change between, for example, terror, sadness and jocularity.[15]
Persistent delirium [ edit ]
It was thought for many years that all delirium was a transient state of brain dysfunction that fluctuated on an hourly basis. English medical writer Philip Barrow noted in 1583 that if delirium resolves, it may be followed by a "loss of memory and reasoning power." Recent long-term studies bear this out, showing that many patients end up meeting criteria for delirium for an alarmingly long time.[16] For example, in ICU cohorts, it is common to find that 10% of patients still have delirium at the time of hospital discharge.[17]
Dementia in ICU survivors [ edit ]
Dementia is supposed to be an entity that continues to decline, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Another way of looking at dementia, however, is not strictly based on the decline component but on the degree of memory and executive function problems. It is now known, for example, that between 50% and 70% of ICU patients have tremendous problems with ongoing brain dysfunction similar to those experienced by Alzheimer’s or TBI (traumatic brain injury) patients, leaving many ICU survivors disabled and unable to go back to work and unable to serve effectively as the matriarchs and patriarchs of their families.[18] This is a distressing personal and public health problem and is getting an increasing amount of scrutiny in ongoing investigations. The implications of such an “acquired dementia-like illness” (note: the term here is being used in a circumstance in which not all patients continue to decline as some have persistent yet stable brain dysfunction and others with newly acquired brain problems can recover fully) are profound at the private level, dismantling the person’s life in very practical ways, such as impairing ability to find a car in a parking lot, complete shopping lists, or perform job-related tasks done previously for years. The societal relevance is also huge when one considers work-force issues related to the inability of a young wage-earner to work due to their own ICU stay or that of someone they must care for.[19]
Causes [ edit ]
Delirium arises through the interaction of a number of predisposing and precipitating factors.[20] A predisposing factor might be any biological, psychological or social factor that increases an individual’s susceptibility to delirium. An individual with multiple predisposing factors is said to have "high baseline vulnerability".[21] A precipitating factor is any biological, psychological or social factor that can trigger delirium. The division of causes into "predisposing" |
to a benefits system that links nearly every aspect of their professional and personal lives to the regime, and this places them in an antagonistic relationship with the rest of society. Dahiet al-Assad, or “the suburb of Assad” northeast of Damascus and the site of the country’s largest military housing complex, reveals how this system works. Known colloquially as Dahia, the housing complex provides officers with the opportunity of owning property in Damascus. As many army officers come from impoverished rural backgrounds, home ownership in the capital would have been beyond their financial reach. Military housing has offered them an opportunity for social advancement, but the community that officers and their families inhabit within Dahia also fosters a distinct identity that segregates them from the rest of Syrian society, leaving them dependent on the regime.
The benefits Dahia provides come at a steep cost. With the move into military housing, officers effectively complete their buy-in, linking their personal and familial fortunes to the survival of the regime. All the trappings of an officer’s life, and the social respectability it provides, are thus granted by and dependent on the regime. In 2000, when then president Hafez al-Assad died, many officers in Dahiet al-Assad sent their families back to their home villages to wait out the succession outcome. The families only returned once Hafez’s son Bashar was confirmed as the new president. Officers had understood that their life in Damascus was contingent on the Assad regime’s survival, rather than on their status as state employees or military personnel.
Syria’s military housing programs were greatly expanded during the 1980s, but in the decades since, they have not fostered a sense of solidarity among officers from different sects, especially Alawites and Sunnis. Nonetheless, military housing benefits had the de facto effect of drawing officers together to protect their common financial interests after the start of the 2011 uprising.
Dahia’s haphazard development suggests that its role in cementing regime loyalty was not a deliberate choice but rather an inadvertent outcome of years of mismanagement and nepotism. The regime has thus been able to capitalize on the suburb’s internal corruption and isolation from wider Syrian society to strengthen its ties with the officers living there and secure their unyielding loyalty. As the uprising descended into full-scale civil war, the ghettoization of the officer corps has played out in the regime’s favor and prompted many officers to regard the revolution as a personal threat to their assets and livelihood.
Protecting a beneficial system, rather than adhering to strict ideological loyalty, is what has kept the Syrian officer corps largely intact. While there have been individual defections among officers living outside of the military housing system, as of mid-2015 there has been only one recorded instance of an officer leaving Dahiet al-Assad to join the opposition—and he was already retired.1 The neighborhood has morphed from a residential area into something more akin to a fortified military base—one that officers perceive as defending them collectively, and by extension the entire army and Syrian regime.
Dahiet al-Assad: The President’s Gift
Two systems of military housing exist in Syria. The first provides officers and their families with accommodations in army compounds during active service—such as the Qatana housing area in Damascus, Rayan in Homs, and Saida in Daraa—without conferring ownership. The second system is a state-subsidized home purchase program that enables officers to purchase homes at discount prices in designated housing areas run by the Syrian army. In theory, any officer could apply for military housing, but the success of an application depends largely on securing favors from those with the de facto power to bestow or withhold property.
Dahiet al-Assad is by far Syria’s largest example of the state-subsidized home purchase program. Others are located in Deir Ezzor, Aleppo, and Tartus.2 In 2003, the army ended the program through which new officers could apply for home ownership in military housing complexes, replacing it in 2005 with a loan program that allocates officers 1 million Syrian pounds (nearly $20,000 at the time) that is paid off monthly via salary deductions. This restricted the supply of housing in Dahia and in areas under the same military housing system, making existing homes all the more coveted and valuable.
It is unlikely that Dahiet al-Assad was originally part of the regime’s long-term plan to preserve officer cohesion. Initially, it simply provided homes to army officers, and later it became the target of commercial property investment and speculation. That the officer corps would be steadfast in its support of the regime was not a foregone conclusion when the uprising began in 2011, but the regime built on decades of mismanagement, corruption, and patronage to ensure its loyalty and to turn Dahia into a bastion of military and ideological support.
Haphazard Development
Dahiet al-Assad was first established in 1982 after Hafez al-Assad issued an executive order to establish housing for officers and their families.3 The archway at the suburb’s main entrance still declares it “the gift of President Hafez al-Assad to the officers in the Syrian Arab Army and their families.”
Dahia’s construction began under the auspices of the Military Housing Establishment (Sharikat iskan al-askari), but the Institution for the Implementation of Military Construction (Moassat tenfez al-inshaat al-askaria) assumed responsibility for the project in the late 1980s. The Military Housing Establishment, under the purview of the Defense Ministry, is the overarching institution responsible for military housing in Syria. While it does not carry out actual construction, it is the lead contractor for military housing, and it is ultimately responsible for all work undertaken in Dahia. The Institution for the Implementation of Military Construction is effectively a real estate firm and general contractor that manages many public and private sector projects.
Construction was meant to take place through a series of multiyear development plans that involved coordinating with various government institutions in order to bring in necessary services. Then defense minister Mustafa Tlass laid the first stone of the housing complex in 1985, and officers began moving in by the early 1990s. As of March 2011, it covered some 250 hectares and housed more than 100,000 residents.4
Contrary to popular belief, Dahia is not a luxury residential area nor is it home to high-ranking officers. Despite its growing population, most areas of Dahia lack key public service provisions. The supply and quality of services have often lagged far behind other neighborhoods in the Syrian capital, due to the lack of coordination between military housing institutions and the civilian government that dispenses services.5 The streets need repair, and water and electricity cut out frequently. While there is much unused land, the neighborhood lacks public spaces or a large park. Public transportation to and from Dahia is also insufficient given its population size and location. The first government bakery in Dahia only opened in 2014, and until 2009, a large garbage dump servicing the neighboring town of al-Tal had only operated near the suburb’s entrance. Burning trash was common in Dahia, and the suburb’s dump site often attracted packs of wild dogs.6
The Civilianization of Military Housing
Economic reforms during the 2000s spurred rapid real estate price inflation and an investment rush into Dahia, which exacerbated the suburb’s chaotic infrastructural development. This process was also facilitated by Dahiet al-Assad’s unique status. Contrary to the rest of Syria, real estate in Dahia is not registered with the Ministry of Local Administration. Rather, the Institution for the Implementation of Military Construction owns the land where the suburb sprang up and thus holds full decisionmaking authority for new construction projects and property sales. Thanks to this special status, the institution has broad leeway in contracting new construction projects for civilian housing and for private firms, with most of the latter being owned by regime members and their affiliates. During the 2000s, the institution became flush with cash following the Dahia construction boom, in turn drawing in a new wave of regime-affiliated personnel and the corruption that came with them.
Thanks to the institution, Dahiet al-Assad also received a large influx of civilian residents during the 2000s. Although there are no official statistics available, interviews with residents suggested that in 2011, roughly 60 percent of the suburb’s residents were officers—including active and retired officers, secret service members, and other security personnel—and 40 percent were civilians. Subsequent interviews with both civilian and military residents confirmed a notable change in the neighborhood’s composition during the run-up to the 2011 uprising. Dahia had become more civilian and had ceased to be, in the view of its residents, a place for officers and their families alone.
This civilian influx made the officer corps more business savvy as the Dahia property boom in the 2000s had increased the value of homes there. Officers began viewing their homes as financial assets. In Dahia’s more wealthy areas of Jowiyyeh or Amjad, for example, home prices reached as high as 30 million Syrian pounds (roughly $600,000 before the uprising began) or more, even though most salaried officers could not afford an apartment worth more than 2 million Syrian pounds ($40,000) after even thirty years of service.
Nonmilitary families moving into Dahia, especially during the five years before the uprising, made many Damascenes believe the area had become a residential suburb of Damascus like any other. One former civilian resident noted: “By 2007, we could no longer say that it was military housing.”7 But the uprising-turned-civil-war showed how Dahia’s new civilian feel was merely a veneer for what was in effect a military neighborhood.
The Officers’ Ghetto
The Benefits System
The army has traditionally framed the purchase of a home in Dahia as a lifelong commitment to the regime. Upon graduating as a second lieutenant—the starting officer rank in the military—cadets would begin a ten-to-fifteen-year waiting period, during which 5–7 percent of their salary was withheld as an eventual down payment on a home. During this time, military personnel and their families often stayed in practically cost-free temporary military housing. Officers invariably need influential connections to eventually purchase a unit in Dahiet al-Assad, and that acquisition normally takes another twenty years to pay off via monthly salary deductions.
Dahia almost entirely hosts only middle-ranking officers. The vast majority of the officer corps there is ranked between major and major general, with less than a dozen of the latter living in the suburb. Higher-ranking officers live in elite areas inside Damascus.
For many officers, military housing has given them a unique opportunity for rapid social ascent. The typical army officer living in Dahiet al-Assad is lower-middle class—regardless of his sect—and hails from the countryside or from coastal areas where economic prospects are dim. Alawite officers mostly come from the coastal areas of Jableh, Latakia, and Tartus, whereas Sunni officers tend to come from the rural outskirts of large urban centers such as Aleppo, Daraa, and Raqqa. Yet both Alawite and Sunni officers share a similar socioeconomic upbringing and thus similar aspirations of upward mobility. The military is one of the few avenues open for these young men that offers them a degree of status, a decent wage, and the prospect of home ownership (in the capital, no less, which many view as the pinnacle of personal success). A home in Dahia was also seen as a place where officers can live while serving out their career, and later as a home to retire in.
Moving into Damascus also improves the social lot of an officer’s entire family. Housing in Dahia provides an officer’s children with the opportunity to grow up and study in the capital. One retired brigadier general, who had lived in Dahia for thirty-five years, at first in temporary army housing but later in his own home, talked about the benefit of living in the suburb had for his four children. “After I took possession of the apartment, our life became more stable and we had [better] hope for the future of our children. As we lived in the capital, our children would study at Damascus University,” he said. The officer mentioned other benefits such as free access to army hospitals anywhere in the country for his entire family—including Tishreen Hospital, Syria’s most advanced, which is also located in the suburb.
There are other perks that living in Dahia provides, and these can be seen upon entering the homes of officers. Army-issued soap and blankets, bread procured from special military offices, and gasoline coupons are all given to officers at discount prices or free of charge. Officers also receive free subscriptions to all three official government newspapers (Thawra, Tishreen, and al-Baath). And each officer receives a certificate of completion of military training signed personally by the Syrian president, along with a photograph taken with the president that is typically hung on the living-room wall.
These may not sound like the sorts of luxuries a resident of a rich central Damascus district would covet, but the officers value these perks because they come largely from lower-middle class and rural backgrounds.
A Sort of Solidarity
Besides the material benefits, the military housing system is central to cultivating a shared identity among middle-ranking officers, as living in Dahia is a comprehensive, all-encompassing lifestyle. Living together with people who are all adapting to city life helps build a sense of solidarity. Dahia is also the space where officers can showcase their social achievements—which many then jealously guard.
But living in Dahia causes officers and their families to be caught between two worlds: the city on the outskirts of which they live and the villages from where they come. In the capital, they are considered to be from the countryside, and in their ancestral towns and villages, they are considered urbanites. This liminal identity strengthens their attachment to Dahia and all that it represents. This hybrid identity is felt most strongly among the officers’ children, who grow up in the suburb and have their identity anchored in it.
Segregation From and by the Wider Society
The benefits officers have access to, along with the shared identity nurtured in Dahia, effectively “ghettoizes” officers within the suburb’s perimeter. Dahiet al-Assad has few official or unofficial relationships with its neighboring areas. In the 1980s, there was little interaction between Dahia and the adjacent suburbs of Barzeh, Douma, and Harasta. Following economic reforms in the 1990s and 2000s, some Douma and Harasta residents opened small businesses in Dahia, including supermarkets, vegetable markets, and butcher shops. But these forms of commercial or social interaction were the exception, not the norm. Dahia students would be sent to the Baath Party’s vanguard camps (muaskar lel-talai) in Douma, and, because the suburb remained administratively part of Harasta, its residents would go there to get a number of official services and paperwork completed.
The army benefits and the officers’ socialization in Dahia give them an incentive to stay where they feel welcome. The colloquial and derogatory term for Dahia residents is the “army of sandal-wearers” (jaysh abu shehata), because they are regarded as being from uneducated, rural, and lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Aware of this perception, officers tend to see few viable options for themselves outside the military in Damascus cultural life, where they expect to be treated poorly.
The divide between Dahia and non-Dahia residents has only grown since the 2011 uprising. To wider Syrian society, a person who lives in Dahia is inescapably associated with the regime. This reinforces a defensive attitude among these officers in Dahia vis-à-vis the rest of society. Whether or not officers personally support the Assad regime, their residences in Dahiet al-Assad, their places in the military, and often their sects and backgrounds all play a role in cementing a perception among the officer corps that they would be targeted by opposition supporters.
Bonds Beyond Sect
Sect plays no formal role in the Syrian army or in Dahia, as this would run counter to the regime’s secular claims. Yet military housing has not bridged the divides among officers of different sects. Division and mistrust has persisted and has even grown stronger between Alawites and non-Alawites since the uprising began. Even in each sect, there are divisions along regional and familial lines.
The military housing system has, however, de facto aligned all officers in defending the benefits and status conferred on them by living in Dahia. Though most officers are Alawite, there seems to be little perceptible difference between them and non-Alawite officers in the way they worry about outside threats. Indeed, many officers have shed their overt sectarian affiliation in order to encourage unity among the officer corps.
For instance, one Sunni major, originally from Daraa but who now lives in Dahia, views himself as an officer first and foremost. When asked to choose between his belonging to Daraa or Dahia, the officer unequivocally said, “I’m from the Dahia community” (ana min ahel al-Dahia).9 Though he noted that the security services committed violent acts, the officer blamed the opposition for fomenting chaos. He maintained that Dahia remained safe even after 2011, but that the uprising has affected him personally because it was against the army institution broadly, to which he belongs and identifies with.
Sect and place of origin are still relevant to life in Dahia. When demonstrations began in Daraa in 2011, Sunni officers avoided grouping and socializing with each other to prevent arousing suspicion. One Sunni officer, for instance, was suspected of sedition, and he made significant efforts to prove that his loyalty to the army superseded his loyalty to his home region. The officer received a Facebook message saying that a fellow officer had accused him of insulting the president and supporting the uprising in his home province. The message frightened the officer, and he followed the chain of rumors about his disloyalty back to its original source, taking great pains to prove the accuser otherwise. He even hung a large photo of President Assad on his balcony to underscore his allegiance to the regime.10
Sect has played a different role for Alawite officers. The uprising deepened their sense of isolation from non-Alawites, causing them to rely even more on the army for their defense. The memory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rebellion from 1976 to 1982—during which a 1979 attack on the Aleppo artillery school left many Alawites dead—colored their views of the 2011 protests. For them, the uprising was a replay of that earlier Brotherhood rebellion, when their sect, the army, and the regime had all come under fire.11
The 2011 uprising had the effect of driving Alawite officers even closer to the army without necessarily strengthening ties between them and Alawite civilians. One Alawite officer described the predominately Alawite Esh al-Warwar neighborhood near Dahia as follows: “Esh al-Warwar is close to Dahia, but I [have] never been there. They are street people [shabeen].” Before the uprising, the officer and his family used to say that the Alawites of Esh al-Warwar were “cattle and gypsies” (baqar wa shrashih).12 The daughter of another officer in Dahia expressed similar sentiments about Alawites from Esh al-Warwar: “The Alawite officer is closer to the Sunni officer than he is to an Alawite from Esh al-Warwar, because they say the Alawites of Esh al-Warwar are lower than them. My mother speaks badly about those people in Esh al-Warwar. The community [negatively] affects the Alawite image in the capital.”13
The relationship between these two Alawite communities has somewhat evolved since the uprising began. Alawite officers’ sentiment in Dahia toward their neighboring Alawite community morphed to some degree from hostility to pity, in part reflecting the uptick in sectarian solidarity after the conflict erupted. After Esh al-Warwar came under attack from rebels in the neighboring area of Barzeh, Alawite officers in Dahiet al-Assad began describing people from Esh al-Warwar as “poor,” “simple,” and “deserving of pity and protection.”14 However, officers in Dahia did not rush to support the residents in their fight against the rebels, nor, as the conflict evolved, were new linkages developed between the two Alawite communities despite their shared position on a sectarian border.
The Regime’s Countermobilization Stronghold
Even though the initial opposition protests in 2011 were political in nature and were aimed specifically at altering regime policy, the isolation of Dahia residents led army officers and their families to believe that protesters posed a threat not only to the regime but also to them personally. As the uprising unfolded, officers shared the same belief—regardless of sect or political ideology—that defending themselves and their interests from wider society was a priority.
The uprising made Dahia residents more suspicious of neighboring areas. Officers would routinely tell their children not to let taxi drivers know they were from Dahiet al-Assad or that it was their final destination. Rumors were common, including one unconfirmed story about the daughter of an officer from Dahia being kidnapped and later killed by criminals from Douma. Another unconfirmed account in Dahia describes a taxi driver kidnapping, killing, and decapitating a young man from the suburb.15
The officers’ separation from the rest of society allowed these rumors to spread. In Saida, near Daraa, for instance, where officers also live in a military compound, Air Force Intelligence Directorate agents began reporting to residents that protesters from nearby villages were planning to attack the military housing complex in retribution for the siege of Daraa.16 In response to these rumors, the military officers and their families in Saida created defense plans and prepared for a potential ambush from would-be attackers even though the battle never materialized. Fears that “maybe the Doumanis or Barzawis [families from towns adjacent to Dahia] will do the same” were expressed frequently and openly in the suburb.17
The 2011 uprising strengthened the perception among Dahia officers that the area’s defenses needed bolstering. Under these auspices, Dahiet al-Assad’s military identity has been fully reasserted. The suburb was turned into a military platform from which to launch attacks on neighboring pro-opposition areas. Military infrastructure that had been blended into the residential area before the uprising were suddenly put into full use.18 For instance, both a property belonging to the water resources ministry and a school for traffic police were used as artillery positions to launch shells at rebels in neighboring Harasta and Barzeh. These sorts of actions reveal the army’s dominance over Dahia and the perception among residents that the regime holds ultimate control over the area. While the militarization of neighborhoods has happened throughout Syria, the transition has been quicker and more thorough in Dahia, which as of 2015 resembles a military base.
In June 2012, as the Free Syrian Army advanced toward Dahia, regime personnel began organizing officers’ sons (mostly Alawite) into the National Defense Forces (NDF), a vigilante group tasked with the suburb’s internal security. As shelling by the rebels became routine, the NDF erected checkpoints throughout the area, and its military vehicles became omnipresent. DShK heavy machine guns were occasionally mounted on the backs of pickup trucks and tanks used to patrol the suburb.
Insecurity and sect-based militarization compelled civilian residents (and Sunnis in particular)—who had migrated into Dahia during the economic boom of the 2000s—to leave the suburb. The reverse was true of military families: one resident remarked that, for him, the sounds of war were “pleasing” because it meant they were in the thick of the fight against the “conspiracy” aimed at the army and the country.19
Once the conflict began, the defining criteria for belonging to Dahia became explicit association with the Assad regime and its symbols. Before the 2011 uprising, pro-regime paraphernalia was no more common in Dahia than most other parts of the capital. But walking through the streets of the suburb since then, the transformation is palpable. Syrian flags and posters of Assad are ubiquitous, with pro-regime groups delivering speeches and holding routine public rallies. Posters of martyrs killed in the fighting are also common. Discussions about the war in Dahia tend to fit with the regime’s narrative, often miming Syrian state media. It is common to hear that “everything is well in the country, there are no problems,” along with stories about how “infiltrators,” “terrorists,” and a “foreign conspiracy” are trying to destroy Syria.20
Sons of officers have begun to prominently display pictures of the president with slogans such as “we love you” (minhabek) while patrolling Dahia and blasting pro-regime songs from their car stereo systems. These sons—many of whom did not enlist—are generally more vocal than their fathers in expressing the need to defend Dahia. That is in part a reflection of their torn identity as neither belonging to Damascus nor to their ancestral villages. This cohesion among Dahia youth has played out in various other ways, including the formation of new political organizations such as the Lions of the Assad Suburb (Asood Dahiet al-Assad) and paramilitary groups such as the NDF.
Fighting on the side of the regime effectively became the defining criteria for belonging to Dahiet al-Assad. A civilian resident reported that military personnel who moved to the area as late as 2007 are considered to be “original residents” as of 2015, while the few civilians who have been living there since the 1990s—longer than the majority of military families—have become “outsiders.”21 This fact was driven home when the NDF began making lists of all Dahia residents in early 2014, but it would only enter the homes of nonmilitary families for head counts. Yet joining the NDF was one way for civilians to “belong” to Dahia. One Dahia resident recalled how a Syrian-Palestinian civilian, who was unable to join the army because of his dual nationality, instead joined the NDF and began to speak with a rural Alawite accent in order to prove his loyalty.22
Surveillance
Regime personnel had long ago infiltrated the private firms tasked with constructing and allocating homes in Dahiet al-Assad. As a result, the determining factor in allocation is rarely the official process, with personal ties to the regime being the most important factor. This allowed corruption and surveillance to thrive in Dahia, with the two reinforcing each other.
The Institution for the Implementation of Military Construction, which is responsible for real estate and construction in Dahia, informally conducts surveillance to protect the regime’s interests. Officially, the institution operates under the Syrian state’s military and is not accountable to the country’s judiciary. Major General Riyad Salman Issa, who is also known as Riyad Shalish and is the cousin of President Bashar al-Assad, has been its director since the late 1980s. Ali Saqr, a regime figure, ran the Office of the First Assistant to the Director for years. Though Saqr is not a commissioned officer—his official military rank is warrant officer first class—he oversaw important administrative tasks in Dahia, making him both powerful and feared among the suburb’s officers.23
Corruption has been the regime’s main tool for both co-optation and surveillance in Dahiet al-Assad. In the case of Saqr, his office was effectively the key to everything from home allocations to business and construction permits—none of which were granted without connections (wasta). Officers as high-ranking as brigadier generals would have to go through Saqr and his office to secure their home allocations. As a result, officers who officially outranked Saqr were forced to curry favor with him in order to receive what was, by all rights, their due. (Saqr was replaced in October 2007 with a civil engineer as part of the regime’s economic reform program to give the institution a more bureaucratic, rather than military, appearance. )24
In Dahia, officers often spy on one another, informing regime personnel about pertinent information or people who criticize the regime. In part for this reason, criticizing the regime or the president in public is rare in Dahia, unlike in most other parts of the country where there is at least some tolerance for it. In one incident during the 2000s, a fifteen-year-old girl living in the suburb published a magazine detailing the government’s failure to provide services in the neighborhood. Shortly afterward, her mother received a call from the Office of the First Assistant to the Director, warning her to desist or face retribution. This is the sort of response most Syrians in Damascus would normally associate with the regime’s intelligence services. Shocked by the call, the mother asked the daughter: “What did you do in the school to have Ali Saqr call me?”25
Corruption has become entrenched in Dahia through the military housing system. An officer knows that improving his lot in life—including his job, salary, and housing for him and his family—is based largely on his ability to befriend key regime personnel. This cronyism has helped foster an environment where officers vie for influence by snitching on each other and backstabbing their colleagues. This has created a general atmosphere of myopic self-interest in the army and regime at large.
Conclusion
The Syrian military was not the only beneficiary of state-subsidized housing. Over several decades, public sector teachers, workers, and numerous other state employees acquired homes through similar projects. Dahiet al-Assad simply offers a window into the wider ways in which the regime provided benefits to state employees before 2011 and insight into how these benefits, whether by design or default, have kept those employees from openly resisting the regime.
In the army, sectarian ties alone do not account fully for the loyalty of officers. Clearly, Alawites hold the most important commands, but many non-Alawite officers have not defected, which suggests that other factors have held them back.26 A close look at the workings of Dahiet al-Assad indicates that the benefits awarded to officers and their families—many of whom come from humble origins—tie them to the army and the regime, irrespective of any religious or ideological concerns. However, the diversity found within Dahia has not resulted in the erasure of sectarian identity and its replacement with a new, corporate officer identity. Conversely, it is Dahia’s networks and patronage system that have created a shared interest in compelling people of various backgrounds to remain loyal to the regime. The uneven public services and byzantine regulations governing the neighborhood suggest that it has prevented defection because it has de-professionalized officers, making them dependent on informal back channels for basic services and compensation, rather than a formal military hierarchy that could weather civil strife.
For decades, one of the Assad regime’s strongest instruments for retaining control of the army and other state institutions has been to corrupt officers by providing them benefits on a personal, rather than institutional, basis. By awarding housing as a matter of discretion and not as an entitlement, the regime has ensured officers and their families have had little choice but to stay in the ranks and remain loyal. And because officers have acquired status and benefits as individuals, not as a corporate group, this has encouraged rivalry among them, discouraging the kind of networking and trust that would be necessary were any officers to try to lead whole units to defect.
Most Syrian army officers have spent years trying to rise above their lower-middle-class origins and acquire the privileges Dahiet al-Assad offers them and their families. Yet in attaining these privileges, they have signed away almost all plausible options ever to leave Dahia. And it is not just the officers’ own futures that are at stake but the fortunes of their entire families. For this reason, almost all defections from the officer corps since 2011 have involved officers who were not invested in the military housing system.
The extent and manner of the dependence of army officers—and other state employees—on the regime for their livelihood, upward mobility, and their families’ well-being reveals a crucial social component that has shaped their behavior since the uprising broke out. This same calculus will also shape their response to any political transition, should this come to Syria.
Notes
1 Author survey with Dahia residents, 2015.
2 None provides housing for noncommissioned officers.
3 Directorate of Culture in Damascus Countryside, “Arab Cultural Center in Dahiet al-Assad” [in Arabic], last accessed September 14, 2015, www.doc-dc.gov.sy/center.aspx?id=39.
4 Author interview with an employee of Damascus Province, Damascus, May 2012.
5 “Suburb of Harasta Out of Time and Space” [in Arabic], Tishreen, March 12, 2006, www.tishreen.news.sy/tishreen/public/read/93299.
6 “Suburb of Dahiet al-Assad Suffers From Poor Services” [in Arabic], Tishreen, October 19, 2006, http://tishreen.news.sy/tishreen/public/read/88809.
7 Author interview with a former Dahiet al-Assad resident, Beirut, March 2014.
8 Author interview with a retired brigadier general, Damascus, Syria, June 2012.
9 Author interview with a Syrian Arab Army officer (via Skype), July 2014.
10 Author interview with Dahia al-Assad officer (via Skype), September 2014.
11 The Aleppo artillery school was attacked early in this rebellion, with prominent Alawite civilians, such as scientists and doctors, later being targeted, which led to the sense that Alawites as a sect, rather than the army or the regime, were the true targets. The rebellion, which was centered in and around the city of Hama, ended in 1982 after the Syrian army laid siege to and destroyed large sections of the city with tanks and artillery, killing thousands of people in the process.
12 Author interview with the wife of a Dahia officer, Damascus, August 2012.
13 Author interview with a daughter of a Dahia officer (via Skype), September 2014.
14 Author interview with Alawite officers from Dahia (via phone), November 2014.
15 Author interview with a Dahia resident (via phone), Beirut, Lebanon, June 2014.
16 See interview with former member of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, “Interview With Intelligence Official Afaq Mohammed Ahmad,” YouTube video, 17:15, from a segment televised by France 24 on November 18, 2012, posted by “France 24 / FRANCE 24 Arabic,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RWZP-QEIk.
17 Author conversation with officers’ families, Damascus, Syria, February 2012.
18 This included military storehouses that had been discreetly spread throughout Dahiet al-Assad and held ammunition, weapons, medical supplies, blankets, and other military gear.
19 Author interview with a Dahia resident (via Skype), September 2014.
20 Author observation in Dahia, May 2011.
21 Author interview with a civilian Dahia resident (via phone), October 2014.
22 Author interview with a Dahia resident (via Skype), October 2014.
23 Saqr’s office was also responsible for recruiting the sons of officers into the NDF, with Saqr’s own son heading the Lions of the Assad Suburb.
24 Hilal Aoun and Ahlam Islmail, “Dahiet al-Assad: Associations Bypass the Plan” [in Arabic], Thawra, June 7, 2009, http://thawra.sy/_print_veiw.asp?FileName=6715202220090705212911.
25 Author interview with a Dahiet al-Assad resident (via phone), July 2014.
26 For estimates of the ratios of Alawite and Sunni officers, see Hicham Bou Nassif, “‘Second-Class’: The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 5 (2015): 626–49.MILFORD - Rachel Elizabeth Curry, 20, who died after falling off a catwalk near a smokestack at the Curtis Specialty Paper Superfund Site had traveled much of the world, according to her obituary.
"Rachel was known for her radiant smile, kindness, generous spirit, and passion for adventure and travel," it is stated in the obituary. "In her short life, she has traveled through 27 states, trekked through Southeast Asia, Israel, Peru, Bolivia, Canada, Mexico, and France, and was an exchange student in Germany."
Curry was on the property with friends when she fell at approximately midnight on Friday. Few details about the accident have been released. According to the Superfund site's profile page, there is security surveillance, lighting and fencing to discourage trespassers.
Born in Raritan Township in 1995, she was a lifelong resident of Holland Township. She graduated from Delaware Valley Regional High School in 2013 and was attending the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, according to the obituary.
She had previously attended Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg and worked at Finnagel's Restaurant in Clinton.
"Rachel loved the outdoors and was passionate about the environment," the obituary continued. "She made a mark on hundreds of cousins and friends."
N.J. Superfund site is fenced, secure, EPA says
Services include a visitation from 4-6 p.m. on Wednesday at the Johnson-Walton Funeral Home, 24 Church Road, Holland Township, followed by words of remembrance from 6-7 p.m. Memorial contributions may be made to The Commons at Fertile Ground, 120 State Avenue NE, PMB #1420, Olympia, WA 98501.
Curry is survived by her parents, Thomas Curry and Dr. Debra (Wohl) Curry of Holland Township; a brother, Brett Curry of Holland Township; and a sister, Candace Redwine of Tennessee. She is also survived by her maternal grandparents, Herbert and Mickey Wohl of Middle Island, N.Y., and many aunts, uncles and cousins.
She was predeceased by her paternal grandparents, Vernor and Birdie Curry, and her stepsister, Jennifer Rathel.New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine said he will "absolutely" sign a medical marijuana bill for chronically and terminally ill patients if it gets to his desk.
Corzine, a Democrat running for re-election, made the comments Wednesday morning on WNYC radio's "Brian Lehrer Show."
Medical marijuana Medical marijuana
He told Lehrer the law could be structured so patients are comfortable and there are safeguards against abuses.
The Senate approved the bill Monday. It faces an uncertain fate in the Assembly.
Thirteen states have medical marijuana laws on the books. All but four came about because of voter referendums. In New Jersey, the Legislature must change the law.
Corzine also said on the show that the $17 billion-plus in federal stimulus money headed to New Jersey will generate or protect 100,000 jobs.
He told Lehr |
rather have as your president? — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 8, 2016
You see who’s ahead.
This is a highly stupid conversation for a lot of reasons, but the main one is the assumption that people in all countries want the same things from their leaders and perceive their national interests in the same way. Putin may be the leader that Russians want, but that doesn’t mean he’s serving his nation well.
Trump is right that Putin polls very well, even in polls conducted by the independent and frequently critical Levada Center, which as it happens, the government blacklisted as a “foreign agent” this week, something I assume the ratings-obsessed Trump fantasizes about being able to do. Most Russians get their news from state-affiliated television networks and voicing dissent is not the safest activity in the country, but we can still assume that a lot of the support for Putin is genuine and deeply felt. At his lowest point, Putin was polling at 61 percent, a number Barack Obama, not to mention Trump, would happily take.
Remarkably, Russians are backing Putin in spite of the longest recession in two decades, caused by the drop in global oil prices decimating the country’s energy-dependent economy. Millions of Russians sank into poverty last year as wages stagnated, and consumers are cutting back on food and medicine because of inflation.
Today’s Russia is a place where government officials are corrupt, life expectancy remains stubbornly low, young soldiers are sent to die in wars their government won’t even acknowledge, opposition politicians and critical journalists are murdered or arrested in alarming numbers, LGBTQ people are subject to state-sanctioned violence, and entire regions are run as the personal fiefdoms of despotic warlords.
Russians don’t even like their government that much (53 percent of them disapprove of it according to Levada’s numbers). They just really like Putin. And despite everything I just said, I don’t blame them, given what came before him. In the generation before Putin’s elevation to power, Russians saw an empire collapse along with an ideological system that millions had placed their faith in for decades. Instead of peace and prosperity, the transition to democracy and capitalism brought a decade marked by corruption, crime, terrorism and distress coupled with the enrichment of a small new class of politically-connected oligarchs. Given the options they’re now seriously considering, I shudder to think of the kind of politicians Americans would elect after something equivalent to the Yeltsin years.
Whatever else he may be, Putin projects responsibility, sobriety (in multiple senses of the word) and a steady hand on the affairs of state. And he has, indeed, ensured that Russia remains relevant on the world stage, righting what most Russians perceived as a grievous historical wrong by retaking control of Crimea and re-establishing Russia as a critical player in the Middle East.
A large majority of Russians believe that having a strong leader is more important than having democracy. They believe it is natural for Russia to have an empire, and that it is unfortunate that the Soviet Union no longer exists. Based on recent trends, we can assume that they’re also willing to trade domestic economic wellbeing for an active foreign policy that extends Russia’s geopolitical influence—something President Obama has often failed to understand in his dealings with Putin.
Most Americans, however, would not be wiling to accept an economic situation akin to Russia’s in exchange for, say, a more effective strategy in Syria. And while this election has tested my faith, I don’t believe Americans are willing to sacrifice competitive elections or a critical media for a leader with some abstract quality of strength.
Putin may be giving Russians the leadership they want, but suggesting that this tells us anything useful about how a U.S. president should govern isn’t just misguided, it’s un-American.Fears about Islamic extremism are rising in nations with large Muslim populations from the Middle East to South Asia and support for radical groups is on the slide, according to a new poll.
Concern about extremism has increased in the past 12 months amid the dragging war in Syria and attacks by Nigeria's Boko Haram, the Pew Research Center said on Tuesday after interviewing more than 14,200 people in 14 countries.
Groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and even Hamas, which won elections to take control of the Gaza Strip, are also losing support.
The review was carried out from April 10 to May 25, before the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - now renamed the Islamic State - took over the northern Iraqi town of Mosul in a lightning offensive which has seen it seize a large swathe of territory.
In Lebanon, which shares a border with Syria, as many as 92 percent of those interviewed from Sunni, Shia and Christian communities said they were worried about Islamic extremism.
Concern has also risen in Jordan and Turkey, both of which border Syria and have taken in significant numbers of refugees fleeing the three-year war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in which extremists have increasingly moved into the chaos.
"In Asia, strong majorities in Bangladesh (69 percent), Pakistan (66 percent) and Malaysia (63 percent) are concerned about Islamic extremism," the Pew report said.
However, in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, such fears were not shared, with only four in ten people voicing any anxiety about extremism.
An overwhelming majority of Nigerians (79 percent) were against Boko Haram, behind the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls earlier this year, while 59 percent of Pakistanis said they have no love for the Taliban.
Just over half of Palestinians (53 percent) have an unfavorable opinion of Hamas and the figure rises to 63 percent in the Gaza Strip, the report said.Share On more Share On more
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1. Why do these girls insist on walking around aimlessly at night?! 2. SOMEONE JUST TRIED TO BLOW THEM UP. 3. Noel pushed someone down the stairs but honestly what relevance does this have to anything? 4. Getting déjà vu from Hanna being mad and Caleb trying to calm her down. 5. Hanna: “A, A.D., Uber A, whatever!”... Hanna is literally me watching this show. 6. OMG Noel Kahn ran over Caleb??? 7. Oh, it was a dream. Lame. 8. Ooooh yeah that Haleb chemistry is giving me LIFE. 9. Can’t wait for Caleb and Hanna to hook up again tbh. 10. OMG Hanna he’s trying to help you why don’t you thank him instead of complaining about your new, free, untapped phone. 11. Does the 100% bug-free phone mean they no longer get texts from A.D. though? And let’s be real, if so why didn’t they do this earlier?! 12. Good on Emily for congratulating Aria for lying to her boyfriend. Nice work. 13. I feel so bad for Shay Mitchell having to say all these very badly-written lines. 14. “First off, you can’t root for Nicole not to be alive” - Emily with the savage truthbombs this season, she honestly gives no fucks anymore. 15. Oops, of course Ezra walks in at this point. 16. Hahah Emily, “I think I’m gonna leave”. Nice way to defuse the tension. 17. Aria’s like, “lol bye take me with you”.
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18. I honestly would NOT want Ali educating my children. 19. She didn’t even finish high school. 20. Oh look. Sabrina’s back. Great. 21. Whatever happened with her and Emily's kiss? I think she just disappeared for two episodes? 22. Why are Emily and the school principal so surprised to see each other in such a tiny fucking town? 23. “Thank God It’s Danish Day” sounds so lame, but also is making me hungry. 24. Ahhh they’re looking for a swim coach, so Alison and Emily can WORK together too! 25. I’m watching you I. Marlene, I know what you’re trying to do. 26. Why did Sabrina question Emily taking the job? Like what else is she going to do, go back to California and bartend? 27. Get it together Sabrina. 28. Good old super sleuth Spencer is on the case finding old doctors. 29. Ali is literally the same age as the students at this school. 30. Just because she’s wearing a collared shirt, you can’t fool us. 31. OMG AN ARMY OF As!!!!!!!!!!!! Just like that flashmob which robbed the girls in NYC. 32. Oh no please don’t start setting up Emison again. 33. Poor old Emily is blaming herself for literally everything. 34. So weird how my eyes start closing whenever those two are in a scene together.
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35. These girls can’t keep showing up at places and asking shady questions out of nowhere. 36. This doctor they’re looking for hasn’t been seen for years… I have a feeling he did something shady with Mary’s kid and then disappeared. 37. Of course his daughter works there now though, everyone in this town is so fucking connected. 38. Next minute, it'll turn out she's A.D. 39. “Wherever my father is, it’s where he belongs.” SO CRYPTIC. 40. Emily stop trying to fix everything and go make out with Sabrina. 41. Making out with Sabrina would be about as interesting as making out with your own hand though, let’s be real. 42. Ezra answers his phone like a real loser. “Yes, this is he.” (He also leaves voicemails though so I guess I’m not surprised.) 43. Like, I know Ezra is meant to be what, in his late twenties? But I always kinda consider him this weird, grandpa. Maybe it’s the cardigans. 44. OMG MRS GRUNWALD! WHAT YOU DOIN’ HERE, HOW DID YOU FIND HANNA? 45. Those eyes have her looking like Kanye at the Met Gala. Why is she so creepy? 46. “Goodness Hanna, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!” 47. Bitch kinda looks like a ghost though, let’s be real. 48. Last time she was hanging around talking about a darkness around Caleb we got Ravenswood and no one wants that again. 49. Lord, if this creepy bitch came in and told me there was a darkness around me and my ex, I’d be running outta there. 50. Oh man someone broke into the doctor’s office, I bet it was Noel Kahn. 51. Why tf is she now giving Spencer her dad’s address? If someone ransacked my office I wouldn’t be doing them any favors. 52. Also why is Spencer so chill about not clearing her name in this office ransacking?
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53. For some reason, Hanna decided to take this creepy AF conversation to Radley, which literally makes ZERO sense. 54. I think we’re all too quick to forget what Radley used to be before it was a swanky hotel. 55. Hanna's looking around like she’s gonna see spirits lmao. 56. Wait, so has Hanna gone from believing Rollins kidnapped her, to Noel Kahn? 57. Did I miss that jump? Was I asleep? 58. Honestly if I had to deal with that Grunwald bitch being so cryptic all the time, I’d be shaking her like “JUST GIVE ME ANSWERS GODDAMN IT!” 59. Oh great, more hidden meanings in English lessons just like last season. And every one of Ezra’s classes. 60. Why is this kid being so savage to Ali? 61. And since when can you call a teacher to the principal’s office and just leave their class unattended? Can it wait 'til lunch? 62. Noel is the shadiest person EVER right now and I am loving it. 63. Why would Noel even walk over to Hanna and Mrs G though?! 64. OMG why is Grunwald’s nose bleeding what kind of Stranger Things nonsense is this? 65. Who is this creepy principal and how small must his school be to keep every student’s file in his office? 66. If he’s going to grill Alison, at least offer the girl a danish. 67. Lol these girls are class of 2012 why am I so old? 68. Hanna is so deadset on Noel being A.D. and honestly it makes sense… why do all the other girls not see it? 69. Except every time they think it’s someone, it clearly is never going to be that person. 70. If only Detective Toby were here to solve it all. 71. Hang on, wasn’t it only in Hanna’s dream that Ali told them about Noel pushing the girl down the stairs? Why is everyone else going along with it? 72. Also why has NO ONE mentioned that Ali shares her initials with their main suspect? 73. “Oh thanks Pam!” is going to be my new favourite insult from now on.
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74. Why is this creepy old doctor so easily swayed with a cheap bottle of whiskey? 75. He and I have a lot in common. 76. I still can’t get over how forward these girls are. 77. “Curb the perve,” what an iconic line. 78. “Do you want me to tell this story or not??” lololol me every time I’m drunk tbh. 79. OK so Mary had two babies... Charlotte who was given to Jessica. And another kid. 80. I have a feeling that this second baby grew up to be Andrew Campbell aka that random blonde guy who kissed Aria and disappeared. Mark my words. 81. ALSO, he had a thing with Spencer remember? Weren’t they the ones playing strip study that time? 82. Old drunk Cochrane has a message for his daughter, and I have a message for the PLL writers. STOP. GIVING. US. WEIRD. MYSTERIES. WE. DON’T. CARE. ABOUT! 83. Idgaf about the Cochranes and their family drama, don’t drag this on any longer. 84. OH MY GOD, IT IS PAIGE WHAT THE HELL. 85. I feel like she would have told Emily that she was back in town. 86. OMG they’ve gone to get a drink at a place that isn’t Radley or The Brew??? 87. Who knew Rosewood even had another place! 88. WAIT THEY WERE LIVING TOGETHER??? AFTER HIGH SCHOOL????? Why were we never told about this? 89. And Paige was gonna go to the Olympics??? 90. What the fuck is this storyline. 91. Wasn’t Emily a better swimmer than Paige anyway? 92. I used to hate Paige BUT EMILY LOOKS SO HAPPY and now I want them to hook up. ANYONE BUT ALISON.
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93. Speaking of Alison, back at it again with sneaking around late at night. 94. Surely schools should have more security. Especially after four girls were nearly killed at a dance here five years ago. 95. OMG A.D. pre-empted Ali’s sleuthing. 96. That Noel Kahn file was super easy to find from the get go, I don’t know why Alison was thumbing through everything slowly. 97. Grab it and ruuuuuun bitch. 98. Why is this janitor walking around without turning lights on? Shadyyyyy. (Literally. It’s very dark.) 99. Aria is being VERY grown up right now I’m proud of that tiny little lady. 100. Surprised Ezra hasn’t grown some stress stubble for this scene. 101. Hanna’s flashbacks are NUTS. 102. Oooh who is Hanna making sneaky deals with? Loving it. 103. Why is Caleb staying in a hotel room and where is he getting the cash for it? Also what happened to his hotshot job in NYC? 104. OMG GUYS KISS! Oh no it’s just a hug. DAMN. SO CLOSE. 105. RUN AFTER HER CALEB. RUUUUUUUN!Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal brought the story, “Bud Crowded Out by Craft Beer Craze.” While Bud Light is currently the highest selling beer in the United States, the flagship brand Budweiser is fading. The international beverage giant is scrambling to win over younger drinkers to boost Budweiser sales, so the familiar Clydesdale horses are out this holiday season and ads will take on a younger vibe.
On Facebook Alexie Marcoux commented that Budweiser’s decline ought to put the end to the old Galbraithian narratives about corporations so powerful they can dictate tastes and preferences. We can hope (but I’m not hopeful — I suspect the demand for evil dragons to be slain by heroic antitrust economists will keep the myth alive).
The beer giant has been through a few mergers over recent years, and I wondered how Budweiser’s troubles were reflected in the related antitrust analysis. Antitrust theory isn’t built on the work of John Kenneth Galbraith, but antitrust narratives conjure similar images of powerful corporations and seemingly helpless consumers (granted that antitrust lawyers write in more leaden prose than JKG).
In January 2013 the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust office filed a lawsuit challenging Anheuser-Busch InBev’s acquisition of a 100 percent stake in Grupo Modelo. Here is what Justice was worried about just over a year ago:
The Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today challenging Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (ABI) proposed acquisition of total ownership and control of Grupo Modelo. The department said that the $20.1 billion transaction would substantially lessen competition in the market for beer in the United States as a whole and in 26 metropolitan areas across the United States, resulting in consumers paying more for beer and having fewer new products from which to choose. Americans spent at least $80 billion on beer last year. According to the department, ABI’s Bud Light is the best selling beer in the United States and Modelo’s Corona Extra is the best-selling import. Because of the size of the beer market in the United States, even a small increase in the price of beer could result in billions of dollars of harm to American consumers, the department said. … According to the department’s complaint, the U.S. beer market is already highly concentrated, and prices are increased by strategic interactions among the largest brewers, including ABI and MillerCoors. ABI generally acts as the price leader, implementing annual price increases in the sub-premium, premium and premium plus segments of the U.S. beer industry. MillerCoors and other brewers have typically joined the ABI price increases, while Modelo has not. By pricing aggressively, Modelo–through its importer, Crown Imports–puts pressure on ABI to maintain or lower prices, especially in certain parts of the country. As a result, Modelo has become a particularly important competitor in the U.S. market.
The press release manages to divide the industry into for segments, from “sub premium” (i.e. Busch and Keystone) to “high end” which is described as including Corona, Heineken, “and a variety of craft beers.” This brief mention, as just a fraction of a segment of the industry, is the only mention of craft beers in the press release. Justice’s formal complaint mentions craft beers three times, each time more or less as an aside — they missed the real market action.
In the resulting agreement, the United States federal government sought to promote competition in the beer industry by, among other things, extracting a promise from the company acquiring a few AB-InBev assets that it would expand the capacity of a brewery in Mexico to at least 20 million hectoliters of packaged beer annually.
For this heroic antitrust effort beer consumers in the United States offer a heart-felt yawn. How many of our tax dollars when into deciding whether the Mexican brewery needed a capacity of 20 million hectoliters, rather than 15 million or 23.5 million?
Meanwhile, actual competition in the market continues to force international beverage giant AB-InBev to scramble for new customers.
NOTE 1: See full collection of Justice documents here.
NOTE 2: It isn’t just the Department of Justice, the private think tank the American Antitrust Institute is also worried about concentration in the beer market. Just a few days ago AAI sent a letter to the Department of Justice expressing concern about rumors of a AB-InBev merge with SABMiller. That letter follows AAI’s lengthy report, Global Beer: Road to Monopoly, which two years ago worried about a then-rumored merger between AB-InBev and SABMiller and the prospect of creating “a huge entity with great market power.”
I keep wondering how great the market power can be in a world without barriers to entry? No real secrets in how to brew beer. I suspect the biggest threats to competition emerge because alcohol distribution is highly regulated in the United States — not because one brewery in Mexico has a smaller than desired production capacity — but I suspect the Department of Justice will not be challenging the post-prohibition three-tier system anytime soon.Treasury boss to stand down
Updated
The Federal Government has confirmed Treasury secretary Ken Henry is retiring from his role.
He will finish up early in the new year and will be replaced by Climate Change Department secretary Martin Parkinson.
Confirming Dr Henry's decision this morning, Prime Minister Julia Gillard called him "one of the greatest of all Treasury secretaries".
"Dr Henry has made a major contribution to the wellbeing of Australians and the prosperity of the nation during his more than 25 years at Treasury, during 10 of which he has been secretary," she said in a statement.
Dr Henry had a distinguished career in the Treasury and related areas dating back to 1984.
He was first appointed secretary to the Treasury in 2001 and was reappointed for a further five years from 2006.
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan has heaped praise on Dr Henry, saying his performance during the global financial crisis shows he is arguably the finest Australian public servant since HC 'Nugget' Coombs.
Opposition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull also paid tribute to Dr Henry, telling ABC News24 that Australia was grateful for his service.
"Ken Henry was a distinguished public servant and very capable Treasury secretary. We all thank him for his public service," he said.
But he also said that Dr Henry, who has been accused by the Opposition of presiding over a politicised Treasury department, had been an "enthusiastic supporter" of the Government.
And he claimed Dr Henry's resignation had been sparked by his frustration with the Government.
"A big part of his thinking at the moment would be just sheer despair at the failure of this Government to act in any form of economically responsible approach," he said.
The move has sparked a round of musical chairs in Canberra's corridors of power.
Dr Parkinson's position will be taken by deputy secretary Blair Comley.
The secretary of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Service and Indigenous Affairs, Jeff Harmer, will also retire next year. The secretary of the Department of Human Services, Finn Pratt, will take over the role.
Dr Parkinson will start his new role on March 7, Ms Gillard said.
"Dr Henry has indicated to me that he warmly welcomes Dr Parkinson's appointment and is looking forward to taking a break after 10 years as secretary," she added.
Topics: federal-government, business-economics-and-finance, government-and-politics, australia, act
First postedSchools better before democracy - Ramphele
Johannesburg - The South African education system was better before the advent of democracy, Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele said on Friday.
"The students of 1976 died fighting against inferior education, and it [education] is worse today," she told students at the University of the Witwatersrand.
"I never thought I would ever say that, but it is worse."
She said the biggest crime committed by the government since 1994, was its role in destroying the quality of education.
"The irony is that the people who ignited the struggle for freedom in 1976 were protesting against poor education," Ramphele said.
"If they were to come back today, they wouldn't believe it: that what they had and what they were protesting [against] is much better than what our children in 80% of the schools get."
Ramphele was later asked by one of the students why, if this was the case, had there been more graduates since 1994.
She defended her comments by asking the student to read a recent report on global competitiveness.
"We are dead last... in our performance in education. We spend the largest proportion of government expenditure on education than any other country, with the worst outcome," she said.
"Yes, we have three times more graduates, but the quality thereof is why people are unemployed."
ANC got 38% of votes
Ramphele called on students to vote in next year's elections.
"We can have that country that I have been dreaming about for the last 65 years. That country that so many of my friends died fighting for, that country that [former president Nelson] Mandela is now on his sickbed, having given his life for," she said.
"That country is possible. It is in your hands. You have to use the power you have in the vote."
She said that in the 2009 general election, 41% of South Africans did not vote.
"By so doing, they handed over power to a minority. So this government is governing with 38% of the votes that are possible in South Africa," Ramphele said.
"It means that it is possible for you and I, who don't agree with what is going on, to vote for a future we believe in. We can change this government in 2014, but it requires you to... exercise your vote and vote for the future, not the past."
She said her involvement in politics was not because she wanted to be in charge, but rather because she wanted to see change.Burned cars at the port, after the tsunami
Nissan is closing its Tochigi assembly plant and an engine plant – both in the quake zone--at least through Friday. Elsewhere in the country, it is closing four assembly plants and one engine factory through at least Wednesday. The company wouldn't say how many units of production it expects to lose or how its U.S. exports may be affected.
Read more: Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20110314/CARNEWS/110319962#ixzz1GalCr35g
The scope of the effect of the quake and tsunami has yet to be tallied on Japan's car industry, as automakers are still trying to figure out the status of their supply chain. AN reports that Honda alone has 113 suppliers located in quake zones, and they have not yet been able to reach 44 of them.
Even Stateside production of cars and trucks may be affected by the natural disaster, as many U.S. plants depend on Japanese factories to supply them with various components.
All Nissan Americas employees and their families are safe and accounted for, including those on assignment in Japan and those traveling in the country on business. Some Nissan Americas employees who were traveling in country on business have already returned to their home countries while others are in the process of returning.
Some Infiniti models and Nissan GTR and 370Z may experience delays in shipment to the U.S. and Canada with full impact still being assessed.
A shipment of more than 600 Nissan LEAFs destined for the U.S. left port in Japan on March 10, just prior to the earthquake, and will arrive as scheduled. Future impact, if any, on Nissan LEAF supply continues to being assessed.
The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last week are going to have repercussions around the world. Thousands of deaths, massive destruction. From my home town in Christchurch last month with a 6.3 earthquake, to Japan, where I have many friends and associates from years of dealing in the export and import industry, it is a very real check on the fact the Earth we live on is in constant motion, and we are powerless in the face of mother nature.One of my friends from Nissan was in the US when the earthquake struck. It is hard to know what to say to someone, than offer your help and support. He flew back to Japan on Saturday, and hopefully everything is going well for him in Japan.There are obviously much more important things than cars, and supplies of cars, but part of reestablishing of the country, and getting them back on its feet will be the Japanese auto industry. The initial estimates are $100 billion in damage, and the death toll continues to rise. Thousands of people are missing. Watching the amount of destruction on TV is shocking. Its like videos of the worst tornado possible with all of the wooden houses in some areas just leveled.Tochigi is the Nissan GT-R production plant, and several of the members of theNAGTROC forumsvisited the plant during the Tokyo Auto Salon in 2009.Autoblog is reporting that power outages have brought production plants to a halt, and many are staying closed due to supplier issues, and allowing families to reconnect.At Nissans Port of Hitachi, thousands of cars have been damaged or burned from the aftermath of destruction behind the tsunami. The stoppages at the plants, plus the damaged infrastructure in the country, could mean it will be months before new cars are once again able to be exported. It will be a long process of rebuilding and getting back to normalcy. You can donate to the American Red Cross to help the Japanese relief effort.Source: Autoblog and Autoweek Nissan's new press release has some new information on Nissan, its people, the plants, and vehicle status.Source: Nissan NewsHome Fronts
Russia: FIRST RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (until March 15). Whole 17,000 Petrograd garrison joins crowds. Temperature 0°F. Duma
prorogued but forms Provisional Government at Tauride Palace. No bread or transport. Only 2 regiments and the police loyal to Tsar in sporadic street fighting.
Canada: Third War Loan opens.
Britain: Bread order makes sale by weight compulsory.
Eastern Front
Russia: Tsar leaves STAVKA for Petrograd. By now CoS Alexejev convinced no offensive to support Nivelle possible, only end of July.
Galicia: Successful German raids near Zloczow-Tarnopol railway, Brzezany and on river Narajowka.
Sea War
USA: State Department announces that all US merchant ships sailing through war zones to be armed.
Atlantic: Q-ship Privet sinks U-85 (Petz) off Start Point near Plymouth (UC-68 blows up on own mines there on March 13). US SS Algonquin torpedoed without warning (US Healdton on March 22).MINNEAPOLIS, July 18 -- They welcomed back Erik Bedard, who had been on the disabled list since May 26, and Sammy Sosa, whose bat had been on hiatus for a month, and readied themselves for an impending roster crush that figures to happen on Tuesday.
The Baltimore Orioles, 3-2 winners over the Minnesota Twins, were a team on the eve of a drastic makeover with the acquisition of Florida Marlins pitcher A.J. Burnett and infielder Mike Lowell likely to be finalized Tuesday, according to several baseball sources. The Orioles will send outfielder Larry Bigbie, pitcher Hayden Penn and relievers Jorge Julio, Steve Reed and Steve Kline to the Marlins. Baltimore also will receive minor league outfielder Eric Reed.
The Boston Red Sox, one of the teams actively pursuing Burnett, believed they were no longer in the running for the pitcher.
"We have not heard anything official, but we do not get the sense that the Marlins are engaging us with much urgency," a Red Sox official said. "In other words, they seem more inclined to go in another direction."
If, as expected, the Orioles face a drastic roster haul, the current version of the team did quite well on its final night. Bedard pitched six scoreless innings, striking out seven, after missing almost two months with a sprained knee, and Sosa hit his first home run since June 18, a 420-foot two-run blast in the seventh inning that moved him into sole possession of sixth place on the career list with 584, one more than Mark McGwire. Miguel Tejada won the game with a home run in the 11th inning, leaving the Orioles tied with the Red Sox for second place in the AL East, half a game behind the New York Yankees.
As of late Monday night, according to several sources close to the Orioles, Baltimore had all but decided not to sign Burnett to a contract extension prior to making the deal. The Orioles hoped Burnett, a free agent after this season whose wife is from the Baltimore area, would sign a new contract after the trade was made.
"My preference would be to sign everyone to one-year contracts," Orioles Executive Vice President Jim Beattie said in general terms and not specifically about the impending trade. "But you have to do what you have to do to get players signed. Sometimes it's worth the risk."
Previously, agent Darek Braunecker, who represents Burnett, had said the pitcher would not negotiate during the season, but he softened his stance on Monday.
"If they were to present something to us that we could resolve quickly, I wouldn't say we wouldn't do that," Braunecker said.
Part of the reason the Orioles have decided to acquire Burnett without a new contract is so they could rid themselves of the salaries of Kline and Reed in the deal. If the Orioles can say they are only guaranteed of having Burnett for half a season, the Marlins take the two relievers off their hands as a way to sweeten the deal for Baltimore. Kline was signed to a two-year, $5.6 million deal in the offseason. Reed is making $900,000 on a one-year deal.
Bigbie, Kline and Julio had all but conceded they would be traded. Bigbie and Julio joked about needing to buy sunscreen to protect themselves from the Florida sun. Kline began to say goodbye to reporters. Bigbie, who conspicuously was not in the lineup Monday, admitted, while it pained him to leave, perhaps the trade would mean a better opportunity for him with the Marlins.
The team had been so uncertain about the status of the roster that it did not announce which player would be taken off the team in order to activate Bedard from the disabled list until minutes before the game. Long reliever James Baldwin was designated for assignment, further fueling the thought that a deal for Burnett was near. Acquiring Burnett means the Orioles will have to demote a starter, eliminating the need to keep Baldwin as a long reliever.
The team had asked Kline to accept a demotion to Class AA Bowie in order to work on his mechanics. The reliever, 2-3 with a 5.61 ERA, declined to go to Bowie, so the Orioles made the move with Baldwin.
At this point, the most likely candidate to fill Baldwin's spot in the bullpen is Sidney Ponson, who has a 6.04 ERA and is 2-7 in his past 12 games. He would be an $8.5 million long reliever.
"I'm acknowledging that there are talks going on that might impact the roster," Beattie said. "That's all. That's fair. That's why we waited [to make the Baldwin move], otherwise we would have tried to do something earlier. But with respect to the information coming in and the timing of it, we tried not to make a move that would" hurt the roster.
One move that won't be made is shifting Melvin Mora from third base to accommodate Lowell, who will be owed $21.25 million through 2007.
"I wouldn't move Melvin out of third base unless Brooks Robinson came back," Beattie said.Drawing a penalty is, in our estimation, one of the true exemplary aspects of a successful forward in the NHL.
It shows you’re working hard, getting chances, forcing your opponent to do something illegal and detrimental to their own team to stop you. Or, in some cases, you’re a nefarious diver whose sneaky behavior makes you both a scourge on the League’s moral standing... and a complete asset to your team.
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Conversely, forwards that take penalties more than they draw them are problematic. In some cases, it’s just doing your job as a fourth-line goon or defensive forward. In other cases, perhaps you’re not earning enough penalties to offset your lapses.
Like, for example, Thomas Vanek of the New York Islanders.
Vanek is a player that, for whatever reason, takes more penalties than he draws. That was the case last season for the Buffalo Sabres, when he took four and drew nothing. And that’s the case thus far this season with the Sabres and the Islanders, as he’s the worst player – forward or otherwise – in the NHL in penalty plus/minus.
That’s a stat tabulated by Extra Skater, which is a stats site that should already be bookmarked on your browser. It’s a stat geek treasure trove that brings interesting info every night.
Here are the bottom 20 forwards in the NHL for penalties taken vs. drawn this season. (Obviously, defensemen by and large take penalties, so they’ll sit this round out.)
Surprises? Marchand’s one, I think. He was plus-2 in 45 games last season in this department. He’s someone known to tumble-weed it now and again; has the Boston Bruins forward lost the benefit of the doubt?
Story continues
Another name that stands out: Jason Spezza of the Ottawa Senators. His penalties taken per 60 minutes in 2011-12 (0.8) was close to his penalties drawn (0.6). So far this season, he’s taking more than earning, which doesn’t seem in line with the Senators’ puck possession figures this season.
Here are the top 20 players in penalty plus/minus:
Well, guess Alexander Steen of the St. Louis Blues gets the opposition’s attention, huh? His 20 penalties drawn through Monday’s games leads the NHL.
Again, you’re seeing a collection of players that forecheck well and possess the puck well. In Rick Nash’s case, he’s a big body you have to foul to get off the puck, and he's drawing nearly a penalty per game.
In the case of Jonathan Toews and Brandon Saad, you have two players that transition to the offensive well and go to the dirty areas in the attacking zone.
If there’s one surprise, it’s Patrick Dwyer of the Carolina Hurricanes, who only starts 26.4 |
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Silicone Oven GlovesBERLIN -- Long before the CIA and FBI came to the public conclusion last week that the Kremlin had interfered in the U.S. presidential election with the aim of helping Donald Trump, a senior German intelligence official told colleagues that Russia was interfering in German politics.
The federal security agency had observed "active measures" from Russia to influence public opinion, Thomas Haldenwang, the deputy president of the domestic security agency BfV, warned senior German security officials at a conference in Berlin in June.
The aim, Haldenwang said, was "to influence public perception and opinion in our country, to the detriment of the German government.”
With elections due for next year, government officials now fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin has trained his sights on Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the most visible critics of Russia's involvement in Syria and Ukraine, as the next target for a Kremlin misinformation campaign.
During a press conference earlier this month, Merkel, who will run for office again next year, said that cyberattacks and a misinformation campaign during the election were “possible.”
Konstantin von Notz, the Green party's spokesperson on internet policy in the German parliament, was blunter. “There’s a real danger that the bitter experience of the U.S. election could be repeated here,” he said.
A history of cyberattacks
Already, there have been several, apparently politically motivated cyberattacks. In January 2015, a pro-Russian group hacked German parliament websites, including Merkel's, bringing them down during a visit of Ukraine's then-prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in what the group said was retaliation for German support of Kiev.
Later in the year, news broke that a group identified as APT28 or Fancy Bear — the group that also reportedly penetrated the networks of the Democratic National Committee in the U.S. — had gained access to the servers of the Bundestag, according to Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, and had been able to roam around undetected for several months, collecting information.
"To use Russia as a tool in an election campaign is something we hate... It's fake information" — Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov
In the spring of this year, hackers tried to gain access to Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The party declined to comment on the damage caused by the attack; however, a spokesperson confirmed that "in the past, there have been repeated cyberattacks on us."
By fall, there were reports of another attack on the Bundestag, also suspected to be originating with APT28, which was fended off before they could access servers, according to the Bundestag.
German officials, including the MP von Notz, are doubtful about media reports that the Bundestag files released by WikiLeaks earlier this month originated from one of those attacks. The released files were a lot larger than what the intruders in 2015 had gotten, according to official estimates.
Officials, however, are concerned that the hackers may be holding onto any potentially damaging material to release it close to the election for maximum disruption.
The head of the federal security agency, Hans-Georg Maaßen, said earlier this month that “information obtained through cyberattacks could emerge in the election campaign to discredit German politicians.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow did not reply to a request for comment by POLITICO. Russian officials have denied that Moscow interfered in the U.S. election and was planning to do the same in Germany.
"It's nonsense," said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Russia Today last week. "To use Russia as a tool in an election campaign is something we hate... It's fake information."
German authorities have signaled that they’re observing the Russians closely. But they are clearly concerned that Moscow could mobilize a wide network of pro-Kremlin allies to spread misinformation.
A broad campaign of misinformation and leaks of stolen information, observers say, could be used to weaken trust in government institutions and strengthen pro-Russian, anti-establishment parties such as The Left (Die Linke) on the far Left, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
A circle of friends
Germans are divided in their views on Russia. In a survey this spring, 53 percent of respondents in the west of the country said they see Russia as a threat compared to 33 percent in the formerly Communist east.
Russians, for their part, have historically seen Germany as a partner with which to divide up control over Central Europe, and not an adversary. And during the Cold War, of course, Moscow controlled the east of Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when Putin, who is fluent in German, was stationed in Dresden as a KGB officer.
Since then, the Kremlin has leveraged its power in other ways, building up a network of influencers, including former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who, weeks after leaving office in 2005, joined the board of pipeline consortium Nord Stream, becoming a lobbyist for Russian energy interests in Berlin. (The CEO of Nord Stream is Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi officer, who is reported to have worked with Putin in Dresden, though Warnig denies this.)
Another high-profile ex-politician with ties to Russia is former state premier Matthias Platzeck, who chairs the German-Russian Forum, a lobbying group, and who in 2014 urged the West to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Both are members of Germany's second-largest party, the Social Democrats (SPD). Currently part of Merkel's "grand coalition," the SPD will challenge her for the chancellorship next year.
Like much of the rest of his party, SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy chancellor and economy minister, also favors a much friendlier approach to the Kremlin, and the party has spoken out in favor of relaxing the economic sanctions on Russia, unlike Merkel, who wants to extend them.
"The influence of Russian foreign media outlets and their activity on social networks has increased — and it’s crucial” — Stefan Meister, German Council on Foreign Relations
Like elsewhere in Europe, anti-establishment parties have sprung up in Germany in recent years, and as trust in the government erodes, Moscow's star shines brighter. The anti-Islam movement Pegida, for example, touts Moscow as an alternative to the poles of Washington and Brussels.
“In growing segments of the German population, people have this vaguely positive image of the Russians as people who stand up to the political mainstream, to the U.S.,” said Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
It's not just covert campaigns such as cyberattacks that concern German officials, Meister said, but also overt attempts to influence the public debate in the country.
“When it comes to Russian attempts to steer public opinion in Germany, the influence of Russian foreign media outlets and their activity on social networks has increased — and it’s crucial.”
A wide range of tools and instruments
Russia began escalating its information efforts in Europe after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, said a report from the European Parliament in 2016, describing Moscow's aim as "to distort the truth, incite fear, provoke doubt and divide the EU."
In the same time period, according to German security officials, there has since been an increase in Russian-funded media coverage criticizing the German government. In 2014, the Russian state-funded broadcasting service Russia Today launched a German-language website and a YouTube channel called RT Deutsch. The Russian state-controlled news agency Rossiya Segodnya has also started news website called Sputnik, which includes German among its 30 languages.
Both RT and Sputnik are decidedly pro-Russian and go out of their way to provide what they say is a counterpoint to Western propaganda.
The Kremlin employs "a wide range of tools and instruments," including think tanks, television stations such as Russia Today, "pseudo news agencies," multimedia services such as Sputnik as well as social media and internet trolls, said the report from the European Parliament.
The report also suggested that, in addition to funding pro-Russian media outlets, Moscow is involved in deliberately spreading “fake news” in comment sections and elsewhere on the web.
The case of Lisa
“Lisa" was the alias of a 13-year-old girl, the daughter of two German-Russians in Berlin, who said she had been kidnapped for 30 hours and raped by migrants. After the claims were reported by Russian media in January, Moscow accused Berlin of "sweeping problems under the rug" and thousands of people in Germany took to the streets, protesting the alleged cover-up.
Peskov, Putin's spokesman, later denied that the Kremlin had sought to use the rape case to stir up tensions around immigration in Germany. But by the time a German police investigation concluded that "Lisa" had lied and there had been no rape, public trust in the political institutions had already been damaged.
At the Berlin conference in June, Emily Haber, one of the highest-ranking civil servants in the interior ministry, called the “Lisa” case an "effective” campaign that had polarized Germans, showing she said, "the limits of what the state can do against disinformation."Building a Better Siddur: An E-Siddur for the Twenty-First Century
Guest post by R. Michael J. Broyde
Rabbi Michael J. Broyde is a Law Professor at Emory University, was the Founding Rabbi of the Young Israel in Atlanta and is a Dayan in the Beth Din of America
I confess: I like davening from the siddur on my Blackberry Bold. It has a backlit screen, the words are clear and I like scrolling more than turning pages. My Blackberry also has a chumash that automatically opens to this week’s parsha and a Shulchan Aruch that I sometimes learn from during those occasional slow moments in davening (like when they are rolling the Torah). But, lurking in the back of my mind is the idea that my e-siddur ought to be doing much more for me, and it is time to build a better mousetrap.
Indeed, my Blackberry has already been programmed in its calendar function to tell me every day a lot of davening information, including the Hebrew date, whether we say tachanun today, when is sunrise and sunset, what is the Torah reading, as well as what is today’s daf. What is needed is an e-siddur that takes advantage of that information. I would like my e-siddur to do at least six things and I can project a few more into the future.
I want my e-siddur to know where I am and what time it is, and thus what I am davening. If it is 7:30 a.m. in Atlanta, GA then my e-siddur ought to know that I am davening shacharit and when I press the siddur icon, open to shacharit. It ought to tell me what is the earliest time for talit and tefillin when I am close to that time and the same for mincha when I am approaching that deadline. When I open my e-siddur at 2:30 pm to daven, it should automatically open to mincha as that is the only prayer for that time. Candle lighting times would be nice too on Friday. I want my e-siddur to formulate the proper davening, given what date and time it is. If it is 7:30 am on December 26, 2011 in Atlanta, GA, it is shacharit for Rosh Chodesh and Channuka, and my e-siddur ought to automatically insert ya’ale v’yavo and al hanisim into shemona esrei, and when I scroll down after Shemona Esrei, Hallel ought to be the next prayer on the agenda. Tachanun ought to be skipped automatically. I want the right Torah reading to come up on Mondays and Thursdays (and Rosh Chodesh and fast days too). When a haftarah is said on a fast day at mincha, that should be after Torah reading. My Blackberry calendar knows these things and so does the computer display board in my shul. My e-siddur should also. I want to be able to program it up front with my minhagim. I daven Religious Zionist ashkenaz and I want my siddur instructions in my native language, English. Someone else might daven Charedi Yeshiva Sefard with Yiddish instructions and someone else Edot Hamizrach with Hebrew instructions; Chacun à son goût. In addition, a variety of different minhagim have developed for zemanei hayom. I should be able to tell it mine among a list of many programmable default options. My e-siddur should adopt to my minhagim. I should be able to program my e-siddur to skip tefillot that are optional and that I do not say and insert those that I do say. Some skip korbanot (not me; I say them every day) and others skip vidui (I do skip it) and some say the six “zachor” passages every day (not me) and some add a prayer for parnassa at the end of davening (I try to). Yet others sit for a few minutes and say Tehillim, either on a monthly, weekly, or daily cycle (not me now, but I used to). Let me personalize my e-siddur. I would like the option to automatically disable email notifications and incoming phone calls when the siddur is open and in use – sometimes, all of us really just want to turn off the outside world when our siddur is open.
Let me add that of course it needs all the bells and whistles of any text based application, such as variable text sizes to accommodate the visually struggling and backlight adjustments for various lighting conditions. A function that tells me the proper direction for tefilla — maybe with both a Rhumb line option and compass direction option (to include both views among the achronim, a subject of a forthcoming article) — would be nice too. So too, while I confess that I am not a Daf Yomi learner (maybe I should be, but that is a topic for a different post) it would be nice if my e-siddur would have a tzurat hadaf for the day’s daf readily available on it.
Let me add that there are all sorts of other interesting features that one could add to such an e-siddur app once it becomes integrated into the general structure of Orthodox life. Consider for example a “context aware automatic alert” which integrates a person’s general schedule with davening times along the lines of an SIRI alert which notes that “you have a 90 minute meeting starting at 4:30 today with sunset at 5:15 – you should daven mincha early today” or “you had better leave early for shacharit today. Heavier than expected traffic is being reported,” each of which requires the integration of the siddur app with other common smart phone or tablet features or applications. More sophisticated additional features, such as hyperlinks to sources or essays could well take the place of notes found in the current printed siddurim. So too, the ability to add one’s own annotations would be of value, from names of cholim at the proper place to perhaps even a davener’s own insights and comments.
I would gladly pay for my daily e-siddur if it is well done (and I suspect that I am not the only one who gladly pay), and more generally such a siddur could be an anchor product for an overall Orthodox religious lifestyle mobile app. It would help people manage their schedule, shop for kosher food, answer simple questions of data driven halacha and provide reminders common to all Orthodox life. Monetization is possible through ads placed by suppliers of kosher food (maybe only when the GPS function notes you are in a supermarket), sefarim stores, local kosher restaurants, maybe even charities soliciting donations.[1]
Prayer is a central ritual to the Orthodox community and technological enhancements to the prayer experience through a nicer and better laid out siddur has been ongoing for centuries. We have always recognized that the esthetics of prayer can enhance the experience of praying; the Jewish community has always sought out the best siddur. An e-siddur can create a prayer environment much more esthetically pleasing than any printed prayer book ever can be, if only because it can give you the right prayers in the right order every day, with instructions tailored to its owner’s current location and customs, while changing every day with the changes of the Jewish calendar.
May all of our prayers be answered.
[1] As my close friend andof more than 30 years, Steven Weiner of SRI (the inventors of Apples new SIRI function) joked while reading an earlier version of this, one could just see the following conversation taking place twenty years hence “SIRI, I forgot to say– what should I do?” “Sorry I can’t tell you that –is not permitted in.”A look at the doomed military adventure dubbed the 'Soviet Vietnam" and its aftermath.
Watch part two
More than 600,000 troops participated in the Soviet Union's decade-long war in Afghanistan, the USSR's largest military operation since the Second World War.
Yet for many in modern Russia, and in other former Soviet countries, the conflict is one they would rather forget and is regarded with humiliation.
Al Jazeera found that many of those who returned alive are still disappointed by the lack of support they received and continue to bear the psychological scars from a conflict sometimes referred to as the USSR's "Vietnam".
Veterans: Soviets in Afghanistan can be seen from Monday, November 22, at the following times GMT: Monday: 0130, 1230; Tuesday: 0630; Wednesday: 0830; Thursday: 0330; Friday: 0730; Sunday: 0030.
Source: Al JazeeraAlmost a decade after the incident, John Daly says he is still pursuing legal action against the PGA Tour for a mishap involving a fan who took his picture during the first round of the 2007 Honda Classic.
Daly first took legal action in 2010, targeting the Tour and the organizers of the Honda Classic, including PGA National Resort & Spa.
A five-time Tour winner whose career high points came with victories at the 1991 PGA Championship and 1995 British Open, Daly contends he was hurt when a female spectator jumped in front of him to take his picture as he was teeing off at the 12th hole at PGA National. He says he tried to stop his swing, hit behind the ball, and fractured two ribs and separated his right shoulder, negatively impacting his career for the rest of that season and years to come.
“I was playing with Shigeki Maruyama,” Daly said during a wide-ranging interview on his RV, which he parked at Hooters in Augusta in order to sign merchandise and pose for pictures during the most recent Masters Tournament. “This lady didn’t even have a ticket — she came out of one of the houses. The weird thing is we warned her twice. We didn’t think she’d do it. I hit about that far behind the ball, and my ribs went one way, my shoulder went the other way.”
Ty Votaw, executive vice president of the PGA Tour, said the Tour would have no comment “because the litigation is ongoing.”
Daly turns 49 on April 28, which means he is about a year away from Champions Tour eligibility. He plans on playing as much as possible, and is already actively recruiting the semi-retired Fuzzy Zoeller to ramp up his schedule so the two friends can play together next year.
In the meantime, Daly is accepting the odd sponsor’s exemption — he missed the cut at the Valspar Championship in his last start, but tied for 10th in Puerto Rico before that — and continues to stay busy. He signed autographs and posed with fans outside his trailer in Augusta. He says business is good with his John Daly Sweet Tea Lemonade Vodka, which comes in peach and raspberry.
“We’re in at least 16 states strong,” Daly said. “We should be, in the next month or so, in 23 states.” As for his on-again, off-again sobriety, he said: “I don’t drink much, a sip here or there. I’ll drink a little bit of mine, a little bit of Crown. If I drink and have a little bit of a buzz, I’m good.”
He says he is no longer working with instructor Rick Smith and has no coach, but he adds he is fine with that. Still, not everything is tranquil in Daly’s world — indeed, he wouldn’t be John Daly without at least a little bit of drama.
“Basically everybody there just broke every rule in the book,” he said of the 2007 Honda, adding that his lawyers planned to stage a mock trial in West Palm Beach, Fla., last week.
“It killed the whole right side of my torso,” Daly said. “It’s cost me since then, I think. This year is probably the best I’ve felt. I never saw that woman again. Somehow there was no police report done at all.”
Daly is no stranger to lawsuits. He sued the Florida Times-Union for libel in 2005, but a judge later dismissed the suit.
Zoeller once said his friend would be lucky to make it to 50, and now Daly is a year away. He has been big (pushing 300 pounds), skinny (thanks to lap-band surgery) and is now big again.
He has claimed in his autobiography gambling losses of roughly $55 million. He has three children with three ex-wives. Shynah Hale (with Bettye Fulford) is 22; Sierra Lynn (with Paulette Dean) is 19; and Little John (with Sherry Miller) is 11. Daly is engaged to Anna Cladakis, who would be his fifth wife, but he says they haven’t settled on a specific date yet.
Although he still has enough game to compete on Tour, Daly’s best stuff comes and goes. It’s been years since he’s made enough to actually keep his card. Unlike others his age, he has not reverted to playing on the lower Web.com circuit. He says his shoulder still pops out occasionally. How he’ll do on the Champions tour is anyone’s guess, but plenty of others before him have gone on to have lucrative second careers on the senior circuit.
Now he’s just got to get to 50.
For more news that golfers everywhere are talking about, follow @golf_com on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube video channel.Fighting broke out between the activists and the masked Israeli troops, who rappelled on to deck from helicopters before dawn.
A spokeswoman for the flotilla, Greta Berlin, said she had been told ten people had been killed and dozens wounded, accusing Israeli troops of indiscriminately shooting at "unarmed civilians". But an Israeli radio station said that between 14 and 16 were dead in a continuing operation.
"How could the Israeli military attack civilians like this?" Ms Berlin said. "Do they think that because they can attack Palestinians indiscriminately they can attack anyone?
"We have two other boats. This is not going to stop us."
But an Israeli military spokeswoman said that there had been a planned and organised attempt to "lynch" the boarding party. She said the activists were armed with knives and guns.
The Israeli government's handling of the confrontation was under intense international pressure even as it continued. The Israeli ambassador to Turkey, the base of one of the human rights organisation which organised the flotilla, was summoned by the foreign ministry in Anakara, as the Israeli consulate in Istanbul came under attack.
One Israeli minister issued immediate words of regret. "The images are certainly not pleasant. I can only voice regret at all the fatalities," Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the trade and industry minister, told army radio.
But he added that the commandos had been attacked with batons and activists had sought to take their weapons off them.
Israeli military sources said four of its men had been injured, one stabbed, and that they had been shot at.
"The flotilla's participants were not innocent and used violence against the soldiers. They were waiting for the forces' arrival," they were quoted by a news website as saying.
The flotilla had set sail on Sunday from northern, or Turkish, Cyprus. Six boats were led by the Mavi Marmara, which carried 600 activists from around the world, including Mairead Corrigan Maguire, the Northern Ireland peace protester who won a Nobel Prize in 1976.
It came under almost immediate monitoring from Israeli drones and the navy, with two vessels flanking it in international waters. The flotilla, which had been warned that it would not be allowed to reach Gaza, attempted to slow and change course, hoping to prevent a confrontation until daylight, when the Israeli military action could be better filmed.
But in the early hours of this morning local time commandos boarded from helicopters.
The activists were not carrying guns, but television footage shown by al-Jazeera and Turkish television channels show hand-to-hand fighting, with activists wearing life-jackets striking commandos with sticks.
The Israeli army said its troops were assaulted with axes and knives.
The television footage did not show firing but shots could be heard in the background. One man was shown lying unconscious on the deck, while another man was helped away.
A woman wearing hijab, the Muslim headscarf, was seen carrying a stretcher covered in blood.
The al-Jazeera broadcast stopped with a voice shouting in Hebrew: "Everyone shut up".
Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza after the strip was taken over by the militant group Hamas in 2007. It has allowed some food and medical supplies through, but has prevented large-scale rebuilding following the bombardment and invasion of 2008-9.
The flotilla is the latest in a series of attempts by activists to break through the blockade. The boats were carrying food and building supplies.
Activists said at least two of the other boats, one Greek and one Turkish, had been boarded from Israeli naval vessels. Activists said two of the other boats in the flotilla were American-flagged.
The confrontation took place in international waters 80 miles off the Gaza coast.
It was attacked by the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh.
"We call on the Secretary-General of the U.N., Ban Ki-moon, to shoulder his responsibilities to protect the safety of the solidarity groups who were on board these ships and to secure their way to Gaza," he said.
Turkish television meanwhile showed hundreds of protesters trying to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul. The incident will be particularly damaging for Israel's relations with what had been seen as its closest ally in the Muslim world.
"By targeting civilians, Israel has once again shown its disregard for human life and peaceful initiatives," a Turkish foreign ministry statement said. "We strongly condemn these inhumane practices of Israel.
"This deplorable incident, which took place in open seas and constitutes a fragrant breach of international law, may lead to irreparable consequences in our bilateral relations."
Israel's closest ally Washington described the loss of life as a "tragedy" on the eve of talks between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy," a White House spokesman said.Some of the most celebrated authors in American letters have written with the help of NEA grants, from Alice Walker and Norman Rush to Sherman Alexie and Joyce Carol Oates. In the days since the President’s proposed budget was first released, we reached out to 14 authors who have received NEA grants and asked them what getting one meant for their writing and what programs like the NEA and NEH mean to our country’s culture.
The President has finally released his budget proposal, and the news is not good for artists, museums, schools, or cultural institutions. As it currently stands, the plan would completely eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, bringing over fifty years of federal arts support to an abrupt end. Combined, the two programs’ budgets amount to less than $300 million, a fraction of the government’s $1.1 trillion in discretionary spending and about.002% of the federal budget. That money plays an outsized role in the nation’s culture and in the lives of Americans of all stripes. The NEA and NEH directly support artists, writers, magazines (like Electric Literature), libraries, local television stations, radio programs, therapy for military veterans, classes for underserved students, concerts, plays, exhibits and thousands of other projects; federal grants also motivate states and civil society organizations to provide even more funding. On signing the bill that created the programs, President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke of their value: “Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Jess Row, author of Your Face is Mine, Nobody Ever Gets Lost, and others
I received an NEA fellowship in 2003, and it allowed me to take leave from my (full-time) teaching job to write in the winter of 2005. That was the first time I’d ever received a grant to be a writer — to make writing my only occupation, for that short period. Though it wasn’t an enormous amount of money, it felt like a huge endorsement of my work. And often that’s the way it works with writers and other artists: the NEA grant arrives at the moment when you’ve begun a career but no one has heard of you yet. It’s a potent form of cultural capital, a calling card that helps you get jobs, readings, the attention of agents or publishers, and/or (if you’re lucky enough to teach full time) some breathing room away from the pressures of academic life.
What the NEA fellowship isn’t — this is a vital distinction — is a way to make a living. Writers and artists in other so-called “developed” countries, like Canada, can apply for government fellowships that actually support them, year after year. We don’t have anything like that in the US; what we have instead is a flourishing culture of creative writing in the academy. We don’t have a cultural consensus around the idea that artists should be encouraged just to be artists, and that the government should support them as a public good, a necessity. Instead, we have a nonprofit arts sector and a tiny government agency, the NEA, that do great things for artists, but in a marginal way that doesn’t make up for the robust government support we need and deserve.
Because American conservatives imagine freedom as a negative space — a wasteland where all traces of social cohesion or society, period, have been blasted away, like the desert setting of the Mad Max movies — nothing drives them crazier than the NEA. The NEA to them is like the National Parks where they’re not allowed to ride snowmobiles. Its vulnerability, its marginality, its mere suggestion that another system of value exists, makes it a perfect target, as it has been since the Reagan years. It’s been under threat so many times that sometimes I feel the Republicans will never actually move to dismantle it because they need it so badly as a target.
But I want to say something else, too: this conversation about the need to protect the NEA as it currently exists is important, but more important, to me, is to say that the NEA is not enough. We deserve better than this. American writers and artists deserve dependable, sustainable, career-long government support, and we deserve, like all Americans, affordable healthcare and housing, and the social safety net that makes it possible to do the work we do. We need to be speaking out for a progressive agenda that will make today’s NEA look like the band-aid it is.
“We deserve better than this. American writers and artists deserve dependable, sustainable, career-long government support, and we deserve, like all Americans, affordable healthcare and housing, and the social safety net that makes it possible to do the work we do..” — Jess Row
Jennifer Haigh, author of Heat & Light, News from Heaven, and others
My NEA grant bought me time to finish writing my fifth book, News From Heaven, a collection of short stories I’d been chipping away at for seven years. The support was more than monetary; it gave me the encouragement I needed in the final stretch of a project that the publishing industry wasn’t exactly clamoring for: stories from a dying town whose people had lost their livelihoods and identities when the coal mines closed. The truth is that writing literature is almost never profitable, but an occasional grant can sometimes make it possible. I hate to think of all the books that will never be finished if the NEA disappears.
“The truth is that writing literature is almost never profitable, but an occasional grant can sometimes make it possible.” — Jennifer Haigh
Porochista Khakpour, author of The Last Illusion and others
I was an NEA fellow in 2012 (meaning I applied in 2011). At the time I had just taken a job at a university that was for-profit and I knew I could not endure another minute of the unethical operation. I had a second novel that was done, but try as we could, my agent and I could not get it sold. I had a few other problems but didn’t know it — a fiancé that would be no longer soon and mysterious health problems that ended up actually being a very pernicious Lyme Disease case. I was 33 and in bad shape. I applied to NEA for the first time thinking it would just be practice for all the many more times I would be applying. I gave it my all, especially because I wanted to see what happened when we submitted a chapter of this second novel that was getting rejected everywhere. Well, about six months later I was on a fellowship in Germany, struggling in all sorts of new ways, and I found out I had received this amazing award. (I was actually on a weekend away in a bar in nearby Prague, drinking very heartily, when I got some frantic calls on a borrowed flip phone, from my agent. I couldn’t understand what it was all about — something about the government needing me?! — and I was certain I had done something wrong. I nearly spit out my svařák when I realized it apparently was one of those rare times I did something right!)
And in a year, the second novel sold (record time for this particular book that had already been circulating for a year and a half)! I’m almost certain it was because of the NEA — I suspect it gave my publishers courage to take on a very unusual and risky book. But before that happened I became very seriously ill for many months. Again, no one knew for sure what was happening until they finally found out it was Lyme. I was bedridden and had no health insurance and no job — and suddenly no way to work on a book as I’d lost most my ability to read and write at that point. I can truly say the NEA actually saved my life. I know we say that about art all the time — and I do believe art does have the power to save us. But here, it actually saved me in a non-art way too. It paid for all sorts of doctors and visits to doctors (I couldn’t drive) and it ultimately paid for many experimental treatments. If I didn’t have that award I don’t know if I’d be alive today. It was that chunk of money that got me better faster so I could return to my book, sell it, work on it, and move back to New York City where all sorts of other work was.
So many hardships come to those who choose a life of art — or rather art chooses them — and we often forget health and wellness is part of that story. The NEA not only gave me the confidence to believe in my second book when it felt like no one else did, but it also gave me the confidence to believe I could stay alive. I can’t imagine another gift like that in the world. I still somehow refuse to believe we will lose the NEA — at least not for good — because, to be very honest, I can’t imagine a world without it. How do you simply part with something that you owe your entire life to?
“The NEA not only |
and the claim that this is all about terrorism is seen around the world as what it is. Which is -- pure deceit.
The above two quotes contain a lot of hogwash, not to mention Greenwald's extremely binary thinking on this issue.
Is all American spying about terrorism? No. And no one in the government ever claimed that. The US Congress has directed the NSA and other intelligence agencies to collect intelligence on foreign governments, just as they collect intelligence on the US.
Is it reasonable to claim that the US and other governments have overplayed the threat of terrorism as justification for acts that erode civil liberties? In my view, absolutely.
But his claim that "none of this has anything to do with terrorism" is not reasonable. That's pure nonsense -- as is his attempt to suggest that any revelations of eavesdropping techniques can't do any harm because terrorists already know all about it. Terrorists may know that the US is trying to spy on them as best it can (just as Germany and France know that). But knowing the precise method is another thing altogether.
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The fact is that while intelligence tools created to spy on terrorists could end up being used and misused for other purposes, it's an enormous logical leap from there to claim that "this is is clearly about political power and economic espionage and the claim that this is all about terrorism is seen around the world as what it is. Which is -- pure deceit."
That's an assertion refuted by a careful reading of the documents Greenwald says help prove his position.The February issue of Kodansha's Magazine Special is announcing on Wednesday that CLAMP will publish the second-to-last chapter of the Tsubasa: WoRLD CHRoNiCLE ( Tsubasa: WoRLD CHRoNiCLE, Nirai Kanai-hen ) manga in the next issue. The manga will have a color opening page in the next issue on February 20, and it will also be on the front cover of the issue.
CLAMP began Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE, their manga that brings together characters from their past series, in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 2003, and they ended the series in 2009. The team then launched Tsubasa: WoRLD CHRoNiCLE in August 2014 in Magazine Special. Kodansha published the manga's second compiled book volume last October. Kodansha USA licensed Tsubasa: WoRLD CHRoNiCLE, and released the first English volume in December.American romantic comedy television series
The Mindy Project is an American romantic comedy television series that premiered on Fox on September 25, 2012. It then began airing on Hulu on September 15, 2015.[2] The series, created by and starring Mindy Kaling, was co-produced by Universal Television and 3 Arts Entertainment.
On March 29, 2017, The Mindy Project was renewed for a sixth and final season, which premiered on September 12, 2017, and concluded on November 14, 2017.[3]
Plot [ edit ]
The series follows obstetrician/gynecologist Mindy Lahiri (Mindy Kaling) as she tries to balance her personal and professional life,[4] surrounded by quirky co-workers in a small medical practice in New York City. The character was inspired by Kaling's own mother, an OB/GYN. Mindy explores life with the help of her co-workers: Danny Castellano, her best friend and love interest, whose religious sensibilities occasionally cause some tension; Jeremy Reed, an English physician who manages the practice; Peter Prentice, another physician who was a fraternity jock while attending Dartmouth; Morgan Tookers, a wacky, yet loveable registered nurse and an ex-con; Tamra Webb, a blunt nurse; and Beverley, the libidinous older office receptionist.[5]
Cast and characters [ edit ]
Main [ edit ]
Recurring [ edit ]
Episodes [ edit ]
Season Episodes Originally aired First aired Last aired Network 1 24 September 25, 2012 ( ) May 14, 2013 ( 2013-05-14 ) Fox 2 22 September 17, 2013 ( ) May 6, 2014 ( 2014-05-06 ) 3 21 September 16, 2014 ( ) March 24, 2015 ( 2015-03-24 ) 4 26 September 15, 2015 ( ) July 5, 2016 ( 2016-07-05 ) Hulu 5 14 October 4, 2016 ( ) March 28, 2017 ( 2017-03-28 ) 6 10 September 12, 2017 ( ) November 14, 2017 ( 2017-11-14 )
Production and development [ edit ]
The series was initially commissioned by NBC, but the pilot with the working title It's Messy was released from NBC's projects on January 27, 2012. NBC then sent the script to Fox executives who read it over that following weekend. On January 30, 2012, Fox greenlit the pilot, with Mindy Kaling attached to star.[6]
On May 9, 2012, Fox placed a series order for the comedy.[7] Two days later, the title was changed from It's Messy to The Mindy Project.[8] On August 27, 2012, the pilot episode was made available to view online on various sites including Fox, in an attempt to garner interest in the series. On October 8, 2012, Fox ordered a full season of The Mindy Project.[9] On March 4, 2013, the series was renewed for a second season,[10] which began on September 17, 2013. On November 21, 2013, Fox announced that The Mindy Project would take a mid-season hiatus, before returning on April 1, 2014.[11] Fox announced the third season renewal of The Mindy Project on March 7, 2014.[12]
On May 6, 2015, Fox cancelled the series after three seasons.[13] On May 15, 2015 Hulu picked up the show, commissioning a 26 episode fourth season.[14] On May 4, 2016, Hulu announced it had picked up the series for a 16-episode season 5,[15] which was later reduced to 14.[16] On March 29, 2017, Kaling announced the series would return for a sixth and final season; the final episode of the series aired on November 14, 2017.[3]
Casting announcements for the remaining series regular roles began in February 2012, with Ed Weeks cast in the role of Dr. Jeremy Reed, a sexy, British doctor in the practice.[17] Zoe Jarman and Dana Delorenzo then joined in series regular roles. Jarman signed on to play Betsy Putch, an upbeat receptionist at the practice; whilst Delorenzo joined as Shauna Dicanio, a young, party loving receptionist in the practice.[18] In mid-March, Chris Messina joined the cast as Dr. Danny Castellano, an arrogant doctor who works at the practice.[19] Shortly after, Anna Camp boarded the series as Gwen Grandy, a stay-at-home mom and Mindy's best friend.[20]
A few months later, Amanda Setton, Stephen Tobolowsky and Ike Barinholtz joined the series. Setton replaced Dana DeLorenzo in the role of Shauna; Tobolowsky joined in the series regular role of Dr. Marc Shulman, the senior partner of the practice; and Barinholtz signed onto the recurring role of Morgan Tookers, a quirky rehabilitated ex-con who joins the practice as a nurse.[21]
Cast changes [ edit ]
The first change occurred when Stephen Tobolowsky's role was eliminated after the second episode – following re-shoots that saw his character be re-written into a mere authoritarian figure in the office – when it was decided that "they didn't really want Mindy to have a boss in the office".[22] Tobolowsky returned, albeit in a voice-over only role, in the eighth episode to explain that his character had retired. The second change of the season, which was first reported on November 20, 2012, saw Amanda Setton's role also eliminated entirely and Anna Camp downgraded to a recurring cast member. They both departed after the twelfth episode.[23] Despite becoming a recurring cast member, Camp only made a single appearance in the seventeenth episode.[24] Neither Setton or Camp's characters had their absence referenced, nor were they mentioned again.
The first change for the second season, which occurred before production of the season began, saw Xosha Roquemore upgraded to a series regular role after recurring in the final three episodes of the previous season.[25] The second change, which occurred just prior to the production of the season's fifth episode, resulted in Adam Pally also being upgraded to a series regular role. He had previously signed onto the series in a recurring role but had filmed only two episodes prior to being promoted.[26]
The first change of the third season occurred prior to the start of production and saw Zoe Jarman's role eliminated from the show.[27] Like Setton and Camp's departures in the first season, the absence of her character was never addressed. The second cast change of the season was announced on November 21, 2014, and saw Adam Pally leave the series after the season's thirteenth episode. His departure after the thirteenth episode of the season was a condition of his upgrade to a series regular that had occurred the previous year. It was reported that Pally is "expected to make occasional guest appearances".[28] Pally made multiple guest appearances after his departure, where he was still credited amongst the regular cast in episodes he appeared, making his final appearance as a part of the main cast in the third-season finale.
In December 2015 it was reported that Fortune Feimster had been upgraded to a series regular role beginning with the fourteenth episode of the fourth season, after appearing in seven of the first thirteen episodes.[29] Garret Dillahunt joined the show in a major recurring role as Dr. Jody Kimball-Kinney.[30]
In June 2016, it was announced that Chris Messina would not be returning as a series regular for season five, but will instead appear as a guest star.[31]
Reception [ edit ]
Critical reception [ edit ]
The Mindy Project received positive reviews from critics, with many highlighting Kaling's performance and her unique character, as well as the writing and directing.[32] On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has a rating of 81%, based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Mindy Project is such a charming comedy, led by Mindy Kaling's impressive talent, that its faults are easy to forgive."[33] Review aggregation website Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean based on reviews from mainstream critics, season one received a score of 69 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[32] It was the number-six best-reviewed show according to the site's fall 2012 season.[32]
On Rotten Tomatoes, Season 2 has a rating of 89%, based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Mindy Kaling earns consistent laughs with wit, charm and physical comedy, as she and her cast grow into well-rounded and familiar, albeit peculiar, characters."[34] On Metacritic, the second season has a score of 55 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[35] Season 3 of the show holds a rating of 82% on Rotten Tomatoes with the critical consensus reading, "The Mindy Project, while still wildly funny, travels further into rom-com country this season."[36]
Season 4 of the show holds a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes with the critical consensus reading, "The Mindy Project begins its online migration with some of the show's best-ever episodes, further refining the balance between heart and humor struck during the first three seasons."[37] On Metacritic the season has a score of 81 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[38]
Controversy [ edit ]
The Mindy Project has been the object of intense scrutiny not only from traditional media forms but also from feminists and people of color, who often weigh in on the show's decisions in casting and writing. At the end of the first season, Jezebel posted an article called "Mindy Kaling Only Makes Out with White Guys",[39] a critique of the casting of romantic leads on the show. The same article contains a response from Nisha Chittal, who has defended Kaling's success in the past,[40] who applauded the show for not making Kaling's race central to her character, and for showing that an Indian woman could date non-Indian men.
During the second season, the episode "Mindy Lahiri Is a Racist" provoked discussion as to whether or not Kaling had made "reparations" for showing a predominantly white cast.[41]
Before the third season began airing, Kaling was criticized for a comment in a Flare article entitled "She's the Boss",[42] in which she stated that the show would not address abortion, as "it would be demeaning to the topic to talk about it in a half-hour sitcom." In an appearance on The Colbert Report two weeks later, she clarified:
A lot of women look to me and look to the show, and they want me to be a spokesperson for a lot of issues, and I actually think that's a responsibility that's cool, I want to live up to that... I want to be able to talk plainly on things but I also want to create an entertaining show. We haven't found a hilarious take on abortion that has not been done yet—but we might. I have faith in us.[43]
Ratings [ edit ]
Season Timeslot (ET) Episodes First aired Last aired TV season Rank Avg. viewers
(millions) Date Viewers
(millions) Date Viewers
(millions) 1 Tuesday 9:30 pm (1–19, 21–24)
Thursday 9:30 pm (20) 24 September 25, 2012 ( ) 4.67[44] May 14, 2013 ( ) 2.57[45] 2012–13 128 3.71[46] 2 Tuesday 9:30 pm (1–14, 16, 18–22)
Thursday 9:30 pm (15, 17) 22 September 17, 2013 ( ) 3.83[47] May 6, 2014 ( ) 2.48[48] 2013–14 125 3.40[49] 3 Tuesday 9:30 pm 21 September 16, 2014 ( ) 2.68[50] March 24, 2015 ( ) 2.05[51] 2014–15 151 2.95[52]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Broadcast [ edit ]The common perception is that all athletes are overpaid millionaires, but that’s not exactly true. Although there are some superstars like LeBron James and Alex Rodriguez that make prolific amounts of money, the vast majority of athletes pull in far less — and most aren’t around long enough to build a large bankroll. The folks at Sports Interaction crunched salary data from across the United States’ major leagues — the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS — and the results compiled in this For The Win-exclusive graphic are shocking. NBA players have the highest average career earnings by far, whereas most MLS players make just half a million dollars.
Sports Interaction also evaluated the true value of the top paid players in each game (for the 2012 season). Kobe Bryant makes more money for every two made field goals than most Americans do in an entire year.
(Thanks to Sports Interaction and Column Five Media for sharing this with us.)Her book "School of Darkness" requires a revisit.
"The objectives of Communism are being steadily advanced...The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous, he cannot believe it exists." -J Edgar Hoover (1956)
By Henry Makow Ph.D
Bella Dodd was a Communist Party of America (CPUSA) leader in the 1930' s and 1940's. Her book, "School of Darkness" (1954) reveals that Communism was a hoax perpetrated by financiers "to control the common man" and to advance world tyranny. Naturally, this important book is out-of-print and not in any used bookstores. It can be read online here. [It has recently been reprinted and is available here.]
Bella Dodd was born Maria Asunta Isabella Visono in Italy about 1904. A brilliant and dedicated woman, she graduated from Hunter College and NYU Law School. She became head of the New York State Teachers Union and was a member of the CPUSA's National Council until 1949.
Dodd describes Communism as "a strange secret cult" whose goal is the destruction of Western (i.e. Christian) Civilization. Millions of naive idealists ("innocents") are tricked by its talk of helping the poor, but it cares only for power. For example, Dodd found there was no social research at party headquarters. "We are a revolutionary party, not a reform party," she was told. (163) The goal is to destroy not to improve.
CREATING "HUMAN BEINGS THAT WOULD CONFORM"
The Communist Party operates by infiltrating and subverting social institutions like the churches, schools, mass media and government. Its aim was "to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control." (162)
For example, Dodd reveals that the CPUSA had 1100 members become Catholic priests in the 1930's. It also subverted the American education system by taking over the teacher's unions and learned societies. Only people who accepted the "materialistic, collectivist international class struggle approach" advanced. (98)
"BOURGEOIS" FAMILY TO BECOME OBSOLETE
Involving women in the war effort fitted the long-range program:
"The party did all it could to induce women to go into industry. Its fashion designers created special styles for them and its songwriters wrote special songs to spur them... War-period conditions, they planned, were to become a permanent part of the future educational program. The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete." (153)
There was to be no family but the party and the state. Dodd helped organize the Congress of American Women, a forerunner of the feminist movement.
"Since it was supposedly a movement for peace, it attracted many women. But it was really only a renewed offensive to control American women... Like youth and minority groups, they are regarded as a reserve force of the revolution because they are more easily moved by emotional appeals." (194-195)
SUBVERSION OF U.S. COMPLETED IN THE 1930's
When FDR recognized Russia in 1933, he deliberately turned a blind eye to the CPUSA's massive program of espionage and subversion. Liberals denied that this took place and complained about a "witch hunt." Guess what? The "loony right" was correct.
A new book (The Secret World of American Communism, based on newly opened Kremlin archives, confirms that CPUSA was a puppet of Moscow and the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were practically run by Soviet agents, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins and Harry Dexter White to name a few.
The war years saw the CPUSA actually renounce the class struggle and join the so-called "Roosevelt camp of progress" which included "progressive capitalists."
"The Communist Party now assumed the responsibility of establishing a rigid discipline over the working class. No employer was more effective or more relentless in checking strikes among the workers, or minimizing complaints...while wages rose a little during those years, they did not compare with the rise in profits and in monopoly control of basic necessities...war production was chiefly in the hands of ten large corporations...the Communists carefully muted such information." (153)
The war years saw amazing coordination between the Communist Party and America's financial elite. The elite financed a sophisticated propaganda agency called the Russian Institute located on Park Ave. across 68th Street from Rockefeller's Council on Foreign Relations. Here "famous names like Vanderbilt, Lamont, Whitney and Morgan mingled with those of Communist leaders. "(153)
At Roosevelt's insistence, Stalin "dissolved" the Comintern in order to make the CPUSA look like an American party. The CPUSA leader Earl Browder achieved national prominence and consulted with senior Roosevelt cabinet ministers.
COLD WAR
The joint US-Russian war effort was to be the basis of the new world order. But, inexplicably, the policy changed and Browder instantly became a non-person. Apparently, the time wasn't right for world government. A cold war would be much more lucrative. Dodd was told that in the future, the party would often find itself opposed not only to the government but also to U.S. workers.
"I now saw that with the best motives and a desire to serve the working people... I and thousands like me had been led to a betrayal of these very people... I had been on the side of those who sought the destruction of my own country." (229)
Like frightened mice, the CPUSA membership scurried to adopt the new party line. Dodd tried to quit but was told: "No one gets out of the party. You die or you are thrown out." (197)
Eventually, Dodd was expelled and smeared as "anti-Negro, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-Semitic, anti-labor and a defender of the landlord." (220). Sound familiar? After more than 20 years of tireless sacrifice, she was without family or friends. The party had been her family. Its "hates had become my hates."
"This is the key to the mental enslavement of mankind. The individual is made into nothing... he operates as the physical part of [a] higher group intelligence... he has no awareness of the plans the higher group intelligence has for utilizing him." (158)
"A SECRET WELL-ORGANIZED WORLD POWER"
Bella Dodd was circumspect about the people behind the Communist Party. Once, she was told to phone two multi-millionaires who lived in the Waldorf Towers if she lost contact with Moscow. Elsewhere, she refers to "a secret well-organized world power." She is obviously afraid to be candid. She suspects that one CPUSA leader's "suicide" was, in fact, murder. (172)
But she does drop a possible clue. She says that each of the nine floors of the party-owned headquarters at 35 E. 12th St. was devoted to CPUSA business. The Sixth Floor held "the publication offices of the Yiddish newspaper, the Freiheit, and the "Jewish Commission." (162)
"What now became clear to me was the collusion of these two forces: the Communists with their timetable for world control, and certain mercenary forces in the free world bent on making profits from blood." (229)
As "one piece of the puzzle that finally became a picture," Dodd tells the story of the ship "Erica Reed" typical of "hundreds of other stories." During the Spanish Civil War, Americans donated money to load the ship with medical supplies and food for Spain. The Communists diverted the ship to Russia instead. (89)
Censorship is crucial to Communists, Dodd says. "I have often seen leaders pull books from shelves in homes and warn members to destroy them."(223)
Communism is essentially a deceitful system of international elite control. It was not suppressed during the McCarthy era. Rather it morphed into the New Left, Counter Culture, Civil Rights, Anti War and Woman's Liberation Movements, and later into a plethora of elite-sponsored NGO's, and media, Democratic and Republican party factions, Liberal, Zionist, Labor, Feminist and Gay Rights groups. Like the CPUSA itself, these groups are controlled from the top so their memberships are unaware of being used.
To the objection that some of the above-mentioned groups oppose globalization, Dodd refers to examples where the CPUSA ostensibly supported causes they wished to sabotage. (205)
CONCLUSION
Communism was/is a plot designed to substitute a Masonic Jewish cabal for the rule of God. It is a fraud hatched by the rich to thwart the dreams of ordinary people and stunt human progress. The same cabal is behind most wars including the impending attack on Iran.
A precursor to the new world order, Communism espouses brotherhood, peace and equality in order to deceive us. It has taken over society's eyes, ears, mind and spirit. Much of what passes for truth in the media and schools is part of this monstrous con job. The expression "politically correct" is an old Communist Party term. Our politicians are mostly traitors.
Feminism is Communist both in origin and spirit. It pretends to champion women but in fact neuters both sexes and destroys the basic social unit, the family. The promotion of homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice" for heterosexuals is also part of this brazen elitist fraud designed to "create new types of human beings who would conform..."
Western Civilization is like a ship floundering in a sea of evil, yet the passengers are too duped and distracted to realize it. Bella Dodd had the courage to sound the alarm 75 years ago. It is never too late to begin to resist tyranny.
There are no lifeboats.
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From August 2010
Related - Makow "What is Communism?" - Essentially it is a monopoly on everything - your thought, your children, your freedom, your property and your soul. This is what NSA snooping is partly about.
-----Feminism originated in US Communist Party
--- We Have DeFacto Communism
---- "The Aim of Freemasonry is the Triumph of Communism"
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First Comment from Dan Butler (1955-2018):
The American Communists (CPUSA) were just one country. The Communists were international, so this was being done simultaneously in every country where there were Communists. Mexico was a haven of Communists during the 1930's; Presidente Cárdenas harbored Trotsky in Mexico City from 1936 till 1940. The Catholic clergy had already been purged during the late 1920's by the Freemasonic government of Presidente Plutarco Calles.
Irregular Freemasonry had already been infiltrating the Vatican since the late 19th century. Vatican Secretariat Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, secretly a high Mason was actually elected Pope in the Conclave of 1903. Only the last minute veto of Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph foiled it. Pius X (GiuseppeSarto) became Pope instead. Though traditionalist Catholics believe Pius X was the last great opponent of Freemasonry, his first act as Pope was to abolish the veto power of the Catholic kings. Still, his encyclical 'Pascendi Dominici Gregisi' (On the Doctrine of the Modernists) in which he calls 'Modernism' the "Synthesis of all heresies", and the 1910 'Oath Against Modernism' for all clergy were powerful statements. These however were kicked to the curb with Pope Giacomo Battista (Benedict XV) Lateran Pacts with the Kingdom of Italy and Mussolini in 1929. This established Vatican City as a sovereign state in the Modern world. Even more damning was the 1933 Concordat with the Third Reich, signed by Secretary of State Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII 1939-1958). Although the Reichskonkordat was in no way an endorsement of Nazi policies, it was a capitulation of teachings of Christ, just to preserve Church assets and comfort zone in Germany.
The oldest document we have of a Masonic long-term business plan to infiltrate and take over the Roman Catholic Church is
"The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita". Alta Vendita was the name of the highest lodge of the Italian Masonic terrorist organization called the 'Carbonari'. Pius VII condemned the Carbonari in 1821. The pseudonym of the author was "Piccolo Tigre," codename for Giuseppe Mazzini.
The secret papers of the Alta Vendita Lodge that fell into the hands of Pope Gregory XVI were produced from 1820 to 1846. They were published at the request of Pope Pius IX by Jacques Crétineau-Joly in his work 'The Roman Church and Revolution' in 1861, Pope Pius IX guaranteed the authenticity of these documents with his Imprimatur.
The full text of the 'Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita' can also be found in George E. Dillon's book, Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked.
In the Encyclical Humanum Genus (1884), Leo XIII called upon Catholic leaders to "tear off the mask from Freemasonry and make plain to all what it really is."
"The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita" is out of print and copies have become extremely expensive on Amazon since TAN Book publishers went out of business in 2011.
But you can read about Alta Vendita online here: http://www.catholicvoice.co.uk/dillon/text.htm#14
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'Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked' George F. Dillon, 1884.High Court judges have rejected two Afghan interpreters’ calls for help as the Taliban continues to target those who assisted British occupation forces.
Two men, who worked with UK forces during the conflict, argued they were being discriminated against, despite being targeted by the insurgent group as “infidel spies,” while Iraqi interpreters had been given assistance.
They say the assistance scheme was also unfair because, with some exceptions, it helped interpreters who had left the UK’s service before December 2012.
One of the men, Mohammed Rafi Hottak, who has already claimed asylum in Britain but says he cannot fully access the scheme, said of the UK: “I risked bombs and bullets working for them.
“The people who I considered as friends and family, they are fighting me for my rights and the rights of my friends in Afghanistan.”
READ MORE: ‘Abandoned’: Afghan interpreter refused UK asylum shot by Taliban
The other individual, named only as AL, is still in Afghanistan and says he faces daily death threats.
The two men wanted the 2012 deadline to be dropped so that those who were embedded as “locally engaged staff” with Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) personnel while “doing dangerous and challenging roles” would get assistance.
Rosa Curling, a lawyer at Leigh Day, told the Guardian an appeal would be launched.
“The court clearly recognized that the British forces operating in Afghanistan could not have functioned without the assistance of locally employed staff, including men like our clients, former interpreters who exposed themselves to considerable personal risk.”
She said the dangers were ever present for those who had served alongside UK military and civilian personnel.
“The Taliban have exacted revenge against these locally employed staff, who have been subject to intimidation.
“Some have been attacked and killed. Yet despite this, a scheme equitable to the Iraqi scheme is not available to those Afghans to whom we owe a great debt of honor.”The same day the city’s health commissioner confirmed that two mohels have been banned from practicing the risky circumcision ritual metzitzah b’peh, the health department quietly adopted a more stringent policy against mohels linked to newborns who develop herpes simplex virus-1.
“Moving forward … Every time there is a mohel who performed MbP [metzitzah b’peh] on an infant who has contracted HSV-1, the Health Department will serve them with Commissioner’s orders banning them from performing the ritual,” the new rule says.
A city spokeswoman said that if the mohel tests negative for HSV-1, the ban would be lifted.
The plan is in sharp contrast to the previous policy, which only banned the mohel if both he and the infant tested positive for the same strain of the virus.
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Under both the previous policy and the new one, the city is relying on the mohels to self-enforce. A city spokeswoman said HIPAA rules prevent health officials from releasing the names of banned mohels, but that they expect the mohels to comply and that banned mohels will be hit with a $2,000 fine if they don’t.
In metzitzah b’peh, the mohel sucks on a newborn’s penis to cleanse and draw blood away from the incision. It is practiced by more than 200,000 chasidic and black hat Jews, who see it as a religious mandate. About 5,200 circumcisions with MbP are performed each year in New York City. However, the practice can lead to brain damage or death if the mohel transmits herpes to the newborn in the process. Since 2000, there have been 24 such cases reported. Two of the infants died, and at least two others suffered brain damage.
MbP critics called the change a good first step, while charedi community leaders characterized it a “witch hunt.”
“Do we just blame people by means of association?” said Rabbi Levi Y. Heber, a prominent Crown Heights mohel. “This is what some would call a witch hunt or a modern-day blood libel, where you blame the mohel for something without looking into facts or evidence.”
The city had considered doing DNA testing to confirm that a mohel, and not a family member or caretaker of the infant, was the source of the infection. However, in 2015, the de Blasio administration instead adopted the plan to have the baby and mohel tested to see if the herpes strains matched. (In 2014, a Rockland County health official said that DNA testing exonerated two mohels who were believed to have transmitted herpes to infants they circumcised. Other medical officials have disputed the validity of the finding.)
‘There is the means of testing whether the mohel is the cause or not, and the city is just not interested. If a mohel is linked, he should be banned from the practice. What is the logic of not doing DNA testing?’ — Rabbi Levi Y. Heber, Crown Heights mohel
Asked how the health department can be sure the mohel is the source of the infection if no testing is done to match the strains, a de Blasio spokeswoman said that other factors, such as the timing and location of the outbreak and other data points, give enough information to allow the city to conclude that the mohel is the source.
Rabbi Heber argues that determining that the mohel has HSV-1 is not enough to peg him as the source of the infection because 70 percent of the population has the virus, which causes cold sores. Most cases of neonatal herpes come from the mother during birth. Some come from parents and other caregivers after birth. For example, if the mother touches a cold sore on her lip and then rubs cream on her baby’s bad case of diaper rash, the virus could be transferred that way.
Mohels in Heber’s community would gladly cooperate if the city would determine the source of the infection through DNA testing, he said. “There is the means of testing whether the mohel is the cause or not, and the city is just not interested,” he added. “If a mohel is linked, he should be banned from the practice.
“What is the logic of not doing DNA testing?” he added. “What is the logic to just come out and defame a Jewish religious practice without looking for hard evidence?”
But Marci A. Hamilton, a legal expert on church-state issues and head of the advocacy organization CHILD [Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty] USA, called the new plan “an important and welcome step forward for infant safety.”
The health department’s policies on child health “should be child-centered,” she wrote in an email. “In contrast, deference to a religious organization at the expense of infant health betrays its very reason for existence. The next needed step is enforcement of such a ban. By creating this bright line rule, the department has created predictability and acted on the right side of preventing harm.”
‘The health department has taken an important and welcome step forward for infant safety. … The next needed step is enforcement of such a ban.’ — Marci Hamilton, legal expert, children’s health advocate
Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at NYU who has been a vocal critic of the city’s MbP policy as being too lenient, also praised the new plan. But he agreed with Hamilton that it doesn’t go far enough.
“The health department is certainly pursuing the right strategy in banning these mohels,” he said, “but the first challenge is to … prevent the infants from ever getting it.”
Without any testing, it’s unclear whether the new plan will stand up in court, said Marc Stern, general counsel at the American Jewish Committee and an expert in church-state law.
“It clearly marks a hardening in attitude on the part of the health department, but the immediate question that comes to mind is, frankly, the due process clause,” he said.
“The question is going to be how do you challenge the commissioner’s order and who has the burden of proof, particularly because it’s at least not impossible that people will catch HSV in other ways,” he continued. “You don’t even know if the mohel has HSV. It’s one thing if you ban them temporarily while you figure it out. It’s another if you issue a permanent ban if you’re not sure they’re [the mohel is] the carrier.”
“I imagine what the commissioner is saying is since HSV in infants is unlikely … if a kid comes down with HSV so soon after circumcision with metzitzah b’peh, the presumption is that it passes from the mohel because the other sources are unlikely and therefore an immediate ban is necessary — that will be the argument,” he said.
“I don’t doubt that at the end of day that the department [of health] will find a way to ban people who spread disease through metzitzah b’peh from performing it,” Stern said. “They’re on pretty firm ground at bottom; they’ll just have to find a way to get it done. And we’ll see what the courts say about it.”
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face could be described as non-judgmental, this was it—beautiful and bright with love and acceptance. I wanted her all to myself.
I finally found my voice.
"Oh, you're Ruhi?"
Her: "Yeah?"
Me: "We need to talk."
Her: "We do?"
Me: "Yes, we definitely do."
I didn't know what I needed to talk to her about, but I knew immediately that I needed to spend time with her. She was the one. It was that simple. Attractive. Muslim. A little shorter than I was, which was rare. Perfect. Now all I needed was to talk to her to work out the details of our wedding. I was in a hurry. My "private parts" would not be safe for very much longer.
***
Courting Ruhi was not unlike most young Muslim courtships in America. You tell your mother that you're going to school to study, and then you meet your boyfriend/girlfriend at a coffee shop or at the movies or at a bookstore. On our first date, we tried to keep it halal. We knew the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) had said, "Whenever a man is alone with a woman, the devil makes a third," so we brought along a skinny business major named Rashid. He was technically not a wali, but he was like a brother to us both, so that had to count for something.
We went to BJ's restaurant in downtown Long Beach and ate deep-dish pizza. Rashid and I sat on one side of the booth while Ruhi sat in the center of the other. She was dressed modestly, a purple sweater, thin and V-necked, with a white top underneath—silver hoops swinging from her earlobes. Her eye shadow was dusted with specks of silver glitter, or maybe I am remembering incorrectly. Maybe she was sparkling.
The steaming pan of pizza rested atop our table. Everyone stared at the last thick slice, but no one wanted to appear greedy. Eventually Rashid, with his blessed metabolism, ate it, and through greasy bites—cheese dangling from his lips—broke the awkward silence that had settled over our table.
"So are you guys gonna get married or what?"
In the minds of most Muslims, it is that easy. Find a Muslim girl. Get married. Simple. No personality tests, common tastes in music, complicated feelings, long talks about future goals. "Love" is a manufactured emotion designed by the West to fall in and out of rather than a simple choice. Do it or don't. Period.
"Your kid's skin will look like coffee with too much cream," Rashid teased. In his mind, the wedding was over and we had become parents before the Pizookie had been served for dessert.
Rashid became a fixture in our dating lives, the tagalong kid we couldn't get rid of. For weeks we dated (all three of us) and saw each other on campus, but Ruhi and I needed to be alone. We had heard of a place called The Next Level, and we both decided it was time to take our relationship there without an audience.
***
Less than a month after we'd met, Ruhi's parents left for Tanzania where they were born and raised. They would be there for three weeks. At 19-years-old, Ruhi was old enough to be left behind to finish her semester of college without disruption despite her mother pleading otherwise: "A Muslim girl should not be alone in the house. It is not safe. What if someone finds out she is here by herself?"
Her father reminded her mother that Ruhi was a big girl. There was money in an envelope, gas in the car, relatives nearby. She would be fine. After all, this was not the savannah of Africa. No lion was lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce.
I was no predator, but this was a chance I wasn't willing to pass up. It was 7:45 p.m., Saturday night, when I began my drive down the 405 freeway to Redondo Beach to meet Ruhi alone for the first time. This was going to be my first "real" Rashid-less date with the girl I was beginning to love. Until now, our only time alone had been phone conversations lasting deep into the heart of the night. We traded books and poems, shared stories about growing up. Neither of us had had it easy, but we both had each other to look forward to now. My stomach boomed with anxiety. I played Metallica loudly in the car and yelled along with James Hetfield the whole way there.
My index finger shook above the doorbell to her house. Then she emerged, framed in the doorway, backlit by lamps with severed gazelle hooves for bases. She invited me inside. I was in a different world. On the shelves, Qurans everywhere, a tapestry of Mecca near the door, a million white dots swirling around the Ka'ba. On the opposite wall, a zebra skin splayed out like it had just been skinned. One false move, I thought, and that might be my skin up there if her dad ever caught me in his house... with his daughter... alone.
"Want some chai?" Ruhi asked.
She'd already made some, a pot of black tea and milk brewed thick with cardamom and cloves. She added sugar and served it to me with a cookie on the side—a spongy orange golf ball that she called laddu.
I stirred my chai, blowing into the cup to cool it down.
"Do you think our kids will have skin this color?" I asked.
She didn't look pleased by my query. Too soon, I thought, too soon. Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door. I leapt off my stool, her eyes wide as dinner plates. And then a louder knock. With a family of a thousand cousins and a hundred aunts, many of whom lived in the area, the chances were pretty good that a relative was at the door.
"Hide in my room! Hurry!" Ruhi yanked me into her bedroom, pushed me into the closet, then pulled me out just as fast.
"Outside! Go out the French doors. Hide in the backyard!"
I hurdled over her bed, burst through the double doors into her backyard, and pinned myself against a tree and the stucco wall behind her house. I was shaking. My belly was full of bullet holes and scalding hot chai was leaking out. I wasn't afraid of God. I was afraid of whomever was at the door.
"Hey girl, what are you all dressed up for? Going out?"
It was her cousin, an NBA-tall, slightly gangster-looking guy named Maqbul, I would later learn. He was sent by an auntie. "Trustworthy" is not a word often associated with a young, single, beautiful, Indian-Muslim girl in the U.S.. At least not in Urdu. So a family henchman had been sent over to check on Ruhi.
"I'm not going anywhere. I am staying home."
Through the gap in the drapes, I could see Ruhi and the lanky shadow of Maqbul. It was clear that she was trying to keep him at the front door, out of view of our two cups of half-drunk chai in the kitchen like spilled blood at a crime scene. She had one hand pressed against his chest, her tricep flexing as she pushed him away.
"Get out of here, Maq. I need to take a shower and go to bed."
Good excuse, I thought. He persisted, but Ruhi was strong. He never crossed the threshold. She closed the door behind him, locked it, and came to fetch me from the yard.
"He's gone. You can come in."
"I think I better get going. That was too close," I said, still shaking like an old man with Parkinson's.
That was the end of our first and only date. We were too scared to go out in public. We'd be seen. We'd be caught. We'd be judged. I had to do this the right way or not all.
***
Two months went by. Two months of long letters, coffee on campus, and poetry readings. Ruhi's friends would drag her to my events to hear me read poems, and she would stand in the back blushing when a line about love was clearly aimed at her. She was my muse, and I wanted to hold on to her forever.
It was Sunday, blissfully warm near her home in Redondo Beach. That's where I met her parents in person. I brought my own mother along. My brother, too. We all sat in the parlor, both families, beneath that splayed zebra skin on the wall. It was awkward to be there again—even though I was invited this time.
I proposed. Officially. Halal style. I told her parents how much I loved their daughter, how I would care for her better than I cared for myself, how nothing in this world meant more to me than she did. Everyone was in tears. Mostly me and Ruhi though. We were softies. We had found each other in a peculiar world, and we had nothing left to hide.
Six months later, we married and moved from southern California to Modesto where I landed a full-time, tenure-track teaching position at Modesto Junior College. Once there, we began to create our own world where, for the past twelve years, we have lived and laughed and cried a whole lot more—like when our first son was born and had to spend a week in the NICU; or when our daughter was born, who Ruhi wanted so desperately to be a girl; or when our littlest came out, fired up and pumping his tiny fists. All with skin like coffee with too much cream. All beautiful, alhamdulillah.
Looking back, I regret never having that first "real" date. So some nights, Ruhi and I turn our suburban kitchen into a dance floor. Instead of a strobe light, our oldest son stands on a chair and flicks the light switch on and off. Our daughter picks songs on an iPad as our little guy hops around like a bunny rabbit. But at least admission is free, and our club never closes, and our song never stops playing.
Excerpted from the book SALAAM, LOVE edited by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi. Copyright 2014. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press. All rights reserved.
GuestIn a surprising decision, the Boston Zoning Board of Appeal this week rejected a controversial development in West Roxbury that had the support of Mayor Martin J. Walsh.
Walsh’s support of building 40 condominiums at 425 La Grange St. put him at odds with organized labor, which objected because the project planned to rely partly on prefabricated construction made by nonunion workers. Two city councilors voiced opposition, in addition to a contingent of local residents.
The development had been proposed for the site of the former Armstrong Pharmaceuticals factory, which has been shuttered and damaged by fire. The board of the Boston Redevelopment Authority voted twice to approve development plans, but the project was rejected Tuesday by the Zoning Board of Appeal.
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“I was very surprised by the outcome because the mayor’s office had come in and said they were in favor of the project. I thought that was the kiss of death,” said one neighbor, Robert Stowe, who opposed the project because of its size. “I’ve sat in on a few ZBA hearings, and it always seems to be the kiss of death when the mayor’s office walks in and says the mayor is in favor of it.”
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The developer, Michael Argiros, did not return a phone message seeking comment. One of Argiros’s consultants on the project was Matthew O’Neil, a longtime Walsh friend who was the architect of his 2013 mayoral campaign. In an e-mail, O’Neil acknowledged he had worked on the project but was no longer involved by the time the zoning board voted Tuesday.
A statement issued by Walsh’s spokeswoman, Laura Oggeri, did not address a question about whether O’Neil’s role in the project influenced the mayor’s support.
“The mayor was encouraged that the development changed from rentals to condos after listening to feedback from the community,” Oggeri said. “He supported the project because it provided positive opportunities for homeownership in West Roxbury.”
City Councilor Matt O’Malley said he opposed the project because it was “too large and too dense for the location.”
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“I shared many of the concerns of the direct abutters and don’t feel they were taken as seriously as they should have been by the developers,” O’Malley said.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the development team came under fire for a proposal that included modular construction. Zoning board member Mark Erlich, a leader of the carpenters union, expressed concern about prefabricated materials built out of state.
“It removes a lot of [work] hours that could be done by people who live and work in the city versus people who live in Maine,” Erlich said during the hearing.
In testimony to the board, Tim Sullivan of the West Roxbury Civic & Improvement Association offered a similarly blunt assessment of the prefabricated construction.
“It would be put together out of state,” Sullivan said. “I’m not even sure if it would be union workers that would be used. I feel like it takes away a lot of job opportunities here locally.”
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A representative from Walsh’s office was the only person to testify in favor of the project. Given the opposition from organized labor, it was an interesting stand for Walsh, a longtime labor leader who was a paid advocate for the building trades before being elected mayor.
Andrew Ryan can be reached at acryan@globe.com Follow him on Twitter @globeandrewryanService Sanitation's holiday light display features 100 port-a-potties animated with lights to the sounds of Straight No Chaser's "The Christmas Can-Can." (Photo: Via YouTube)
Service Sanitation has a unique Christmas light display that definitely doesn't stink.
The Gary-based porta-potty business used the roof lights of 100 portable toilets to produce a Christmas light display that can even be seen in space, at least according the YouTube video.
The porta-potty rooftops dance to the sounds of "The Christmas Can-Can" byIndiana University's male a cappella group Straight No Chaser.
If you enjoy what you hear from Straight No Chaser, The Happy Hour Tour featuring the group will be in the Murat Theatre at the Old National Centre at 3 and 8 p.m. on Dec. 21 and 22.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/1AfkZz6One of the essential techniques to learn for any makeup application is contouring—and although it seems intimidating at first, it’s actually fairly easy to master. We recently covered contouring basics, but now we have remixed that article to share some tips and product recommendations for those with darker skin tones.
“When you contour, the underlying idea is the same, no matter what skin tone you’re working with,” says Los Angeles–based makeup artist Brande Bytheway. The end goal? “Contouring is all about playing up your natural features,” says Brande, who recommends practicing and playing around to discover what works on your particular face.
To recap, there are two main techniques in contouring: lowlighting and highlighting. Lowlighting refers to using a darker color wherever there’s an area of the face or feature you want to recede or de-emphasize. Highlighting is the opposite: using lighter colors on areas you want to emphasize or bring forward.
Here’s how to perform basic contouring and highlighting on the cheeks, eyes, and nose, plus product picks! As Brande notes, AJ Crimson’s line of makeup offers a really wide range of foundation shades and BBs to fit most any skin tone.
Cheeks
If you’re a beginner, try out the technique on the cheeks first—it’s really simple. For this look, we started with a clean base using AJ Crimson BB+D cream in Shade 7. Then, using a medium angle brush, we applied Inglot Eye Shadow #63 AMC, a matte shade, on the hollow of the cheeks (or right underneath the cheekbone). That’s the lowlight, and every time you do a lowlight, you want to balance with a highlight. In this case, we used Inglot AMC Multicolour Bronzing Powder #87 along the cheekbones to bring them forward.
If you’re adding luminizer on dark skin, Brande suggests a bronze-based product like this, rather than something pearl-based. “This will give you more of overall natural glow. If you’re color is too pearly, on dark skin, it can look like you have a line of frost,” she says. Brande also noted AJ Crimson’s wide range of foundation and BB shades. “The range is wide enough that almost any skin tone will find something that works,” she says.
Nose
Here, we did light contouring on the nose, using the same lowlight and highlight shades we used on the cheeks (see above) Starting at the inner corner of the brow, we brushed a small amount of the lowlight shadow along both sides of the nose. Then we applied the highlight down the bridge of the nose. To finish, we blended the two together with a clean brush.
Eyes
Contouring and highlighting the eyes can really make them pop. For this look, we started with Inglot Eye Shadow #327 and Inglot AMC Pressed Powder in 68 as the lowlight, applying it into the crease and blending well. Then, we countered that with a highlight brushed right along the brow bone—we used blended two shades here, Inglot Eye Shadow #312 and #405. We finished the eyes with Anastasia Brow Wiz in Ebony on brows.
For darker skin, Brande suggests choosing a highlight shade that has yellow or orange in it. “If you pick a product with too much of a cool undertone,” she explains, “it can look ashy once it oxidizes, as though it’s floating on top of the complexion. A peachy shade like Inglot’s #312 works well on dark tones, because it will blend in and give you a nice bright pop,” she says.
Finishing Touches
To complete the look, we added cream highlighter (Luminize from Too Faced’s Natural Face Palette) to the higher plans of the face—the cheekbones, brow ridge, and down the bridge of nose. Lastly, we layered Inglot Lipstick #410 under Too Faced Summer Sun Shines Lip Gloss in Papaya Slushie on the lips. Done!We grow up with certain beliefs about ourselves and our lives and expectations that things should work out a certain way. Then, we change, our lives change, and we start to realize that things aren’t going as we had expected. This can be in our relationships, with our families, in our careers, or anything else.
How do we get to a place where we can think clearly about our lives, accept them, and then take steps to change what is not working?
Let’s take an example of a mom of an 11-month-old, who never thought she would need a break from her child, and especially never thought she would let her child watch TV so she could decompress. Now let’s say that the mother turns out to be pretty exhausted, having had no idea how exhausting it is to care for a child all day. Let’s say the baby has had a terribly fussy day, the mom is feeling lonely and isolated, and she is really at her breaking point. If this mother is not good at acceptance, she will do one of the following:
She will turn on the TV for the baby. She feels bad about herself and needs a coping mechanism in her mind to deal with these negative feelings. So, she will say, “That’s not TV! That’s an educational DVD! That doesn’t count!” This is changing her reality to match her preconceived expectations. But she isn’t really fooling herself. She keeps thinking in the back of her mind, “Why am I using TV to babysit my kid? I never would have thought I would be so lazy.”
She will not allow herself to turn on the TV because this would make her have to question her long-held beliefs about herself and what a good parent should do. So, she will keep walking around and around with her baby, possibly even on the verge of tears, and thinking of herself as a bad parent anyway, even though she isn’t using the TV. She wanted to use the TV, and she doesn’t have a smile on her face with the baby, and why should one fussy baby be so tough to deal with?
Neither of these two options helps this mother to cope with her situation in a healthy and adaptive way because she has not accepted her new life story. And her new life story is the following: “I am not a perfect mom. I am pretty bad with getting no sleep. I actually think that having the baby watch TV isn’t that bad, now that I am a parent, and not a pregnant person thinking about what it will be like to be a parent.”
If she can accept this new normal, she can even think about alternate coping strategies, such as, “I know I am terrible with getting no sleep, so I can take a nap when the baby naps in the morning instead of schlepping us both to baby music class.” Or, “I should find a sitter for a couple afternoons a week so I can take a nap or at least have someone else to hand the baby to.” Or even, “We are going to watch TV every day from 3-3:30 and I am just going to accept that is our new schedule, and hopefully it will take some stress out of my life.”
None of these new solutions would have entered the mind of this mom before she engaged in acceptance. She would be too busy pretending she wasn’t having a hard time, or castigating herself for having a hard time, or having a nervous breakdown.
Here is another example that I see frequently in couples counseling: a woman married a man hoping/assuming/expecting that he would settle down and stop wanting to party so much with his friends after they got married and had kids. Instead, he goes out nearly as frequently, leaving her to care for the kids and feeling lonely and resentful. She vacillates between two coping mechanisms to deal with her anger and sadness:
Saying to anyone who will listen, “I’m totally cool with Jason going out at night! He has a tough job and needs to decompress! And he was always this way!” This would be wonderful if she meant it, but in this case, she doesn’t. She knows that she doesn’t too, and every time she says something like this to others, she ends up feeling even more upset and lashing out at her husband that evening, along with wondering why she can’t just really feel “totally cool with Jason going out” in her heart.
Getting enraged and screaming at her husband, “What is wrong with you that you have no sense of responsibility? Don’t you know what it means to be a parent? Do I have to do everything around here? “This, as you might imagine, leads to a big blowup. It also leads to her feeling guilty, thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why do I explode like that?”
Here is another time when acceptance can help. She can learn to accept that her husband still has the desire to go out and party, even with kids at home, and that she is not okay with this.
She previously wanted her life story to be: “After we got married, we both settled down and stopped partying.” But this is not happening, and if she accepts this, her new story is: “After we got married, I wanted to stop partying, and Jason didn’t, and I felt hurt.” This story represents reality, objectively, and does not cast anyone in the role of villain.
If this wife accepts this story, she can now look for solutions. One could be asking Jason to go to couples counseling about this issue. Another could be figuring out why his going out triggers her so much and why it was so important to her to have a husband who wants to stay home a lot (reasons for this may be rooted in her childhood experience in her family of origin). A third could be thinking outside the box: would she feel happier and less resentful if she, too, got time to go out with friends?
Each of these solutions would rewrite this woman’s life story in different ways. Now the story could be, “We went to counseling and figured out a compromise about going out versus staying home and we’re doing better now.” Or, “I realized that I associated going out with my dad, who was always going out drinking and was unreliable. So I didn’t want either of us to go out after having kids. But really I think I would like to go out more myself, and I also want to ask Jason to promise never to drive drunk, since that does really bother me.”
Allowing yourself to rewrite your life story can be liberating. You can finally be objective about what is and is not working for you, without shame or judgment. You can work on coming up with solutions to your problems rather than pretending they don’t exist or that they will magically resolve themselves. And most important, you can rewrite your life story into one that makes you feel proud.
Acceptance and Rewriting Your Life StoryKiwi UFC star Mark Hunt has set up a management company to help young athletes avoid the mistakes he made.
Casually dressed in one of Auckland's swanky Viaduct restaurants, Mark Hunt sports a diamond-layered wedding ring that immediately catches the eye.
An impulse buy he regularly takes off for sparring, it's just one outlandish error of judgment the Kiwi UFC star made during his 26-year career in combat sports.
"There's a $30,000 mistake right there," Hunt said, pointing to his ring.
With two contractual appearances left in the UFC, Hunt is starting to make plans for life after fighting by setting up a management company to help others avoid the many pitfalls in his brutal industry.
He remains determined as ever to claim the heavyweight title – his next fight is expected to be against a top five contender in Brisbane in March after a dominant first round TKO win in his rematch with 'Bigfoot' Silva last month. But, as the transition draws closer, the 41-year-old realises the need to make alternative plans. He can't fight forever.
His first step into post-fight life was his Juggernaut apparel and he's now teamed up with businessman Mark Keddell, who has come on board as director, to create a management arm of the same company.
Hunt has been there, done that, and wants to draw on those experiences to guide emerging prospects, as well as entertainers. With strong connections across Asia and America, Hunt believes not only can he get fighters in the door but help them carve out a successful sustainable career.
"I've talked about it for a while. We've just got to put a few contracts in place. I've already put 11 fighters into a company in Japan," Sydney-based Hunt said.
"There's so many crooks in this business. At the end of it the fighter gets the last bit. I want it to be different; I want the fighter to get what he deserves and not be cheated. If you get the right combination of fighter with team, they're unstoppable. Mike Tyson was one of the good ones before he got ripped off. There's a lot of fighters that make serious coin.
"I've fallen many times as a human, as a person, and as a fighter. I know the holes to steer away from and how to patch them up. If you have the right team you don't fall into those. All they have to do is worry about fighting. They don't have to worry about who is taking what from them.
"There's nothing worse than seeing a fighter lose because he's lost outside the ring."
Unlike many sports in Australasia that have systems to educate up-and-coming athletes about financial management, especially investment and superannuation plans, those in the fight arena are often left to find their own way.
This can lead to unexpected tax bills appearing and promoters who promise the world only to leave fighters bankrupt.
David Tua's slide from the top of heavyweight boxing to hardship provides a high-profile New Zealand example.
"The NRL and rugby they have camps where they teach the players how to spend their money," Hunt said.
"I've had to find out the hard way. It hasn't been easy. I've made many mistakes. I've lost millions of dollars – spent millions of dollars because no-one told me how to use it.
"When you get to the top that's when the battle begins. You've got to have your troops on point for when the sharks come circling. There's some really talented kids out there right now. They just need the right team behind them."Story highlights Vigil at Sikh temple one year after murders brings people from all faiths hurt by gun violence
Valarie Kaur: Most people know Aurora or Newtown but don't remember Oak Creek
Now, hate crimes lists includes Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs, Buddhists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses
Kaur: Oak Creek will keep fighting gun violence despite all the setbacks in reform
The other night was one of the most sacred and extraordinary events of my life as an advocate. A gathering of people from all around our country with one thing in common: a desire to stop the gun violence that plagues their lives and continues to plague our nation.
One would anticipate the one-year anniversary vigil to be small and somber. Most people I meet know Aurora and Newtown but draw a blank when they hear Oak Creek. It simply blurs into the string of horrific mass shootings last year that each time failed to yield the solutions to gun violence that we were desperate for.
And yet, more than 1,000 people of all faiths and backgrounds gathered in Wisconsin for the vigil with many more watching online. Holding candles and wearing scarves and turbans in solidarity, they listened to survivor stories of Oak Creek and other national tragedies, from Virginia Tech to Newtown
Valarie Kaur
Rather than a solemn affair, the Sikh Americans of Oak Creek interwove tearful testimonies with multifaith prayer and music, stories and songs that repeatedly lifted up the Sikh spirit of "Chardi Kala," everlasting optimism and high spirits even in hardship and suffering.
The Oak Creek mass shooting was a national tragedy. It was the biggest act of violence against a faith community since the 1963 Alabama church bombings. But it is also a story of how a community got up from being floored and organized for concrete social and political change. In a time when many who want gun violence prevention legislation are frustrated and tempted to give up, Oak Creek offers hope and inspiration.
Immediately after the mass shooting, the Sikh community rightly understood the Oak Creek tragedy was part of a history of discrimination on the basis of race and religion. Sikhs in Oak Creek joined civil rights groups and allies in a national grassroots campaign calling for the FBI to track hate crimes against Sikhs and others vulnerable to violence.
Amardeep Kaleeka, whose father was killed fighting the Sikh temple gunman, speaks at the vigil.
Their work resulted in a historic Senate hearing on the rise of domestic terrorism and hate crimes in America. On September 19, 2012, Harpreet Singh Saini, a teenager whose mother was gunned down in the prayer hall, became the first Sikh in U.S. history to testify before Congress.
"I want to protect other people from what happened to my mother," Harpreet said. "I want to combat hate, not just against Sikhs but against all people. Senators, I know what happened at Oak Creek was not an isolated incident. I fear it may happen again if we don't stand up and do something."
JUST WATCHED Remembering Wisconsin temple shooting Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Remembering Wisconsin temple shooting 01:18
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Harpreet asked the government to give his mother the dignity of being counted in hate crimes statistics. On Friday, after a year of concerted organizing, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice will finally begin to track hate crimes against Sikh Americans, Hindus, Arabs, Buddhists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Orthodox Christians. They will be counted on the Hate Crime Incident Report form for the first time.
Although adding categories to an incident report might seem like a minor improvement, it is not. It's impossible to combat the problem of hate-based violence in America without acknowledging that it exists. The policy change is an important crime-fighting tool and a civil rights victory for a community that has suffered discrimination, especially since 9/11.
Quick action that galvanized Oak Creek in the wake of tragedy helped get this done. But it was also the result of more than a decade of sustained effort by determined community advocates, such as the Sikh Coalition, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund and South Asian Americans Leading Together.
Now, some Sikh Americans are joining the movement against gun violence for the first time. Amardeep Singh Kaleka, whose father Satwant Singh Kaleka was killed fighting the gunman in the shooting, has become a prominent voice against gun violence. His brother, Pardeep Singh Kaleka, teamed up with former white supremacist Arno Michaelis to educate young people about the roots of violence. They helped the Sikh youth of Oak Creek found Serve2Unite in the aftermath of the mass shooting.
"We refused to let that act define what we became," said Oak Creek Mayor Steve Scaffidi. "We can accomplish something. We can make a change that's real. We don't have to wait for Washington or someone else to do it."
As a Sikh American, I was deeply inspired that the vigil honored all victims of gun violence. The ceremony began and ended with a reading of the names of people murdered by guns -- a school in Newtown, a theater in Aurora, the streets of Chicago and daily homicides that barely make headlines.
Between stories of victims, the drums of Native American tribes flowed into Sikh prayers and the voices of a children's choir. The vigil also featured an array of representatives from some 45 groups who worked with Sikhs since the tragedy, including Groundswell at Auburn Seminary, a multifaith social action network of 100,000 people of faith I helped found.
The movement against gun violence has not fizzled out. Even in the midst of the distractions of the next day's news cycle, we must remain focused in the pursuit of solutions that make our streets and schools, homes and houses of worship, safer for all. Young Sikh Americans are among the many new voices that can re-energize the movement.
After all, the story of Oak Creek teaches us the way forward beyond the passage of reasonable legislation such as background checks. It reminds us to focus on curbing the impulse to violence and hate in our own homes and hearts. And it shows us how to keep working even when times are bleak -- in Chardi Kala, a spirit of relentless optimism.In many places worldwide, such as Devils Tower in Wyoming and the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland (image), ancient lavas cooled into hexagonal blocks or columns. The big geological mystery: Why that particular shape? Using the same sort of computer simulations engineers employ to analyze stresses in bridges and aircraft parts, researchers analyzed the stresses within a thick slab of lava as it solidified. They found that as the material at the surface cooled, it shrank more quickly than the underlying lava, which was still warm. That shrinkage led to a random pattern of cracks that typically intersected at 90° angles. But as the material cooled and shrank further and cracks grew downward into the solidifying slab, small cracks began to consolidate into large ones and the angles between them gradually shifted toward 120°—the angle at which the most energy is released, the researchers report online this week in Physical Review Letters. Those 120° angles—the same angle between two adjacent sides of a hexagon—are generally maintained until the lava completely cools, which leads to the overall shape and pattern of blocks so commonly seen in nature, the researchers explain.elitefts Classic Originally Published in 2010
“During the past decade, the board press has become one of the most popular bench training movements,” says EliteFTS founder and CEO Dave Tate. “Whether the use of boards involves the dynamic effort method, max effort method, using it as a basic supplementary exercise or as an exercise to increase triceps strength and development, board presses remain at the top for bench training movements.”
Board Benefits
Lifters use boards for a variety of different reasons. Dave believes the most important and widely used purpose for boards is to increase/correct the mini-max or sticking point.
Increase/Correct Mini-Max: “Wherever your mini-max happens to be, overload that specific area of the bench press where you’re weak,” says Dave. “You’ll develop more strength through that range of motion.”
“Wherever your mini-max happens to be, overload that specific area of the bench press where you’re weak,” says Dave. “You’ll develop more strength through that range of motion.” Tricep Development: This is more for athletes or bodybuilders. A great exercise you can try is “Tricep Hell”(see example toward end of article).
This is more for athletes or bodybuilders. A great exercise you can try is “Tricep Hell”(see example toward end of article). Handle Heavy Weight: With boards, you’ll have heavier weights in your hands, but you’ll be working with only a partial range of motion. This is easier on your CNS, which makes for a faster recovery. “When you actually compete or go for a max,” says Dave, “the weight will feel lighter because you’ve handled it, and even heavier weight, before.”
With boards, you’ll have heavier weights in your hands, but you’ll be working with only a partial range of motion. This is easier on your CNS, which makes for a faster recovery. “When you actually compete or go for a max,” says Dave, “the weight will feel lighter because you’ve handled it, and even heavier weight, before.” Confidence: Because you’ve handled a certain weight before, you’ll now have the confidence – or at least a good starting point, psychologically – to bench it through a full range of motion.
Because you’ve handled a certain weight before, you’ll now have the confidence – or at least a good starting point, psychologically – to bench it through a full range of motion. Rehab/Prehab: Boards can help you with the movement you want. If you have shoulder problems, you can take the shoulder rotation out of the bench press by using boards. “Pressing on boards will bring the |
) in the West Bank over the past six weeks, Ias says he has witnessed "a process of ethnic cleansing that has been going on since the start of the occupation".
"I've seen people whose homes have been demolished in the middle of the night by dozens of soldiers, people who are left with nothing. I've seen Bedouin villages without running water or electricity next to Israeli settlements with total control over water resources. I've seen people denied their basic human rights and any hope for the future. You can't experience that without it changing you."
Last Saturday, a group of 150-200 Palestinians and international activists set off on a bicycle ride through the Jordan valley to visit villages in an act of solidarity. As they reached route 90, the main road running north to south through the valley, they found their way blocked by the Israel Defence Forces.
According to Ias, the soldiers said the cyclists could not proceed "for security reasons". There was a standoff. "We were very peaceful, singing songs, clapping hands. It was a good, empowering experience, people were happy," he said.
But as one of the organisers moved forward, Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner, the deputy commander of the Jordan Valley Brigade who was in charge of the operation, removed his rifle. "He obviously wanted us to move back, but he didn't say anything."
According to Ias's account, a Dutch activist was pushed to the ground and a Palestinian man was struck from behind. Then Eisner slammed the base of his rifle into Ias's face. "I fell to the ground. I was surprised and disoriented. I didn't feel any pain until later."
Eisner, who was forbidden to speak directly to the media, gave a different version of events to colleagues and friends. He said the activists were armed with sticks and were violent, and that one had hit him, breaking a finger. But, he added, "these stories do not interest the chief of staff or my commander. We know the history of these anarchists. They came with sticks and broke my hand – but no one will tell and film that."
He said his actions were necessary. "It was a two-minute confrontation so, yes, it's true that some pictures look bad, but I used a weapon in a [non-lethal] manner and I did not put anyone's life in danger."
Eisner – who was seen in the video wearing a type of kippah associated with the national-religious settler movement – and his colleagues claimed that the clip uploaded to YouTube was edited to distort the incident and cut out violence by the activists. Ias rejects this, saying the organisers have offered to hand over the unedited footage to the Israeli media to prove there was "no aggression, no attempt to violence, not a single stone picked up".
The military, which routinely films such incidents, mainly for intelligence-gathering, has not produced any footage.
Ias was taken to hospital in Jericho for treatment, later rejoined the activists, and "went home feeling it was just another incident in a lot of incidents I have seen in the past few weeks. I didn't expect it to have any consequences at all."
But the video was picked up and broadcast by Israeli television on Sunday – the same day the Israeli authorities launched a big security operation to prevent hundreds of international activists landing at Ben Gurion airport to attend a week of solidarity actions in the West Bank.
By Monday, the video had appeared on countless news websites and the story was running in papers round the world. The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the president, Shimon Peres, and the military's chief of staff, Benny Gantz, all made statements saying Eisner's actions were unacceptable and in breach of Israeli military standards of conduct.
On Wednesday, Eisner was dismissed from his post for two years although he has been allowed to remain in the army.
"The incident that took place in the Jordan river valley is extremely serious and in absolute contradiction with [IDF] ethics," an army spokesman said. "There are different bodies, some of them anarchists and belligerent war instigators, disparaging our soldiers to create a buzz in the media, but we must maintain IDF ethics and avoid getting dragged into a provocation."
Eisner told colleagues: "I did not expect this to be the decision. I thought they accepted my version of events and understood it. They showed me the door out. I need to digest the decision and then plan my future."
He said he did not "accept this as a moral failure in any way [but] it could have been a professional mistake to use a weapon in front of the cameras".
Ias is taking legal advice on the possibility of a civil suit against the officer.
After finishing high school in Aarhus, the young Dane worked in factories and hotels to save money for his trip to the West Bank. He arrived in mid-February, and will leave in three weeks when his tourist visa expires. He attended a two-day workshop in Ramallah to learn about his legal rights as an international activist, non-violent protest and Palestinian culture. He did not plan to spend any time in Israel.
"The ISM differs from other international solidarity groups in that we are willing to try to actively oppose the occupation, rather than just monitor it," Ias said. "We will use our bodies to intervene, to challenge. So if we see soldiers trying to grab Palestinians at a demo, we will hold on to them to make the arrest difficult."
But, he added: "I've not been presented with one single incident of ISM members being violent. I've not seen any statements espousing terrorism. The ISM is founded on principles of non-violence."
He said the international community had a duty to intervene when wrong was being done. "The colour of my skin and my nationality gives me great privileges. We have to use that to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians."
The Israeli government rejects the image of the ISM as peace activists. "They parade themselves as a non-violent movement but they refuse to condemn suicide bombings or attacks by Palestinians on innocent civilians," said the government spokesman Mark Regev. "They educate their members in an aggressively anti-Israel position. They never criticise human rights abuses on the Palestinian side."
This, Regev stressed, did not justify the actions of the Israeli soldier.
The incident triggered wide debate in Israel about activism and the power of the camera. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, has been giving cameras to Palestinians for several years, encouraging them to document the behaviour of Israeli soldiers. The IDF has trained around 100 combat soldiers to use video cameras, partly to identify protesters, partly to counter what they see as activist propaganda, and sometimes to use in internal investigations.
Many commentators have pointed out that the IDF would not have taken action over the incident had it not been filmed and broadcast round the world. But, Ias said, his nationality and skin colour contributed to the attention. "The global media wouldn't care at all if a Palestinian had been hit in the face with a rifle."Real Madrid now know for a fact that Man United are willing to do business this transfer window.
During one of the meetings between representatives of the two clubs over David de Gea, the talks took an unexpected turn. To the surprise of Real Madrid, the English contingent changed the focus of the conversation. "And is Raphaël Varane for sale?" More important than exactly how the question was phrased, what matters is that it was asked.
Real Madrid know for a fact that United are interested in signing the French centre-back. And that is not all. To add to their unease, the English outfit insinuated that they would be willing to spend a significant sum on Varane.
However, Real's response was categorical: the young central defender is not for sale and there is absolutely no way that they are going to sit down and negotiate a deal for him.
Nevertheless, United's interest underscores the importance of making sure the player is happy and feels like an important part of the team to prevent any problems in the short term.
Varane wants to stay, but he wants a promotion. On the contrary, the possibility of him leaving the Bernabéu might arise. And if that happens, United will be waiting with open arms to offer the France international everything he wants in order to prise him away from 'Los Blancos'.[quote="masondoggy, post:3, topic:294339"]
So let me see if I have this right. Now I can march into my local Catholic hospital and demand a sex change operation and they can't refuse me? Good golly I hope I'm reading this wrong.
[/quote]
The law prevents discrimination against people who have already had the surgery. The line is "who they are".
"This announcement affirms that all patients in federally funded health care settings must be treated equally and may not be denied care simply because of who they are," Rupert said. "We are grateful to HHS for clarifying this important policy and providing transgender people with the security of knowing they are included in the administration’s commitment to the health and well-being of all Americans."
Up to this point any health care provider could deny any treatment to a transgendered person only because they were transgendered-something you kind of have to tell your physician. Such a person could go into an ER because of an accident or sudden illness and a physician could refuse to treat them because of their personal beliefs about those people who have had that type of surgery.Evidence of Islamic State atrocities needs to be collected urgently to ensure it is not lost and that those responsible for “the worst crimes of our generation” eventually face justice, the human rights barrister Amal Clooney has said.
Massacres of the Yazidi people, murders, gang rapes, forcing children to become soldiers and the operation of slave markets should not go unpunished by the international courts, she told a conference on accountability for crimes in Syria and Iraq. Clooney is working as counsel to survivors of Iraq’s Yazidi community, which was overrun by Isis fighters in 2014. She is assembling records and testimony with the aim of bringing charges against captured and fugitive Isis soldiers and commanders.
Isis views Yazidis as the “worst type of infidel” because they do not have a holy book, Clooney explained. She added that men were separated from women and executed shortly after Mosul was attacked three years ago. Boys who had hair under their arms and appeared to have entered puberty were declared to be adults and shot too.
Who are the Yazidis and why is Isis hunting them? Read more
Yazidi girls over the age of eight and under the age of 40 were sold through slave markets set up by Isis, she said. Some were sold over the internet. Many were gang-raped. But Islamic State was also a “bureaucracy of evil” and left behind a trail of evidence, according to Clooney. It created documents recording the identity of foreign fighters and certificates of slave ownership.
About 50 mass graves have been discovered, while tens of thousands of Yazidi refugees who can testify have now reached Germany.
“All of this evidence is going to be lost if it’s not collected soon,” Clooney warned. “Mass graves are being contaminated as relatives dig for remains of their loved ones. Documents are not being gathered. Witnesses are being dispersed around the world. They are increasingly reluctant to to speak about these cases.”
Various legal routes are being explored in the hope of bringing Isis fighters to justice, involving lobbying at the United Nations, which has already launched an investigation into war crimes in Syria. “The UK government has been taking the lead,” Clooney said. “They have been making it a priority to launch an investigation and have drafted a resolution.” The Iraqi government, however, has not sent a letter authorising it.
Another possibility is to prosecute former Isis fighters who have fled back to their home countries. As many as 15,000 foreign fighters are believed to come from states that are members of the international criminal court and are therefore within its jurisdiction.
“I believe that the crimes committed by Isis in Iraq are some of the worst of our generation,” Clooney said. “Medieval types of violence were being committed in which there were slave markets. This is a test not just for the Iraqi government, but for the United Nations and international law.”
The lecture was in memory of the international lawyer John Jones QC, who died last year after being struck by a train. Clooney shared offices at Doughty Street Chambers with Jones, who specialised in war crimes tribunal work and death penalty cases. She remembered him as a “close friend who was admired and loved”.
A German federal prosecutor, Christian Ritscher, told the conference that war crimes cases against former Syrian militiamen who had fled to Germany were already being taken through the country’s domestic courts. A warrant for genocide charges against Isis fighters was also being prepared, he revealed.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said a UN-backed investigative unit was already gathering evidence about war crimes in Syria, although it was not preparing criminal charges. He welcomed the decision of a Spanish court this week to assert its right to hear cases relating to Syria under universal jurisdiction.
Iraq has about 5,000 prisoners who have been detained during the conflict, Al Hussein said. Iraqi courts often rely on confessions, and the death penalty is often handed down to defendants who are not even represented in court. It would better, he suggested, if Iraq joined the ICC.QR Code Link to This Post
I am offering one free tattoo to each person who is interested. I can only do one or two each day as this is very stressful for me and I tend to get jittery over time. I don’t want people showing up once my hands start shaking. Please don’t drink the night before as this will cause you to bleed more and it will be much more difficult to do the tattoo. Also, don't try to show up drunk either.I ask that you bring a photo or sketch of the item that you would like tattooed. The tattoo should not be larger than a 4x6 photograph as anything larger than that will just take me way too long. I would really prefer to do smaller tattoos. If you would like a large tattoo, I can do the outline for you and then you can go to another shop to get it finished off. I will do my best to give you a tattoo that somewhat resembles what you bring in. I can show you a few on my own tattoos that I did myself and the objects which I modeled them after. If you like one of my tattoos, I can do one like it as that would be easier.If anyone is looking for a tattoo of a black geometric object such as a square, triangle, or cube that would be a good choice. Circles are still somewhat difficult for me.A few more conditions on the free tattoo: no burley-men this includes bikers, rugby players, Marines, body-builders, boxers, or inmates. You should not have a significant other, brother, sister, mother or father that is a burley-person. If your biceps are larger than my neck, please don’t respond. Also, if you know martial arts or own a gun, forget about it. If more than 90% of your flesh is tattooed, please go to your regular shop as they will be happy to see you. Actually, I would prefer people who are not capable of kicking my ass.Please remember that I am doing my best to provide you a free service and I would appreciate it if people don’t come back to me with complaints like my ex-significant other. Yes, you know who you are and you are such a sissy! Perhaps, for the first few people who respond, we can do the tattoo in a discreet place on your body; somewhere that won’t stand out in case you don’t like it.No minors allowed. Sorry I will need to check your identification to verify.I ask for nothing in return. Maybe a smile when you leave :)By Jason Newell:
America is facing a stark reality in the near future: automation is going to contribute to a mass displacement of the world’s manufacturing workforce. And it’s just mind boggling that this impending reality wasn’t thoroughly discussed by major candidates during the previous election cycle. If I recall correctly, there was one instance where one of the early Republican Primary candidates brought up automation: Marco Rubio mentioned the changing economic paradigm during a debate
Marco’s decision to invoke this topic echoed millennial sentiments as many of those within this demographic understand the changing nature of the world’s economy. Economic manufacturing of old is giving way to rapid technological advancement of new. I assume that it’s a tough pill to swallow for the baby boomer generation. Domestic manufacturing is becoming peripheral in terms of importance when compared with modern globalization. More specifically, comparative advantage is a more appealing business objective because it affords companies the ability to cut cost drastically.
Furthermore, Union power is being eroded. The argument against Union power is their advocacy in favor of dues and economic protectionism. However, Unions are one of the least important reasons for companies moving overseas. In reality, overseas incentives include, but aren’t limited to, low wages, enormous tax cuts, and an overall decrease in oversight. Many of these business perks are created through pro-corporate trade deals, such as NAFTA and the TPP. For the most part, these trade deals are cloaked under the guise of “creating new jobs,” but this is somewhat a deceitful expectation because these deals often cause the opposite effect in developed nations like the United States. Trade deals have a strong impact on domestic job losses – this is true, but the other side of the equation brings us back to automation.
It’s estimated, that by 2021, the US will lose 6% of its entire workforce to automation. Moreover, a 2013 Oxford study anticipates that around half of the US workforce will be at risk of replacement due to automation. The main premise for the future job losses is the cognitive development of robotics. Basically, starting in 2021, robotic technology will advance to a point whereby telemarketing, manufacturing, and other well-known processes give way to rapid robotic inclusion.
Nonetheless, while this scenario appears damaging to current and future American employees, there is a way to mitigate the robotic wave. One such solution is to subsidize technical and scientific-centric education in order to retain some employees displaced by rapid automation. Automation will require individuals to oversee maintenance and functionality of robotic systems, not much different than how computer systems are managed. This strategy proved to be successful during the 1930s, through WW2 and beyond. Massive manufacturing initiatives were instituted with the growing threat of both German and Japanese aggression leading up to the Great War. In order to fulfill these more advanced positions, the federal government subsidized education revolving around manufacturing demands and necessities. This investment assisted in the development of America’s middle class workforce – along with strong unions and good pay of course.
In the end, it’s crucial for leaders on both sides of the aisle to discuss automation. A refusal to accept this potentially stark reality may lead to massive social change, or even worse, social unrest. It’s more of a “wait and see” game at this point, but hopefully a well-known visionary will come forward and inform America that it needs to put her snow tires on before she hits the mountain pass.
Please check out the following documentary on Automation:
AdvertisementsTypical of this shambles of a club that not even an hour after a brilliant press conference from Leeds Fans LLP a classic meltdown ensued. While fans were feverishly favouriting mutual support of fan ownership, the megalomaniacs at board level had plans to derail the entire club.
Without warning, without obvious provocation and without sensible justification, assistant coach Steve Thompson was suspended with immediate effect. This was more than a disciplinary action, as word circulated that his contract would not be renewed at the end of the season – this was a sacking.
Much like the shambles that Brian McDermott stepped into post sacking, Neil Redfearn walked into the Blackburn press conference woefully ill-equipped to answer the questions thrown at him. He did a superb job in difficult circumstances, but it was apparent that Neil was completely in the dark. He repeatedly cited the enormous contribution “Thommo” made to the club and the statistics support this. Steve’s addition to the back-room staff were transformative, or at least the effect on the pitch seemed to be.
The fact that Redders suddenly had help, a peer to bounce ideas off and someone to share the workload. Where Leeds were struggling to keep their heads above water, gasping for every point like it might be our last, post-Thommo we seemed more assured. Steve managed to “fix” Luke Murphy for one, and many of the players cited him as a positive influence. To lose this important character shows appalling mismanagement.
“I’d rather earn £10 my way than £100 yours”
Or at least that’s the feeling I get from our owners (I’m avoiding citing Cellino specifically because he’s supposedly banned, but it’d be ridiculous to assume the actions are anyone’s but his). I don’t see any rationale for suspending a man who was performing very well in his role. Unless it turns out he’s assaulted someone in a Clarkson-esque way, I’m really not sure on what basis he’d lose his position.
Especially when Redders is totally blind to whatever has happened. Neil stated in the press conference that Nicola Salerno was the signature on Thommo’s letter, which seems strange considering I wouldn’t expect him to have that authority. As it stands, I’d only expect Andrew “the puppet” Umbers to be able to enforce such a move, but things are never as they seem at Leeds.
Redders to leave?
With bookies slashing odds on our very own Redders to walk away, the club has been suddenly cast into turmoil. He cut a dejected figure in the press conference, understandably expressing that he felt undermined and I expect that was a very deliberate ploy from the club. I just don’t understand why.
I’ve been pretty clear in my support of Redders and the academy vision, in that if we had £10bn I’d still keep him and the current vision going. I believe in it, a lot of us do, and the owners are trying to destroy it for their own selfish means.
Leeds’ best chance of being promoted comes from within, from the players we have trained, nurtured and selected over the past decade. Neil Redfearn has been leading this side of the club for 6 years and is the best man to lead us forward under this vision. Creating a climate where his position is untenable throws the club into familiar chaos once again.
Contracts, kids and Premiership buyers
Lewis Cook specifically cited Massimo’s ownership situation as a barrier for him signing an updated contract. In players like Cook, Mowatt and Byram we have talent above our level. It’s hardly a leap to expect Premiership teams to come in for them but I was confident of us retaining important youngsters under Redders. They buy into his leadership, into his vision and the fact that anyone can play in the first team if they’re good enough.
With Dawson, Phillips, Walters (etc) coming through, it’s an exciting time. Or it was when I felt we’d have a head-coach/manager who would nurture and utilise the talent coming through. Let’s not forget that Dave Hockaday was prepared to sell Alex Mowatt, arguably our player of the season. It’s hard to imagine a non-Redders manager giving Cook games ahead of Bianchi, which we know to be the right decision.
I’m not confident of the club retaining talented young players without Neil Redfearn, but for some reason the owners are doing everything they can to alienate him. Specifically by removing his key partner and ally they weaken his position at the club. I sense they’re trying to force him out, I just don’t have any understanding of why.
I sense it is that time-old mantra of “I’d rather get £10 my way than £100 yours”. If I was being cynical I’d suggest that our troubled owners dislike the fact that Redders has been playing (and winning) with academy products rather than the myriad of imported players. It’ll be those imported players causing fuss. I’m led to believe that Cellino considers Thompson responsible for the change in formation and personnel that rendered a lot of his signings and instructions moot. Be damned, then, that through that change came league-topping form and safety.
Or at least that’d make sense if he weren’t consistently playing Bamba and Silvestri, whilst giving Antenucci games. Hell, it came out today that he’s been specifically instructed not to play Antenucci due to a bonus in his contract should he reach 12 goals for the season. That’ll be a contract Salerno negotiated too.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING makes sense here. If Redders leaves and we start losing key players I might just start supporting Preston. At least they have Larry.
Bloody hell. Hold me.Morocco will "never recognise" Western Sahara's independence despite rejoining the African Union after a decades-long dispute over the territory, Nasser Bourita, Morocco's deputy foreign minister said.
Last Monday, the AU approved Morocco's re-entry into the bloc which it quit in 1984 in protest at the admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) declared by the Polisario Front at the height of a war for the territory.
"Not only does Morocco not recognise - and will never recognise - this so-called entity," Bourita told website Le Desk in an interview on Sunday.
"It will [also] redouble its efforts so the small minority of countries, particularly African, which recognise it, change their positions."
AU membership would not change Morocco's stance that the Western Sahara is an integral part of its territory, he said.
READ MORE: Moroccans have lost trust in their politicians
Monday's summit in Addis Ababa followed an intense diplomatic battle with the Polisario's backers, led by Algeria and South Africa, which opposed Morocco rejoining the AU.
Meanwhile, the head of Western Sahara's Polisario Front has said "all options are open" in its independence struggle from Morocco, but called for talks after the kingdom rejoined the African Union.
Polisario head and SADR president Brahim Ghali told AFP in an interview on Sunday that the move did not fundamentally change the situation.
"We always look for the peaceful way" to resolve the conflict, Ghali told AFP at a Sahrawi refugee camp in Tindouf, southwestern Algeria.
"But all options remain open," he said, hinting that a return to armed struggle was possible.
READ MORE: Making sense of the recent tension in Western Sahara
Thousands of Sahrawis are settled in five camps around Tindouf, where they receive aid from UN agencies and international NGOs.
Efforts to reach a negotiated solution for the territory have borne little fruit.
Ghali, who took over as leader of the Algeria-backed Polisario on the death of his predecessor Mohamed Abdelaziz in May 2016, said he hoped new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will push for a return to talks.
"We hope that he will have the necessary support of the Security Council to lead the negotiations that will enable the self-determination of our people," Ghali said.
A UN peacekeeping force, United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), was set up in 1991 to monitor the ceasefire and organise a poll on the future of the territory.
The SADR, which remains a member of the AU, demands independence and a UN-supervised referendum to resolve the conflict.
Morocco, which controls 90 percent of the territory including its three main towns, insists it is an integral part of the kingdom and that only autonomy is on the table.ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - Game and Fish officials are searching for a black bear that attacked a woman Saturday.
Officials say the attack happened in the Valles Caldera National Preserve near Los Alamos. The woman was participating in a marathon event when she came across a mother bear whose cub ran up a tree, officials say.
The woman was airlifted to an Albuquerque hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Officials say, initial reports of her injuries indicate that she was bit and scratched - receiving injuries to her head, neck and upper body.
Officials say they are working the National Park Service to deter people from entering the area. Once the bear is found it will be euthanized and tested for rabies.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1020617108006993&set=gm.574821456028323&type=3&theater
New Mexico Game and Fish provided these tips if you ever encounter a bear.
Here are some ways to protect yourself If you encounter a bear:
Stop, and back away slowly while facing the bear. Avoid direct eye contact, as the bear may consider that a threat. Do not run. Make yourself appear large by holding out your jacket. If you have small children, pick them up so they don't run.
Give the bear plenty of room to escape, so it doesn't feel threatened or trapped. If a black bear attacks you, fight back using anything at your disposal, such as rocks, sticks, binoculars or even your bare hands. Aim for the bear's nose and eyes.
If the bear has not seen you, stay calm and slowly move away, making noise so the bear knows you are there. Never get between a mother bear and her cubs.
If you live or camp in bear country:If Google implements its latest patent, Google Glass could allow users to take photos and 'like' objects by framing it with their hands.
Raise your hands together in the shape of a heart, and instantly share a photo of what you love with your friends. That's the idea behind Google's latest patent, granted today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent describes three hand gestures that could be used by Google Glass to generate an image from the user's field of view. Making a heart shape using two hands would prompt Glass to capture the area enclosed by the shape. Holding one hand in the shape of an L would capture a rectangular image, as if your finger and thumb formed the lower left corner of a picture frame. Larger rectangles would be captured by dragging the L-shape across the object in front of you, from top right to bottom left. Finally, the patent allows for simply drawing a closed-loop in your field of view with a single finger to create an image of whatever was in that loop.
These methods for taking images could complement Google's image searching app, Google Goggles. Google Goggles generates search results based on an image, like the Golden Gate Bridge or a famous painting. Available on both Android and iOS phones, recent updates have improved text recognition and added recommendations for similar products when used for shopping.
Of course, a patent only means that Google could implement this functionality for Glass at some time in the future. If they do, I predict we might end up seeing scores of inadvertent photos of hamburgers showing up on Google+. For now, those could only come from the Glass Explorers, the early adopters who earned the privilege of purchasing Glass and testing it in the wild through Google's #ifIhadglass contest. A retail date for Google Glass has not been announced.
Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office via Engadget.Stuart Black
Watch Short Documentaries About Great London Photographers
Getting behind the stories of photographers and how they take their pictures, FullBleed is a recently-launched YouTube channel that probes the work of several interesting London snappers.
This week sees the addition of Jenny Lewis, the new film One Day Young featured here as an exclusive. Lewis began taking pictures of mothers from Hackney with their babies only hours after they were born. She has since taken this idea to Malawi for WaterAid and here in the FullBleed film, she poignantly describes the contrasting conditions versus the similarities of the proud faces of the mothers from both Africa and London.
Other films in the FullBleed portfolio include one about Bob Mazzer, who has spent 40 years recording life on the London Underground. His tireless body of work features some extraordinary images from the 70s and 80s which capture the late night theatre of the tube system perfectly. Mazzer calls it: “the big underground party that was happening 24 hours a day.”
Also worth checking out is Dougie Wallace and his Harrodsburg project. This Glaswegian came to London and was struck by the mega-wealth around Kensington and Knightsbridge and how it has physically corrupted the people who live there. “It’s about the 1% and also about the crazy wealth gap, the luxury goods and fast supercars next door to foodbanks. I’m not sneering, I’m just shining a light and taking pictures of what I see.”
FullBleed aims to document photographic culture and explain the artistry behind photography through a regular series of original short films. It’s revealing to hear James Fry, Oasis’s photographer laureate, talking about how one of his album covers was named worst of the year but how cool he thought that was. There’s also Paddy Summerfield on his moving and revealing series Mother & Father, which shows his parents at the end of their lives.
Future films will include one about the Lost In Music photography project and exhibition which launched recently at the Print Space in Shoreditch. You can also see the featured artists picking their favourite photos in the Apocalypse Pictures section, which basically amounts to a series of mini-masterclasses.
See more London Shorts here.Australian think tank proposes military base on PNG’s Manus Island
By Patrick O’Connor
30 July 2013
The Australian newspaper yesterday published a comment by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Sam Bateman and Anthony Bergin, urging the Labor government to rebuild a World War II-era military base on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
The government is currently preparing the island to detain up to 3,000 asylum seekers, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plan to illegally deport all refugees arriving in Australia by sea. For more than a decade, successive Liberal and Labor governments have used so-called border protection, ostensibly directed against refugees, as a pretext for a substantial military and intelligence build up to Australia’s north and northwest.
As a result, there is already a large naval presence around the country’s two main Indian Ocean territories, Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands. These are near the strategically important naval trade routes connecting China and East Asia with oil and raw materials suppliers in the Middle East and Africa.
The significance of these areas was further heightened by the Obama administration’s aggressive “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. Obama’s “rebalance” is aimed at maintaining US domination of the entire region, by encircling China and preparing for a potential military assault on it. A key part of Washington’s “AirSea Battle” war plan involves the US and its allies closing off the naval choke points north of Australia.
Now the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a government-funded think tank that has the closest ties to the military and foreign policy establishment, is urging an increased naval and air force presence in Australia’s former colony of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Manus Island
In their article, “Manus military history of merit,” Bergin, ASPI’s deputy director, and former Australian navy commodore Sam Bateman seize on recent comments by the PNG parliamentarian for Manus Island, Ronnie Knight, who declared he would not support the refugee detention centre being constructed unless the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) took over the running of the island’s Lombrum base, to patrol nearby waters for illegal fishing activity.
After declaring that “you can’t talk about strategy without a map on the wall,” the authors explain: “As was shown during World War II, Manus is a fine strategic location that dominates this part of the Pacific… Australia should increase its maritime presence in the archipelagic arc to our north. RAN’s use of Manus would greatly facilitate that presence. As well as naval facilities, its Momote airfield would be a valuable base for Australian and allied maritime surveillance aircraft.”
Bergin and Bateman make no pretence that such a military build up in Australia’s former colony would have anything do with either refugees or illegal fishing.
Instead, a Manus facility is promoted as a way of bolstering the Obama administration’s military focus on East Asia and the Pacific: “The US is interested in new bases in the Pacific. At the same time, the island countries are looking to the US to demonstrate that it appreciates the importance of the Pacific islands region in Washington’s rebalance policy towards Asia. Manus could be an option.”
The island base was first developed by the US military in 1944, after American-led forces invaded Manus and removed the Japanese troops. An official Australian naval history explained: “From the naval point of view, the principal attraction of Manus is the great Seeadler Harbour, with its more than 100 square miles of anchorage and depth of water sufficient to accommodate the largest fleet. The Americans immediately began to develop the Seeadler Harbour area into a huge base, rivalling Pearl Harbour, which was used in later operations against the Japanese… When the Pacific War ended, Manus had been developed into one of the most powerful bases in the world.”
ASPI’s Bateman and Bergman add that by the time of the US invasion of the Philippines in late 1944: “There were more than 800 ships in Seeadler Harbour, Manus Island. Base installations included large wharves and floating docks, four major airfields, living quarters for 150,000, a 3,000-bed hospital and fuel depots, supply stores and repair workshops.”
After World War II, one historian explained: “The United States clearly placed high priority on retention of Manus as a permanent base.” (Roger Bell, “Australian-American discord: Negotiations for post-war bases and security arrangements in the Pacific 1944–1946”, Australian Outlook, 1973.)
Negotiations between Washington and the Labor government of Prime Minister Ben Chifley broke down as Canberra attempted to work closely with the US, while at the same time limiting Washington’s influence in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the South Pacific. This provoked private denunciations from US State Department officials of “Anzac imperialism.”
By mid-1946, however, US regional priorities had shifted to north-east Asia. The Manus facilities were largely dismantled before the base was handed over to Australian control in 1949. It was maintained as part of Canberra’s colonial rule of PNG, and then transferred to Papua New Guinean control in 1974–75 as part of a transition to formal independence.
ASPI’s proposal that Australian imperialism rebuilds the Manus naval-air base is another indication of rapidly escalating geo-strategic tensions in the region.Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
Posted on 17 January 2012 by dana1981
Patrick Michaels is a research fellow at the Cato Institute think tank, the chief editor of the website World Climate Report, has been given a climate blog at the business magazine Forbes, and his articles are frequently re-posted at climate "skeptic" blogs like Watts Up With That (WUWT). Despite his clear conflict of interest (Michaels has estimated that 40% of his work is funded by the petroleum industry), many people continue to rely on him as a reliable source of climate information. This |
an increased amount of Chinese study detailing exactly how each unit in the Chinese military will participate in this campaign -- what their key missions would be, what their benchmarks for success would be. Incredibly detailed studies, tactical studies, strategic studies, on how they are going to invade Taiwan.
That is what really struck me, Taiwan is doing everything it possibly can to maintain peace and stability and the Chinese were apparently seeing this as a sign of weakness and may have actually accelerated their planning for an eventual invasion of Taiwan. The goals of Taiwan and America are very different from China's. The goal of Taiwan, the U.S., Japan and other democracies in the region is simple, it is to maintain the status quo and keep the Taiwan Strait peaceful.
China's goal is not to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. China's goal is actually to conquer Taiwan piece by piece, peacefully if possible, but if that's not possible, then by military force. Their end goal is to annex and occupy Taiwan, it's very clear in all the Chinese internal military writings that this is their goal.
It's also very clear looking at Beijing's behavior over the past 10 years that no matter what Taiwan does, not matter what the United States does, they continue preparing for the invasion of Taiwan. That was my major point that particular chapter. It wasn't to make any predictions, because I don't make any predictions or a timetable.
Click here for part two and part three of Taiwan News' exclusive interview with Easton.
About the author
Ian Easton is a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, where he conducts research on defense and security issues in Asia. During the summer of 2013 he was a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA) in Tokyo. Previously, Ian worked as a China analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) for two years. Prior to that, he lived in Taipei from 2005 to 2010. During his time in Taiwan, he worked as a translator for Island Technologies Inc. and the Foundation for Asia-Pacific Peace Studies. While in Taiwan, he also conducted research with the Asia Bureau Chief of Defense News.
Ian holds an M.A. in China Studies from National Chengchi University in Taiwan and a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a certification in advanced Mandarin Chinese, having formally studied the language at Fudan University in Shanghai, and National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.Australian barrister Jay Williams thrown out of Manus Island despite court order, to be deported from PNG
Updated
Papua New Guinea says it will deport an Australian barrister who was ejected from the Manus Island detention centre despite a court order granting him access.
Sydney barrister Jay Williams is representing 75 asylum seekers and was granted access to the facility by Papua New Guinea judge Justice David Cannings.
However, Mr Williams was ejected from the detention centre yesterday.
PNG's attorney-general Kerenga Kua says Mr Williams is not legally allowed to practise as a lawyer in PNG.
He says Mr Williams never applied to the National Court for permission and does not have a license to practise.
"What it means is that if you're an admitted lawyer but don't have a current practising certificate for 2014, you cannot practise law in this country. Now in the case of Mr Williams, it meets neither requirements," he said.
He says Mr Williams will be deported from the country and will leave on the next available flight.
Justice Cannings set up a human rights inquiry earlier this month to examine the conditions of asylum seekers at the Australian facility.
The PNG government put the inquiry on hold on March 21 after it obtained a stay order from the supreme court.
Justice Cannings responded by initiating a new inquiry.
The PNG government is seeking to appeal against Justice Cannings's refusal to disqualify himself from the inquiry over allegations of bias.
On Wednesday, PNG's public solicitor Frazer Pitpit sought an adjournment when the matter returned to court because he did not have a practising certificate.
Justice Cannings has held a week of hearings and also allowed a handful of journalists to join him on his second visit to the detention centre, which is normally barred to media.
One of the more confronting images witnessed by media was a plaque on one of the fences requesting that all security guards carry a Hoffman knife.
Members of the media were told that the knives were used to cut down people who tried to hang themselves.
Topics: refugees, immigration, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, human, rights, papua-new-guinea, pacific, australia
First postedPaul Nurkkala’s “Flight of the Year” Shows Incredible View of Train Interior, Undercarriage, and View from on Top of Moving Cargo Train
Drone pilots and the video they capture continues to accelerate with the pace of change in the consumer drone and camera and video accessories market as these two paradigms march lockstep in their transformation of the fields of photography and videography.
Film, once the exclusive purview of filmmakers and Hollywood-level videographers is now increasingly within the reach of the average person. Camera shots, angles, and perspectives that were previously difficult to achieve are now assisted by consumer technology that is widely available and ubiquitous – who hasn’t had a family member or friend show up one day with some kind of flying drone, many of which can carry smartphones and GoPro cameras?
The footage captured by these photographers and videographers, both amateur and professional alike, is truly spectacular, none more so than the video above of Paul Nurkkala’s “Flight of the Year” in which he maneuvers his drone around a moving train.
As DPReview notes, this action is probably on the wrong side of most laws, but breathtaking nonetheless in its audacity.
The expert drone pilot flies the drone around the moving train, underneath it, on top of it – everywhere. All coupled with barrel rolls and flourishes of skill that would make an F1 pilot impressed.
Paul Nurkkala’s drone is a custom build that he designed himself. For the video capture, he used a GoPro Hero Session 5. He describes the equipment he used to make the drone in the YouTube video’s description.
You can follow his drone career at his webpage, located here: http://paulnurkkala.com/.
As of this article’s publication, the YouTube video has over 1.2 million views.Back in September we noted that "Wen Jiabao Says China Willing To Extend Help To Europe... For A Price" the price in question being that, among other things, the EU should recognize China's market economy status, and to split Europe with the US on the topic of Chinese currency manipulation. Naturally, being the biggest import partner for China's goods, the topic of providing vendor financing to Europe has always been a critical one. Well, as was made clear overnight a key part of the European rescue effort is to get China on the same page, and to have it allocate capital to the EFSF. As the FT reports this may have happened, although with more or less the same conditions that China delineated 6 weeks ago. Only this time China has all the leverage. According to the FT: "China is very likely to contribute to the eurozone’s bail-out fund but the scope of its involvement will depend on European leaders satisfying some key conditions, two senior advisers to the Chinese government have told the Financial Times." So what are the conditions: "Any Chinese support would depend on contributions from other countries and Beijing must be given strong guarantees on the safety of its investment, according to Li Daokui, an academic member of China’s central bank monetary policy committee, and Yu Yongding, a former member of that committee." Obviously, Europe will promise the latter. As for the former it could be a tad problematic because as observed previously Brazil has voiced against rescuing Europe in the form of non-IMF participation. But there are more conditions: "It is in China’s long-term and intrinsic interest to help Europe because they are our biggest trading partner but the chief concern of the Chinese government is how to explain this decision to our own people,” said Professor Li. “The last thing China wants is to throw away the country’s wealth and be seen as just a source of dumb money.” Alas, that is precisely how the entire world sees China. As for the final condition: "He added that Beijing might also ask European leaders to refrain from criticising China’s currency policy, a frequent source of tension with trade partners." And this is how you declare political check mate and shut up all voices that threaten to protest against mercantilist policies. And since it is only a matter of time before China will have to rescue the US, we hope Senate enjoys the time remaining in which it can debate whether or not China manipulates the CNY. That time is about to end.
From the FT:
Klaus Regling, head of the EFSF, was due to arrive in Beijing late on Thursday for discussions with senior Chinese leaders on whether and how much China might contribute. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, telephoned his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao a few hours
after the summit ended to discuss the rescue plan but there was no immediate announcement on any Chinese involvement.
European leaders agreed that the EFSF would explore two plans to increase its remaining firepower from about €250bn to €1,000bn. One would be to offer investors insurance on selected government debt while the other would create a special fund in which the International Monetary Fund or countries such as China could invest.
With $3,200bn in foreign exchange reserves, roughly a quarter of which are believed to be held in euros, China could be willing to contribute between $50bn and $100bn from the reserves to the EFSF or a new fund set up under its auspices in collaboration with the IMF, according to one person familiar with the thinking of the Chinese leadership.
“If conditions are right then something a bit above $100bn is not inconceivable,” this person said.
And here is how China gets one step closer to internationalizing its currency:
One condition China might ask for is that its contribution be at least partly denominated in renminbi, which would protect its investment against currency fluctuations. China would buy euro-denominated bonds but repayments would compensate for any changes in the value of the renminbi, which has appreciated nearly 20 per cent against the euro in the past three years.
Needless to say, Europe is not too happy with the economic give for political take...
Reflecting the unease in Europe, the head of Germany’s industry association, said he feared Chinese help could “come at a political cost”. Hans-Peter Keitel told the FT: “Asking a non-eurozone nation to help the euro would the the other nation the power to decide the fate of the single currency.”
This is spot on, and at this point, Europe has absolutely no trump cards left. It is entirely at the mercy of China. Or so the market thinks.
What is ironic is that when the next European bail out has to happen, and China is indeed seen as an actual source of dumb money, political tensions will finally shift over from the developed world to "surplus positive" one:
"Any mis-steps in helping Europe could cause problems with domestic public opinion – the Chinese people will watch very carefully what their own government does,” Prof Yu said. “European leaders also must have a clear plan of what to do and they must show China they have the political will as well as the support of their own people; if we see protests and chaos all the time, then China won’t have confidence in Europe’s political ability.”
And so China enters the wacky and wonderful world in which Europe will promise the moon and the stars with the only backstop strategy that one of hope, more hope and nothing else.
We are confident this will all end the way good money chasing after bad always does. But for now, the surge continues.During the last couple of weeks, the Ethereum network has been the target of a sustained attack. The attacker(s) have been very crafty in locating vulnerabilities in the client implementations as well as the protocol specification.
While the recent patches have led to an overall increased resiliency in the client implementations, the attacks have also demonstrated that a lower-level change to the EVM pricing model is needed.
For many users, the most visible consequence is probably that they are having difficulties getting transactions included in blocks, and full nodes are facing memory limitations in managing the bloated state.
This is our strategy to address these issues:
As a temporary measure to minimize the effects of the most recent attack, we recommend all miners to lower the gaslimit to 500K gas.
A hard-fork based on EIP 150 version 1c will be put into effect at block 2457000 [see below]. This will reprice certain operations to correspond better to the underlying computational complexity.
[see below]. This will reprice certain operations to correspond better to the underlying computational complexity. A second hard-fork will follow shortly after, aimed at reverting the current "state-bloat" introduced by the attacks. This second fork will serve to remove accounts which are empty; lacking code, balance, storage and nonce == 0.
We have implemented the changes required in the clients and are currently extending and adding tests in an effort to prevent the introduction of consensus-breaking vulnerabilities.
And as a reminder, the Ethereum Bug Bounty is open and includes the new hardfork-implementations.
EDIT: Fork block has been moved to 2463000 in order to accommodate even more testing.At halftime of Saturday’s second-round win over Notre Dame, West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins told CBS sideline reporter Allie LaForce that his team needed to stop fouling the Fighting Irish.
Here’s what happened next:
LaForce: “What’s the biggest adjustment you’ll make at the half?”
Huggins: “Hopefully stop fouling.”
LaForce: “Alright, simple as that. Thanks Coach.”
Huggins: “Thank you.”
Huggins isn’t known for his loquaciousness, but he’s usually good for a laugh. A video of the above exchange should provide that.
.@ALaForce talked to Bob Huggins who is putting an emphasis on limiting the fouls. @WVUhoops leads at the half, 42-35. #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/PIqOaQ5f2H — March Madness TV (@MarchMadnessTV) March 18, 2017
A few hours after the Mountaineers’ win, Gonzaga went into halftime with a double-digit advantage over Northwestern. Bulldogs coach Mark Few spoke with CBS reporter Jamie Erdahl.
Jamie Erdahl: “Coach, with an 18 point lead, what aspects of your offense have been executed well?”
Mark Few: “Well, I think for the most part we’ve been pushing it … a lot of things have happened good for us in transition. We gotta continue to do that. And then we’ve taken decent care of the ball down there and that’s a big key for us.”
Erdahl: “You likened this Northwestern team to just another physical Big 10 team. How have you been able to handle that?”
Few: “Well, I mean, they are physical. We’re not getting a whole lot of great looks inside and they’ve been able to dig out some offensive rebounds against us. Again, it’s just one half, okay? We gotta come back and play the same half we just got done playing.”
.@ZagMBB are up 38-20 on @NUMensBball at the half on CBS. @JamieErdahl caught up with Gonzaga head coach, Mark Few. pic.twitter.com/HJweu7BItk — March Madness TV (@MarchMadnessTV) March 18, 2017
And if those interviews weren’t enlightening enough, here’s Gregg Popovich opening up about his San Antonio Spurs.
Mark Jones: “Back for the start of the fourth quarter, Coach Popovich, your thoughts on the third quarter?”
Gregg Popovich: “We’re behind.”
Words of wisdom from the king of in-game interviews.
Obviously most of these exchanges are pointless, but coaches are usually required to do them for broadcast and contractual purposes.
Just like Marshawn Lynch, they’re only here so they won’t get fined.
My least favorite interview is when somebody has to put on a headset and talk to the broadcast team. You see this a lot in American soccer. Sometimes it takes place at halftime and sometimes they do it in the middle of a game, which becomes really awkward when one team is about to score and the coach pauses mid-sentence.
Philadelphia Union manager Jim Curtin sometimes gets roped into these interviews, but it’s usually a hapless assistant wearing the headset. Credit to Jim, who is always great with the media, but who wants to speak with us after conceding a stoppage time goal?
Ask yourself this:
When’s the last time you heard something profound during an in-game interview? When’s the last time you said, “Wow, I never thought about that…“?
The answer is probably never. And a coach isn’t sharing deep thoughts with us anyway. He or she isn’t telling us that Bradley Fletcher is playing ten yards off the line of scrimmage and vulnerable to double moves, but you already knew that.
Some of my colleagues complain about not having enough access to players, coaches, and executives, but I’m the opposite; I think we have too much access.
We’re allowed into their locker rooms and practice facilities and office buildings. Media interviews take place before the game, during the game, and immediately after the game. We’re standing at one locker doing an interview while a naked teammate is putting his pants on at the adjacent locker.
I’m a believer that game days and locker rooms are sacrosanct and should be free of outside interference.
One of the worst experiences of my journalism career involved covering a Phillies game at the 2014 trade deadline. I was sent to Washington to see if Jonathan Papelbon had anything to say regarding rumors of his imminent departure.
For context, reporters are actually allowed into the Phillies clubhouse before the game, which results in a scenario where media members stand around awkwardly and wait for somebody to talk.
When the Phils’ closer showed up at his locker, a crowd of about 15 people surrounded him and a local TV reporter proceeded to ask him the same question in five different ways.
Do you think you’ll be traded?
Do you want to be traded?
Are you okay with being traded?
What happens if you get traded?
Have the Phillies said anything to you about being traded?
Papelbon, predictably, said nothing of interest.
The media horde was then brought to the dugout, where General Manager Ruben Amaro, Jr. fielded questions about the same topic. Manager Ryne Sandberg was also made available.
This all happened before the game. After the 10-to-4 win over the Nationals, reporters again had access to Sandberg and the entire locker room.
That’s a lot of media availability, and that’s just one game out of 162.
The Eagles beat is somewhat similar.
The NovaCare Complex used to feature a media work room and lunch buffet, so covering the Birds was like working a nine-to-five job while eating for free.
That actually changed last year, and reporters were booted to another building, but they still have partial access to the team cafeteria. Lunch is four dollars, or something like that, which is still cheaper than the Taco Bell at 25th and Passyunk.
Anyway, you generally do some writing, watch a bit of practice, get some quotes, grab lunch, then head back to the media room. Most NFL writers go an entire season without ever stepping foot in their respective media outlet’s headquarters.
An Eagles writer has access to the locker room post-game and several times per week after practice. Doug Pederson is usually available on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday.
The offensive and defensive coordinators speak once per week and players in leadership roles, such as Malcolm Jenkins and Carson Wentz, are placed at a dais to field questions.
Some people don’t think it’s enough. They want Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie and Don Smolenski and the guy who put the windmills on top of the Linc.
I do understand not having enough access to ownership, so I agree with that gripe. I’ve spoken to Philadelphia Union owner Jay Sugarman four times in eight years.
That said, do we really need to hear from Doug Pederson three times per week? What else could we possibly ask him?
Less is more, which sounds ridiculous in the 24/7 world of sports media, but I really do believe that. I’ve always felt like I get better quotes from players and coaches when I speak to them on a less frequent basis.
Respite from the media results in more thoughtful answers because you’ve generally had time to digest game film, training sessions, and recent developments. We’re looking at diminishing returns when we ask Dave Hakstol the same questions three times in 72 hours.
Here’s the thing; quotes aren’t as important as they used to be.
Players and coaches can speak to fans directly through social media and other channels. Reporters don’t have to be that conduit anymore. Just look at how President Trump communicates to his supporters through Twitter.
Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017
Plus, millennials don’t necessarily care about that type of content. The typical 24-year-old Eagles fan shows lukewarm interest in Pederson’s weekly press conference.
Research shows that he or she enjoys analysis and commentary. That fan is more inclined to watch all-22 film breakdown rather than listen to Dave Fipp talk about how good Bryan Braman is.
You can create unique and interesting content without needing constant availability from players and coaches.
And while Gregg Popovich provides humorous moments for social media and Sports Center, do his halftime interviews really add anything to the broadcast? No, and that’s why he trolls us, because he knows that the entire thing is a big, fat joke.
Access is great, and we should appreciate what we have, but I also think we can survive for 24 hours without shoving a camera in somebody’s face.
How does this make you feel?US intelligence and law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters on Wednesday that the CIA had been aware of the impending leak of its cyberwarfare arsenal since the end of last year.
The unnamed officials also confirmed that an internal investigation by the agency into the source of the leak is focused primarily on contractors, who the agency believe passed the documents to WikiLeaks.
They also stated their belief that the 8,761 documents contained within the current “Year Zero” leak, the first of the “Vault 7” series, appear to be authentic. On Wednesday, the FBI also announced its federal criminal investigation into WikiLeaks following the latest release and stated that it will be coordinating their efforts with the CIA.
READ MORE: FBI investigating Wikileaks’ vault 7 disclosures on CIA hacking
The leak has already been described by experts as potentially more significant than the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden in 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported.
WikiLeaks’ publication of a massive batch of covert documents detailing the hacking techniques used by the CIA poses a multitude of uncomfortable questions for world leaders, law enforcement and even WikiLeaks itself.
In one poll tweeted earlier Wednesday, the transparency group asked whether it should work more closely with the tech industry to help shore up cyber defenses around the world.
Tech companies are saying they need more details of CIA attack techniques to fix them faster. Should WikiLeaks work directly with them? — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 8, 2017
WikiLeaks says that the classified information contained in the leaked documents was “lost” by the CIA and subsequently “circulated among former US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner.”
One of those individuals is then said to have provided the whistleblowing website with the relevant content.
According to WikiLeaks a secure upload submission option, in which no identifying data about a source is recorded, is offered. WikiLeaks has not said if the identity of the source is known to the organization.
READ MORE: Apple, Samsung, Microsoft: WikiLeaks blows lid on scale of CIA’s hacking arsenal
WikiLeaks stated on Twitter that the information revealed so far in Year Zero accounted for “less than 1 percent” of the total series of publications. More releases are expected but when they will occur is unknown.
WikiLeaks has released less than 1% of its #Vault7 series in its part one publication yesterday 'Year Zero'. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 8, 2017
It has also not announced the number of documents and files it plans to release or the frequency of release – unlike last year’s Podesta email leak where it released emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) each day in the run-up to the US election.
READ MORE: WikiLeaks says just 1% of #Vault7 covert documents released so far
WikiLeaks claims the cache of documents and files released originated from within the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. The CIA have not confirmed if the documents are authentic.
“We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents,” Jonathan Liu, a spokesman for the CIA, told The Washington Post.
Ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden appeared concerned by the release, telling the BBC: "If what I have read is true, then this seems to be an incredibly damaging leak in terms of the tactics, techniques, procedures and tools that were used by the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct legitimate foreign intelligence.”
"In other words, it's made my country and my country's friends less safe."
Edward Snowden tweeted that the leak, which consists mainly of HTML files and PDF documents, “looks authentic,” adding to the feeling that the files are genuine.
READ MORE: WikiLeaks CIA Vault 7: 'We are looking at George Orwell’s 1984’
Year Zero has highlighted the extent of the CIA and MI6’s spying capabilities. The two intelligence agencies were revealed to have held a joint workshop on hacking into Samsung smart TVs, allowing them to listen to audio via the devices, even when powered off.
The leak also revealed that vulnerabilities in Google’s Android Operating System, used in 85 percent of the world’s smart phones, allowed it to be “weaponized” by the CIA using hacking code.
The techniques allow the CIA to access data from social messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Weibo and Clockman before encryption, according to WikiLeaks.Labour MP and former Cabinet member Tessa Jowell has emerged as the frontrunner to become the party’s next candidate for Mayor of London.
A new YouGov poll for the Evening Standard puts Dame Tessa ahead of all other known rivals with 17% of poll respondents naming her as the best potential candidate.
Only comedian Eddie Izzard beat the Dulwich and West Norwood MP, securing the backing of 21% of respondents.
However Izzard has repeatedly said he won’t consider standing before 2020.
Labour MP Diane Abbott, recently sacked from the party’s front bench, and former Transport Secretary Lord Andrew Adonis attracted the support of 9% and 6% respectively.
David Lammy and Sadiq Khan, both regularly claimed to be the front-runners for the nomination, scored the backing of just 7% and 5% of respondents.
Ms Jowell enjoys the highest cross-party support of any likely runner with 29% of Liberal Democrats and 17% of Conservative voters backing her.
She also has a clear lead among Labour supporters with 20% naming her the best candidate, 7% more than selecting the second-placed Diane Abbott.
Labour says it will select its candidate through a primary in which both party members and non-members will be able to vote.Our imaginary BFF Elizabeth Chambers Hammer, co-owner of Bird Bakery and guest judge on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars, is back with another can’t-miss dessert: Sea salt peanut butter bars. A fluffy, salty-sweet peanut butter filling covers a peanut butter cookie crust, and then a chocolate layer tops the whole thing. It’s a family recipe she likes for the holidays, but we’re pretty sure we can come up with an excuse for making these bars any time of the year.
More: Steal your imaginary BFF Elizabeth Chambers’ brilliant Halloween party tricks
Sea salt peanut butter bars recipe
Ingredients:
For the bar base
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons high-quality creamy peanut butter
1 large egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon high-quality vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon heavy cream For the filling
For the topping
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
More: Take your salted caramel obsession to the outer limits with these desserts
Directions:
For the bar base
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add peanut butter and beat until combined. Slowly add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. On low speed, add the flour mixture, incorporating completely. On a greased 8 x 13-inch sheet pan, evenly press the dough. Bake for 5 to 7 minutes. Let cool.
For the filling
In the large bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, powdered sugar, peanut butter, sea salt, vanilla extract and heavy cream until fluffy. Spread the peanut butter filling evenly over the pre-baked bar base.
For the topping
In a small saucepan, over medium heat, melt butter and chocolate together until smooth. Spread evenly over the peanut butter filling using an offset spatula. Let chill. Cut into 3-inch squares.
More: 20 desserts that use up all those broken canes^^^ANALYSIS^^^
^^^NEW INFO^^^
It’s been almost a full year since the Podesta Emails began to leak onto the internet, courtesy of Wikileaks. What was found in these emails was astonishing, with mentions of spirit cooking, pedophile code words, and even questionable phrases such as “Dreaming about your hot dog stand in Hawaii”…
Since the discovery of these emails, the search for the smoking gun, or the golden link, has been relentless in the underground community. Whether it be on 4chan, Twitter, or other sites, the talk and the restless search has been non-stop since it was launched just after the election.
Leads have been followed, facts have been reported, with occasional dis-info being tossed into the mix, even going as far to go face-to-face with the mainstream media. However, within recent months, the search has fallen mainly silent and has stagnated. Most info being circulated now puts us in an endless loop back to the start, with no golden link in sight.
However, within the past few weeks, we came across an article out of the New York Times and The Washington Post from 1987, about 6 children who were found in Tallahasse, Florida in a van amid deplorable conditions with 2 men, traveling to a disputed location.
Upon further review, these men were alleged to be a part of a little known D.C.-based cult known as “The Finders”, or better known as “Finder’s Keeper”. To emphasize, little is known about this Cult, its practices, their members, or their locations in general. What we do know is that this cult abducts children of members and takes them to undisclosed locations, in which their fate is unknown.
However, since the ripping of the Pizzagate conspiracy, information has began to slowly trickle out onto the internet in various places, whether in the form of video blogs, messages on forums, or other methods, more is being known about the Cult, and their doings.
But to better understand how this group functions, and how this may be the key to the “pedogate” conspiracy, we have to go back to the beginning, when the group first began to receive exposure to the public eye. Make sure to pay attention and keep track, and take notes, because it is imperative you know the truth.
Tallahassee, Florida: The First Glimpse and Subsequent Cover-Up?
In the Afternoon of February 4th, 1987, the Tallahassee Police Department received a tip from an anonymous caller, alerting the police to a peculiar situation in a local playground, as stated in a United States Customs Service report:
As stated in the initial investigation above, Two “well-dressed men” were in some sort of playground with six young children, who were described as dirty and unkempt. When police arrived, they immediately launched an investigation into the background of these men and children.
The children were in extremely dangerous condition, with some bearing insect bites, and not being bathed for a few days.
Upon further inspection of their Virginia-registered Van, investigators found Maps; books, letters, and a foul-smelling mattress.What these documents contain were not disclosed.
When the children were identified, one was an apparent daughter to the men, Mary Houlihan; one was named after Benjamin Franklin; one was named after Pope John Paul; and one was identified only using initials. The men were arrested on the spot on numerous counts of child abuse and neglect and taken in for further questioning.
When questioned, the strange story got even stranger. The men were evasive in questioning, and said that the children, originally “living in tents in a commune just outside of Washington D.C.”, were heading to a school in Mexico for “brilliant children”. When the children were asked about their presence with these men, they stated the same thing.
However, no info outside of the initial contact and arrests of the suspects were released to the public, until a few days ago, when a Voat user under the name “votesarestolen” conducted a Public records request into the investigation in question. The documents were released to a friend of him, who will remain anonymous, and then uploaded these reports in a google drive file.
There are 73 total documents that were sealed off from public records relating to this case. The reason? Some of these documents contain information that will not only be key to the point of this investigation, but PROVE the link between “Finder’s Keeper / The Finders”; other sex abuse cases; the Government efforts to cover it up; and the present day theory of Pizzagate.
The documents relating to this case will contain key evidence that will link this lone case to a plethora of other sex abuse cases going on at the time, which likely crossed paths with the Franklin cover up scandal; leading to the current theories today.
Be warned that some of these documents contain graphic descriptions and may not be suitable for all. With that said, here is the entirety of these documents:
February 4th, 1987 (Day 1)
The 6 images above detail the initial findings of the first few hours of the “Finder’s incident” in Tallahassee, mostly just background information for the first 2 pages, such as vehicle information. However, on page 3 and beyond, we begin to see just how deep this investigation goes, what becomes uncovered, and show how this turned from a possible abduction case, into something potentially bigger than anticipated.
On pages one and two, not much info can be used to raise suspicion, but there are some concerns on page 2, which details the suspects descriptions. If you look closely at the descriptions of the 2 men, you will notice that they have the same height; weight; hair color; and other features, as well as their addresses. The only differences were that one of the Men’s noses was pointed; One had a southern accent; and one was a year younger than the other. Otherwise, the two were nearly identical, which is very rare in police cases.
On Page 3, where the official description of the reports begin, The report immediately writes that the officer arrived at Myers Park, where the officer noticed 2 white males in coats and ties with 6 children, 4 male; 2 female, who were very unkempt and dirty as well as riddled with bug bites. When confronting the men, the writer states the following:
This writer spoke to suspect #1 who stated that he and suspect #2 were teachers from Washington D.C. and they were en-route to Mexico with the children. Suspect #1 stated that they were going to Mexico to set up a school for brilliant children. When asked about the parents of the children, Suspect #1 became very evasive and stated that the Children’s parents were in Washington D.C. Suspect #2 refused to give this writer any information and he pretended to faint when told he was under arrest for child abuse…
The writer then approached the Children for more information about their “trip”, including their names. The report says the following about the Children:
[The Children] were extremely hungry when they got to the police department and the older children said they hadn’t eaten since this morning. The children appeared as if they hadn’t bathed in several days and most of them didn’t have any underwear. The older children stated that they have to do good things to get food as a reward and they are given (oranges; bananas; carrots; and raw potatoes) to eat.
Furthermore, the suspects began to become uncooperative with the investigation, with Suspect #1 continuing to be evasive; and Suspect #2 being uncooperative.
Another officer that was at the scene stated that, when talking to the oldest child, Mary, she was unsure of her last name and that one of the suspects was her father and that John Paul was her brother. The children lived together in that Address at 3918 W St. NW, Washington D.C.
Other details that were found was that the Children had no clear idea of where they were going; they had not seen their mothers “since Christmas”, which did not exist to them; they did not go to school; and other minor details.
But the strangest detail of all comes at the end, when the children were not only taught how to read, but how to “play games.” When asked, the children replied that the adults had to do what the “game caller” said, and were forced to follow, nor were they allowed “inside the house”, possibly referring to the D.C. address.
February 5th, 1987
The second day of the investigation was mainly a recap of the first day’s finding, in which more details about the children emerged.
The first few pages are a recap of the first day’s investigation and findings into the crime at hand. However, one thing to note was that, despite the suspect being identified as James Houlihan, who was also one of the children’s father, had no |
North Carolina Board-which initially targeted those who were deemed mentally ill, expanded its program to include the general population.” In fact, “the majority of those sterilized had never been institutionalized, and 2,000 were younger than 19” (Wiggins, p. 1). In addition, the fight against poverty in North Carolina led to sterilizations in the general population. As this fight intensified, a new policy was created that led to an increase in the number of non-institutionalized people who were sterilized. Sterilizations of the non-institutionalized rose from 23% between 1937 and 1951 to 76% between 1952 and 1966 (Schoen, Choice and Coercion, p. 109, "Reassessing," p. 151).
The Human Betterment League made it their mission to spread information to the public regarding the “benefits of eugenic sterilization” (Gardella, p. 110). At the University of North Carolina State Public officials from the department of sociology searched for any possible people eligible for eugenic sterilization. Eventually through their efforts and the upholding of the state’s sterilization law North Carolina eve managed to sterilize the non-institutionalized (Gardella, p. 110)
Other Restrictions Placed on Those Identified in the Law or with Disabilities in General
There are no other known restrictions placed on those identified in the law.
Groups Targeted and Victimized
Women, Especially African Americans and Those with Developmental Disabilities
77% of all those sterilized in North Carolina were women. North Carolina carried out 50 percent of these between 1929 and 1947 on females under the age of twenty (Cahn, p.162). There was a strong historical mentality in the South that supported the idea of trying to control the reproduction of women, and African Americans which helped the idea of eugenics to spread from the North to the South with little opposition from the elitist White male population. Because of the strong belief in moral purity of the South, however it was easy to explain why White women were just as endangered as African American women.
Physicians in North Carolina didn’t leave any margin for error either. Many women were brought in under the pretext that they might have been exhibiting behaviors that were sexual in nature and thus increasing the possibility of sexual promiscuity and warranting eugenic sterilization (Cahn, p. 165).
Women that were deemed “subnormal” intellectually were also likely to be forcibly sterilized. About sixty percent of the inmates at a North Carolina Farm Colony in the 1930’s were considered feebleminded and candidates for sterilization (Cahn, p.165). The greatest fear with women was that they are deceiving to others as they are still attractive to men and yet are below the standards for reproduction. North Carolinian journalists reported on these issues stated that these morons would breed rapidly “like mink” and “contaminate” the whole “healthy human stock,” (Cahn, p.166). And most of the women that they felt needed to be sterilized most were those women that exhibited no outward sign of incompetence but simply didn’t do well on IQ tests because these women’s “charm of personality and conversation l ability…posed a greater social threat than more obviously disabled persons since their very attractiveness would lead to more opportunities for illicit sex or marriage and, thus a, the likelihood of starting a “family of future liabilities to the State” (Cahn, p. 168).
Women were not safe even if they somehow managed to flee the State of North Carolina either. Such sexually deviant women could be chased all the way to Florida, as was the case for Emma Suggs. She was a candidate for sterilization because of her mental state due to her past and her “out of wedlock pregnancy” (Cahn, p. 169).
Soon North Carolina set its sights on women of color who were seen as likely to be on welfare and to have illegitimate children. Chapel Hill Weekly stated that there was a “higher proportion of Negroes than whites: and noted that “the feebleminded Negro woman, often with illegitimate children, is a familiar and recurrent problem to health and welfare agencies” (Cahn, p. 177).
Women, including wives, daughters, sisters and unwed mothers, were overrepresented. They were labeled as either “promiscuous, lazy, or unfit” (Wiggins, p. 1), or more commonly as “sexually uncontrollable” (Schoen, Choice and Coercion, p. 110). Overall, women made up 84.8% of sterilizations (State Library, “Statistics”, p. 1). However, more interesting is that the sterilization of men virtually halted in the 1960s, with only 2 sterilizations in 1964, and 254 sterilizations of women (State Library, “Sterilizations”, p. 1). Therefore, after 1960, women accounted for 99% of sterilizations (Sinderbrand, p. 1). While many white women were sterilized, the state began to focus on sterilizing black women as they became the majority of the welfare population. Black women were seen as highly uneducated, poor, and as having higher fertility rates than their white female counterparts. Schoen noted that as the amount of black women on welfare increased “the public association between ADC and black female recipients was particularly close” (Schoen, Choice and Coercion, p. 109; see also "Reassessing," p. 153). Black women were presumed to have uncontrollable sexual behavior, and as these racial stereotypes were reinforced, black women became an even larger target for controlled reproduction through sterilization.
Social class also played a role in who was targeted after WWII, as women on welfare, usually living in socially isolated places, were overrepresented. The reason for this was to prevent “poor” and “unfit” women from reproducing children with mental or social ills (Wiggins, p. 1). They were generally ordered for sterilization by social workers and lived outside of institutions. The poor were not only targeted for their “social ills” but also because they were easier to sterilize. They would often not be released until they or a family member agreed to have them sterilized (Wiggins, p. 1).
Women that were social workers were strong supporters for the eugenics movement. Johanna Schoen (2011) has argued that some social workers provided sterilization out of empathy. However, Krome-Lukens maintains that women were often coerced and that many social workers provided sterilizations as an opportunity to save money from future drains on society (Krome-Lukens, p. 49). Interestingly enough—according to Krome-Lukens—eugenics was a key element of progressive reform and was indicative of the new mentality surrounding sexuality and the standard gender roles of the time (Krome-Lukens, p. 9).
Finally, race also played a role in those targeted for sterilization. During the Civil Rights Movement, petitions were sent to the state’s eugenics board for black women (Winston-Salem, “Wicked Silence”). Overall, by the later 1960s, 60% of those sterilized were young, black women (Wiggins, p. 1). Overall, blacks represent 38.9% of sterilizations. This is because sterilizations of blacks were concentrated in a shorter period of time and because minorities only made up quarter of North Carolina’s population (State Library, “Statistics”, p. 1). From the years 1960 to 1962, of the 467 sterilization ordered by the board, 284 (61%) were black (Winston-Salem, “Wicked Silence”). In addition, blacks were targeted because the amount of welfare recipients who were black grew from 31% in 1950 to 48% in 1961 (Schoen, Choice and Coercion, p. 109; see "Reassessing," p. 151). It was seen as necessary to sterilize those recipients of welfare to decrease the growing financial burden on the state.
In an interview for MSNBC's "Rock Center" in 2011, NC Governor Perdue was asked about the increase in eugenics sterilizations in the 1950s and 1960s. The Governor's response was evasive and provided no acknowledgement of the fact that there were disproportionate numbers of African American females among the victims as a response of deliberate state policies that were based on disability, race, gender, and class. See here.
There are two stories that were made public by two black women who were sterilized against their will at a young age in North Carolina. The first is Elaine Riddick, who had been sterilized at the age of 14 by a state order in North Carolina in 1968 after giving birth to a baby after being raped. When she was operated on she was not informed that she was being sterilized. She only discovered this years later when she was trying to get pregnant with her husband. She was considered part of a lower class and the consent form had been signed by her illiterate grandmother, who was threatened to lose her public benefits, and her parents, who were both alcohol dependent at the time. She blames the sterilization for ending her marriage and is still affected by the surgery, saying, “I felt like I was nothing. It’s like, the people that did this; they took my spirit away from me” (Sinderbrand, p. 1).
The second story is of Nial Cox Ramirez, who was sterilized at the age of 17 after several instances of pressure from social workers to get sterilized after becoming pregnant. She eventually complied because they threatened to take her family off of welfare, but she was never informed of the consequences of the surgery. She was assured she would be able to become pregnant again, but learned otherwise when she attempted to conceive years later. Like Riddick, her marriage fell apart. When she sued the state of North Carolina in 1967, the lawsuit was dismissed on a technicality (Wiggins, p. 1). These women were only two among those who fell under the categories of the groups targeted, and suffered as a result.
Some were quick to believe that Black Americans practiced reckless breeding (Larson, p. 156). However, North Carolina took an ever more grand approach to solving its reproductive woes, instituting a birth control program geared towards giving poor women a more acceptable and less costly way to prevent unwanted pregnancies claiming that it would “be taught when the economic status precludes adequate care” (Larson, p.157).
Young children were also targeted by these eugenic practices. A teenage girl from North Carolina was the object of her father’s affections. She was given a physical and the doctors realized that she’d had sexual intercourse. As a result he parents gave consent to have their daughter sterilized instead of reprimanding the father for sexually assaulting his daughter (Ariyo, p. 59).
Blacks and Mentally and Physically Disabled: The Story of Junius Wilson
(Source: http://www.racialicious.com/2009/05/26/when-systems-of-oppression-intersect-mental-health-and-the-immigration-system/)
Junius Wilson was born in 1908 to Sidney and Mary Wilson (Burch, p. 1). He was born deaf in and so his literacy level was extremely low. At the age of eight he was sent away to a residential North Carolina School for the deaf and blind in Raleigh. This was America’s first school created to care for the special needs black children (Burch, p. 20). He was never taught proper sign language and so his family members often would misunderstand him or misinterpret gestures that he made, and he also did not understand the things that his family members were telling him, as his mother could not teach him how to read and write (Burch, p. 18). Because of the confusing communication, some of his family members suspected that he had assaulted one of his own family members sexually. In this community he was somewhat safer from his family however he was sent here not for deafness per se but for his perceived mental deficiencies and sexual deviations. Here in this institution Wilson became a member of a community that was equally misunderstood and equally ostracized by the greater community. They were all people of color and they were all unable to communicate by normal conventions. They were never officially taught ASL (American Sign Language) as they were all people of color and at the time no one saw fit to use their teaching resources on Blacks. They instead developed their own gestures and signs to communicate with one another and to the staff members in the institution. This form of sign language was entirely unique to these people. As a result, the deaf Blacks from Raleigh could not communicate with other signing deaf people, and far less could they be understood by their hearing peers (Burch, p. 22).
Southern states had a strong history of segregation. This mentality of separation and White superiority bled the special education programs of even the most progressive places south of the Mason Dixon, like North Carolina. Gustavus Ernest Lineberry became the superintendent for the North Carolina School for the Colored Blind and Deaf in 1918, after this the quality of education changed dramatically. Lineberry was a firm believer in the teaching of the blind and deaf, even Blacks, but he was not so kind as to consider the needs of his White and Black students to be the same (Burch, p. 22). He completely redistributed the resources of the school so that the best teachers and alumni were teaching at the White schools. He then made sure to provide a far less academic curriculum for the Blacks, as he felt there was a dire need to keep Blacks “in their place” (Burch, p. 22). The Black students with physical disabilities were given an education that would prepare them for rudimentary, vocational labor so that they could prove their worth to society ‘boys were taught shoe repairing, carpentry and cabinetmaking along with dairy work” (Burch, p. 22). It was also clear that this vocational form of training, towards fields that required little interaction, lowered the cost that their programs would incur and made the need for sufficient literacy nearly unimportant.
This, however, created a great deal of socialized problems for the students participating in the programs. Everyone sent to the school for the Colored Deaf and Blind was sent there to become better functioning and well prepared to rejoin society. But the students were not exposed to role models that were not fluent in sign and who did not know how to supply the needs of the deaf and blind. And because of the segregation that was taking place students could not even be taught by their White peers secretly, because they were transferred to Morganton (Burch, p.23).
Goldsboro Asylum during the Great Depression
Junius Wilson was becoming too much of a burden for his family as he became older, and his communication with them had not really improved either which was greatly to his detriment. His family decided that the best thing they could do in their situation was to have Wilson committed to a mental asylum. He was given up to the police by his family under the charge of attempted rape. However, it is clear that not everyone was on board with this idea. Although, his mother allowed them to take him away it was said that she didn’t approve of the decision and would not speak with André, his father, because he was the one that supported removing his son permanently (Burch, p. 129).
Wilson was moved to Goldsboro Asylum in a farming colony. North Carolina was experiencing the debilitation of the Great Depression just like everyone else at the time and so holding whole mental institutions was more of a juggling act than those that ran the institutions could bear alone. Goldsboro opened up farming colonies in order to defer some of the costs involved in feeding inmates by having the inmates work for the food that they ate. The institution even went so far as to send inmates to other farms so that they could make money for the asylum. One could look at this as a sad combination of economic desperation seasoned with racism in the South and a disregard for the mentally and physically disabled (Burch, p. 76).
Freedom for Wilson
After a great deal of mistreatment however, Junius Wilson’s case was taken up by John Wasson, who noted that Wilson was being held in the Asylum for “phase of life adjustment disorder” something he felt didn’t warrant a seventy year stay in a mental institution (Burch, p. 128). In a major State court case Junius Wilson v. the State of North Carolina Wilson was finally granted his freedom and a cottage to call his own on the outskirts of the Hospital property at Goldsboro.
The Years after Junius Wilson
Wilson’s story continued to have a significant impact after his death. His case which he brought through the North Carolina judiciary as a result of his poor treatment and wrongful sterilization was a model that others used in order to seek compensation for the trauma caused (Burch, p. 214). The state of North Carolina has made great efforts to own up to its involvement in the eugenics movement. In 2003 North Carolina was one of the first states to repeal the eugenic sterilization laws. Unfortunately it has taken until very recently for any party afflicted by the eugenics laws to be officially recognized and monetarily compensated. Until the 2009-2010 session of the State Legislature of North Carolina, there had been one promise after another with only symbolic acknowledgement being offered (Burch, p. 215). (See also below on compensation for victims.)
Major Proponents
Dr. William Allan was North Carolina’s initial promoter of negative eugenics. He wrote his first study on eugenics in 1916 and by the end of his life he had written 93 papers. He had his own private practice until 1941, when he started the medical genetics department at Bowman Gray. He thought that hereditary diseases could be halted by prevention and based much of his work on field studies and surveys. He pushed for a statewide bank of genetic information that would catalog peoples’ genetic backgrounds to see if they were prospective parents. He continued to push for this until his death in 1943 (Winston-Salem, “Forsyth in the Forefront”).
. (Photo origin: Winston Salem Journal, Against Their Will, available at http://media.gatewaync.com/wsj/photos/specialreports/againsttheirwill/graphics/parttwo_herndonsmall.jpg)
Dr. C. Nash Herndon followed in the footsteps of Allan when he took over the department at Bowman Gray after his death. He conducted surveys of those with disabilities in an effort to find links of hereditary diseases. He was president of the American Eugenics Society from 1953-1955 and president of the Human Betterment League of North Carolina. He was the greatest contributor in pushing the eugenics movement forward in North Carolina after WWII (Winston-Salem, “Forsyth in the Forefront”).
(Source: http://www.ci.winston-salem.nc.us/Home/DiscoverWinston-Salem/History/Articles/Winston-SalemMayorsBiographies)
James G. Hanes was the founder of the Human Betterment League of North Carolina in 1947. The league changed the face of eugenics in North Carolina by giving the board new legitimacy. In 1957, the league had sent out more than 575,000 pieces of mail promoting the sterilization program and helped lead to the increasing number of sterilizations on blacks and women outside of institutions in the following years (Winston-Salem, “Selling a Solution”).
Ira M. hardy was the Superintendent at the North Carolina School for the Feeble-Minded. She appealed to the Southern Medical Association that took place in Florida expressing her deep desire to make the mentally ill completely separate from the rest of the population (Larson, p. 46).
Kate Burr Johnson was female social worker during the era of eugenic sterilization. She was a major proponent of the movement of compulsory sterilization. Johnson claimed that she wanted women to be liberated and be provided with reproductive freedom; however, she was actually strongly supporting the eugenic sterilization of people that would become social liabilities and produce unfit or economically unstable offspring (Krome-Lukens, p. 3).
“Feeder Institutions” and institutions where sterilizations were performed
(Photo origin: Winston Salem Journal, Against Their Will, available at http://media.gatewaync.com/wsj/photos/specialreports/againsttheirwill/graphics/parttwo_bowman.jpg)
The Bowman Gray School of Medicine housed a program for eugenic sterilizations starting in 1948. It was aimed at the eugenic improvement of the population of Forsyth County. It consisted of a systematic approach that would eliminate certain “genetically unfit strains from the local population” (Winston-Salem, “Forsyth in the Forefront”). It expanded the program throughout North Carolina. The school received much philanthropic support for research of genetic ideas. Today, school officials condemn eugenic research, as the dean of the school, Dr. William B. Applegate, states “I think that the concepts and the practice of eugenics is wrong and unethical and would in no way be approved or condoned in modern medical times” (Winston-Salem, “Forsyth in the Forefront”). The school is now part of the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center-one of the most respected academic medical centers in the country. Although officials of the school condemn eugenics there is no mention of the program for eugenic sterilizations on the medical center’s website.
(Photo origin: North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, available at http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/mhfacilities/images/Caswell-Center.jpg)
The Caswell Training School was founded in 1911 and was North Carolina’s only school for the mentally retarded until 1958. It was built in Kinston, North Carolina after the people of Kinston offered free electricity and gas for the school if it located itself there (Noll, “Public Face,” p. 9). Many local areas fought to have an institution built in their areas because the prospect of new jobs outweighed the negatives associated with the institutions. In 1912, superintendent Dr. Ira Hardy said the facility was not only designed to house the feeble-minded and decrease their threat, but also to train them for a productive life outside the institution (Noll, “Public Face,” p. 5). However, he did not remain superintendent for long, as in 1914 Dr. C. Bank Nairy became the new superintendent. He also spoke of control and helping patients, but in addition he focused the institution on “protecting” the patients. Similar to other institutions, the sterilization of women became a focus and McNairy stated that the protection, care, and training of these “poor, unfortunate, fiends, yet irresponsible enemies of themselves, society, and the state” were the duty of Caswell Center (Noll, Feeble-Minded, p. 131). The protection the institution offered came also in the form of segregation and sterilization. Caswell Center put many of its residents to work in the later years. The center claimed a three-fold purpose to this work: first to train the child, second to keep him out of mischief, and third to conserve the amount of money that would be paid for help to carry on the work (Noll, Feeble-Minded, p. 132). These “high-level” patients were utilized by the center as farm and maintenance workers to decrease the facility costs. By 1935, 300 patients worked in the dining room and sewing rooms (females) and on the farm (males). However, male residents were often released much earlier after sterilization than were their female counterparts. From 1914-1919, 52% of men were discharged within three 3 years while only 31% of females were (
Noll, Feeble-Minded,
p. 132). These numbers reflect the attitudes in the South towards sex roles and mental disabilities.
Living conditions at the training school were subpar, as well as the amount of staff on hand. In 1955 there were only 11 teachers and one psychologist for a resident population of 1800. In the mid-1950s, the Caswell Training School sterilized about 50 people per year. It drew its residents from the most impoverished and socially isolated sections of the white North Carolina population. Admission to the institution was heavily class based, as low economic status went hand-in-hand with institutionalization (Noll, Feeble-Minded, p. 112). The school is still open today and is now called the Caswell Developmental Center (Castles, pp. 1-3). It offers residential services, care arrangements, and medical treatments to patients (Noll, “Public Face,” p. 5). The center embraces its heritage with a museum and accessible archives, which is not common as many institutions remain ambivalent of their past (Noll, “Public Face,” p. 14). The museum serves to show the facility’s role in mental health policy and the archives are there to help researchers and show how progress has been made in the treatment of mentally retarded persons. However, the fact that the Caswell training school played a central role in North Carolina’s sterilization program receives limited recognition (Noll, “Public Face,” p.16). The Caswell Training School’s website does not mention the sterilizations that occurred there in the past.
(Source: http://www.ncgenweb.us/cabarrus/Photos/HistMarkers/StonewallJacksonTrainingSchool.jpg)
The Stonewall Jackson Training School was founded in 1907 and was North Carolina’s first juvenile detention facility. This was mostly a school for boys, but a few girls were sterilized there over its history, all of whom were labeled as “mentally retarded”. The boys who were sent there had only “minor scrapes” with authorities, not for mental illness. In 1948, seven boys out of 300 were targeted for sterilization because they were ready for discharge. These boys were deemed “feebleminded” as a justification for the operation. These were the only boys sterilized at this school (Winston-Salem, DETOUR: In ’48 State Singled out Delinquent Boys). The building still exists but does not remain in operation today. There is no commemoration at the site or mention of the past.
Source: http://www.oberrycenterfoundation.org/wisobc.htm
The Goldsboro Training School, now known as the O’Berry Center, opened in 1957 as the first institution for black intellectually disabled citizens. It had 150 clients were transferred to it from Cherry Hospital, at which point the treatment of the patients was limited to academics and vocational training. It is still operating today with approximately 430 clients, but it is no longer limited to African Americans (Castles, pp. 12-14). The center’s website refers to the institution's history of dealing with Black citizens with intellectual disabilities.
(Source: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=607397&imageID=1253742&total=17&num=0&word=21273&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=13&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=Name&sLevel=&sLabel=North%20Carolina%20State%20Board%20of%20Charities%20and%20Public%20Welfare&imgs=20&pos=14&e=w )
The Morrison Training School was established in 1923, according to the North Carolina Department of Corrections website. Morrison Training School was originally a boys’ training school for Blacks. The facility opened in 1924, in 1925 housing eight youth. In 1939, its name was changed to Morrison Training School for Governor Cameron Morrison. The name was changed again in 1969 to Cameron Morrison School (Huggins, p.1). The facility closed and then reopened as a prison in 1977. Morrison and Sandhills Youth Center were organized as the Sandhills Youth Complex (Huggins, p.1). In 1978, three of Morrison’s dormitories were converted to house 100 women inmates. In 1988, Cameron Morrison Youth Center’s name was changed to Morrison Youth Institution (Huggins, p.1). From 1988 to 2002, Morrison Youth Institution served as a medium security prison for young male felons, 18 to 21 years of age. In January 2002, Morrison was converted to a medium security for adult males, and renamed Morrison Correctional Institution, to help meet the state’s growing need for adult male prison bed space. The youth inmates transferred to other youth prison facilities. In July 2002, Impact East was closed and was reopened in June 2003 to house minimum security youthful offenders.
The
North Carolina Farm Colony
(State Industrial Farm Colony for Women), as analyzed by Cahn (2007, pp. 168-72), was also "feeder institution" that held deviant female teenagers and others before having them transferred to an institution for the "feebleminded" and sterilized.
Opposition
Blacks were opposed to sterilizations one two levels: those who knew about its racial bias and those who didn’t. The sterilization program was only whispered about in the black communities, and any evidence that race played a part in those who were sterilized wasn’t made public or scrutinized. Therefore, the eugenics board was allowed to proceed with few hurdles (Winston-Salem). Those blacks knew about the racial bias involved with sterilization tried to push for their rights. In 1959, State Senator Jolly introduced a bill that would authorize the sterilization of an unmarried woman who gave birth for the third time. This bill was contested by group of blacks. However, the senator's response was "You should be concerned about this bill. One out of four of your race is illegitimate." Blacks that demanded to be heard were ruled out of order by the white-controlled legislature (Winston-Salem, "Wicked Silence").
Some college students were in opposition to the sterilizations. In 1960, students from North Carolina A&T State University began sit-in movement against states progressive attitude or race relations. However, this gained little speed or recognition by the state to make any changes. Also, at Shaw University in Raleigh from 1968 to 1972, student activists tried to educate blacks about the issues and threats of sterilization. However, they lacked detailed information, and therefore this gained little momentum as well (Winston-Salem, “Wicked Silence”).
Today, North Carolina is trying to amend for its past, making it one of the only states to do so thus far. In April 2003, the sterilization law was unanimously voted to be overturned by the North Carolina Senate. A few weeks later, a law was then signed by Governor Easley to officially put an end to forced sterilizations in North Carolina. Soon after, on April 17, 2003, Easley issued a public apology, stating, “To the victims and families of this regrettable episode in North Carolina's past, I extend my sincere apologies and want to assure them that we will not forget what they have endured" ("Easley Signs Law Ending State’s Eugenics Era," p. 1). Then, in December 2005, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators passed resolution calling for federal and state programs to identify victims nationwide and get them health care and counseling (Sinderbrand, p. 1). However, these current efforts to find sterilized victims are difficult due to budget constraints and high costs of a publicity campaign. Therefore, efforts to find victims through "free media" were employed, such as posting info on bulletins, offices, health departments, libraries, schools, billboards, and city buses etc. (Sinderbrand, p. 1).
Source: http://news.ncdcr.gov/2009/06/18/historical-highway-marker-remembers-eugenics/
In 2009, a marker was dedicated in Raleigh, where the state eugenics board had met
Recently Gov. Bev Perdue created the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation. The North Carolina General Assembly made funding available for the Foundation to plan and take on their mission to provide long awaited compensation to the victims who were sterilized compulsory by the State of North Carolina. The Foundation will function as a resource to help the survivors of the N.C. Eugenics Board program. The N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation is a group whose purpose is to provide information and assistance to all those affected.
A task force created by the governor has considered providing compensation for victims (NC Justice for Victims Foundation). (
Anderson Cooper on CNN ran a story on compensation for victims of sterilizations on 12/27/2011 (see
this link
While a task force recommended to set compensation for surviving and verified victims at the amount of $50,000, the state senate rejected such a proposal in the summer of 2012, and the foundation was faced with the prospect of shutting down due to a lack of money. As of October 2012, only about 170 victims who are still alive have been verified, out of an estimated total of approx. 1,500-2,000. The low number of victims who have revealed themselves in this way reflects the continuing stigma of being sterilized and parallels the situation in Germany, where for many decades victims were reluctant to come forward in part due to the stigma attached to sterilizations and the still-existing belief that a sterilization constitutes a black mark on a family lineage.
The situation might be reflective of the difficulty of citizens in North Carolina to allow for "negative memory," i.e., a willingness to concede that the state representing the will of its citizens was capable of committing atrocious (though legal) deeds. In contrast to sterilization victims in British Columbia and Alberta, not a single victim of a state eugenic sterilization law is known to have been compensated by a state in the United States so far.
After extensive efforts by organizations such as the Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims, the state’s NAACP, and legal clinics by the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights to spread the word about compensation to victims of eugenic sterilization, the number of claimants reached a number close to 800 until the cutoff date of June 30, 2014. In the larger context of compensation for social injustice stemming from illiberal and injurious state programs a firm deadline seems highly problematic, as the date seems arbitrary and informed not by considerations of justice but by political expediency, and it remains unclear why such a deadline would be necessary in the first place.
The number of verified cases remains very low at less than 220 (see
).While a task force recommended to set compensation for surviving and verified victims at the amount of $50,000, the state senate rejected such a proposal in the summer of 2012, and the foundation was faced with the prospect of shutting down due to a lack of money. As of October 2012, only about 170 victims who are still alive have been verified, out of an estimated total of approx. 1,500-2,000. The low number of victims who have revealed themselves in this way reflects the continuing stigma of being sterilized and parallels the situation in Germany, where for many decades victims were reluctant to come forward in part due to the stigma attached to sterilizations and the still-existing belief that a sterilization constitutes a black mark on a family lineage.The situation might be reflective of the difficulty of citizens in North Carolina to allow for "negative memory," i.e., a willingness to concede that the state representing the will of its citizens was capable of committing atrocious (though legal) deeds. In contrast to sterilization victims in British Columbia and Alberta, not a single victim of a state eugenic sterilization law is known to have been compensated by a state in the United States so far.After extensive efforts by organizations such as the Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims, the state’s NAACP, and legal clinics by the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights to spread the word about compensation to victims of eugenic sterilization, the number of claimants reached a number close to 800 until the cutoff date of June 30, 2014. In the larger context of compensation for social injustice stemming from illiberal and injurious state programs a firm deadline seems highly problematic, as the date seems arbitrary and informed not by considerations of justice but by political expediency, and it remains unclear why such a deadline would be necessary in the first place.The number of verified cases remains very low at less than 220 (see here ). It appears that a victim is only verified for compensation if a record of an order by the state's Eugenics board exists. If this is the case, it leaves out those whose records might no longer be extant, or whose sterilization was due not to a sterilization order under the state's eugenics law but what is known as "Mississippi appendectomies" (this is noted and explained here ). As is the case with the deadline, this very narrow definition of victimhood is not calibrated to the historical record or experience of victimhood.
Bibliography
Ariyo, Oluwunmi. 2006. “Making the ‘Unfit’ Individual: Analysis of the Rhetoric of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina.” Master’s Thesis, Department of Communication, Wake Forest University.
Burch, Susan. 2007. Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Cahn, Susan. 2007. Sexual Reckonings. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Castles, Katherine. 2002. “Quiet Eugenics: Sterilization in North Carolina's Institutions for the Mentally Retarded, 1945-1965.” Journal of Southern History 68: 849-78.
Caswell Developmental Center. Available at
Gardella, John E. 1995. “Eugenic Sterilization in America and North Carolina.” North Carolina Medical Journal; 56 (2): 106-10.
Huggins, J C. 1995-2011. North Carolina Department of Correction. Available at
Krome-Lukens, Anna L. 2009. “A Great Blessing to Defective Humanity: Women and the Eugenics Movement in North Carolina.” Master’s thesis, Dept. of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
1995. Sex, Race, And Science: Eugenics In The Deep South Baltimore. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Larson, Edward J.
Noll, Steven. 2005. “The Public Face of Southern Institutions for the ‘Feeble-Minded.’” The Public Historian 27, 2: 25-42.
------. 1995. Fee |
called with and empty string as first parameter.
We then return the triplet containing the current data pointer, the memory cells and the output string.
Without the previous function our program would not end and it will give us an error like this
<pre><code class="hls php">** (FunctionClauseError) no function clause matching in Brainfuck.run/4 iex:25: Brainfuck.run("", 0, [0], "")
because there is no function matching the pattern with the empty string as first param.
The second basic function is the generic one that matches a string starting with some character, no matter which, skips it, and calls run again with the rest of the string.
<pre><code class="hls php">defp run(<<_>> <> rest, addr, mem, output), do: run(rest, addr, mem, output)
With this two functions in place we already have a scanner, a completely useless scanner, that skips everything and then returns the initial state.The complete code for this is just a few lines long
<pre><code class="hls php">defmodule Brainfuck do def run(program), do: run(program, 0, [0], "") # exit program defp run("", addr, mem, output), do: {addr, mem, output} # skip everything defp run(<<_>> <> rest, addr, mem, output), do: run(rest, addr, mem, output)
end
Brainfuck.run(“hello world”)
output: {0, [0], “”}
Note that Elixir matches patterns from top to bottom, so we need to put the function that skips unrecognized commands at the end, otherwise more specific patterns would be ignored.
Basics, strings and the I/O
I’m gonna start implementing commands, by defining the functions that handle the IO operations, basically they output a byte and read a byte from input (in our case stdin ).
To do that, first we need to introduce two more helper functions
<pre><code class="hls php">defp byte_at(list, addr), do: list |> Enum.at addr
defp char_at(list, addr), do: [list |> byte_at addr] |> to_string
byte_at extracts the byte at position addr in list (AKA our memory cells), while char_at returns the same byte as string value.
In Elixir strings are binaries, or, in other words, strings of bits.
To convert a byte value to a string, we cannot simply use to_string function, because it will convert the byte to its string representation, not to the character rapresented by its value, so we need to wrap it inside [] and make it a byte list (the internal representartion of ASCII strings).
As an experiment, you can start iex and try this code
<pre><code class="hls php">65 |> to_string # print "65"
[65] |> to_string # print “A”
[65, 66, 67] |> to_string # print “ABC”
Handle @op_putc opcode, that appends one byte to output
<pre><code class="hls php">defp run(@op_putc <> rest, addr, mem, output) do run(rest, addr, mem, output <> (mem |> char_at addr))
end
When @op_putc is at the beginning of the program, this function call run with the new output formed by appending the character at the current memory location to the old output.
Rest becomes the new program, while address and memory are unchanged.
Next is @op_getc, which reads a byte from stdin and puts it in the current memory location.
<pre><code class="hls php">defp run(@op_getc <> rest, addr, mem, output) do val = case IO.getn("Inputn", 1) do :eof -> 0 c -> c end run(rest, addr, mem |> put_at(addr, val), output)
end
It’s a bit trickier than the previous, but gives us the opportunity to introduce the case statement.
In Elixir everything is an expression, and returns a value.
We use this feature to assign to val the result of the case expression.
Inside the case we use pattern matching to match the return value of IO.getn, which, straight from the Elixir interactive help
<pre><code class="hls php">Gets a number of bytes from the io device. If the io device is a unicode
device, count implies the number of unicode codepoints to be retrieved.
Otherwise, count is the number of raw bytes to be retrieved. It returns:
• data – the input characters
• :eof – end of file was encountered
• {:error, reason} – other (rare) error condition; for instance, {:error,
:estale} if reading from an NFS volume
We read one byte from the input, if it returns :eof, return 0, if it returns some data, we return it (it is guaranteed to be one byte long).
We ignore error conditions, since they are very rare, especially in our simple case.
The new memory will have val value at addr position.
Not hard at all until now.
Let’s talk about memory
There are two opcodes in brainfuck that operates on memory values, + and -.
The implementation is very straightforward
<pre><code class="hls php">defp run(@op_vinc <> rest, addr, mem, output) do run(rest, addr, mem |> inc_at(addr), output)
end
defp run(@op_vdec <> rest, addr, mem, output) do
run(rest, addr, mem |> dec_at(addr), output)
end
Now that we (hopefully) grasped the basics of the Elixir syntax and how pattern matching is used, it should be pretty easy to understand how these two functions work.
Last two functions we meet today handle the data pointer.
I’ll just show you the two basic cases, when the pointer moves inside the memory length, we’ll keep handling the auto expansion of the tape to the left and right for the next part.
<pre><code class="hls php">defp run(@op_pinc <> rest, addr, mem, output) do run(rest, addr+1, mem, output)
end
defp run(@op_pdec <> rest, addr, mem, output) do
run(rest, addr-1, mem, output)
end
Almost no need to explain what it is going on, the data pointer is simply incremented or decremented and the new value is passed to run.
In the next post I’ll talk about how to handle expanding the memory tape when needed and, the most fun part, where Elixir capabilities really shine, handling loops and jumps in a very easy way.
I’ve created a gist with all the code presented in this post, of course it misses loops, but you can use it as a starting point for your own experiments
If you enjoyed this, GOTO part 2Kendrick Lamar shared his love for women’s natural looks and imperfections in the video for his new single “Humble,” but not everyone is feeling the same as some accused him of misogyny.
After Lamar obliterated his hip-hop peers on “The Heart Part 4” last week, “Humble,” released in the early hours of Friday, March 31, is a change of pace due to his appreciation of unapologetically Black afros and women’s stretch marks.
“I’m so f—–‘ sick and tired of the Photoshop,” Lamar spits. ” Show me somethin’ natural like afro on Richard Pryor / Show me somethin’ natural like ass with some stretch marks / Still will take you down right on your mama’s couch in Polo socks, ayy.”
The highly visual clip also contains overt religious themes like a take on Leonardo da Vinci’s mural “The Last Supper,” but Twitter users were stuck on Lamar’s musical celebration of women’s unedited beauty and the song quickly went to No. 1 on the iTunes songs chart.
Many applauded the ode to embracing natural looks.
So… I'm thinking about @kendricklamar's new video for #Humble & the casting call where they said. "Naw, sis. Not enough stretchmarks." pic.twitter.com/kXPKxWfQ40 — April (@ReignOfApril) March 30, 2017
the body positive images in Kendrick new video tho???????? #behumble #KingKendrick — the myth (@ThatsJeanDeaux) March 30, 2017
Didn't realize how much I wanted to see an ass like mine represented until I saw that ass w/ stretch marks in Kendrick's video #Humble??? — Bob The Drag Queen (@suzie_melonz) March 30, 2017
Girls when they heard Kendrick say bring back asses with stretch marks #kendricklamar #humble pic.twitter.com/SKEu8fyovE — TUFFKNIGHT (@OWU5U) March 31, 2017
Shout out to Kendrick Lamar for saying he likes women with stretch marks and all. These fake IG models can take a rest. — Ayomide O. Tayo (@AOT2) March 31, 2017
At least one was a bit cautious.
I appreciate Kendrick mentioning stretchmarks. I also know he probably only means certain types of stretchmarks on certain kinds of women. — Elle J Kaye (@spokenELLE) March 31, 2017
Some took issue with Lamar’s stretch mark line, as they felt he was trying to control women’s bodies.
He also touches on how he's "sick and tired of Photoshop" and displays an images of a light skin girl with no make up in his music video. — kaila (@kaichare) March 31, 2017
For all of his supposed brilliance that y'all assign to him it would be nice if he knew that black women didn't exist on two spectrum ends — Sierra (@SKEEerra) March 31, 2017
Kendrick has a rather patronizing, shallow way of looking at situations relating to women. I wish I could tell him about himself lol — fat and boujee (@delafro_) March 31, 2017
You guys just can't handle that people (namely women) don't like Kendrick despite his benevolent, incense coated misogyny — Jasmine Sanders (@JasMoneyRecords) March 31, 2017
That led other users to slam negative responses to “Humble.”
Kendrick said he like natural bodies… where is the problem…. 99% of y’all can’t afford surgery so why are you upset — Lance (@CashFlowinAsset) March 31, 2017
Kendrick: Embrace your natural beauty. The hair and skin you were born in are beautiful.
Feminists: OUR BODIES ARENT HERE TO PLEASE YOU PIG. pic.twitter.com/DkfKDJj3jJ — Will (@Iad3uxieme) March 31, 2017
"Why rappers glorify fake bodies what about REAL women" *Kendrick raps about real booty with stretch marks and natural hair* "Hotep!" — Groovy (@GroovyTi) March 31, 2017Reimold to have surgery
MLB.com/blogs Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 22, 2012
By Britt Ghiroli
Orioles outfielder Nolan Reimold will undergo surgery to repair a herniated disk in his neck on Monday morning at Johns Hopkins Hopsital, a procedure that will be performed by neurosurgeon Dr. Ziya Gokaslan and is expected to end the 28-year-old’s season.
Reimold announced the decision prior to Friday’s game, and said he went back-and-forth a few times on his decision, but ultimately the consensus of multiple doctors –which he had visited in Baltimore this week — won out.
“The best thing to do as far as my career was definitely to get the surgery,” said Reimold, who last played April 30 and was dealing with what was originally diagnosed as neck spasms in the weeks prior to that. “[It will] get the pressure off the nerve that’s getting pushed on.”
Reimold said his procedure is the same one NFL quarterback Peyton Manning had, and he will have the herniated disk removed and two vertebrae will be fused together, which should make the area stronger than it had been even when he was healthy.
“He’s obviously responded well to it,” Reimold said of Manning, who is expected to be the Denver Broncos starting quarterback this season. “A lot of times the symptoms respond immediately and other times it takes a little bit of a while for the strength to come back.”
Asked if he was resigned to the fact that he would not play again this year, Reimold said: “I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to do the surgery and do my rehab until I’m ready to play at this level. Which, whether it takes eight weeks or longer, that’s what I’m going to do.”
The news, while not unexpected given Reimold’s flurry of doctors visits earlier this week, is still a significant blow to an Orioles club that had anticipated him manning left field in 2012. The Opening Day starter, Reimold hit.313, with five homers and 10 RBIs, posting a.627 slugging percentage in 67 at-bats before hitting the disabled list.
While on the DL, he had two epidural injections to try to ease the pain, but was still bothered by numbness and tingling despite a second, more recent, MRI showing Reimold’s herniated disk had made some improvements. Monday’s fusion surgery is fairly common among spine surgeries and while Reimold was optimistic about his career going forward, he was understandably upset about the immediate future.
“It’s disappointing,” he said of having to resort to surgery. “I wanted to [contribute], not just individually, but collectively too, because the team has been playing well. We are in the division up there towards the top. So, to not be a part of it, just to watch it is kind of tough. But I’m still rooting for the guys and puling for them. Just from that perspective it’s tough. But I’ll be back. And everything should go well, and I’ll do everything I can to be back as soon as I can. And hopefully be stronger.”Phoenix's Scoring Bug Analyzed and Fixed By Don Hodges Posted 1/22/2010. Updated 8/14/2015 The 1980 arcade game, Phoenix, was created by Amstar Electronics. It is fairly well known that if the player shoots 3 birds in a row very quickly as they fly upwards during the second stage of the game, the score will jump to around 204,000 points, no matter what the player's current score is.
3 birds fly upwards and will trigger the bug if shot quickly enough.
A sample score after triggering the bug. A video of the feat can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OABVZGUMMkY After some digging around in the assembly language code and using the MAME emulator with the dubugger, we can discover the reason that this bug exists, and design a fix for it. The program reserves 4 slots of memory for birds that have been hit by the player's missile. Each of these slots are 4 bytes long, and they are all contained in a single area of memory at locations #4370 through #437F. [The # indicates a hexadecimal number.] Slots 1 and 2 are normally used for the regular death animation for most of the birds. Slots 3 and 4 are used for the special death animation which has the score shown in the middle of two shells which open on both sides of it and move apart. This is used for small birds that are flying upwards with wings outstretched, and for the large birds in the third and fourth stages. Table 1: Slots for bird death animations.
Slot Number Type Byte 1 Byte 2 Byte 3 Byte 4 1 Regular 4370 4371 4372 4373 2 Regular 4374 4375 4376 4377 3 Special 4378 4379 437A 437B 4 Special 437C 437D 437E 437F In each slot, the first byte is used as a counter which indicates the state of the animation of the dying bird. When a bird is hit, this byte is normally set to #C, or is set to #10 for the special animation. This counter is decreased as the animation of the dying bird goes through its stages, and reaches 0 (zero) when it is complete. When a bird is hit, the program first checks to see which type of bird was hit. If it was a normal bird, the memory location that is checked first is set to #4370, which is the first byte of the first slot. If it is one that uses the special animation, the first memory checked is set to #4378, which is the first byte of the third slot. Then it examines the first byte from either slot 1 or slot 3. If the byte is zero, this means that the slot is open to use and the code then uses this slot to store 4 bytes of data that are related to the animation of the dying bird. If the byte is not zero, this means that the slot is being used and the next slot is then checked. The program then checks either slot 2 or 4. If the first byte is zero, then it is then used, but if not then the code uses the next slot, without doing any more checks. This works out OK for regular hits. The third death animation becomes the special one that pulls apart onscreen. However if 3 birds flying upward are hit in quick succession, then the program, after checking the third slot and the fourth slot, ends up using 4 bytes starting at #4380 to store the data, in a nonexistent fifth slot. The memory locations #4381, #4382, and #4383 are normally used to hold the player's score! [The first byte #4380, does not appear to be used for anything.] These bytes get overwritten. #4381 always gets the value #20. This corresponds to the player's hundred thousands and ten thousands digits. The second byte #4382 gets a value of #41 or #42. This corresponds to the player's thousands and hundreds digits. The last byte can vary widely, and represents the player's tens and ones digits. When this occurs, the player's score becomes #204,XYZ, where X can be 1 or 2 and Y and Z can be various digits. [The score is held in memory in Binary Coded Decimal]. The assembly language code with my comments for all of this follows, for those that are interested. You may need some assembly language knowledge to follow this. The CPU code is assembly language from the Intel 8085A. ; come here when a bird has been hit. 0EB8: 21 78 43 lxi h,$4378 ; HL := #4378 [slot for special animation] 0EBB: 7A mov a,d ; A := D 0EBC: FE 10 cpi $10 ; Are we to use the special animation? 0EBE: CA C3 0E jz $0ec3 ; Yes, skip next step 0EC1: 2E 70 mvi l,$70 ; Else HL := #4370 [slot for regular animation] 0EC3: 7E mov a,m ; Load timer from this slot 0EC4: A7 ana a ; Is this slot available? 0EC5: CA D5 0E jz $0ed5 ; Yes, skip ahead, we will use this slot ; else check next slot... 0EC8: 2C inr l 0EC9: 2C inr l 0ECA: 2C inr l 0ECB: 2C inr l ; Increase HL by 4. [now at 2nd or 4th slot] 0ECC: 7E mov a,m ; Load timer from this slot 0ECD: A7 ana a ; Is this slot available? 0ECE: CA D5 0E jz $0ed5 ; yes, skip ahead, we will use this slot ; else use the next slot. Bugged when birds are flying upwards. ; source of 204K bug. HL becomes #4380 which is start of score. 0ED1: 2C inr l 0ED2: 2C inr l 0ED3: 2C inr l 0ED4: 2C inr l ; Increase HL by 4 [now at 3rd or 5th slot] ; there should have been a check here to see if HL==#4380 and change it if so. 0ED5: 72 mov m,d ; Store D into byte 1 0ED6: 2C inr l ; Next byte 0ED7: 73 mov m,e ; Store E into byte 2. score becomes 20xxxx 0ED8: 2C inr l ; Next byte 0ED9: 70 mov m,b ; Store B into byte 3. score becomes 2041xx or 2042xx 0EDA:... A Fix We can fix the bug by checking the value of L after it finds the first 2 slots filled and gets ready to use the next slot. If L is #80, then we will set it to #70 so that the first slot is used instead of the score RAM. This will end up using a normal animation for the bird death instead of the special animation, but this is probably the best way to fix this without doing a much more complete code rewrite. The fix does not appear possible to patch within the confines of the original codespace, so a hook is created to a new subroutine in an area of unused memory. This bug can be fixed by the following patch, which requires changing 10 bytes of code: 0ED2: CD E6 0E call $0EE6 ; call patch... 0EE6: 2C inr l ; restore instructions wiped by the patch call 0EE7: 2C inr l ; 0EE8: 2C inr l ; if L becomes #80 then the S flag is set. Did it happen? 0EE9: F0 rp ; no, return and continue normally 0EEA: 2E 70 mov l,$70 ; else set L to #70 to use 1st slot, not the score RAM 0EEC: C9 ret ; return This patch has been tested and does work. It can be implemented by a MAME cheat code: :phoenix:20600000:0EEA:002E70C9:00FFFFFF:Fix 204K bug :phoenix:20710000:0EE6:2C2C2CF0:FFFFFFFF:Fix 204K bug (2/3) :phoenix:20610000:0ED2:00CDE60E:00FFFFFF:Fix 204K bug (2/3)
Learn more about MAME cheats at http://cheat.retrogames.com Comments and Conclusions: Some have suggested that this bug is actually an "Easter Egg", but I disagree. It seems like this bug was not intentional. In my opinion it looks like some sloppy programming. It would suck to be going for a record score and accidentally trigger this and set your score BACKWARDS. Much thanks to Steve Fewell for inspiring me to look into this bug and providing help, and feedback on drafts of this page.(CNN) Nigeria has announced plans to send an astronaut into space by 2030, as part of its drive to develop a world-class space industry.
"The space program is very important," said Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Minister of Science and Technology, during a speech in the capital city Abuja. "Space is a major asset that Nigeria must be involved in for the purpose of protecting national interests."
A Nigerian Space Agency delegation will visit partners in China this month to discuss logistics and investment for a manned space mission, which would be the first by an African nation.
The case for space
Dr. Onu's announcement has been greeted with skepticism, partly as it came soon after a scam email demanding $3 million for a lost Nigerian astronaut went viral, and as policy announcements from the new government have been scoring poorly on the Buharimeter, a Nigerian civil society website assessing policy commitments. Onu also recently announced plans to start a pencil manufacturing industry that would create 400,000 jobs.
But Nigeria's space program is no joke, and it is making steady progress. The National Space Research and Development Agency ( NASRDA ) has launched five satellites since 2003, with three still in orbit delivering vital services. The most recent - NigeriaSat-X -- was the first to be designed and constructed by NASRDA engineers, and more advanced models are in development.
The space agency has made extensive and creative use of the satellites, from analyzing climate data to improve farming practices, to retrieving hostages from Boko Haram, and officials argue this proves space exploration is essential for Nigeria.
"We contribute to various sectors that benefit the nation," says Felix Ale, NASRDA communications chief. "Space applications are key to development."
Capacity has improved through greater investment in infrastructure and skills, says Ale, adding that NASRDA has now trained over 300 staff to PhD or BsC level.
Crucially, the industry also benefits from political will at the highest level.
"The president is committed to the program," says Ale. "To ensure that dreams transfer to reality."
Grand ambition
Launching an astronaut into orbit represents a greater challenge than Nigeria's previous missions, but leading figures from the space industry are optimistic.
"To train an astronaut from selection to flight takes about eight years," says Dr. Spenser Onuh, head of the Centre for Satellite Technology Development. "2030 is realistic in my opinion...Responses from the international collaborators are very supportive and encouraging."
Professor Calestous Juma, a specialist on space programs in developing countries at the Harvard Kennedy School, suggests the mission represents "lofty ambition" that "may or may not happen as planned."
But he believes that the vision is more important than the outcome.
"Scientific, technological and engineering capabilities would have direct economic benefits to Nigeria long before the decision of putting a person in space is made," says Juma. "Space walks are probably the least important. It is the scientific and technological infrastructure and its linkages to the rest of the economy that matters."
Inspiring a continent
The Nigerian space program has ambitions beyond its borders, and it is hoped that bold statements -- such as a manned mission -- will inspire stargazers across the continent.
"This would be a landmark achievement for Nigeria and Africa, which will encourage the rest of Africa to get involved," says Ale.
Nigeria already shares resources from its space assets, such as providing satellite imagery to Mali, and has supported the idea of an African Space Agency.
With an ever-increasing number of African states investing in space programs, while traditional powerhouses downsize, the continent could be the hotspot of exploration for years to come.Liverpool: top of the table with six games to go
Brendan Rodgers' side went top of the Premier League on Sunday after thrashing Tottenham 4-0 at Anfield to capitalise on dropped points for their main rivals as Chelsea lost at Crystal Palace and Manchester City drew at Arsenal.
City, who trail Liverpool by four points but have two games in hand, remain the bookmakers' favourites to win the Premier League, but Carragher is convinced that his old club will beat them when they visit Anfield on Sunday April 13.
And he says the players and supporters now believe their 24-year wait for a league title is about to end.
"I think Liverpool will win it now," Carragher told Monday Night Football.
"The feeling before the weekend was 'we've got a chance', but those results and the intensity Liverpool played with on and off the pitch has changed that.
"I'm talking about the crowd, I'm talking about the Kop. You heard the roar at the end of the game and you know something's happening.
"They are chanting for Brendan Rodgers throughout the game and I've never heard that before as much. They are normally singing Kenny Dalglish's name or for Rafa Benitez a little bit, but it was all for the manager Brendan Rodgers.
"After this game there is a major belief that Liverpool will go on and win the league. There's a banner in the crowd now:'make us dream' and I think they're making the supporters believe now.
"With the way they are playing - and the pace and energy they've got - it will be very difficult for Man City to go there and take three points.
"I can only see Liverpool winning that game."
Liverpool are the highest scorers in the Premier League so far this season with 88 goals and have scored 22 goals in their last six games.
Carragher says it's unlikely that the team will continue to hit those heights for the rest of the campaign - and feels there will be tough tests in the remaining six fixtures before the trophy is in the hands of skipper Steven Gerrard.
"You can't expect Liverpool to keep winning games by three or four between now and the end of the season," he added.
"There is going to come a moment when they are under the cosh; they might go one down or go down to 10 men.
"Something will happen that Liverpool have to come through - and then you can say they deserve to win the title for that reason.
"It will be difficult for them to win every game 3-0 or 4-0 now. I don't think that happens towards the end of the season.
"There will be a moment between now and the end, in the six games where they prove themselves as champions - and I believe they will."
Happening
Fellow Monday Night Football expert Gary Neville knows exactly what it takes to win Premier League titles, having picked up eight of them during his career.
And while he still thinks Manchester City are slight favourites to win the league, he has noticed a trophy-winning spirit emerge among the Liverpool players.
Neville said: "'Something's happening' is something you used to feel when you were going for titles.
"You used to sense it and there was a moment where you thought it. There's almost a belief and a spirit that hits you and you think 'we're unstoppable here'.
"I have to say, seeing the coach arrive at Anfield on Wednesday night, they thought something was happening. Then against Tottenham you saw the atmosphere in the ground.
"Then you saw the players. Something happened in the warm-up before the game that I wasn't seeing 12 months ago. You saw them all hugging each other, high fives and patting each other on the chest.
"After the fourth goal you saw Suarez and he couldn't wait to give Henderson the goal. I'm not sure he'd have given him the goal as quickly two years ago.
"There is a sense of calmness and you can see it among them, but I have to say City still have the strongest squad and the expectation is with them."
And when asked if he was looking forward to working on the April 13 showdown for Sky Sports, the former Manchester United full-back replied: "Liverpool v Man City for the title? It's like having a choice of two blokes to nick your wife..."The head of the Newark FBI said Wednesday the NYPD’s monitoring of Muslims in New Jersey has had a chilling effect on the feds’ ability to gather counter terrorism intelligence.
In the annals of policing this is unheard of. Usually people in law enforcement hang together. If they have squabbles they keep it in the cone of silence.
Not this time.
“What we’re seeing now with the uproar that is occurring in New Jersey is that we’re starting to see cooperation pulled back. People are concerned that they’re being followed. People are concerned that they can’t trust law enforcement,” said FBI Newark Special Agent in Charge Michael Ward.
LISTEN: 1010 WINS’ Steve Sandberg Reports https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/muslims1-sandberg-40soc-rstern.mp3
Ward said the NYPD’s spying on mosques and Muslim businesses in the Garden State has caused sources to dry up and made the job of gathering counter terrorism intelligence much more difficult, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.
“It’s starting to have a negative impact. When people pull back cooperation it creates additional risks. It creates blind spots. It hinders our ability to have our finger on the pulse of what’s going on around the state,” Ward said.
Ward’s attack is the latest criticism of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s decision to send cops way beyond the borders of the five boroughs to seek out people who might want to attack New York City.
But it’s the first attack by a brother law enforcement official, and it’s the first public display of what appears to b a long-simmering resentment among federal officials of Kelly’s success in building a 1,000-member counter terrorism unit that rivals any unit anywhere.
By comparison, the Newark FBI office has 100 agents.
Police experts told Kramer the attack is unprecedented.
“I’ve been in the field for 42 years and I can’t recall it happening before,” said Robert McCrie, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Ward kept his on-camera comments brief, but then leveled other criticism of the NYPD, charging that Kelly’s force keeps a close hold on any intelligence it gathers and only shares what it wants when it wants.
“Law enforcement agencies don’t generally speak in the way this SAC did,” McCrie said.
The NYPD vigorously defended its past and present surveillance tactics and pointed out that many terrorist operations, including the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the 9/11 attack were masterminded in New Jersey.
The Department also pointed to the present terror concerns involving Israel and Iran. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said: “…as the likelihood of military conflict between Israel and/or the United States escalates, understanding where an operative for Hezbollah, Iran’s terror ally, may try to meld in would be absolutely vital for the protection of New York City.”
And in a sort of good cop-bad cop scenario, the head of the FBI in Washington praised Kelly and the NYPD on Wednesday for doing a “remarkable job in protecting New York.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has refused to criticize harsh comments from critics of the NYPD’s tactics, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but he did defend the city.
“Anything we’ve done in New Jersey, we have done under an agreement with the state of New Jersey that was signed by a previous governor, and still remains in effect,” said Bloomberg on Tuesday.
WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb On The Story https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/lamb_bloomy1w_morn_120307.mp3
Not backing down one inch, the mayor said the city will continue to gather the kind of information that the Constitution, and court decisions, allow it to do.
“We work with the governor of New Jersey and the state of New Jersey all the time. We’ll continue to do that,” added Bloomberg.
Christie said the NYPD thinks the world is their jurisdiction and the danger, he said, is that one agency cannot be aware of everything, and a lesson of 9/11 is that all levels of law enforcement need to communicate.
“I’m not saying they don’t belong in New Jersey, but tell us! Share it with the appropriate law enforcement agency,” Christie said. “My concern is this kind of obsession that the NYPD seems to have that they’re the masters of the universe.”
WCBS 880’s Levon Putney With Reaction From The FBI https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/putney_spying1w_midday_120307.mp3
Back in 2005, then New Jersey Gov. Dick Codey signed the executive orders that allowed the NYPD to cross the Hudson, and carry out surveillance operations in New Jersey.
But, as Codey told WCBS 880, he did not authorize any spying.
Where do you stand? Sound off in the comments section below!Smartphone Sony Xperia Z1S is expected to be on the market in the first quarter of 2014. year.
Chinese site Digi-wo published information on the prices and availability of this mobile. For this smartphone will need to pay 430 euros and it is expecteed to battle version of the Xperia Z1F for the international market, given that the ZF1 intended for the Japanese market only. It is speculated that will have the same Qualcomm Snapdragon processor 800 and the 20.1 megapixel camera as well as a Japanese device, but it will not have the same rounded corners. Xperia Z1F is available in green, black and pink color, and uses Google’s Android 4.2 operating system with Sony accessories. It is still unknown what colors will be available Xperia Z1S.James Cahill, one of the foremost authorities on Chinese art, whose interpretations of Chinese painting for the West influenced generations of scholars, died on Friday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 87.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his daughter, Sarah Cahill, said.
Professor Cahill, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965 until his retirement in 1994, was among a group of eminent art historians who, from the late 1950s to the 1970s, researched and cataloged Chinese painting. At the time, Western interest in Chinese art was far less than it is today, said Patricia Berger, professor of Chinese art at Berkeley and one of his former students.
Working with the Swedish scholar Osvald Siren and later on his own, Professor Cahill recorded and photographed Chinese masterworks, building a canon on which to understand the development of Chinese painting over the centuries, Professor Berger said.
In his analysis of paintings, Professor Cahill typically tried to learn as much as possible about the character of an artist from the brushwork. This formal analysis led to an interest in authenticity, a major theme in the study of Chinese art; in China, copying revered works is a tradition, and some copies are regarded as masterpieces in their own right.I like the Fourth of July. Almost everyone does. Friends and neighbors gathered in parks and backyards throughout the nation, sharing food and drink and happy thoughts in a festive atmosphere. What’s not to like?
Well the patriotic claptrap, of course. That I could do without.
I’m not talking about patriotism. Acts of citizenship and service honor this country’s traditions. I’m talking about the empty speechifying, often by politicians wearing faces gleaming with corruption, which passes for patriotism these |
drag it out too long, no number of Paul Heyman crazy faces will save this match from the doldrums.
20. There’s always the chance that somebody in one of the non-Rumble matches will pull double duty. The New Age Outlaws are taking on Cody Rhodes and Goldust (and the Rhodes brothers are already announced as Rumble participants), but I doubt they’ll enter the Rumble, unless it’s for some kind of anti-Punk shenanigans. I assume Show and Lesnar won’t make it solely due to the carnage they’ll wreak upon one another during their head-to-head. Orton and Cena should be negatives as well, but you never know when Vince McMahon will decide John Cena needs another Rumble banner to hang in the rafters. (And as with all things, what goes for Cena goes for Orton to a somewhat lesser degree.) Daniel Bryan and Bray Wyatt are maybes, because, well, next point …
19. I can imagine Bryan and Wyatt ending up as repeat performers in the Rumble because they both seem too big for their one-on-one match, bizarre as that sounds. Their feud has been the main event on Raw for the past few weeks, but appearing in a regular old wrestling match Sunday seems like a letdown. A lot of people are guessing that Bryan will beat Wyatt and then enter himself into the Rumble, which would certainly be a compelling next step in his story line. Just imagine: Bryan comes in at no. 29, starts to clean house. Then Bray comes in at no. 30, stares Bryan down, and helps him clear the ring. Then he lets Bryan knee him out of the ring. I have no idea why any of this happens, but it will somehow add up to Bryan working the main event at ’Mania.
18. But what if Bryan’s feud with Wyatt isn’t actually a piece of that puzzle? I’m not throwing in with everybody who thinks WWE is burying Bryan, but I think there’s something to the idea that they’re keeping him away from the title scene — so he’ll be available to work with a certain Dead Man at ’Mania. Wishful thinking, perhaps. But it makes a lot of sense. If he’s not running in at the end of the Rumble, this is where they’re headed. Or else they’re just burying Bryan.
17. One good indicator that they’re not: The WWE marketing machine has finally gotten behind him, and the results are, well, weird. I understand the genius of selling fake beards — kids love that stuff. And goat-themed onesies — I’m not in the target demographic, but the illustration is cute. But can somebody please explain this fur-billed hat monstrosity? The bill in no way resembles a beard. There’s no way to even wear it as a beard. If you made a fur-billed visor, then you could put it around your face and wear it as a beard. That would be a reasonable product. But a fur-billed hat is just creepy.
16. With the New Age Outlaws back and seemingly unchanged since their heyday, along with Goldust’s Indian summer, Jericho’s timelessness, and Batista’s triumphant return, it may be time to reconsider the definition of a wrestler’s prime. Sure, there have always been guys who wrestled into old age, from “Strangler” Lewis to Ric Flair, but they looked and moved like old men when they performed. This new generation of fogies looks younger than a twentysomething Arn Anderson. What’s going on? For one thing, taking time off the grueling WWE schedule does wonders for these guys’ physical well-being. Besides that, between advances in exercise, the health industry, and supplements of all varieties of legality, this generation is roughly 20 years younger-looking than its parents. This reminds me: The WWE Network really needs to have a season of Tough Enough where all the contestants are former WWE superstars looking for a second chance. Are you telling me you wouldn’t watch that?
15. We’re still several wrestlers shy of 30. Who else is left? Well, how about second-tier guys: Ryback, Curtis Axel, Antonio Cesaro, Jack Swagger, Sin Cara, Brodus Clay, and Tensai. I’d put fairly good odds on all those guys appearing, because they’re all either capable of amazing feats of strength, partners with somebody who’s capable of amazing feats of strength, impressively fat, or Sin Cara. The third tier is Darren Young, Titus O’Neil, Los Matadores, Three Man Band, Tyson Kidd, and Zack Ryder, assuming any of those guys is still employed.
14. Ryback, by the way, has morphed from my least favorite WWE wrestler to one of my five or so favorite performers over the last month. And he’s still climbing. He remains lousy in the ring, but WWE has done a good job of hiding that by putting him in a tag team with Curtis Axel (a more than serviceable worker). The stroke of genius, however, has been letting Ryback sit in on commentary, where he has taken us on a mind-blowing trip into either a severely tortured mind or one of the most well-drawn characters in modern WWE history. The same symptoms are present in his newly robust Twitter presence. He recently went on a rant that was so off the wall that when he teased that he’d been fired, everybody believed him. His next move was to walk to the ring on Raw while making a demented typing gesture. By then, my appreciation for the Big Guy was cemented.
13. I don’t really care about Sin Cara, but it’s worth mentioning that WWE recently replaced the original Sin Cara — who had an astonishing knack for getting hurt — with Hunico, the wrestler last seen on a lowrider bicycle in Dockers and a bandanna. Yes, the same Hunico who played the Evil Sin Cara that “real” Sin Cara feuded with soon after his arrival in WWE. Hunico was a better Sin Cara even then, so it’s somewhat encouraging (if also hilarious) that WWE has seen the error of its ways and given Evil Sin Cara the chance he always deserved. And let this be a lesson to you, meta-fans: Just because you lose a feud doesn’t mean you can’t win in the end.
12. One other bloke I haven’t listed yet is Wade Barrett, who has gotten lots of airtime in recent months with his new “Bad News” Barrett character. But lest you think he’s just another tough judoka from the mean streets of Harlem, he’s the same bristly Brit he’s always been. Now, however, he has a podium and gavel from which he dispenses bad news to fans and fellow wrestlers. Of course, I use “fellow” loosely here, since we haven’t actually seen Wade wrestle since he’s been repackaged. Maybe the Rumble is the right time to debut his physical side, but I wouldn’t mind if they keep him on the sidelines. He’s just too magical as WWE’s cantankerous stage manager, and they should save his ring return for something more important. Which means Wade will probably be in the Rumble.
11. As I write this, I’m realizing that WWE has made me care about Orton, Ryback, (maybe) Sheamus, and Barrett all significantly more than I cared about them three or four months ago. (Of these, Barrett is the only one whom I actually wanted to like, but he’s been so unmemorable since his Nexus run that I’m lumping him in with the rest.) That’s no small feat for the company. Throw Damien Sandow, Fandango, and, hell, even 3MB in there, and you have to admit that WWE has found its rhythm at making terrible characters or potentially terrible gimmicks ironically likable. All I can do is stop here and give the company kudos. Well done, WWE! Now, can you please do something with Kofi Kingston and Alberto Del Rio?
10. Kofi Kingston, disgruntled OfficeMax employee. I’m just going to leave that there.
9. Oh, I guess any Royal Rumble column would be remiss if it didn’t mention Jake “The Snake” Roberts. I can’t not mention Jake, who recently recovered from injury and rehabbed with the aid of pro wrestling’s resident yogi, Diamond Dallas Page. Jake has been practically begging for a Rumble slot since he started getting healthy, but — like Roddy Piper — I think his campaign is working against him. Roberts would be a great surprise, and publicly petitioning to be a surprise is self-defeating. And they already gave him a big surprise moment on “Old School” Raw a few weeks back. That said, if any story deserves a storybook ending, it’s Jake’s. They just might have to build in a little more than 90 seconds so that fans have enough time to wipe the tears from their eyes.
8. Jake’s return at Old-School Raw came in support of CM Punk, who got the rub from both the Snake and Roddy Piper during that show. If there were any question about the counterculture taking over the mainstream, that basically sealed it. Punk is the Rumble’s no. 1 entrant, thanks to a decision by WWE’s nefarious director of operations, Kane. What’s key here isn’t whether Punk will win — my guess is he won’t — but that putting him first makes this Punk’s match. All the other headliners (save for Batista and any other surprises) have matches separate from the Rumble. Making Punk first is a gift to fans, a promise that he’ll be an enormous part of the match.
7. Also, it’s another step toward a fully rekindled feud between Punk and Triple H. First, Punk had issues with Hunter’s old buddies the New Age Outlaws. Then, he quarreled with Kane, who’s doing the McMahon family’s bidding. Are we finally going to get the big Punk–Triple H match we’ve waited years for at WrestleMania 30? I know that many fans hate Triple H, but I would love it if he squares off with Punk. It would be a brilliant move for WWE, too. After that, every time fans scream about a story line they don’t like, WWE can answer: “Look at Punk! He eventually got his match with Triple H! Vindication takes time!” Just kidding, WWE doesn’t listen to the fans.
6. Since the Rumble is the beginning of the road to WrestleMania, what does the rest of the ’Mania card look like at this point? If Punk–Triple H is edging toward a lock, and Bryan-Undertaker looks possible, then Orton-Batista could be more feasible than ever. And I guess that sounds good. I have no interest in Batista as a good guy, but there’s a certain Affliction-T-shirt-wearing faction of WWE fans that will have very strong feelings about the outcome. I’m down with it. Orton-Batista 8: This Is for All the Red Bull and Vodkas, Bro might be a Match of the Year candidate. If you buy that, I guess you’re picking Batista to win the Rumble. Which I guess I am too.
5. The Rhodes brothers — Cody and Goldust — have long been rumored to be heading toward a match at ’Mania, so Sunday’s the day for the seeds of dissent to be sown. Could they lose to the Outlaws and have it out in the Rumble? The fact that they’ve already announced their participation in both matches may be telegraphing this development, but obvious works for these two — it’s just old-fashioned, fun wrestling. Whatever they do will hit the sweet spot.
4. Speaking of old-school wrestling, I have to mention that the Ultimate Warrior was announced as the first inductee into the 2014 WWE Hall of Fame Class. This is great news — by any definition, he should be in the Hall, and any excuse to rewatch those cocaine-fueled, absolutely insane promos from his heyday is worth it to me. I hope WWE offers good health insurance to its production staff, because whatever poor assistant had to pore over the tapes to pick out the interview excerpts for this announcement package is probably suffering from PTSD.
3. Speaking more of old-school wrestling, the WWE Network was announced earlier this month. It’s going to change all our lives. First of all, you get the PPVs for $10 a month, which is a gift in and of itself. Then there’s old wrestling footage, and original shows, one of which is going to be made up solely of old Ultimate Warrior promos and seizure-inducing strobe lights. (OK, that’s not true, but if you have time to watch only one video today, please let it be this amazing video of old Warrior promos. It really makes you reconsider your childhood. Which, now that I think about it, is the beauty of the WWE Network.)
2. Two Mondays ago, when WWE was busy pimping its just-announced network, color man Jerry “The King” Lawler suggested that fans check out his victory against Curt Hennig to win the AWA championship back when Lawler was the star (and co-owner) of the Memphis wrestling territory. JBL replied: “That’s not fair. You booked the territory!” Ladies and gents, this is what the Reality Era hath wrought. In 1996, Brian Pillman uttered the words “booker man” in Kevin Sullivan’s direction, and the wrestling world exploded. Today, breaking kayfabe comes as easily as Pat Summerall calling in the chain gang. (And speaking of WWE announcers breaking the fourth wall, I interviewed the legendary Jim Ross recently, during which he talked about his career, his relationship with WWE, the current crop of superstars, and, of course, Oklahoma Sooner football.)
1. Enjoy the Royal Rumble, everybody. If you haven’t made plans already, take Bill Simmons’s advice and get some friends together for a Rumble draft. Or go to a bar and count down from 10 over and over again for an hour. Or find a Rumble drinking game online, preferably one without “Michael Cole says ‘vintage’” on the list, because I don’t want to be responsible for what happens. Either way, enjoy it — this is the best moment of the wrestling year. Because by the time WrestleMania rolls around, we’ll all be jaded again.UPDATE: Unknown Whether Infant Will Survive
It is with deep sorrow that we report that the 3-month-old baby was beaten so brutally that he is now in a vegetative state, and not expected to survive.
The Free Thought Project released the following update on the baby’s condition:
Upon arriving at the hospital, the infant was foaming at the mouth, had bruising around his neck consistent with being held by the throat, and was suffering from a lack of oxygen. He sustained brain damage as well as retinal hemorrhaging, or bleeding from his eyes, that is so severe it could only have been caused by violent shaking or a fall from a building of at least 20 feet, according to the prosecutor.
“We don’t know if this child will survive much longer,” the 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett said.
Both cops are facing between 10-30 years in prison, but we strongly suspect they will not be convicted since they enjoy government privilege.
Watch the video on the court proceedings below:
CHARLOTTE — A report has surfaced online that has Charlotte, SC residents deeply shaken, after getting word that two police officers caused severe bodily harm to a precious 3-month-old baby.
Officers Jeff Taylor has resigned from his position as a police officer after being charged with child abuse.
He “inflicted great bodily injury” on a 3-month-old infant, according to the warrants.
Another Officer, Audrey Schurig, was said to have been involved in the abuse. However, Officer Schurig did not resign.
She has been charged with child neglect and putting the child at risk of bodily harm, according to reports.
Although Officer Taylor has resigned, Officer Schurig is still employed as a police officer at the Chester Police Department, being placed on leave instead of terminated.
Controversy surrounding the injured child arose after Officers Taylor and Schurig took the infant to a medical center in Rock Hill.
The child was observed to be suffering with brain and neck injuries and was displaying seizure-like symptoms, as though something traumatic had occurred.
The arrival of the injured child prompted investigations as to how the brain damage and the neck damage occurred.
But the Officers, curiously, would not provide investigators with information, and were being uncooperative, according to reports.
The officers are both scheduled to appear in court to face the shocking charges.
The baby was their own child, according to reports.
The condition of the infant, as well as what precisely happened to cause the brain damage, will be updated in this report as more details are made available.
Watch the video below:Organizers of the upcoming Invictus Games Toronto 2017 unveiled a slate of events Friday to mark the one-year countdown of the competition. Established by Prince Harry in 2014, the Invictus Games are for “wounded, ill and injured active duty and veteran service members.”
Prince Harry, kneeling left, meets, in May, with Canadian athletes with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, standing left, during the Prince's visit to Toronto to promote the 2017 Invictus Games, which the city will be hosting. ( POOL / REUTERS file photo )
“These games really are therapy for these competitors,” said the head of the Toronto games’ organizing committee Michael Burns. “And it doesn’t start when the game starts, it starts when they get chosen, selected to be on Team Canada. “Giving them a new mission is vital to their confidence and their well-being.” The games will coincide with Canada’s 150th anniversary and the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge, giving it special significance for Canadians.
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The CN Tower was lit yellow Friday night to commemorate the upcoming games, which will run from Sept. 24 to 30, 2017. The main kickoff event will be at Toronto Nuit Blanche on Oct. 1 at Yonge-Dundas Square from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., where around 10,000 members of the public will have the chance to take part in building an installation. The installation will be a 30-ft.-by-30-ft. structure created with building blocks and will read “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” There will also be a live mural experience by David Arrigo, a sports artist. Closer to the games, there will be a relay across all 32 military bases in Canada to spread excitement and awareness of the event. Co-captain of Team Canada, master corporal (retired) Natacha Dupuis competed in the last games, held in Orlando.
“It was a life-changing experience,” the 37-year-old from Quebec said, adding that it helped her deal with the post-traumatic stress disorder she was diagnosed with after her second tour of Afghanistan in 2008. She still deals with nightmares, flashbacks, night sweats, anxiety and depression occasionally, she said, but, over time, and, through therapy, it’s improved.
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“What I remember the most (from last year’s games) is it’s not so important the medals or being first or being second or last,” said Dupuis. “I actually saw a last place person being cheered louder than first and that’s really touching and it’s the only place I’ve ever seen anything like this.” Organizers anticipate about 600 competitors will attend the event from 17 countries. There will be 12 sports they can compete in, including golf, swimming and wheelchair rugby. The games will cost an estimated $40 million to $45 million to host. Unlike other sporting competitions, the Invictus Games have team sports where men and women compete together alongside people with both physical and mental wounds, said Burns. “You’ll find when you see team Canada, or many of the other nations who will be coming, more than half of their teams are able bodied,” he said, adding some team members will have attempted suicide, will be severely injured or finding it hard to transition from military life to civilian life. Canada’s team will have 100 members from across the country in 2017, the largest team it’s ever had, said Burns. “We want people to access these games and really be inspired by what they see on the playing field and on the courts.” By the numbers 600: Estimated number of competitors 17: Countries competing 12: Number of sports, including golf, swimming and wheelchair rugby 2: Number of new nations competing 100: Number of Canadians who will be competing in 2017 40-45: Estimated millions of dollars to host the games.
Read more about:Derby County are said to have won the race to sign Southampton midfielder Harrison Reed.
According to the Hull Daily Mail, Derby County are expected to sign Southampton midfielder Harrison Reed on a season-long loan deal.
The report states: ''[Steve] Bruce also said a possible loan move for Harrison Reed was over as he was unavailable. Reed is expected to join Derby on a season-long loan.''
The Rams, who are still searching for their first Championship win under new manager Paul Clement, have suffered from injuries early on into the season as four central midfielders - Will Hughes, Jeff Hendrick, Jamie Hanson and Craig Bryson - have already found themselves onto the treatment table.
Reed, who is highly-rated by Southampton, looks to be an ideal loan signing ahead of what should be a very promising season for the East Midlands outfit.
How will Reed fit into Derby's system?
The England under-20 midfielder is a player with a huge engine and a lot of tenacity.
He will add an extra bite to the Derby midfield and, along with Thorne, will ensure the Rams midfield dominates possession nine times out of 10.
Nevertheless, as a potential replacement for Hughes, the loan move alone doesn't make sense. Reed is very much a player who will be more comfortable deeper rather than in behind the strikers and is better known for his defensive work than attacking.
It is likely Clement will still need one more body in central midfielder, even if Saints youngster does agree to the proposed loan move.The Detroit Lions have struggled to recapture the magic they had on offense last season. That challenge will be tougher now that they've lost one of their leaders.
Wide receiver Nate Burleson is done for the season after suffering a broken right leg during the Lions' 13-7 loss to the Chicago Bears on Monday night.
Burleson was injured while being tackled after making a 16-yard reception in the third quarter. He was helped off the field and tended to by trainers before heading to the locker room for further examination. Lions coach Jim Schwartz told reporters after the game that Burleson's season was over.
A 10-year NFL veteran who set a career-high with 73 receptions last season, Burleson was a key part of Detroit's offense, joining Calvin Johnson and Titus Young in the team's three-receiver sets. Expect rookie Ryan Broyles to take on a bigger role in the offense now.
Multiple teammates tapped Burleson on the helmet as he limped off the field, a sign of the respect he commands in the locker room. At 2-4 and standing at a crossroads, the Lions will miss the leadership and production Burleson provided.
UPDATE: Burleson will require surgery on his broken right leg and could be out up to eight months, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Follow Dan Hanzus on Twitter @danhanzus.Watching Netflix content on your Windows Phone 8 device is about to become a better experience.
Netflix on Thursday released a relatively small update for its Windows Phone 8 app. But it added one sought-after feature — full-screen support for 720p playback. The update should improve the app's image quality for phones with high-resolution screens, like the HTC Windows Phone 8X and Nokia Lumia 920. Users will also be happy to see that the black bars present on the previous version of the app have now been eliminated.
Netflix previously had a Windows Phone 7.5 app running on Windows Phone 8 devices, a company spokesman told PCMag.com. With the latest update, the app is now fully compatible with Windows Phone 8.
Users seem to be pleased with the update, many of whom offered up positive reviews in the Windows Phone Store.
"Excellent. Very high quality on a fast network. Latest update supports 720p on HTC 8X," one user wrote.
The Netflix app is free to download in the Windows Phone Store. Users will, of course, need a Netflix account to take advantage of the app.
Meanwhile, Netflix this week made Arrested Development fans happy when it announced it would release the highly anticipated fourth season on May 26. At 12:01 a.m. PT, 15 new episodes will be posted to the streaming site, rendering fans' Memorial Day weekend plans useless.
The TV and movie subscription service also last month announced that U.S. users can now link their Facebook accounts to Netflix to share with friends what they're watching.A group of parents and advocates is set to announce a new effort next week calling for Georgia to expand its medical marijuana law and allow growers to harvest and distribute their product in-state.
Georgians for Freedom in Healthcare plans to make a formal announcement about the effort Tuesday at the state Capitol with an eye toward the upcoming legislative session that starts in January.
Georgia for the first time this year formally approved the use of a limited form of cannabis oil to treat illnesses including cancer, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. More than 200 families have since qualified for the state’s new medical marijuana registry, allowing them to use the oil for treatment.
The law, however, does not address the oil’s manufacture or how to buy or obtain it. In fact, the sale of any form of marijuana is and remains a violation of state and federal law. Essentially, state lawmakers this year only created a way for some people to be protected from prosecution for having a limited form of the oil in their possession.
Three companies currently ship low-dose cannabis oil into Georgia — something families have discovered on their own, with no help from the state.
The Georgia Commission on Medical Cannabis — which is scheduled to meet Wednesday — is now studying whether to recommend the law go further but has not yet reached a conclusion.
The commission has already heard from advocates encouraging it to develop guidelines related to cultivation and production in Georgia.
Law enforcement officials are still skeptical, but manufacturers and growers who testified at a commission meeting in August said their priority in cultivating plants for the oil include safety, security measures and testing that, among the top manufacturers, is often done by independent UL-listed laboratories.(New York, NY) Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for December’s Senate special election in Alabama, took a leading role in an effort by a far-left legal group massively funded by billionaire George Soros to grant full voting rights nationwide to felons released from prison, including those convicted of murder, rape, and other violent crimes.
Besides his direct role advocating for the votes-for-criminals scheme, Jones is also listed by the Soros-funded organization as a “supporter” of the voting drive for felons alongside a grouping of radical Soros-financed organizations. Jones is himself tied to some of those other Soros-funded groups.
In December 2011, Jones was one of fifteen signatories on a letter sent to Congress from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School calling for the restoration of “federal voting rights to the nearly four million Americans living, working and paying taxes in our communities who have been disenfranchised because of a criminal conviction in their past.”
The Brennan Center has been the recipient of numerous grants from Soros’s Open Society Foundations totaling over $7,466,000 from 2000 to 2010 alone.
Brennan’s letter, signed by Jones, was in support of the Democracy Restoration Act, which was introduced in 2011 by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).
Conyers has a long history of association with the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, attending and speaking at numerous DSA events. He is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was originally so closely linked to the DSA that until 1999 the Caucus’s official webpage was reportedly hosted on the DSA’s own website.
Currently, voting laws for convicted felons differ state by state. Nineteen states restore voting rights only upon completion of the sentence, meaning prison, parole, and probation. Seven states permanently bar voting for people with criminal convictions unless the federal government approves restoration, while three states permanently ban convicted felons unless the government approves individual restoration.
The issue is a hot button topic in Jones’s own state. Last May, Alabama’s Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law that defined a clause in the State constitution denying the right to vote to anyone who has committed a crime that demonstrates “moral turpitude.” The new law generated a list of about 50 crimes that fit under the “moral turpitude” banner, including murder, kidnapping, and sexual abuse.
Yet progressive activists and groups such as Think Progress, a project of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, have taken issue with Alabama’s reported refusal to actively notify potentially tens of thousands of former felons that they regained their voting rights. A federal judge in July sided with Alabama, affirming that the state does not need to make such notifications.
For decades, Jones has been a champion of voting right for all criminals, including the most violent offenders, putting him at the radical end of the spectrum on the issue.
Back in 2005, he wrote an amici curiae (“friend of the court”) brief on the matter with Eric Holder, who would go on to become Attorney General under the Obama administration. Jones’s 2005 brief, which was written for a Supreme Court case involving the state of Florida for voting for criminals, is featured on Brennan’s website.
The 2011 Brennan Center letter to Congress signed by Jones calls for a blanket restoration of voting privileges to all criminals upon release from prison and return to their communities. The missive states, “People who commit crimes must and will serve all terms of their sentence. But once the criminal justice system has determined that they are ready to return to the community, they should receive both the rights and responsibilities that come with the status of being a citizen. Restoring the right to vote is simply good law enforcement policy.”
Jones listed with Who’s Who of Soros-funded radical left
Besides the letter, Jones is currently listed on the Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) information page of the Brennan Center’s website as among the “Groups and Individuals who support the DRA.”
Jones is listed there alongside scores of far-left activist groups funded by Soros, some of which also have ties to Jones. Those Soros-funded groups include the Alliance for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union (the recipient of a $50 million Soros grant), Black Youth Vote!, the NAACP and scores of others.
Also listed with Jones is the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), a Soros-funded radical think tank that partnered with the Occupy movement to organize anti-capitalist protests.
CAF co-founder Robert Borosage previously served as director of the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies, which is known for espousing pro-Soviet views during the Cold War.
Borosage also helped found the controversial Apollo Alliance, a project of the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Apollo, which changed its name to the Blue Green Alliance following negative publicity about its far-left politics, was endorsed by the controversial former group known as ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group whose pet project is currently being pushed by Jones.
On his 2017 Senatorial campaign website, Jones advocates a living wage plan for the state and country that, as Breitbart News reported last week, has a history of hurting small businesses, negatively impacting local economies and decreasing employment opportunities for low income workers. The living wage was originally the project of ACORN, which played a central role in enacting the scheme in several cities.
Another co-founder and director of CAF—listed on Brennan’s website alongside Jones—is Robert Hickey, who also co-founded the Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute, which itself is also listed with Jones on the same Brennan Center webpage list of “supporters.”
Also listed alongside Jones is the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, to which Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave a whopping $50 million. The group seeks to decriminalize drug offenses.
Earlier this week, Breitbart News reported that Jones spearheaded an effort on behalf of the Soros-funded Brennan Center that sought to fundamentally transform the role of U.S. Attorneys from one of prosecuting criminals to activists that enact a so-called progressive criminal justice agenda. A key aspect of Jones’s Brennan campaign was to push reduced sentencing for drug offenders. This has also been a major policy aim for Soros.
Another group listed alongside Jones is the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which is famous for defending protesters from radical groups who get arrested during the course of disruption campaigns. A notable former member of the National Lawyers Guild is Bernardine Dohrn, the NLG’s first national student organizer. Dohrn was a leader of the Weather Underground anti-American domestic terrorist group along with her husband, former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
Also signed as a “supporter” with Jones is Sojourners, a Christian evangelical ministry known for embracing so-called liberation theology, which is described by Discover the Networks as teaching that the New Testament gospels “can be properly understood only as calls for social activism, class struggle, and revolution aimed at overturning the existing capitalist order and installing, in its stead, a socialist utopia.”
Debate over voting for convicts
Proponents of voter restoration for convicts argue that the inability to vote doesn’t deter crime and may impede them from reintegrating into society.
Syndicated columnist Steve Chapman, for example, wrote:
If the prospect of incarceration doesn’t deter criminals, losing the right to vote certainly doesn’t. We don’t permanently strip criminals of freedom of speech or religion, the right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches or the right against self-incrimination. Why deprive them of the vote? The chief result of disenfranchising former inmates is to discourage them from changing their ways and fully integrating into society. The people likely to be obstructed from voting are not the incorrigible criminals but the reformed ones. They get jobs, pay taxes and keep their noses clean—the sort of behavior that Republicans, as well as Democrats, should want to encourage. There are lots of bad things criminals can do once they’re released back into society. Voting isn’t one of them.
In a Newsmax piece titled “6 Reasons Ex-Felons Shouldn’t Vote,” Jerry Shaw opined that “ex-prisoners have demonstrated dishonesty and irresponsibility in their character by committing a crime, especially a serious crime and have forfeited their right to vote.”
Shaw pointed to questions of constitutionality, saying:
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which addresses equal protection under the law, does not always pertain to felons and ex-felons, according to Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski in dissent of a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2006. Although racial, gender and reproductive rights have been upheld under the amendment, felonious crimes allow lawmakers to introduce felon disenfranchisement laws.
Roger Clegg previously testified to Congress on the issue of voting privileges for felons, and he writes a policy paper on the matter.
Writing at the Center for Equal Opportunity, Clegg advocated:
We don’t let everyone vote—not children, not noncitizens, not the mentally incompetent. There are certain minimum and objective standards of trustworthiness, responsibility, and commitment to our laws that we require before people are entrusted with a role in the solemn enterprise of self-government. Those who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens don’t meet those standards. This doesn’t mean that the right to vote should never be restored to felons, but the decision to restore the right to vote should not be made automatically. It should be made carefully, on a case-by-case basis, weighing the seriousness of the crime, how long ago it was committed, and whether there is a pattern of crime.
Written with research by Joshua Klein.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.QR Code Link to This Post
Thank you for judging me on the CD I bought yesterday. Our passive-aggressive altercation made me realize how conformist I am for buying an old Rage Against The Machine album. Your condescension was just the intellectual wake-up call I needed.I discovered a new me yesterday, and my eyes were opened in a new way. Thanks to you, I realize now that the key to enlightenment is reading Pitchfork, watching High Fidelity, listening to Velvet Underground, having a tattoo of a star on the inside of my wrist, growing an ironic mustache, living in the Mission, and wearing a too-small sweater, multi-colored 70’s ski-vest, chunky plastic-frame glasses, a high school sports T-shirt, air-tight black jeans, and Nixon-era Chuck Taylors.I had it all wrong, man. You showed me that a skilled job and a comfortable living is just a lie. I need to go to art school, have my parents pay my rent, join a Joy Division-influenced band, and wait for a record deal, like you. I’m totally missing out in life.So thanks again for mocking me. I mean, at first I thought you were just a pathetic, frustrated musician trying to feel better about yourself. But now I see you’re an uncompromising visionary.No one will ever understand you. You’re so different.Signed,Everyone Not Like YouEve Myles has admitted that she still hopes for a Torchwood comeback.
The actress - soon to be seen in new BBC One drama Frankie - told CultBox that the Doctor Who spinoff may return to television "now or... in twenty years time".
"We didn't come back for the fifth series," she acknowledged. "[But] it's still there - it's still bubbling away.
"If it has ended in Hollywood [with fourth series Miracle Day], well, then we came from BBC Three to BBC Two to BBC One to Hollywood - that's a drama in itself. Wonderful experience, wonderful memories."
Myles confirmed that she has heard nothing about a potential fifth series, but added that she is eager to reprise her role of Gwen Cooper.
"When [series creator Russell T Davies is] ready, if he is ever ready, then he's got people who love and adore it just as much as he does," she said.
Torchwood writer Chris Chibnall - who recently penned hit ITV crime drama Broadchurch - previously cast doubt on the likelihood of a fifth run.
"It |
an Aug. 11 report from Al-Monitor, Eilon Adar, a hydrologist and the former director of Ben-Gurion University’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, warned that time is running out to finish construction and provide electricity to Gaza’s waste treatment plant.
Adar told Shlomi Eldar, a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse:
“Gaza sends wastewater to the area of the nonfunctional treatment plant, causing the water level to rise. A virtual mountain of underground water has been created that will flow to the only place in Gaza that still has drinkable water. That water will become contaminated and then disaster will hit. Once [contaminated] water permeates potable water, it will be almost impossible to fix the situation.”India's identity system rivals the growth of other platform innovations like Windows, Android or Facebook, CEO Satya Nadella has said.
Nadella, in his book 'Hit Refresh', which was released during the ongoing Ignite 2017 conference, has praised India's leap forward in the digital and technological arena.
" now has scaled to over one billion people, rivaling the growth of other platform innovations such as Windows, Android or Facebook, the 50-year-old wrote in his book that hit the book stores today.
He praised the creation of the new digital ecosystem IndiaStack.
IndiaStack is a set of APIs (application programming interface) that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise an unique digital Infrastructure to solve Indias hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
"China strategically used the global supply chain and their own domestic market to amplify their comparative advantage and bootstrap their economic growth, the India-born CEO noted.
"The combination of industrial policy, public sector investment, and entrepreneurial energy is what many other countries will also look to replicate from Chinas success. I see the beginnings of this in India with the creation of the new digital ecosystem known as IndiaStack, Nadella said.
"India is leapfrogging from once being an infrastructure-poor country to now leading in digital IndiaStack ushers in a presence-less, cashless, paperless economy for all its citizens, said the Indian American CEO from
In his book, Nadella wrote that on a trip to Bengaluru he engaged in a conversation with Nandan Nilekani about IndiaStack and its future road map.
"Nandan is the legendary founder of Infosys, who went on to create a new startup working with the Indian Government- Aadhaar-the identity system that is at the center of IndiaStack," he said.
Nadella has also mentioned about Enlightiks, a startup that was acquired by Practo, a leading e-health company in India.
"I met the founder of Enlightiks onthe same trip to Bengaluru. They are using the latest cloud and AI from Microsoft to create a state-of-the-art health care diagnostics service that can, for example, detect an Atrial fibrillation event before it happens because of the rich data going from the personal device of the patient directly to the cloud, he said.
"In turn, this cloud service can be made available to hospitals in Smaller towns or rural areas in India. Enlightiks also has plans to take advantage of IndiaStack to authenticate the user, accept payment, create portal medical records, and much more. This Indian innovation is now looking to expand in the US,Africa and everywhere else, he wrote.
According to Nadella, this dynamic is not unique to China or India.
"I saw this across Chile, Indonesia, and Poland, and also in France, Germany, and Japan. Reflecting on my earlier visit to Egypt, its clear they are investing in human capital," he said.In May, Funkmaster Flex made headlines when his comments about Tupac Shakur went viral. Now, during a recent interview with noted 'Pac fan, Vic Mensa, the DJ was asked to clarify his statements about the late artist.
When asked if he was offended by Flex's comments, Mensa reveals he hadn't heard exactly what the Hot 97 DJ said, but read a headline about it. "I never really delved too deep into it," Vic says. "Why don't you tell me what's wrong with Tupac."
Funk Flex said he liked 'Pac but was more of a fan of the Interscope Tupac as opposed to the Death Row Tupac. "To me, the Death Row 'Pac was a short time—two years," says Flex.
"I don't think Tupac was trying to be a gangster," he added. "I think he was willing to do whatever to get his music and what he believed in across. That's how it always seemed to me."
According to Flex, his issue with 'Pac developed with "the Biggie situation." "A situation happened at the studio... 'Pac is doing a song with the people he has a problem with. This is pre-Bad Boy. Meaning, 'I'm having a street issue with some guys I ran with. We were together and we're now separate, but I'm doing something with their artist [and] I'm going to carry this burner with me cause I know what it might be.'"
The DJ went on to say he was disappointed in how 'Pac placed blame on Biggie for the 1994 shooting at New York's Quad Recording Studios, which he claims went on to become the start of a campaign against Big. Flex also reassured Vic that his comments against 'Pac weren't out of hate, insisting he respects 'Pac as an artist.
In a May episode of his Hot 97 show, Funk Flex alleged Tupac shot himself during the 1994 shooting. “He knew who approached him," he said. "He had a steel on him, ’cause he knew he had a issue out there, and when get got there, they was just gonna take his jewelry. They didn’t even touch him. He panicked, pulled out the steel, shot himself.”
Check out the conversation between Vic Mensa and Funk Flex below.Businessman using a laptop with light bulb over his head
Do you love your job? Ok, maybe not love, but at least like?
If you don't, you're not alone. Eighty percent of employees say they are dissatisfied with their jobs. Responses to my recent blog post on passion told much the same story -- most would rather be anywhere than at their current job.
There's lots of reasons for this -- boring work, office politics, low pay, controlling boss... the list is endless.
Whatever the cause, being dissatisfied at work isn't good for you or your employer. Chronic unhappiness creates a host of emotional and physical problems and lowers our job performance. We also carry these negative emotions into our homes and neighborhoods, hurting the relationships we cherish most deeply.
To break the cycle, sometimes the best option is to find a new job. If the environment at work becomes so toxic that it negatively affects your health and kills your resolve to wake up in the morning, giving your two weeks' notice may be the way to go.
If quitting is not an option, don't despair. You can thrive on the job and in life and experience joy along the way by doing just one thing:
Choose to be positive.
Sounds clichéd, right? It's not and here's why: Choice is the ultimate expression of autonomy. It's the one thing we can control when times get tough, and it's how we remain true to ourselves.
Famed Austrian psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl called this type of choice "tragic optimism." which simply means, "saying yes to life in spite of everything."
When I share this insight with clients, they're understandably skeptical. Choosing "yes" in the face of life's challenges is difficult. Most of us would rather avoid the "in spite of" part altogether.
It's necessary, however, to face our challenges head on. Avoiding or ignoring problems and the negative feelings that go along with them doesn't work, and actually makes us feel worse.
Yet, we can't force ourselves to be positive. Becoming optimistic is not a matter of the will. It's a byproduct of purpose. We can only say "yes to life" when we know what it looks like and how to get there. We can only be positive when we have something to look forward to.
Here's how to start: The next time you face a negative situation (or any situation, for that matter) ask yourself this:
"What meaning can I create from this experience?"
When we ask this question, something remarkable happens. We awaken to the possibility of the present, the moment-by-moment unfolding of existence. We begin to see every experience (whether good or bad) as an opportunity to impart significance to our actions.
The disagreeable co-worker is no longer the person we tolerate, but someone who needs our compassion. The tasks we dread doing -- writing emails, leading meetings, and giving presentations -- become opportunities to develop discipline and skills and influence others. The long commute is a time to learn (audiobooks are one of the best inventions), reflect, and give thanks. These are just a few examples.
When we approach life in this way, our focus shifts from the feelings of an experience to the meaning of an experience. It's not that we ignore negative feelings or pretend they don't exist (remember, that doesn't work). Rather, we choose to create meaning alongside our feelings.
Follow the 4 R's here. Recognize your feelings (acknowledge them), release them, re-focus on your quest, and repeat as needed.
So this is your quest -- use your experiences to become a better version of yourself and enrich the lives of others.
This is how we create meaning. This is how we say yes to life. This is how we choose to be positive.
Creating our own meaning fuels optimism because it gives us a purpose, a tangible reason to wake up in the morning. By living in the present, we also discover who we are, what we love (our passion) and what we can become.
I recently had the opportunity to witness optimism firsthand.
Last month, my wife and I bought a couch at a large furniture warehouse. After I backed our rental truck up to the loading dock, I met "Ben," the warehouse manager.
He exuded enthusiasm as he loaded the truck, so I asked him, "What do you like about your job?" Without a pause, he said, "Not the money. I'm responsible for millions of dollars of merchandise and I only make a little over minimum wage."
He quickly followed up by saying, "But I love furniture and I love helping customers find the perfect piece. And back here, I'm my own boss." Ben went on to say that he wanted to use his experience to open his own business one day.
Ben is a picture of optimism.
He doesn't complain about circumstances beyond his control or wait to discover his purpose, as many of us do. Instead, he takes ownership of his life by creating meaning out of the moments he is given. He strives to be the best at what he does while helping others get the "perfect piece." This is his source of enthusiasm.
The same is true for us. Even though our journeys may be different, the pathway to positivity is the same. When we choose to say yes to what we are given by living in the present, making meaning of each day, our experiences go from dread and "I can't wait until today is over" to appreciation and purpose.
If you follow the simple (but not easy) steps I outline above, you'll be on your way to reaching new levels of performance and experiencing joy and satisfaction on the job and in life.
I'd love to hear how you create meaning in your experiences and stay positive. Please leave your comments below or email me at frank@frankniles.com.
Dr. Frank Niles is co-founder and managing partner of Scholar Executive Group, LLC, a boutique consulting firm that provides coaching, counseling, and leadership development training for Fortune 500 companies and influential people. Learn more at frankniles.com and scholarexecutive.com or email Frank at frank@frankniles.com.
For more by Frank Niles, Ph.D., click here.Bruise Like a Peach May 22nd, 2011, 12:30 pm
First Previous ------ Jump To ------ #1 - Bruise Like a Peach #2 - Forgive Ness #3 - Execute her! #4 - Pack, man #5 - Psychic #6 - Little Mac #7 - Weakest Link #8 - In the presence of Princess Toadstool.. #9 - Uhh.. Gee, no #10 - Have you ever met a knight? #11 - I'm here turok your world #12 - Marshalls And Ross #13 - Metal Mario! #14 - BOO!!! #15 - Bee drill #16 - Do a barrel roll! #17 - A CONTRAdiction #18 - Pokemon Snap #19 - Battletoads #20 - I don't know #21 - Mario Cart #22 - Earthworm Jim #23 - Did I Pass My Driving Test? #24 - Congratulations you have twins! #25 - Misty #26 - Paper Mario #27 - Secret of Mana.. #28 - Piranha Plant #29 - Goldeneye #30 - Shampoo #31 - Fox you look exhausted.. #32 - So I like music.. #33 - I do not own et! #34 - Little Big Planet? #35 - Fishing with my father in-law #36 - Dreamcast #37 - King Bomb-Omb and Guile.. #38 - Boo Finale #39 - Lakitu #40 - Turning over a new leaf #41 - Meg #42 - Substitute Teacher #43 - More Tall Kombat #44 - Danny Next NewestLOS ANGELES — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is only the most recent politician to blame the Chinese for taking American jobs, but in Southern California, the opposite could be coming true: Hollywood insiders expect to see China’s film industry making more attempts to lure American writers and directors in the coming years.
“The holy grail is going to be large-budget, English-language co-productions that play and expound Chinese culture worldwide,” said Sky Moore, a partner at the law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and the lead attorney on a co-production deal between Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and China’s Hunan TV. “You’re going to see endless attempts at doing that.”
With China set to become the world’s biggest box office as soon as next year, its studio heads understandably want to develop ambitious films that appeal to worldwide audiences — and contain a distinctly Chinese message. But most people in those international markets don’t speak Mandarin, and they certainly don’t want subtitles. The answer could lie in another American tradition: outsourcing.
Over the last year, China’s film industry has become increasingly intertwined with Tinseltown. The Lions Gate-Hunan deal opened the floodgates, as several more co-production deals followed, and Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group — owned by the country’s richest man, Wang Jianlin — bought a majority stake in Legendary Entertainment for a reported $3.5 billion last month.
Moore said that’s all leading to China producing truly global movies, and that requires the type of behind-the-camera professionals that are a lot more prevalent at juice bars than hot pots. “I think there’s going to be maybe even a shift of creative talent to China to the extent that they can entice people to move there,” he said.
While that talk might be premature — nobody ever really leaves Los Angeles — film industry insiders tell International Business Times that Chinese film executives are in Los Angeles frequently looking to bring on seasoned American movie pros. And unlike back home, they’re willing to pay for it.
But that’s not necessarily a certain path to success, said Bennett Pozil, an executive vice president at East West Bank who’s worked on several Chinese studio deals, including the Hunan and Lions Gate arrangement.
“I’ve seen that to be a commonality with Chinese companies — looking to the West,” Pozil told IBT. “Hollywood guys are supposed to be the best. But that’s not the only way.”
Photo: Fred Prouser/Reuters
New World
The Chinese box office does massive business on domestic films — last year’s “Monster Hunt” made $381 million in China and about $33,000 in the U.S. — but its studio execs have spoken consistently about the importance of English-language, Chinese-culture movies that count as domestic films under the Chinese quota system and appeal to a global audience.
This year’s adventure epic “The Great Wall,” starring Matt Damon and Hong Kong singer and actor Andy Lau, which comes out in November in the United States and December in China, is the first real test case. It has a Chinese director overseeing his first English-language film, and with an estimated budget of $135 million, it’s being funded like a movie expected to travel. Pozil did not want to speculate on that movie’s box office performance, but he said trying to thread that needle and make a film that appeals to mainstream audiences in China and the U.S. is a formidable challenge.
“I think it’s hard [enough] just to make a movie that works for China alone,” Pozil said. “Making a movie for both, it’s a higher degree of difficulty.”
And, he added, dialogue-driven movies, especially comedies, can get lost in translation.
“Humor doesn’t really travel well anywhere,” Pozil said.
But the potential reward appears to be worth the risk, as Chinese film companies continue to forge business relationships with Hollywood, and Moore said the flow of money is only increasing, despite what’s going on in the rest of China’s economy.
“It’s a tidal wave of financing that’s coming,” Moore said.
That wave hasn’t trickled down to China’s screenwriters, who receive relatively low wages and occupy a lower place in the social hierarchy compared to their U.S. counterparts. Despite the nine-figure box-office take of many of the country’s homegrown films, China’s top earning screenwriter earned only about $1.5 million last year. Joe Eszterhas got twice as much for “Basic Instinct” in 1992.
China Film Insider covered a December event where an Alibaba Pictures executive suggested crowdsourcing movie scripts online, causing many screenwriters to voice strong objections on social media.
And while China’s screenwriters aren’t organized in any way, the Writers Guild of America ensures minimum wages for their American counterparts. That gives American screenwriters better working conditions, but would seem to make them more vulnerable to global market forces. Yet it’s Chinese screenwriting that is effectively being offshored, even if some of the Chinese firms balk at Hollywood’s pay scale.
“When they hire American talent, they’re going to have to pay for it,” Moore said. “But there’s a little bit of sticker shock.”
That didn’t stop Alibaba Pictures, the moviemaking appendage of Jack Ma’s e-commerce and media empire, from signing a 10-year lease for 22,000 square feet in a brand new art deco building in the suburban L.A. city of Pasadena — the kind of office space designed to appeal to veteran writers and producers. The company has added staff and is advertising open creative positions on LinkedIn.
Yu Dong, the CEO of Bona Film Group, told China Daily in December that Hollywood pros “know better how to make it in the business,” and he plans to travel to L.A. often in 2016. And IBT has learned that Le Vision Pictures — one of the Chinese co-producers on “Great Wall” — is likely to make a significant L.A.-based hire soon, although that could not be confirmed.
Chinese cash has certainly been a stimulus for L.A. luxury real estate — and production companies — and the country’s cinematic ambition could mean a prosperous year of the monkey for Hollywood screenwriters.
“For them, it’s ni hao,” Moore said, using the Mandarin word for hello.I’m finally getting around to writing about the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom commemoration this week, mainly because, for a change, so much of the writing about it has been so excellent. Frankly, most of what I’d have wanted to say has been said: Plenty of people have pointed out it was a march for “jobs and freedom,” though the jobs part later got lost. (My own favorite frequently overlooked fact: In a handbill for the march, the very second complaint was that “millions of Americans, black and white, are unemployed,” making clear the movement’s attempt to improve the conditions of white workers too, though most of us didn’t care to pay attention.)
The heroes who never get enough credit – particularly labor leader A. Philip Randolph and his amazing ally and organizer and strategist Bayard Rustin -- have gotten lots of coverage this week. Harold Meyerson reminded us of “The Socialists Behind the March on Washington,” while the Nation’s Rick Perlstein laid out how they had to work to make the march happen, as Kennedy liberals, fearing either violence or attacks on the president’s civil right record, fought it until it was clear King and Randolph wouldn’t back down. Over and over we’ve heard the great story of John Lewis’ fiery first speech draft -- attacking Kennedy’s civil rights bill and promising a “nonviolent” version of Sherman’s march to the sea -- as well as his bowing to Randolph and toning it down. And Brittney Cooper made a sobering point that was vexing me: that this week’s march commemoration, while inspiring, didn’t represent the same kind of political force propelling society forward as the one 50 years ago.
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Yet with all this amazing coverage from the left, the right has gotten almost everything about the march wrong, in a way that’s actually shocking, though I guess it shouldn’t be. Maybe we should be glad that they start from the premise that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a great American hero, albeit one they think his commemorators are misrepresenting. Maybe it’s progress that a man once reviled as a communist and thoroughly disrespected by the mainstream media – as evidenced by his hostile interrogation on “Meet the Press” the Sunday before the march – is now lauded by righties from Bill O’Reilly to Laura Ingraham to David Brooks as a beloved hero whose dream has been betrayed – but by the left, not by them.
These faux-devotees of the great MLK, these history-challenged concern trolls, remember only King’s admittedly inspiring line about wanting his children judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” They don’t remember that he was a radical, in fact, a socialist. That he was about to launch a multiracial Poor People’s Campaign that was unpopular even with some of his top lieutenants, who didn’t think the movement was ready to venture beyond black issues. They forget the New York Times editorialized against his joining the movement against the Vietnam War (a move that even some of his closest allies, including Bayard Rustin, second-guessed). Their tributes never mention that he died supporting a strike by mostly African-American sanitation workers in Memphis.
Rick Perlstein may have said it best on “Up With Steve Kornacki” this weekend: “Frankly, Martin Luther King had to be forgotten before he could be remembered.” Or as King’s lawyer, Clarence B. Jones, told Michele Norris on NPR, after the march the FBI considered King “the most dangerous Negro in America.” The right is willfully ignoring what King and the march stood for, and getting away with it.
* * *
If Laura Ingraham’s comments were the most dumb and vicious, George Will’s (on ABC's "This Week") were the most outrageous, because they’re so widely and casually and cruelly held. Will disrespected and misrepresented not just King, but a man he and the rest of the right often pretend to venerate even more, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, by claiming that single motherhood, “and not an absence of rights, is surely the biggest impediment” to equality for African-Americans.
“A young social scientist from Harvard working in the Labor Department published a report,” Will told the other panelist pedantically. “His name was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He said, ‘There is a crisis in the African-American community, because 24 percent of African-American children are born to unmarried women. Today it’s tripled to 72 percent. That, and not an absence of rights, is surely the biggest impediment.”
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There is so much wrong with Will’s contemptuous ignorance. First of all, while there were things to find objectionable in Moynihan’s 1965 report “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” he makes a passionate case that it was the legacy of slavery, the persistence of racism, black male persecution and generations of poverty that had caused the so-called black family crisis – not the other way around. He also compared black Americans' troubles to those experienced by some of his own forebears -- the rural Irish exiled to American cities a hundred years earlier. “It was this abrupt transition that produced the wild Irish slums of the 19th Century Northeast. Drunkenness, crime, corruption, discrimination, family disorganization, juvenile delinquency were the routine of that era,” Moynihan noted.
And while one common beef with the Moynihan report is that it didn’t offer much in the way of policy prescriptions, that’s reading it in a vacuum (which too many on the left still do). Around the same time, Moynihan helped write President Lyndon B. Johnson's famous Howard University speech on race, which committed the country not merely to equality of opportunity but demanded efforts to achieve a much more controversial "equality of results.” Working for Johnson's Labor Department, Moynihan proposed public works jobs and affirmative action measures, as well as a guaranteed national income, to lift black families, whether they were headed by one or two parents, out of poverty. Later, under Richard Nixon (a career move that sealed his reputation as a proto neoconservative), he again proposed a guaranteed family income. Might Will join his friend Pat and back such policies today?
Clearly Will disrespected his beloved Moynihan as much as he did King. I also have to ask, of all of the conservatives railing against the scourge of single motherhood this week (Bill O’Reilly aped Will Monday night): If the black poverty rate is explained by the rise of the single-parent family, why has the poverty rate declined by almost 40 percent, from 41 in 1968 percent to 26 percent today, when the percent of black households headed by a single mother has almost tripled. Shouldn’t it have gone up, as the rate of single motherhood did?
The forces behind the rise in black – and white – single parenthood are complicated, but Will hasn’t bothered to have a new thought about them since he pretended to read the Moynihan report almost 40 years ago.
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The truth is, today’s conservatives are the direct political and intellectual descendants of people who sneered at King and his 1963 March on Washington. I was stunned to watch a rerun of “Meet the Press” from the Sunday before the march, and to find that the four questioners treated King and NAACP head Roy Wilkins with the contempt and suspicion you’d expect if they were grilling accused criminals.
They badgered King with questions about Bayard Rustin’s youthful support of the Communist Party, and harangued Wilkins about how he could be so irresponsible as to bring “100,000 militant Negroes” to the nation’s capital, given the violence and mayhem we all know militant Negroes are bent on. They peppered both men with surreal queries about how all the “reasonable people” thought the civil rights leaders were demanding too much, too soon -- and then, if they got it, weren’t they just going to continue to fight for ever more unreasonable demands, since that’s what “militant Negroes” do? The patience of King and Wilkins on the show that day was nonviolence in action. When the march came off without one single arrest, a day-long tableau of our highest principles in action, there began a grudging but still halting and uneven extension of humanity to the civil rights leaders and the black masses they represented -- and a whitewashing of King's real agenda.
Fifty years later, of course, the same impulses on the right – I’d argue it’s repressed white guilt, which then produces lurid fantasies of black vengeance – told us there were going to be ugly riots if George Zimmerman was acquitted. But there weren’t. No matter. The presence of Trayvon Martin’s parents among the honored marchers and speakers in Washington last Saturday was enough to convince the white-grievance mongers that this year's march actually was what the 1963 march was trumped up to be: an orgy of black revenge. Except, again, there was no violence, and meanwhile George Zimmerman was free to have his picture taken at the factory that made the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin, on the eve of the march, because it’s a free country, and “George is a free man and as such is entitled to visit, tour, frequent or patronize any business or locale he wishes,” as his brother Robert told Yahoo News.
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* * *
We celebrate another anniversary on this day: Coincidentally, or not, five years ago Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination as its first black presidential candidate, on the 45th anniversary of the great civil rights march. It’s hard not to evaluate Obama with the standards of King’s legacy, but it’s probably wrong, or at least premature, to do so. Still, with the National Security Agency scandal roiling, and the war drums beating louder about Syria, I find myself hoping he’s studying not just King, but the tragic lessons of Lyndon Johnson.
On this march anniversary week we’re reminded once again of what a good president Johnson was on the issue of civil rights, how comparatively brave and legislatively savvy, compared with everyone who came before him. But his legacy, on the left, is that awful war he didn’t have the courage to disengage from. “I am not going to be the first president to lose a war,” he told advisors and Congress members, and that, not eradicating poverty or ensuring civil rights, was his north star.
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I worry that Obama, and in fact any Democrat who would be president right now, feels the same unwillingness to be the guy who loses another war -- pick a war, any war, we have so many to choose from, some winding down, others escalating.
Still, I’m uncomfortable with some on the left using this occasion to rail against Obama’s national security policies, using King as a cudgel. Even Rick Perlstein was too quick to put Edward Snowden in the pantheon of civil rights greats, alongside King and Randolph, men who lived their whole lives under a crushing system of injustice, and who poured their adult lives into outsmarting it. Snowden’s portrait doesn’t belong with theirs on the wall of heroes, at least not yet. Only Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker managed to find the right sense of proportion as he raised the irony of Obama’s role as the first black president commemorating those heroes, all of whom were victims of the fledgling surveillance state of their time.
I had a productive conversation about this recently with James Peterson, professor of Africana Studies at Lehigh University and a fellow MSNBC analyst, on Martin Bashir's show. He worried aloud that some on the left care more about Snowden’s revelations than the ongoing “stop-and-frisk” controversy and other civil liberties issues, like racial profiling, experienced exclusively by blacks and Latinos. I made the plea that people who care about social justice have to – and many of us do – care about both sets of issues, and he agreed. But the unspoken question was, which should be prioritized, when?
I admit, during this commemorative week, I’ve come to think it’s wrong for white people in particular to deploy King as a weapon against our first black president. It simplifies the context in which both men have had to struggle, against staggering odds. It cheapens them, and us – especially on this day. History will no doubt compare them, but historians will have more information and more wisdom than we have today. Obama is the president, of everyone, charged with advancing liberty and justice as well as keeping us safe. He has disappointed me, profoundly at times, but I will not find him wanting, at least not today.
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Still, were he alive, I have no doubt but that King would still be marching. He got a holiday after he was silenced; had he never been silenced, I'm not so sure he'd have gotten a holiday, because he would have kept pushing us, all of us, to live up to our highest ideals.If you had asked a cross section of F1 insiders and fans at the start of the season for a prediction of where the two Ferrari drivers would stand on competitiveness, few of them would have predicted 10-10 in qualifying at this stage.
Kimi Raikkonen's astonishing third place in Brazil qualifying, ahead of Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel is the fourth race in a row that the Finn has out qualified his younger, four times world champion team mate. This time last year Vettel was solidly ahead on all metrics and had won three races.
Yet Raikkonen has been resurgent this season and in the F1 world drivers' championship standings there are only 9 points between them, with Vettel having got ahead in Austin, where Raikkonen retired.
So what lies behind this turnaround for Raikkonen?
Typically the phlegmatic Finn is not giving anything away and will say only that the car suits him better. A large part of his problem before was in the front end of the car and the sensitivity on cornering.
Perhaps Raikkonen's style is more dependent on the front end than some other drivers, but the word is that the key change that has brought this renaissance about is Ferrari's switch from pull-rod from suspension to push-rod.
Ferrari had been an outlier in the previous seasons, as the sole team opting to use a system which lowers the centre of gravity of the car and which Ferrari perceived could help with aerodynamics - as it takes the strut away from some of the vortices off the front wing.
The push-rod suspension, which has a diagonal strut from the wheels to the rocker, has better geometry and has proved more confidence-inspiring for the drivers.
The weakness of this year's Ferrari is in low speed corners, both in aerodynamics and mechanical traction. The strength is the engine and clearly the front end of the car is working well, which gives the team something to build on for next season, when the cars will have higher downforce and more mechanical grip from the tyres. The floor and diffuser of the cars will be much more important than today and it is from there that the majority of the extra downforce to make the cars four to five seconds a lap faster will come.
Today was a good example of Raikkonen's 2016 form; he was fastest in Sectors 1 and 3 during the Saturday practice session, only losing ground to the other teams in the long middle sector where low speed aero is the key. Precision is the name of the game at Interlagos as the lap is short and the lines are defined so the added confidence from the front end of the car doing exactly what he wanted it to do, gave Raikkonen the edge and showed that at 37 he still has plenty to offer in F1.
"I think we’re lacking a bit of downforce overall there [Sector 2], comparing maybe to the guys in front of us – but you know the car’s been behaving today, pretty good and just been struggling on the tight corners to turn around the car and a bit of front-locking so obviously it’s been a bit guessing whether we can turn or not," said the Finn.
Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene denied again this weekend that Vettel is in 'crisis' or that his fiery behaviour in Mexico showed his frustration at a season of broken dreams.
"Sebastian is quite emotional. Sometimes he looks a bit more Latino than German," said Arrivabene. "He’s very passionate, especially when he’s driving and it’s in a racing battle.
"It’s not a question of frustration. Sometimes he can be unhappy as we are unhappy because our expectations are different. But he’s not a guy who is giving up; he’s a guy that is pushing like hell. Sometimes when the adrenalin is going up to the sky, maybe he’s choosing a word more than what is expected, but then my role, like in Mexico, is also to call him and to invite him to be focused on what he’s doing."
What do you think? Leave your comments in the section belowYep … the million-dollar question has been answered: that glorious array of food trucks will once again be present on the Grand Plaza at WonderCon Anaheim, right outside of the Anaheim Convention Center! This year’s group includes 15—count ‘em!—15 great trucks!
Scheduled to appear this year (line-up is subject to change):
Barcelona On the Go (Latin Bistro)
(Latin Bistro) Burger Monster (Gourmet Burgers & Sliders)
(Gourmet Burgers & Sliders) Chunk & Chip (Craft Ice Cream Sammichs)
(Craft Ice Cream Sammichs) Cool Crave (Italian Ice and Other Desserts)
(Italian Ice and Other Desserts) Devilicious (Gourmet Sandwiches)
(Gourmet Sandwiches) Falasophy (Falafel and Hummus Bar)
(Falafel and Hummus Bar) Kala (Artful Mexican Cuisine)
(Artful Mexican Cuisine) Meat Up BBQ (Smoked Comfort Food)
(Smoked Comfort Food) My Delight Cupcakery (Cupcakes)
(Cupcakes) Slummin’ Gourmet (Modern Bistro Fare for the Streets)
(Modern Bistro Fare for the Streets) Spudrunners (Fries, Baked Potatoes, and Grilled Cheese)
(Fries, Baked Potatoes, and Grilled Cheese) Tasting Spoon (Gourmet Sandwiches)
(Gourmet Sandwiches) TJ’s Woodfire Pizza (Woodfire Pizza)
(Woodfire Pizza) Viking (Sausage, Corn Dogs, Hot Dogs)
(Sausage, Corn Dogs, Hot Dogs) White Rabbit (Filipino Fusion)
Plus don’t forget the food vendors inside the Anaheim Convention Center, both in the Exhibit Hall and scattered throughout the lobbies on all 3 levels, and in the Arena!
In addition to the food in the Anaheim Convention Center and the food trucks outside during WonderCon, the show’s headquarters hotel, the Hilton Anaheim adjacent to the Convention Center, has a food court—which includes Sbarro, Baja Fresh Express, Just Grillin’, and Submarina—as well as a Starbucks, Mix Restaurant, and Mix Lounge. As the official headquarters hotel, the Hilton is also home to nighttime Games, Anime screenings, and the Hospitality Suite on Friday and Saturday nights. Stop in and enjoy the Games area on the second level in the Pacific CD Ballroom or relax with your friends at the Hospitality Suite |
called third strike.
Chad Qualls recorded one out in the Atlanta eighth before Andrelton Simmons reached on an infield hit. Dunn struck out pinch-hitter Brian McCann and retired Jason Heyward on a groundout.
Eovaldi allowed a first-inning single by Freeman and retired his final 14 batters. He walked three and struck out eight.
"They're a great team," Eovaldi said. "I threw the ball really well tonight, It was just a great win all around."
Braves rookie starter Alex Wood had retired 12 straight batters before Jeff Mathis singled with two outs in the fifth. Wood gave up two hits, struck out seven and walked one in six innings.
Relievers David Carpenter and Luis Avilan combined to allow no baserunners and strike out three over the next two innings.
Eovaldi received no run support for his fifth straight start. The Marlins haven't scored while Eovaldi has been in a game since his 8-3 victory over Washington on July 12. He has a 1.04 ERA in his last four starts.
"He's always had a good arm to me," Heyward said after going 0-for-3. "Attacks the strike zone, has a lot of movement on his pitches, especially the fastball. Sometimes it's a little bit wild and effective as far as which side of the plate."
Braves third baseman Chris Johnson, who leads the NL with a.338 batting average, was ejected by plate umpire Jim Joyce to end the first after taking three pitches -- all fastballs -- for strikes with runners on first and second.
Johnson yelled at Joyce and threw his bat and helmet before walking to the dugout. After a 54-minute rain delay, Janish replaced Johnson.
Johnson was upset with himself for not being in the batter's box with two out in the ninth.
"Yeah, I'm one of those guys that wants to be in the game the whole time and wants to be in that spot," he said. "So, yeah, I'm definitely kicking myself a little bit."
Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton didn't play. Manager Mike Redmond said he gave his star the night off because "it seems like he's just really grinding and not having a whole lot of fun out there."
The Marlins have the NL's worst winning percentage and they're last in the majors in homers, RBIs and slugging percentage.
Game notes
Walden left the game after taking a liner off his pitching hand from Logan Morrison, the third batter he faced. Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said Walden might need a couple of days to rest his hand, but added that the injury didn't appear serious.... RHP Anthony Varvaro got Atlanta's final out in the ninth.... McCann was held out of the lineup with a sore knee as Gattis took his place.... Atlanta OF Jordan Schafer was activated from a rehab assignment before the game and optioned OF Jose Constanza to Triple-A Gwinnett.... Upton went 0-for-4 to end a 13-game hitting streak.An industrial hemp producer says marijuana growers aren't happy about his ongoing trials across eastern Australia.
Hemp is grown for seeds, oil and fibre, and, while it belongs to the same species, is a different variety to the drug plant, marijuana.
Phil Warner, from EcoFibre Industries, says marijuana contains the psychoactive chemical THC but hemp doesn't, and that makes his industrial hemp research unpopular.
He says drug growers are concerned that the pollen from the hemp will contaminate their high THC crops, reducing their virility.
"We've been pushed out of areas because the industrial hemp affects all of the open grown marijuana and depletes it. They don't like us because the pollen spread of the industrial hemp will invade the dope grown up in the bush at least five kilometres away."
Mr Warner has been trialling many cultivars of industrial hemp in various locations across the country from far north Queensland to southern Tasmania in an attempt to identify which varieties do best, under what conditions, and where the best hemp growing areas are.
He says it's a great fibre crop that can be used to make a range of products including insulation, plastic and fabrics, and is best grown under irrigation here in Australia, on well drained soils. Once established, it's a hardy crop.
"After about eight weeks it'll be around your waist. After that, it shoots away and gets up to four metres in the next two and a half months. It matures in late February and that's when you harvest it."
After harvesting the hemp is processed and the fibre (bast) and the hemp's interior pith (hurd) is separated.
However, there aren't any hemp processing mills in Australia, so trials are underway to find the best processing method.
Mr Warner has enlisted the use of a cotton gin at Carroll in northern New South Wales to see if using a gin to process harvested hemp is viable.
"The cotton gin is not designed for hemp, but it we can produce a good saleable product then we use basically everything from the module-making equipment right through to the ginning process."
Scott Davies, manager of the cotton gin at Carroll, says he's not too worried about opening his gin up to the cannabis crop, because it has similar properties to cotton.
"We have an industrial agricultural plant that only operates between four to six months per annum. Making the facility operational for those other dormant months is quite appealing," Mr Davies said.One of the greatest gifts technology had given to man is the creation of the Internet. Using the Web breaks boundaries and creates connections and improves information distribution. Despite these benefits over time the Internet seems to create a disconnection among our youth today. Especially since social media platforms have started to rise to prominence.
We can all admit that social media has definitely made our lives as parents, and our children’s lives a lot easier as well. But we also have to confess how it can negatively affected some of the kids psyche nowadays.
Psychologists today tackle many issues surrounding teens and their use of social media. As much as parents want to shield their kids today from the daunting risks that revolve around the Internet, nothing can or will stop them from accessing the Web.
The topic of the effects of social media on teens is broad. In fact, there is a staggering amount of studies and surveys published about it. If you are reading this article, chances are you are starting to wonder how the Internet is influencing your kids today. Below are the most concerning factors affecting your teenager right now.
They Are Addicted To It
Let’s face it, even us adults tend to stick our noses on our phones to check our Facebook accounts from time to time. I myself admit that I check it almost every 2 hours. One study revealed two thirds of Americans log in to Facebook on a daily basis, and 40% of them login multiple times a day.
There is a long list of reasons why we log on Facebook, but it is often used as a distraction or a relief of boredom. We associate the “likes” we get as a positive reinforcement on the comments we post. This is what makes it so addictive – Classical Conditioning, as psychologists call it.
They Tend To Be Insecure
As parents, even if we give all the love and support we can to boost their self-esteem, social media is always there for them, to put it into teen’s slang, “hate on them”.
The stories on social sites are often idealized versions of what actually is happening in reality. Users tend to compare themselves with what is said, see how it relates to their own situation or experience, and may end up thinking less of themselves because they don’t have the “ideal” life they want.
They Are Physically Inactive
Teens today prefer to stay at home and surf the Internet rather than engage in physical activities like sports and exercise. This is one of the reasons why there is such a huge population of obese teens these days.
In fact, even adult obesity is on the rise too as older people are not exempt from this situation. Encourage them to go out and practice a sport or two that they enjoy. Getting them active promotes both a healthy heart and mind.
They Become Restless
Social media platforms, as mentioned above, are addictive. When our children do not get to access their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts, it becomes a huge issue to them and they become restless, to the point that they can’t let this issue go. Don’t believe me? Try turning off your Wi-Fi for a few minutes and see how they react.
They Are Getting Cyberbullied
Our kids tend to hide from us what’s going on in their lives, and when they become the subject of cyberbullying, it becomes harder for them to admit what exactly is happening. Cyberbullying is a huge problem today to the point that many organizations were formed to stop this crime.
Enough is Enough, a society fighting against cyber bullying conducted a survey and found that 95% of the teens using social media have witnessed cyberbullying. And 33% of them have been victims of it.
There are also many positive effects in using social media. It can be used to promote businesses, endorse an advocacy, or spread awareness on certain important causes. However, the negative effects of it can also be daunting, especially when our teenagers today have all the freedom to access the Web and constantly visit social media sites.
The Internet is not going anyway, and it is surely here to stay. The only thing we can do as responsible parents is to stay on top of things, monitor their Internet use and teach them the discipline to focus on the good and stay away from the bad sides of it. Educating them on the proper use of social media will lessen the negative effects they can have on their psyche.The Mistborn Trilogy
This playset is based on the Mistborn novels by New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson. In the Final Empire, an immortal tyrant, the Lord Ruler, has reigned supreme for a thousand years. But a crew of gentlemen-thieves is determined to bring his rule to an end. Central to the plot is the use of magic, known as Allomancy, which allows persons to gain supernatural powers by consuming and metabolizing certain metals.
House Venture
The building is based on keep Venture, where many significant events occur. It is described as a tall, square building with buttresses and columns. While the full splendor of Keep Venture cannot be captured in one small set, I have maintained the essence of the location and packed it with play features.
Allomantic Play Features
Most of the play features are related to allomantic abilities; characters can “push” and “pull” against metals to help them fight, move objects, and launch themselves through the air. Pearl-gold (representing metal) signals these features, including a trap door on the roof, a break-away wall, a dropping balcony, and a hidden compartment in the floor. Also included are a coin to “push” off on the floor to launch a minifigure, a coin connected to a transparent spinning bar, and a container with coins to shoot (catapult) at an opponent.
Minifigures
I have included Vin, Elend, Sazed, TenSoon, Marsh, and a koloss. Vin is wearing all black with her mistcloak. She has an obsidian dagger and a vile of metals as accessories. Elend is wearing his regal white uniform, and carries a long sword and a book. Sazed is wearing his colorful v-shaped Terris robes, and has his scholar’s satchel. TenSoon, taking the wolf hound form, is accompanied by a bag with skeletal remains. Marsh, as a Steel Inquisitor, has a half smile, half frown depicting his inner struggle. A hood covers his bald head and he carries an obsidian ax as a weapon. The blue-skinned koloss is a massive brute and therefore a big-fig is perfect.
Support
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this; I hope to gain your support. If you like this set, and want it to become a reality, please share this with others.The Toronto International Film Festival has always been known as much for its quantity as its quality. Hundreds of movies from around the world screen here every September, crammed tight like sardines into an 11-day schedule, some yanked from the major fests that fall before it on the calendar. But in 2017, TIFF seems to have taken a cue from one of its special presentations, Alexander Payne’s incredible-shrinking-man comedy Downsizing. Which is to say that, in more ways than one, North America’s biggest film festival got smaller this year. There are fewer movies (320, down from 400 last year), fewer venues to see those movies at (neither the Isabel Bader Theatre nor the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema host the festival anymore), and fewer programs (yours truly mourns the death of Vanguard, which launched such recent A.V. Club favorites as The Duke Of Burgundy, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and Colossal). The overall goal seems to be a more manageable festival experience for all. Call it addition by subtraction.
Of course, for critics and journalists, covering TIFF comprehensively is still a pipe dream. The organizers could cut the lineup in half and it would still be impossible to see everything. The A.V. Club certainly won’t be covering it all, but we’ll strive, as always, to provide reactions to the movies that matter, from the big award-season hopefuls to the art-house gems that put the international into this international festival. For the fourth year in a row, I’ve decamped with Ignatiy Vishnevetsky to Canada, where we’ve taken up temporary residence in a cozy Airbnb conveniently located just down the street from the Scotiabank Theatre, where most of the press and industry screenings are held. Our general routine hasn’t changed much, but our plan of attack has: Instead of the daily roundups we’re written in previous years, we’ll be knocking out shorter but more frequent dispatches, with quick thoughts on individual films we’ve just watched and the occasional pairing of titles. They’ll run periodically from now until next Thursday.
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One thing that apparently hasn’t changed at TIFF is the festival’s strange commitment to programming a total mediocrity as its opening-night selection. In the grand tradition of Demolition, The Magnificent Seven, and The Judge comes Borg/McEnroe (Grade: C), an overwrought sports drama about the apparently famous 1980 Wimbledon match between two pros with very different public personalities. On one side of the net is Björn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason), Swedish world No. 1 superstar, regarded not just as one of the best players in the world but also a “gentleman” of the sport, due to his unflappability on and off the court. On the other side is his fiercest competition, brash New Yorker John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf), widely detested for his habit of constantly losing his temper and cursing at spectators during matches. In both style of play and temperament, they were near opposites, which only fueled the media frenzy around their impending showdown.
This is actually one of two films playing at TIFF this year about a real-life tennis rivalry; Battle Of The Sexes, which screens in a few days, tackles the titular grudge match between champ Billie Jean King and retired player Bobby Riggs, who organized the whole event as his way of proving to the world that women didn’t belong in the sport. Borg/McEnroe doesn’t possess that kind of dramatic hook—there’s nothing ideologically at stake, unless one fervently believes that potty-mouths have no place in tennis—so the film is forced to focus more on the players themselves. Screenwriter Ronnie Sandahl’s working theory is (get this) that the two were more alike than different: Laborious origin-story flashbacks to Borg’s youth as a hotheaded prodigy indicate that his famous composure was something he carefully cultivated over time (“Never show another emotion again,” his trainer, played by Stellan Skarsgård, somewhat unbelievably tells him), while scenes behind closed doors demonstrate how McEnroe’s short fuse was more strategy than impulse. But this two-sides-of-the-same-coin dichotomy is about as deep as the psychology runs.
Assumedly aware that he’s making a movie about one of the less inherently cinematic of sporting events, director Janus Metz compensates with a lot of bombastic, jittery style, amplifying the crunch of flashbulbs to a deafening roar, restlessly skittering his camera around, generally taking notes from Ron Howard’s Rush playbook. But there’s not a lot of suspense about where the movie might go, even for the uninitiated, because the out-of-order opening scene blatantly establishes that Wimbledon will come down to these two contenders (lest one fear they have to pay any attention to any of the matches leading up to the finals). This flash-forward opening also labors hard to melodramatically inflate the importance of both the game and this individual rivalry; for as much as Borg/McEnroe makes tennis players look like neurotic, joyless psychos, it also comes close to depicting them as demigods on the court. It’s a sports movie for masochistic, vainglorious athletes. For the rest of us, the film’s minor pleasures lie almost exclusively in LaBeouf’s willingness to lean into his own bad reputation. Like Lars Von Trier and Andrea Arnold before him, Metz harnesses Shia’s assholery instead of trying to disguise it.IONIA COUNTY, MI -- The arrest of two men suspected of dealing heroin in rural Ionia County led authorities to dozens of stolen items, including firearms. Investigators received a tip that Michael Fountain, 30, and Ryan Whitelock, 27, were selling heroin in Ronald Township. Deputies executed a search warrant at a home in the 3000 block of Westbrook Road on Monday, Aug. 3. During the search, deputies seized firearms that were possessed illegally, which included a rifle that was determined to be stolen. A stolen Honda four-wheeler was recovered, along with power tools, flat screen TVs, computers, laptops, crossbows and other items. Deputies plan to work with other law enforcement agencies to return the stolen items. Fountain, of Ionia, was arraigned on charges of delivery of heroin, possession with intent to deliver heroin, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and felony firearms. He's in custody on $50,000 bond. Whitelock, of Ionia, was arraigned on one count of possession of heroin. He remains jailed on $10,000 bond. Additional charges related to the stolen property will be sought once an inventory is taken of the recovered items, authorities said.
Angie Jackson covers public safety and breaking news for MLive/The Grand Rapids Press. Email her at ajackso3@mlive.com, and follow her on Twitter.Image: MIT
A computer keeps time thanks to an oscillator crystal. A bit of quartz with an applied electric field exhibits natural resonance, a fundamental frequency. This is exploited as a means to synchronize activity within a circuit, like the baton of an orchestra conductor.
The human brain doesn't feature an oscillator crystal, yet it's capable of keeping impeccable or at least pretty good time. The precise mechanisms have largely remained a mystery, but a group of neuroscientists from MIT and Columbia University may have the beginning of an answer. In a paper published this week in Current Biology, they describe how the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIC) region of the brain helps it to both interpret and reproduce time intervals, e.g. keep the beat, as it were.
The LIC likely isn't the singular source of the brain's timing signals, the authors note, but it seems to be a critical part of the process of interval measurement. They tested this out using rhesus monkeys, observing brain activity as the primates interpreted interval-based sensory information and then converted that information in motor activity (movement).
The primate experiment was an adapted version of a game used with human subjects called "ready, set, go." The subject observes a "ready" signal followed by a "set" signal, and they're asked to provide a "go" signal at the same time interval from "set" and they observed between "ready" and "set."
"In many natural settings, sensory and motor aspects of timing are heavily intertwined," the study explains. "For example, in sports, music, and imitation, humans continuously measure time intervals and use those measurements to control the timing of their actions. To investigate the mechanisms that flexibly link sensory and motor timing capacities, we developed a time reproduction task for rhesus monkeys in which the animals measured an interval demarcated by two time markers and reproduced it by a proactive saccade [a type of eye movement]."
In previous, human versions of this experiment conducted by Mehrdad Jazayeri, the current paper's lead author, it had been shown that subjects did not simply attempt to reproduce the given interval, but they combined their own imperfect measurement of that interval with prior knowledge of what the interval could have been. As more and more intervals are observed, and this prior knowledge accumulates, the subjects were able to more accurately reproduce new intervals. The result is observation modulated by or fact-checked against prior experience.
"When people reproduce time, they don't seem to use a timer."
"When people reproduce time, they don't seem to use a timer," Jazayeri offered in a statement. "It's an active act of probabilistic inference that goes on."
So, the next step was to repeat the experiment while monitoring neural activity directly. What the researchers found is that neural activity in the measurement phase of the experiment (as the monkey observes the interval between "ready" and "set") increases on a sharp curve before leveling off until the "set" signal is received. A bolt of anticipation and then a wait. The longer the interval between the first two signals, the flatter the slope winds up being at the end (at "set").
The slope at the end of the observation interval predicts the overall slope of increasing neural activity during the reproduction phase of the experiment (between "set" and "go"). This makes sense. A fast increase in activity correlates to a fast interval. If the gap is longer, the brain has more time to reach the required neural activity threshold to generate a response.
Jazayeri's research winds up asking more questions than it answers. One of these has to do with an unexplained dip in neural activity observed following the "set" signal. This dip seems to mask information about the interval being reproduced and how that information reappears is a mystery.
A follow-up experiment that's currently underway adds a second measurement interval, another opportunity for observation and refinement by the subject. Early results suggest that, as expected, subjects are able to use this additional information to further refine their estimate of the first timing interval. This is still just the beginning of understanding timing in the brain.Regulators in Boston, USA, have issued warnings about the risks involved in Bitcoin purchase, after a second ATM device was set up in the state on 17 March 2014, offering Bitcoins for sale in exchange for US dollars.
The ATMs or kiosks are produced by Liberty Teller, a small, Boston-based firm. They issue paper ‘wallets’, that look a little like a concert or plane ticket, with tamper-proof holograms fixed over a scan-able Quick Response Code. A mobile phone equipped with a camera and Bitcoin wallet can then be used to scan and upload the Bitcoin, according to Liberty Teller’s instructions.
However this has concerned regulators who are trying work out if the kiosks need an ATM licence. As the device does not issue a recognised currency, Janet Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, recently said Bitcoin is “outside of the banking system” present they are operating without one.
The Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, Boston’s consumer regulator, wrote in its advisory “A couple of weeks ago, a Bitcoin ‘ATM’ opened up in South Station. While this operation closely resembles an ATM, the kiosk performs quite differently. It does not provide cash, but instead allows consumers to load bitcoins onto a virtual wallet either accessed by an app downloaded onto a smartphone or through a code provided on a piece of paper that is unique to each consumer.”
It went on to note “Bitcoins are not FDIC insured. Unlike credit cards, you have no right to reverse the charges if something goes wrong. The South Station kiosk also has no disclosures, leaving consumers without information about fees or where to go if there is a problem.”
The Massachusetts Division of Banks, the state banking authority, is reportedly reviewing the operation of the kiosks to determine if they will require licensing.
The Central Bank of Cyprus issued a warning on 19 March 2014 about the risks involved with Bitcoin after Cyprus-based Neo & Bee, a Bitcoin card supplier, opened its flagship branch in Nicosia on 24 February.
The firm claims, “With the Neo's Bee cards, we change the status quo on payment methods and the way we purchase physically and on the internet. No charges and unlimited freedom, instantly and without intermediaries.”(CNN) Federal prosecutors and investigators are in disagreement over the strength of evidence in the investigation of the 2014 death of Eric Garner, stalling efforts so far to bring charges in the case, law enforcement officials briefed on the case tell CNN.
As recently as three months ago, the Justice Department Civil Rights Division in Washington appeared close to announcing charges, law enforcement officials briefed on the probe said.
Demonstrators rally against police brutality in memory of Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014.
But objections from several officials overseeing the case, including from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn and the FBI, have at least temporarily shelved those plans.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the investigation is still ongoing and no decisions have been made.
Federal prosecutors in recent months have been using a grand jury in Brooklyn as part of their probe, CNN has previously reported. The focus of the investigation has been on whether NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo used excessive force and broke the law in trying to arrest Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes.
JUST WATCHED A CNN report from 2014 on the immediate aftermath of Garner's death Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH A CNN report from 2014 on the immediate aftermath of Garner's death 01:09
Pantaleo was shown on video, recorded by a bystander, using what witnesses said appeared to be a chokehold technique during the Garner takedown. The NYPD bans the use of chokeholds. Garner could be heard saying "I can't breathe" in the video, a phrase that became rallying cry for street protesters in the wake of a spate of police-involved deaths.
Pantaleo's attorney, Stuart London, said: "I've never thought any federally protected constitutional right was ever violated. This was a simple street encounter with no specific intent to ever violate his civil rights. It is very frustrating for my client to have this cloud still remain."
The Justice Department investigation in Garner case has faced numerous hurdles. New York state law provides immunity to anyone who testifies to a grand jury, which meant that the FBI agents and prosecutors working the case had to take extra steps to gather evidence for their probe.
Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant, center, warms up before an NBA basketball game against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday, December 9, in Los Angeles. The team wore "I Can't Breathe" shirts during warm-ups in support of the family of Eric Garner. Since a grand jury declined to indict a New York police officer in the death of Garner, demonstrators across the country have taken to the streets to express their outrage. Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic, died in July after he was put in a chokehold by the officer, Daniel Pantaleo. Hide Caption 1 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Protesters gather in front of the Barclays Center during an NBA game in New York on Monday, December 8. Hide Caption 2 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police clash with demonstrators at the entrance of a Target near the Barclays Center on December 8. Hide Caption 3 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Seven-year-old Elijah Owens, left, stands by people participating in a "die-in" demonstration outside the Philadelphia Eagles' stadium in Philadelphia on Sunday, December 7. Hide Caption 4 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision People protest in the streets of Chicago on December 7. Hide Caption 5 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators retreat in Berkeley, California, after police deploy tear gas during a protest that turned violent before dawn on December 7. Hide Caption 6 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision A police officer in Berkeley clashes with a protester on December 7. Hide Caption 7 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision A police officer raises a shotgun toward the crowd in Berkeley on Saturday, December 6. Hide Caption 8 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision People in Los Angeles lie down during a "die-in" on Hollywood Boulevard on December 6. Hide Caption 9 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police stand guard as protesters participate in a "die-in" December 6 at Grand Central Station in New York. Hide Caption 10 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Protesters shut down all eastbound and westbound lanes on Interstate 195, which links Miami Beach to the mainland, on Friday, December 5. Hide Caption 11 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators march through the Loop in Chicago on December 5. Hide Caption 12 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Protesters block an intersection in downtown Washington on December 5. Hide Caption 13 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators march through a Macy's in Manhattan before staging a "die-in" at the iconic department store on December 5. Hide Caption 14 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police make an arrest as protesters march through Manhattan early on December 5. Hide Caption 15 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police officers form a line with demonstrations under way in Oakland, California, on Thursday, December 4. Hide Caption 16 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision A demonstrator gets arrested during a protest in New York on December 4. Hide Caption 17 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police detain a protester in New York on December 4. Hide Caption 18 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators gather in New York's Foley Square on December 4. Hide Caption 19 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police officers in New York staff a barricade at a Brooklyn Bridge exit ramp on December 4. Hide Caption 20 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators march across the Brooklyn Bridge on December 4. Hide Caption 21 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision "Black Lives Matter" is written across the cheek of Samaria Muhammad as she chants with fellow protesters in Atlanta on December 4. Hide Caption 22 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators block the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel in New York on Wednesday, December 3. Hide Caption 23 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Protesters lie down in Grand Central Station on December 3. Hide Caption 24 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision A demonstrator cries at a protest in Philadelphia on December 3. Hide Caption 25 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators block traffic on Interstate 395 in Washington on December 3. Hide Caption 26 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision A woman speaks during a demonstration in Oakland on December 3. Hide Caption 27 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Police officers stand guard in New York's Times Square on December 3. Hide Caption 28 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Protesters rally near Rockefeller Center during a ceremony to light the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York. Hide Caption 29 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Protesters face off with police in Oakland. Hide Caption 30 of 31 Photos: Protests after Eric Garner grand jury decision Demonstrators lie in the streets of St. Louis on December 3. Hide Caption 31 of 31
And another complication is a dispute of whether Pantaleo used a chokehold, and if so for how long and whether it was enough force to kill Garner. Some officials involved in the case believe the evidence evidence is not conclusive.
Cases like this are notoriously hard ones to make and relatively few result in federal civil rights charges against a police officer, law enforcement officials said.
Some officials led by Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers and FBI agents investigating the case have advised superiors that there isn't enough evidence to bring charges, the law enforcement officials said.
In a statement to CNN, Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson said, "The Garner investigation is being handled in a manner similar to many of our civil rights investigations, where experienced prosecutors from both the U.S. Attorney's office and the Civil Rights Division jointly investigate the case. In every single case the department brings -- including civil rights matters -- the department reaches one decision regarding whether charges can responsibly be brought at the conclusion of the investigation. The investigation into the death of Eric Garner is active and ongoing and no decisions have been made regarding the outcome of the case."
A spokeswoman for the FBI declined comment. A spokeswoman for the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney didn't comment.
One official involved in the matter said disputes over the strength of a case are a normal part of discussions before deciding whether to bring charges. "That's how we test the strength of our cases," the official said.
Last year, a New York state grand jury declined to charge Pantaleo in a separate case investigated by the Staten Island district attorney.
In cases of alleged police misconduct, state laws offer more broad authority to bring charges. Federal charges are considered a fall back because federal law has much narrower jurisdiction.Image credit: stockxpert
Diary of a DNA potentiator
Columnist: Brendan D. Murphy Posted on Friday, 28 November, 2014 | 0 comments Columnist:
Sealing the FB cuts off the energy supply, to some extent, of etheric and other parasites, making them more vulnerable to intervention, or even expelling them outright (including physical parasites in the body).
Luckman has seen or been told by clients of, he estimates, at least 100 cases of etheric parasites being recognised and/or leaving after Potentiation.
Etheric parasites can be viewed using such devices as Harry Oldfield’s PIP technology and variations of it. They come in various forms, including, for example, grey aliens, reptilians, and more.
Article Copyright© Brendan D. Murphy - reproduced with permission.
here. Brendan D. Murphy is an independent researcher and author who has been studying metaphysics, the occult, physics, and related subjects since a profound metaphysical awakening around the age of twenty. Now twenty-eight, Brendan has spent the past four years researching and assembling his forthcoming book series The Grand Illusion on a full-time basis in preparation for release in 2012. To contact Brendan, view free book excerpts, or to just stay updated on developments, visit his new fan page -
In New Dawn magazine No. 133 (July-August 2012), I had a piece entitled Diary of a DNA Potentiator (which was also published on this website around the same time). It detailed some of my experiences with a revolutionary sound-based “wholing” modality facilitating accelerated evolution called the Regenetics Method. At the time, I was still on my way through the timeline, which consists of four distinct activations. I had yet to receive the third activation called Elucidation when the article went to print. I had performed the first activation (Potentiation) on September 12th, 2011. Now, deep in the year of 2014 I am able to speak retrospectively on the whole timeline experience, having completed the final stage of the timeline (Transcension), which was initiated on June 1st, 2013, thus completed by March 1st 2014.The timing of completion was auspicious, to say the least, because March 1st was the self-same day that I co-created Global Freedom Movement with three close friends. This co-incidence is pertinent within the context of the Regenetics Method, because one of the commonly reported effects of this process is the proliferation of synchronicity in people’s lives, and the contemporaneously increasing abundance. When you are “in flow”, synchronicity becomes the norm rather than the exception. I seek to provide access to this peace and abundance on the largest scale possible.I mean not for us merely to take a torch into the darkness of unconsciousness on this planet, but to create a raging conflagration of awakened consciousness that will shine as a galactic beacon—and do it as quickly as we can. The Matrix is crumbling, and its architects are getting desperate because their food source—human unconsciousness and its attendant misery—is drying up.In my initial “report”, I focused primarily on the physical dimensions of this transformational process, and commented on various physical maladies, including lingering soft tissue injuries and also food allergies. Potentiation, the first activation, focuses primarily on the physical and etheric bodies (the etheric being the physical’s template/doppelganger). Additionally, the term “DNA activation” itself tends to fixate attention on the physical domain, even though, in reality, that is where the least of the work and change is occurring.Now, having experienced the remaining stages and their effects in my life, as well as having further observation and research under my belt, I can speak more broadly on what we are doing with this transformational and healing technique.In a nutshell, by using the Solfeggio frequencies, we are RE-tuning your physical and subtle bodies to the frequencies of LOVE, HEALTH, HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS, and ABUNDANCE which were your birthright, but usurped by the Matrix, as you were indoctrinated in your youth, pummelled with lies and fear porn, dumbed down, and programmed into a false identity. The four activations of the Regenetics Method spell the END of that B.S., and an organic, gradual return to Source/self-awareness, interconnectedness, and abundance.Game over. Exit Matrix stage left.–Dr. Len HorowitzThis kind of voice- and sound-based DNA activation is a “shamanic” healing technique that targets |
must have a Builder Hall level 3 in order to remove obstacles in the Builder Base. Obstacles in the Builder Base respawn in a similar fashion to Obstacles in the Home Village. While trees and other types of vegetation will respawn over time if the obstacle limit isn't reached, rocks and stones will not respawn. Many obstacles are common to both the Home Village and Builder Base. The Tall Grass is the only Builder Base Obstacle that doesn't require a free Master Builder to remove, and will never yield Gems. You can either remove it with 50 or for free by placing a building on it, and the removal will be instantaneous. The latter method can be done without a Builder Hall level 3. Removing the Tall Grass with 50 counts towards the Nice and Tidy Achievement and the Gardening Exercise Clan Quest, but placing a building on it for free won't count. In Village Edit Mode, Tall Grass can be removed using Elixir, but cannot be removed by placing buildings on top of it. The Old Barbarian Statue will spawn Tall Grasses by its side. The same goes for the Ancient Barbarian Statue decoration. If neither of these is present, any remaining Tall Grass can still spawn beside nearby Tall Grass, but if all the Tall Grass are cleared too, then Tall Grass will not respawn until the Ancient Barbarian Statue is bought.
Type Size Removal Cost Removal Time Experience Gained Respawn Weight Tall Grass (1) 1x1 50 * Instant N/A 3%** Tall Grass (2) 1x1 50 * Instant N/A 3%** Mushroom 2x2 100 10s 3 10% Tree Stump 2x2 500 10s 3 20% Trunk 2x2 1,000 10s 3 20% Small Tree 2x2 2,000 10s 3 20% Tree 2x2 2,000 10s 3 30% Big Tree 2x2 10,000 10s 3 10% Grove 3x3 20,000 1m 7 20%
Type Size Removal Cost Removal Time Experience Gained Stone (Small 1) 2x2 500 10s 3 Stone (Small 2) 2x2 500 10s 3 Stone (Small 3) 2x2 500 10s 3 Stone (Small 4) 2x2 500 10s 3 Stone (Small Pillar) 2x2 500 10s 3 Stone (Pillar) 2x2 10,000 15s 3 Stone (Large) 3x3 20,000 15s 3 Old Barbarian Statue 3x3 200,000 1m 7
*Can be removed for free by placing a building on top of it; see above for more details.
**Tall Grass only respawns if at least one of the following is present: other neighboring Tall Grass, the Old Barbarian Statue obstacle, or the Ancient Barbarian Statue decoration.
Special Obstacles These obstacles only appear for a limited time, and are usually created to commemorate holidays. After the period in which they spawn ends, players can continue to keep these obstacles. Note that all special obstacles (and the Gem Box) ignore the one-tile buffer zone rule that governs where normal vegetation can spawn. They can spawn in any 2x2 empty space within your village, though they tend toward spawning close to the outer edges of the field. X-Mas Trees are a prominent special obstacle, with different versions of them appearing in every winter period since the game's launch. The first X-Mas Tree was added in 2012, and appears as a small tree with flashing colorful ornaments. It initially gave 30,000 Gold when cleared, which was then increased to 50,000. On 3 January 2013, Supercell indicated on the forums that people will get to keep their trees even after the winter theme is gone. The tree also appears in the Gold Rush level of the Single Player Campaign. The 2013 X-Mas Tree appears as a small tree with golden garlands, a golden spike ball on top, and two skulls at the bottom of the tree. The tree also appears in the Gobbotown level of the Single Player Campaign. This X-Mas Tree gives 75,000 Gold when cleared, a figure that has been retained for all subsequent X-Mas Trees. The 2014 tree is similar looking to the 2012 one, but is adorned with tinsel, candy canes as well as colored ornaments and flashing lights. During the period of winter 2014, the tree randomly spawned wrapped presents worth 5,000 Elixir each when cleared. The tree also appears in the Fool's Gold level of the Single Player Campaign. The presents can also be generated by the Santa's Surprise and Santa Strike. The 2015 X-Mas tree appears like black metal tree with golden chains, spikes and spiky ball on top. There also lays sword next to it. When zoomed, you can see sparks coming out. The 2016 X-Mas tree has red-orange ribbons wrapped around it, with a white top. The 2017 X-Mas tree is almost completely white, with a blue-white gem on top. The 2018 X-Mas tree has blue ornaments with a conducting rod at its tip. Special Halloween obstacles have spawned every Halloween period since 2014. The Halloween Headstone spawned in 2014. It appears similar to a normal tombstone, but with a octagonal engraving on the tombstone and a Skeleton's hand coming out of the ground. The obstacle appears to have inspired the design of the Tombstone card in Clash Royale. The Halloween Cauldron spawned in 2015 and appears as a cauldron with elixir-colored liquid inside it. The Scary Pumpkin spawned in 2016 and appears as a pumpkin split in half with a zigzag cut that is meant to resemble sharp teeth, and a pink interior. The pumpkin opens and closes its "mouth" from time to time. The somewhat simply-named Halloween Obstacle spawned in 2017 and appears as the skull of a Baby Dragon. The Witch's Hat spawned in 2018 and appears as a purple hat that resembles the hats that witches are associated with in popular culture. There's a special kind of Army Camp in the Goblin Gauntlet mission in the Single Player Campaign that only consists of a camp fire with different surroundings that the one in the Army Camp, which is only 2x2. You can notice this by the other obstacles that are next to the camp fire. You can also drop troops over it since it is considered as an obstacle. A video of X-Mas Tree (2012) being chopped down and the reward: Video A few Chinese New Year obstacles were introduced since 2018: Both the Fireworks Stash and Fortune Tree were added in the 2018 CNY period. The Glowy Lantern was added for the 2019 CNY period. Notably, it is the first Builder Base special obstacle. During the 5th anniversary of Clash of Clans (August 2017), Supercell introduced the 5th Anniversary Cake. It costs 25,000 Elixir to destroy, but you get a reward of 75,000 Elixir. A similar 6th Anniversary Cake was added around the 6th anniversary period of the game (August 2018). The Spike-y Cactus was released in celebration of Supercell's highly anticipated game, Brawl Stars. It resembles the Brawler Spike.
Trivia The rainbow effect on the Gem Box might be a reference to the saying "There's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow." However, in this case, the pot of gold is a pot of gems. If no gems are purchased, earned through achievements or spent on various purposes, 1623 obstacles (not including gem boxes) are needed to clear to buy the 3rd, 4th and 5th Builder Huts which cost 3500 gems in total, which roughly translates to 528 days (counting from the first obstacle removed and assuming that the village always contain less than 45 obstacles, in order for new obstacles to spawn). In very early versions of the game, an odd looking stone was able to appear in a newly created village. It became unobtainable soon after the game's release, and only a few players are known to still have it. A few examples of players who still have this stone: (#Y98CJG, #PULPLU, #LLJUOO, #C2VY8G, #UPYJ, #8J88U, #V9CC8). This stone made a new appearance in the 23rd October 2018 update, in the new Single Player Campaign maps "High Pressure" and "Burning Sensation." Aside from the Gem Box, the Spike-y Cactus and Glowy Lantern are the only obstacles that give a different resource than used to remove it. The Glowy Lantern is currently the only special event obstacle to spawn in the Builder Base.The main event
Suffering from Coakley-Brown fatigue? Indeed, the Massachusetts Senate race has fixated journalists who treat the special election like a chariot race, a poker game or a lover’s quarrel; the volume of coverage is immense and often melodramatic. Close to 8,000 accounts of the matchup between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown have appeared in the last 24 hours, according to Google News.
Yet the race is of national interest for practical and symbolic reasons. “Very, very important,” says Richard Dunham of the San Francisco Chronicle, who distilled the Top 10 reasons why Americans should pay attention.
Mr. Dunham ticks off the first five: Massachusetts is one of the most Democratic states in the nation. Health care reform is at stake. Democrat-only legislative power would come to an end. This is the “Kennedy” seat. This is where the Boston Tea Party took place.
He continues: This is a test of the power of political independents. It’s a good indicator of voters’ desire for divided government. It could give a jump-start to Republican recruiting efforts in other states. It’s proof that Republicans don’t have to be moderates to win on Democratic turf.
And last but not least?
“It would be a personal and political repudiation of President Obama,” Mr. Dunham says, particularly after his personal appearance with Ms. Coakley, and in a last-minute campaign spot.
“By inserting himself into the race, Obama raised the stakes. If Massachusetts voters reject his personal appeal, it’s a sign that the president’s remaining personal popularity is not necessarily transferable to endangered Democrats,” Mr. Dunham adds.
The sideshow
Urgent bulletin from the Land of Hanging Chads: Some predict the electronically tabulated ballots in Massachusetts will be attacked, hacked and compromised on Tuesday.
A dozen nonpartisan election watchdog groups — some advocating a return to simple paper ballots — have issued a last-minute “orange alert,” warning that the special election “is ripe for manipulation.” They are pointing the accusatory finger at New England Diebold affiliate LHS Associates, a private company in Methuen, Mass.
“The electronic voting systems used in Massachusetts are notoriously plagued with problems and vulnerabilities, and are in violation of federal voting system standards. Moreover, they are sold, programmed and maintained by a company with a disturbing criminal background,” says organizer Brad Friedman.
The motley consortium — which includes Election Defense Alliance, the Center for Hand-Counted Paper Ballots and Florida Fair Election — is demanding that Massachusetts election officials maintain custody of “trade secret software and memory cards” pertaining to ballot and voting data.
Paranoid? Then get thee to a polling place.
“Alert citizens can help defend against election shenanigans by volunteering as polling center watchdogs,” Mr. Friedman adds.
And the chorus
“In advance of what would be one of the biggest upsets in modern political history, Democrats in Washington are already scheming how they might again bypass the will of the American people,” says the Republican Study Committee.
President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “continue to plot” the trajectory of health care reform legislation, even if public opinion polls consistently reveal that only about a third of the public favors the bill.
“Are Washington Democrats astonishingly tone deaf to what Americans think, or do they just not care anymore?” the group asks. “If Democrats think failure to pass a bill is a political liability for them, wait until they see the political blowback from trying to fast-track it against the will of the American people. Should they take that route, they each might have a Martha Coakley experience of their own.”
Stop the presses
Yes, even minuscule presidential acts are subject to interpretation. President Obama pushed the “send” button on a Twitter message he didn’t write while visiting the Red Cross on Monday. A few resulting headlines:
“Obama’s first Tweet makes presidential history.” (CNN)
“President Obama finally Tweets — for Haiti — in the third person.” (Techcrunch.com)
“President Obama Tweets (sort of).” Fox News
“Barack Obama’s first Tweet (and his enemy’s punishment).” (Gawker)
How very Kerry
“I’m no stranger to hard-fought campaigns, but what we’ve seen in the past few days is way over the line and reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin’s 2008 campaign rallies. This is not how democracy works in Massachusetts,” Sen. John Kerry says.
The Massachusetts Democrat is apparently uneasy about all the goings-on across his turf — like Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack getting knocked down recently by Coakley aide Michael Meehan, maybe?
“Scott Brown needs to speak up and get his out-of-state ‘tea party’ supporters under control. In Massachusetts, we fight hard and win elections on the issues and on our differences, not with bullying and threats,” Mr. Kerry adds.
Potty party
Because we all need, well, a laugh, Inside the Beltway hereby reports that Proctor & Gamble has developed the world’s first “high-performance” sports diapers for babies, just in time for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
The manufacturer is test-marketing the environmentally friendly “Team USA Pampers Swaddlers and Cruisers with Dry Max” among the infants born to several Olympic athletes. Wait, this is a cultural moment. Think of it: an official partnership between the U.S. Olympics Committee in a post-Mitt Romney era and a diaper manufacturer.
“Every baby is a champion in play,” Proctor & Gamble says.
Poll du jour
• 88 percent of Republicans and 93 percent of Democrats support Medicare.
• 68 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Democrats support Medicaid.
• 90 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats support national defense.
• 69 percent of Republicans and 93 percent of Democrats support federal aid to public schools.
• 55 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Democrats support federal environmental-protection policy.
• 29 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of Democrats support foreign aid.
Source: A Harris Poll of 2,276 adults conducted Dec. 7 to 14 and released Jan. 15.
• Treats, bleats, Tweets, feats to jharperwashingtontimes.com.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.The Hallowich children were just 7 and 10 years old when their family received a $750,000 settlement to relocate away from their home in Mount Pleasant, Penn., which was next door to a shale-gas drilling site. By the time they’re grown up, they may not remember much about what it was like to live there — the burning eyes, sore throats, headaches, and earaches they experienced thanks to contaminated air and water. And maybe it’s better if they don’t remember, since they’re prohibited from talking about the experience for the rest of their lives.
The terms of Stephanie and Chris Hallowich’s settlement with Range Resources included, like most such settlements do, a non-disclosure agreement preventing them from discussing their case or gas drilling and fracking in general. But the agreement’s extension to their children is unprecedented; one assistant law professor at the University of Pittsburgh called it “over-the-top.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:
According to the transcript [of the settlement hearing], the Hallowichs’ attorney, Peter Villari, said that in 30 years of practicing law he never had seen a nondisclosure agreement that included minor children. And, although he advised the Hallowichs to accept the settlement, he questioned if the children’s First Amendment rights could be restricted by such an agreement.
According to Villari, the settlement wouldn’t have gone forward unless the couple also signed a document stating their health was not affected by drilling operations. So all the record will show, as a spokesperson for Range Resources put it, is that “clearly the Hallowichs were not in an ideal situation in terms of their lifestyle. They had an unusual amount of activity around them. We didn’t want them in that situation.” Man, if you could get $750,000 just for having an “unusual amount of activity” near your home — say, the construction of some microapartments — development-related NIMBYism would cease to exist.
For people whose property values, health, and quality of life have suffered thanks to fracking, settlements like these can be a bitter pill to swallow. In exchange for much-needed compensation for damages, they’re barred from speaking up about their experiences, which slows the spread of awareness about fracking’s potential risks and helps the cycle of exploitation continue. ClimateProgress explains:
The Hallowich family’s gag order is only the most extreme example of a tactic that critics say effectively silences anyone hurt by fracking. It’s a choice between receiving compensation for damage done to one’s health and property, or publicizing the abuses that caused the harm. Virtually no one can forgo compensation, so their stories go untold. Bruce Baizel, Energy Program Director at Earthworks, an environmental group focusing on mineral and energy development, said in a phone interview that the companies’ motives are clear. “The refrain in the industry is, this is a safe process. There’s no record of contamination. That whole claim would be undermined if these things were public.” There have been attempts to measure the number of settlements with non-disclosure agreements, Baizel said, but to no avail. “They don’t have to be registered, they don’t have to be filed. It’s kind of a black hole.” … Sharon Wilson, an organizer with Earthworks, said … “These gag orders are the reason [drillers] can give testimony to Congress and say there are no documented cases of contamination. And then elected officials can repeat that.” She makes it clear she doesn’t blame the families who take the settlements. “They do what they have to do to protect themselves and their children.”
The Range Resources spokesperson said the company doesn’t believe this settlement should apply to the children. But according to the hearing transcript, Range Resources’ attorney asserted not only that the order does indeed apply to the younger Hallowichs, but that the company “would certainly enforce it.”
If Range Resources ever gets its official position straight, the Hallowich kids could be released from the gag order. Until then, they better watch what they say on the playground.ECHL Team to Wear Gettysburg Address Jerseys
Of all the unusual minor league promotional jersey nights, this is one I never thought we’d see.
The Bakersfield Condors (ECHL, Edmonton Oilers) will be wearing special jerseys commemorating the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on Sunday.
The front of the jerseys are cream with a sublimated black and white depiction of President Abraham Lincoln reading his famous speech on November 19, 1863, with a Condors logo (complete with Lincoln’s famous stove-pipe hat) a banner below acknowledging the anniversary.
On the back, the words of the speech are written out, the opening line “Four score and seven years ago”, bolded and featured right under the collar. Finally a scene from the Battle of Gettysburg is shown at the bottom.
The Condors will auction off the game worn jerseys with proceeds going to local charities.EFF app for Android
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released an app for Android devices, but announced today that it has no plans to bring the software to Apple’s iOS platform. The reason, the organization said, is that it simply cannot agree to Apple’s developer agreement.
The EFF specifically called out six points in the document that it took issue with, although it noted that there were even more problems it didn’t have the space to mention. The complaints aren’t new—many of them date back to 2010—but it seems the foundation is determined once again to make its points heard.
From the EFF’s blog post:
As we have been saying for years now, the Developer Agreement is bad for developers and users alike. Here are a few of the terms that we are worried about: Ban on Public Statements: Section 10.4 prohibits developers from making any “public statements” about the terms of the Agreement. This is particularly strange, since the Agreement itself is not “Apple Confidential Information” as defined in Section 10.1. So the terms are not confidential, but developers are contractually forbidden from speaking “publicly” about them. Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that would “enable others” to reverse engineer, the software development kit (SDK) or iPhone OS. App Store Only: Section 7.3 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple’s SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you’re prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia. No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the “ban on jailbreaking” provision that appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or “enabling others to do so.” Apple Owns Your Security: Section 6.1 explains that Apple has to approve any bug fixes or security releases. If Apple does not approve such updates very quickly, this requirement could put many people in jeopardy. Kill Your App Any Time: Section 8 makes it clear that Apple can “revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time.” Steve Jobs once confirmed that Apple can remotely disable apps, even after they have been installed by users. This contract provision would appear to allow that.
The organization has a mixed relationship with Apple. Last year it praised the Cupertino company’s “remarkable improvement” in the area of customer data protection and gave high marks in security to both iMessage and FaceTime.
The flipside of this is the EFF’s work to ensure that jailbreaking an iOS device remains legal despite Apple’s best attempts to scare users out of installing modifications to their phones and tablets. There are also the issues with the App Store model mentioned above.
It’s unlikely that the EFF will compromise its ideals to publish an app on iOS, though it’s always possible the software could eventually be released through the Cydia store on jailbroken devices—an course of action technically prohibited by the developer agreement against which the EFF is trying to take a stand.White House senior adviser Steve Bannon declared Thursday "it's going to get worse" for President Donald Trump as he "continues to press his agenda and as economic conditions get better" — infuriating liberals and the "opposition" media that have stood against him since he announced his candidacy nearly two years ago.
"As things get better, they're going to fight," Bannon said at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor outside Washington. "If you think they're going to give the country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken."
Bannon's comments, on a panel with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, marked his first to a public gathering since joining Trump's White House quest last year from Breitbart News.
"Every day, every day it is going to be a fight — and all the opportunities he had to waiver off this — every day, he tells Reince and I that 'I promised this to the American people and I'm going to deliver on this.'"
The crowd cheered.
Vice President Mike Pence addresses CPAC later Thursday, while President Trump speaks Friday.
Other Thursday speakers included Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
In a conversation moderated by Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors CPAC, Bannon and Priebus laid bare President Trump's agenda, slammed the mainstream press and dismissed reports of chaos within the administration.
Known as a tough talker and for his bluntness, Bannon said President Trump's "immediate" withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was "one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history."
The move "let our sovereignty come back to the nation," he said. "The mainstream media doesn't get this.
"We are in consultation with The Hill — and people are starting to think that amazing bilateral trading relationships with people that will re-position America in the world as a fair-trading nation will start to bring high-valued manufacturing jobs back to the United States of America."
Bannon added, under Trump's first two executive orders, the travel ban and creating a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, "the rule of law will exist when you talk about sovereignty and when you talk about immigration."
He said other immediate successes of the Trump White House include the plan to be unveiled by his Defense Secretary James Mattis on defeating the Islamic State, and the order that cuts excessive business regulation.
"Every business leader knows that the problem is not just taxes, but it is also the regulation," Bannon said.
"That is the way the progressive left runs. They can't get it passed, so they'll put it in a regulation — and that's all going to be deconstructed."
In bashing reports of a rift between he and Bannon, Priebus said "I love how many collars he wears with the same look.
"We're different, but we are similar," he added. "He is very determined in making sure that every day, the promises that President Trump has made that we are working on.
"Steve is very consistent and loyal to the agenda and a presence that is very important to have in the White House."
He also called Bannon "a very dear friend and someone that I work with every second of the day — and actually. I cherish his friendship."
For his part, Bannon admitted "I can run a little hot on occasions — and Reince is indefatigable.
"Low-key and determined. The only way this thing works is that Reince is very steady.
"Reince is always kind of steady," he added. "Other people are running, but he's steady and he's got one of the toughest jobs in my life: To make it run every day."
Bannon declared Trump's "nationalistic economic agenda" was creating "a new political order — and it's still being formed."
In light of this effort and the resistance from liberals and the media, Bannon told the CPAC crowd: "We're at the top of the first inning of this, and it's going to take just as much fight, focus and determination.
"The one thing I would like to leave you guys today with is we want you to have our back."
He also asked attendees to "hold us accountable.
"Hold us accountable to what we promised. Hold us accountable for delivering what we promised."Computer Mind Archetype (Starfinder)
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Update: Let me strongly recommend these two excellent posts on Switzerland, by Lars Christensen and Simon Cox.
Here is Kevin Drum:
Via James Pethokoukis, Scott Sumner claims that Market Monetarists got things right during the aftermath of the Great Recession when others didn’t: It must be a major embarrassment to the profession that us lowly MMs turned out to be more correct during the crisis than any other major group (New Keynesians, New Classical, RBC-types, etc.) and indeed more accurate than other groups on the fringes (old Keynesians, old monetarists, Austrians, MMTers, etc.): 1. It’s now obvious that Fed, ECB, and BOJ policy was far too tight in late 2008 and early 2009, but MMs were just about the only people saying so at the time. 2. We correctly pointed out that fiscal austerity in 2013 would not slow growth in the US because of monetary offset, whereas in a poll of 50 elite economists by the University of Chicago, all but one gave answers implying it would slow growth. 3. We pointed out that massive QE would not lead to high inflation, while many other economists on the right said it would. 4. We correctly predicted that the BOJ and Swiss National Bank could depreciate their currency at the zero bound, while many on the left said monetary policy was pushing on a string at the zero bound. 5. We pointed out that the ECB’s tightening of policy in 2011 was a huge mistake, which now almost everyone recognizes. I’m a little puzzled by this. Unless I’m misremembering badly, prominent lefty economists like Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have been saying most of these things all along. And while I’m not really quite sure if these guys think of themselves as New Keynesians or Neo-Paleo Keynesians or modified Old Keynesians or what, they’re basically Keynesians. The only one of Sumner’s five points where there’s disagreement, I think, is #2, and I’d argue that this is a very difficult point to prove one way or the other. My own read of the evidence is that the modest austerity of 2013 might very well have had a modest effect on growth, but frankly, a single year of data is all but impossible to draw any firm conclusions from. However, it’s certainly true that there were no huge changes in the trend growth rate.
Let’s take these one at a time. There’s really only one reason why Kevin Drum and others even pay attention to market monetarists. People like David Beckworth and I became well known in the blogging community for a very contrarian point of view in late 2008 and early 2009. We argued that monetary policy was way too tight and that this was making the recession much worse. Almost no one outside the market monetarist community was making that claim (with a handful of exceptions like Robert Hetzel at the Richmond Fed (in a much more polite fashion).)
In one of my early blog posts I wrote an open letter to Krugman asking him to support QE, NGDP targeting, etc., and he shot me down with a sarcastic reply, mocking the notion that monetary stimulus could help at the zero bound. Yes, much later he supported QE, and even at that time he was not really opposed, but the Keynesian community was strongly pushing the “monetary policy is ineffective at the zero bound” viewpoint in late 2008 and early 2009. Even more shockingly, so was almost everyone else.
If you don’t believe me, consider how Ryan Avent describes the impact of market monetarism in 2011:
Once upon a time, the Fed was viewed as having near-absolute power over the path of the economy. Then crisis struck and many argued that the Fed had run out of ammunition and fiscal policy was required. Eventually people began arguing that the Fed could do more and should do more, thanks largely to the efforts of Mr Sumner himself.
Or this from September 2012:
Yet even as this [QE] was taking place, the conventional wisdom across the economics wires was that monetary policy had largely done all it could do, or perhaps all it should do. The most straightforward argument on this score was that with interest rates at zero, the Fed was powerless to create more demand. QE could prop up banks, many suggested, but it could not influence the real economy. What was necessary instead was fiscal expansion, which could bypass a limping banking system and plow money directly into the economy. A more sophisticated critique emerged from people like Paul Krugman, who diagnosed the economy has having sunk into a liquidity trap. With interest rates near zero, he argued, balance-sheet policy””swapping one zero-yield asset for another””was unlikely to prove effective. The only way the central bank could further stimulate the economy would be to slash the expected real return on bonds below zero by promising high inflation in the future. But this was hopeless; to do this, the Fed would have to credibly promise to “be irresponsible”: to tolerate inflation in some future in which the economy was no longer at the zero bound. Since no one would believe that the Fed would do such a thing, no one would expect high future inflation. The only solution to the problem is fiscal stimulus.... As these debates were playing out, a dissenting voice emerged in a tiny corner of the economics blogosphere. On February 2nd, 2009, Scott Sumner launched his blog with a flurry of posts assailing the conventional wisdom on monetary policy. But almost no one knew who Mr Sumner was, and so no one read those posts. Then on February 25th, Tyler Cowen linked to his blog, and readers and comments began trickling in. Mr Cowen’s status within the economics blogosphere signaled to the rest of us that these were ideas worth engaging. The result was a long and detailed conversation on Mr Sumner’s key ideas, the heart of which was a call to refocus monetary policy on nominal GDP rather than inflation. As Mr Sumner is quick to admit, this is not an idea original to him. Rather, he argues (compellingly, in my view) it is one that follows directly from Milton Friedman’s monetarist revolution but which lost out to inflation targeting during the early years of the Great Moderation. The insight is that the central bank’s provenance isn’t the money supply or interest rates or inflation but simply demand, best captured in nominal output or income: the total amount of money spent each year. If one accepts, as most macroeconomists do, that nominal shocks can have real consequences, and if one then accepts, as is common, that central banks ought to try to smooth out nominal shocks, then it makes the most sense to just stabilise the biggest nominal aggregate. Alternatively, the best way to insure against a damaging fall in demand is to make sure that demand doesn’t fall, or at least to promise to quickly rectify any demand drop that does occur, by maintaining a stable path for nominal output growth.... The notion that the central bank should focus on raising NGDP and that inflation is largely a sideshow has taken a while to catch on. But caught on it has. That is down partly to the effectiveness of the idea itself and the argument developed by Mr Sumner. And it is down partly to the fact that Mr Sumner’s framework has done a good job explaining the ups and downs of recovery. Blogs helped his idea find an audience. As the audience grew, Mr Sumner was able to find print outlets for his views. And through blogs, economists advancing the idea were able to communicate and deepen their arguments, eventually forming what has been called the first school of economics to emerge online: the market monetarists. This school now has a book out, edited by David Beckworth. As the blogosphere cottoned on to the idea, it seemed to trickle up. This newspaper covered the idea in a column in August of last year. In October of 2011 Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius endorsed the idea in a research note, and Christina Romer, a former head of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, signed on in a column at the New York Times. In November of last year, Mr Bernanke was asked about NGDP targeting at a post-meeting press conference. And at this year’s Fed convocation in Jackson Hole, renowned monetary economist Michael Woodford presented a paper to an audience of central bankers which came down in support of the concept.... As the market monetarist community is now pointing out, the Fed’s new policy is a step in the right direction, but it is a long way from what they would actually recommend implementing. And they’re right. Fairly or not, however, the policy will be judged as a test of market monetarist ideas. Yesterday’s market moves suggest that nominal output growth should accelerate in coming quarters. How much acceleration is likely to occur will depend on how much room the Fed is willing to give the economy to run. If the rise in inflation expectations leads the Fed to begin walking back its new language a month from now, the gain will be small.... It is unfortunate for the school’s adherents that both the victory and the test |
Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali". Boutros Philip-Ghali Glass was a friend a friend, was a friend a one two three four.
One two three four. One two three four. One two three four. One two three four. One two three four five six seven eight. One two. One two.
Koyaanisqatsi watsi Taxi Waxi. Koyaanisqatsi watsi Watutsi Taxi Waxi. Om mani padme sum.
Philip Glass is a composer of music that repeats, then Philip Glass is a composer of music that repeats, then Philip Glass is a composer of music that repeats, then Philip Glass is a composer of music that repeats, then philip glass is a composer of music that repeats, then does a lot of Ravi Shankar.
Koyaanisqatsi watsi watsi. Watsi.
Oooooh-ah. Ooooooh-ah. Short arpeggio.
Two lovers sat on a on a on a park bench, their parts bench bench bench touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight in the moonlight in the moonlight.
Eins zwei drei vier. One. Two. One two three four. One two three
same chord. same chord. different chord? nope, same one.
This minimalist piece stopped suddenly. You can help Uncyclopedia by throwing the CD across the room.
Works by Philip Glass
Einstein on the Bleach, for physicist, toilet cleaner, and metallic (enriched uranium) percussion
, for physicist, toilet cleaner, and metallic (enriched uranium) percussion 1 Page, Played Twice, originally called 2 pages, until Philip Glass admitted he decided to repeat the page twice, rather than write a second part. Nobody noticed.
, originally called 2 pages, until Philip Glass admitted he decided to repeat the page twice, rather than write a second part. Nobody noticed. Akhnathen!, or the Egyptian Sneeze, for twelve percussionists, 20 tacet violins, ragweed, infinite arpeggio generator and handkerchiefs
, or the Egyptian Sneeze, for twelve percussionists, 20 tacet violins, ragweed, infinite arpeggio generator and handkerchiefs Coy Anna's Curtsey, or the Girl of the Golden Corral, for twelve strip-tease artists, oglers, hecklers, carbohydrates and spraypaint
, or the Girl of the Golden Corral, for twelve strip-tease artists, oglers, hecklers, carbohydrates and spraypaint A Man Clapping, for a man clapping
Sawyagramma, for old folks, multiple televisions, and quaaludes
, for old folks, multiple televisions, and quaaludes Waiting for the Barbarians - oh blast: they've been here already
- oh blast: they've been here already Different Brains, idea stolen from Steve "The Third" Reich, based on a wish-fulfillment dream had in therapy while at the Esalen Institute of Metamagical Navel-Gazing.
, idea stolen from Steve "The Third" Reich, based on a wish-fulfillment dream had in therapy while at the Esalen Institute of Metamagical Navel-Gazing. Music With Identical Parts, controversial two CD album. Critics accused Mr. Glass of changing the oohs and aahs too much between the parts.
, controversial two CD album. Critics accused Mr. Glass of changing the oohs and aahs too much between the parts. String Quartet No. 4 ("Muzak")
Piece for Steve Reich...wait no, never wrote a piece for Steve Reich. Who's Steve Reich, never heard of 'em.
Whistling Concerto in B
Glassworks, sequel to Brickworks
Prelude to Endgame, about a master and his slave who don't know how to play chess
In the Summer House for violin and cello, and its sequel Behind the Bike Sheds
for violin and cello, and its sequel One plus One, for amplified tabletop
, for amplified tabletop C# held for 30 minutes while an oboe plays something that sounds Egyptian, praised as his "Most unnecesssary piece this year" by the New York Times
, praised as his "Most unnecesssary piece this year" by the New York Times Music for the film A Brief History of Time ; brief is not the word.
; brief is not the word. 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, a subtle propaganda piece promoting nudism.
, a subtle propaganda piece promoting nudism. Hi-Gher, 1998 post-modern situationist deconstructionist reinterpretation of David Bowie's 1956 classic, largely based on William S. Burroughs "mess-up" techniques.
, 1998 post-modern situationist deconstructionist reinterpretation of David Bowie's 1956 classic, largely based on William S. Burroughs "mess-up" techniques. Long Off Booking, 2007 setting of poems by Leonard Cohen. Was Philip Glass's first attempt to restrict himself to four chords only. He must have thought that's how you write pop(ular) music.
, 2007 setting of poems by Leonard Cohen. Was Philip Glass's first attempt to restrict himself to four chords only. He must have thought that's how you write pop(ular) music. Scratched Skipping CD, damaged items returned to Douche Gramaphone rereleased
See AlsoIn this season of Holy Patience, we reflect and wait for the coming of the Christ Child. This feast being celebrated on the 25th of December, has become a grand holiday loved by both Christian and secular peoples. The coming time of preparation is, however, a much lesser known aspect of this season. Often chocolate calendars, carols, holiday movies and the changing of the priest’s vestments are the only precursory changes that we notice. We all know of Lent, but what is Advent? What is it’s history? Here are seven facts you might not have known on the subject:
1. In Eastern Christian Churches, Advent goes by several names: St. Philip’s Fast, The Nativity Fast, Winter Lent or Christmas Lent
2. The first mention of a preparatory period before Christmas is in a canon of the local council of Saragossa, Spain (380)
It forbade the faithful to be absent from church during the three weeks from the 17th of December to the Epiphany.
3. At the Synod of Mac (581), in present day France, the season was kept as a period of fasting as strict as that of Lent commencing in some localities on November 11, the feast day of St. Martin
The fast became known as “St. Martin’s Fast” or “St. Martin’s Lent.” This fasting period said that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday no one was allowed to consume meat, dairy products or oil.
4. In most Eastern Churches, the fast did not begin until the day after St. Philip’s feast day and the same strict fasting was kept as that in St. Martin’s Lent
This is the present liturgical pre-Nativity season for the East, and it wasn’t established until the Council of Constantinople (1166).
5. The Gelasian Sacramentary, a book on Christian Liturgy dating back to the 8th century, notes five Sundays for the season of Advent; these five were reduced to four by Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-85)
6. In England, especially the northern counties, an advent custom (now extinct) developed that was for poor women to carry round the “Advent images,” two dolls dressed to represent Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary
A halfpenny was expected from every one to whom these were exhibited, and bad luck was thought to menace the household not visited by the doll-bearers before Christmas Eve at the latest.
7. In Italy, during the last days of Advent, the Calabrian pifferari or bagpipe players come to Rome and play before the shrines of Mary, the mother of Jesus
The Italian tradition is that the shepherds played on these pipes when they came to the manger at Bethlehem to pay homage to the Messiah.
The Challenge
It seems that today, after many years, the idea of fasting another 40 days before Christ’s birth is no longer required. However, that does’t mean we cannot try it out anyway. So I challenge you, dear reader, to take on the “strict” observance of the old’n days. No meat, oil or dairy products on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Offer your sufferings to the Christ Child, with the knowledge that His suffering is perpetual and the Eucharist is Life.- Two people suffered major injuries, when the car they were riding in, went off a freeway and crashed into a building in Walnut Creek.
The CHP says it happened just before midnight.
The vehicle was going from Highway 24 to Interstate 680, when it went off the road, and plummeted onto a building at Boulevard Circle.
Firefighters said they were told that authorities were chasing the car, a BMW.
KTVU reporter Alex Savidge learned that Lafayette Police were chasing the car, but backed off, when the speed of the pursuit became too dangerous.
The building houses several businesses, including a hair salon and yoga studio.
The BMW ended up wedged inside a room, upside down.
The male driver and female passenger had to be extricated from the car.
They were taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek with major injuries.Is New Zealand in the midst of a man drought? It depends where you live and how old you are.
While data from the 2013 census shows there are only about 82 single men for every 100 single women, it also reveals that the so-called man drought might be just the opposite for women under the age of 30 and for those living in rural areas.
READ MORE: Singletown NZ: Where do the most single people live?
On the one hand, single men comfortably outnumber single women in mostly rural areas like the Southland and Otorohanga Districts.
On the the other, there are about four single women for every three single men in places like Napier, Whanganui, Whangarei and Porirua.
WORST MAN DROUGHT SPOTS
The map above shows a broadly urban/rural divide. There's a healthy ratio of single men to single women in most rural areas but the bachelors are typically outnumbered in urban spots.
Examining the country in close detail, a few places stand out. Showing as a deep purple on the map, the top ten man drought spots in the country all have at least two single women for every one single man. In Matakana, north of Auckland, the ratio of single women to men is almost three to one. At St John's Hill, in Whanganui, it's two to one.
A common thread across all of the areas with a man drought is the relatively high median age.
Places like central Gore (median age, 60), Waikanae Park (61) and Ngawhatu, near Nelson (52), have more than twice as many single women as men but also have a median age much higher than the national median of 38. This matches the national trend for dwindling numbers of single men per single women as people get older, which is reflected in the graph below.
WORST WOMEN DROUGHT SPOTS
The large chunks of the map in darkest green are heaviest on the ground with single blokes. The military bases - Linton in Palmerston North and Burnham near Christchurch - are overwhelmingly young, male and single. At the time of the 2013 census, at Linton, there were 342 single men and 72 single women. At Burnham, there were 420 single men and 96 single women. Both had a median age of just under 23 years.
Areas dominated by prison populations, like Paparua, are similarly dominated by single men.
There are spots in most of the big cities, too, where bachelors outnumber bachelorettes. In a part of central Christchurch labelled Avon Loop, there were 963 single men and 636 single women. In central parts of New Plymouth, Hamilton and Dunedin, single men were in the majority. Much of central Auckland is a shade of green on the map, too.
ABOUT THE DATA
The latest census, carried out in March 2013, provided a rich vein of information about single life in New Zealand.
However, it is not without its flaws.
People will have moved and relationship status changed since March 2013.
It's also important to note that people were only counted as single or partnered if they volunteered that information. Well over a million people were happy to state that they were single, but a significant minority of about 237,000 people preferred not to say what their relationship status was.Dates in this article are according to the Julian Calendar. Sources using the Old Style calendar will need to be adjusted by adding ten days.
[ citation needed ] The Synod of Dort. The Arminians are seated at the table in the middle.
The Synod of Dort (also known as the Synod of Dordt or the Synod of Dordrecht) was an international Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618–1619, by the Dutch Reformed Church, to settle a divisive controversy initiated by the rise of Arminianism. The first meeting was on 13 November 1618 and the final meeting, the 154th, was on 9 May 1619. Voting representatives from eight foreign Reformed churches were also invited. Dort was a contemporary English term for the town of Dordrecht (and it remains the local colloquial pronunciation).
In 2014 the first entire critical edition of the Acts and Documents of the Synod was published.[1]
Background [ edit ]
There had been previous provincial synods of Dort, and a National Synod in 1578. For that reason the 1618 meeting is sometimes called the Second Synod of Dort.
The acts of the Synod were tied to political intrigues that arose during the Twelve Years' Truce, a pause in the Dutch war with Spain. After the death of Jacob Arminius his followers presented objections to the Belgic Confession and the teaching of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and their followers. These objections were published in a document called The Remonstrance of 1610, and the Arminians were therefore also known as Remonstrants. They taught election on the basis of foreseen faith, a universal atonement, resistible grace, and the possibility of lapse from grace. The opposing Calvinists or Gomarists, led by Franciscus Gomarus of the University of Leiden, became known as the Contra-Remonstrants.
The Arminians were accused of propagating false doctrine and perceived as ready to compromise with the Spanish, whereas the Dutch Calvinists were not, so Arminianism was considered by some to be not only theologically unsound but also political treason; in 1617–8 there was a pamphlet war and Francis van Aarssens expressed the view that the Arminians were working for Philip IV of Spain.[2] Planning for a National Synod was begun by Adriaan Pauw in March 1618.[3] Before that, there had been a debate as to whether the synod should be national, as the Contra-Remonstrants wished, or provincial for Holland, as the Remonstrants argued. This decision was worked out in 1617, with outside input from the English ambassador Dudley Carleton.[4]
Purpose [ edit ]
The Synod of Dort
The purpose of the Synod was to settle the controversy over Arminianism. It was subsequently alleged, but never proven, that the outcome had already been decided. According to Frederick Calder, "condemnation [of the Remonstrant doctrines] was determined before the national synod met."[5] On the other hand, beyond the condemnation of the Arminians, the theological formulations of the Canons of the Synod by no means gave support to all the Gomarists wanted. In fact, Johannes Bogerman, president of the synod, himself a Supralapsarian, argued for the inclusion of the Infralapsarian position in the Canons. The more extreme views of Dutch Calvinists were moderated in the detailed debates.[6]
Delegates [ edit ]
The Synod had members representing Reformed groups from continental Europe, as well as from the British isles. Among these groups were also Anglican delegates from the Church of England[7] and the Church of Scotland.[8]
Proceedings [ edit ]
Simon Episcopius (1583–1643) was spokesman of the 14 Remonstrants who were summoned before the Synod in 1618. At the opening of the synod, Episcopius asked to speak.
Episcopius... insisted on being permitted to begin with a refutation of the Calvinistic doctrines, especially that of reprobation, hoping that, by placing his objections to this doctrine in front of all the rest, he might excite such prejudice against the other articles of the system, as to secure the popular voice in his favor. The Synod, however, very properly, reminded him... that, as the Remonstrants were accused of departing from the Reformed faith, they were bound first to justify themselves, by giving Scriptural proof in support of their opinions. The Arminians would not submit to this plan of procedure because it destroyed their whole scheme of argument... and were thus compelled to withdraw. Upon their departure, the Synod proceeded without them.[9]
He concluded by expressing his dissatisfaction with the organization of the assembly, and that the Contra-Remonstrants had prevented an accurate representation of the Arminian supporters in the Dutch Reformed Church with votes in the synod.[10] A delegation of Episcopius consisting of Bernard Arentsz Dwinglo (1582-1652) and Johannes Arnoldi Corvinus called on the Church of England representatives, and others coming from outside, asking for support and giving written accounts of the context. After that a month was spent on procedural matters concerning the Remonstrants. They were finally ejected from the Synod at session 57 on 14 January.[11]
The Canons of Dort [ edit ]
The Synod concluded with a rejection of the Arminian views, and set forth the Reformed doctrine on each point, namely: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement (arguing that Christ's atoning work was intended only for the elect and not for the rest of the world), irresistible (or irrevocable) grace, and the perseverance of the saints. These are sometimes referred to as the Five points of Calvinism. The nomenclature never inferred that all of Calvinism could be reduced to a mere five points, but that TULIP--the acronym that was later developed for the teachings of Dort in the English-speaking world--summarized the Calvinist position regarding the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God in salvation. It is The Decision of the Synod of Dort on the Five Main Points of Doctrine in Dispute in the Netherlands, popularly known as the Canons of Dort, is the explanation of the judicial decision of the Synod.[12] In the original preface, the Decision is called:
a judgment, in which both, the true view agreeing with God's word concerning the aforesaid five points of doctrine is explained and, the false view disagreeing with God's Word is rejected.
Aftermath [ edit ]
The thirteen Remonstrant ministers, including Episcopius, had been charged to remain in Dort until further instruction. On 20 May 1619 the Remonstrant ministers who had been present were summoned by the lay-commissioners of the synod and directed to abstain from ministerial activities such as preaching, exhorting, administering the sacraments, and visiting the sick. Furthermore, Episcopius was commanded not to write letters or books promoting the doctrines of the Remonstrants. The Remonstrants agreed to refrain from ministering in the government-ordained churches, but confessed their duty to expound their doctrines wherever people would assemble to hear them.[13]
On 5 July they were called to the States-General assembly where they were requested to sign The Act of Cessation, the legalization of the order to desist from the ministry. When they refused to sign it, they were sentenced as "disturbers of the public peace" and ordered to leave the United Provinces.[14] However, in the 18th century, Arminian theology spread to England where it became integral to the theology of the Methodist churches.[15]
Bible translation [ edit ]
The synod also initiated an official Dutch Bible translation (the Statenvertaling, i.e. Translation of the States or, The Dutch Authorized Version) from the original languages that would be completed in 1637. Translators were appointed, and the States-General were asked to fund the project. It had a lasting impact on the standard Dutch language, which was just then beginning to gain wider acceptance and developing a literary tradition. It would remain the standard translation in Protestant churches for more than three centuries and still is used in some sister churches of the Netherlands Reformed Congregations and similar, smaller denominations.
Like its sister translations, the Genevan Bible and the King James Version (Authorized Version), the Dutch pastor-scholars worked in the Old Testament from the Masoretic Text (consulting the Septuagint) and in the New Testament from the Textus Receptus (consulting the Majority Text).
In 1645, the Westminster Assembly appointed Theodore Haak to translate the Statenvertaling met kantekeningen [the Dort Bible and its commentary] into English for wider distribution. This work was published by Henry Hill in London 1657.
Political impact [ edit ]
The Synod rejected the teachings of the Remonstrants on the controverted points as falling outside the bounds of the Reformed confessions. There followed the political condemnation of the statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt who had been the protector of the Remonstrants. For the crime of general perturbation in the state of the nation, both in Church and State (treason), he was beheaded on 13 May 1619, only four days after the final meeting of the Synod. As consequence of the Arminian defeat, the jurist Hugo Grotius was given a life sentence in prison; but he escaped with the help of his wife. Both Van Oldenbarnevelt and Grotius had in fact been imprisoned since 29 August 1618.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Frederick Calder (1835), Memoirs of Simon Episcopius, London: Simpkin and Marshall.
, London: Simpkin and Marshall. Jonathan I. Israel (1986), The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World 1606–1661
Jonathan I. Israel (1998), The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall
Anthony Milton (2005), The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619)
Further reading [ edit ]Police outside of Memphis made an embarrassing mistake earlier this month, pulling over a 65-year-old woman after confusing the Ohio State Buckeye leaf decal on the back of her car for a marijuana leaf, according to The Columbus Dispatch's Joe Blundo.
The woman, Bonnie Jonas-Boggioni, grew up in Columbus, home of the Buckeyes, and is a diehard Ohio State fan. According to Blundo, "She has served as president of the Ohio State Alumni Club in the Dallas-Fort Worth area," where she currently lives.
According to the story, Jonas-Boggioni and her husband were making their way back to Texas from a funeral in Columbus on Feb. 4 when they were stopped by police in Tennessee (via Blundo).
"It’s just amazing they would be that dumb...Knowing I wasn’t speeding, I couldn’t imagine why...They were very serious. They had the body armor and the guns."
From what Jonas-Boggioni understands, the officers believed that a marijuana sticker might mean the car was carrying illegal drugs, giving them reason to stop her.
Unfortunately, the officers somehow confused a Buckeye helmet sticker, which has five leaflets, for a marijuana leaf, which usually features seven narrow leaflets.
According to Jonas-Boggioni, the police officers even asked her to remove the decal from her car after realizing their eyes had betrayed them (via Blundo).
"I said, 'You mean in Tennessee?' and he said, 'No, permanently.' I didn’t take it off...This little old lady is no drug dealer."
After an impressive 12-0 football season in 2012, it's no surprise that Jonas-Boggioni wasn't willing to part ways with her proud Buckeye symbol. And after all, she shouldn't have to.
Follow Bleacher Report Featured Columnist Patrick Clarke on Twitter.Carlos Sainz says that, while he is content to be a team player for the time being, he won't be afraid to show a selfish streak when the situation calls for it.
The Spaniard was at the centre of a 'team orders' row at the Singapore Grand Prix, when Toro Rosso team-mate Max Verstappen refused move over for him, but says he isn't going to push the issue, even after team bosses admitted that they were wrong to give the instruction to the Dutchman.
There is no doubt that the situation irritated the former Renault World Series champion at the time, but Sainz is well aware that he needs to watch his words with his F1 career still in its infancy with an employer that has shown little mercy when it comes to driving talent.
"Obviously, you always need to show a bit of selfishness if you are a champion but, in my opinion, the long-term best position that you can do is listen to the team," he explained, "I am a team player. I've said it from the beginning and I think I've shown in from the beginning - every time the team has asked me for something, I was telling them 'yes'.
"In the end, I rely on these guys - on Red Bull, on Toro Rosso - and my future relies on them. If I turn my back on them, I know that I am not going to go anywhere, so I think I behaved."
With both Verstappen and Sainz being tipped for bigger and better things, either within the Red Bull family or elsewhere in F1, the Spaniard - who has shown no qualms in dealing with more experienced opponents, including hero Fernando Alonso, in his debut season - promises that he possesses a more steely streak if he needs to call on it.
"So far I have not had the situation to show my selfishness because I've trusted them," he said of his team, "Every time they called for [position] swaps, I've done it, but, when I need to be selfish, don't worry, I will be..."This is the third post of AngularJS – from beginner to expert in 7
steps. We started our first post by showing you how to start out building an AngularJS app. In the second post, we discussed how scopes and the $scope service work. Throughout this tutorial series, we are building an NPR audio player that will show us the current stories on the show Morning Edition and play them in our browser. To see the fully finished demo, head over here.
3. Data binding
We can make our app a bit more interesting by binding an input field to the person.name attribute. This step sets up a bi-directional binding from the input field to the page.
Bi-directional in this context means that if the view changes the value, the model sees the change, and if the model changes the value, then the view will see the change.
AngularJS sets this up automatically for you. We’ll discuss the digest_loop in depth in an upcoming article, if you’re curious how it works.
To set up this binding, we’ll use the ng-model function on the input, like so:
<div ng-controller="MyController"> <input type="text" ng-model="person.name" placeholder="Enter your name" /> <h5>Hello {{ person.name }}</h5> </div> 1 2 3 4 <div ng-controller = "MyController" > <input type = "text" ng-model = "person.name" placeholder = "Enter your name" /> <h5> Hello {{ person.name }} </h5> </div>
Now that we have a binding set up (yes, it’s that easy), we can see how the view changes the model:
Try it
Hello {{person.name}}
As you type in the input box, you’ll see that the name underneath changes automatically. That change illustrates how our data binding works in one direction, from the view to the model.
We can also change the model on the (client-side) back end and see it reflected on the front end.
To illustrate our data binding from back end to front end, let’s make a clock function in our MyController model that will update a value on the $scope. In this example, we’ll create a clock that will tick every second (as clocks usually do) and change the data on the clock variable:
app.controller('MyController', function($scope) { $scope.person = { name: "Ari Lerner" }; var updateClock = function() { $scope.clock = new Date(); }; var timer = setInterval(function() { $scope.$apply(updateClock); }, 1000); updateClock(); }); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 app. controller ( 'MyController', function ( $ scope ) { $ scope. person = { name : "Ari Lerner" } ; var updateClock = function ( ) { $ scope. clock = new Date ( ) ; } ; var timer = setInterval ( function ( ) { $ scope. $ apply ( updateClock ) ; }, 1000 ) ; updateClock ( ) ; } ) ;
As you can see, as we change the clock variable on the model, the view automatically updates to reflect our changes.
We can show the clock variable that’s attached on the $scope in the view simply by surrounding it in {{ }}:
<div ng-controller="MyController"> <h5>{{ clock }}</h5> </div> 1 2 3 <div ng-controller = "MyController" > <h5> {{ clock }} </h5> </div>
See it it
{{ clock }}
Interaction
Notice that we have bound data to the input field above. We don’t have to limit this data binding to only data. We can also call functions on the $scope (as mentioned previously).
To bind buttons or links (or any DOM element, really), we’ll use another built-in directive, ng-click. The ng-click directive binds the click event to the method (the mousedown browser event) to the DOM element (i.e., when the browser fires a click event on the DOM element, the method is called). Similar to our previous example, the binding looks like:
<div ng-controller="DemoController"> <h4>The simplest adding machine ever</h4> <button ng-click="add(1)" class="button">Add</button> <button ng-click="subtract(1)" class="button">Subtract</button> <h4>Current count: {{ counter }}</h4> </div> 1 2 3 4 5 6 <div ng-controller = "DemoController" > <h4> The simplest adding machine ever </h4> <button ng-click = "add(1)" class = "button" > Add </button> <button ng-click = "subtract(1)" class = "button" > Subtract </button> <h4> Current count: {{ counter }} </h4> </div>
Both the button and the link will be bound to an action on the containing $scope, so when they are pressed (clicked), Angular will call the method. Note that when we are telling Angular what method to call, we’re putting it in a string with the parentheses.
Now, let’s create an action on our DemoController.
app.controller('DemoController', function($scope) { $scope.counter = 0; $scope.add = function(amount) { $scope.counter += amount; }; $scope.subtract = function(amount) { $scope.counter -= amount; }; }); 1 2 3 4 5 app. controller ( 'DemoController', function ( $ scope ) { $ scope. counter = 0 ; $ scope. add = function ( amount ) { $ scope. counter += amount ; } ; $ scope. subtract = function ( amount ) { $ scope. counter -= amount ; } ; } ) ;
See it
The simplest adding machine ever Add Subtract Current count: {{count}}
Data binding and AJAX in our app
Interaction
As we saw in the last example of the previous section, we bound a button to the view using the data binding we just learned about. In that example, we bound the button to the play() action and bound the PlayerController ’s method play on the play button (and the same for the stop button, with the stop method).
AJAX
In the last tutorial, we referenced a locally hosted audio file; however, doing so gives us a static NPR file instead of a live NPR feed. In our NPR app, we’ll use $http to populate the list of available news clips we can play.
Out of the box, AngularJS supports AJAX (or asynchronous JavaScript and XML). This support gives us the ability to make requests back and forth from a server or multiple servers, which is essential to a client-side app like ours that needs to get and set data.
AngularJS supports AJAX through a service (which we’ll discuss in an upcoming section) called the $http service.
All of the core AngularJS services are prefixed with $. We’ve seen this before with the $scope service.
The $http service is incredibly flexible and gives us many different ways to call AJAX services. To keep this tutorial simple, we’re only going to focus on the simplest method possible. We’ll dive deeper into the $http service in a more advanced section in the future.
Before we go too far into detail, let’s make a request with the $http service:
$http({ method: 'JSONP', url: 'https://api.github.com/events?callback=JSON_CALLBACK' }).success(function(data, status, headers, config) { // data contains the response // status is the HTTP status // headers is the header getter function // config is the object that was used to create the HTTP request }).error(function(data, status, headers, config) { }); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 $ http ( { method : 'JSONP', url : 'https://api.github.com/events?callback=JSON_CALLBACK' } ). success ( function ( data, status, headers, config ) { // data contains the response // status is the HTTP status // headers is the header getter function // config is the object that was used to create the HTTP request } ). error ( function ( data, status, headers, config ) { } ) ;
Try it
Make request Request result: [{{beers}}]
The $http service is a core AngularJS service that helps faciliate communication with remote HTTP servers via the XMLHttpRequest object or through JSONP.
Note that AngularJS will take care of handling a JSONP request if you append the EXACT string: callback=JSON_CALLBACK as just above. AngularJS will replace JSON_CALLBACK with the proper callback it constructs for you.
The $http service is a function that takes a configuration object, which defines how the HTTP request is constructed. It will return a promise that has two methods success and error.
To get a list of the available audio clips, let’s make a request to NPR’s API. First, you’ll need to register with NPR to get an API key. Head over to their site at http://www.npr.org/templates/reg/ or click here to register from this page.
Register for your account below first. Once your account has been created, click on “Open Api” to find your API key
Keep note of your API key. We’ll use that in a minute. Now, we’re going to set up our PlayerController to call the $http service to fetch a list of the clips.
Just like we did above, let’s call the $http service to make a request, this time to get all the clips. We want this service to run when the controller is instantiated, so we can simply put this method right in the controller function (which is run when the controller is created), like so:
var apiKey = 'YOUR_KEY', nprUrl = 'http://api.npr.org/query?id=61&fields=relatedLink,title,byline,text,audio,image,pullQuote,all&output=JSON'; app.controller('PlayerController', function($scope, $http) { // Hidden our previous section's content // construct our http request $http({ method: 'JSONP', url: nprUrl + '&apiKey=' + apiKey + '&callback=JSON_CALLBACK' }).success(function(data, status) { // Now we have a list of the stories (data.list.story) // in the data object that the NPR API // returns in JSON that looks like: // data: { "list": { // "title":... // "story": [ // { "id":... // "title":... }).error(function(data, status) { // Some error occurred }); }); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 var apiKey = 'YOUR_KEY', nprUrl = 'http://api.npr.org/query?id=61&fields=relatedLink,title,byline,text,audio,image,pullQuote,all&output=JSON' ; app. controller ( 'PlayerController', function ( $ scope, $ http ) { // Hidden our previous section's content // construct our http request $ http ( { method : 'JSONP', url : nprUrl + '&apiKey=' + apiKey + '&callback=JSON_CALLBACK' } ). success ( function ( data, status ) { // Now we have a list of the stories (data.list.story) // in the data object that the NPR API // returns in JSON that looks like: // data: { "list": { // "title":... // "story": [ // { "id":... // "title":... } ). error ( function ( data, status ) { // Some error occurred } ) ; } ) ;
Now that we have the the list of clips in data in the |
with Ada when it was close to the Azores, west of Portugal.
Then nothing — until last Friday, when the U.S. research ship Neil Armstrong from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found Ada off the coast of Florida, a long, long way from its last reported location. Ada was battered, missing its sail and rigging — but still afloat.
Kristoffer Vik Hansen was part of the UBC engineering team that designed and built Ada over a period of three years. He said it was a “pretty amazing feeling” to hear that Ada had been found.
Vik Hansen, who graduated from integrated engineering in 2015, said UBC is one of the world leaders in autonomous sailing vessels. UBC is a three-time winner of the International Robotic Sailing Regatta.
Setting a goal of crossing the Atlantic was a challenge for the students to take autonomous sailing to the next level.
“ ‘OK, let’s do something no one else has done,’ ” Vik Hansen recalled telling his colleagues.
“It doesn’t need to be a venture-funded, big organization to do it. It can be a couple of students that do it with things they scrap together. Much more about motivation than having a bank account behind us.”
Related
Ada is a solar-powered, carbon-fibre boat with a wood core and windsurfing rigging. Its electrical design includes two GPS systems and an ultrasonic wind sensor. One of its software innovations is an obstacle avoidance system that uses infrared imaging.
Vik Hansen said Ada is made of about 20 watertight compartments. All but one could be flooded and it would still float.
“We made it to be unsinkable,” he said, knowingly referencing the “unsinkable” Titanic that sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage.
“And we remembered to close the hatches.”
Ada is being shipped back to Vancouver to see what happened so improvements can be made to Ada 2.o. The UBC team plans to be the first to enter a robotic sailboat in the Victoria to Maui International Yacht Race. The next Vic-Maui race starts next July.
Discoveries made in designing Ada and her descendants could have applications elsewhere.
“I don’t know if autonomous recreational sailing will happen in future, but autonomous cargo ships with sailing capabilities to save fuel — that kind of stuff will be reality pretty soon,” Vik Hansen said.
“We have prior team members who work for autonomous auto manufactures now. Maybe they learn something from this that they can apply to cars.”
Ada is named after Ada Lovelace, recognized as one of the world’s first computer scientists for the work she did on Charles Babbage’s mechanical computer. Born in London in 1815, she was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.
Vik Hansen said Ada Lovelace’s story should be known by more people.
“Having a name like that brought a personality to the project,” he said.
“She has become a person to many people. Now we found her.”
kevingriffin@postmedia.com
Related
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Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.Brain uses ‘older’ systems/structures to preferentially process emotion expressed through vocalizations.
It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognize emotions conveyed by vocalizations, according to researchers from McGill. It doesn’t matter whether the non-verbal sounds are growls of anger, the laughter of happiness or cries of sadness. More importantly, the researchers have also discovered that we pay more attention when an emotion (such as happiness, sadness or anger) is expressed through vocalizations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech.
The researchers believe that the speed with which the brain ‘tags’ these vocalizations and the preference given to them compared to language, is due to the potentially crucial role that decoding vocal sounds has played in human survival.
“The identification of emotional vocalizations depends on systems in the brain that are older in evolutionary terms,” says Marc Pell, Director of McGill’s School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the lead author on the study that was recently published in Biological Psychology. “Understanding emotions expressed in spoken language, on the other hand, involves more recent brain systems that have evolved as human language developed.”
Of nonsense speech and growls
The researchers were interested in finding out whether the brain responded differently when emotions were expressed through vocalizations (sounds such as growls, laughter or sobbing, where no words are used) or through language. They focused on three basic emotions: anger, sadness and happiness and tested 24 participants by playing a random mix of vocalizations and nonsense speech, e.g. The dirms are in the cindabal, spoken with different emotional intent. (The researchers used nonsense phrases in order to avoid any linguistic cues about emotions.) They asked participants to identify which emotions the speakers were trying to convey and used an EEG to record how quickly and in what ways the brain responded as the participants heard the different types of emotional vocal sounds.
They were able to measure:
how the brain responds to emotions expressed through vocalizations compared to spoken language with millisecond precision;
whether certain emotions are recognized more quickly through vocalizations than others and produce larger brain responses; and
whether people who are anxious are particularly sensitive to emotional voices based on the strength of their brain response.
Anger leaves longer traces — especially for those who are anxious
The researchers found that the participants were able to detect vocalizations of happiness (i.e., laughter) more quickly than vocal sounds conveying either anger or sadness. But, interestingly, they found that angry sounds and angry speech both produced ongoing brain activity that lasted longer than either of the other emotions, suggesting that the brain pays special attention to the importance of anger signals.
“Our data suggest that listeners engage in sustained monitoring of angry voices, irrespective of the form they take, to grasp the significance of potentially threatening events,” says Pell.
The researchers also discovered that individuals who are more anxious have a faster and more heightened response to emotional voices in general than people who are less anxious.
“Vocalizations appear to have the advantage of conveying meaning in a more immediate way than speech,” says Pell. “Our findings are consistent with studies of non-human primates which suggest that vocalizations that are specific to a species are treated preferentially by the neural system over other sounds.”
About this neuroscience research
Funding: The research was funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Source: Katherine Gombay – McGill University
Image Source: The image is adapted from the McGill press release
Original Research: Abstract for “Preferential decoding of emotion from human non-linguistic vocalizations versus speech prosody” by M.D. Pell, K. Rothermich, P. Liua, S. Paulmann, and S. Sethia, S. Rigoulot in Biological Psychology. Published online October 2015 doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.08.008
Abstract
Preferential decoding of emotion from human non-linguistic vocalizations versus speech prosody
This study used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to compare the time course of emotion processing from non-linguistic vocalizations versus speech prosody, to test whether vocalizations are treated preferentially by the neurocognitive system. Participants passively listened to vocalizations or pseudo-utterances conveying anger, sadness, or happiness as the EEG was recorded. Simultaneous effects of vocal expression type and emotion were analyzed for three ERP components (N100, P200, late positive component). Emotional vocalizations and speech were differentiated very early (N100) and vocalizations elicited stronger, earlier, and more differentiated P200 responses than speech. At later stages (450–700 ms), anger vocalizations evoked a stronger late positivity (LPC) than other vocal expressions, which was similar but delayed for angry speech. Individuals with high trait anxiety exhibited early, heightened sensitivity to vocal emotions (particularly vocalizations). These data provide new neurophysiological evidence that vocalizations, as evolutionarily primitive signals, are accorded precedence over speech-embedded emotions in the human voice.
“Preferential decoding of emotion from human non-linguistic vocalizations versus speech prosody” by M.D. Pell, K. Rothermich, P. Liua, S. Paulmann, and S. Sethia, S. Rigoulot in Biological Psychology. Published online October 2015 doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.08.008
Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.In the video, a NYPD Lieutenant can be seen assaulting an 11 year-old girl. Why assault the child? The cop suspected the girl of stealing another boy’s cell phone. As it turned out, the boy that lost the phone, had accidentally dropped it, and it was picked up by another kid – not the girl.The child was arrested anyway, but the charges were later dropped when it was officially determined that she did not steal the phone.As of right now, claims of assault and battery and excessive force is being brought against the police officer involved.The officer had stated under oath that “ during a struggle with her, she and I both slipped and fell to the ground. On the ground she continued to flail her arms and thrash her body, preventing me from placing handcuffs on her. We continued to struggle until I was eventually able to place handcuffs on her” The girl’s name and the officer’s name have yet to be released. The incident occured in January of this year.OAKLAND, Calif. — ON Tuesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics to three researchers whose work contributed to the development of a radically more efficient form of lighting known as light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.
In announcing the award, the academy said, “Replacing light bulbs and fluorescent tubes with LEDs will lead to a drastic reduction of electricity requirements for lighting.” The president of the Institute of Physics noted: “With 20 percent of the world’s electricity used for lighting, it’s been calculated that optimal use of LED lighting could reduce this to 4 percent.”
The winners, Shuji Nakamura, an American, and Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, both from Japan, justly deserve their Nobel, and should be commended for creating a technology that produces the same amount of light with less energy.
But it would be a mistake to assume that LEDs will significantly reduce overall energy consumption.
LED’s are but the latest breakthrough in lighting efficiency. Consider the series of accelerated lighting revolutions ushered in by the Industrial Revolution. In the early and mid-1800s, for instance, “town gas” made from coal was developed and used to illuminate streetlights. Whale oil became the preferred indoor lighting fuel for upper-income Americans until it was replaced by more efficient kerosene lamps. And then, finally, in the late 19th century, the electric light bulb emerged.There is a big crater somewhere in the Pinezhsky District of Arkhangelsk oblast. That's about 200 km downrange from the Plesetsk test site. According to eyewitness accounts published in the local press, the crater appeared after an explosion that was heard around noon on August 25, 2016. This is how the area looks like:
It's not Tunguska, of course, but the explosion seems to have been very powerful. The crater is also quite big. There are actually two craters, and the size of the larger one is more than 100 meters. In fact, it can be seen from space:
Since the explosion point is not that far from Plesetsk, it was natural to suggest that it was some kind of a launch failure. A local civil defense official confirmed that it was in fact "a stage of a missile/rocket launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome." Given that there was no attempt to cordon off the area, it was a relatively harmless solid-propellant motor, which very much rules out a space launch (or such exotic versions as an early test of a Sarmat missile). Other intriguing possibilities have been mentioned - a Nudol ASAT test for example (which in fact failed once in 2015). However, the impact point is so close to the path from Plesetsk to Kura, there is little doubt it was a launch of an ICBM.
Indeed, I have it on good authority that the missile that failed in the August 25 launch was RS-24 Yars. No official confirmation yet, but I hope we will hear more about the test in the coming days. One thing that would be interesting to learn is the failure mode - as far as I can tell, it is somewhat unusual for a missile to fail and land 200 km downrange. To land there, the missile must have failed fairly early in flight, in which case it should have been destroyed by range safety. Apparently it wasn't.
In any event, a failure of RS-24 Yars in what appears to be a routine test cannot be a good news for the Strategic Rocket Forces. The Topol-M/Yars missile has been a very reliable machine so far and I don't think it ever failed in a flight test before. It's just one failed test, of course, but it will raise questions about reliability of the system that is on its way to becoming the main ICBM in the Russian arsenal.
UPDATE 8/17/17: It was indeed a Yars launch, but not quite - the book "Northern Spaceport of Russia, vol. 3 (Северный космодром России. т. III) lists this test as a "first test launch of the Yars-M ICBM":Sheldon Simeon, center.
More than any other reality television show, Top Chef hits that elusive American sweet spot of prestige and commerce. The franchise has sold mass-market frozen dinners, but still maintains the respect of the food industry and regularly produces contestants who go on to open critically acclaimed restaurants. I got to witness this high-wire culinary act firsthand at the James Beard House on Wednesday night, during a dinner cooked by Top Chef contestant Sheldon Simeon. Why Sheldon? Earlier this season, he won an elimination challenge that granted him the prize of … cooking again. Everybody wins! Especially me, your Vulture correspondent who got to eat a five-course dinner sitting next to Food & Wine editor and Top Chef judge Gail Simmons. Yes, she looks great eating.
Getting there
Let’s start with the James Beard House, a little townhouse in the West Village named after the man who was known as the “dean of American cookery.” (Also a gay man; here’s a good piece about it.) The restaurant, or “performance space” as it calls itself, is easy to miss. I walked by it twice before I actually noticed the subtle, gold-plated building number. It looks just like one of those apartments in the Village that you stroll by on cool autumn nights, wondering if Carrie Bradshaw is tapping away at her keyboard inside.
The dinner was sold out. I get checked in by a bespectacled gentleman who tells me my table number is five, which I immediately forget and think is maybe table No. 2. The first thing I see is the kitchen, which is brightly lit and crowded with admirers taking photos of Sheldon Simeon making food. Everyone is obsessed with Sheldon. He’s a fan favorite, and exudes the same lovability in person that he does on camera. Later that night, people will quote Sheldon to me: “You can’t cook with hate in your heart.”
Sheldon is flanked by other celebrity chefs who are helping that night: April Bloomfield from the Spotted Pig, along with Top Chef alums Carla Hall and Silvia Barban. I’m starting to think that “performance space” is exactly the right word for this dinner, because Sheldon is smiling and talking, all the while he actually does the important job of feeding 70 people. If someone tried to talk to me while I was writing, my brain would short circuit and I would die.
Cocktails
There’s a wall of people in the cocktail area, and as much as I love alcohol, I can’t stand crowds, so I duck outside onto the patio. Others follow suit, and I decide that we’re the most sensible people in the room. One of them, an investment banker from Hawaii, asks me if I’m a fan of Top Chef. I explain that I don’t describe myself as a “fan” of things, but that I have watched every single episode of Top Chef since the first season, including Just Desserts. Okay, so maybe I am a fan. I love Top Chef!
We don’t get cocktails, but the cater waiters are kind enough to bring food to the patio. I try a cured pork belly on a cracker that tastes like a very fancy Lunchable. There’s a airy foie gras mousse on toasted Hawaiian sweetbread. But the best hors d’oeuvre I eat is a pork and shrimp lumpia with fermented chiles and pineapple. I want to take another one — the last one — but I don’t want to look like a monster.
First course: Salmon
I’m seated next to Gail Simmons, and I quietly start to freak out. I tell her in no uncertain terms that she’s my favorite judge on Top Chef. It’s true! Maybe it’s because she doesn’t appear on every single episode, but I feel her absence more acutely; she provides the necessary counterbalance to Tom Colicchio’s stern dad demeanor. She is always precise about what she thinks a dish does well, without being unnecessarily catty or cruel. And here is something I can tell you about Gail after dining less than 24 inches from her face: She is beautiful. Obviously, a lot of people on TV are beautiful, but she looks like a gorgeous feline decided to become a person.
Before we can start eating, James Beard Foundation President Susan Ungaro comes out to welcome all the “new faces” and let everyone know that the James Beard House is also open for regular-people dining. Then she introduces a man from Dassai brand sake, which is the alcohol pairing for the first dish. As the sake guy talks, a fleet of waiters bring out a salmon crudo with grilled pineapple. It’s a perfect example of what Top Chef excels at — that elusive late capitalistic enterprise of brand synergy. I eat my salmon. It’s good, but I think it needs a little salt?
Second course: Sheldon’s winning dish!
This is the big moment: the dish that prompted Tom Colicchio to proclaim Sheldon Simeon would be one of the great American chefs. It’s a chow fun noodle dish, which Sheldon created earlier this season by pulverizing Carolina Gold rice served with hibachi pork belly, okra, and turkey neck broth. When they bring the dish over, they pour the broth table side, which ups the fancy factor by ten percent. Since filming, the plating changed so that Gail doesn’t recognize it at first. The noodles are smaller, but she says that it tastes the same. The noodles are delightfully chewy. And the broth! Gail uses a spoon to drink it up. I follow her lead.
Photo: Megan Swann Courtesy of the James Beard Foundation
There’s also a couple from New Jersey sitting at our table. The wife, in particular, is a big fan of the show. BIG FAN. So far, Gail has been talking to her colleague from Food & Wine, but I’m watching the woman watching Gail and waiting for her big moment. When it comes, she doesn’t waste it. First, she wants to know what Gail thinks of the dish. (“Sheldon apologized that I had to eat the same dish twice, and I was like, We picked it for a reason!”) She and her family are going to go on a trip to Los Angeles, so where’s a good, casual place to eat? (Jon & Vinny’s.) What about Brooke? They love Brooke. Which Brooke restaurant should they go to? (Playa Provisions.) Gail tries to check her phone, but the woman presses forward. Gail. Gail!
Third course: Turnips
I love how weird this dish is from Tony Maws, the chef of Craigie on Main. It’s a couple of turnips with the tops in a beet, chorizo, pork blood, and dashi ragout. A lot of people don’t know how to eat it, but it seems like you can just smother the turnips in the ragout and go to town. It’s a funky, savory dish that looks like a double-turnip homicide. It’s tasty.
Gail has a spare moment, and I too, want to talk to Gail. She says how she’s “an eater,” and as someone who watches her over the course of dinner, I can attest that she finishes her plates. As a fellow eater, I want to know how she’s so skinny, and she immediately returns the question with a wink. “Well, how are you so skinny?” (My heart skips a beat.) She continues, “We’re not so skinny that it sounds like we’re lying.” So true, Gail Simmons!
Fourth course: Sheldon’s lunch plate
Before the plate itself comes out, the waiters bring us a tray full of “dime bags” filled with dehydrated broccoli and chili thread. We later learn (because Gail asks the waiters) that we’re supposed to crumble it over the next dish, a “lunch plate” consisting of mochiko chicken, ahi poke, macaroni salad, and ho’i’o (fern shoot) salad. Sheldon loves to cook these fun, inventive dishes that come from his love of Hawaiian and Filipino food. You can’t cook with hate in your heart!
Gail talks about a British show that she loves, and it’s not the one you’d expect … unless you guessed Back in Time for Dinner. The first iteration of the series follows a family, who cook according to the technology and social mores of a particular decade, starting with the 1950s. Gail explains how, for instance, the chest freezer was part of a changing family structure that allowed women to more easily work outside the home. I suddenly have the improbable wish that Gail Simmons recap this show for Vulture.
Fifth course: Dessert
The dessert course is made by Carla Hall, the beloved Top Chef contestant who appeared on season five before coming back to do All-Stars. She’s made a coconut and lime mousse, studded with mango and toasted coconut and served with sesame shortbread cookies. Just like the chicken pot pie challenge that she won on All-Stars, Carla has tucked a couple of shortbread cookies underneath the mousse like a little pieces of treasure. Hootie-hoo!
The Farewell
At the end of the meal, the chefs come out to take a bow. Everyone has their phones out. This is like a One Direction concert for foodies. “Tonight was very special,” Sheldon says. “I’m super stoked that I got to fill your bellies with aloha.” The rest of the chefs talk about how wonderful Sheldon is. They open it up for questions, and one man asks a “question” that is really a story about how he and his wife went to Hawaii, and tried to eat at his restaurant, Tin Roof, on their way to the airport only to discover the restaurant was closed on Sundays. Sheldon is eminently gracious with this ungracious man, apologizes, and explains that “Sundays are for family.”
Truly, that’s what Sheldon does with his food: He gives you something that he would give to his family, which is the most generous thing a chef can do. If you’re Asian-American, you understand that he’s reconstructing parts of your childhood and honoring how your parents eat. As the guests file out, each of them shakes Sheldon’s hand or asks to take a photo with him. He always says yes and always smiles, even though I can see the tiredness creeping into his eyes. It’s been a long day. It makes me think about how hard he’s had to work to get to where he is, and how, even though I only know him from television, I’m proud as hell. Mahalo, Sheldon.The editors of the Low Churchman’s Guide to the Solemn High Mass are sorry to announce the cessation of this informational series. Despite the importance of the Guide as a source of reliable and accurate information in a world besieged by Ritualism, the task of composing and fact-checking our articles has taken time away from more important tasks, such as picketing outside Ritualist churches and throwing rocks through stained-glass windows. It has further come to our attention that numerous social ills exist that do not fall under the direct purview of the Ritualist movement, a non-exhaustive list of which would include “dancing,” “fantasy novels,” “Velcro,” “automobiles,” and “flavoured vodka.” The retirement of this series will therefore allow our staff the freedom to protest against a greater variety of un-English and undignified modes of happiness.
In its short existence the Low Churchman’s Guide has exposed the dangers of organ shoes, narthices, Compline and other horrors to a generation apparently oblivious to their mortal danger. Critical acclaim for the Guide has been extensive, recognizing our writers for their “noxious attitudes” and “constant poking fun… a repeated revelation of his own ignorance and lack of understanding.” The many honours showered upon the Guide might tempt our staff to an attitude of unbecoming pride, but we remain true to the agenda that motivated its foundation in the first place: if even one person has been dissuaded from embarking upon a Ritualist career through reading our work, then the Guide has served its purpose. Such thoughts will provide reassurance and comfort as our editors embark upon new projects.
Although the Guide will no longer be updated, we are confident that the existing articles will provide materials of practical use to other low churchmen bewildered by the extent of Ritualist perversity. Its contents will also no doubt be useful to future generations of scholars attempting to trace the genesis and extent of the Ritualist phenomenon once it dies out, as it soon surely must. To aid these researchers in their efforts, the last official act of our staff will be to index our existing content under practical subject headings.
At this juncture it is traditional for an editor to extend a word of thanks to his readers for their invaluable service in making the publication a success. Loyal churchmen do not acknowledge the weight of tradition as having any determinative force, however, and in any case it is not clear why one should feel obligated to thank readers who contributed nothing toward the material support of this publication whatsoever. Our staff wrote all of the articles; you had only to read them. We hope that you will not send us letters of condolence or attempt to contact us in any manner; we do not plan to respond to any such messages.Hundreds of people allegedly confessed to eating human flesh given to them by one of four men facing cannibalism charges in South Africa, reports say.
The four accused cannibals — Nino Mbatha, 32; Lindokuhle Masondo, 32; Sthembiso Sithole, 31, and 30-year-old Lungisani Magubane — appeared in court on Monday in Estcourt to face charges of murder and conspiracy for allegedly raping, killing, mutilating and then eating the body of a woman, The Witness reports.
One of the suspects allegedly walked into a police station in the central South African town on Friday while holding human body parts, including a leg and a hand, and confessed to being “tired of eating human flesh,” according to the newspaper.
Police found more body parts at a home in the Rensburgdrift section of Estcourt, a town in the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province.
Col. Thembeka Mbhele, a police spokesman, said Mbatha — one of the accused cannibals who also acts as a traditional healer known as a “nyanga” – was arrested in Amangwe, where more body parts were found.
Meanwhile, ward councilor Mthembeni Majola, who held a community meeting Monday after the suspects appeared in court, said roughly 300 residents confessed to visiting Mbatha and knowingly eating human flesh.
Majola said the practice was not limited to Estcourt and that Mbatha had links across Uthukela, one of the 11 districts of the larger KwaZulu-Natal province.
Mbatha had apparently worked as a practicing healer in Ladysmith before fleeing to Rensburgdrift earlier this year after another nyanga was reportedly attacked and killed, Majola said, although that killing has not be confirmed.
“We don’t know what to do or who to trust,” Majola told the newspaper. “This has happened within our community. Families, people we know and live with, have now confessed to eating this woman.”
Some residents even confessed to personally digging up graves at Mbatha’s direction before giving him the recovered remains.
Villagers said during the meeting that Mbatha told them that exhuming the graves would protect them from harm, make them stronger and bring them wealth if they handed them over to the nyanga.
The provincial Occult-Related Crime Unit is now investigating the claims, Mbhele said.
Related Video 1:20 CNN host eats human brains, sparking outragePlease enable Javascript to watch this video
SACRAMENTO -- Sacramento City Councilors rejected a resolution Tuesday to increase the amount of days people can water outside from two to three days per week.
It agreed on approving an alternative plan to reduce the city's conservation goal from 28 percent down to 20 percent, while keeping the two day a week watering restriction.
The proposal came two weeks after the State Water Resources Control Board ordered cities to set their own conservation standards. Since that time, several local cities including Roseville and Galt have increased their outdoor watering days.
"It's not the time for us to move away from conservation," city council member Jeff Harris said.
Tuesday evening the Department of Utilities presented a resolution that would reduce the city's water shortage condition from a Stage 2 to a Stage 1, increasing the amount of outdoor watering days from 2 to 3 days per week, and reducing the city's 28 percent conservation goal down to just 10 percent.
"In an effort to balance the need to save water with the need to maintain the health of the city's urban forest and landscapes," Jim Peifer with the Department of Utilities said.
Peifer said the Department of Utilities conducted a study to see the effect California's historic drought had taken on the city's trees over the last five years. He said that report showed the city's tree canopy declined by 8 percent during that time period.
Council member Harris argued against the idea that allowing residents to water their landscaping more days per week would address that issue. He said drip irrigation is often a more effective method of watering trees than turning on sprinklers for an extended period of time.
"Frankly, as an avid gardener and someone who does take care of a lot of trees, being able to water twice a week is more than ample," Harris said.
The sentiment was echoed by several council members who concluded that Sacramento needed to lead the state in water conservation.
"I also want to continue to support anything we're doing to educate the public on top of what we're doing right now," VIce Mayor Rick Jennings said.Our latest Welsh Political Barometer poll once again includes our normal question about the party leaders; here we ask respondents to rate all the leaders on a 0-10 scale, where 0 means ‘strongly dislike’ and 10 means ‘strongly like’ (with respondents also able to choose Don’t Know if they wish). For our latest poll, we asked about all the main party leaders in Wales, and at the UK level. That meant including Paul Nuttall, the new UKIP leader; and also included Tim Farron, who had not been included in the September Barometer poll.
In the table below, I present three sets of figures for each leader:
In the first column, we have the percentage who chose Don’t Know. As I have observed several times previously, while some people can choose this option because they are genuinely undecided, in the aggregate the percentage of Don’t Knows is a reasonably proxy measure of the relative public visibility/anonymity of a leader.
In the second column, I list the average score out of 10 on the 0-10 scale, for each leader, for those respondents who did have a view about them.
And in the third column, I show the change in this average rating since the September poll. (For Tim Farron and Paul Nuttall, this column is simply left blank).
Leader % Don’t Know Average /10 Change Carwyn Jones 27 4.3 -0.2 Leanne Wood 31 4.2 -0.3 Andrew RT Davies 47 3.2 -0.2 Neil Hamilton 34 2.0 No change Mark Williams 67 3.4 -0.2 Theresa May 15 4.3 -0.4 Jeremy Corbyn 15 3.5 -0.5 Tim Farron 44 3.4 Paul Nuttall 57 2.7
So what can we make of these findings? As I have commented here many time before, while some of our respondents may well choose the Don’t Know option because they are genuinely undecided about someone, in the aggregate the percentage choosing this option functions as a pretty good measure of the public visibility of a political leader. And the patterns that we see here are very much in line with those that previous polling evidence has suggested. Thus, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition at Westminster enjoy much the greatest public profile. They are then followed by the First Minister and Leanne Wood. Neil Hamilton also enjoys a relatively high public profile given his actual political status (as the Assembly group leader of the National Assembly’s smallest recognised party); however, given his low popularity ratings this profile may not be an unalloyed benefit to his party. The other leaders, both at UK and Welsh levels, lag some way further behind.
In terms of popularity, there is an interesting general trend – that nearly all the leaders have become less popular since our last poll! Perhaps our poll hit upon a particularly grumpy sample of respondents, or possibly one that was feeling the post-Christmas blues? Whatever the reason, all those that we asked about in September have seen their ratings decline, with the singular exception of Neil Hamilton. (However, Mr Hamilton remains by some way the least popular leader, and his average score is perhaps encountering what social scientists sometimes refer to as a ‘floor effect’).
Looking at the figures for the individual leaders, Carwyn Jones, Theresa May and Leanne Wood remain some way ahead of the others as the most popular leaders – although even they average well under five out of ten. For most of the other leaders there is little that is particularly surprising – although it is notable that, among those members of the public who have formed a view about Paul Nuttall, he is not yet doing very at all well.
What is clearly of importance, however, is that the largest decline in ratings since September is that experienced by Jeremy Corbyn. He has fallen a full half a point since our last poll less than four months ago. For a Labour leader to be averaging only 3.5 out of 10 on this scale is extremely poor. Even Ed Miliband never quite sank this low. (He did score 3.6 in the December 2014 Barometer poll). The brief Corbyn Bounce
that we saw in our first Barometer poll after his election now seems a long time ago. Much of the Welsh public now seem to have made up their mind about the Leader of the Opposition, and their views are not generally favourable. This cannot possibly be good news for the Labour party – in Wales or elsewhere in Britain.Joshua Roberts/Reuters Sorry, Gov. Matt Bevin, but we're not buying into that old fearmongering about marijuana.
The governor of Kentucky said Tuesday that his state will never legalize marijuana because of all the (non-existent) overdoses it has caused.
Gov. Matt Bevin, speaking to WHAS radio, shot down a fellow Republican’s proposal to legalize, regulate and tax sales of marijuana. State Sen. Dan Seum had argued last week that such a move could help pull the state out of its pension crisis. Instead of addressing the issue with research and facts, Bevin pushed the hysteria button.
“So a lot of toked-up people gambling, that’s the solution for Kentucky?” Bevin asked after the radio host brought up ideas to legalize marijuana or expand gambling. “I would say no and no. Not while I’m governor. Those are sucker’s bets. We’re not going to legalize marijuana in this state.”
He claimed that Colorado, one of the first states to legalize weed recreationally, was seeing horrible results.
“There are people overdosing based on ingestion of products that are edibles and things,” Bevin said. There are “law enforcement people in emergency rooms being overrun by problems.”
“It has not been good for that state, and states like us would be wise to look at that and realize that’s a sucker’s bet,” the governor argued.
The “sucker’s bet” has currently netted Colorado tax revenue in excessive of half a billion dollars.
As for the alleged overdoses, Dr. Daniel Vigil of the Colorado Department of Public Health told Insider Louisville that the incidents would more accurately be described as overconsumption ― “not overdoses comparable to an opioid overdose.” He said the state saw a temporary hike in poison center calls and emergency room visits, which it has since addressed with new policies.Nineteen different subscale versions of a light-blocking "starshade" were tested recently in the Nevada desert.
The next step in the exoplanet revolution may be an in-space "starshade" that lets alien worlds step out of a blinding glare.
Researchers are testing designs for a starshade, which would fly in formation with a future space-based telescope. The starshade, also known as an "external occulter," would block the light from a star while allowing the scope to spot emissions from much dimmer orbiting planets.
Scientists are conducting desert tests of the technology on Earth. They're using the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to model a starshade's ability to help future instruments find and characterize rocky, Earth-like alien worlds. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]
A starshade may be used on NASA's potential Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a space-based instrument that would feature a primary mirror 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide, the same size as that of the agency's iconic Hubble Space Telescope.
Several years ago, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) donated two space telescopes to NASA. In 2013, the space agency announced it hoped to use one of these scopes for WFIRST. That move spurred anticipation in the U.S. astronomical community for Hubble-quality imaging over an area of sky 100 times larger than that viewed by Hubble. This version of the |
.I first posted this one year ago. I’ve had 3 readers over the past year tell me that this post helped them get their child to the ER early enough so that their child’s appendix could be removed prior to it rupturing. I’m reposting it as a reminder that the signs we hear about aren’t necessarily the ONLY signs of appendicitis.
Appendicitis-How it Started
My son is fairly predictable.
Well as predictable as a kid can actually be.
He has a certain pattern he follows when he gets sick. His tummy hurts, he gets a fever, he throws up a few times. Case closed.
One week ago from today, we had to leave a birthday party early because he claimed his stomach hurt.
We got home though and he was absolutely fine. It was strange, but he had eaten pizza for the 2nd day in a row, so I chalked it up to that.
Sunday he was fine. Monday he complained his stomach hurt before school, but he was also trying to get OUT of school at the time, so I sent him on his way and he did fine.
Tuesday he had a baseball game and he had no complaints. But that night when I checked on him sleeping before I went to bed, he felt really warm to me. I was pretty sure he was feverish, but when he woke up the next morning (Wednesday) fine, I doubted myself. He said his tummy hurt, but he was also smiling and bouncing around while he said it, so off to school he went (it’s important to note this was Halloween).
Appendicitis-Trick or Treat or BUST!
When he walked out of school I just KNEW my little boy had a fever. Glassy eyed, head bowed as he trudged his way out the door towards me. Got him home and took his temp and sure enough…low grade fever. Judge me if you will, but it was Halloween, so I gave him some tylenol and when his fever went away and he started chomping at the bit to go trick or treating…out the door we went.
He did great while trick or treating and promptly fell asleep when we got home. I had the motrin ready all night long though just in case he woke up feverish during the night.
The next morning (Thursday) he was bright eyed and bushy tailed and fever free. He was super excited to spend the day at home with me since he needed to be 24 hours fever free before returning to school. All day long, he played, had fun and stayed fever free.
I want to stress that never ONCE did he throw up, have loose stools or lose his appetite. He probably only complained about his stomach a total of 4-5 times throughout the week and 2 of those times seemed to be to get out of something he didn’t want to do.
That night, since he had gone all night and all day fever free, we loaded up and went to his last baseball practice. He was fine the first half. About halfway through we were doing a special “parents play the kids” game and his first at bat went great. He was happy he hit the ball and ran the bases happily.
His next at bat was NOT so great though. He was clutching his stomach and once he got on first base, he told his coach he didn’t feel well and wanted to go home.
Appendicitis-Mama’s Instinct
So we started for home, but at this point I just can’t shake this NAGGING feeling that something is very wrong. Nothing about this sporadic tummy pain made sense to me because it just wasn’t resolving. Tummy pain and fevers with no other symptoms? This isn’t how my son worked. He got sick, got REALLY sick, and got over it. This lingering illness was just strange.
It was around 6:30pm by this point and I knew his pediatrician was closed. I just knew I needed some confirmation THAT NIGHT that I wasn’t crazy or over reacting. I did not want to go to the ER because I actually felt a bit silly about the whole “feeling” thing, so I asked my husband to drive us over to a nearby Walgreens clinic.
My son was clutching his stomach as we walked in there and while we waited. Finally we went in and we told the doctor what was wrong. He told us he likely couldn’t help us with something stomach related with no other symptoms (which I expected), but he did lay him on the table and probe his belly.
WHOA.
Appendix.
This word never entered my mind in all the days prior. Why? Because his pain came and went. Because his appetite was fine and everything else was fine. Because when you hear about appendicitis you think pain that just gets worse and worse and worse until finally you either get to the hospital in time OR you don’t because your appendix bursts.
I want to make it clear that the Walgreens Clinic did NOT diagnose him (they didn’t even charge us or put us into the system), but they were the catalyst that sent us on our way to the ER.
Appendicitis-Headed to the ER
We debated going to our city children’s hospital or to our local hospital (where I actually delivered both children). The local hospital was 10 minutes away and the children’s hospital was 30.
I’m SO glad we chose to go to our local hospital.
Because they are not a children only hospital…children are treated VERY special there! My son was whisked into triage immediately. (the magic words were “5 years old” and “stomach” I believe 😉 ) They actually already had all of mine and Noah’s info in the system from when I gave birth to him there (just a couple slight changes to the info!)
We went to the children’s waiting area and had barely sat down when they called us back.
First we had an examination. The doctor pushed on his tummy while talking to him about school, video games, etc. She could tell by his winces and cries where the pain was. This gave her enough suspicion to order an x-ray.
He was feverish so they gave him some motrin.
The x-ray showed a LOT of stool. Now, my son is 5 which means I don’t monitor his every (um…any) bowel movements. But I had been worried he could be constipated so throughout the week I had taken note of when he went #2. I knew he had gone daily. However, he did have a back up of stool which is one symptom (and possible cause) of appendicitis.
I think a lot of dr’s would have sent him home and said he was constipated. I could tell that’s what our doctor thought. However, the fever was baffling her. Constipation would not cause the fever he was having.
Appendicitis-Thankful for a Thorough Doctor
At this point, the dr ordered bloodwork, urinalysis, an IV and a CT scan.
He fell asleep for a bit at this point and was SO hot and feverish. It was pretty scary. The motrin thankfully kicked in and he was able to get a bit of rest.
First we did the IV and the bloodwork. That was HORRIBLE. I was laying on his lower half, my husband was holding his upper half and TWO nurses were holding his arm down as he screamed “You’re killing me!” Once it was finally in, he was STEAMING mad and terrified anytime anyone came near him (except myself or my husband). He finally chilled out and sat and watched TV while we drank the special drink and waited for the CT.
The CT was no big deal for him. He actually thought it was kind of fun.
Next came the waiting. Test results trickled back.
Urine= fine
Bloodwork=fine…White blood cells were NOT elevated
CT took awhile and he ended up falling asleep while we waited. Dr checked in on us a few times, but seemed encouraged by the results so far. Just when we started thinking we might be going home, she came in with the news.
Appendicitis
She was VERY surprised. She said that appendicitis doesn’t generally present this way. Usually once it starts hurting, it does not stop. However, it was most DEFINITELY appendicitis.
The CT scan showed an inflamed appendix and we needed to stay overnight and talk to the surgeon in the morning.
Appendicitis-Admitted to the Hospital
That night will go down as one of the worst night’s in our family’s history. Our son had to stay overnight in the hospital, and when my husband went home to get supplies…he got locked out of the house! Needless to say, we don’t have a back up key besides the keys on our keychains (which were BOTH in the house) but we’ll be getting one soon 😉.
The next morning (Friday) the PA for the surgeon came in and said that he would be getting surgery that day. He did pretty well all morning (except for a lot of loose stool) and at around 12:30, we took him down to pre-op.
Appendicitis-Time for Surgery
We sat and blew bubbles for him that the nurse gave us. Every member of the surgical team came and asked Noah questions about school and things he likes and just got to know him. They all seemed to love him. They gave him some muscle relaxers before we had to leave and he got rather silly just before we left.
The surgery team had made me feel so good that I honestly wasn’t really worried while he was in surgery.
The surgeon came out about 40 minutes later and handed us the pictures of the laparoscopic surgery and showed us what Noah’s appendix had looked like. They generally can’t tell if the appendix has perforated or not until they get in there, and we were SO thankful that Noah’s had NOT. He had acute appendicitis and we caught it before it really caused real problems. You could tell it was getting there, but it’s gone now!
He told us we could see Noah in 5-10 minutes so we could be there to wake up when he woke up in recovery. This was the most nervewracking part because 20 minutes went by without a peep. I finally got a hospital employee to go back and see what was going on and she was able to get us back there.
Appendicitis-Waking from Sedation
He was having a VERY hard time waking.
THIS was the hardest part of the WHOLE thing. I’ve never felt so helpless as when my little boy was coming out of sedation. He heard my voice and immediately begged me to hold him. There were wires everywhere and I just couldn’t. He couldn’t open his eyes and this was so upsetting to him.
He said his belly button was hurting (they went in through his belly button) and we realized he had actual pain so they gave him some meds. He finally went back to sleep and this was the first time I had a very good cry.
Thankfully we had a student nurse with us that day and she started talking to me and distracted me from my sadness. (that girl will make a GREAT nurse!)
Appendicitis-Recovery Begins
Finally we were able to go back to his room and the rest of the day he spent just kind of waking up. He started off with popsicles and actually ate a few slices of pizza that night. We also got up and walked down to the playroom in the children’s wing. Just hours after having an organ taken out! Modern medicine amazes me.
I stayed overnight with him both times and my husband took my daughter home. We went to bed at about 8:30 and he only got up once to go to the restroom.
This morning (Saturday), we got up and he has pretty much been eating and drinking since he opened his eyes. He had the last of his antibiotics and pain meds and we were on our way home by 1pm!
Here’s the kicker, he can go back to school on MONDAY. He has some restrictions. No PE for 2 weeks. No contact sports for 6 weeks. He can’t lift anything over 10 lbs (including his backpack) and he really can’t do anything that might make him fall (chase his friends, play on the playground, run in general, etc) for the next couple of weeks either.
He had an organ removed on Friday and he’s back to school on Monday. Unreal.
My little boy is doing great. He’s a bit slower and he does have some referred pain from the air they pumped into his belly for the surgery (they told us this would happen). But he’s in great spirits and doing just fine.
Appendicitis-Not Necessarily How It Looks on TV
All this (all 2013 words thus far?) to say…appendicitis doesn’t necessarily look how TV and movies says it looks. It isn’t necessarily going to be plainly obvious. It isn’t necessarily going to fit the symptoms you see on Web MD.
My advice to you is just to KNOW your child. Follow your hunches. If things aren’t fitting their normal “stomach virus” pattern…it won’t hurt to get them checked out. If that Walgreens doctor hadn’t pushed on my son’s belly…I cringe to think how long we would have gone without taking him in to be checked.
I have talked to 3 other moms in the past two days who did not have any conclusive proof of appendicitis until they had a CT done. Obviously you don’t want to do a CT unless you have to, but if something doesn’t seem right…insist the doctor order a CT.
The bloodwork, urinalysis, symptoms, duration and consistency of symptoms and the x-ray said NO.
The CT said YES.
I hope this helps someone. I feel so incredibly blessed that we were able to catch his illness when we did. I feel so incredibly thankful to God that we basically had the BEST case scenario. I know that this whole situation could have been so much worse and I’m so thankful that I trusted my instinct that something just wasn’t right.
Trust your instincts parents. They are God given to us for a reason!Other consumer advocates and members of Congress are more ambitious. They would like to see a paid federal family leave and medical leave insurance program.
Ms. Shabo’s organization, together with the Center for American Progress, has been working with lawmakers to draft legislation that would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the arrival of a new child or for a parent’s serious illness or that of a family member. The costs would be split between workers and their employers, who would each contribute two-tenths of 1 percent of workers’ wages to pay for insurance that would replace up to 66 percent of a worker’s usual wages, subject to a cap of about $1,000 a week.
A handful of states have already struck out on their own and devised similar programs that might serve as models. California and New Jersey, for instance, have established family leave insurance laws — built on those states’ temporary disability insurance programs — which allow workers to take paid leave to care for a new child (or a sick family member). The costs are borne by employees. Under the California program, created in 2002, workers pay 1 percent of their wages to cover both their state disability insurance and paid family leave insurance, which provides 55 percent of an employee’s weekly salary up to about $1,000 a week. New parents can take up to six weeks of family leave; pregnant women can also take time under the program to recover from childbirth.
New Jersey’s program, which began operating in 2009, typically provides two-thirds of the average of a worker’s last eight weeks of pay, to a maximum of $584 a week, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
In New York, new mothers can tap the state’s temporary disability insurance program, which is paid for by contributions from both employers and employees and provides up to a paltry $170 a week. (Employers pay, but can seek up to 100 percent of the contribution from employees.) Rhode Island and Hawaii also have provisions for replacing some income.
The patchwork of state laws that are stitched with different company rules can be difficult to navigate, particularly for new parents. “It shouldn’t matter where you live or who you work for,” Ms. Shabo argued. “All that matters is that you should have time to take care of your children without worrying about facing major financial turmoil.”
Kenneth Matos, senior director of employment research and practice at the Families and Work Institute, a research group, emphasized the importance of being able to make decisions that work within the context of the entire family.
“When only the birth parent can take paid leave, you put people in a situation where they have to follow traditional gender roles, which doesn’t always make sense,” Dr. Matos said. “If the male partner has a more flexible job it doesn’t matter, because she is the one who gets the leave. A lot of people are beginning to talk about how these issues need to be looked at as overall family issues, and the decisions need to be made in the context of all of the people involved.”Dick LeBeau owns rookie quarterbacks. That is basically a foregone conclusion at this point.
Since LeBeau rejoined the Pittsburgh Steelers as the defensive coordinator in 2004, he has only lost to rookie quarterbacks twice.
It shouldn't be a surprise that reports are surfacing that the Cleveland Browns don't want to start Johnny Manziel in the Week 1 matchup at Heinz Field unless absolutely necessary.
According to Ryan Wilson of cbssports.com, the organization realizes that Brian Hoyer could give their team the best chance for victory, even if he isn't the most talented quarterback on their roster.
Browns coach Mike Pettine told reporters, "It's just something right now where we are comfortable with Brian going out there to start the game."
As for work in the preseason, Pettine continued, "I think it's a little overblown as to who the starter is going to be. The key component, as I've stated earlier this week, is that we are going to balance the reps."
Although Pettine didn't shut the door on Manziel getting the nod in Week one, and has said the team will announce the official starter after the third preseason game, it would make sense for the young signal caller to get a pass against a defense that is so adept at puzzling rookie quarterbacks.
This isn't to say Manziel won't see the playing field if he doesn't start in Week one against the Steelers, but his playing time will be extremely limited compared to the more seasoned Brian Hoyer.
Dick LeBeau has already declared that he is mentally preparing to get the team ready to face the rookie phenom, but the majority of Pittsburgh Steelers defenders have stated they could care less who is behind center for the rival Browns.
Whether it's Hoyer or Manziel behind center on September 7th at Heinz Field, the quarterback of choice could be in for a long day at the office.“It looks like the situation in Sabah is going to remain unstable for a while yet because the Sultan’s followers have managed to disperse into a wider area,” said Bryony Lau, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Jakarta.
“If there are more deaths of Filipinos at the hands of the Malaysian security forces, there’s no question that will further inflame anti-Malaysian sentiment in the southern Philippines, with potential security consequences for Sabah,” she said.
Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia and President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines have tried repeatedly to convince the group from the southern Philippines to return before violence broke out. Both leaders are facing elections, and the fighting is being used by opposition candidates to criticize government efforts.
Mr. Aquino is not up for re-election, but members of his party in both chambers of the legislature are running for office. Victories by his political allies in the Senate and House of Representatives are crucial for the president to successfully pursue his political agenda.
Jamalul Kiram III, the Manila-based leader of the fighters in Sabah, and one of the claimants of the title of Sultan of Sulu, has support on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, which is a politically important, vote-rich area.
The self-proclaimed sultan also has support from Filipinos in other parts of the Philippines who believe the country has a legitimate claim to Sabah. Members of Mr. Aquino’s cabinet are treading carefully in their dealings with the sultanate. Taking a strong position against the sultan could cost votes in the May national elections.
Malaysian authorities, on the other hand, are incensed by the incursion into Sabah and have labeled the Filipino fighters as “terrorists.” Mr. Aquino’s government has rejected the term but noted that if the bodies of Malaysian soldiers were desecrated, as reported by authorities, those would be considered “terroristic” acts.— Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own —
By Paul Taylor
PARIS (Reuters) - They’re at it again.
No sooner has the financial system begun to stabilize than Big Finance is reverting to its old ways — aggressive hiring, remuneration on steroids, wriggling out of regulation or threatening to decamp to evade tougher supervision.
These are is not the rantings of some crypto-Marxist City-basher, but the considered view of one of Europe’s most thoughtful financial regulators.
In testimony to the House of Commons on Tuesday, FSA chief Lord Adair Turner voiced concern that the industry was failing to learn the lessons from the “biggest financial crisis in the history of market capitalism.” Regulatory exhaustion and the first green shoots of recovery could prompt “some drawing back from the degree of radicalism that we require,” he said, raising the prospect of another such crisis in 10 or 15 years’ time.
Turner cited investment banks’ aggressive hiring of traders among his concerns. Others would add the return of bumper bonuses, the casting off of restraints on top executives’ pay, and threats by banks and hedge funds to desert the City if the EU or the UK enact onerous new rules.
There are plenty of examples. Last week, 10 of the biggest U.S. banks repaid $68 billion in U.S. taxpayers’ bailout funds in a race to extract themselves from government restrictions on pay for senior executives.
Citi (C.N), prevented from repaying its $25 billion in TARP funds, is reported to be planning to raise employees’ base salaries by as much as 50 percent this year to offset smaller bonuses.
In Brussels, there is talk that Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, the pope of “light touch regulation,” is busy watering down his officials’ proposals to regulate the vast and opaque trade in over-the-counter derivatives.
Where banks and financial market players feel they are not getting their way, some are threatening to vote with their feet.
Hedge fund managers warned the UK Treasury at a recent meeting that some funds could desert London for Switzerland to avoid EU regulation. And even the big banks are dropping veiled hints that they could move elsewhere.
A senior continental European regulator says he sees growing signs that the financial services industry is playing for time in the belief that it will be back to “business as usual” soon provided it can see off the drive for rapid and sweeping regulation.
Regulators are not necessarily helping themselves. Debates over the degree of future intervention, and turf battles between different regulatory bodies, are sapping momentum in the United States, Britain and the EU.
There is legitimate concern that hasty, ill-drafted reforms will merely create a new set of problems in the future. But regulators have a limited opportunity to impose meaningful changes. They must not allow themselves to be blown off course.Once upon a time when I was traveling in Europe, a young lady pulled up her shirt and flashed me. At first I thought this was a customary greeting in her country, but I quickly realized it was an effort to distract me so her friend could pickpocket me. Now, when ladies flash me, which happens more than you might think, I put my hand over my pocket in case it is a ruse.
This is one of many things I have learned in my travels. On our recent trip to Mexico, the learning did not stop. Below is a list of things I learned traveling through the great country south of the border.
What I Learned Traveling in Mexico
Food
When ordering a hot dog and they say “con todo?” – with everything, unless you want carrots, salsa, mustard, ketchup, copious amounts of fried onions, creamy cheese and jalapeños, you should not say “si.”
When eating chips and salsa, it is always wise to take a tiny amount of salsa on the first chip in order to find out just how fiery hot it is. A full scoop of salsa could lead to disaster and a desperate search for the waiter to bring more beer.
The larger the crowd outside a taco stand the greasier and spicier the taco meet.
You can get a chile relleno taco, which is a chille relleno inside a taco. Mexico is a great country.
If a Mexican says something is spicy, it isn’t a description, but a warning.
There are pork rinds the size of a small cars in the markets.
They don’t eat a lot to cheese in Mexico. Conversely, the average Tex Mex meal is 64% cheese, according to a recent study.
You can buy bacon wrapped hot dogs in quick stops. Dios es mi Amigo.
If you bump into the table of a woman selling fried grasshoppers in the market and some of her product falls on the floor, she will become very much upset.
Drinking
At every cantina, there is always a local who is passed out drunk. They are not asked to leave or looked down upon. When they wake up, they are served more booze.
You should not try to drink a 300-pound American government official, whose Mexican nickname is El Torro, under the table. I learned this though observation, not participation. On a side note, Obama owes me 100 pesos.
You should not try to drink a 40-year-old Mexican government official under the table, especially if he claims to have been drinking in this very same cantina since he was 12.
When eating at a market and the only beverage options are a dubious jug of water or beer, sometimes you are forced to get drunk at lunch.
Beer is accompanied by more condiments than anywhere else on Earth. You usually get an entire sliced lime, salt, chips and salsa, peanuts fried in chili and garlic and maybe even a soup, which is usually murderously hot. It seems like a nice gesture, but the cynic in me thinks the picante food is there to encourage more beer drinking.
Mezcal, a tequila-like liquor made from the agave cactus, tastes like licking a homeless person who has been doused in gasoline. It burns, tastes of salt and dirt with a smokey finish.
Travel and Culture
Selfie sticks are banned as carry on items on domestic flights and in many museums in Mexico. Yet another reason this is a great country.
Seeing millions of monarch butterflies at once is kinda neat.
If a one-legged lady in a wheelchair is speeding towards you, get out of the way.
When a sudden rain storm hits, the cotton candy vendor is the first one to run for cover.
Mexico has vibrant indeginous communities all over the country. That makes me happy about our world.
There are communities of blond-haired, blue-eyed mennonites who wear traditional clothes in Chihuahua and Campeche. They stand out like a Mexican wearing a mariachi outfit in a community of blondes.
Buses generally leave when scheduled but arrive on Mexican time. Ironically, the only bus we took that left late was the only one to arrive early. #crazydriver
They sell some really strange man underwear in Mexico City.
Language
My Spanish resides at that magic point where gringoes who don’t speak any Spanish think my Spanish is really good but people who actually speak the language know the truth.
Chinga tu madre is evidently not a very nice thing to say to someone.
Angangueo is really hard to say but not as hard as Teotihuacan.
Maldicion does not mean the f-word. We watched a lot of movies with subtitles. Whenever a person would drop an f-bomb, it was often translated to maldicion, which means cuss word. “Hey you mother cuss word! I am going to blow your cuss word head off with my gun!”
I can’t roll my r’s. I used to think I could.
My English is okay, my Spanish is bad but my Spanglish is poetic.
Personal
After seeing the Day of the Dead festivities, I learned that when I die I want my friends and family to parade through the streets in costume and then come to my grave every November 1, drink copious amounts of mezcal, hire a six-piece mariachi band and dance around my grave all night. If you don’t do this you are not honoring my wishes and do not love me.
Well, there you have it. Those are the things I learned in Mexico. If I could pass along one pearl of wisdom it would be this: beware the spicy salsa.
What are some valuable lessons you have learned while traveling?
You can follow me on Facebook or InstagramThis is my second post on The Challenge of Honesty that was released Sept 1. (You might want to check out my previous post.) Frances Lee Menlove tells about growing up before correlation existed.
The Correlation Committee was started in 1961 and, in the words of John-Charles Duffy, “encompasses a philosophy–one might even say, a theology–of Church governance, in which LDS doctrines about priesthood and prophetic authority are synthesized with strategies for organizational efficiency drawn from the world of business. This philosophy sets a premium on strong central authority, uniform procedures, and unified discourse. … One of correlation’s several objectives is to preserve purity of doctrine in Church discourse, which is to say that correlation acts as a mechanism to police and promote orthodoxy.”2
“Uniform procedures” and “unified discourse” were not part of my Church upbringing. I have two stories to illustrate just how uncorrelated my formative years were. When I was a young teenager in the 33rd Ward in Salt Lake City, our Sunday School class decided that we wanted to learn about other religions. And so, every two or three weeks, we would load into cars and attend other Sunday services in Salt Lake City. They knew we were coming, and we had been briefed on good manners so we could appropriately file into the Unitarian or Catholic or Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints services to watch and listen. I remember that a leader of the local Reorganized Church met with us after the service to answer questions. There was one glitch on the Sunday we visited the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The girls didn’t have head coverings, so after some hurried whispers, we were led, as a group to the front row, making it clear that we were visitors. Our Sunday School teacher that memorable year was the same Joseph Jeppson who helped found Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
The second story, which I love to tell, is about my grandfather, another pre-Correlation Mormon. He was also a bacteriologist and a dedicated empiricist. Just as Henry Eyring did, he liked to say that “in this Church we don’t have to believe anything that isn’t true.” Grand-dad went to see the bishop one Sunday and explained to him that he knew Sister Brown had tuberculosis, and besides, who knows what other diseases were running around the ward? Even without these known ailments, the practice of passing one large sacrament cup down the row with each person taking a sip was unsanitary in the extreme.
“Brother Greaves,” the bishop huffed, “do you really think that God would allow his sacred water, which has been blessed by the priesthood, to cause disease, to make people sick?”
“Bishop”, my grandfather replied, “do you really think that God would have given us brains if he didn’t expect us to use them?”
The bishop suggested that he go home and repent. My grandfather’s reply to that suggestion was “Horse feathers!”
My grandfather helped get the practice changed. My memory is that Elder John A. Widtsoe, another scientist, was his ally. He thought the moral of the story was this: “See, even though Church authorities sometimes act like jackasses, the Church has a way of righting itself.” Grand-dad had a little of J. Golden Kimball’s salty style.Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Some of the most memorable moments of my tabloid-filled youth consisted of watching Geraldo Rivera interviewing and confronting Neo-Nazis and racists both in his studio and on the streets. Often times, these heated encounters resulted in brawls such as the one in this video, which has over 600,000 views on YouTube.
Geraldo and many others gave “a voice” to countless hateful groups on a regular basis throughout my youth, and millions of my fellow Americans saw them and were exposed to their unenlightened and pathetic ideology. This didn’t result in hordes of youth turning to violent extremism or the beginning of a Fourth Reich. Rather, what these interviews successfully did was expose the idiocy of these groups and make them even more isolated than they were before. That is how things work in a functioning free society. You aren’t afraid of ideas, you exchange them.
On Friday, I woke up to headlines proclaiming that David Cameron had called for a criminalization of “non-violent extremism” during a speech at the UN. I thought this could be a good topic for a post, but after watching it, I decided to focus on something else. At the time, I figured it was just a politician spouting stupid nonsense as usual. It wasn’t until today that I realized his “war on free speech” was about to become a key platform of Conservative Party policy in the UK. We learn from the Guardian that:
Radical Islamist extremists and neo-Nazis could be banned from making public appearances including on television under a gagging order proposed by the Conservatives with echoes of the broadcast ban that once applied to the voice of Gerry Adams. The home secretary’s new orders would be aimed at those who undertake activities “for the purpose of overthrowing democracy”, a wide-ranging definition that could also catch a far wider range of political activists. May will also set out proposals to ban non-violent extremist groups that fall short of the current threshold for being banned as terrorist-related organizations. The moves to ban extremist but non-violent groups and to introduce extremist asbos were blocked by the Liberal Democrats on freedom of speech grounds and so were not announced when Cameron proposed measures to tackle British jihadists travelling to Syria. May will announce during the home affairs debate at the Tory conference that the new powers will be included in the party’s manifesto for next year’s election. The restrictions are expected to include banning individuals from speaking at public events, protests and meetings, having to inform the police in advance of any public event, protest or meeting that they plan to attend, and banning individuals from particular public locations. May also wants to include restrictions on banned individuals from broadcasting, from associating with named people, and restricting their use of social media or the internet by requiring them to submit in advance any proposed publication to the police. Banning orders would be time-limited to ensure they were proportional, but breaching the civil orders would be regarded as a criminal offence punishable with a jail term. The Home Office has always argued that banning such groups would do more harm than good, but May says that it is now needed. A home secretary’s decision to ban a group would be subject to an immediate review by the high court to ensure it was not “obviously flawed”. A ban would make it an offence to be a member of or to fundraise for the group.
There are so many things wrong with the above it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, Teresa May wants to “ban non-violent extremist groups that fall short of the current threshold for being banned as terrorist-related organizations.” Think about that very closely. Essentially, she is saying non-violent groups that are currently not breaking any laws should be criminalized by creating new laws. Once this process begins, it will continue to be expanded and expanded until pretty much every form of expression other than government propaganda will be banned. Secondly, she notes that the new laws are necessary to combat groups that undertake activities “for the purpose of overthrowing democracy.” Considering that the U.S. government changes the meanings of words at a moment’s notice, such as claiming that “imminent” doesn’t really mean “imminent,” I argue that an official government definition of democracy is necessary. Moreover, what if the UK is like the U.S., a state that claims to be a democracy, but in reality is an oligarchy? What are the rules about calling for the removal of an oligarchy? Additionally, a government definition of democracy takes on increased weight in light of the bizarre statement by Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that a Catalan independence vote is “anti-democratic.” Since such a vote seems to be the definition of democracy, it appears that politicians also have their own bizarre definition of democracy. I’d like to know what it is, but I think it’s safe to guess: Democracy = Maintenance of control by the status quo at all costs. Despite the glaring fact that banning people from non-violent free speech is obviously authoritarian and fascist, we must ask why now? Why are the UK government and many other so called “free and democratic” societies suddenly so terrified of free speech. Is it due to Islamic extremists, which are almost always funded by Western intelligence agencies or our allies in the Middle East, or is it something else? I think I know what it is. One thing we know from history is that people in power tend to become very paranoid about losing it. People who hold power based on fraud and deceit, and who start to lose the support of the masses, are particularly vulnerable to extreme paranoia. This is exactly what I think is happening to people in power throughout the world. From Hong Kong to Scotland. From Catalonia to the Middle East. All across the globe, young people are uniting in protest to achieve the same goal. They see a status quo in power that has destroyed their futures. They see centralized power far from where they live primarily being used by the super rich to become super richer. They are sick of it and they want something else. In fact, they are now beginning to demand something else. This has absolutely nothing to do with Islamic extremists or Neo-Nazis. In fact, attacks by such groups only serve to further expand the power of the entrenched ruling class. Nothing would be more useful to these people than violent attacks by extremist groups. No, what really scares them is thoughtful, rebellious, free-thinking citizens speaking their minds; and now they are trying to ban that…
In any event, if we really want to ban extremist, disturbing behavior, let’s start with David Cameron’s selfie at Nelson Mandela’s memorial:
Cameron thumbnail at top by William Banzai7.
* * *AP Christine |
about the difference in insurance costs for a motorcyle or a car worth $5000?
I am choosing to buy between a motorcycle and a car. I am considering the factor of cost as of now. My budget is $5000 and I want to keep the maintenance and insurance cost per annum to be minimum.
Cost of eye surgery with no insurance?
contemplating cataract surgery as well as glaucoma surgery in north carolina. ( no Insurance). what’s the average cost of these procedures per eye?
What is state financed insurance in Florida?
i am looking for treatment centers for my son in Florida and i am in Virginia and when i read insurance info every one of them takes state financed insurance? what is this?
How to not pay for car insurance when getting a license?
Please inform me about the putting a different address"" thing. How can I drive and even if I get caught (which I hope doesn’t happen)"
What is the penalty for driving with no insurance?
What is the penalty for driving with no insurance?
"At-fault driver lies about accident, his insurance denies claim, any recourse?"
Thanks for the response, my sister had spoken with a few lawyers, though she said none were interested in taking the case due to there being no bodily injury. My parents recently purchased a new car and decided to give her their old car, so now they are in possession of the damaged car and are deciding on what to do with it."
What is the best UK car insurance for me to get?
Ok, i’m a little confused here. Basically my insurance expires in a few days and i’m coming up to 4 years no claims. I’ve never protected these claims (obviously as you cannot protect less than four years) and on my renewal i’ve come to a dilemma; 1) I have got a fairly cheap quote which includes courtesy car, legal cover and windscreen cover (this is cheaper offer but doesn’t offer protected no claims). or 2) courtesy car, protected no claims and windscreen cover (this is a little more expensive but doesn’t have legal cover). Now my question is (since I don’t know much about car insurance, i just know its a law), how important is legal cover? i’m assuming its very important but for the last four years i’ve never had any claims or been in any accidents, and i really want to start protecting my claims since my car is kind of old now and i’m worried about losing the last 4 years, any tips or advice? oh this is on comprehensive by the way. Thanks in advance to anyone that can help."
Will my car insurance premium go down in price when i pay off my car?
I’m in California…
Car insurance for a new driver?
Car insurance for a new driver?
Do I need to mention car insurance claims when going for motorbike insurance?
Title says it all really! I have a car insurance claim against me which I want to know if I have to declare when applying for motorbike insurance. Hopefully not, because motorcycling is quite different to car driving..?! Thanks!"
Will auto insurance be significantly lower in Kelowna BC compared to Toronto ON due to population difference?
Will auto insurance be significantly lower in Kelowna BC compared to Toronto ON due to population difference?
When to buy car insurance for used car?
When should you buy car insurance so you can drive the car away but not have the rug pulled out from under you and have the person sell to a higher bidder while you’re gone? I know you don’t need a license plate when you first buy to drive it home on the most direct route but you need it insured. So when do you do that?
Will a car pool lane ticket cause my insurance rates to go up?
I called my insurance company and my agent wasn’t sure so she called an underwriter and called me back. She said that it is a non chargeable offense not a point, not a moving violation and it will not effect my insurance rates! She said it will be at least $341 and that sucks but at least my rates wont go up… thanks for all the answers!"
In texas can they deny u car insurance?
I got a new car today and my bf got a ticket in my old car today. I heard if u have an unpaid ticket than I cant get car insurance on my new car… Is tht tru
Need help with car & insurance (Just starting out)?
So I am 18 and want to move out of my mother’s house because of reasons I shouldn’t mention. Not because I am some spoiled teen looking to do what ever I want. But are you willing to help me? My question is: How do I get my liecense with out limited insurance or a car? How do I get insurance without a liecense or a car? How do I get a car without a liecense or insurance? This is the vicous cicle D: How can a new adult jump out into the world when my mother isn’t willing to help me? I have a stable income. I just need some advice.
Insurance as a 17 year old on a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle?
I am 17, I am currently insured under my mums name on a BMW 320D. However I have my own car, which is a 1200 Beetle 2 Door Saloon, petrol and manual transmission. I live in Northern Ireland, UK. I was looking to get insured in it after I get it MOT’d and taxed. I know nothing about insurance on vintage cars, so anyone who has more experience in this field could you please tell me how to go around doing in. Who should I get insured with? I dont want to be spending more than 100 a month."
What is the penalty if police finds i have an old car insurance card in my car and not the current one?
i scratched a car before, the guy took my OLD insurance card information and took pictures of the scratch, because i looked so scared and apologized again and again, he let me go. lucky me. but what if the police finds out i give him the OLD and EXPIRED insurance information, will i go to jail? i heard illegal immigrants got locked up for this reason. i’m not illegal, what will happen to me?"
Should i carry collision insurance on my 2006 silverado?
Should i carry collision insurance on my 2006 silverado?
Why is my insurance quote so much and what is NCD? Im 17 years old!?
I understand with me being 17 my insurance will be a little high but the quotes im getting at the moment are hitting the 2500 mark whilst some of my friends are getting insurance between 600-1000 so why is mine so high? Also; What is no claims discount? Ive literally only just passed my driving test and no ones has explained to me what this is and i have a feeling me putting ‘0 NCD’ is contributing to high insurance, is it? Why do i have to put how long ive lived in the UK as well? Im a British Citizen, parents british but i was born abroad and only moved to england when i was 11 as my dad was in the army so we travelled, but does this affect my insurance as well? sorry for all the questions, just need some help. Also, the car im trying to insure is a second hand Ford Ka Collection, 2000w, 1.3 petrol Thanks"
I have a c corp with 4 employees including myself……i have a whole life insurance policy that i stopped pay?
e policy that i stopped paying on about 1 year ago….. what is the best move for me start a 401k(non matching high limits) or resume the whole life insurance policy jeff
Will my insurance be through the roof?
I am 16 years of age, and I own a ’85 2.8L V6 Fiero GT. It’s of course 2 door and a sports car. I have the title and plates all ready in my name. I was wondering before I go to get insurance Monday, do you guys think it will be expensive for me? My mother is adding me as a second driver and sadly I am not carrying a B average for that discount. I tried getting some quotes from Progressive it was 650 and Nationwide it was 800, and my mother uses Nationwide. I am not sure if I did the quote correctly though because it shouldnt be that much! Please any helpful idea’s or thoughts! Thanks."
It says the doctors average salary is around 200k…but how much do they get from insurance companies?
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos074.htm okay but specialists are still doctors go to english class i was making a generalization idiot
Can I get insurance if I don’t have a license?
I’m 18 and want to get my license but I need insurance, can I get liability without a license and about how much it would cost?
ANSWER: I would recommend that you try this web page where one can get quotes from different companies: http://INSUREQUOTE.US/index.html?src=WP2cuegrathiecorcouAnyone who’s ever logged in to a social network while in a jubilant, possibly intoxicated frame of mind knows the dangers. Sometimes you share something you should maybe keep to yourself, or you forget to check your privacy settings, or you show off a little too much skin.
That’s more or less what the U.S. government appears to have done in the heady moments after dumping whatever was left of Osama bin Laden into the churning waters of the North Arabian Sea.
Getting him had taken 10 years, billions of dollars and the dogged work of an unnamed senior intelligence analyst in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.
The Associated Press brought the mysterious analyst’s role to light on July 5, after which a mere two days elapsed before The Observer managed to learn the identity of this super spy, type it into Google and track the poor guy to a quiet subdivision in Northern Virginia.
Just how a reporter—one whose largest scoop to date involved the romantic indiscretions of a pair of Hollywood actors—gained possession of a nugget of intelligence that a senior U.S. official told us would be “extremely damaging” if publicly revealed, is either the tale of a carefully orchestrated public relations gambit designed to christen a new American hero, or that of a colossal governmental blunder—or perhaps a bit of both.
It began little more than a week ago, when the Associated Press published an adulatory profile a mysterious C.I.A. analyst, entitled “The Man Who Hunted Osama Bin Laden.”
In the breathless prose of a Jerry Bruckheimer trailer, reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo introduced the shadowy figure who’d tracked bin Laden nearly since the day the towers fell. “In the hunt for the world’s most-wanted terrorist, there may have been no one more important,” they wrote.
The story quoted a number of “current and former intelligence officials,” including John E. McLaughlin, the former deputy director of Central Intelligence, all of whom heaped praise on their steadfast colleague. But at the C.I.A.’s request, the piece did not identify the man by name “so that he would not become a target for retribution.” Instead, Mr. Goldman and Mr. Apuzzo wrote, “Call him John, his middle name.”
“They made a compelling case that even though he wasn’t under cover, they didn’t want to put a target on his back,” Mr. Apuzzo explained of his discussions with the C.I.A. “So we wrote it in a way that people would not be able to identify who he was.”
Well, not exactly. Because the story also dangled a more tantalizing clue—noting that John was standing “just outside the frame” in the “now-famous photograph” of the Obama national security team huddled around a conference table in the Situation Room, anxiously watching a TV monitor as the daring raid on bin Laden’s compound unfolded.
That was enough for John Young of Cryptome.org, an intelligence blog dedicated to exposing government secrets. About nine hours after reading the AP piece, Mr. Young posted a story that appeared to unmask the master terrorist hunter. And he did it with the sort of simple deductive reasoning that wouldn’t be out of place in a Miss Marple novel. It seems that although the man’s face was cropped out of the famous Situation Room photo, his pale yellow necktie was not. He also appeared to be unusually tall. The White House, as part of an all-out effort to trumpet its signature intelligence triumph, had released a number of photos on that day to media outlets around the world. Mr. Young simply checked the administration’s Flickr feed for shots of a man with the same build and taste in neckwear.
And there he was.
Indeed, he turned up again in a shot taken two days later, accompanying then-C.I.A. director Leon Panetta to a closed-door briefing of Congress. Curiously, he was even wearing the same tie. (To be fair, it was before Father’s Day.)
“It was a no-brainer to figure this out,” Mr. Young told The Observer, speaking in a crusty drawl that recalled the late William S. Burroughs.
Mr. Young’s item was intriguing, but not conclusive. And it failed to name the arch-spook, though Mr. Young later noted, “If I had the name, I’d put it up. I’m an absolutist.”
Once the photo was out there, of course, it was only a matter of time. But how little time was surprising. Within a day, The Observer happened to mention the Cryptome story while out with some friends. An acquaintance volunteered that he recognized the man in the photo and proceeded to put a name to the face.
A few web searches turned up details of the man’s personal life. In college, he’d played basketball. No superstar by any means—he was mostly a practice player—he’d been aggressive enough to catch the eye of the team’s coach, who later spoke glowingly of John’s unusual shooting style.
The Observer also stumbled across the man’s college G.P.A. (a respectable 3.5). We grabbed his address on Lexis/Nexis and gazed down on his home via Google Maps. We checked out his children’s school and noted that his wife recently helped coordinate the school fair. We read about his son’s sports exploits, and observed with a touch of conspiratorial frisson that his father is an expert in the work of Leo Strauss, one of the patron saints of Bush-era neoconservatism.The controversy around “fake news” took on a new pall this month when a North Carolina man chose to investigate, gun in hand, a false online conspiracy theory that a Washington. D.C.-area pizza parlor was harboring a pedophilia ring with ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Known now as “Pizzagate,” the incident (in which no one was hurt and the gunman arrested) leads to a bigger question of what Americans perceive as fact and fiction in a media landscape where conspiracy theorists and trolls can have as much voice and public attention (if not more) as traditional news outlets.
While it’s easy to condemn the accused — Edgar Maddison Welch — for jumping to an extreme conclusion over claims spread on sites like 4chan and Reddit, it’s equally easy to forget that Welch is hardly alone.
It’s impossible to know how many Americans read and believed the story, but researchers at Stanford University recently released startling numbers that offer insight into the fake news paradox.
Perhaps the most shocking finding of the report is that a whopping 93 percent of college students couldn’t identify lobbyist websites as biased sources of information. The findings were equally dismal for high school students, less than 20 percent of whom knew that looking at one photograph online was not enough to tell if an event actually took place or not. Eighty percent of middle school students were unaware of what “sponsored content” meant or that it differed from other content on a website.
Students also struggled to convey what makes a source credible, as education nonprofit news outlet The Hechinger Report pointed out.
“When presented with a tweet made from a liberal advocacy group, half of the students judged the tweet without bothering to click the link to read the source of information,” Nichole Dobo wrote. “Among the students who did click, few were able to articulate why a poll that was cited was credible or not.”
Why do so many Americans have trouble telling truth from fiction online?
The answer may come down to human biology, as science writer and Skeptic Magazine publisher Michael Shermer illustrated in a 2010 TED talk. The human tendency to believe something is, in Shermer’s view, a byproduct of perfectly honed survival instincts — it’s better to err on the side of believing something is true and exercise caution rather than assume something is wrong.
“If you believe the rustle in the grass is just the wind and it turns out to be a dangerous predator, you’re lunch,” Shermer argued in his talk.
And, as Business Insider reported, humans are much more vulnerable to believing lies or misinformation when they feel somehow threatened. Believing that something is true is the first step to asserting control over that situation — a deeply human, psychological need, Northwestern University professor Adam Galisnky argued.
“The less control people have over their lives, the more likely they are to try and regain control through mental gymnastics," Galinsky told Business Insider.
This phenomenon goes far beyond fake news deceiving readers. Some experts have even tied the human need to assert control over situations to factual distortions surrounding major cataclysmic events, such as the 9/11 “truther” movement, which contends the terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the government, or the popular conspiracy that the Sandy Hook school massacre was staged.
“Their distortions offered a reprieve to people overwhelmed by a perceived loss of control,” CNN Gregory Krieg wrote. “In targeting the victims (of Sandy Hook), they have created — at an unfathomable moral price — a place to direct their rage.”
If the feeling of a lack of control can make people more susceptible to conspiracy theory and hyperbole, it makes sense why an estimated 70 percent of Americans believe the news media is intentionally biased.
As the election results showed, mainstream news outlets have serious work to do in better understanding the voices of those who are skeptical of — and feel ignored by — traditional news coverage. The fact that many outlets didn't take Trump's candidacy seriously until the election was nearly over helped sow doubt in many people's minds, and both candidates' use of social media raises the question of how much modern politics needs journalism to get messages out.
“This could be the last election where mainstream media play a dominant or leading role,” Canadian and American media ethicist Stephen Ward said after the election. “Given what Trump has done on Twitter, I see more and more campaigns running this way in the future, without visiting editorial boards — saying, 'to hell with them, we don’t need them.’”
Twitter: ChandraMJohnsonThe 2017 NFL regular season is nearly four months away, but people are already betting on win totals for the season. The San Francisco 49ers were installed at 4.5 wins by Bovada a couple weeks back. The OVER was installed as a favorite at -130 (bet $130 to win $100), while the UNDER was set at even money. According to Odds Shark, the OVER is now at -125, and the UNDER is at -105.
I checked in with Bovada on Tuesday, and while it is still really early in the offseason, 80 percent of initial bets have been on the OVER. I don’t know the exact number of bets at this point, but I have seen enough optimism out there that this is not all that surprising. Earlier today, a discussion got started about the 49ers OVER, and a few notable folks offered up some optimism:
The 49ers over/under is set at 4.5. I'm going to take that over. Could see 6-7 wins. — Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) May 16, 2017
6-10 is my bet with a handful of close losses. Kirk Cousins arrives in 2018, 9-7, 49ers sneak into the playoffs https://t.co/ShOfUGuk4i — Kevin Jones (@Mr_KevinJones) May 16, 2017
I'll join the 6-10 bandwagon. Long way to go, but talent is improved and offense should be significantly better just on Kyle alone. #49ers https://t.co/QxzoIegslt — Jeff Deeney (@PFF_Jeff) May 16, 2017
When the regular season arrives, I don’t expect that we’ll have 80 percent of people still betting on the OVER. However, I do plan on checking in with Bovada later this summer to see how that percentage is looking. If the number remains this high, it will be tempting to fade the 49ers. When the public is so heavily backing one side of a bet, it raises some questions. After all, sportsbooks are money-making machines for a reason.
That did get me thinking about other win total wagers. The 49ers are matched by the Cleveland Browns at 4.5 wins, with the New York Jets just ahead of them at 5 wins. When I look at these three teams, I keep seeing the Jets as the team most likely to finish with the worst record in the league. They have some talent on their roster, but that offense, I just can’t see it looking particularly good. Josh McCown strikes me as sort of a poor man’s Brian Hoyer. He has an adequate floor, and virtually no ceiling. Add in that his own skill position players are a question mark, and the Jets could be in the driver’s seat for the No. 1 pick. I’m tempted by that UNDER, even as I wonder why the sports book has the number that high.Google might be joining the needle-free blood test party. The company has filed a patent for a "needle-free blood draw" system that can be used either as a wearable on a person's wrist or as a hand-held device that takes blood from a fingertip or other parts of the body.
The patent, which was published today and is still pending, describes a blood draw system that works by sending a surge of gas into a barrel containing a micro-particle that pierces the skin. Once blood is released from the skin, it's sucked up into the negative pressure barrel. "Such an application might be used to draw a small amount of blood, for example, for a glucose test," Google explains. This means that the technology could end up being used to help people with diabetes. We emailed Google about to ask about this, and a spokesperson replied "we hold patents on a variety of ideas — some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don't. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patents."
Given Life Sciences' current projects, a focus on diabetes wouldn't be that surprising. The company is already working on two devices designed to help diabetics monitor their glucose levels: smart contact lenses and a bandage-sized, cloud-connected sensor to help people monitor their glucose levels. If these projects are successful — and if they gain FDA clearance — that could mean big business for Google; about 29 million people in the US have diabetes.
Given the nature of patents, it's hard to tell if Google (now Alphabet) is actually working on this device at all. If the company does decide to move ahead with this, however, it might have to readjust its design. Right now, the wrist wearable featured in the patent looks like an oversized Moto 360 from hell.HERE it is! Spy photographers have sprung the 2018 Holden Commodore, the most anticipated new car in more than a decade, in glorious, fully undisguised production form – and only about a week out from its expected official reveal.
Both the black sedan/hatch and grey wagon sprung on a photo shoot in sunny Southern California -- complete with German numberplates -- wear flagship Opel Insignia OPC livery. We understand everything bar the badges will translate wholesale onto the NG Commodore, due here in about a year’s time.
In the words of then-prime minister Ben Chifley at the launch of the original 48-215 on November 29, 1948… She’s a beauty!
The Insignia sports a wide-wheeled stance, crisp contemporary angles (check out that C-pillar point!), sculpted lines, and unique detailing such as the chrome strip that follows the wagon’s window line down to the tailgate. This should give the MY18 Commodore the style and attitude to take on other premium Euro imports, including mainstream competitors such as the Ford Mondeo/Fusion.
The latest Astra-style design language seems to have translated handsomely onto a family car the size of the 1997-2006 VT-VZ Commodore. However, it is worth noting that the Insignia Grand Sport pictured will also challenge segment-leading wagons such as the Skoda Superb in terms of space and practicality, greatly sharpening the NG Commodore’s appeal… as long as Holden prices it right.
Furthermore, look closely at the Insignia … sorry, Commodore’s nose: being an OPC, you’re most likely looking at a top-line Holden Commodore SS-V alternative, complete with 3.6-litre V6 auto, trick all-wheel-drive system, and – judging from the radar tech grille insert just below the badge – advanced driver-assist technology such as automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control.
Throw in adaptive dampers as part of a complex drive-select mode, and we’re talking about the most advanced Holden yet. Bring it on!
We’ll know more about the most important NG Commodore when Holden reveals further details, which rumours suggest could be as early as this week.Indianapolis head coach Chuck Pagano classified Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew as a "rolling ball of butcher knives." First of all, just that visual is amazing, and it's hilariously true, especially against the Colts.
Historically, Jones-Drew has absolutely killed the Indianapolis Colts when the two teams play against each other and is typically the focal point of the Colts defensive game plan, as he should be once again on Sunday. In 12 games against the Colts, Jones-Drew has 230 carries with 1,212 rushing yards (5.27 YPC) and nine touchdown runs with three touchdown receptions. He averages 101 yards per game against the Colts.
The Colts have done an adequate job of slowing team's running games in the first two games of the 2012 season, but stopping Maurice Jones-Drew is no easy task and the Jaguars offense is undoubtedly going to have to lean on him once again if they want to pick up their first win of the season.In January, we relayed the announcement that Steam was removing support for OAuth, a feature that allowed one-click Steam key redemption for games purchased through Humble Bundle.
While games and bundles sold since that announcement redeem manually on Steam, older purchases with OAuth key redemption were allowed to work as originally intended. This morning, the function was disabled and is no longer operational.
Starting today, we will be returning to the original system we used for Steam key redemption, which requires you to manually redeem your keys on Steam. All Humble download pages are now affected by this change.
If you already redeemed a Steam key through OAuth, then your download page or account library page will no longer show the redemption date or Steam account that the game was redeemed on. Instead, for your records, your download/library page will show an already-redeemed key. These keys can not be redeemed a second time.
Instructions on how to redeem games manually on Steam can be found here.There are echoes of the "Seven Seconds or Less" Phoenix Suns all around the NBA, so it's only fitting that there are remnants of those Suns teams everywhere you look in the NBA Finals.
It's a testament to how good that group they assembled in Phoenix in the mid-2000s really was, even if they never reached the Finals together. And it's a triumph of style meshed with strategy, a much-needed reminder that aesthetics and success don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr was the general manager of the Suns from 2007-10, and Cleveland Cavaliers general manager David Griffin was his vice president of basketball operations. Kerr has Alvin Gentry, who spent a decade in Phoenix as an assistant and then head coach, on his staff. Warriors backup guard Leandro Barbosa is a former Sun, as are Cavaliers reserves Shawn Marion and James Jones. Former Suns guard Raja Bell is the director of player administration for the Cavaliers. For good measure, Steve Nash showed up at Oracle Arena to watch Game 1.
So you'd better believe Mike D'Antoni, the coach of the Suns from 2004-08, was among the nearly 18 million television viewers who watched the Finals opener.
"I like it because all the guys I was associated with are there," D'Antoni said. "That makes it fun. And it validates a little bit of what we did in Phoenix. It makes you feel good."
In some ways the Warriors and Cavaliers are here to finish what D'Antoni started. The league scoring average was 93.4 points per game in 2003-04. The Suns' average wasn't much better: 94.2. In 2004-05, the first year D'Antoni and Nash joined forces to inject a turbo boost in the Suns' offense, they hit triple digits on the scoreboard as often as the temperature reached triple digits outside in Phoenix, averaging 110 points per game. The rest of the NBA followed suit, and by 2008-09 the league-wide scoring average reached 100 points; it's hit the century mark three more times since then, including this season. It's reflected in the coaching carousel as well, as Gentry will take over the New Orleans Hornets after the Finals are through, and D'Antoni is being considered for the Denver Nuggets opening.
At first the Suns' high-powered offense couldn't break the "slow and steady wins the race" mentality. The San Antonio Spurs won titles in 2005 and 2007 -- beating D'Antoni's Suns along the way both times -- with teams that were near the bottom of the league in pace but at the top in defensive rating. In 2012, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra tapped former Suns assistant coach Phil Weber for advice, and the Heat opened their offense in the playoffs by taking an additional four 3-pointers per game from their regular-season average on their run to the first of their back-to-back championships. The 2013-14 Spurs were a top-10 team in pace and led the league in 3-point shooting.
"I think the league, the trend is to play that way," Nash said. "We were kind of the first, in a way. We didn't [get to the NBA Finals], but lots of teams have done it and improved on it."
A quick look at the profiles of this year's finalists shows you how the transformation is complete. The Warriors led the league in pace. The Cavaliers are third in offensive rating and one third of their shots are 3-pointers (a higher frequency than D'Antoni's first Suns team). After shaking off the rust from a week-long layoff, the two teams combined to play a highly entertaining series opener that featured 208 combined points, 58 3-point attempts, 24 fast-break points and 13 lead changes.
"[Game 1] was off the charts," D'Antoni said. "From individual play to great team play. That's what the NBA stands for now."
Sure, hardware is more important than software updates, and the Cavs and Warriors have two of the NBA's top components in LeBron James and Stephen Curry. Just don't underestimate the role that style has played in their success. As the league came around to the D'Antoni way, these two teams were able to flourish in the new environment.
"What happened is you see teams playing a stretch-4, adapting to the rules, coaches have changed their thinking so you're getting more and more pace and open court," Kerr said. "And the guys after Mike, [Gregg Popovich] and Erik Spoelstra, have taken a lot of those elements and applied them to their own personnel. I think the game has evolved. I think Mike deserves a ton of credit for the watchability of the NBA. I think it's way more fun to watch than it was 15 years ago. And Mike... he's the guy who triggered the changes."
Kerr wanted to blend the Suns' offense with the ability to highlight individual matchups through alignment that he experienced in the triangle offense while playing with the Chicago Bulls and the adaptable, fluid offense he played in San Antonio. Hiring Gentry demonstrated which system he valued the most.
"We were a team that played up-tempo," Gentry said of the Suns. "We wanted to pass the basketball."
These Warriors came to appreciate passing as well; they led the NBA in assists with 27 per game. And they also led the league in points, field goal percentage and 3-point percentage.
Meanwhile, with the Cavaliers, "There's many tenets of the way we built the Suns that I used with Cleveland for sure," Griffin said.
"The 3-point-shooting aspect of it was significant," he said. "Being able to put shooters around ball-dominant drivers and creators was significant. Having the history we had with that and the success we had with that helped a lot."
It was part of the rationale for giving David Blatt, the successful coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv, his first NBA head-coaching job.
"Blatt's philosophy coming over was real similar [to D'Antoni's]," Raja Bell said. "It was going to be ball movement, people movement and a lot of drawing and kick, and good first look. Mike wasn't one of those guys that believed in coming down and waiting. You got a look and it's a high percentage for you, you shoot it.
"We do a lot of that. We're a heavy iso team because we've got such great one-on-one players, but systematically and philosophy-wise, we want to play as much as we can the way Golden State does or the way Phoenix did."
D'Antoni's most radical departure from NBA orthodoxy was to go away from posting up big men. D'Antoni thought the low post player was inefficient, a stationary target that was easy for defenses to locate and double-team. The analytics wave that swept through front offices in the past decade came to the conclusion that the best thing a big man in the post could do was pass outside to someone for an open 3-pointer.
The Suns rolled with 6-foot-10, 245-pound Amar'e Stoudemire at center and 6-7, 220-pound Marion at power forward. That was exceptional then, commonplace now.
"There aren't as many bigs around as there used to be," Marion said. "Power forwards aren't like the power forwards of old. Now these guys are smaller, they don't really post up. You can't really name guys that post up now. Everything is a face-up jump shot now. We kind of reinvented the definition of a combo power forward."
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Marion doesn't get enough credit for his role in that re-invention -- or his role with the Suns. On the 2004-05 team, for example, he led them in rebounds and steals, and was third in made 3-pointers.
"Shawn was a guy who could help at the 3-point line, he could help at the paint, he could stop penetration," Griffin said. "He'd block shots. He'd get steals. He'd get us out on the break. I think people really underestimated how big a deal he was to us."
He almost had to do too much, covering up for the lack of defensive ability of his teammates or the lack of a coherent defensive scheme are the greatest knock on D'Antoni.
"One thing about our teams in Phoenix is we were never really high defensively, and I think that was kind of our downfall," Gentry said. "We never really got to that point where -- not being the best defensive team like we were here, we needed to be in the top 15, and we weren't. We were like in the bottom five. And I think that cost us down the stretch."
"I don't think the style itself could never win," Griffin said. "I certainly don't think our Suns teams not winning it were a statement that you couldn't win playing that way. They were a statement that you couldn't win playing that way at the cost of defense.
"It was the mindset. It wasn't something that was focal for us. What we wanted to do was to run your legs out from under you, and that was going to be the way we got key stops. It certainly worked. We had great success. But we weren't able to really pair a defensive scheme and a tempo. It just wasn't something that was emphasized at the time."
With the Warriors, Kerr built on the defensive foundation poured by his predecessor, Mark Jackson. He brought in Ron Adams -- who helped Tom Thibodeau make the Chicago Bulls such a tight defensive unit -- as an assistant and helped the Warriors get even better on defense.
"A team like Golden State, they're No. 1 in the league defensively, with an explosive offense like that," Bell said. "That's why they won so many games. That's what we were lacking [in Phoenix.]"
Don't sleep on Cleveland's defense, either. Heading into the Finals the Cavaliers have held opponents to the lowest scoring average in the playoffs.
Both Finals teams manage to be great on defense without viewing offense as a chore in between. They have vibrant, even joyful, offenses that have come to represent the ultimate manifestation of the D'Antoni system.
"Mike's offensive fingerprints are all over the league," Bell said.
And now they're in the NBA Finals, even if D'Antoni never touched them with his own hands.ToneTree is launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for its Oak augmented reality playground system. The Oak is a dock for your iPhone that turns any tabletop into an AR playspace.
The product brings together digital and physical toys to create an AR experience. Augmented reality is expected to become a $90 billion market by 2020, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital.
To get started, just place your iPhone on the Oak Dock, launch the Oak App, pick up an Oak Kit, and play. Oak comes with a variety of kits that let you immerse yourself in AR experiences, whether you want to play drums, fly through space, or create your own app.
The Rockstar Kit lets you play any instrument anywhere. Just place the included pads down in front of Oak and break out into a jam session. The Gamer Kit turns your table into a battlefield. Collect powerful AR trading cards, place them in front of the Oak, and watch them come to life as you battle your friends. The Explorer Kit lets you pilot your own spaceship. Use a toy ship to dodge asteroids and |
, firepower, and skill, today fnatic is grinding out event wins and victories via the battle-tested and serrated edges of their own battleaxes. Despite setbacks at nearly each event (i.e. close games or group stage defeats), they have seemingly never faltered to win in the end.
Part of this winning formula of course rests on the hindquarters of the CS:GO stallion that is olofmeister, but lately all five of the black-and-orange appareled team have been showing up to play good Counter-Strike.
IEM Katowice will kick off tomorrow and begin the rankings countdown for the month of March, but if all things hold their current course, expect the sails of fnatic to reach the offing first.
2. EnVyUs
EnVyUs benefit from their disastrous 7-8th place run at FACEIT S3 at DreamHack Winter 2015 disappearing after a three-month drain on their ranking and also from the fact that they did compete in February unlike Na`Vi and won the Game Show Global eSports Cup.
While we actually did not weigh the results of the Game Show Cup that heavily, nV were able to score best-of-three victories over CLG, Cloud9, dignitas (in the grand final), and most importantly, Astralis, to win the event.
EnVyUs take un petit saut to second place
However, viewers did see that the team lacked some of their former superiority as they lost to dignitas 0-2 in the group stages, dropped maps to CLG both times they faced off, and dropped a map to Astralis on the Frenchmen's way to winning the event.
The change in leadership seems to not have affected Happy, who can continue to enjoy the noncommittal life of "playing scrimmy" and then lurking around the map to pick up one Deags, although apEX has also been his usual mercurial self as of late.
nV do stand tall and proud in the ESL Pro League for now (at 4-2) and they also finished in fifth place at the ESL Barcelona Expo, however to be fair the team were a victim of the strange format as they played fnatic a total of three times (and took one of those maps).
Therefore, EnVyUs have edged up to take second place and now stand ready to challenge fnatic for first, which a win in Katowice would do well to help bolster.
3. Natus Vincere
Natus Vincere actually did not play in offline competitions in February and seemingly laid back to relax after a victory at the DreamHack ZOWIE Open in Leipzig towards the end of January.
Perhaps such uninhibited leisure leads to unwise gambling and a slackening of skill as Na`Vi currently stand at 4-4 in the ESL Pro League, placing the currently third best team in the world below a number of other competitors.
Like a deer in headlights, Na`Vi froze in place in February
With a heavily stacked Group A awaiting them at IEM Katowice, Zeus and crew have a chance to take down their rivals and regain second or to slip up and possibly drop down to the usual 4-5th range they were inhabiting in late 2015.
4. Astralis
Astralis have to swallow bitter medicine and yet again contend with a fourth place ranking, as a team once billed as possibly being the best in the world has put up middling results since rebranding into their current partial player-owned organisation.
"The players on our team whose names start with d seem to love BDSM."
At the Game Show Cup, which once again was not counted too heavily in our rankings, Astralis were definite contenders to take gold but unfortunately matched up against EnVyUs in the semifinals as the French team were unable to top their own group. A close 2-1 series followed which went nV's way and the Danes had to contend with a third place finish over CLG.
A good portent from that event however was the return of duo device and dupreeh to strong form, as both players put up 1.20 and 1.18 ratings respectively.
The Danes have a strong 6-2 record in the ESL Pro League, but on the other hand were absolutely bodied by fnatic in the Aftonbladet Fight Night #3. This inability to match up against their erstwhile rivals is reflected in the finish of ESL Barcelona, where the two teams were the only two remaining but Astralis lost two close matches to settle for second place at the event.
Astralis are certainly not dropping off, but rather the team have entered a holding pattern around fourth place and for now are seeking answers that will move them ahead of their other competition.
5. Luminosity
Luminosity not only mirror Natus Vincere in always somehow being in the Eastern European team's group at big events but also in the fact that they did not attend offline events in February.
coldzera helps get that cheddar like whatever (just not in February)
The Brazilian team hold a healthy 4-0 record in the ESL Pro League and they have also been spotted bootcamping well in advance of IEM Katowice, so all signs point to yet another strong performance this weekend from FalleN & crew.
For now however, they rest easy in the fifth place berth: a Brazilian team who dared to dream big and who now sit over legendary European figureheads such as NiP and Virtus.pro.
6. dignitas
dignitas are the hottest prospect of 2016 so far, at least for teams above the top five.
Following a strong performance in Leipzig, the Danish-Norwegian team entered February with a performance at the Game Show Cup that saw them finish second, entirely new ground for MSL and crew.
The failure to qualify for the Major ended the month with a bitter aftertaste for dig
The high tide of this achievement was defeating a floundering EnVyUs 2-0 in the group stage, as CLG proved to be easy fare in the semifinal, and dignitas then could not handle the French giants in the grand final.
In ESL Barcelona, dignitas finished a decent fourth place, however it cannot be stated enough that the flippant format of that event writes down the maturity of the results in Spain.
Finally, the MLG Main Qualifier brought tragedy as dignitas entered the event as the highest ranked team attending and yet fell flat against both Renegades and Cloud9 to exit the tournament early and thus hold no chance of attending the Major.
Without slots at IEM Katowice or MLG Columbus therefore, dignitas are in serious danger of losing this distinction as sixth best team in the world come the end of March.
7. Virtus.pro
dignitas moved up a slot over Virtus.pro, however this fact was more due to the Poles' horrendous form as of late as well as their last best result (a 3-4th finish at FACEIT Stage 3) falling out of the calculation.
Thought you'd never see this guy go 3-20 at an offline game? Think again.
Virtus.pro did not attend an offline event in February but the team's 1-11 record in the ESL Pro League is so beyond bad, it is egregiously awful. Such records normally summon to mind the likes of SKDC and PENTA in Pro League results, not a team who managed to win numerous events in 2015 and always challenged the top teams.
All eyes will be on Virtus.pro at IEM Katowice, to see whether the team have simply thrown in the towel on their Pro League qualification chances, or are disintegrating as a whole.
8. G2
The G2 organisation aptly signed ex-Titan on February 1st and the French-Belgian team then travelled to Vilnius where they finished 5-6th place (defeating Cloud9 twice, losing to Astralis in a close series, and then losing to CLG in the quarter-finals).
Such results were hardly stellar but they were a step up in form compared to Ex6TenZ & co.'s ennui in January, where they were smashed at StarSeries XIV with a 7-8th place finish (admittedly in a tough group).
In Barcelona meanwhile, G2 finished third place partially thanks to an "Alliance" system that saw them throw fellow Frenchmen of nV under the bus with a further notable result being a best-of-one defeat of Astralis.
G2 qualified for the Major with two close best-of-one games
Part of the team's climb is of course attributable to the fall of fairly inactive lineups such as FaZe and NiP, however G2 solidified their upward growth in the final weekend of February at the MLG Main Qualifier with victories over Tempo Storm and FlipSid3, putting a rowdy young upstart in their place and dispatching a consistently top 15 team, in other words.
It is hard to say if G2 can keep up this trend of growth and they will not be playing at this weekend's IEM Katowice. However, the team are into the Major unlike dignitas (who sit two spots above them) and have a whole month to prepare and try and do damage.
9. mousesports
A team mainly composed of Germans led by a nineteen-year-old Bosnian superstar who calls in English sounds like a recipe for disaster and yet it has somehow worked so far.
NiKo and his team had two event highlights in February: they won the Acer Predator Masters Season 2 finals which had mostly tier two teams in attendance aside from mouz and they managed to qualify for MLG Columbus in two best-of-ones by taking down YP and HellRaisers, with the latter game getting close.
The big German teddy bear was a huge factor at the MLG Qualifier
mousesports have not fared well in the ESL Pro League so far as they sit at 1-3 but the team are among the many in the top fifteen who will also be competing this weekend at IEM Katowice.
Good calls and performance by NiKo and strong efforts by the equally capable chrisJ and nex could continue to strengthen the team's hold on a top ten position.
10. FaZe
All FaZe have done in February is win two online games against Virtus.pro, but then again who hasn't.
The pan-European team will debut in the relatively easier Group B this weekend at IEM Katowice and the world will get to inspect how the team have developed since they were last seen at DreamHack Leipzig finishing in 5-6th place.
For now, point decay has moved them down two spots.
11. NiP
NiP have taken a nosedive due to an increasing period of inactivity, although their past achievements in the last 12 months continue to prop them up above the drowning point.
The Swedish team, with their newfound addition pyth, hold a pretty solid 5-1 record in the ESL Pro League, but their real test will come this weekend where they are drawn in a stacked Group A at IEM Katowice.
12. Cloud9
The world saw Cloud9 with Stewie2K debut at an offline event in early February via the Game Show Global eSports Cup, and the world was generally disappointed. The team finished in 5-6th place, losing to G2 twice and only defeating the paltry Russian team Method (who were using stand-ins).
Stewie2k looked more comfortable in his play by the month's end
What was more disconcerting however was the noticeable lack of T-side execution and strategy, something which n0thing has personally admitted to in a video released by the North American team.
The team were further shamed by failing to qualify for IEM Katowice or DreamHack Masters Malmö, both times losing to Tempo Storm of Brazil as well as losing a final decider for the latter event to rivals CLG.
Skadoodle and his team hold their 12th place form however, as they went into the MLG Main Qualifier and following an early loss to Gambit, managed to take down favourites dignitas in a best-of-one and then survive a best-of-three battle against Renegades.
13. CLG
CLG rocket back into the top 15 after a strong showing at the Game Show Cup and a successful qualification bid for the Major alongside their fellow North American brethren.
The team have clearly benefitted from the leading of Faruk "pita" Pita as well as the growing form of both jdm64 and tarik, with the former playing well in Vilnius and the latter on point in Columbus.
reltuC has also been developing into that rarest of players in North America: a formidable support. A successful qualification bid for DreamHack Masters Malmö didn't hurt either and thus CLG have enjoyed a three spot growth.
14. FlipSid3
FlipSid3 have had an off-and-on February. Not many remember them attending the Game Show Cup (they did) where they were dismantled and de_stroyed, having to contend with a 7-8th place finish.
The team reappeared in Krefeld, Germany for APM Season 2 and actually did quite well, finishing in second place after convincing victories over E-frag.net, HellRaisers, and CSGL. The fact that teammate markeloff had to leave before the grand final only further limits any damage caused from losing to mousesports in the end.
Shara stickers PogChamp
However, the Ukrainian team's greatest achievement in the month was perhaps qualifying for the next Major, as they survived a close loss to G2 in their group to play a decider match where they humiliated the rising threat of Tempo Storm. Newcomer Shara has also appeared to play strong Counter-Strike lately.
15. Liquid
Liquid hold onto their top fifteen spot despite nearly being supplanted by the rising fortunes of Mihail "Dosia" Stolyarov's Gambit squad.
Unlike CLG and Cloud9, Liquid were not in attendance at the GEC Cup and only appeared at the end of the month to narrowly qualify for the Major, in a tournament where newest addition s1mple strongly underperformed.
The team will be forced to continue using Eric "adreN" Hoag for the time being (at the Major for example), however their fortunes should rise if they continue to play with all players not slacking (and especially when koosta begins to consistently play with the squad).
You can also see which teams round up the Top 20 over at our dedicated Team ranking page.
March 2016 begins with a massive event, the $250,000+ IEM Katowice, in which almost all of the teams in our top ten and a few beyond that will be taking part.
The month will go quiet afterwards, with only the Counter Pit Season 2 finals and Copenhagen Games taking place for second tier teams, and most teams will hibernate in anticipation of the MLG Columbus Major which will get under way on March 29.
stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on TwitterDavid Rockefeller was many things to many people. As the last surviving grandchild of American oil tycoon John D. Rockfeller, David Rockefeller spent his life engaging in a variety of philanthropic works. He was also the head of Chase Manhattan bank for over a decade. But not everyone counts themselves as a fan of the late billionaire, who died Monday at the age of 101.
Long the target of so-called “conspiracy theorists,” David Rockefeller has been characterized as a leading proponent of globalism, one-world government, and a “New World Order.” According to Infowars, a popular conspiracy site founded by Alex Jones, David Rockefeller even bragged in his memoirs about his desire to unite the world behind a single governing body.
“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will,” David Rockefeller wrote in Memoirs. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
<> on November 4, 2013 in New York City.
The New York Times, in its obituary for David Rockefeller, spent little time examining the various charges that Rockefeller was involved in plans to try and control the world under one united governing force and instead opted to focus on his philanthropy. They briefly mention Rockefeller’s involvement in the Council on Foreign Relations and his founding in 1973 of the Trilateral Commission, but do not explain what those entities are. They are independent bodies which seek to influence governments all over the world and which seem to yield tremendous power for non-elected, private, non-governmental entities. Given the number of high-ranking members of American government over the years who have been involved with these groups, the idea is not incredibly far-fetched. George H.W. Bush, for example, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the 1970s.
According to New Left Project, Noam Chomsky described Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission in harsh terms.
“Essentially liberal internationalists from Europe, Japan, and the United States, the liberal wing of the intellectual elite. That’s where Jimmy Carter’s whole government came from. The Trilateral Commission was concerned with trying to induce what they called ‘more moderation in democracy’ — turn people back to passivity and obedience so they don’t put so many constraints on state power and so on,” Chomsky wrote. “In particular they were worried about young people. They were concerned about the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young (that’s their phrase), meaning schools, universities, church and so on—they’re not doing their job, [the young are] not being sufficiently indoctrinated. They’re too free to pursue their own initiatives and concerns and you’ve got to control them better.”
One rumor about David Rockefeller that persists despite there being no evidence for its validity is that Rockefeller has been the recipient of seven heart transplants over the course of his life. According to Heavy, this rumor was started by an admitted satire site called World News Daily Report. It was later furthered by a site called AnonHQ, which is loosely affiliated with the hacking group, Anonymous.
It’s understandable why the rumor of David Rockefeller having had multiple heart transplants is alluring. People in need of heart transplants often have to wait a long time for one to become available, leading to a lot of uncertainty and pain. The idea that an inconceivably wealthy man could just walk right up to the hospital and have a new heart implanted on demand fits nicely into the narrative that the privileged and powerful live under a different set of rules than the rest of us.
However, there is zero evidence that David Rockefeller ever had a single heart transplant, let alone seven of them. It’s possible, but one can only speculate since medical records are by law kept private in the United States. Given the way that false information spreads on the internet, it’s no surprise that a rumor like this would spread so easily. However, there are known facts about Rockefeller’s life and his involvement with powerful proponents of globalism that are more in need of close examination than a silly story about alleged heart transplants that probably never took place. Perhaps this could be a lesson that people need to be more careful with the information they consume and share.
Globalist banker David Rockefeller died Monday at the age of 101. [Image by Jason Kempin/Getty Images]
[Featured Image by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images]BEIRUT, Lebanon — Does Islam allow girls to play tag? What about soccer?
Such questions have suddenly become points of public policy in Saudi Arabia as public schools in the ultraconservative kingdom prepare, for the first time in their history, to offer physical education for girls.
The Saudi education ministry said on Tuesday that P.E. for girls would start with the coming academic year, marking a slight loosening of the rules in a country that has long had one of the world’s most restrictive environments for women.
The announcement did not detail what activities would be offered, but said they would be introduced gradually and “in accordance with the rules of sharia,” or Islamic law.
Because of the kingdom’s desert traditions and strict interpretation of Islam, women in Saudi Arabia must cover their hair and bodies in public, and are barred from driving and from traveling abroad and undergoing some medical treatments without the permission of a male guardian — usually a father, husband or even a son.Tucked in yesterday's post about Android Support Library v23.2 were a couple of screenshots, posted on the Android Developer's Blog, of an unreleased Android version. How do we know? Because there's a hamburger button in the Bluetooth settings section, a button that doesn't exist on Marshmallow, but that we're able to confirm is there on Android N.
This hamburger button does what hamburger buttons do: it opens the side drawer. The drawer has a list of all the settings sections so instead of going back to the main settings screen and choosing one, you can simply open the drawer, tap a new section, and jump to it immediately.
Hamburgers everywhere!
It's arguable whether that's faster or not, but what's even a little more jarring is the fact that the drawer won't exist in the main settings screen — it would be redundant. Google has been adamant about developers making the drawer a constant across their apps, not something that's accessible from one screen and not from another. But it wouldn't be the first time it broke its own rules, so it could easily go with a navigation drawer that's only accessible in settings sections and not the main screen.
In any case, given Google's track record with Android M Previews, we know the company could be testing something for a while and not implementing it in the final version. That might be the case here or the hamburger button could live on through to the final N. Only time will tell.In its action plan for the Paris COP21 meet, India pledges to reduce its carbon intensity -- a measure of a country's emissions relative to its economic output -- by 35% by 2030 (AFP Photo/Money Sharma)
Its Himalayan glaciers are melting fast, its agricultural heartland is drying up and its capital is choking on the world’s filthiest air.
Yet India’s government is one of the few major economies refusing to pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of this month’s major climate conference in Paris.
Global warming is already changing the face of rapidly developing India, a nation forecast to become the world’s most populous, overtaking China, in less than a decade.
“No one has done less to contribute to global warming than India and Africa. No one can be more conscious of climate change than Indians and Africans,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a recent Delhi summit.
– Melting glaciers –
In the Himalayas of Kashmir, scientist Shakil Ahmad Romshoo fears for the future of the pristine region which relies heavily on its more than 100 glaciers for water.
At least two major ones have disappeared completely in the last 50 years, while those in a key basin have shrunk by more than 27 percent over the same period, Romshoo’s studies show.
“The impact of climate change in Kashmir is loud and clear. We have noticed a significant decline in stream flow from the glaciers,” the glaciologist, from the University of Kashmir, told AFP.
In villages nestled in the foothills downstream, less water flowing into rivers and ponds has forced farmers to completely change their way of life.
Instead of rice paddies dotting the landscape, farmers have switched to growing apples which use less water, raising concerns about a drop in India’s grain supplies.
As snow melts faster on the peaks from warmer temperatures, farmers, who have stuck with traditional crops, have been thrown into turmoil.
“All the snow melt on the mountains now melts away by April when we actually start needing it for agriculture,” said Haji Mohammad Rajab Dar in Chandigam village.
“I used to get 230 to 260 sacks of rice from my fields. It is reduced to just 90 this year,” the 70-year-old said, explaining that his land is not conducive to growing apples.
“So we are ruined and turning into beggars slowly.”
– Shrinking coastline –
India’s landscapes are changing — from the melt in the Himalayas, to the increasingly arid farm belts in the middle and the stunning coasts where fishermen talk of rising, warmer seas eroding their shores.
“Changes in sea level and temperature have affected our livelihood. Over the last decade, the amount of fish caught has reduced by 40 percent,” said Ayub Hajji whose family has been fishing off Gujarat’s coast for generations.
India says developed countries are mostly to blame for climate change, and heaping demands on developing nations to cut emissions is both unfair and hypocritical.
Authorities insist they must focus on meeting the growing needs of its 1.25 billion people, 300 million of whom lack access to electricity.
In its action plan for the Paris COP21 meet, India pledges to reduce its carbon intensity — a measure of a country’s emissions relative to its economic output — by 35 percent by 2030, rather than an absolute cut in emissions.
Globally, India is the third largest carbon-emitting country — though its per capita emissions are only one third of the international average — according to the World Resources Institute.
– Gasping for breath –
While the government has an ambitious programme to ramp its use of renewables, including solar energy, it has also vowed to continue expanding its use of coal.
It plans to double coal production to one billion tonnes by 2020 — saying it was vital to meet the needs of its burgeoning economy, which grew seven percent last quarter.
But the increasing emissions are taking their toll on health, with Delhi now officially the world’s most polluted capital, a problem compounded by the steady rise in car ownership.
At one of Delhi’s leading chest hospitals, Dr Manu Madan said the corridors are full of patients suffering asthma and other ailments linked to the dirty air.
“We see more than 600 patients a day in the out-patients department,” said Madan, who normally skips lunch to try to keep the queues down.
Madan said his team from the Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute are bracing for winter, when heavy cloud cover traps the pollution.
“Children suffer the most because of less immunity. At least two to three months during the winter are the worst. In many cases, we recommend they move out of Delhi.”
– Fields dry up –
In the fields of western Maharashtra state, large numbers of farmers are reeling from erratic rains which experts suspect are linked to climate change.
Sudden heavy downpours followed by weeks of no rain at all are accelerating topsoil erosion and leading to less fertile and even barren fields, said Shantaram Sakore, director of a local farmers’ NGO.
With no access to irrigation and heavily reliant on the annual monsoon, farmers are increasingly competing to dig deeper borewells to tap groundwater to cope with drought.
“Collectively they have depleted the ground water level substantially,” said Sakore, calling for more education on climate change.
Rice farmer Narayan Nipurte, from Thane district north of Mumbai, knows little of the complexities of global warming. But he understands the drier monsoons are making it more difficult to feed his family.
“There will be some seasons when there is no rain, so what do you do?” Nipurte asked.Bitch about traffic.
Look, we get it. We live with it every day. Somehow a city of three million people has four million cars on the highway at any given moment.
But you know what? That biker splattered across four lanes of the 10 isn’t going to pull himself back together and hobble to the shoulder because you’ve got “Book of Mormon” tickets. LA is an automobile town, and that comes with certain costs. Like taking an hour to drive ten miles. Like planning ahead.
If you’re caught on the 405 during Carmageddon, put on some music, roll the windows down, and relax. Or better yet, do what we do and find your way around it…
Get lost and ignore our advice.
…Because yeah, we’re really good at going around it. We all laughed when SNL put out “The Californians,” but the next conversation was about the validity of the directions they listed. When we get in a car, we know where the hell we’re going. On any given day, there’s a Dodgers game, a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and a movie premiere at LA Live. Maybe all three. And on those days, we still make it from Downtown to North Hollywood in time to catch the tail end of the car chase on channel 4.
So when we’re riding shotgun with our Waze app open, and we make a suggestion, it’s a good idea to listen to it. It may sound unorthodox. It may sound downright wrong. But trust us. We’ve been around the block once or twice. Actually, you know what? We never go around the block more than once.
Say we’re not a real city.
Los Angeles is big. Bigger than the next few biggest cities in America combined, actually. And yeah, it takes an hour on a good day to go from Santa Monica to Long Beach. Yeah, those are both technically cities in their own right. But that doesn’t mean your hometown is somehow a more valid metropolis than mine (lookin’ at you, Chicagoans and San Franciscans).
Los Angeles has its fair share of urban sprawl, but you don’t call a tall guy a collection of limbs just because the blood’s gotta flow a bit longer to the feet. And don’t bother telling us you like San Francisco better. We wish you’d stayed there.
Say we have no culture of our own.
So what if we’ve got everything from a Koreatown to a Little Ethiopia? So what if the city itself is only 200 years old? We’re the entertainment capital of the world. We’ve got over 300 professional theatres, many of which you’ve probably heard of before.
We’ve got LACMA, we’ve got the Getty, we’ve got the Disney Concert Hall and the Philharmonic. Tourists stand in line for half an hour just to try a Pink’s Hot Dog. We have one of the most important bases of hip-hop in America — only New York bothers to compete, and if Kendrick Lamar is any authority on the matter, we’re kinda winning right now.
But yeah dude, tell me again that Los Angeles has no culture. Just do me a favor and take off that fucking Lakers hat when you do it.
Ask if we know any celebrities.
Did you not just hear me? You really missed the whole part about how there’s so much more to Los Angeles than Hollywood? Typical. Half the time, when people talk about hating LA, they couldn’t name much more than the Hollywood sign and the Chinese Theatre.
Fun fact: We hate those places too. There’s a reason “Take Fountain” is practically a meme in LA. We avoid that tourist trap at all costs, because as difficult as it is to imagine, we’re people, and we dislike piss-smelling people dressed as Spider-Man getting all up in our face. What you consider a novelty is just a day in the life for us.
Celebrities too. So even if we have seen Randy Jackson picking out a new jacket at the Beverly Center, we don’t want to have a conversation about it. Who cares?
Get away with jaywalking.
I had a minor panic attack the first time I went to Southeast Asia. Cars were zipping past, and these people just walked, just walked, into traffic. The cars slowed for them and everybody went on their merry way as if they hadn’t just nearly killed an entire intersection. And the cop did nothing!
In LA, cops seem to have nothing better to do than write tickets for jaywalking. So after a certain conditioning point, you just stop doing it. It’s not worth it. The crosswalk is seriously right there, and you don’t have to nervously glance over your shoulder when you take it.
But every so often, somebody forgets they’re not in Southeast Asia (metaphorically folks, not trying to bring race into it) and runs into the street, forcing you to slow down and miss the next light. And there’s not even a cop around to write them a ticket. One of these days, I’m not going to slow down.
Bring up our history of racism and crime.
We hate the LAPD sometimes. Especially when they write us jaywalking tickets. They can be arbitrary, trigger-happy, occasionally racist assholes. But you know what? They’re our arbitrary, trigger-happy, occasionally racist assholes. We know they fuck up sometimes, but Christopher Dorner going on a rampage and citing alleged corruption doesn’t make you an authority on their rare-but-spectacular failings.
We know Rodney King happened. We know OJ happened. When you bring it up, we don’t start trashing our own city’s overworked law enforcement with you. We wonder what bullshit your city’s hiding in its campaign for collective sainthood.
No, Los Angeles isn’t perfect. There’s still plenty of leftover racial tension in Koreatown and Watts, but it’s the best it’s been in a long time. Telling the fat kid he’s fat doesn’t help him lose weight, and telling a recovering racist asshole that he’s a racist asshole has never worked out well for anybody.
Cheer for the wrong team / be a bandwagon fan.
In LA, we like sports. But it’s important to know which sports when you’re talking to us, because we’re the kind of people who start riots if our team loses. Hell, we start riots if our team wins. If history teaches us anything, it’s that Angelenos are pretty damn good at rioting.
Depending on which side of town you’re on, you could be rooting for the Bruins or the Trojans, and it’s even harder to spot the difference between a Lakers fan and a Clippers fan. If you can’t, well, just avoid the Staples Center altogether.
Rooting for the Dodgers and the Kings is a pretty safe bet…but don’t be a bandwagon fan. Just don’t. We’ve all been to Hollywood and we can spot fake a mile away. That Kings jersey you’re wearing is clearly less than a year old. Just get out.
Say hella.
Unlike most other cities (lookin’ your way again, Chicago), Angelenos are pretty good about singing the praises of their neighbors. We’ve got nothing to prove, so we don’t mind saying that San Francisco is an absolutely beautiful place. If Southern California is all about the flash and sexy substance, then Northern California is the warmth and reassuring comfort. Whatever San Francisco feels about LA, we are okay with them.
So why do you need to ruin it by saying “hella” in every sentence? What kind of a word is that? People from NorCal use it to replace the word “very.” What did “very” ever do to you? For an area that holds two of the best universities in the world, NorCalers sure don’t shy away from sounding stupid. To any self-respecting Angeleno, “hella” is like nails on a chalkboard. And even the chillest bros on the beach can only listen to that for so long.Light novels, which are roughly equivalent to young adult fiction in the west, are increasingly being used as the basis for both manga and anime series. Luckily for us, there's been an interest in translating and publishing them for English-speaking audiences. That's good news for both those who want to see the original form of a story and for bibliophiles, and each month brings both new and continuing series so that we've got a respectable catalogue of titles.
Despite the increase in their publication, fewer light novels come out each month than manga volumes, and they also take longer to read. That means that we'll be covering them a bit differently: just one preview for each of the new series. We can't neglect the fact that there are some very interesting continuing volumes as well, so do bear in mind that the final volume of Spice and Wolf comes out in June, along with the first book to go beyond what was adapted into anime for Overlord. (It has a pretty promising title as well – “The Lizardman Heroes.”) Likewise new volumes of The Rising of the Shield Hero and Sword Oratoria are due in June, as well as the next installment of Nisioisin's monogatari franchise. Sadly even I can't read quite that many books and have time to write them up, so here are the new series starting in the months of April, May, and June.
April
Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers volume 1 by Ishio Yamagata, YenOn $14.00
This mystery/fantasy hybrid is making its debut after its anime adaptation, so the major plot twist may already be known to potential readers. Even if you are aware of it, however, this is still worth reading, if only for the characterization of Adlet and the fact that it is devoid of game-jargon. A straight fantasy novel rather than an isekai story, the plot follows a group of seven people claiming to each be a chosen “Brave,” a special warrior who will drive back evil and protect the kingdom. Since no one is willing to admit to being the fake, this turns all of the Braves against each other, and while they're all suspicious of point-of-view character Adlet, we as readers know that he's not the fake. The result is a solid mix of both genres, with the main gripe being that it really is pretty difficult to solve the actual mystery on a first read-through. (So it's not a cozy, basically.) The art, unfortunately, really doesn't fit with the tone of the writing and the end of the book throws in a wrench that kind of makes you feel like Ishio Yamagata wasn't initially planning to make this a series and needed to give the story a reason to continue. But on the whole this is a good book and just different enough from the other light novel fantasies on the market to merit reading.
May
Your name by Makoto Shinkai, YenOn $20.00
I haven't seen the film yet, but Makoto Shinkai wrote both movie and novel almost concurrently and it was only the differences in publishing a book and releasing a film that gave one any precedence over the other. Although I feel like there are aspects of this story that would work better in an audio/visual medium – specifically point-of-view issues – there's no denying that this is a beautiful story regardless. The story follows Taki and Mitsuha, two high school students who one day suddenly swap lives and bodies, living as each other for random days. Although neither can quite figure out each others’ lives, they do become fond enough of each other that when the switches suddenly stop, Taki grows hysterical. As he tries desperately to find the girl he's realizing he's come to love, he makes a terrible discovery that makes reuniting seem impossible. But really, “impossible” is just another word, and Sh |
sense," Paul said. "The money we would save extracting our fighting men and women and our equipment from overseas conflicts and regions will more than offset the savings you seek by upending the manner in which veterans receive care."A new generation of CZW is kicking off … and Pro Wrestling Sheet has learned Sami Callihan recently took over their creative team to help lead them into the future.
Sources tell us Callihan and his team will be handling creative/promotional decisions from now on, while CZW Prez DJ Hyde will focus on managing all the back-end business aspects of the company.
The company has long been known for promoting death matches, something that was covered last year in a popular Vice documentary, and stuff like Tournament of Death/Cage of Death will still be happening — but we’re told they’ll no longer be featured as the forefront of the company.
CZW’s new generation kicked off this weekend after independent wrestlers Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Lio Rush won the company’s top two titles.
Excited for a change in the Combat Zone? Sound off in the comments.At Doctor on Demand, a popular online health site, patients can videoconference with physicians on a host of maladies, from skin rashes and flu diagnoses to getting a prescription for an eye infection. On Maven, a telemedicine app targeted to women, nurse practitioners chat with patients on issues such as birth control, breast feeding and postpartum depression. Opternative offers online eye exams that it says are just as accurate as in-person tests. It’s a boom time for telehealth. Just as smartphone apps have revolutionized ride-hailing and apartment-sharing, telemedicine technology is upending health care.
States have been playing catch-up. As recently as 2011, only 11 states had telehealth parity laws, which require that insurers reimburse telehealth providers exactly as they would for an in-person visit. Today, 29 states and the District of Columbia have parity laws. In those jurisdictions, if a patient with a sore throat wants to confirm she has a strep infection and receive a prescription for antibiotics, it makes no difference to insurance companies whether the visit occurs over the computer or in an office. Forty-eight state Medicaid programs (every state but Connecticut and Rhode Island) offer some form of coverage for telemedicine. Congress is expected to take up legislation this year that would expand telehealth coverage for Medicare enrollees.
More than 200 telemedicine bills were introduced in state legislatures in 2015. Not all of them passed, but it has “given an indication that the time has come to have [the telemedicine] conversation,” says Jonathan Linkous, CEO of the American Telemedicine Association.
Despite the momentum, there are still plenty of gaps and question marks when it comes to telehealth policy. The 21 states without a parity law aren’t uniformly liberal or conservative. Kansas, South Carolina and Utah don’t have one, but neither do Illinois or Pennsylvania. Massachusetts, a state known for progressive health-care policies, doesn’t have a parity law. It currently only covers telemedicine under Medicaid with certain managed care plans, and not for fee-for-service payments.
Even among states that do have parity laws, the patchwork of policies can vary widely from one state to the next. Texas, for example, requires insurers to cover telehealth, but it mandates that a patient’s first appointment with a new doctor must be an in-person visit. Within Medicaid programs, about half of the states require that a patient be in a medical facility for telehealth appointments, rather than at home. The differences among states can be frustrating for telemedicine providers. Kofi Jones, vice president of public relations and government affairs for the telehealth company American Well, says she has 30 binders in her office filled with state-by-state regulations and legislation. “I’m waiting for the day when parity laws are uniform across the country,” she says. “I suspect it’ll continue to be a slog, but when that day comes, I’m having a binder-burning party.”
Traditional health-care providers can be slow to integrate new technology. After all, almost half of doctor’s offices polled in 2013 still used paper records, according to a survey from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Other recent surveys have found that only 2 percent of patients nationwide have access to video visits with their primary care physician. Less than half -- 45 percent -- even receive a traditional phone appointment reminder.
But the explosion of born-online health-care services is fueling a rising consumer demand for more telehealth options. Telemedicine advocates see it as a way to cut down emergency room visits and increase health-care access for rural patients. Many in the medical community, however, maintain strong concerns about patient privacy and overall quality of care. As states move toward more inclusive telehealth policies, they must confront those issues along with a more basic question: Just how good is the medical care you get over the phone?
Florida is the nation’s third most populous state. And with its large population of seasonal snowbirds and transplanted retirees, Florida presumably has a lot of people who would like to seek medical help from their doctor back home. But the state, which doesn’t have a parity law, is like “the Wild West” when it comes to telehealth, says Christian Caballero of the Telehealth Association of Florida, a trade group formed last year to push for parity legislation in the state. The association in July received a planning grant from the state Health Resources and Services Administration to implement telehealth options in north Florida, which is more rural and underserved than other parts of the state. “When you give people health care on the front end, that just drives down the overall costs of health care,” says Caballero. “Now it’s up to us to give people in underserved areas those options.”
Florida lawmakers have considered telehealth bills in recent years, but none of the measures have become law. Advocates were optimistic about a proposed telemedicine bill last year, because unlike previous proposals, it stripped out language that would have required Medicaid to reimburse providers at the same rate as for in-person visits. But the bill died in committee.
The difficulty in passing legislation in Florida echoes broader conversations about telemedicine across the country. In many cases, doctors have urged caution when it comes to adopting new technologies. The American Optometric Association, for instance, has come out hard against online eye exams, calling them a “substandard model of care.” The American Medical Association (AMA) is more open to telemedicine but has taken a cautious approach. The group released recommended guidelines for telehealth coverage and payment in 2014, but held off on releasing an ethics policy in November after concerns were raised that the draft proposed wasn’t thorough enough. “This is something I’m passionate about, and I’ve been engaged with it for a while,” says AMA board member Jack Resnick. “But we need to make sure that we’re doing it right -- telehealth can’t just become another silo in health care. It’s important to us that a physician using telehealth practices understands a patient’s full medical history and is able to coordinate that care with their other providers.”
The problem, Resnick says, is that telehealth appointments are often “one-off visits, where information isn’t relayed back to that person’s primary care provider.” Mobile telemedicine apps may or may not catalog a patient’s health data from one session to the next; regardless, it’s up to the patient whether she chooses to share that information with her primary physician. “That’s bad care,” says Resnick, “and a potential hazard of telemedicine.”
SOURCE: American Telemedicine Association
There’s also the issue of privacy when it comes to patient data. Many medical professionals worry about the potential for hackers to access and expose patients’ sensitive medical information. Some private companies, including American Well, Doxy.me and Teladoc, offer HIPAA-compliant interfaces for physicians to use -- at no cost, in some cases -- which the companies say are safe and reliable ways to protect information. The concern over hackers is legitimate but overblown, says Robert Pearl, chairman of the Council of Accountable Physician Practices. And patients aren’t likely to care anyway: “If someone were to hack into your health and financial information, most people would be more freaked out over financial information,” he says. “Yet that possibility doesn’t stop people from online banking and ordering from Amazon.”
Cross-state licensure is another big issue that has stymied telehealth expansion in the past: How can a physician licensed in Virginia treat a patient who lives in New Mexico? But that, too, is changing rapidly. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, an agreement initiated by the Federation of State Medical Boards, provides an expedited way for doctors to have their licenses recognized by multiple states. Since the compact was introduced in late 2014, a dozen states have signed on -- Wisconsin became the 12th in December -- and bills are pending in at least nine more states. It’s easy to imagine that in a very short time, a doctor who’s licensed to practice anywhere in the country will be licensed to practice everywhere in the country.
Telehealth advocates don’t imagine e-health ever fully replacing face-to-face interactions between patients and physicians. Instead, the idea is for video chats, texts and phone calls to become more seamlessly integrated into the existing health-care system. Linkous, the American Telemedicine Association CEO, has been with the group since it was founded in 1993, when telemedicine mostly involved primary care physicians in rural areas communicating in real-time with a specialist in the next big city. As technology has advanced over the past 20 years, attitudes and expectations have changed too. That will continue to happen, Linkous says. “Who nowadays would ever use a bank that makes you come in to a branch to access your money? Five years from now the question will be, ‘Who is going to go to a doctor’s office that makes you come in every single time you have the sniffles?’”Posted on by Chris Brennan ---
Episode 129 of the podcast features an interview with Dorian Greenbaum about the recent discovery of a new horoscope from Egypt that dates to the 4th century CE.
In September of 2017 Dorian Greenbaum and Alexander Jones published a paper on the discovery through the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, titled P.Berl. 9825: An elaborate horoscope for 319 CE and its significance for Greek astronomical and astrological practice.
The chart contains a number of interesting and unique features, such as zodiacal subdivisions and lots, which we discuss during the course of the interview.
Below you will find the show notes, which contain an outline of some of the points that we touched on in the discussion, followed by links to download or stream the recording of this episode of the podcast at the bottom of the page.
Show Notes
Introducing Dorian and talking a bit about her background. Received her PhD from the Warburg Institute in 2009. The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence Expanded version published by Brill in 2015: The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence
New discovery of a papyrus birth chart that dates to the 4th century CE. The chart is unique for several reasons. Is an elaborate or “deluxe” horoscope. Positions to the degree and minute, plus zodiacal subdivisions. Only about 26 deluxe horoscopes survive. Contains the seven Hermetic lots mentioned by Paulus Alexandrinus. Also calculates the Master of the Nativity.
Paper is titled “P.Berl. 9825: An elaborate horoscope for 319 CE and its significance for Greek astronomical and astrological practice” Published September 2017 by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Co-authored with Alexander Jones, who discovered the papyrus in the Berlin archives.
Background on other surviving horoscopes from antiquity. Around 350 Greek horoscopes survive from antiquity. They say there are 446 extant horoscopic texts total from antiquity. Several collections of ancient horoscopes have been published.
About the Greco-Roman “horoscopes”. Horoscope as a generic term for “chart” ( thema ) here. Distinction between literary charts versus standalone (usually called ‘documentary’) charts. Distinction between standard charts versus deluxe horoscopes. The lack of delineation potentially being due to verbal interpretations.
Horoscope boards. Most of the horoscopes are fragments of papyrus with calculated placements. Usually thought the placements recreated on horoscope board for consultation
Rediscovering the chart. Where and how was the chart found? What methods were used to date it? Are the positions in the chart tropical or sidereal? The process of putting together the missing pieces.
Lots (so-called “Arabic Parts”). Not a ton of charts with lots survive. They are the second most used point outside of the planets in surviving horoscopes. Most just have the Lot of Fortune, then some the Lot of Spirit, and then a handful of others. Dorian prefers to refer to it as the Lot of Daimon. Discussion about the concept of the daimon. This is the earliest and only standalone chart to contain so many lots. This chart is unique in that it has all seven lots mentioned by Paulus. Sometimes referred to as the Hermetic lots Olympiodorus and a scholion say the Panaretus was by Hermes Paulus is/was our earliest extant source for that full set of lots. Although the Panaretus obviously would have been earlier. Paulus wrote his Introduction in 378 CE. Earlier tradition used alternative calculations for Eros and Necessity. Present in Dorotheus, Valens, and Firmicus. Seems to imply that the Paulus versions were introduced later? This is the first surviving documentary horoscope that contains all of the Hermetic lots. It is a night chart, and it does reverse the calculation of Fortune accordingly The rest of the Lot calculations are also reversed.
Use of zodiacal subdivisions.
Discussion about the stated position of the Midheaven and whether it indicates the use of equal or quadrant houses.
Use of the Master of the Nativity.
Possible connection with Paulus.
Parting thoughts.
Listen to This Episode
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EmailA leading international human rights group has highlighted the decision to place a 10-year-old autistic student in a metal cage as a violation of disability rights in Australia.
Human Rights Watch, one of the world's most respected campaign organisations, detailed the incident in its latest annual report on abuses and concerns in Australia.
Human Rights Watch have condemned a decision to build this cage for a 10-year-old autistic student.
The cage, which was two metres square in size and had a self-closing latch and door, cost $5195 and was not approved by the ACT Education Directorate.
The cage was in place for 17 days and was initially described to parents as a "sanctuary" for a boy with special needs and behavioural problems. It was dismantled a day after government officials became aware of its existence.FILE -- In this April 6, 2003 file photo, Marwan Barghouti waves as he enters a Tel Aviv court. Gilad Erdan, Israel's minister of public security said Tuesday, April 18, 2017, that he will not negotiate with hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who launched a hunger strike to press for better conditions. Erdan also said prominent Palestinian prisoner Barghouti, the organizer of the protest, has been placed in solitary confinement. Barghouti, a leader of the 2000 Palestinian uprising, is serving five life terms after being convicted by an Israeli court of directing two shooting attacks and a bombing that killed five people. (AP Photo/Jeremy Feldman, File) The Associated Press
By ARON HELLER, Associated Press
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel will not negotiate with hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who launched a hunger strike to press for better conditions, a government minister said Tuesday, adding that the organizer of the protest has been placed in solitary confinement.
If sustained, the strike led by Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader jailed during the second Palestinian uprising, would be the largest in recent years.
It is also gaining traction since Barghouti, who is serving multiple life terms in prison after Israel found him guilty of involvement in the deaths of four Israelis and a Greek monk, is widely expected to run for president once Mahmoud Abbas is out of the picture.
The strike could also heighten Israeli-Palestinian tensions at a time of renewed U.S. attempts to restart stalled peace negotiations. Israeli rule over the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured during the 1967 war and claimed by the Palestinians as part of a future state, reaches the half-century mark in June.
The Palestinian prisoners seek better conditions, including more contact with relatives, and an end to Israel's practice of detentions without trials.
Israeli officials said some 1,100 prisoners joined the strike on Monday.
Palestinian officials and activists put the number of hunger strikers at 1,300 and 1,500, respectively, saying it is difficult to get updates from inside the prisons.
They said some 6,500 Palestinians are currently in Israeli lockups. Israel calls them security prisoners — held for offenses ranging from stone throwing and membership in outlawed groups to carrying out attacks that killed or wounded Israelis. Several hundred are being detained without charges.
Barghouti, the strike leader, is prominent in the Fatah movement of Western-backed Palestinian President Abbas. Polls suggest that the 58-year-old Barghouti is the most popular choice among Palestinians to succeed the 82-year-old Abbas.
Barghouti, a leader of the 2000 Palestinian uprising, is serving five life terms after being convicted by an Israeli court of directing two shooting attacks and a bombing that killed five people, including three Israelis. Barghouti, who disputed the court's jurisdiction and didn't mount a defense, has been in prison since 2002.
In an opinion piece published this week in The New York Times, Barghouti alleged that Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel "have suffered from torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, and medical negligence." He said he organized the hunger strike to fight back, after exhausting all other options.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he had read the Sunday article in the Times that "presents arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti as a 'parliamentarian and leader'."
"The paper recanted after we pointed it out to them," Netanyahu said, adding that calling Barghouti a political leader was akin to calling Syrian President Bashar Assad a doctor.
Israeli Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan said he believes the strike is politically motivated and that the prisoners have no legitimate complaints.
"These are terrorists and incarcerated murderers who are getting exactly what the international law requires," he told Israel's Army Radio. "My policy is that you can't negotiate with prisoners such as these... There is no reason to give them additional conditions in addition to what they already receive."
He said Israel has established field hospitals outside the prisons to respond to any immediate medical needs.
Erdan said Barghouti was transferred to another prison in northern Israel and was placed in solitary confinement.
"It doesn't have to do with publishing the article (in the New York Times) but rather that he is instigating mutiny and leading the hunger strike and that is a severe violation of the rules of the prison," he said.
Issa Qarakeh, a Palestinian government official dealing with prisoners, said most of those who joined the hunger strike were Fatah supporters. He said about 170 prisoners from Fatah rivals Hamas and Islamic Jihad also participated.Judas Code Is Loaded With Gun Action
By Sato. August 15, 2014. 12:02am
Judas Code is tri-Ace’s upcoming free-to-play title with a shooting mode for single player and card-battle multiplayer mode for PlayStation Vita. The game’s latest trailer shows us its two modes in full motion.
The video starts out with a glimpse of the action, where you’ll need to shoot down enemy infantry and mecha units, all while dodging the occasional missiles. They then share a little bit about the game’s story and the mysterious pillar called “Longinus” that appeared in the midst of World War III.
We also get to see the two protagonists, and other key characters like the childhood friend Mei Yasoshima. They also show the leader of the Regenerator organization guild, Muerta Megalith, along with the mysterious Operating System girl, who quotes “Will betray God.”
At the 1:10 mark of the video, it demonstrates a closer look at the shooting action in Judas Code that is kind of reminiscent of a shooter game. You’ll take cover while shooting down all nearby enemies, except it seems like you’ll be doing plenty of moving on your own instead of being on rails.
Next, they show off its multiplayer card battle mode, where you’ll participate in 16-man 8 vs. 8 showdown, using different cards acquired through missions in story mode. By winning in this mode, you can even score some pretty nice loot, as well.
Judas Code launches in Japan on August 21, 2014 for PlayStation Vita as a free-to-play title with micro-transactions.Holy LTE, Batman! While all of us wireless broadband fans were sleeping restfully in our beds, little did we know that over $30 billion in Federal Communications Commission wireless spectrum licenses hung in the balance.
Turns out that a bunch of disgruntled spectrum bidders from the last two major auctions had taken the FCC to court over some of its auction rules, asking the agency to "nullify the auction results, but permit the winning bidders to keep their licenses unless and until they are won by another bidder at re-auction." In other words, they wanted a do-over.
We're talking about the FCC's two biggest recent wireless broadband sell offs—Auction 66, which in 2006 generated about $14 billion in winning bids, and the 2008 700MHz sale, which put another $19.5 billion into the United States Treasury and laid the foundation for 4G wireless across the country.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that it was "loath" to nuke the results of these huge sales, "since it would involve unwinding transactions worth more than $30 billion, upsetting what are likely billions of dollars of additional investments made in reliance on the results, and seriously disrupting existing or planned wireless service for untold numbers of customers."
"Moreover, the possibility of such large-scale disruption in wireless communications would have broad negative implications for the public interest in general," the justices added.
Well, like, yeah. Thanks, Third Circuit judges.
So maybe you're wondering what the big issue was that could have turned the whole Verizon/AT&T next-generation LTE and WiMAX shebang upside down? Allow us to explain.
The concern
When the FCC runs its auctions, the agency tries to look out for the little guy or gal who hasn't got anything like the capital to match Verizon, AT&T, or other deep-pocketed bidders. The Commission does this by classifying certain bidders as "Designated Entities" (basically small businesses), and it gives them bidding credits.
"Entities" averaging annual gross revenues of $40 million or less over the last three years get a 15 percent credit. Entities averaging annual gross revenues of $15 million or less get a 25 percent credit. And a 35 percent credit goes to entities that average $3 million or less.
But there's a potential problem with this system. What's to stop your poor, longsuffering little DE from setting up a deal with a fat cat, moneybags company, undermining the notion that it's really a small business in the first place?
And what's to stop that DE from buying some spectrum at a 35 percent discount, then quickly selling it off to wealthy investors and making a nice pile of cash? The point of these rules, after all, is to give smaller companies a chance at the wireless business, not a shot at the lottery.
Rules of the road
The FCC set up various guidelines to prevent this sort of mischief. One of them is an "attributable material relationship" rule to evaluate whether the subsidiaries or affiliates of big businesses should qualify for DE credits [all italics below are ours]:
[a]n applicant or licensee has an attributable material relationship when it has one or more arrangements with any individual entity for the lease or resale (including under a wholesale agreement) of, on a cumulative basis, more than 25 percent of the spectrum capacity of any one of the applicant's or licensee’s licenses.
The attributable rule offers some wiggle room, but more strict was the latest version of the "impermissible material relationship" rule:
An applicant or licensee has an impermissible material relationship when it has arrangements with one or more entities for the lease or resale (including under a wholesale agreement) of, on a cumulative basis, more than 50 percent of the spectrum capacity of any one of the applicant's or licensee's licenses.
Finally, there's what could be called the "ten-year rule," which stipulated that a DE that resells its spectrum at a premium to a non-DE loses its DE eligibility and has to repay some money under the following schedule:
If the DE cut a resale deal in the first five years after the auction, it has to pay all the credit money back; on the sixth or seventh year, 75 percent repayment is required; on the eighth or ninth year, 50 percent; and on the tenth, 25 percent. After ten years, the resale has no penalty.
Arbitrary and capricious
The three plaintiffs in this case are Council Tree Communications, Bethel Native Corporation, and the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. Although the FCC's rules of the road regarding Designated Entity status are obviously based on legitimate concerns, it's not a black-and-white issue. Various small business advocates argue that even with the FCC's DE credit rules, smaller entities need to partner with some kind of backer to make their wireless venture work, and the ten-year rule is way too long, given the vicissitudes of the wireless biz.
In any event, the Third Circuit ruled that the FCC launched some of these regulations without giving the public proper notice and chance to comment, thus violating the Administrative Procedures Act. This was the case with the "50 percent impermissible relationship rule" and the 10-year bidding-credit repayment schedule.
But rather than pressing the reset button on those auctions, which it could have done, the court has instead vacated these specific rules and remanded the matter back to the FCC for more proceedings.
Bottom line: "DEs will be free to lease or wholesale as much of their spectrum as they wish, subject to revenue attribution should they lease or wholesale more than 25 percent of their spectrum to a single entity," the court says. "Vacating the 10-year-hold rule will simply mean that DE's repayment obligations will once again be governed by the previous 5-year schedule."
Had the Third Circuit done otherwise, that would have been, well, very big news.First of all I'll just say, headphones are extremely subjective. Headphones I say sound great and are comfortable you may find to sound terrible and are the most uncomfortable thing you've ever put on your head. So, this is my review for the Arctis 7. This is by far, the most comfortable set of headphones I've ever used and they just so happen to sound fantastic as well - this is all subjective so see below. TLDR; Great sounding headset, extremely comfortable for my small/medium head. Doesn't put pressure on the top of my head which has always been an issue for me. Overall highly recommended, has some quirky buttons and the software is blah but not a big deal. If you have a large head or you want a ton of bass, look elsewhere. Research: I've bought, used, returned, sold on craigslist just about every headphone/headset under the sun. This includes audiophile grade sets like the HD650 and K7xx(702) as well as Logitech's G933, Hyper cloud x 2's - you name it I've tried it. The reason I've tried so many different kinds is I found all of those varying levels of uncomfortable, until the Arctis 7. Comfort: 5/5 I have a small head and most headphones seem uncomfortable to me, especially on the top of my head. This is a snug fitting pair of headphones that I wouldn't recommend for someone with a large head. If you have a large head, I've also owned the G933, get those they are freakin' huge (and really good). The drivers touch my ears ever so slightly but it isn't an issue for me. Initially when I put these on I thought they weren't comfortable. But the elastic material just disappears after about 5-10 minutes of wearing these as opposed to getting more noticeable with the other sets I've tried. I really do forget I'm wearing headphones with this set. I found myself not adjusting these at all vs. other sets I'm constantly moving around trying to get them just right on my head. Sound: 5/5 I'm not audiophile but I've used audiophile grade headphones combined with amps/dacs yada yada yada. Honestly, these sound fantastic, they remind me of reference headphones which means they are relatively flat sounding. These aren't the headphones to get if you want to listen to booty bouncing bass tracks. However, they are great for gaming and do have a nice amount of bass to immerse you into whatever you're playing. The presets are nice and varied, I use the "immerse" preset and it does great for me. I can pin point where people are in FPS games when I hear someones foot splash and echo in a cave I know exactly where to expect them to be. Wireless: 5/5 Fantastic, no cut in and out, no lag. No dog jumping on me and ripping the headphones off my head. Recharge cable included is way too short, needs to be twice as long to allow for cable management. Mic: 4/5 My friends say it sounds clear but it's a bit nasally. Overall they prefer it to my old desktop mic. Software: 3/5 My rating system is flawed but I'll let this one slip through because the hardware is great. The software isn't great folks. It's hard to tell if these are even charging at first, it doesn't tell you much about the headset. The equalizer is great however allowing you to use presets or tune to your liking. It's hard to explain but the software just feels... cheap. Hopefully they update the software. Features: 5/5 Mic side tone is a great feature. Any close backed headphone should have this, being able to hear myself and adjust the level of that is amazing. During loud gaming moments I don't find myself yelling to my buddies because I can hear myself in the headset. I personally don't use the chat split audio because of discord but that is also such a great feature, bravo. I was able to tune the mic sensitivity in discord so that it doesn't pick up keyboard/mouse clicks. Buttons: 4/5 I wish the power button was just a simple sliding on/off button like the logitech but it works fine and is well positioned. The various plugs are a bit confusing at first and steelseries basically tells you nothing about them in their little booklet so I found myself searching online for answers. Seriously, include a picture of the headset with labels steelseries. Customization: 5/5 I love that you can replace the headband and cushions easily and they sell everything on their website. I plan on picking up leather cushions for the cold months and using the included cushions for warmer months. Quality oozes out of this headset, I feel like I will have these for a long long time. RGB: 5/5 There is none, thank you. In conclusion, I feel like my quest for a comfortable pair of gaming headphones has ended and thankfully they are wireless.
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All Times Local Box Score
Total: POS No. Player Sh SOG G A No stats reported for this team Total: POS No. Player Sh SOG G A No stats reported for this team Goalie Stats
Goalie Stats
NO Player Min GA Saves No Goalie stats reported for this team NO Player Min GA Saves No Goalie stats reported for this team Corner Kicks Team 1 2 Tot No stats reported Shots By Period Team 1 2 Tot No stats reported Fouls By Period Team 1 2 Tot No stats reported Saves By Period Team 1 2 Tot No stats reported Scoring Summary # Time Team Goal Scorer Assists Description No stats reported Cautions And Ejections Fouls No stats reported Shootout Attack Set Serve Pass Def Block Gen Team Totals 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total Team Blocks: No stats were reported for this game Attack Set Serve Pass Def Block Gen Team Totals 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total Team Blocks: No stats were reported for this game Team Attacks: Game K E AT PCT No stats reported for this team Team Attacks: Game K E AT PCT No stats reported for this team Team Totals Dead Ball Rebounds No. Player P FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A OREB DREB REB AST TO BLK STL PF PTS MIN No stats were reported for this team Team Totals Dead Ball Rebounds No. Player P FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A OREB DREB REB AST TO BLK STL PF PTS MIN No stats were reported for this team Totals Player AB R H RBI PO A No stats were reported for this team Totals Player AB R H RBI PO A No stats were reported for this team Totals Totals
Pos No. Player G A Pts Sh SOG GB TO CT FO Pen Total: POS No. Player Sh SOG G A GB TO Face Pen No stats reported for this team
Pos No. Player G A Pts Sh SOG GB TO CT FO Pen Total: POS No. Player Sh SOG G A GB TO Face Pen No stats reported for this team Goalie Stats
Goalie Stats
NO Player Min GA Saves Dec No Goalie stats reported for this team NO Player Min GA Saves Dec No Goalie stats reported for this team Shots Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Saves Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Ground Balls Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Turnovers Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Clears Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Face Off Violations Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Face Offs Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Extra-Man Opportunities Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Scoring Summary # Prd Time Team Type Scorer Assist FPS H - V No stats reported Penalty Summary Period Time Team ## Name Minute EMO Offense No stats reported
Pos No. Player G A Pts Sh SOG GB DC TO CT FPS Fouls Total: POS No. Player Sh SOG G A GB DC TO CT FPS Fouls No stats reported for this team
Pos No. Player G A Pts Sh SOG GB DC TO CT FPS Fouls Total: POS No. Player Sh SOG G A GB DC TO CT FPS Fouls No stats reported for this team Goalie Stats
Goalie Stats
NO Player Min GA Saves Dec No Goalie stats reported for this team NO Player Min GA Saves Dec No Goalie stats reported for this team Shots Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Saves Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Ground Balls Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Fouls Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Draw Controls Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Turnovers Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Clears Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Free-Position Shots Team 1 2 3 4 Total No stats reported Scoring Summary # Prd Time Team Type Scorer Assist FPS H - V No stats reported Penalty Summary Period Time Team ## Name Minute EMO Offense No stats reported Stats by DakStats Copyright © Daktronics, Inc. For IE users:
To see background colors: Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Check "print background colors and images".Hello everyone. Melissa here writing in from the French Alps. We’re here skiing in France and having some great bonding time on our family ski vacation. Since we’re usually hanging in an apartment, it’s amazing to get out in the fresh air and look at majestic mountains all day.
We stopped one day for lunch at a small cabin and here’s what they served up. Not my usual fare!
On Thursday, a ski competition took place near by and we watched the skiers bound down the mountain at insane speeds. Here are the skis lined up and ready for action!
Awed by these views, I keep snapping away with my camera all day long.
Behind me in this photo appears a glacier which stays frozen during the whole year.
Here I am with my two little girl snow bunnies. They are skiing better than mama already!
And my big boy at a lunch place which is so sunny they give you a straw hat.
Proud mama moment.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget to enter our weekly giveaway below.
Love,
Melissa xoxo
Weekly Giveaway
Prize: One (1) $50 Amazon gift card.
Rules:
Enter using the Gleam.io widget below.
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ways you can enter to increase your chances of winning. The giveaway ends on Monday, March 28, 2016 at 11:59 PM (Eastern Time).
Winner will be contacted within 48 hours after the giveaway has ended.
Weekly $50 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway"Red Light, Green Light" redirects here. For the EP by the Wildhearts, see Red Light – Green Light
Statues (also known as Red Light, Green Light in the United States, and Grandmother's Footsteps in the United Kingdom) is a popular children's game, often played in different countries. How the game is played varies throughout different regions of the world.
General rules [ edit ]
A person starts out as the "Curator" (It, Granny, Pooh, etc.) and stands at the end of a field. Everyone else playing stands at the far end (distance depends upon playing area selected). The object of the game is for a "Statue" to tag the Curator, thereby becoming the Curator and resetting the game. The Curator turns their back |
oops: Never seen Star Trek.
PascalDragon: You'll find out next chapter.
Vidgamelords: No promises.
Gwiley16199: Can't wait for everyone to see how it unfolds…
FreelanceBum: Agreed.
Guest 2: Thank you!
Shuraban: Don't think they can do that.
Andilite: I certainly have a plan.
Veoviing: Hang in there!
ObsessiveImaginings: Fixed, again. Thanks!
Volchise: Two days?! Wow.
Strunvokunril: Life only gives me so much time to write.Around 4,000 people showed up at Vancouver City Hall to protest against a far-right rally on Saturday afternoon.
Tensions rose briefly as protesters from opposing sides began yelling at each other, but Vancouver police quickly escorted several far-right demonstrators away from the crowd. One protester was in handcuffs.
More than 4,000 people showed up at Vancouver City Hall to protest against a far-right rally on Saturday 1:11
"Officers made five arrests for breach of the peace, and two people were escorted out of the rally to prevent a disturbance," wrote Sgt. Jason Robillard in a release. "There were no reported assaults and no injuries."
Plans for the far-right demonstration began circulating on social media earlier in the week, not long after a deadly white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Va.
Man in handcuffs escorted away from city hall by Vancouver police. Still in cuffs. <a href="https://t.co/04P1wpOdxY">pic.twitter.com/04P1wpOdxY</a> —@pieglue
According to a Facebook page for the event, the rally is protesting Islam and the Canadian government's immigration policies. The page is no longer live, but the demonstration was expected to begin around 2 p.m. PT.
By 3 p.m., a handful of far-right protesters appeared to have gathered. They held Confederate flags and the "alt-right" symbols for Pepe and Kekistan. One wore a shirt in support of U.S. President Donald Trump.
This man, wearing a 'Trump is my President' T-shirt argued with crowds about his views on Islam, immigration and mainstream media. (Chantelle Bellrichard)
Counter-protest
Counter-protesters started streaming into the city hall area — as well as the nearby SkyTrain station and surrounding streets — around 12:45 p.m. PT.
Thousands showed up to protest an anti-Islam rally planned for Saturday afternoon at Vancouver City Hall. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Upbeat music and cheers could be heard from neighbouring apartments.
Isabelle Rowe-Codner, one of the anti-racism rally's organizers, said the number of attendees for the counter-rally doubled in a day.
"We've gotten so much support... It's all been happening so quickly," she said on Friday.
Organizers said the counter-protest is peaceful, "essentially" there to outnumber the far-right protesters and "give our voice some say."
Sounds like more of a party than a protest. Listen: <a href="https://t.co/uzuWjstHpC">pic.twitter.com/uzuWjstHpC</a> —@tinalovgreen
Rowe-Codner said the group took extra security measures as its numbers grew, and volunteers will be watching the counter-protest crowd closely to keep the peace.
"We are going to have many people who are vulnerable attending … If anybody instigates something from our side, it'll be those [vulnerable] people [in our group] who are most likely targeted by white supremacists," she said.
"If those affected by white supremacy and racism felt unsafe at our rally, then we wouldn't be doing our job."
Thousands of peaceful demonsrators gathered at Vancouver City Hall Saturday, protesting against a far-right rally planned for later in the day. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Rowe-Codner said the coalition saw some pushback about the rally earlier in the week, and not just from the far-right.
"A lot of people [who lean left and central] are saying, maybe if you ignore this situation they'll go away... But there are a lot of people and communities out there that face white supremacy and who can't ignore it," she said.
"We can't let this problem grow and grow until it becomes a situation like Charlottesville."
By 1 p.m., thousands of peaceful demonstrators were at Vancouver City Hall. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Political leaders condemn far-right
On Wednesday, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson condemned the far-right rally, saying "hatred and racism have no place" in the city.
He said people have the right to demonstrate and the city can't shut an event down, but city staff will be working to ensure the events are peaceful.
Premier John Horgan also made a statement supporting the counter-protesters, saying the province rejects "all forms of racism, discrimination, intolerance and bigotry."Share this...
A tsunami of outrage swept across Germany right after President Donald Trump announced dropping out of the Paris Accord (and not to transfer billions of taxpayer money over to the UN each year).
It appears the President’s bold and courageous move is leading to potentially dangerous pockets of energy policy and climate science uprising in Germany.
A reader just pointed out something a bit stunning: Germany’s flagship ARD television, the country’s version of the BBC, reported here how a group of conservative politicians from Angela Merkel’s CDU party known as the Berliner Kreis has just voiced its strong opposition to the party’s climate and energy policy course.
A group from Angela Merkel’s CDU party recently released its “Climate and Energy Political Demands”, calling for a science and energy policy “without ideology”, an end to “moral extortion”, and an exit from the “climate saving circus”, pdf here.
According to the ARD report, the group of conservatives is disputing the “‘solitary role’of the greenhouse effect in global warming’ – and is demanding a change in direction in the chancellor’s climate policy“.
The Berliner Kreis, led by Philipp Lengsfeld and Sylvia Pantel, issued an official declaration (German), see pdf here.
“World rescue circus”
The Berliner Kreis declaration demands a return to science “without ideology”, a “fact-based” discussion — one free of “moral extortion” –, and calls for a “reform of the IPCC”, which “has not been as scientifically sound as an advising body needs to be”.
The Berliner Kreis declaration adds that the science must not become “a sort of world rescue circus”.
The Christian conservative group also casts Germany’s CO2 reductions policy into question, noting that so far the country has cut back its CO2 emissions by less than half a billion tonnes while the rest of the plant has increased it by 14 billion tonnes, i.e. 30 times more than what the country has saved.
Germany’s CO2 emissions represent only 2% of the globe’s output, but its energy policy has been 100% pain.
Alinsky-type target?
Now that the Berliner Kreis position has become public, already it has come in the cross-hairs of major media outlets, setting off a wave of reports, e.g. here, here and here.
It remains to be seen what the real ARD intent of their report was: Whether to show that there is dissent in on the climate topic in Germany and that policy needs to take a step back, or if it is to identify and single out unwanted voices Alinsky style (Rule 13).
Lately the approach used by the media and entrenched establishment in Germany concerning unwanted dissenting voices on sensitive issues – such as Europe, immigration and climate – has followed the labelling formula of: dissent = extremism = Nazi. Many feel intimidated by it and thus are afraid to speak up.
What becomes of the dissident Berliner Kreis will remain a question. Expect Merkel to mobilize forces to shut them up, and down. The Berliner Kreis would be well-advised to quickly forge channels and networks with international dissenting groups, as they may be about to find out what the real price of civil courage is.
German publicist Dirk Maxeiner here, who knows first-hand the cost of civil courage, applauds the move by the group of CDU dissenters, commenting (with sarcasm):
A group of CDU parliamentarians that calls itself the ‘Berliner Kreis’ dares to think for itself on the climate issue. The Tagesschau comments on this atrocity with the headline: ‘CDU right wingers attack Merkel’s climate direction.’ Skepticism, thought, realism, facts – all right wing.”Drugs and agrichemicals can be easily improved using the new process and pharma is already making use of it
Inserting fluorine atoms directly and simply into various organic substrates including heteroaromatic rings is now possible thanks to a user-friendly and scaleable difluoromethylation process developed by US researchers. The find opens the way for adding difluoromethyl (CF 2 H) groups to drugs and agrochemicals in order to enhance their properties.
Many new life science products, including drugs and agrichemicals, contain fluorine atoms or trifluoromethyl (CF 3 ) groups because the fluorine atom can increase the metabolic stability and efficiency of bioactive compounds. For example, the CF 3 group in prozac allows the drug to be transported across the blood-brain barrier. However, until now, CF 2 H groups could only be added to bioactive compounds using complicated two-step or multi-step difluoromethylation processes.
’Medicinal chemists have told us for years exactly what they want and how they want to do it. We have listened,’ says Phil Baran, who led the research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. ’This reaction installs a functional group that they sorely desire in a way that is amenable to parallel synthesis in an open flask and in water with simple, non-toxic reagents and a procedure that rivals the simplicity of preparing your morning coffee - add one solid reagent, one liquid reagent and stir.’
The team invented the solid reagent using difluoromethanesulfonyl chloride as a starting point and added various metal counterions until they identified zinc dialkylsulfinate salt (DFMS) (Zn(SO 2 CF 2 H) 2 ) - an easily prepared, air-stable white powder - as the optimum precursor for the CF 2 H radical.
They then tested the reagent on a variety of organic substrates and successfully demonstrated the effective direct transfer of a CF 2 H unit to heteroarenes,
,
-unsaturated enones and aromatic thiols. ’There is no alternative for a chemist who wishes to directly install a difluoromethyl group in these kinds of spots on a molecule,’ says Baran
’I think it’s a nice way of making aromatics with CF 2 H groups attached and I know that a lot of pharmaceutical companies are looking at systems like that,’ says Graham Sandford, who researches organofluorine chemistry at the University of Durham, UK. ’You don’t get fluorinated molecules from nature, so you have to put the fluorine atom in there and that’s a difficult thing - that’s why new methodology that is simple and scaleable like Baran’s process are always very valuable,’ he adds.
’I think a reaction can always be made more practical and higher yielding, but in the meantime Sigma-Aldrich has commercialised this reagent and it is already being employed at a few pharma companies,’ Baran adds.
James UrquhartThe last time San Francisco looked comprehensively at how it plans for parking, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, gas was 25 cents a gallon and we hadn’t even started building BART. It was an era when cities came to be dominated by drive-ins and drive-throughs, when streetcar lines were were being torn up and old neighborhoods were bulldozed for new freeways. As a result, our city’s parking policy still acts as a Viagra for traffic, pollution and unaffordability.
As The City debates a Transportation Demand Management ordinance aimed at taming traffic congestion, now is the time to update San Francisco’s parking requirements from the ground up. The City has decided it’s time to tackle congestion and commissioned a survey of research on what works. The research concluded that “available parking is perhaps the single biggest factor in people’s decision to drive. The research shows that just building housing on a transit line doesn’t reduce automobile use, but reducing parking does.” We’re also in The City’s worst-ever housing affordability crisis, and parking requirements are a key culprit in driving up housing costs. Refreshing San Francisco’s parking policy is critical to growing an affordable, sustainable city with vital and dynamic neighborhoods.
San Francisco should stop forcing parking on homes and businesses that do not need or want it. Paying for superfluous parking drives up housing and business costs and worsens The City’s housing shortage and our escalating commercial rents.
Removing the 1950s-era parking mandates would also free up space for more housing. Families should be allowed to convert their unused garages into the bedroom of an elderly parent or convert them to in-law units so they can earn rent money to help pay a mortgage or provide retirement income.
On commercial and transit corridors, we should allow driveways and the ground floors of parking garages to be converted into small shops for neighborhood merchants. New storefront spaces provide less expensive alternatives in neighborhoods where retail rents are skyrocketing and will help restore dynamism and much needed foot-traffic to local streets. In addition, private driveways eliminate valuable on-street public parking that can be used by patrons of local businesses.
Forcing extra parking upon those who do not want it or need it is not just a burden in terms of cost and space; it also acts as a big inducement for driving. Recent research from UC Berkeley shows that imposed parking mandates significantly increase the proportion of people who drive alone in their cars, even in communities adjacent to high-quality transit like BART. Incentives to drive alone are also incentives for congestion, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — all scourges that we want our city to fight against.
We have made incremental steps in removing parking mandates in a few neighborhoods — starting in the 1980s with the Downtown Plan, and continuing into portions of the Eastern Neighborhoods and in small portions of the rest of The City through the Better Neighborhoods plans of the 1990s and 2000s. This new approach to parking has helped keep neighborhood commercial streets vital, decreased the cost of new housing and reduced runaway congestion. But this piecemeal approach to parking mandates has taken us as far as it can, and it’s now time to rewrite the rules at the city-level so the whole city can benefit from up to date parking policy.
Eliminating parking mandates doesn’t mean parking will altogether disappear. San Francisco currently has more than 450,000 parking spots — if you lined them up end to end, they would stretch from Mexico past the Oregon border — and the vast majority of them are going nowhere. It doesn’t mean that all new developments won’t have parking; instead, builders and homeowners need only add the parking that building users really need, rather than fulfill an arbitrary mandate.
While San Francisco likes to set the national trend, on parking policy we would merely be playing catch-up. In recent years, cities across the country — Oakland, Sacramento, Miami, Philadelphia, Buffalo and others — have reduced or eliminated parking mandates citywide and are improving how on-street parking is managed.
To deliver 21st century mobility and retain a vibrant, affordable and sustainable city, now is the time rewrite Eisenhower’s parking rules for today’s and tomorrow’s San Francisco.
Tom Radulovich is president of the BART Board of Directors and executive director of Livable Cities. Nick Josefowitz is a member of the BART Board of Directors and founder of Leadership for a Clean Economy.
Click here or scroll down to commentIf you've paid for a.com domain name in the last three years, the Coalition for ICANN Transparency (CFIT) says that you've paid too much—and it's trying convince federal courts that the law has been broken.
VeriSign has an exclusive contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to manage the.com and.net DNS registries. According to a group of disgruntled registrars, the whole situation is an antitrust nightmare, one allegedly perpetuated by lobbyists, astroturfers, planted news stories, and "stacked" public meetings.
The case was brought back several years ago but was tossed by a federal judge before going to trial. Now, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled (PDF) that CFIT can proceed with its case against VeriSign, a case based on "antitrust statutes drafted in the late 19th century."
Back to the future
CFIT's complaint is based on the relationship between Verisign and ICANN. The 2006 contract awarding the main.com registry to Verisign, for instance, was allegedly done without any competitive bidding and it led to prices that "were artificially high."
CFIT cares about domain prices because it is made up of key DNS registrars (who can resell.com names but must still pay VeriSign) and DNS registrants. Under an older contract, VeriSign's prices for.com domains were capped at $6 until the end of 2006. After that, they were allowed to rise by seven percent in four out of the following six years.
If the system had been open to competitive bidding, said CFIT, "the costs of domain name registrations would have fallen to at least as low as $3.00 per domain name, with at least the same level and quality of services provided by VeriSign."
If you're buying or selling.com domains in bulk, cutting the price in half is a big deal—one worth going to court over. So CFIT went to court, arguing that VeriSign was acting illegally under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
But how did VeriSign convince ICANN to award it such a contract in the first place? According to CFIT, it used just about every technique you could imagine.
"In order to get ICANN to agree to the terms VeriSign desired," said CFIT, "VeriSign paid lobbyists to support its position,'stacked' ICANN's public meetings with VeriSign supporters, hired purportedly independent organizations and individuals to advocate VeriSign's position, paid bloggers to attack ICANN's reputation, planted news stories critical of ICANN in mainstream media, threatened ICANN with litigation, arbitration, and government investigation, and indeed eventually brought suit against ICANN in federal and state court. VeriSign's suit against ICANN was settled, allegedly as a result of VeriSign’s offer to pay ICANN a fee of between $6 and $12 million in exchange for the favorable terms in the agreements."
Despite the long list of charges, a federal court found that CFIT had not actually made a proper claim under the law against VeriSign. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco overturned that decision and said that the case could proceed in reference to.com domains; CFIT did not present enough evidence to proceed with its claims about.net domains, however.
Domain names have certainly been good to VeriSign, which recently announced 13 percent year-over-year revenue growth. The company says that there are now 183 million top-level domain names in the world, with the largest single chunk of those being.com.
Further reading:Jake Tapper (CNN / Screengrab)
CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday humiliated Donald Trump’s claim that the barrage of negative news stories related to his administration are “conspiracy theories,” taking moment to explain to the president what differentiates a conspiracy theory from actual, real news.
Discussing the Trump administration’s ever-changing story surrounding the resignation of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, Tapper noted today the president gave a “quite different explanation” than White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave earlier this week.
Whereas Spicer said at a press conference Tuesday that Flynn’s resignation was “a matter of trust,” Trump today blamed Flynn’s firing on the “unfair” media reporting stories about Flynn’s contact with the Russian ambassador.
“The media, of course did not fire Gen. Flynn, President Trump did,” Tapper said. “Now what the media did do was reveal to the nation that Gen. Flynn had lied to the Trump team—including Vice President Pence—when he claimed he never discussed Obama’s sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador.”
“President Trump knew this at least as early as Jan. 26,” Tapper added. “But he did not act on this until media revealed the truth to you, and, as it turns out, Vice President Pence.”
The CNN host then turned to Trump’s twitter reactions about the ongoing Flynn saga, wherein the president blamed the negative reports on “conspiracy theories”:
The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017
“Of course these stories … are not conspiracy theories, these are news stories sourced by government officials,” Tapper explained. “Conspiracy theories are different, they’re false, they’re crackpot, they’re nonsense.”
“How do I illustrate what conspiracy theory is?” Tapper continued. “How about this one about Ted Cruz’s father,” he said rolling footage of then-candidate Trump claiming his former rival’s father was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“That’s a conspiracy theory,” Tapper said. “Or how about this one, about President Obama,” he added, playing footage of Trump in 2011 insinuating that the former president was not born in the United States.
“THOSE are conspiracy theories,” Tapper said. “These are facts.”
The CNN host then turned to Trump’s hypocrisy regarding leaks. Though his administration is currently fixated on the historic amount of internal information coming from the White House, Tapper noted the president was more than happy to use leaked information to his advantage during the campaign.
“No president likes leaks … but it’s worth noting candidate Trump’s path to power was tread on a road of leaks,” Tapper said, playing a montage of the president praising information from WikiLeaks and the FBI that proved damning for rival Hillary Clinton.
“He didn’t have a problem with leaks then,” Tapper said, adding, “It’s not a moral position if you only hold it when it applies to you.”
Watch the video below, via CNN:Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on their return from the marriage service at St James's Palace, London, 10 February 1840. Engraved by S Reynolds after F Lock.
Pair of white satin shoes worn by Queen Victoria on her wedding day
The wedding dress of Queen Victoria was worn by Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, at her wedding to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on 10 February 1840. She selected a white dress, which was considered an unusual choice at a time when colours were more usual,[1] made from heavy silk satin.[2] The Honiton lace used for her wedding dress proved an important boost to Devon lace-making.[3][4] Queen Victoria has been credited with starting the tradition of white weddings and white bridal gowns,[5][6] although she was not the first royal to be married in white.[7]
Design [ edit ]
The lace was designed by William Dyce, head of the then Government School of Design (later known as the Royal College of Art), and mounted on a white satin dress made by Mary Bettans.[8]
The plain, cream-coloured satin gown was made from fabric woven in Spitalfields, east London, and trimmed with a deep flounce and trimmings of lace hand-made in Honiton and Beer, in Devon.[8] This demonstrated support for English industry, particularly the cottage industry for lace.[2][8] The handmade lace motifs were appliquéd onto cotton machine-made net.[9] Orange flower blossoms, a symbol of fertility, also trimmed the dress and made up a wreath, which Victoria wore instead of a tiara over her veil. The veil, which matched the flounce of the dress, was four yards in length and 0.75 yards wide. Victoria's jewellery consisted of a necklace and earrings made up of diamonds presented to her by the Sultan of Turkey, and a sapphire cluster brooch given to her by Albert a day earlier. The slippers she wore matched the white colour of the dress. The train of the dress, carried by her bridesmaids, measured 18 feet (5.5 m) in length.
Queen Victoria described her choice of dress in her journal thus: "I wore a white satin dress, with a deep flounce of Honiton lace, an imitation of an old design. My jewels were my Turkish diamond necklace & earrings & dear Albert's beautiful sapphire brooch."
After the wedding [ edit ]
Portrait painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1847, as an anniversary present for Prince Albert Victoria wearing her wedding veil and lace for her Diamond Jubilee Portrait, 1897
Reenactments [ edit ]
While photography existed in 1840, the techniques were not yet fully developed. A series of photographs taken by Roger Fenton on 11 May 1854 of Victoria and Albert are often described as wedding or reenactment photographs, with the dress identified as her wedding dress.[10][11] The Royal Collection has refuted these interpretations, stating that the images are the first photographs to show Victoria as a queen, rather than as a wife or mother, and that she and Albert are wearing court dress.[12][13]
In 1847, Victoria commissioned Franz Xaver Winterhalter to paint a portrait of her wearing her wedding clothes as an anniversary present for Prince Albert.[14] The portrait was also copied as an enamel miniature by John Haslem.[14]
Queen Victoria's wedding lace [ edit ]
Victoria revisited the lace-makers to create the christening gown worn by her children, including Albert Edward, the future Edward VII.[15] This gown was worn for the christening of all subsequent Royal babies until the baptism of James, Viscount Severn in 2008, when a replica was used for the first time.[16] As a mark of support for the Honiton industry, in addition to often wearing their lace on her and her children's clothes, Victoria insisted her daughters also order Honiton lace for their wedding dresses.[3] Victoria also wore her wedding lace mounted on the dresses she wore to the christenings of her nine children (except for Albert Edward's, for which she wore her Garter robes).[17][18] She also wore it to the weddings of two of her children, her eldest daughter, Victoria, in 1858,[17] and her youngest son, Leopold, in 1882.[19] Her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was permitted to wear it as part of her wedding gown in 1885.[20] Victoria also wore the lace to the wedding of her grandson George (the future George V) to Mary of Teck in 1893,[21] and for her Diamond Jubilee official photograph in 1897.[22] When Victoria died, she was buried with her wedding veil over her face.[23] In 2012 it was reported that while the dress itself had been conserved and displayed at Kensington Palace that year, the lace was now too fragile to move from storage.[8]
Influence [ edit ]
Wearing white was quickly adopted by wealthy, fashionable brides. Less than a decade later, Godey's Lady's Book would incorrectly claim that white wedding gowns were an ancient custom reflecting a bride's virginity, writing "Custom has decided, from the earliest ages, that white is the most fitting hue, whatever may be the material. It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one", even though white had been a distinctly uncommon choice for bridal gowns before Victoria's wedding and was not chosen by a majority of brides until decades later.[5]
Following the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, comparisons were drawn between the bride's white wedding dress and Queen Victoria's own.[5]The Bayern Munich attacker has fired a veiled criticism at his coach by insinuating that the Spaniard does not communicate enough with him
Mario Gotze says his future at Bayern Munich depends on whether Pep Guardiola talks to him more often.
Last month Gotze hit the headlines for complimentary comments on Juventus, with whom he had been linked, but the Scudetto holders pursued a move for Schalke attacking midfielder Julian Draxler instead.
Those talks appear to have stalled due to Schalke's high pricetag, leading to suggestions Juve could rekindle their interest in Gotze, whose two years at the Allianz Arena have been a mixed bag.
The highlight of his time as a Bayern player was scoring the World Cup-winning goal last summer with Germany, whereas he rarely features prominently in crucial matches for the Bavarians.
Gotze, 23, admits that there have been plenty of frustrations since he joined from Borussia Dortmund in 2013 and opined he needs more of an open line of communication with his coach.
"The last two years were definitely not very simple," the German attacker told reporters following Bayern's 3-0 win over AC Milan on Tuesday. "We'll see what happens.
"It will work out if Guardiola talks to me more often. I'm going to let everything come to me. Anything beyond that, we'll see."
Gotze, who has a contract in Munich until 2017, scored the second goal against Milan after coming off the bench in the Audi Cup semi-final victory as Bayern continued their pre-season preparations.
Bayern's win was overshadowed by Guardiola having a half-time row in the tunnel with Rossoneri midfielder Nigel de Jong, whose tackle on Joshua Kimmich forced the midfielder off injured.For other uses, see Tivoli
Tivoli (or often in English: Tivoli Gardens) is an amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. The park opened on 15 August 1843 and is the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world,[2] after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Klampenborg, also in Denmark.
With 4.6 million visitors in 2017,[1] Tivoli is the second-most popular seasonal amusement park in the world after Europa-Park. Tivoli is the most-visited theme park in Scandinavia, and the fifth most-visited theme park in Europe, only behind Disneyland Park, Europa-Park, Walt Disney Studios Park and Efteling.
History [ edit ]
The amusement park was first called "Tivoli & Vauxhall";[3] "Tivoli" alluding to the Jardin de Tivoli in Paris (which in its turn had been named from Tivoli near Rome, Italy),"Vauxhall" alluding to the Vauxhall Gardens in London. It is also mentioned in various books, like Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.
Tivoli's founder, Georg Carstensen (b. 1812 – d. 1857), obtained a five-year charter to create Tivoli by telling King Christian VIII that "when the people are amusing themselves, they do not think about politics". The monarch granted Carstensen use of roughly 15 acres (61,000 m²) of the fortified glacis outside Vesterport (the West Gate) for an annual rent. Therefore, until the 1850s, Tivoli was outside the city, accessible through Vesterport.
From the very start, Tivoli included a variety of attractions: buildings in the exotic style of an imaginary Orient: a theatre, band stands, restaurants and cafés, flower gardens, and mechanical amusement rides such as a merry-go-round and a primitive scenic railway. After dark, colored lamps illuminated the gardens. On certain evenings, specially designed fireworks could be seen reflected in Tivoli's lake.
Composer Hans Christian Lumbye (b. 1810 – d. 1874) was Tivoli's musical director from 1843 to 1872. Lumbye was inspired by Viennese waltz composers like the Strauss family (Johann Strauss I and his sons), and became known as the "Strauss of the North." Many of his compositions are specifically inspired by the gardens, including "Salute to the Ticket Holders of Tivoli", "Carnival Joys" and "A Festive Night at Tivoli". The Tivoli Symphony Orchestra still performs many of his works.
c. 1900 Tivoli's pirate ship,
Tivoli was also used predominantly in the 1961 science fiction film, Reptilicus.
In 1874, Chinese style Pantomimeteatret (The Pantomime Theatre) took the place of an older smaller theatre. The audience stands in the open, the stage being inside the building. The theatre's "curtain" is a mechanical peacock's tail. From the very beginning, the theatre was the home of Italian pantomimes, introduced in Denmark by the Italian Giuseppe Casorti. This tradition, which is dependent on the Italian Commedia dell'Arte has been kept alive, including the characters Cassander (the old father), Columbine (his beautiful daughter), Harlequin (her lover), and, especially popular with the youngest spectators, the stupid servant Pierrot. The absence of spoken dialogue is an advantage, as Tivoli is now an international tourist attraction.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Tivoli also hosted human exhibitions.[4]
In 1943, Nazi sympathisers burnt many of Tivoli's buildings, including the concert hall, to the ground. Temporary buildings were constructed in their place and the park was back in operation after a few weeks.[5]
Tivoli is always evolving without abandoning its original charm or traditions. As Georg Carstensen said in 1844, "Tivoli will never, so to speak, be finished," a sentiment echoed just over a century later when Walt Disney said of his own Tivoli-inspired theme park, "Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world." In Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, the word tivoli has become synonymous with any amusement park.
Rides [ edit ]
Dæmonen roller coaster in the background Dragon Boat lake androller coaster in the background
The park is best known for its wooden roller coaster, Rutschebanen, or as some people call it, Bjergbanen (The Mountain Coaster), built in 1914. It is one of the world's oldest wooden roller coasters that is still operating today. An operator controls the ride by braking down the hills so it won't gain too much speed. It is an ACE Coaster Classic.[6]
Another roller coaster, The Demon (Dæmonen), features an Immelmann loop, a vertical loop, and a zero-G roll all during the ride time of just one minute and forty six seconds. An old roller coaster, The Snake (Slangen), was removed to have enough space for The Demon. In 2017, Tivoli Gardens added an optional virtual reality experience to the ride, simulating a flight through ancient China, along with encounters with dragons and demons. The Demon is situated next to the concert hall.
A well-known swing ride, The Star Flyer, opened in Tivoli in 2006. 80 metres (260 feet) high and built by the Australian company Funtime, it offers panoramic views of the city.[3]
On 1 May 2009, Tivoli Gardens opened the new ride Vertigo, a looping plane ride where the rider pilots the ride, able to control the plane.
A Zamperla Air Race ride, Aquila, opened on 11 April 2013. It is a giant swing and spinner with centrifugal powers up to 4 g, named after the constellation of the Eagle.[7]
The newest attraction is Fatamorgana, which opened in 2016. This is the world's first Condor 2GH, which offers two separate seating arrangements, one milder version with two-seater gondolas, and a thrilling version in which riders are slung around at high speed while seated in a ring and facing away from the center.[8]
Roller coasters [ edit ]
Ride name Type Opened in Manufacturer Additional information The Caravan (Karavanen) Steel sit down 1974 Zierer Reaches a speed of 26 km/h (16.2 mph) on a 60.2 m (197.5 ft) long track and a height of 3.3 m (10.8 ft); age limit 2 years old. Small Tivoli model, train 2x6. The Demon (Dæmonen) Steel floorless 2004 Bolliger & Mabillard Reaches a speed of 77.2 km/h (48 mph) on a 564 m long track (1850.4 ft) and a height of 28 m (92 ft) with 3 inversions (loop, Immelmann, zero g-roll); height limit 1,32 m. Floorless Custom Coaster, train 4x6. The Odin Express (Odinexpressen) Powered 1985 Mack Rides Reaches a speed of 60 km/h (37.3 mph) on a 300 m long track (984.3 ft); age limit 2 years old. Custom Powered Coaster, train 2x10. The Roller Coaster (Rutschebanen) Wooden sit down 1914 Valdemar Lebech This classic coaster reaches a speed of 50 km/h (31.1 mph) on a 720 m long track (2362.2 ft) and a height of 12 m (39.3 ft). Themed around a mountain, train 2x12.
Other rides [ edit ]
Aquila - giant swing and spinner ride that opened in 2013; with centrifugal powers up to 4 g; height limit 1,2 m.
- giant swing and spinner ride that opened in 2013; with centrifugal powers up to 4 g; height limit 1,2 m. The Bumper Cars - classic bumper cars that date from 1926.
- classic bumper cars that date from 1926. Fatamorgana - a 43 m (141 ft) tall hybrid Condor ride that opened in 2016. Huss.
- a 43 m (141 ft) tall hybrid Condor ride that opened in 2016. Huss. The Ferris Wheel (Ballongyngen) - Ferris wheel which opened during WWII in 1943.
(Ballongyngen) - Ferris wheel which opened during WWII in 1943. The Flying Trunk (Den |
negate his right not to be recklessly shot by a police officer.
“The central question in this case… is not whether (Castile) had a right to carry a gun … it was his right not to be killed for no good reason,” Paulsen said.
He added that Yanez’s subjective opinion that he faced a threat to his life was not an adequate defense. Instead, he said the legal standard is based on the “objective” assessment of what a “reasonable officer” would do under the same circumstances.
“If all (a police officer) had to do is say, ‘I felt threatened and you have to believe me, Judge,’ there would never be a prosecution (in these cases.) … That’s what a trial is for,” Paulsen said.
The St. Anthony police officer was charged in November with one count of second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm for fatally shooting Castile during a July 6, 2016, traffic stop in Falcon Heights. Castile was in the car at the time with his girlfriend and her young child.
Yanez wore a beige suit at the hearing. Sitting next to his team of attorneys, he said nothing during the roughly 40-minute proceeding.
Earl Gray, another of Yanez’s defense attorneys, said that while the defense had hoped to win its motion Wednesday, he was still confident Yanez would prevail at trial.
“Before you can be convicted, a jury has to find unanimously that your client is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Gray said. “Well, I believe that when we present the (findings) about Castile’s conduct that night compared with our client’s, I don’t think it will take a jury long to find that the state has failed miserably to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Some of Yanez’s fellow officers, including the St. Anthony police chief, attended the Wednesday hearing.
Castile’s family and friends took up two rows inside the courtroom.
His mother, Valerie Castile, said afterword that the future of the case is “in God’s hands,” and reiterated the integrity of her son and the depth of loss she and her loved ones have had to carry since his death.
“He was an amazing human being,” she said.
Castile graduated from Central High School in 2001. He was a longtime employee for the St. Paul school district, where he worked in an elementary school as a kitchen supervisor. He had never been convicted of a felony in Minnesota.
Yanez, who is Latino, is married with one child. The 28-year-old became a licensed police officer in 2011 and joined the St. Anthony Police Department about four years ago.
He has no record of complaints against him in his personnel file.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 27. Yanez is expected to enter a plea during the proceeding.Guus Hiddink has confirmed John Terry will miss Chelsea's FA Cup tie Guus Hiddink has confirmed John Terry will miss Chelsea's FA Cup tie
John Terry has been ruled out of Chelsea's FA Cup fifth-round tie at home to Manchester City on Sunday.
The Chelsea skipper missed the midweek Champions League last-16 first-leg defeat at Paris Saint-Germain after suffering a hamstring injury during last weekend's 5-1 win against Newcastle.
Terry's next appearance for Chelsea will be his 700th for the club, but interim boss Guus Hiddink confirmed the 35-year-old will not reach the milestone at Stamford Bridge this weekend.
"He will not be fit for this weekend," Hiddink told reporters on Friday. "I saw him this morning. He was with the physios yesterday, trying a bit on the pitch.
"Still too many problems to be fit for the weekend."
Hiddink (left) hopes Terry will return for the clash with Southampton
Hiddink hopes Terry will be fit enough to return to action for the Premier League game at Southampton on February 27 but confirmed he will take a cautious approach with his skipper.
He added: "We have a week, I hope next weekend he will be available. I cannot predict it. I think we have to be a bit cautious with him as well."Heritage International University supports the aims and values of the International Commission on Nobility and Royalty
The International Commission on Nobility and Royalty
(See Additional Articles below)
Royal Families of the World
All the major legal principles that promote genuine and authentic nobility, royalty and chivalry are contained in the following new two volume book. Note what is says in the first paragraph of the Foreword:
The whole field of nobility and royalty is in disarray and confusion. It is rife with falsehoods, misguided experts, phony princes, and counterfeit chivalric orders. Besides the numerous scams and charlatans that exist, there is a widespread misunderstanding of the international and natural laws that govern dynastic rights. This is a field that is truly divided. This sad state of affairs need not continue. If international law is honored, revered and respected, then everything can be set in its proper order. The grand key to this needed unity is the rule of the just, time-honored laws that already exist.
The author is Dr. Stephen Baca y Kerr, JD, LLM, MAT, former special counsel to the Imperial and Royal House of Habsburg, Professor and Dean of the Law School at the International College of Interdisciplinary Studies. His book is The Entitlement to Rule: Legal, Non-Territorial Sovereignty in International Law and it is a masterpiece. Note excerpts of what people have said about it:
"It is written in a clear and compelling manner. It is hoped that more and more people will become familiar with the laws of justice contained in this book." (Thubten Samphel, director of the Tibet Policy Institute of the Central Tibetan Administration and author of the book Falling Through the Roof, Dharamshala, India) (Thubten Samphel, director of the Tibet Policy Institute of the Central Tibetan Administration and author of the bookDharamshala, India)
"It is magnificently done and of great worth." (Adalberto J. Urbina Briceno, Sc.D., Professor Head of the Public International Law Chair of the Catholic University Andres Bello- Caracas)
"It is a goldmine of references and is a valuable account of a [thought provoking]... and poorly understood area of law." (Rev'd Professor Noel Cox, LLM, MA, MTheol, Ph.D., LTh, FRHists, Barrister, Aberystwyth University, New Zealand)
"Dr. Kerr has put together a book that is a "one of a kind" providing what is needed to perpetuate the rights of deposed sovereignty. For all those interested in the legal future of nobility and royalty, this is a very important, scholarly and insightful book to read." (LaWanna Blount, Ph.D., F.Coll.T, vice president and professor at the American College of Interdisciplinary Sciences, Como, Mississippi, USA)
"Dr. Kerr's book... is one of those... path breaking works that throws new light on a field of study... on the complex legal and philosophical sinews that keep alive [deposed] monarchies.... This type of writing fills a huge gap within the royal studies field...." (Dr. Diana Mandache, historian and author, Budapest, Romania)
"The author obviously has a deep understanding of international law and how it relates to deposed monarchies and exiled governments. The content is well structured and well written. I accept this book as conforming to the highest academic standards expected of a master scholar and practitioner." (Alexander Arapov, Sc.D., Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology of the All-Russian State Distance-Learning Institute of Finance and Economics, a branch of the Financial University of the Russian Federation)
"This has been the most interesting and helpful book I have read in the field of nobiliary law as well as international law.... It exemplifies the highest level of scholarly content, clarity and depth of inquiry yet presented on this profound and important subject." (Prof. Dr. Mirjana Radovic-Markovic, Academician, Institute of Economic Sciences and Faculty of Business Economics and Entrepreneurship, Belgrade, Serbia)
This unique book is being offered for free because of its singular importance to the field of nobility and royalty. Go to the website: www.the-entitlement-to-rule.com.
The following is a list of heads of royal families and royal heads of state and in some cases the royal heir. This page, however, is incomplete and in some cases controversy exists about who is the rightful head. We are working to make this list as accurate and inclusive as possible. The valid and genuine Princes of India and most of the "de jure" royalty of Asia are unfortunately not included. Any additions or corrections are most welcome. Thank you.
AFGHANISTAN: HM King Mohammad Zahir Shah passed away in the Summer of 2007 / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Ahmed Shah Khan : HM King Mohammad Zahir Shah passed away in the Summer of 2007 / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Ahmed Shah Khan
ALBANIA: HM King Leka I / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Keka
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
ASIA (The "de jure" sovereign kings, emirs, etc. of various former little nations --- too many to keep track of) (See: " Royal News," December 2007)
AUSTRALIA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales : HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
AUSTRIA-HUNGRY: HIRH Archduke Otto von Hapsburg, Royal Prince of Bohemia (The archduke passed away and there is a dispute over the so-called heir, whose qualification do not fit with the House statues or family constitutional law of succession)
BAHAMAS: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
BARBADOS: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
BAHRAIN: HM King Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa / Heir: HH Crown Prince Shaikh Sulman bin Hamad al-Khalifa
BELGIUM: HM King Philippe / Heir: Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant
BELIZE: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
BHUTAN: HM King Jigme Singye Wangchuck / Heir: HRH Dasho Kesar Jigme Wangchuk
BRAZIL: HIRH the Prince Dom Pedro Carlos of Orleans and Bragança / Heir: HIH Prince Pedro Thiago of Orléans-Braganza
BRAZIL: HIRH Prince Dom Luís of Orléans-Braganza / Heir: HIRH Prince Dom Bertrand of Orléans-Braganza
BRUNEI: HM Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei and Yang Di-Pertuan of Negara Darussalam / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Muda Haji al-Muhtadee Billah ibni Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu
BULGARIA: HM King Simeon II, elected Prime Minister 2001 / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Kardám, Prince of Tirnovo
BURUNDI: HRH Crown Princess Rose Paula Iribagiza / Heir: Prince Charles Muhirwa
CAMBODIA: HM King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia
CANADA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
DENMARK: HM Queen Margrethe II of Denmark / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Frederik
EGYPT: HM King Ahmed Fouad II / Heir: Prince Muhammad Ali
ETHIOPIA: HIH Crown Prince Zera Yacob Amha-Selassie : HIH Crown Prince Zera Yacob Amha-Selassie
FRANCE: The Royal House: HRH Prince Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans, Comte de Paris, "de jure" King of France / Heir: HRH Jean, Duke of Vendômedesignated "regent" for his older brother: HRH Prince François, Count of Clermont.
FRANCE: A Competing Royal House: HRH Prince Luis Alfonso Gonzalo Víctor Manuel Marco de Borbón y Martínez-Bordiú, Duke of Anjou, Duke of Bourbon and Duke of Touraine / Heir presumptive: HM King Carlos I of Spain : A Competing Royal House: HRH Prince Luis Alfonso Gonzalo Víctor Manuel Marcode Borbón y Martínez-Bordiú, Duke of Anjou, Duke of Bourbon and Duke of Touraine/ Heir presumptive: HM King Carlos I of Spain
FRANCE: The Imperial House: HIH Prince Charles Napoléon / Heir: HIH Prince Jean-Christophe Louis Ferdinand Albéric Napoléon
GEORGIA: HRH Prince Nugzar Bagration-Gruzinsky / Heir: HRH Princess Anna Bagration-Gruzinsky
GERMANY--Anhalt: HH Julius Eduard, Duke of Anhalt ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard,_Prince : HH Julius Eduard, Duke of Anhalt
GERMANY--Baden: HDGH Maximilian Andreas Friedrich Gustav Ernst August Bernhard, Grand Duke of Baden / Designated Heir: Bernhard, Hereditary Prince of Baden
GERMANY--Bavaria: HRH Duke Franz von Bayern / Heir: HRH Prince Max-Emanuel Ludwig Maria Herzog in Bayern, Duke in Bavaria
GERMANY--Hanover & Bruswick: HRH Prince Ernst August V / Heir: HRH Prince Ernst August of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg
GERMANY--Hesse: HRH Prince Moritz Friedrich Karl Emanuel Humbert Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine / Heir: HRH Prince Donatus of Hesse
GERMANY--Lippe-Biesterfeld: HSH Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince of Lippe (This is contested by HSH Prince Armin of Lippe who renounced his rights in 1953)
GERMANY--Mecklenburg-Schwerin & Strelitz: HIRH Prince Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg / Heir presumptive: HRH Prince Christian-Sigmund of Prussia
GERMANY--Oldenburg: HRH Anton Günther, Grand Duke of Oldenburg / Heir: HRH Christian, Duke of Oldenburg HRH Anton Günther, Grand Duke of Oldenburg / Heir: HRH Christian, Duke of Oldenburg
GERMANY--Prussia: HRIH Prince Georg Friedrich / Heir presumptive: HRH Prince Christian-Sigmund of Prussia
GERMANY--Reuss-Schleiz: Heinrich VIII
GERMANY--Reuss-Schleiz-Köstritz: HSH Prince Heinrich IV
GERMANY--Saxe-Coburg and Gotha: HSH Andreas Michael Friedrich Hans Armin Siegfried Hubertus / Heir: HSH Hubertus, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
GERMANY--Saxe-Meiningen: HSH Prince Johann Friedrich Konrad Carl Eduard Horst Arnold Matthias Prinz von Sachsen-Meiningen, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen / Heir: HSH Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen
GERMANY--Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach: HSH Prince Michael-Benedict, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
GERMANY--Saxony: HRH Prince Maria Emanuel, Margrave of Meissen / Heir: HRH Alexander Prinz von Sachsen-Gessaphe (adopted)
GERMANY--Schaumburg-Lippe: HSH Prince Ernst August Alexander Christian Viktor Hubert / Heir: HSH Prince Heinrich-Donatus
GERMANY--Waldeck & Pyrmont: HRH Prince Wittekind / HRH Prince Carl-Anton
GERMANY--Württemberg: HRH Carl, Duke of Württemberg / Heir: HRH Prince Friedrich
GERMANY (The "de jure" sovereign high nobility of the former Holy Roman Empire are considered royalty and are composed of dukes, princes, and counts --- too many to keep track of) (See Chapters: " Sovereignty and Mediatization " and " Sovereignty and Royalty, " under the article " Sovereignty & The Future of Nobility and Royalty ")
GHANA--Ashanti: : HM Asantehene Osei Tutu II
GRENADA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
GREECE: HM King Constantine II of the Hellenes / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Pavlos
HAWAII: H.R.H. Prince Quentin Kuhio Kawananakoa / Heir: HRH Prince Kincaid Kawananakoa ( www.4dw.net/royalark/Hawaii/hawaii10.htm ) : H.R.H. Prince Quentin Kuhio Kawananakoa / Heir: HRH Prince Kincaid Kawananakoa
INDIA (The "de jure" sovereign princes of the Empire of India (maharajas, rajas, etc. of former kingdoms and principalities --- too many to keep track of)
INDONESIA: (The "de jure" sovereign princes of Indonesia (sultand, rajas, etc. of former kingdoms and principalities --- too many to keep track of, however, eventually, they will be added to the article entitled " The Return of Royalty to Indonesia ")
IRAN: HIH Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi / Heir presumptive: HIH Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi
IRAQ: HRH Prince Ra'ad, Head of the Royal Family
IRAQ: HRH Prince Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, claimant, Head of the "Iraq Constitutional Monarchy" association
ITALY: HRH Prince Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, Duke of Savoy / Heir: HRH Prince Emanuel Filiberto, Prince of Venice : HRH Prince Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, Duke of Savoy / Heir: HRH Prince Emanuel Filiberto, Prince of Venice
ITALY: HRH Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, Duke of Savoy / Heir: HRH Prince Aimone, Duke of Apulia
ITALY--Parma: HRH Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma and Piacenza / Heir: HRH Prince Carlos of Bourbon-Parma, Prince of Piacenza, Duke of Madrid
ITALY--Tuscany: HRH Archduke Sigismund, Grand Duke of Tuscany / Heir: HRH Archduke Amadeo
ITALY--Two Sicilies: HRH Prince Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Castro and Calabria / Designated Heir: HRH Prince Antoine of Bourbon (There is a movement to unify both families) HRH Prince Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Castro and Calabria /Designated Heir: HRH Prince Antoine of Bourbon (There is a movement to unify both families)
ITALY--Two Sicilies: HRH Infante Don Carlos, Duke of Calabria, Infante of Spain / Heir: HRH Prince Pedro Giovanni María Alejo Saturnino y Todos los Santos, Duke of Noto (There is a movement to unify both families)
JAMAICA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
JAPAN: HIM Emperor Akihito / Heir: HIH Crown Prince Naruhito
JORDAN: HM King Abdullah II bin Al Hussien / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah
KOREA: HIH Prince Lee Ku, Hereditary Prince Imperial of Korea died recently. He is survived by his daughter, but it is unclear at this time who will be the rightful successor.
KUWAIT: HH Emir Sabah IV Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah
LAOS: HRH Crown Prince Soulivong Savang
LESOTHO: HM King Letsie III / Heir: Her Royal Highness Princess Senate Mohato Seeiso
LIECHTENSTEIN: HSH Prince Hans-Adam II / Heir: HSH Hereditary Prince Alois is presently functioning as regent or the soverign representative of his father.
LYBIA: HRH Crown Prince Sayyid Muhammad bin Sayyid Hasan ar-Rida al-Mahdi as-Sanussi
LUXEMBOURG: HRH The Grand Duke Henri Albért Gabriel Félix Marie Guillaume of Luxembourg / Heir: HRH Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume Jean Joseph Marie : HRH The Grand Duke Henri Albért Gabriel Félix Marie Guillaume ofLuxembourg / Heir: HRH Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume Jean Joseph Marie
MALAYSIA: HM Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Syed Putra, reigning elected Head of State (King) for five years. The king must be elected from one of the nine Sultans of the Malay States (Perak, Selangor, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu and Johore)
MALTA: Elective Prince of The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta: "de jure" over past territories and still an independent subject of international law: His Most Eminent Highness the Prince and Grand Master Fra Matthew Festing as of March 11, 2008
MEXICO: HIH Count Maximilian von Goetzen-Iturbide, Prince of Mexico / Heir: HIH Prince Fernando ( www.casaimperial : HIH Count Maximilian von Goetzen-Iturbide, Prince of Mexico / Heir: HIH Prince Fernando
MONACO: HMSH Prince Albert II, The Sovereign Prince of Monaco
MONTENEGRO: HRH Crown Prince Nikola II / Heir: HRH Grand Duke Boris, Hereditary Prince Petrovic-Njegos of Montenegro
MOROCCO: HM Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan / Heir: HRH Prince Moulay Hassan
NEPAL: HM King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (recently deposed) / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Paras Bir Bikram Shah Dev : HM King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (recently deposed) / Heir:HRH Crown Prince Paras Bir Bikram Shah Dev
NETHERLANDS: HM King Willem-Alexander / Heir: Catharina-Amalia Beatrix Carmen Victoria, Princess of Orange
NEW ZEALAND--Maori: King Tuheitia Paki
NEW ZEALAND: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
NORWAY: HM Harald V / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Haakon
OMAN: HM Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al-Said
PAPUA NEW GUINEA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
PORTUGAL: HRH Dom Duarte, Duke of Bragança / Heir: HRH Prince Dom Afonso, Prince ofBeira
QATAR: HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani / Heir: HH Tameem Bin Hamad Al Thani
ROMANIA: HM King Michael I passed away in 2017 / Her Royal Highness, Margarita, is now the head of the Royal House, which was made by royal decree or a change in succession rules made on 30 December 1997
RUSSIA: HIH Grand Duchess Maria Wladimirovna / Heir: HIH Grand Duke George Mikhailovich
RUSSIA: HH Prince Nicholas Romanovich HH Prince Nicholas Romanovich
RWANDA: HM King Yuhi VI
SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
SAINT LUCIA: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
SAINT VINCENT AND THE GREADINES: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
SAUDI ARABIA: HM King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz / Heir: HRH Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince
SOLOMON ISLANDS: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales : HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
SOUTH AFRICA--Bafokena: His Majesty King Kgosi Leruo T. Molotlegi
SOUTH AFRICA--Xhosa: HM King Zwelonke Sigcawu
SOUTH AFRICA--Zulus: HM King Goodwill Zwelithini
SPAIN: HM King Felipe VI / Heir: HRH Infante Leonor, Princess of Asturias
SWAZILAND: HM King Mswati III : HM King Mswati III
SWEDEN: HM King Carl XVI Gustaf / Heir: HRH Crown Princess Victoria
THAILAND: HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) / Heir: HRH Crown Prince Mah Vajiralongkorn
TIBET, Kingdom of: His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
TONGA: HM King Tupouto'a Lavaka / Heir apparent: Siaosi Manumataongo, Crown Prince
TURKEY: H.I.H. Osman Bayezid Osmanoglu, Prince of the Ottoman Empire / Presumptive Heir: HIH Prince Sehzade Dündar Aliosman Efendi
TUVALU: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales
UGANDA--Buganda: HM Kabaka Rodney Muwenda Mutebi II
UGANDA--Bunyoro-Kitara: HM King Solomon Gafabusa Iguru
UGANDA--Busoga: His Royal Highness Isebantu Kyabazinga (HRH Henry Wako Muloki)
UGANDA--Toro: HM King Oyo Nyimba Kabambaiguru Rukidi IV
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, reigning elected President of Ruling Body consisting of seven Sheikdoms or Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain)
UNITED KINGDOM: HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales : HM Queen Elizabeth II / Heir: HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales
VATICAN CITY: HH Benedict XVI (sovereign prince of an internationally recognized independent territory or government) / Heir: by election of the Cardinals
VIETNAM: HIH Prince Bao Thang / Heir: HIH Prince Bao An
WALLIS and FUTURA: (French overseas territory composed of three islands) Three kings, representing three traditional chiefdoms, are members of the Territorial Assembly: Tomasi Kulimoetoke II--died May 7, 2007 no successor yet, Soane Patita Maituku, Visesio Moeliku, the Head of State is the President of France : (French overseas territory composed of three islands) Three kings,representing three traditional chiefdoms, are members of the Territorial Assembly: Tomasi Kulimoetoke II--died May 7, 2007 no successor yet, Soane Patita Maituku, Visesio Moeliku, the Head of State is the President of France
YEMEN: HRH Prince 'Ageel bin Muhammad al-Badr Hamidaddin, Saif al-Islam / Heir: HRH Prince Muhammad al-Hassan bin 'Ageel Hamidaddin : HRH Prince 'Ageel bin Muhammad al-Badr Hamidaddin,/ Heir: HRH Prince Muhammad al-Hassan bin 'Ageel Hamidaddin
YUGOSLAVIA & SERBIA: HRH Crown Prince Alexander / Heir: HRH Hereditary Prince Peter
ZANZIBAR: HM Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah Al-Said
The following map shows how much of the world is ruled by monarchs. Among their peers, they are generally the more rich, prosperous, stable and most free people of the earth. Monarchy, chiefly constitutional monarchy, is a great blessing and benefit that we recommend to others who wish to improve the well-being and best good of their countries.
To know how to address or speak to a royal or noble, see " Royal and Noble Ranks, Styles and Addresses "
The Crowned Nations of the Earth are shown below:
Absolute monarchy ·
Semi-constitutional monarchy ·
Constitutional monarchy ·
States in personal union with a constitutional monarch · (commonwealth)
Sub-state or Subnational level monarchy or monarchies · (partial)
The Ten Richest Monarchs of the World
1 King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand of Thailand
Age: 80
Net worth: £18.79 billion
2 Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates
Age: 60
Net worth: £12.35 billion
3 King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia
Age: 84
Net worth: £11.27 billion
4 Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei
Age: 62
Net worth: £10.74 billion
5 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai
Age: 58
Net worth: £9.66 billion
6 Prince Hans-Adam II von und zu Liechtenstein of Liechtenstein
Age: 63
Net worth: £2.68 billion
7 Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar
Age: 56
Net worth: £1.07 billion
8 King Mohammed VI of Morocco
Age: 46
Net worth: £805.4 million
9 Prince Albert II of Monaco
Age: 50
Net worth: £751.7 million
10 Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman
Age: 67
Net worth: £590.1 million
11 Prince Karim Al Hussein
Age: 71
Net worth: £536.9 million
12 Queen Elizabeth II
Age: 82
Net worth: £349 million
13 Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait
Age: 79
Net worth: £268 million
14 Queen Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard of the Netherlands
Age: 70
Net worth: £161 million
15 King Mswati III of Swaziland
Age: 40
Net worth: £107.4 million
(Anita Singh, "The world's richest royals," Telegraph.co.uk, 25 August 2008: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2598278/The-worlds-richest-royals.html )
We encourage you to read and enjoy the articles that follow, which are informative and can deepen one's understanding of the whys and wherefores as well as the true and permanent rights of royalty, nobility and chivalry. The following articles are considered to be especially important and valuable:
Dynastic Law " by Stephen P. Kerr, LL.M., JD Article #1: "" by Stephen P. Kerr, LL.M., JD
German Nobility " by Michael Waas Article #2: "" by Michael Waas
Nobiliary Law and Succession " by Jan-Olov von Wowern Article #3: "" by Jan-Olov von Wowern
Article #6: " Genealogy "
Heraldry " Article #7: "
Chivalry and Modern Times " by D. Edward Goff Article #8: "" by D. Edward Goff
Demoralised Georgia may renewed itself by restoring its monarchy " Article #9: "
A Statement Issued by the Chancellery of the Royal House of Georgia " Article #11: "
Some Inaccuracies on the Website of Prince David Bagrationi " Article #12: "
Monarchy Efforts in Serbia " Article #15: "
The Model Constitution " Article #19: "
The Return of Royalty to Indonesia " by Gerry van Klinken & Donald P. Tick Article #20: "" by Gerry van Klinken & Donald P. Tick
Sovereignty in the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires " Article #21: "
Use " Contact " to join the Commission as a contributor or apply for certification for titles, knighthood, status or ancestry. Our goals and mission are to protect the public from counterfeit titles, phony knighthoods and fake genealogies. We certify the true and the genuine as well as promote chivalry, royalty and nobility. There is so much that needs to be done. We invite you to contribute and join with us.
Contact or donate through the following:
For Membership or to become Certified, please read " Membership Categories, Fees, Evidence Requirements & Standards."."
When you are ready to move ahead with membership or certification, go to " Enrollments and/or Contributions " or " Registration or Certification."."
© Copyright 2005/2009 -- International Commission on Nobility and Royalty. All Rights Reserved.[ THE INVESTOR ] In a rare consensus, the five major candidates for next week’s presidential election have pledged to strengthen support for small and medium-sized enterprises as a way to increase employment.
Whoever is elected president, they all say they will promote a governmental agency handling matters related to SMEs, now under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, to an independent ministerial-level office.
Experts share the presidential candidates’ perception that the country’s deteriorating unemployment problem cannot be eased, let alone settled, unless the gap in wages and other working conditions between SMEs and large companies is considerably reduced.
Hourly wages received by SME workers amounted to 79.4 percent on average of those paid to employees at large firms in 1995. But the proportion continued to decline, to 70.2 in 2000, 63.7 in 2010 and 59.2 in 2014, according to data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
The wage gap between SMEs and large companies remains wider than that between regular and irregular workers.
In 2014, small and midsized enterprises accounted for 99.9 percent of the total number of local businesses, hiring nearly 88 percent of workers, showed figures from the Korea Federation of SMEs.
However, nearly a third of SMEs engage in low value-added businesses.
“The country’s labor market is divided into the first league of large corporations and regular jobs and the second league of SMEs and irregular jobs,” said Bae Kyu-shik, a researcher at the Korea Labor Institute, a state-run think tank.
The improving performance of large exports-oriented manufacturing companies has not resulted in an increase in employment partly due to the automation and off-shoring of production.
Government data show the number of jobs in the manufacturing sector declining for a ninth consecutive month in March while the country’s exports have kept a streak of on-year monthly increase since November.
The jobless rate stood at 4.2 percent in March, with the figure for young people reaching a record high of 11.3 percent.
Many SMEs still have difficulty recruiting qualified workers because of severe job mismatches.
A panel on youth employment under a tripartite commission of representatives from the government, management and labor last month called for preventing job mismatches from being structuralized through strengthened oversight over wage payments to SME employees and contracts between large firms and their suppliers.
Many smaller businesses have delayed wage payments to their employees or fail to pay the minimum wage as they are struggling to keep afloat. Eight in 10 SMEs with wages in arrears had less than 30 workers as of 2014.
Guaranteeing fairness in contracts is needed to improve the wage gap as nearly half of SMEs in the manufacturing sector rely on supplying parts to large manufacturers.
A MOTIE official said underpriced payments to subcontractors had been overlooked to some extent to help shore up competitiveness of major manufacturing exporters.
“This should change now,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
He also said unionized workers at large companies should be ready to make concessions to reduce the wage gap with subcontracted workers.
Experts say active measures should also be taken to reduce the wage gap between regular and irregular workers. It is necessary to consider ensuring the same wage for the same work as has been pushed ahead with by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, they note.
Bae said it was also important to implement industrial strategies for enhancing the fundamental competitiveness of SMEs and encouraging them to grow into intermediary and large corporations that can compete in global markets.
He stressed it would be impossible to solve the unemployment problem without enabling SMEs to offer a bigger number of quality jobs, particularly to young job seekers.
In this regard, presidential candidates’ pledges to strengthen support for small firms do not seem concrete and substantial enough to ensure long-term competitiveness of SMEs.
Critics say such pledges -- including financial support for research and development projects, subsidies for employment programs and designation of areas for small businesses -- are nothing but a repetition of the measures taken by previous administrations.
In a symposium last week, Lee Jong-wook, a professor of economics at Seoul Women’s University, called on presidential candidates to specify what the proposed ministerial-level office in charge of SME-related matters will do.
Previous measures focused on protection have been cited as reasons for many smaller businesses to hesitate or refuse to grow further at the expense of being disqualified for support tailored for SMEs.
It is necessary to facilitate the restructuring of marginal firms and provide competitive SMEs with effective incentives to help them grow into intermediary and large companies, experts say.
By Kim Kyung-ho/The Korea Herald (khkim@heraldcorp.com)Besiktas manager Slaven |
Kelly left last offseason for the NFL. So has Riley, who seems set on sticking with what he knows, thought about trying to find the pro-style version of Chip Kelly, someone young and new who can infuse the offense with fresh ideas?
“I think we’ve got a great staff,” Riley said. “I don’t think we have to make a change to get the ‘right’ people or ‘magical’ people: I think we can find what’s best for our program and our team right here, and do what we need to do.”
At this point, the 2014 roster looks murky. Three big NFL decisions hang over the Beavers as quarterback Sean Mannion, receiver Brandin Cooks and defensive end Scott Crichton, all juniors, contemplate leaving school early and turning pro early. (Cooks said he will likely make the decision before classes resume on Jan. 6; the other two were noncommittal on a timetable.) Logic says Cooks and Crichton are gone, while Mannion stays. After that, it gets interesting.
A supposedly veteran offensive line graduates three players this spring, which would seem to be a blow to the Beavers’ offense. But in reality, that line underperformed this year, and repeated injury problems did not help. OSU will return both primary running backs, and Storm Woods and Terron Ward figure to be even better with another year of experience.
Tight end Connor Hamlett, the Beavers’ most consistent receiver outside of Cooks, should be healthy by the start of the 2014 season. And there are budding superstars in young receivers Malik Gilmore, Richard Mullaney and Victor Bolden, the true freshman who looks to take over for Cooks. Mannion has proven he can be a superstar at times, but his accuracy and decision-making still need work against top defenses; typically in Riley’s system, where it takes a few years before you have full command of the expansive playbook, quarterbacks play the best football of their careers as seniors. That should work to Mannion’s advantage.
Defensively, the Beavers will be expected to fill holes on the defensive line again. That was supposed to be a seamless transition in 2013, as Oregon State signed a handful of junior college linemen last winter, but three never became eligible and showed. Riley said in September that going forward, he will only list junior college transfers who are enrolled in the spring, because those are usually the ones who are available come fall camp.
That being said, Miami transfer Jalen Grimble, who sat out in 2013, should be able to contribute immediately. He often looked like the best player on the scout team this season. Rashaad Reynolds, one of the most under-appreciated players of the past few years, will be gone, but there is a stable of young cornerbacks who can fill in; in the Hawaii Bowl, Larry Scott looked particularly good.
But for now, the depth chart remains up in the air as three major pieces of the Beavers' pro-style system decide on their futures.
— Lindsay SchnellShare. 4J Studios created the pack, which includes Halo character skins and pre-made worlds. 4J Studios created the pack, which includes Halo character skins and pre-made worlds.
The Halo Mash-up Pack for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition will come out tomorrow, Microsoft announced.
Exit Theatre Mode
Fully revealed just a couple of days ago, the Halo Mash-up Pack features a Halo-themed texture set, 31 musical tracks from the franchise, and 40 character skins, including Master Chief and Cortana. Microsoft, Mojang Studios and 343 Industries also are promising pre-made Halo worlds with the pack, such as Silent Cartographer, Valhalla, and Blackout.
Created by 4J Studios, the Halo Mash-Up Pack will cost $4/€3.80/£2.70 on Xbox Live. For more on Minecraft, be sure to check out IGN's official YouTube channel on the game.
Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel, talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show, and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter.President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow misrepresented the role of the Secret Service on Sunday morning during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” in an attempt to justify Donald Trump Jr.’s controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer and a Russian-American lobbyist, several former and current Secret Service officials told HuffPost.
The meeting has drawn condemnation and concerns on both sides of the aisle because it appears that Trump Jr. colluded with a foreign power hostile to the United States to seek negative information about his father’s presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.
In his interview with ABC White House reporter Jon Karl on Saturday, Sekulow, a longtime Trump ally and a member of his personal legal team, asserted that if Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin were such concerning figures, the Secret Service should have prevented them from entering Trump Tower. Sekulow made several misleading statements, according to current and former Secret Service officials who spoke to HuffPost.
KARL: But do you accept what we heard from the president’s pick to run the FBI, that what should’ve happened there, you know, a situation where you have representatives of a foreign government offering assistance to ― in an election, that what should’ve happened is that the FBI should’ve been notified? SEKULOW: Well, I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in. The president had Secret Service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me.
Trump’s legal team and surrogates have been using a range of excuses to push back on the controversy surrounding the meeting, claiming it wasn’t illegal for Trump Jr. to have accepted it; that any campaign, regardless of party, would have accepted such a meeting; or that nothing of note came out of the meeting, meaning that it shouldn’t be a matter of interest to the press or public.
Some pundits and reporters have speculated that Sekulow shouldn’t even have made the assertion about the Secret Service’s role because Trump Jr.’s meeting took place on June 9, 2016 ― at that point, only his father had a Secret Service protective detail.
Even though Trump Jr. didn’t have a protective detail at the time of the meeting, given that Trump’s home, office and campaign office were all in the same space, the Secret Service did consider all of those spaces to be part of their screening oversight to look for physical danger to the candidate, according to two sources familiar with the protective posture of the Secret Service at that stage of the campaign.
“At that stage, we would only screen for physical threats, we were not at the stage to be in a counterintelligence posture,” Jonathan Wackrow, a 14-year veteran of the Secret Service, who served on former President Barack Obama’s detail, told HuffPost.
The Secret Service was conducting physical checks (magnetometers) for anyone entering Trump’s office space and apartment (with some exceptions), but they were only checking names of people meeting with his father and those names were only checked to ensure that they wouldn’t have presented a physical threat to Trump (for example, a prior conviction for assault), not a possible counterintelligence threat. Had Trump Jr. met with Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin outside of Trump Tower, they wouldn’t have been subjected to any screening at all.
At that stage, we would only screen for physical threats, we were not at the stage to be in a counterintelligence posture. Jonathan Wackrow, a 14-year veteran of the Secret Service
“Donald Trump, Jr. was not a protectee of the USSS in June, 2016. Thus we would not have screened anyone he was meeting with at that time,” a Secret Service spokesman said in a statement to HuffPost, referring to the counterintelligence screenings or criminal background checks.
Sekulow’s assertion that the Secret Service would have prevented someone “nefarious” from entering Trump Tower is misleading because it assumes the agents’ role in protecting candidates is the same as protecting officials. The Secret Service only has authority to physically prevent someone from entering a secure space of the president or vice president of the United States. Even if the Secret Service felt someone presented a physical threat to candidate Trump (after screening their name), they could not have stopped him or her from entering Trump Tower if Trump, his family, or his campaign team disregarded the concerns of the Secret Service.
With respect to Trump, now that he is president, the screening of people who will be in his proximity is much more rigorous. Any individual coming within proximity of the president is subjected to what’s known as an “arms-reach-of-the-president,” or an ARP, check. In that screening, the Secret Service will do a background check through all of the intelligence databases on anyone that will be in the same room as the president for a meeting or a reception where they will be photographed with the president.
For example, if the White House is holding a diplomatic reception with the president, the guest list will be run through an ARP check. If a businessman invited to the reception is flagged as a known Russian state security officer, their name will be flagged for the highest level of White House staff and a decision will be made if they should be allowed to attend.President-elect Donald Trump left the door open Sunday on how exactly he plans to overhaul the regulation-heavy agenda pursued by the Obama administration, suggesting he wouldn’t dismantle all that his predecessor has done – while making clear the government needs to be more business-friendly.
Asked in an exclusive interview with “Fox News Sunday” whether he’d take a “wrecking ball” to President Obama’s legacy, the construction magnate responded:
“No. I don't want to do that at all. I just want what's right.”
The answer may have surprised those watching Trump’s recent Cabinet selections, which have included: a prominent ObamaCare critic to lead the Health and Human Services Department; a foe of Obama’s overtime pay expansion to lead the Labor Department; and a state attorney general currently suing the Environmental Protection Agency to lead that very agency.
Trump, at the same time, has sent mixed signals about his plans, meeting in recent days with prominent climate change activists Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Asked on “Fox News Sunday” about the implications of those meetings as well as his Cabinet selections, Trump indicated his interest is in making the government more efficient and responsive to business.
TRUMP RIPS CLAIMS OF RUSSIA INTERFERENCE IN 2016 RACE
At the EPA, he said, “You can't get things approved. I mean, people are waiting in line for 15 years before they get rejected, okay? That's why people don't want to invest in this country.”
Trump said: “So we're going to clean it up. We're going to speed it up and, by the way, if somebody is not doing the right thing we're not going to approve. … We can't let all of these permits that take forever to get stop our jobs.”
Trump steered clear of committing to specific actions regarding projects that have pitted environmental interests against the energy industry, while suggesting economic considerations are paramount to him.
On the long-disputed Keystone pipeline that was halted by the Obama administration, Trump said “you’re going to have a decision fairly quickly.”
Asked about the Dakota Access Pipeline, which the Army Corps of Engineers wants to re-route following protests, Trump said he did not want to answer right now.
“But I will tell you, when I get to office, if it's not solved, I'll have it solved very quickly,” Trump said, before adding: “Something will happen. It'll be quick. I think it's very unfair. So, it’ll start, one way or the other.”
Trump, meanwhile, said he is still studying the Paris climate agreement – a pact, backed by the U.S. and dozens of other nations, committing countries to curb the global rise in temperatures – but, “I don't want that agreement to put us at a competitive disadvantage with other countries.”
When asked where he stood on the environment and climate change, Trump would not be pinned down. “I'm very open-minded. I'm still open-minded. Nobody really knows,” Trump said. “Look, I'm somebody that gets it and nobody really knows. It's not something that's so hard and fast. I do know this: other countries are eating our lunch.”
Taken together, Trump’s comments, meetings and appointments speak to an incoming president still weighing his options on how drastically he wants to reverse or halt the Obama regulatory agenda.
In an indication that the incoming administration may be preparing for big changes with regard to energy sector programs and rules, his transition team reportedly has sent around a questionnaire asking the Energy Department for a list of appointees and senior executives – and details on who has spearheaded the agency’s clean energy initiatives.
One unnamed department official described the questionnaire as a hit list, according to an Associated Press report. The memo sparked alarm among some Democrats, as did Trump’s decision last week to name Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA.
Pruitt has been involved in lawsuits against the Obama EPA, including over the controversial Clean Power Plan and waterway regulations. He also has suggested the debate over global warming – and the impact of human activity on global temperatures – is unsettled.
Former Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders suggested Sunday that the Pruitt pick suggests the meetings with Gore and others are not informing policy decisions.
“I’m glad they reached out to Gore, but apparently they are not hearing what Gore has to say,” he told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” Sanders said it’s troubling Trump would appoint a climate change “denier” to lead the EPA.
Trump’s first order of Obama legacy business may be the Affordable Care Act, with congressional Republicans eager to send a repeal bill to his desk next year. Trump has said he plans to nominate Georgia Rep. Tom Price to lead HHS, which would put an outspoken ObamaCare critic at the helm of the agency that implemented the law.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that the Obama administration “pushed investment out” with its raft of rules and predicted a shift toward what he called “common-sense regulation,” including with health care.
“Our No. 1 focus is jobs [in the House],” he said. “[ObamaCare] is going to collapse on itself. We have to look at health care in a new form and have a new health care system.”Sandy, Bedfordshire A leave-taking of Britain is playing out in the skies as swifts and martins fuel up for their epic journey
Through these last weeks of summer, the autumn migration has played out in the skies, though it goes largely unnoticed by most below. A trickle of an exodus began over the bank holiday with three dark specks, way, way up in the blue. Specks, yes, but you could see, from the wings curved like taut bows, that they were unmistakably swifts.
Hatched on northern ledges they had become citizens of heaven. They deviated on insect-chasing sallies in all directions, but were overall tracking south-west.
Swifts migrate from Beijing to southern Africa without landing Read more
The swifts were almost lost over the horizon when three more materialised in the same spot as the first trio. And then, when those birds had nearly gone from sight, another cluster appeared, and then, when they too were at vanishing point, yet another.
For half an hour, until I was summoned back to my paint brush, I watched this loose but connected procession of travellers traversing the sky. I regretted afterwards that I had not stayed to see whether the chain stretched over tens or hundreds of miles.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest House martins can be heard chattering while in flight. Photograph: FLPA/Alamy
Whenever waves of humidity roll in and the clouds bank up, the air is salted with the frenzied chatter of house martins. Most people must hear them, but no one looks up. Maybe it is just background noise.
Birdwatch: House martin Read more
I watched one of these pop-up flocks the other day, the birds cutting across each other against an ominous blue-black backdrop. All but two of the birds were purposeful in their “fast flap, glide” fly catching, the old and the young milling together in the currents.
There was an errant pair in their midst. House martins are noted for their antagonism towards rival birds close to the nest site, but it seemed these two had carried their dispute into the departure lounge. They broke from the crowd to engage in a fierce beak-to-tail chase, tracing loops, bows and chicanes, bodies flashing light-dark-light-dark as they turned.
A passive observer, I nevertheless felt the speed, exhilaration – and also pointlessness of the pursuit. Why waste so much energy instead of fuelling for the journey of their lives? It seemed that, for this pair, there was time enough to bicker.
Follow Country diary on Twitter: @gdncountrydiaryThe photograph is a bit grainy. Wearing a faded purple raincoat, an empty bucket hitched to her waist, the woman has her back to the camera. You can’t tell if she’s young or old but you can see that she’s walking alongside an apartment building. Ahead on the flooded road are a few cars and motorcycles, still submerged. The circular ripple caused by the knee-high water she is wading through suggests a slow, measured movement. As if she’s on a mission that requires deliberate, unhurried focus.
It’s no longer raining. And there is no other human being visible in the frame. Yet, the night before the photograph was taken, it had rained incessantly as Chennai faced its heaviest rainfall in over a century. The person who took the picture, Padma Ramani, was visiting a niece at the Srividhya Apartments when she peeped out of her window and saw the milk-delivery woman, as usual, doing her rounds at 6am.
Ramani’s nephew, Ramanathan S, who works with the news website The News Minute, knew the delivery woman as someone who had been supplying milk ‘for years’ and uploaded the photograph to Twitter. He certainly didn’t anticipate the reaction.
Buzzfeed India picked it up, so did digital content platform ScoopWhoop. It was the lead picture in a story on the Chennai floods at UK-based The Independent newspaper’s website. It was on Huffington Post India. It was there in the language press.
When Ramanathan went to interview the by-now famous ‘milk-lady’ Radha a few days later, he says, the 60-year-old seemed surprised to see him. She had woken up at 4am as she does every other morning, reached the milk cooperative, Aavin, to pick up the supplies and then had headed over to fulfil her delivery responsibilities. “So many people dependent on me, how could I not go?” she asked. Both Radha’s children, it turns out, have good jobs and she does not need to work. But for her the milk cooperative ‘is not just a job’. “I made my life out of it. I’ll do it as long as my body allows it,” she said.
Radha didn’t have to get to work. Nobody would have rebuked her for failing to show up on a day when milk was being sold in the black market for Rs 100 a litre. That she did says something about her work ethic and the pact that she has made with her customers.
It says something also about our times that a small act of basic decency should be viewed as something worthy of telling and repeating. After all, there is no great heroism on display; no lives are being saved. Apparently 15 other women from the same cooperative turned up for work that morning. And, yet, these tiny acts seem to have become so scarce that we feel we need to cling to them as an emblem and reminder of our humanity.
Why did the photograph get that sort of reaction, I ask Ramanathan. “I think people want to be inspired in the face of a tragedy. They want to see somebody standing up to it,” he says.
In the morning after a disaster, there is hope that human beings will find their better selves. That morning, innumerable ordinary Chennai residents on the ground and on social media did just that as they pitched in, volunteered, sent out relief packets, prepared home-cooked meals, and even rescued stranded animals.
At a time when self-interest is regarded as a stepping stone to our notions of success, at a time when we teach our children that ambition is good and aspiration a quality to be striven for — India ranked a low 106 out of 145 nations in the art of giving finds a recent Gallup poll — and at a time when we are strident in our demand for our rights, we need to be reminded that selflessness is also a virtue and that as citizens we have duties too.
Sometimes it takes an accidental photograph taken early in the morning in the midst of devastation to remind us of our better selves.
First Published: Dec 18, 2015 23:06 IST(CNN) Alan Rickman, the British actor with the unforgettable voice who played the brooding Professor Severus Snape in the "Harry Potter" films as well as "Die Hard" villain Hans Gruber, died Thursday after a short battle with cancer, according to his representatives at Independent Talent Group.
He was 69.
"There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death," "Potter" author J.K. Rowling tweeted Thursday.
Fans had lost "a great talent," she said, and his family "have lost a part of their hearts."
There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man.
Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the films, posted a statement on Google+ calling Rickman "one of the greatest actors I will ever work with" and one of the nicest, as well.
"Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny," Radcliffe wrote. "And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass."
Alan Rickman
A smooth-voiced London native, Rickman worked on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in UK television projects before earning his first film role as German terrorist Gruber, opposite Bruce Willis' John McClane, in 1988's "Die Hard."
He had been in Hollywood only two days, but he almost didn't take the role.
"I read it, and I said, 'What the hell is this? I'm not doing an action movie,' " he recounted in a 2015 interview with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
It ended up being one of the most memorably villainous roles in film history.
In the 2015 interview, Rickman recounted that he helped shape the role, despite being a novice film actor hired because he would work cheap.
After being fitted to wear a militaristic outfit as leader of a band of terrorists, Rickman suggested that perhaps Gruber could wear a suit, affect an American accent and pretend to be a civilian trapped in the building for a scene with Willis' cop character.
He said he was told, "You'll wear what you're told."
"But then I came back, and they handed me the new script" that included the revisions.
"So you know, it just pays to occasionally use a little bit of theater training when you're doing a movie."
JUST WATCHED 'Harry Potter' actor Alan Rickman dies Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 'Harry Potter' actor Alan Rickman dies 02:02
Despite acclaim for his portrayal of Gruber and performances in movies such as "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," "Truly Madly Deeply" and "Sense and Sensibility," Rickman was never nominated for an Oscar.
He did win a BAFTA Award for supporting actor in "Robin Hood" and was nominated three other times, including for "Truly Madly Deeply," in 1990, and "Sense and Sensibility" in 1995.
He also won a Golden Globe in 1997 for best actor in the HBO biopic "Rasputin."
Although he carried on a lifelong love affair with stage acting, Rickman is probably best known to younger filmgoers as Snape, the antagonistic and bullying wizard who, in the end, plays a crucial role in the Potter saga.
He took the role in 2001's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" without knowing much about the character.
"People thought I knew a lot, and I didn't," he said. "When I was asked to do it, there were only three books written."
But he did have a clue, he said in a 2011 thank-you letter to Rowling at the conclusion of the film series, which saw stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint grow up on screen.
"Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands."
That knowledge helped shape his portrayal of the character, he told the Los Angeles Times in 2011.
"It was a punctuation mark in my life every year, because I would be doing other things but always come back to that, and I was always aware of my place in the story even as others around me were not," Rickman told the newspaper.
His presence was invaluable, "Potter" producer David Heyman told the Los Angeles Times.
"He had a real understanding of the character, and now looking back, you can see there was always more going on there -- a look, an expression, a sentiment -- that hint at what is to come," Heyman said. "The shadow that he casts in these films is a huge one, and the emotion he conveys is immeasurable."
Acting was 'an inevitability'
Rickman was born in 1946 to a working-class West London family. Despite an early interest in acting, he studied graphic design in college and owned a design business with friends after graduating.
In 1971, at the age of 25, he applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, one of the oldest acting schools in England.
"There was an inevitability about my being an actor since about the age of 7, but there were other roads that had to be traveled first," Biography.com quoted him as saying.
In 1978, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, followed by roles in British television and theater.
In 1985, he won the role of Le Vicomte de Valmont in the stage version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," his first major villain -- and the breakthrough role for which he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1988.
Later that year, he went to Hollywood to try his hand at film acting. Despite not knowing much about the film business, he was offered the "Die Hard" role immediately.
"I'd never made a film before, but I was extremely cheap," he said in the BAFTA interview.
And despite almost rejecting "Die Hard," he said, the progressive storyline won him over.
"Every single black character in that film is positive and highly intelligent," he said. "So, 28 years ago, that's quite revolutionary, and quietly so."
Playing Gruber gave rise to the notion of Rickman as master of villainous roles, one at which he often bristled.
"I don't see them any of them as one word," Rickman said of his roles in 2011. "It doesn't matter what I'm playing, it's not one word, and I think any actor would say the same."
Not all of his roles were heavy or dark, of course. In 1999's campy "Galaxy Quest," a heavily made-up Rickman played a classically trained actor named Sir Alexander Dane. In the movie, Dane was a washed-up science-fiction actor whose character had a trademark expression, "by Grabthar's hammer!"
The exclamation was trending Thursday on Twitter in tribute to Rickman.
'A rare and unique human being'
As news of Rickman's death spread, so did the tributes.
"I'm very sad to hear about Alan today," "Harry Potter" star Emma Watson tweeted. "I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor. I'll really miss our conversations."
Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy in the "Potter" films, tweeted, "Heartbreaking news about lovely Alan. Nobody else could be as hilarious, tragic, terrifying & truthful all at the same time."
British actor Stephen Fry called the news of Rickman's death "desperately sad."
"A man of such talent, wicked charm and stunning screen and stage presence," Fry wrote. "He'll be sorely missed."
The director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Edward Kemp, said the school would be "much the poorer" without the involvement of Rickman, who was vice chairman of its council.
"He was generous with his time, his insight, his money, his experience, not only to RADA students but to young actors and theatre makers across the spectrum," he said in a statement. "He will be much missed."
Actress Emma Thompson, who appeared with Rickman in "Judas Kiss," "Love Actually," "Sense and Sensibility" and three of the Harry Potter films, issued a moving statement mourning his death, according to numerous media outlets.
"Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye," she wrote.
"What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom, and kindness," Thompson said in the statement. "His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word.
"He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again," she said.
Rickman is survived by his wife, Rima Horton, whom he met when they were teenagers. The couple had no children.
His fans still have a few new things to look forward to.
His film "Eye in the Sky," about drone warfare in Kenya, is set for March release. He also did voice work for the upcoming "Alice Through the Looking Glass."The international meet-up of Return of Kings (RoK) devotees was planned for locations around the world, including in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth, this Saturday evening. But in an announcement posted on the RoK website, the group's leader, Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh, said the meeting was cancelled due to safety concerns.
"I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6, especially since most of the meetups can not be made private in time," Valizadeh wrote.
"While I can’t stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return of Kings meetups. The listing page has been scrubbed of all locations. I apologize to all the supporters who are let down by my decision."
The meet-up was to be for "heterosexual, masculine men" only. Women and homosexuals were not welcome, Valizadeh said.
The RoK leader had pledged to be in Australia for the meetings after a nationwide backlash against him.
Valizadeh's travel plans received significant opposition, including a petition that received more than 100,000 signatures, opposition from local police forces, and a message from Australia's former sex discrimination commissioner.
Despite this, Valizadeh had pledged never to cancel the event.Brooklyn’s Troy Ave. releases the ambitiously titled New York City: The Album, led by a video for the title track, “New York City,” which features fellow Big Apple journeymen Raekwon and N.O.R.E.
Right from the jump, New York City proclaims a “Classic Feel,” with the initial song riding a smooth-but-gritty string-and-piano track, certainly hearkening to a New York street-rap vibe. Few joints stray from this updated boom-bap/soul-sound DNA, and while Troy Ave. isn’t the most complex lyricist, he sits well in the pocket of the musical selections, which generally works because there are more good beats than bad ones.
Mostly braggadocio, Troy Ave. does take time to tell some (purportedly) auto-biographical stories and shed light on his opinions regarding certain situations, such as coming up in the rap game/street life (“Mama Tears”) and past relationships (“Regretful”).
Production is generally tight and cohesive throughout, with some notable beatsmiths popping up, including Harry Fraud, Scram Jones and AraabMuzik. Aside from the aforementioned, features are few, but include well-known names like Tony Yayo (“Show Me Love”) and Pusha T (“Everything”).
At first glance, New York City sounds very New York Cityish. Worthy of marinating with, for sure, and definitely worthy of adding fuel to the not-all-NY-rappers-are-trying-to-sound-like-Southerners argument that too many still stick to.
Watch Troy Ave. – “New York City” featuring Raekwon & N.O.R.E. below. Stream/Download New York City: The Album below that.
Comments:Q: How involved do most instructors get in providing feedback and helping to map out development plans for their students? I mean, in providing constructive feedback like “I think you should work on [insert position/guard/movement] for the next two months.” I understand that I need to take a certain amount of ownership over my training, but am just looking for some guidance. I got to a large school that has many class time options and pretty much a different instructor for each class, so I’m not sure that I have a single instructor that really “knows my game” well enough that they feel comfortable in trying to shape my development plan. If I ask something like “what are some good breaks/passes for me to focus on” I’ll get a decent answer, but I’m looking at something more big picture. I could probably get some ideas from competing, but I feel like I have to work on pretty much everything. Any tips for how to get some better constructive feedback in order to focus my training? I’m fine with paying for privates (either with my instructor or another) but from reading forums it seems like most players recommend that privates be used once you already know what it is that you want to improve.
A: The depth of guidance you’re seeking is hard for a coach to give without spending a lot of one-on-one time with you. That attention is usually reserved for their promising competitors or private lesson clients, unless you have an overeager instructors with a lot of free time.
If you have an instructor you trust, you could try telling them what you told me. They’re more likely to have insights into your game than I am, and even if they don’t, it doesn’t hurt to ask. You may have even better luck finding a purple or brown belt to act as your mentor. They may not have the most prestigious rank, but they often make up for it by having the time to give you attention, especially if you can be a consistent and dedicated training partner.
Being told “only work on this” is something I usually see in the later belts (mid purple and brown) because the lower belts are about building broader skills. Specialization comes after you have a foundation to fall back on.
Like you said, competing will sharpen your focus and highlight what you need to work on. Don’t get overwhelmed by feeling you need to work on everything. Make a list to prioritize if you need to. Pick out a the main techniques, positions and strategies you want to work on. Put in the extra drilling, study instructionals and tournament footage, try to use it in sparring, and ask for feedback from training partners and instructors.
The frustration you feel is common, so don’t be discouraged. Even with private lessons and personalized coaching, you will always need to evaluate your own game. Don’t be afraid of asking others for help, but know that most of the answers you are looking for come from personal experience and trial and error.Not only are the tracks on this album a rare find, but some of the line-ups are interesting. For example, the very first track is Pettiford in a duo with a trumpet, and tracks 13 and 14 feature a front line comprised of four baritone saxophones. However, all tracks are treasures because Pettiford is prominent in the mix and his genius shines brightly.If you are on the CD version's page there is no track list nor sound samples (at the time of this review). You can see the track names and listen to sound samples on the MP3 version's product page at Oscar Pettiford: Lost Tapes - Germany 1958/1959. There you can hear what I am struggling to describe in words with respect to the unique nature of the music on this album.Since there is scant background information about the performances I have tracked it down. Note the line-ups for each track because there is a certain boldness in the way the front lines are assembled.Track 1 is from a July 15, 1959 session recorded in the SWF Baden-Baden studio in an interesting duo of Pettiford on bass and Dusko Goykovic on trumpet.Track 2 is the same session, but the line-up is Lucky Thompson on soprano sax, Hans Hammerschmid on piano, Pettiford on bass and Hartwig Bartz on drums.Tracks 3, 5 and 6 were recorded in the SWF Baden-Baden studio on June 14, 1959 and feature Pettiford on bass, Rolf Kuhn on clarinet and Jimmy Pratt on drums.Tracks 4 and 7 are from the same session with Hans Koller on tenor sax added to the line-up.Tracks 8 through 10 were recorded on February 24, 1959 at the SWF Baden-Baden studio featuring Hans Koller on tenor sax, Attila Zoller on guitar, Pettiford on bass and Jimmy Pratt on drums.Tracks 11 through 14 were recorded on December 2, 1958 at the SWF Baden-Baden studio. Tracks 11 and 12 feature Hans Koller on tenor sax, Attila Zoller on guitar, Pettiford on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums. Tracks 13 and 14 are a treat because Pettiford is on bass and cello with an interesting baritone sax section comprised of Hans Koller, Helmut Brandt, Rudi Flierl and Johnny Feigl. Hans Hammerschmid on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums round out the rhythm section.The final two tracks are from a live radio broadcast from Stadthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany on December 3, 1958 that features Hans Koller on tenor sax, Hans Hammerschmid on piano, Attila Zoller on guitar, |
coverage for women in this way also results in significant cost savings. Expanding the Medicaid Family Planning State Option would allow states to expand Medicaid coverage for family planning services, without a waiver, to those who don’t otherwise qualify for full Medicaid benefits. These cost savings could help states avoid additional cuts to critical health programs and allow them to use the savings for other pressing needs. The Medicaid Family Planning State Option will also save federal funds. The Congressional Budget Office determined that the Medicaid Family Planning State Option saves the federal government $200 million over five years and $700 million over 10 years.
Where’s the Opposition?
Irrespective of the cost savings, these benefits are in fact in danger at the hands of a majority-male Congress whose coverage for Viagra remains well-protected.
Some of the opposition comes from likely suspects and is based on misinformation campaigns that belie their true purpose. Republicans in Congress, like Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Mike Pence–who introduced an amendment today to the House appropriations bills to defund Planned Parenthood–just can’t seem to get the connection between increased access to prevention services, improved health and reduced need for abortions, the women’s right they love to hate.
And it is no surprise that groups like Family Research Council and the National Right to Life Committee are against not only funding for abortion services, but also for contraception. FRC, for example, continues to perpetuate myths about an amendment to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee health reform bill originally sponsored by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). This amendment, which passed as part of that bill, would ensure coverage of well-woman care, HIV prevention and testing, pap smears, pregnancy care, and contraceptive supplies. FRC continues to claim it forces taxpayers to pay for abortions for the first time in 30 years.
It does not address abortion coverage. At all.
Watch Your Frenemies
But then there are Democrats who may either “cut a deal” on coverage of abortion services or who oppose it outright.
For example: while the House and Senate HELP Committees have passed their bills, and neither of those includes any restrictions on coverage of reproductive health care, Tchen noted:
This was not easy to achieve in committee and won’t be easy to hold on to the Senate floor or on the House floor. And the President can not do it alone. His efforts alone will not be enough. It will take each of you to raise your voices when you go home and here in DC and to spread the word.
In fact, as of this writing, trouble may be brewing in the Senate Finance Committee and is boiling up in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Senate Finance has been promising a bill “for weeks” according to one source, but nothing has as yet materialized publicly. Meanwhile, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of Committee has according to Dana Goldstein, “indicated some openness to compromising on abortion rights in exchange for Republican support for a final reform bill.” While Baucus’s office underscores his pro-choice position, co-Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) is not pro-choice, and in the still largely old boys club that is the Senate, that “bipartisan” thing trumps women’s rights every time.
“Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee are pushing for language in health care reform legislation that would eliminate coverage for abortion services,” stated a coalition of religious groups that support abortion rights. “If this happens, many women could lose coverage for abortion services that their private insurance currently includes. Plus, millions of uninsured women will still lack a basic health care service despite having been promised a better quality of life,” says Rev. Carlton Veazey, president and CEO, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
“If these senators are allowed to deny coverage of abortion services,” Veazey continued,
the burden will inevitably fall on low-income women and widen the huge gap in health status and access to health care services that reforms are meant to remedy. Compared to their higher-income counterparts, low-income women are four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy and five times as likely to have an unintended birth.
“As people of faith, we believe that health care reform should expand coverage to provide for the basic services that every human being deserves; it should not deny essential services to half of the population and aggravate the troubling disparities in health care affecting minorities and low-income individuals,” Veazey adds.
In the House, Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) (who this week helpfully tried to re-insert funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs into the House appropriations bill) has threatened to halt passage of legislation unless it explicitly “excludes public funds for abortions.” Stupak claims to have 39 House Democrats in line to vote against passage. Today’s Congress Daily reports that:
Stupak said he will consider voting against the health reform bill if leaders do not allow a floor vote on an amendment that explicitly prohibits using public funds for abortions. If the vote is not allowed, he and other Democrats opposing abortion rights will likely vote against the rule allowing consideration of the health reform bill, he said.
Even the Senate HELP Committee–which as noted above has passed its bill–debated a half-dozen abortion-related amendments, defeating most on identical 12-11 votes, including one that would have barred people who get government insurance subsidies from buying private insurance plans that include abortion coverage.
In fact, even the “contraceptive option” was deemed to controversial for at least one Democrat. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) voted against the Mikulski Amendment ensuring coverage of contraception and of essential service providers. Calls to his office inquiring as to the reason for his vote against contraceptive coverage were not returned.
Public v. Private: Confusing the Issues
The basic argument for those who are trying to completely eliminate even the possibility of coverage for abortion services under health care reform is that “no public funds should be allocated for abortions” because “we don’t do that.”
But that is, not surprisingly, a misleading argument because health reform is intended to completely transform insurance coverage and to expand the range of essential coverage, and as noted earlier, most private plans today already cover these services.
In order to ensure all Americans are covered, most health reform proposals include options for “insurance exchanges” and other methods through which the federal government might partially subsidize the costs of insurance coverage for those without employer-based insurance, or those who can not afford to pay out-of-pocket for an insurance policy. What the Republicans and the Democrats opposed to continuing current coverage (including current abortion coverage) for women want to do is to elminate the possibility of coverage from either subsidized or private plans whether or not the federal government is subsidizing a particular person.
This is sort of like applying the “global gag rule” to private insurance plans because even if you are paying for 90 percent of your policy, the restrictions apply both to the federally funded portion (10 percent) as well as to the 90 percent of the policy you pay for. Moreover, some analysts believe the implication is that even in cases where you pay for 100 percent of the policy you choose, if the federal government is involved in any way in that insurance plan by subsidizing others, your coverage would still be restricted.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told NPR last week that not letting people use what might be very small subsidies to buy private coverage was going too far.
“The next step in this logic will be to require anybody seeking these services to walk to the clinic, lest they use federal highways, supported by federal highway funds,” he said.
What is more: The public is against having the Senate or the House dictate their medical choices.
A survey conducted by the Mellman Group for the National Women’s Law Center of 1,000 likely voters found that:
Voters overwhelmingly support the broad outlines of reform and requiring coverage of women’s reproductive health services. Seventy-one percent of voters support requiring health plans to cover women’s reproductive health services, as opposed to 21 percent opposing this coverage.
Absent coverage for women’s reproductive health services, majorities oppose reform. If reform eliminated current insurance coverage of reproductive health services such as birth control or abortion, nearly two-thirds (60%) would oppose the plan and nearly half (47%) would oppose it strongly.
Voters want an independent commission to make coverage decisions, not politicians. A strong majority of voters (75 percent) prefer that an independent commission of citizens and medical professionals make decisions about what should be covered under reform rather than the President and Congress. Fully 73 percent of voters want an independent commission to decide whether abortion should be covered, while just 16 percent want the President and Congress involved.
Even in the face of opposition arguments, majorities support requiring coverage of abortions under reform. After hearing strong arguments both for and against covering abortion under reform, two-thirds (66 percent) support coverage, agreeing that health care, not politics, should drive coverage decisions. A majority of voters (72 percent) reported that they would feel angry if Congress mandated by law that abortion would not be covered under a national health care plan.
Voters want rules to stop insurance companies from discriminating against women. Even in the face of industry claims of too much government interference, 62 percent agree that reform should establish new rules to treat everyone fairly and stop discrimination, while far fewer (32 percent) side with opponents’ claims.
Where does it go from here?
Even despite the evidence, the benefits and the clear public support for women to continue making their own medical decisions with their families and their doctors, and for full coverage of these services, anti-choice activists and politicians continue to play the same political shell games with women’s health and lives.
So groups are heeding the call to “bring it.”
And you can join them.
Here are links to action by some of the organizations mobilizing to ensure reproductive health services remain available to women and their families:
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
National Women’s Law Center
NARAL Pro-Choice America
National Partnership for Women and FamiliesMickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party returned to Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort on September 1, 2014. This fun Halloween-themed event runs select nights from 7:00 p.m. to midnight through October 31. I’ve attended the event a few times during my time with Disney. It’s fantastic! I love that so many guests dress in costume and the entertainment is outstanding (okay, I’m also a big fan of the candy). This year, guests should look for some commemorative items created especially for this event, including apparel, pins, and, for the first time, a limited-edition graphic MagicBand.
Presented in a decorative box, the limited-edition graphic MagicBand will include the event logo. It will have an edition size of 5,000 and will retail for $29.95 (plus tax). Guests must present one of the following for the MagicBand to be linked to at the time of purchase: valid theme park admission, Memory Maker card or an active MagicBand.
Guests attending the event will also find a few apparel items for adults and kids, including both long and short sleeved options plus a ladies’ cut T-shirt. A slightly altered event logo was used for the limited-release pin.
Speaking of pins, guests should look for a couple of different things, including individual limited-edition pins (Chip ‘n’ Dale with Clarice is my favorite), a boxed set, a framed set, and a limited-release mystery pin set.
One final item wasn’t created specifically for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party but I thought it was perfectly themed for the event. It’s a limited release, graphic MagicBand that contains the infamous wallpaper from the Haunted Mansion attraction (retail is $24.95 plus tax). This item will also have to be linked at the time of purchase just like the aforementioned limited-edition graphic MagicBand.
Please visit the following Magic Kingdom Park locations to find these products:
Please note the Haunted Mansion-themed graphic MagicBand will only be sold at Magic Kingdom Park at this time. Guests do not have to attend Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party in order to purchase it.Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and other conservative Republicans led a protest on Sunday which tore down barriers at a second world war memorial in Washington and confronted police outside the White House. Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, accused President Barack Obama of using war veterans as pawns in the two-week-old federal government shutdown.
"We are here to honour our vets," she told a crowd at the national mall, which has been fenced off since 1 October. "You look around though and you see these barricades and you have to ask yourself is this any way that a commander in chief would show his respect, his gratitude to our military. This is a matter of shutdown priorities."
Obama could lift the barricades if he wished, she said, adding: "Our veterans should be above politics."
Cruz, a Texas senator and fellow Tea Party darling, accused Obama of targeting the memorial: "He said, 'If you open the memorial I will veto it'."
Thousands of people, accompanied by tractors with blaring horns, converged on the plaza and sang "God bless America". Later some tore down barriers and carried them to the White House, where they dumped them while chanting "shame on you" to police in riot gear.
The protest fuelled a febrile mood as congressional Democrats and Republicans sought an elusive compromise to end the government shutdown and avert an impending default on US debt.
Polls show most Americans blame Republicans for the crisis. Tea Party activists raised the stakes and forced more mainstream Republicans into a corner by linking the fiscal battle to a campaign to repeal the administration's healthcare law.
Sunday's protest attempted to shift blame for the memorial closures, one of the most politically sensitive, on to the White House. It came ahead of a big veterans' rally scheduled for Tuesday, when thousands of former service members are expected in Washington to express concern that the shutdown will disrupt disability payments and other benefits.
"It could be, in worst-case scenario, a suicide spike. Emotional stability drops," Ryan Lamke, a wounded veteran, told CNN. "I mean, we're talking about a population of veterans that are not seeking out the mental health care they so desperately need."
The political battle over memorials follows a separate row over "phony" arrival ceremonies, in which flag-draped coffins of dead military personnel were carried from planes and presented to relatives.
In fact the remains of those killed in Vietnam or the second world war had often arrived weeks or months earlier and been stored in a laboratory run by the Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command agency. Many of the C-17 cargo planes were towed into position because they can no longer fly, fuelling accusations that the ceremonies, which include bugles and bagpipes, were misleading theatre.
In a statement to NBC, which broke the story last week, the Pentagon said the "arrival ceremonies" would henceforth be known as "honour ceremonies" to avoid confusion.In this Metal tutorial, you will learn how to get started with Apple’s 3D graphics API by rendering a simple triangle to the screen.
Update note: Andrew Kharchyshyn updated this tutorial for iOS 12, Xcode 10 and Swift 4.2. He also wrote the original.
In iOS 8, Apple released its own API for GPU-accelerated 3D graphics: Metal.
Metal is similar to OpenGL ES in that it’s a low-level API for interacting with 3D graphics hardware.
The difference is that Metal is not cross-platform. Instead, it’s designed to be extremely efficient with Apple hardware, offering improved speed and low overhead compared to using OpenGL ES.
In this tutorial, you’ll get hands-on experience using the Metal API to create a bare-bones app: drawing a simple triangle. In doing so, you’ll learn some of the most important classes in Metal, such as devices, command queues and more.
This tutorial is designed so that anyone can go through it, regardless of your 3D graphics background — however, things will move along fairly quickly. If you do have some prior 3D-programming or OpenGL experience, you’ll find things much easier, as many of the same concepts apply to Metal.
Note: Metal apps do not run on the iOS simulator; they require a device with an Apple A7 chip or later. To complete this tutorial, you’ll need an A7 device or newer.
Metal vs. SpriteKit, SceneKit or Unity
Before you get started, it’ll be helpful to understand how Metal compares to higher-level frameworks like SpriteKit, SceneKit or Unity.
Metal is a low-level 3D graphics API, similar to OpenGL ES, but with lower overhead meaning better performance. It’s a very thin layer above the GPU, which means that, in doing just about anything, such as rendering a sprite or a 3D model to the screen, it requires you to write all of the code to do this. The trade-off is that you have full power and control.
Conversely, higher-level game frameworks like SpriteKit, SceneKit and Unity are built on top of a lower-level 3D graphics APIs like Metal or OpenGL ES. They provide much of the boilerplate code you normally need to write in a game, such as rendering a sprite or 3D model to the screen.
If all you’re trying to do is make a game, you’ll probably use a higher-level game framework like SpriteKit, SceneKit or Unity most of the time because doing so will make your life much easier. If this sounds like you, we have tons of tutorials to help you get started with Apple Game Frameworks or Unity.
However, there are still two really good reasons to learn Metal:
Push the hardware to its limits: Since Metal is at such a low level, it allows you to really push the hardware to its limits and have full control over how your game works. It’s a great learning experience: Learning Metal teaches you a lot about 3D graphics, writing your own game engine, and how higher-level game frameworks work.
If either of these sound like good reasons to you, keep reading!
Metal vs. OpenGL ES
OpenGL ES is designed to be cross platform. That means you can write C++ OpenGL ES code, and, most of the time, with some small modifications, you can run it on other platforms, such as Android.
Apple realized that, although the cross-platform support of OpenGL ES was nice, it was missing something fundamental to how Apple designs its products: the famous Apple integration of the operating system, hardware and software as a complete package.
So Apple took a clean-room approach to see what it would look like if it were to design a graphics API specifically for Apple hardware with the goal of being extremely low overhead and performant, while supporting the latest and greatest features.
The result is Metal, which can provide up to 10✕ the number of draw calls for your app compared to OpenGL ES. This can result in some amazing effects — you may remember from the Zen Garden example in the WWDC 2014 keynote, as an example.
Time to dig right in and see some Metal code!
Getting Started
Xcode’s iOS game template comes with a Metal option, but you won’t choose that here. This is because you’re going to put together a Metal app almost from scratch, so you can understand every step of the process.
Download the files that you need for this tutorial using the Download Materials button at the top or bottom of this tutorial. Once you have the files, open HelloMetal.xcodeproj in the HelloMetal_starter folder. You’ll see an empty project with a single ViewController.
There are seven steps required to set up Metal so that you can begin rendering. You need to create a:
MTLDevice CAMetalLayer Vertex Buffer Vertex Shader Fragment Shader Render Pipeline Command Queue
Going through them one at a time.
1) Creating an MTLDevice
You’ll first need to get a reference to an MTLDevice.
Think of MTLDevice as your direct connection to the GPU. You’ll create all the other Metal objects you need (like command queues, buffers and textures) using this MTLDevice.
To do this, open ViewController.swift and add this import to the top of the file:
import Metal
This imports the Metal framework so that you can use Metal classes such as MTLDevice inside this file.
Next, add this property to the ViewController :
var device: MTLDevice!
You’re going to initialize this property in viewDidLoad() rather than in an initializer, so it has to be an optional. Since you know you’re definitely going to initialize it before you use it, you mark it as an implicitly unwrapped optional, for convenience purposes.
Finally, add viewDidLoad() and initialize the device property, like this:
override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() device = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() }
MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice returns a references to the default MTLDevice your code should use.
2) Creating a CAMetalLayer
In iOS, everything you see on screen is backed by a CALayer. There are subclasses of CALayers for different effects, such as gradient layers, shape layers, replicator layers and more.
If you want to draw something on the screen with Metal, you need to use a special subclass of CALayer called CAMetalLayer. You’ll add one of these to your view controller.
First, add this new property to the class:
var metalLayer: CAMetalLayer!
Note: If you get a compiler error at this point, make sure that you set the app to target your Metal-compatible iOS device. As mentioned earlier, Metal is not supported on iOS Simulator at this time.
This will store a handy reference to your new layer.
Next, add this code to the end of viewDidLoad() :
metalLayer = CAMetalLayer() // 1 metalLayer.device = device // 2 metalLayer.pixelFormat =.bgra8Unorm // 3 metalLayer.framebufferOnly = true // 4 metalLayer.frame = view.layer.frame // 5 view.layer.addSublayer(metalLayer) // 6
Going over this line by line:
Create a new CAMetalLayer. You must specify the MTLDevice the layer should use. You simply set this to the device you obtained earlier. Set the pixel format to bgra8Unorm, which is a fancy way of saying “8 bytes for Blue, Green, Red and Alpha, in that order — with normalized values between 0 and 1.” This is one of only two possible formats to use for a CAMetalLayer, so normally you’d just leave this as-is. Apple encourages you to set framebufferOnly to true for performance reasons unless you need to sample from the textures generated for this layer, or if you need to enable compute kernels on the layer drawable texture. Most of the time, you don’t need to do this. You set the frame of the layer to match the frame of the view. Finally, you add the layer as a sublayer of the view’s main layer.
3) Creating a Vertex Buffer
Everything in Metal is a triangle. In this app, you’re just going to draw one triangle, but even complex 3D shapes can be decomposed into a series of triangles.
In Metal, the default coordinate system is the normalized coordinate system, which means that by default you’re looking at a 2x2x1 cube centered at (0, 0, 0.5).
If you consider the Z=0 plane, then (-1, -1, 0) is the lower left, (0, 0, 0) is the center, and (1, 1, 0) is the upper right. In this tutorial, you want to draw a triangle with the following three points:
You’ll have to create a buffer for this. Add the following constant property to your class:
let vertexData: [Float] = [ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, -1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0, 0.0 ]
This creates an array of floats on the CPU. You need to send this data to the GPU by moving it to something called a MTLBuffer.
Add another new property for this:
var vertexBuffer: MTLBuffer!
Then add this code to the end of viewDidLoad() :
let dataSize = vertexData.count * MemoryLayout.size(ofValue: vertexData[0]) // 1 vertexBuffer = device.makeBuffer(bytes: vertexData, length: dataSize, options: []) // 2
Taking it comment by comment:
You need to get the size of the vertex data in bytes. You do this by multiplying the size of the first element by the count of elements in the array. You call makeBuffer(bytes:length:options:) on the MTLDevice to create a new buffer on the GPU, passing in the data from the CPU. You pass an empty array for default configuration.
4) Creating a Vertex Shader
The vertices that you created in the previous section will become the input to a little program that you’ll write called a vertex shader.
A vertex shader is simply a tiny program that runs on the GPU, written in a C++-like language called the Metal Shading Language.
A vertex shader is called once per vertex, and its job is to take that vertex’s information, such as position — and possibly other information such as color or texture coordinate — and return a potentially modified position and possibly other data.
To keep things simple, your simple vertex shader will return the same position as the position passed in.
The easiest way to understand vertex shaders is to see it yourself. Go to File ▸ New ▸ File, choose iOS ▸ Source ▸ Metal File, and click Next. Enter Shaders.metal for the filename and click Create.
Note: In Metal, you can include multiple shaders in a single Metal file. You can also split your shaders across multiple Metal files if you would like, as Metal will load shaders from any Metal file included in your project.
Add the following code to the bottom of Shaders.metal:
vertex float4 basic_vertex( // 1 const device packed_float3* vertex_array [[ buffer(0) ]], // 2 unsigned int vid [[ vertex_id ]]) { // 3 return float4(vertex_array[vid], 1.0); // 4 }
Here’s what’s going on in the code above:
All vertex shaders must begin with the keyword vertex. The function must return (at least) the final position of the vertex. You do this here by indicating float4 (a vector of four floats). You then give the name of the vertex shader; you’ll look up the shader later using this name. The first parameter is a pointer to an array of packed_float3 (a packed vector of three floats) – i.e., the position of each vertex.
Use the [[... ]] syntax to declare attributes, which you can use to specify additional information such as resource locations, shader inputs and built-in variables. Here, you mark this parameter with [[ buffer(0) ]] to indicate that the first buffer of data that you send to your vertex shader from your Metal code will populate this parameter. The vertex shader also takes a special parameter with the vertex_id attribute, which means that the Metal will fill it in with the index of this particular vertex inside the vertex array. Here, you look up the position inside the vertex array based on the vertex id and return that. You also convert the vector to a float4, where the final value is 1.0 — long story short, this is required for 3D math.
5) Creating a Fragment Shader
After the vertex shader completes, Metal calls another shader for each fragment (think pixel) on the screen: the fragment shader.
The fragment shader gets its input values by interpolating the output values from the vertex shader. For example, consider the fragment between the bottom two vertices of the triangle:
The input value for this fragment will be a 50/50 blend of the output value of the bottom two vertices.
The job of a fragment shader is to return the final color for each fragment. To keep things simple, you’ll make each fragment white.
Add the following code to the bottom of Shaders.metal:
fragment half4 basic_fragment() { // 1 return half4(1.0); // 2 }
Reviewing line by line:
All fragment shaders must begin with the keyword fragment. The function must return (at least) the final color of the fragment. You do so here by indicating half4 (a four-component color value RGBA). Note that half4 is more memory efficient than float4 because you’re writing to less GPU memory. Here, you return (1, 1, 1, 1) for the color, which is white.
6) Creating a Render Pipeline
Now that you’ve created a vertex and fragment shader, you need to combine them — along with some other configuration data — into a special object called the render pipeline.
One of the cool things about Metal is that the shaders are precompiled, and the render pipeline configuration is compiled after you first set it up. This makes everything extremely efficient.
First, add a new property to ViewController.swift:
var pipelineState: MTLRenderPipelineState!
This will keep track of the compiled render pipeline you’re about to create.
Next, add the following code to the end of viewDidLoad() :
// 1 let defaultLibrary = device.makeDefaultLibrary()! let fragmentProgram = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "basic_fragment") let vertexProgram = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "basic_vertex") // 2 let pipelineStateDescriptor = MTLRenderPipelineDescriptor() pipelineStateDescriptor.vertexFunction = vertexProgram pipelineStateDescriptor.fragmentFunction = fragmentProgram pipelineStateDescriptor.colorAttachments[0].pixelFormat =.bgra8Unorm // 3 pipelineState = try! device.makeRenderPipelineState(descriptor: pipelineStateDescriptor)
Taking it section by section:
You can access any of the precompiled shaders included in your project through the MTLLibrary object you get by calling device.makeDefaultLibrary()!. Then, you can look up each shader by name. You set up your render pipeline configuration here. It contains the shaders that you want to use, as well as the pixel format for the color attachment — i.e., the output buffer that you’re rendering to, which is the CAMetalLayer itself. Finally, you compile the pipeline configuration into a pipeline state that is efficient to use here on out.
7) Creating a Command Queue
The final one-time-setup step that you need to do is to create an MTLCommandQueue.
Think of this as an ordered list of commands that you tell the GPU to execute, one at a time.
To create a command queue, simply add a new property:
var commandQueue: MTLCommandQueue!
Then, add the following line at the end of viewDidLoad() :
commandQueue = device.makeCommandQueue()
Congrats — your one-time setup code is done!
Rendering the Triangle
Now, it’s time to move on to the code that executes each frame — to render the triangle!
This is done in five steps:
Create a Display Link Create a Render Pass Descriptor Create a Command Buffer Create a Render Command Encoder Commit your Command Buffer
Note: In theory, this app doesn’t actually need to render things once per frame, because the triangle doesn’t move after it’s drawn. However, most apps do have moving pieces, so you’ll do things this way to learn the process. This also gives a nice starting point for future tutorials.
1) Creating a Display Link
You need a way to redraw the screen every time the device screen refreshes.
CADisplayLink is a timer synchronized to the displays refresh rate. The perfect tool for the job! To use it, add a new property to the class:
var timer: CADisplayLink!
Initialize it at the end of viewDidLoad() as follows:
timer = CADisplayLink(target: self, selector: #selector(gameloop)) timer.add(to: RunLoop.main, forMode:.default)
This sets up your code to call a method named gameloop() every time the screen refreshes.
Finally, add these stub methods to the class:
func render() { // TODO } @objc func gameloop() { autoreleasepool { self.render() } }
Here, gameloop() simply calls render() each frame, which, right now, just has an empty implementation. Time to flesh this out.
2) Creating a Render Pass Descriptor
The next step is to create an MTLRenderPassDescriptor, which is an object that configures which texture is being rendered to, what the clear color is and a bit of other configuration.
Add these lines inside render(), in place of // TODO :
guard let drawable = metalLayer?.nextDrawable() else { return } let renderPassDescriptor = MTLRenderPassDescriptor() renderPassDescriptor.colorAttachments[0].texture = drawable.texture renderPassDescriptor.colorAttachments[0].loadAction =.clear renderPassDescriptor.colorAttachments[0].clearColor = MTLClearColor( red: 0.0, green: 104.0/255.0, blue: 55.0/255.0, alpha: 1.0)
First, you call nextDrawable() on the Metal layer you created earlier, which returns the texture in which you need to draw in order for something to appear on the screen.
Next, you configure the render pass descriptor to use that texture. You set the load action to Clear, which means “set the texture to the clear color before doing any drawing,” and you set the clear color to the green color used on the site.
3) Creating a Command Buffer
The next step is to create a command buffer. Think of this as the list of render commands that you wish to execute for this frame. The cool thing is that nothing actually happens until you commit the command buffer, giving you fine-grained control over when things occur.
Creating a command buffer is easy. Simply add this line to the end of render() :
let commandBuffer = commandQueue.makeCommandBuffer()!
A command buffer contains one or more render commands. You’ll create one of these next.
4) Creating a Render Command Encoder
To create a render command, you use a helper object called a render command encoder. To try this out, add these lines to the end of render() :
let renderEncoder = commandBuffer.makeRenderCommandEncoder(descriptor: renderPassDescriptor)! renderEncoder.setRenderPipelineState(pipelineState) renderEncoder.setVertexBuffer(vertexBuffer, offset: 0, index: 0) renderEncoder.drawPrimitives(type:.triangle, vertexStart: 0, vertexCount: 3, instanceCount: 1) renderEncoder.endEncoding()
Here, you create a command encoder and specify the pipeline and vertex buffer that you created earlier.
The most important part is the call to drawPrimitives(type:vertexStart:vertexCount:instanceCount:). Here, you’re telling the GPU to draw a set of triangles, based on the vertex buffer. To keep things simple, you are only drawing one. The method arguments tell Metal that each triangle consists of three vertices, starting at index 0 inside the vertex buffer, and there is one triangle total.
When you’re done, you simply call endEncoding().
5) Committing Your Command Buffer
The final step is to commit the command buffer. Add these lines to the end of render() :
commandBuffer.present(drawable) commandBuffer.commit()
The first line is needed to make sure that the GPU presents the new texture as soon as the drawing completes. Then you commit the transaction to send the task to the GPU.
Phew! That was a ton of code, but, at long last, you are done! Build and run the app and bask in your triangular glory:
Where to Go From Here?
The final project for this tutorial is in the tutorial materials bundle using the Download Materials button at the top or bottom of this tutorial.
You have learned a ton about the Metal API! You now have an understanding of some of the most important concepts in Metal, such as shaders, devices, command buffers, pipelines and more.
Also, be sure to check out some great resources from Apple:
You also might enjoy the Beginning Metal course on our site, where we explain these same concepts in video form, but with even more detail.
Or you can dive into books: Check out our Metal by Tutorials book.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and if you have any comments or questions, please join the forum discussion below!Max Lowe makes his home league debut in Steve McClaren’s first game back in charge of Derby County ahead of the visit of Leeds United today, kick-off: 3pm.
The 19-year-old academy graduate comes into the squad in place of Marcus Olsson, who is ruled out of this afternoon’s contest through a short-term injury.
Nick Blackman and Abdoul Camara are also missing through minor injuries.
That is the only change that the Rams have made from the side that drew 1-1 with Reading before the international break.
Scott Carson extends his record of starting every league game this season so far this season in goal, and will be supported by a back four of Cyrus Christie, Richard Keogh, Alex Pearce and Lowe.
Will Hughes has recovered from a minor knee injury to retain his place in the middle of the park, alongside Jacob Butterfield, who will have Bradley Johnson behind them playing in the holding role.
Tom Ince and Ikechi Anya will take their places out on the flank and will support Matěj Vydra, who will lead the Rams’ attack again this season.
Craig Bryson returns to the matchday fold for the first time since Derby’s defeat to Blackburn Rovers last month, whilst Jonathan Mitchell, Johnny Russell, Darren Bent, Chris Baird, James Wilson and Andreas Weimann will also be in reserve for McClaren.
Chris Powell, Derby’s assistant manager, spoke to Rams Player HD to review Derby’s team news and speak about the prospect of linking up with McClaren in the Rams’ dugout.
>
Derby County: Carson, Christie, Keogh (C), Pearce, Lowe; Johnson, Butterfield, Hughes; Ince, Anya, Vydra
Substitutes: Mitchell, Bryson, Russell, Bent, Baird, Wilson, Weimann
Leeds United: Green, Ayling, Bartley (c), Jansson, Taylor, Phillips, O’Kane, Hernandez, Mowatt, Sacko, Wood
Substitutes: Silvestri, Coyle, Cooper, Vieira, Grimes, Roofe, Antonsson
Tweets by @ dcfcofficialSouth Korean President Lee and US President Obama agreed to "closely co-operate" following Kim's death [AFP]
North Korea has test-fired a missile off its eastern coast, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, as South Korea's military was placed on high alert in the wake of the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak earlier on Monday called for calm as the government was placed in "emergency mode" amid fears that Kim's death could further destabilise relations between the two Koreas, who have remained technically at war since an armistice halted the Korean War in 1953.
"President Lee (Myung-Bak) urged the public to go about their usual economic activities without turbulence," a senior presidential official told a televised news conference on Monday.
Following news of Kim's death, Lee convened an emergency national security council meeting and ordered all government officials on emergency response status, meaning they are restricted from taking leave |
reps or higher, I may end the workout right there simply because I don't want to overdo things and I want to be fresh (more or less) for the next day.
Here's a couple of example training sessions spelling it out for you, step-by-step:
Example 1: Let's say your plan for the day is to squat 5x5:
Warm Up
45 x 10
135 x 10
225 x 5
315 x 3
365 x 1
PR Attempts
405 x 3 (3RM)
Work Sets
330 x 5x5
Example 2: Here's another example. In this case, let's say it's supposed to be a “light” day. Instead of going light on back squats, you're going to do front squats instead.
Warm Up
45 x 10
135 x 5
225 x 3
275 x 1
PR Attempts
330 x 1 (1RM)
315 x 2 (2RM)
Work Sets
275 x 3x3
Failed On A PR Attempt! Now What?
It would be nice to never miss a rep, let alone a PR attempt, but sometimes, we fail.
If you felt you fell out of the groove and could have gotten that rep, and you have the energy left over to make that rep, you can try that PR again.
On the other hand, if you really had no chance of hitting the weight you just missed, then it’s time to go with an on-the-spot contingency plan.
Simply look at your PR table, and look for another personal record you think you have a high chance of hitting. There’s no shame in cherry picking PR’s to stay on the PR train.
Sometimes I’ll usually go into a training session with a main PR I want to set, and a “back up” PR if I happen to fail my attempt. Occasionally, I’ll hit both the main PR and back up PR attempts in one day.
What To Do If You Can't Hit PR's Anymore or...How To Avoid Stalling On PR's
Let's continue with the example from above. If you managed to get a 3RM with 380 lb, you may be able to hit 385 lb the next week, and then 390 lb the week after that. You might be able to add another 5 lb and squat 395 lb for 3 reps, which is weight listed for a 2RM. Sooner or later, there will be a point where you cannot simply add 5 lb per week and get a 3RM all the time.
So what do you do? There's a few solutions:
1. Cycle Rep Ranges for PR Attempts
This would be suitable for those who like to be super organized and want things planned out in advance.
Here's an example, assuming we're doing the big 3 lifts, and working in the 1-5 rep range:
Squat Bench Press Deadlift Week 1 5RM 3RM 2RM Week 2 3RM 2RM 1RM Week 3 2RM 1RM 5RM Week 4 1RM 5RM 3RM Week 5 5RM 3RM 2RM Week 6 3RM 2RM 1RM Week 7 2RM 1RM 5RM Week 8 1RM 5RM 3RM
Looking at the squat, the first week you'll attempt a 5RM. If you miss 1 rep, that may be a 4 rep max.
The week after that, increase the load and attempt a 3RM, and then a 2RM the following week.
Finally, during week 4, attempt a 1RM.
Week 5 you'll start the cycle all over again, going from breaking a 5RM to a 1RM.
This simple organization is easy to follow and is logical. If you've hit a 5RM, then you could probably hit a 3RM. If you've established a new 3RM, then a 2RM shouldn't be too far behind. If your 2RM is higher than before, then it's not a far stretch that your 1RM is higher as well.
It looks good on paper, and I'm sure there are some people who like this planned approach, but like Mike Tyson says:
The downfall with this structured cyclical PR organization is that sometimes, you'll miss. The following week will not go according to plan. You could make further plans and “If-Then” rules (for example, if miss, then attempt again next week).
Personally I prefer the following method instead:
2. Going For PRs Based On What You Think Or Feel You Can Hit That Day
This is more of a “play by ear” method of choosing what PR to attempt that day.
"You never know when it's Christmas in the gym again and when it's there you have to take it" – Kirk Karwoski
Sometimes, and I wish all the time, it's Christmas in the gym (as Kirk Karwaski would say) and you're able to set some big PR's on core lifts from session to session.
It can be “one of THOSE days” and it's better to catch the wave and ride it hard and as long as you can instead of letting go of the opportunity, because you won't know when it'll come again.
Other times, you need to cherry pick your PR's and grab the low hanging fruit instead of trying to break PR's that's out of reach. But in the end, a PR is a PR, and if you lifted something heavier and/or for more repetitions than in the past, you're getting stronger.
Here's how to do it:
After (or before or in between) your warm up sets, look at your PR table for the exercise you're performing that day, and based on how you're feeling, how the bar is moving during warm ups, and your most recent PR for that lift, choose something that you think you can hit that day.
For example, my final warm up set on the bench press at 365 lb for 1 rep felt really difficult, so, looking at my PR table:
1RM 2RM 3RM 4RM 5RM Bench Press 375 365 350 330
I probably wouldn’t have success going for a 1 rep max or 2 rep max. I can be conservative and try for a 3, 4 or 5 rep max.
The next bench press session, I'll repeat the same process and pick and choose based on how I'm feeling and what I think I have a high chance of lifting that particular day.
If I don't think I can hit a regular bench press PR in any repetition, I'll do a variation of the lift such as a paused bench press, reverse grip bench press, or paused reverse grip bench press.
This might seem unstructured, but after some trial and error and through experience, you'll develop a good sense of judgement for picking weight for a personal record.
3. Use Different Variations Of The Exercise
Another way to continue to set new PR's is to have few different variations of the main lifts to choose from, and assistance exercises that have a carry over effect to the squat, bench press and deadlift.
Which leads me to the next section…
Exercises And Rep Ranges To Measure
Let’s start off by taking a look at a couple of quotes by a couple of guys you probably haven’t heard about:
“That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.” - Karl Pearson
And:
"When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates." - Thomas S. Monson
The selection of exercises you should keep track of are:
Main lifts – if you're a powerlifter, then the big 3 (squat, bench press, deadlift) of course. If you're a weightlifter, snatch and clean & jerk would be required Variations of the main lifts Assistance exercises that support the main lifts
For example, let's take the back squat.
This “one” exercise can be expanded like this:
Low bar squat High bar squat
Some will find that they'll be able to lift more with a low bar position on their back compared to a high bar squat.
Let's add some variations to each:
Low bar squat Low bar squat – no belt Low bar squat – paused Low bar squat – no belt, paused High bar squat High bar squat – no belt High bar squat – paused high bar squat – no belt, paused
As you can see from above, a simple “back squat” can turn into 8 different variations of the exercise. If you are tracking up to 10 rep maxes, that would be a total of 80 different PR's you can attempt on any given day! If you want to add even MORE variations, you could track squat PR's with and without knee wraps, knee sleeves, include exercises such as pin squats, and all the possible combinations.
The reason why you want to add in harder variations like beltless squats and paused squats is that if you progress in these lifts (in other words, get stronger in these variations), it will carry over to your main lift, which in this case would be the squat. Also, these variations will force you to use a lower weight because of a mechanical disadvantage, using less supportive equipment, pausing etc., so even if you have to have a “light” day, you can still make that workout challenging and fun.
Imagine this scenario: for 12 weeks, you squatted with a belt and put on a hypothetical 40 lb to your beltless 1RM. What do you think will happen once you put on a belt and test your belted 1RM for the squat? Chances are, it will probably go up.
Examples of Assistance Exercises
By focusing on exercises that have a carry-over effect on the main lifts, you'll get stronger. The selection is based on, “does it benefit the squat, bench press and deadlift in some way”.
For the low bar squat, bar position can change the mechanics of the lift to make it harder:
High Bar
Front Squat
For the bench press:
Wide grip bench press
Close grip bench press
Reverse grip bench press
Partials (board presses, floor presses, pin presses etc)
Deadlift:
Snatch grip
Partials (rack/mat pulls)
Deficit
Stance width (sumo/conventional)
You're going to have to experiment to find out what works for you, but the key is to keep track of the PR's for each exercise, and break them on a regular basis!
There are other things you could measure (and PR at):
Volume (example: best squat at 5x5)
Density (
#of repetitions at a given weight (for example, maximum number of reps with 225 lb on the bench press)
Training and meet PR’s
I'm sure in the future when bar speed measuring devices become commonplace, you could measure that too.
I personally only keep track of repetition maxes, because it’s simple, easy to track and it’s over and done with after 1 set.
A Note On Rep Ranges
Now, for powerlifters or anyone else who's primary goal is to improve the 1 rep max, there is a carry over effect of repetition maxes. If you focus on trying to hit a 1RM PR all the time, you're going to come to a stall sooner rather than later.
By training in and setting PR's in multiple rep ranges, you'll get stronger and your 1RM is bound to go up.
If you put on +20 lb on your 5RM, 3RM, and 2RM then it will be reasonable to assume that your 1RM would be higher as well.
Personally, even though I mostly work in the 3-5 rep range for my work sets, I track 1-10 reps for my PR's because it's simple, and fit's into my training goals of getting stronger and a little more jacked (hypertrophy). Also, “10” is a nice number.
If you're a masochist and are a fan of the 20 rep “widow maker” squats, you can add that to your PR scoreboard. But that’s too much damn cardio for me.
Additionally, when choosing what number of repetitions to hit for a PR, I generally go with 1,2,3,5,8 and 10 rep maxes.
4,6,7, and 9 are there to make the table complete, and if I happen to miss a repetition (or do more than I wanted), I can still get a PR at an unintended rep.
To explain what I mean, let's say I'm going to a 10RM on the overhead press with 210 lb. If I miss a rep and only get 9, it's still a PR at a 9 rep max.
Also, if I feel strong and want to crank out another rep, the planned 3 rep max (or whatever it is) will turn into a 4 rep max.
“Reporting” Your PR's
Let’s go back to the quote, and take a look at the second sentence:
"When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates." - Thomas S. Monson
This is really an option thing to do, but I think there's direct and indirect value to announcing your newly set (and newly missed!) PR's to the public. The “reporting” part of the quote comes from the business world, where employees report some measurement or key performance indicator to their overseer, but, unless you're working with a coach, you probably won't be required to report your PR's to someone else.
What you could do is announce them somewhere online, to a group of like minded individuals. Or just blast it out to everyone on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or some other social media network and make them envious and fearful of your growing power levels. The feedback you get and the fact that you know someone else is looking over your training logs will motivate you to continually hit PR's.
By making progress, breaking PR's, you're inspiring others to get stronger themselves and hit their own PR's. The feedback you get will then motivate you to continue to work hard to obtain new PR's. It's like a feedback loop of getting stronger.
But that’s not all…
Rivalries
Another benefit of sharing your progress is that they'll be picked up by others who are on a similar journey to getting stronger.
It seems to work like this: your progress and PR's pushes them to get stronger, and in turn, their progress and PR's pushes you to get stronger. Each person want's to out lift the other, and this little friendly competition becomes a influence on your training.
I have a made a few Internet rivals since I started lifting, and it spawned some nice e-friendships. I'm ahead on the numbers on some lifters, neck and neck with others, and chasing some others who are a bit stronger than me, and others who are way stronger. In the end, I like to think that we all support each other in the quest to add more weight to the bar.
Summary
Putting it altogether in an easy-to-follow flowchart, it looks like this:
By keeping score of your personal records for multiple, meaningful exercises and rep ranges, and, attempting to break a personal record every workout:
you look forward to breaking a PR ever workout
get stronger because you're always adding weight to the bar
If you are keeping track of your PR's already using your brain, piece of paper or a notebook, upgrade by using this template in Google Drive.
I've made it available to the public for anyone to use, because I'm sure most people are too lazy to make one themselves.
Fill out the empty boxes with the numbers of your own PR's (you can also insert a link if you have it uploaded to Youtube). Once that’s done, look at it prior to every workout, and pick something you think you can hit. Then, set a PR!
Welcome aboard the PR train.Chapulling is a newly coined word derived from the 2013 protests in Turkey. This word came into being after Prime Minister Erdogan's speech in which he used the word "çapulcu" -- the normal meaning of which is looter or marauder -- to describe the peaceful demonstrators. Thereafter, the social media sites adapted this word to English with a new meaning: "fighting for one's rights."
So what are these "çapulcu's" doing? We "çapulcu's" are ordinary citizens of Turkey. We are workers, doctors, lawyers, architects, musicians -- the people of this country. We serve our country and its people no matter their social class, looks, ethnic background, or political opinions.
Again yesterday, I was out there in Taksim. When you climb from the ferry landing at Besiktas going toward Taksim, the smell of tear gas hits you, as do the residual effects of this agent.
All roads are covered wıth barricades made of paving stones pulled from the sidewalks.
Arriving at the square in Taksim, it looks like a photograph from Central America in the 1980s, things I have seen only in documentaries of those tumultuous times.
The walls are covered with political slogans; cars and even busses are turned on their sides on the roads. People, mostly university or high school students, are scattered throughout Gezi Park; they have become the new "residents" of the park our Prime Minister wants to turn into a shopping mall. Groups made up of political parties of differing ideologies, social organizations, national unions, and so forth are here. They are dancing, singing, and eating in the park. Our people are caring for one-another, building shelters, cooking with supplies donated by the public, handing out food to Gezi Park's new "residents." Musicians from the philharmonic have come together to give concerts while the new "residents" listen, do yoga, sing, and dance.
Mauraders? Looters? This is truly an act of civilians, something that you well know from your history. This is a people who have begun to live as one, as if we have one heart pumping for all of us.
But what is the reason? What do we want? Who is the leader and why are all of these parties trying to take credit for the action? How and when is this going to end?
We, the "çapulcu's," today stand for our freedom, raising our voice in a way that will, we hope, echo into the future. This is our country, too. We work during the day and protest at night. Despite serious provocation, we are peaceful. We want our country, our home, our people back. For this we are in the streets. For this we risk all. For this we take our lives and our history into our hands.
Today we will honor those who were killed, injured, and arrested while exercising their democratic rights with a one-minute moment of silence. We will also offer a prayer for Mirac Kandili (a religious day).
We are chapulling for many reasons. Not just for us, but for the 50% of the population whom our Prime Minister claims he speaks for, whom he asserts he is having a hard time "holding back." While the Prime Minister's discourses sound like a call to civil war, we will keep on chapulling. By doing so we hope to bring these sad events to a close in a way that will benefit all Turkish citizens, whether they are on the field or not.
Doctor K IstanbulThe White House again will not use the term “genocide” to describe the Ottoman Turks’ massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
Senior administration officials met with leaders from the Armenian-American community Tuesday to discuss the 100th anniversary commemoration of the killings, but a statement summarizing the meeting did not contain the word “genocide.”
The U.S. “will use the occasion to urge a full, frank, and just acknowledgement of the facts that we believe is in the interest of all parties,” National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said.
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As a candidate in 2008, Obama promised to describe the mass killing of Armenians as a genocide. But he has not used the term since becoming president.
Turkey, an ally of the U.S., has refused to call the killings a genocide, and some officials have denied the scope of the massacres.
The decision angered Armenian-American leaders who participated in the White House meeting.
"President Obama's surrender to Turkey represents a national disgrace,” Armenian National Committee of America Chairman Ken Hachikian said in a statement. “It is, very simply, a betrayal of truth, a betrayal of trust.”
An intense lobbying battle between Armenian and Turkish interests broke out last month over a resolution in Congress that would label the killings a genocide.
“The United States has long prided itself for being a beacon of human rights, for speaking out against atrocity, for confronting painful chapters of its own past and that of others,” he said in a statement. “This cannot be squared with a policy of complicity in genocide denial by the president or Congress.”
A senior administration official said Obama is expected to make a statement marking the 100th anniversary of the killings on Friday.
“We know and respect that there are some who are hoping to hear different language this year,” said the official, who spoke anonymously. “We understand their perspective, even as we believe that the approach we have taken in previous years remains the right one — both for acknowledging the past, and for our ability to work with regional partners to save lives in the present.”
National Security Adviser Susan Rice met separately Tuesday with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, encouraging him to "take concrete steps to improve relations with Armenia and to facilitate an open and frank dialogue in Turkey about the atrocities of 1915," Meehan said.
- Updated at 8:25 p.m.Koei Tecmo’s Berserk details Zodd, transformations
A look at Guts in his Berserker Armor.
Koei Tecmo has updated the official website for its upcoming Berserk game, detailing recently confirmed playable character Nosferatu Zodd and providing a look at Guts’ Berserker Armor transformation.
Get the information below.
■ Characters Zodd (voiced by Kenta Miyake) A legendary mercenary known as “The Immortal Nosferatu Zodd.” He is an Apostle who has roamed the battlefields for hundreds of years in search of formidable enemies. He has an interest in Guts, who wounded him, and leaves him an ominous prophecy. ■ System Unleash Hidden Strength Some characters can “transform,” which changes their appearance and improves their attack power and attack speed. By unleashing stronger than normal actions, you’ll be able to mow down the a horde of enemies with a single attack.
Berserk is due out for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita at retail, and PlayStation 3 via download, in Japan on October 27, and for PlayStation 4 physically, and PS Vita and PC via Steam digitally in North America and Europe this fall. In Japan, first-print copies of the game include a wet outfit for Casca.
View the screenshots at the gallery.SHARE Click image to enlarge. Empty Cradles The Journal Sentinel is taking on an issue we had too long ignored - the death of children before their first birthday. Infant mortality is a crisis not just of public health, but of ethics and morality. The rate at which infants die in our city is unacceptable. We are examining the problem and pointing to solutions. Go to: Section | Blog
By of the
Though Milwaukee's stubborn infant mortality rate reached a historic low in 2012, the rate at which African-American babies died before their first birthday continued to creep upward, according to preliminary figures to be released Tuesday by the Milwaukee Health Department.
Mayor Tom Barrett has made infant mortality one of his administration's top issues. While generally encouraged by data contained in the Health Department's report, he said he was troubled by the persistent disparity between black and white rates.
African-American babies died at nearly three times the rate of white babies.
"The overall numbers show progress," Barrett said. "But the disparity issue is still a very, very big challenge. This is our call to action."
Infant mortality rates, because they involve small numbers, can bounce up and down from year to year. Health officials prefer to use three-year averages to discern trends.
Using three-year rolling averages, the 2012 overall rate for the city was set at 9.6 deaths per 1,000 births, down from the 2011 rate of 10.1. It is the sixth year in a row that the overall rate has decreased, and it is the lowest overall rate the city has ever recorded.
The 2012 rolling average black rate was 14.6, up from the 2011 rate of 14.5. It is the third year in row the black rate has gone up.
The white rate, 5.2, has been virtually the same for three years.
The Hispanic rate dropped, from 7.7 in 2011 to 6.1 in 2012. Health officials cautioned that Milwaukee's Hispanic population is too small to determine short-term trends.
State and national numbers for 2011 and 2012 are not yet available, but historically Milwaukee has had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country.
The city set a goal in 2011 to reduce its overall infant mortality rate by 10% and the black rate by 15% by 2017.
The goal would drop the overall rate to 9.4 and the African-American rate to 12.
Magda Peck, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Zilber School of Public Health, noted that, given the current trend, the city might meet its overall infant mortality goal without achieving its goal set for the African-American community.
"One is not enough," she said.
"It is always heartening to see rates of infant death go down," she said. "But it is persistently disturbing that not all Milwaukee babies are headed in the same direction."
Also, Peck said, it is important to place the infant mortality rate in the context of actual births and deaths. The vast majority of babies live.
According to the Health Department's preliminary data, 96 infants out of the 10,019 babies born in 2012 died before their first birthdays.
The report does not parse out the causes these deaths.
But a Health Department report that analyzed the causes of death of 499 Milwaukee infants who died between 2005 and 2008 found that more than half the deaths were associated with premature birth and about 1 in 5 was associated with unsafe sleep.
The Health Department "will continue its aggressive interventions in both of these areas," said Commissioner of Health Bevan Baker, "in an effort to dramatically reduce the number of preterm births and unsafe sleep-related deaths among Milwaukee's youngest, smallest and most vulnerable residents."Below is a suggested reading list for someone interested in the intersection of economics and evolutionary biology. If you have any recommendations for additions, please let me know.
1. Books at the intersection of economics and evolutionary biology
2. While not directly at the intersection, other books containing core ideas relating to my thinking on evolution and economics
3. Books on evolutionary economics and complexity theory
4. Articles at the intersection of economics and evolutionary biology (generally technical economic papers)
4A. The evolution of preferences
Becker, Gary (1976) Altruism, Egoism and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Sociobiology, Journal of Economic Literature 14(3), pp.817-826: One of the earliest calls for biology to be used in economics.
De Fraja, Gianni (2009) The origin of utility: Sexual selection and conspicuous consumption, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 72(1), pp.52-69: The desire for conspicuous consumption was shaped by sexual selection and is consistent with a utility maximising economic framework.
Hansson, Ingemar and Charles Stuart (1990) Malthusian Selection of Preferences American Economic Review 80(3), pp.529-544: The earliest article I am aware of that explicitly examines the evolution of an economic preference.
Hirshleifer, Jack (1977) Economics from a Biological Viewpoint Journal of Law of Economics 20(1), pp.1-52: Another of the earliest calls for biology to be used in economics.
Rayo, Luis and Gary Becker (2007) Evolutionary Efficiency and Happiness Journal of Political Economy 155(2), pp.302-337: An argument that if happiness is a tool through which human choices are directed to evolutionary goals, constraints on our feelings may lead to relative preferences and habit formation.
Rogers, Alan (1994) Evolution of Time Preference by Natural Selection American Economic Review 83(3), pp.460-481: One of the first articles to propose an evolutionary basis to time preference.
Robson, Arthur and Larry Samuelson (2009) The Evolution of Time Preference with Aggregate Uncertainty American Economic Review 99(5), pp.1925-1953: A great article on how risk affects the optimal rate of time preference. Arthur Robson is the king of the study of the evolution of preferences, as a scan of the papers on his home page shows.
Robson, Arthur and Larry Samuelson (2009) The Evolutionary Foundations of Preferences in Benhabib, Jess, Alberto Bisin and Matthew O. Jackson, Handbook of Social Economics (ungated working version here): A thorough and excellent review of the literature on the evolution of preferences.
Rubin, Paul and Chris Paul II (1979) An Evolutionary Model of Taste for Risk Economic Inquiry 17(4), pp.585-596: A fantastic example of how an evolutionary framework can yield new results.
4B. Genoeconomics
Beauchamp, Jonathan P. (2011) Molecular Genetics and Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(4), pp.57–82: A good discussion of the potential use of molecular genetics in economics and economic policy (my post here).
Benjamin, Daniel J. et al. (2012) The Promises and Pitfalls of Genoeconomics, Annual Review of Economics, 4(1), pp.627–662 (ungated working paper here): A sound reminder to take a lot of genoeconomics research with a grain of salt.
4C. Evolution and economic dynamics
Clark, Gregory (2008) In defense of the Malthusian interpretation of history, European Review of Economic History, 12(2), pp.175-199 (ungated working paper here): This article is a response to critiques of A Farewell to Alms (critiques here, here, here and here), but it expands on some important points in the book.
Galor, Oded and Omer Moav (2002) Natural Selection and the Origin of Economic Growth, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), pp.1133–1191: The seminal article proposing that evolution affected economic growth through a genetically based preference for quality or quantity of children. With Juerg Weber and Boris Baer, I have simulated and extended this paper.
Spolaore, Enrico and Romain Wacziarg (2013) How Deep Are the Roots of Economic Development?, Journal of Economic Literature, 51(2), pp.325–369: An outstanding discussion of the deep roots of economic development and how persistent differences in development are.
4D. Macro-genoeconomics
Ashraf, Quamrul and Oded Galor (2013) The Out of Africa Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development, American Economic Review, 103(1), pp.1-49 (ungated working paper here): Genetic diversity has positive effects on innovation but hampers trade, meaning that moderate levels of genetic diversity gives the right mix (I have written a series of posts on this paper, all of which can be found through this post).
Spolaore, Enrico and Romain Wacziarg (2009) The Diffusion of Development Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(2) pp.469-529 (ungated working paper here): An argument that the genetic distance between populations acts as a barrier to the transfer of technology, leading to income differences between groups (my post here).
5. Articles on evolutionary economics and complexity theory
Alchian (1950) Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory Journal of Political Economy 58(3), pp.211-221: The 1950 proposal that examining the actions of economic agents as trial and error, and adaptive and imitative behaviour may be a better basis for examining economic behaviour than perfectly rational profit maximisation.The CW has released episode descriptions for their DC TV shows in the week beginning March 27th and it sounds like it's going to be a good one! Kevin Smith makes his return to Supergirl alongside Lynda Carter, someone whose President is definitely hiding something based on what we've seen so far. Things in The Flash sound particularly interesting, though, as Abra Kadabra makes his debut and promises to reveal the identity of Savitar (proof perhaps that the villain comes from the future).
Legends of Tomorrow meanwhile should be great fun, especially as the Legion of Doom finally get their hands on the Spear of Destiny and rewrite reality as they see fit (something which may very well mean the Reverse-Flash is here to stay). Finally, the battle against Prometheus looks set to take an interesting turn in Arrow and the synopsis also makes it clear that it's Adrian Chase beneath the mask. Should we believe that, though? Time will tell, but as always, share your thoughts in the comments section.
Supergirl - "Distant Sun"
LYNDA CARTER RETURNS AS PRESIDENT MARSDIN; KEVIN SMITH DIRECTS – A large bounty is put out on Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) and aliens from far and near attack National City intent on taking out the woman of steel. Alex (Chyler Leigh) and Maggie (Floriana Lima) run into Maggie’s ex-girlfriend, Emily (guest star Hayley Sales), who is in town for a week. Hank (David Harewood) gets an interesting order from President Marsdin (guest star Lynda Carter). Kevin Smith directed the episode written by Gabriel Llanas & Anna Musky-Goldwyn.
The Flash - "Abra Kadabra"
DC COMICS’ CHARACTER ABRA KADABRA VISITS CENTRAL CITY – The Flash (Grant Gustin) battles Abra Kadabra (guest star David Dastmalchian), a villain from Earth-19, who makes him a tempting offer – release him and Abra Kadara will reveal Savitar’s true identity. Desperate to save Iris (Candice Patton), Barry considers taking the deal but Gypsy (guest star Jessica Camacho) breaches in to capture the villain for her own reasons and during the melee, Abra Kadabra manages to escape. Barry is furious that Gypsy interfered but Gypsy refuses to back down, forcing Cisco (Carlos Valdes) to take sides. Meanwhile, Julian (Tom Felton) is still a bit cold towards Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) but when she is severely injured in a battle with Gypsy, he rushes to her side. Nina Lopez-Corrado directed the episode with story by Andrew Kreisberg and teleplay by Brooke Roberts & David Kob.
Legends of Tomorrow - "Doomworld"Fined for hurling on the street March 14, 2014
Antrim County Board chairman Jim Murray. INPHO Antrim County Board chairman Jim Murray. INPHO
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A young man has been fined £85 by the PSNI for hurling in a Belfast street.Twenty-year-old Thomas Thibodeau was enjoying a puck-about with a friend on Jerusalem Street on Wednesday evening when two PSNI officers intervened and issued him with a fixed penalty notice for disorderly behaviour.Antrim County Board chairman Jim Murray says the incident is reminiscent of the "dark days" in Northern Ireland: "I thought those days had gone," he states in The Irish News. "It's something we will be taking up ourselves and we will be arranging a meeting with the PSNI. It's not on and is taking us back to the dark days."A PSNI spokesman explained how hurling can be construed as disorderly behaviour: "It is the manner in which the equipment is being used or the associated behaviour and risk that this may pose to others, i.e. anti-social behaviour and criminal damage."Sinn Fein's Pat Sheehan has called for discrimination against Irish games to be stamped out immediately: "At best, there seems to be a degree of ignorance when it comes to the PSNI's attitude to gaelic games. At worst, this behaviour is a throwback to an attitude which treated all things Irish as alien."Häagen-Dazs just released four non-dairy ice cream flavors, adding to the fast-growing selection of vegan desserts. Sink your spoon into Chocolate Salted Fudge Truffle, Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge, Mocha Chocolate Cookie, and Coconut Caramel.
The Häagen-Dazs website says the new flavors have “a creamier texture and an authentic taste that shines through.”
Chocolate Salted Fudge Truffle has Belgian chocolate base and contains soy.
has Belgian chocolate base and contains soy. Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge is made from ingredients like corn syrup, sugar and peanuts and is soy-, almond-, and cashew-free.
is made from ingredients like corn syrup, sugar and peanuts and is soy-, almond-, and cashew-free. Mocha Chocolate Cookie also has a Belgian chocolate base and is nut free, but does include soy and wheat. The other three flavors are gluten free.
also has a Belgian chocolate base and is nut free, but does include soy and wheat. The other three flavors are gluten free. Coconut Caramel seems like the cleanest of the bunch as far as ingredients and allergies go. The first ingredient is coconut cream. It does not include any soy, wheat or peanuts.
“While most non-dairy options simply start by substituting soy, almond or cashew milk, every flavor in our new collection begins with a core ingredient, like real pieces of Belgian chocolate, actual peanut butter, or real coconut cream,” says the website.
Although the packaging does not explicitly use the word “vegan,” all the ingredients are in fact animal- and cruelty-free.
Häagen-Dazs has followed the lead of other major brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Breyers, who have both released vegan flavors.
These non-dairy flavors are sold exclusively at Target stores in the U.S.
Photos: Häagen-DazsSpeaking at the EEF National Manufacturing Conference in London, Miliband said yesterday (26 February) that “There is no greater threat to the long-term stability and prosperity of Britain and British business than leaving the European Union.”
Leaving the European Union is not in Britain’s |
THE WRONG DONGERHOOD ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿
Me: jail susan if he's surv
Le Donger Face: ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ YOU CAME TO THE WRONG DONGERHOOD ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ YOU CAME TO THE WRONG DONGERHOOD ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversitY
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ YOU CAME TO THE WRONG DONGERHOOD ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿]
Le Donger Face: ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ YOU CAME TO THE WRONG DONGERHOOD ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿
Le Donger Face: ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ YOU CAME TO THE WRONG DONGERHOOD ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿
Night 5
Missing Numbers: LMAOOOOOOO HI INSANITY
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Massstttaa: role
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Insanity:...
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Susan Trevor: I am escort I have kept rbing pp
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Massstttaa: no
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Susan Trevor: Yes.
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Susan Trevor: Whatever i guess you lose
Massstttaa decided to execute Susan Trevor.
pp checked Massstttaa.
Day 6
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐Repost this windmill of friendship if you think Europe should embrace racial diversity卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐 卐
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Susan Trevor has been killed.
Le Donger Face: oh we win?
Insanity: Help us
Missing Numbers: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Le Donger Face: lmao we won
Missing Numbers: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Le Donger Face: ༼ ºل͟º༽ I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE DONGLIFE, THE DONGLIFE CHOSE ME ༼ ºل͟º༽
Missing Numbers: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Le Donger Face: lol
Massstttaa has been killed.
Massstttaa was attacked by the Mafia.
Le Donger Face: i loved this one
Le Donger Face: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Le Donger Face: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Le Donger Face: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: Darude- status☐ Not Sandstorm☑ Sandstorm
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: shhhhhhhhhiet
pp: Sup e_e
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: we lost
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face:.-.
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Me: Howdy.
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
pp: This fucking town wouldnt listen to me.
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Me: I mislead the Mayor to lynch my Mafiso instead of me.
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐
Ayylmao: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄ CUTERINO THE DONGERINOS ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)=ε✄
Missing Numbers: ↓ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘʸ↓ ↑ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ ↑
Le Donger Face: ┌∩┐༼ ºل͟º ༽┌∩┐ SUCK MY DONGER � |
kvin wrote an article about a strange funeral he attended. He claims that when he was 12 he was at a funeral procession and the people at the event made him kiss the face of a dead 11-year-old girl. He creepily wrote in his Nekrolog, “An adult pushed my face down to the waxy forehead of the girl in an embroidered cap, and there was nothing I could do but kiss her as ordered.”
Such are the convoluted affairs of one man struggling to come to terms with his own history…perhaps the ultimate irony in this crime given his tenure as a historian.Pennsylvania law makes it a felony to record people’s conversations without permission, whether by wiretapping or eavesdropping or likely even sending in someone wearing a wire. It has various exceptions for law enforcement, if the proper conditions are met. But if a police officer records conversations without qualifying for one of the exceptions, he’s committing a crime.
But the twist is with the remedy. Two of the remedies are not uncommon: the officer could be prosecuted, though that requires a prosecutor to decide to do so, and he can also be sued for damages. But the third remedy is, to my knowledge, quite unusual: The person whose conversations were illegally intercepted can sue to get the police officer fired, and the court must grant this remedy if it finds that the officer intentionally violated the law. Here is the statute, 18 Pa. Consol. Stats. § 5726 (paragraph break added):
Any [person who was a party to the intercepted communication] shall have the right to bring an action in Commonwealth Court against any investigative or law enforcement officer, public official or public employee seeking the officer’s, official’s or employee’s removal from office or employment on the grounds that the officer, official or employee has intentionally violated the provisions of this chapter. If the court shall conclude that such officer, official or employee has in fact intentionally violated the provisions of this chapter, the court shall order the dismissal or removal from office of said officer, official or employee.
A quick Westlaw search reveals that the remedy had been invoked in at least several recent cases, and in some of them the courts let the case go forward, rather than throwing it out as a matter of law on summary judgment. I don’t know, though, what actually happened in these cases — whether there was a jury verdict, a monetary settlement to get the case dropped, or a settlement under which the officer was indeed fired.
If anyone knows more about how this remedy has played out in practice, I’d love to hear about it. And of course it would be interesting to discuss the policy arguments for and against this sort of remedy.
I also couldn’t find any law review articles that discuss the issue; I think it would be ripe for a student law review note, especially if the note is framed around the remedy, and asks whether the remedy should be adopted throughout the country, rather than if the note is cast as “here is a Pennsylvania statute that I’ll discuss just in the context of this one state.”If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber looking for a stick-style streaming media player, you now have a new option: The Amazon Fire TV Stick, a $39 player that's priced between Google's $35 Chromecast and Roku's $50 Streaming Stick. And if you're a new or current Amazon Prime subscriber who's willing to act quickly, you can get it for just $19 today or tomorrow.
That seems to be such a good deal that we're scratching our heads and asking, If you can get a Fire TV Stick for so little money, why the heck would you pay $99 for the company's Fire TV player, which we tested in the spring?
We hope to get a definitive answer when we get a Fire TV Stick into our labs for testing; it can be preordered now, but doesn't ship until Nov. 19. But based on what's been announced, it seems that some features will remain exclusive to the Fire TV settop box. At least on paper, Fire TV should be faster. Also, it's not clear if the Stick has the Fire TV's Free Time, a password-protected area for younger kids that lets parents choose what their kids can see, and set time limits for how long they can watch shows. In addition, while the Fire TV Stick has casual games, it lacks the more robust gaming capabilities of the Fire TV. And while the Fire TV Stick can respond to voice commands for searches, you have to use a mobile device—such a phone or tablet—with a built-in microphone, since the included remote control lacks the embedded mic found on the Fire TV remote. The Fire TV remote with the built-in mic will work with the Stick, but you'll have to buy it as a $30 option.Harry Redknapp has launched a scathing attack on Liverpool, describing Brendan Rodgers' side as "bang average" and "the worst Liverpool side I have seen in years".
Rodgers’ side took seven points from their first three Premier League games but suffered a humiliating 3-0 home defeat by West Ham on Saturday.
Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Redknapp feels the club are struggling after the retirements of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, claiming they will struggle to finish in the top five this season.
“I don’t fancy Liverpool at all,” said Redknapp at the Telegraph Total Football Live event, in association with Virgin Media.
• Liverpool's transfer deadline day
“I think it’s the worst Liverpool team I have seen in years. They look bang average. They are lucky to have any points.
“Bournemouth should have beaten them, they got a wonder goal at Stoke. OK, they played all right first-half at Arsenal. I think they will do well to finish in the top five. I am not with Liverpool at all this year. Having said that they will probably win the league.
“They lost Steven Gerrard, their leader. What a player. They lost Jamie Carragher the year before. They’ve lost their characters.
“Look at the two centre-halves on Saturday (Dejan Lovren and Martin Skrtel). The left-back (Joe Gomez) is a good young player who can’t kick with his left foot but he is playing at left-back. He’s a fantastic talent, strong, quick. But what will he give you on the left? He is on the wrong side. They look a badly balanced team to me. Sorry, I can’t have Liverpool.
“I love Liverpool Football Club, and if you said to me which team would I have loved to manage in this country it would be Liverpool - but I can’t see it this year.”
And Redknapp has also criticised Rodgers for not acknowledging that Christian Benteke’s goal was offside in Liverpool’s 1-0 win over Bournemouth last month.
“He comes on TV and they said, ‘What about the offside goal?’ and he said, ‘I haven’t seen it yet’,” added Redknapp.
“Can’t he say, ‘Yeah, it was offside but they even out’. These managers, you know? I’m glad I’m not one!”Photo: Comedy Central/FOX
Last week, we learned that The Simpsons and Family Guy were finally going to do a crossover episode, with the Griffins spending an FG episode in Springfield. Well, the crossing-over continues, as The Simpsons showrunner Al Jean announced at the show’s Comic-Con panel that the Futurama crew will be stopping by for either the last episode of season 25 or the first of season 26. Jean explained to Entertainment Weekly that “Bender has to come back from the future to kill Bart because there’s something that Bart does now that makes the future really, really, really bad.” This isn’t Bender’s first cameo on The Simpsons: All the way back in season sixteen, the robot appeared very briefly in a scene set in the future. This time, it’s not just Bender, however, with much of the cast making the trip back in time. Meaning Hermes and Lisa can discuss the finer points of pointy hair, finally.Hey there, this is Old Jegger. Thanks for tuning in to hear this old dog howl about this and that. Hopefully, I spit out something that strikes a chord or makes you feel a little less lonely about the vacuum of space wrapped around your ship.
Strange to think about that, isn’t it? That only a bit of metal separates you from, well, nothing. I realize that’s something we all take for granted in this day and age, but it’s a pretty spectacular feat when you think about it. Goes to show that just because something is common that doesn’t mean it ain’t incredible too.
In fact, I’d argue that a lot of stuff we take for granted today is pretty incredible, if you really think about it. Like how our lenses just feed us all this info. Or how about those Torpedo Burrito vending machines? Honestly, I’ve never gotten a burrito from one of those things that wasn’t delicious and perfectly wrapped. The engineering and maintenance that must go into ensuring that level of consistency across the Empire is just astonishing.
Anyways, not sure if you can tell, but I’m in a contemplative mood at the moment. Just had one of those experiences that makes you stop and take stock of things. Now, don’t you worry about Old Jegger. Everything’s gonna be ok and, in fact, I’m probably better off because of it. In my opinion, it’s good to get your cage rattled every once in a while. Keeps you on your toes, so you don’t get caught flat-footed.
’Cause it’s those simple, small things we all take for granted that can really come back to kick you in the keester if you’re not careful. For me, it was a reminder that no matter where you are in this universe, you can’t take your safety for granted.
It all started after I made a few modifications to Shana. I met a hauler at a Covalex in Baker who recommended a few tweaks and, well, they worked like a charm. They made Shana’s shield genny a little more efficient so I could pump out a stronger shield while saving some energy. It was a nice upgrade, but it also lulled me into a false sense of security.
The fact that Shana now had a slightly better shield got into my head. Suddenly, I was feeling safer than I had ever been, so I started doing things I usually wouldn’t, like venturing into Oberon even though I know Vanduul keep being spotted there. Coming out of there unscathed just made it worse, so when I was back in secure space, I wasn’t afraid of nothing. That mentality was exactly why I stumbled in the heap of trouble I found in Ellis, of all places.
I had just enjoyed some cruising time around Noble, soaking up its beauty, before settling in for a quiet trip into the system’s outer reaches. As Shana passed one of Noble’s moons, I noticed a small blip on my scans. I slowed to a stop and sat down at the scan station to investigate.
After a little fine tuning, I was pretty certain the blip was a wrecked ship caught in the orbit of Ellis 5b. Now, I’ve been around the block enough to know that particular moon gets pelted by meteors. Usually, I avoid it just for that reason, but I know those high-strike areas also increase your chance of finding decent scrap. So, excited by the prospect of what might be waiting, I quickly charted my course and got Shana to the coordinates as fast as I could.
As I dropped out of QT and brought her in close, my heart leapt at the sight of a brand, spanking new Constellation Aquila floating in front of me. Looked like it could’ve been right off the showroom floor, if it wasn’t for the gaping hole punched through both sides of its cargo hold. I’ll be honest, as I think back on it, I’m a little ashamed that it took a few seconds to think about who had set out in this pristine vessel only to meet such a sad fate.
I mean, I’ve explored my fair share of wrecks and seen what the effects of space can do to folks, and yeah, it’s taken a toll on me. When you’re all by your lonesome, there aren’t as many distractions to keep your mind from focusing on things you’d rather not. For the longest time I learned to make myself numb to it. I tried to think of it as business and nothing else. I ain’t saying I’m proud of that. A person’s a person and it’s always sad when someone dies tragic, but dwelling on it ain’t healthy either.
For a while it worked. Like anything, you do it enough and you’ll get used to it. Until I came across this one wreck that … yeah, it’s tough for me to talk about even now.
Well, after seeing the Aquila, I closed my eyes and said a little prayer I learned from some Church of the Journey folks for those lost on the drift. After it was done, I noticed a number of crates floating outside the ship but still within its gravitational pull. I took that as a sign I was the first to find this wreck. That’s when I started to get excited again. Shana’s electrical system was in dire need of an upgrade and this ship would do the job just fine.
I climbed out of the pilot’s seat and started putting on my EVA suit. How fortunate was Old Jegger, getting first pickings on a ship like this? It was almost too good to be true. Then it suddenly was.
Shana’s sensors started to scream. With my EVA suit half on, I stumbled to the cockpit to see a number of ships coming in hot. So I cranked up the shields to max only to lose power to the entire ship. I’d never pushed the shield so hot, and it obviously didn’t agree with the rest of the system.
My heart just about beat out of my chest. I was a sitting duck, and with my EVA suit half on, seconds away from becoming a space popsicle if Shana’s hull was breached. Suddenly, I saw a flash. It took me a second to realize what it was — an EMP blast. These outlaws had no intention of shooting me to pieces. No, sir, these folks were intent on boarding Shana, and that’s probably what saved my life.
Since my maxed shields had already popped the system, it wasn’t affected by the EMP, but the outlaws didn’t know that. They proceeded thinking I’d be down for a bit, but seconds later Shana’s systems came back online and she roared to life.
Took those wanna-be-boarders by surprise too. I dumped every last drop of power into the engines and quickly put enough distance between us to avoid another EMP. The outlaws chased me for a bit, but once my new shields were deployed, at a more reasonable power level, they couldn’t make much of a dent in ’em. When they finally peeled off, I QTed to a safe location.
After the scare, I promised myself I’d get back to basics and stop being so cavalier in my actions. So, to make sure I’d keep that promise to myself, I sat down to tell you all about this. Gotta say, it’s kind of embarrassing for someone as seasoned as myself to admit to falling into a trap I should’ve seen systems away. Hopefully, by hearing my tale of foolishness, maybe a few of you have learned what not to do.
Just goes to show that it don’t matter how many years you have on you, if you want to survive the drift, you can’t take anything for granted.
Until next time, this is Old Jegger signing off. Somewhere, far from home."Pirlo" redirects here. For the Italian alcoholic beverage, see Pirlo (aperitivo)
Andrea Pirlo Ufficiale OMRI[4][5] ( Italian pronunciation: [anˈdrɛːa ˈpirlo]; born 19 May 1979) is an Italian former professional footballer. Pirlo was usually deployed as a deep-lying playmaker in midfield for both his club and national teams and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever exponents of this position due to his vision, ball control, creativity and passing ability, as well as for being a free-kick specialist.[6][7][8]
Pirlo began his club career as an attacking midfielder with his hometown club Brescia, whom he helped win a Serie B title and subsequent promotion to Serie A in 1997. His promising performances led to a move to Inter Milan in 1998, but he struggled to gain playing time at his new club, and was sent on loan in 1999. Despite successful spells with Reggina and a return to Brescia, Pirlo was still unable to break into Inter's starting line-up and was sold to cross-city rivals Milan in 2001. At Milan, manager Carlo Ancelotti decided to transition Pirlo into a deep-lying playmaker to orchestrate the team's attacks. Pirlo excelled in his new role and soon developed into a world-class midfielder, and won a plethora of trophies, including two UEFA Champions Leagues, two UEFA Super Cups, two Serie A titles, a FIFA Club World Cup, a Supercoppa Italiana, and a Coppa Italia.[8] After joining Juventus on a free transfer in 2011, who had gone trophyless since 2003, he added four more Serie A titles, which he won consecutively, as well as two Supercoppa Italiana titles, and a Coppa Italia. After playing in Italy for over 20 seasons, Pirlo joined Major League Soccer franchise New York City in 2015, helping the team to reach the playoffs in his second and third seasons before retiring in 2017.
At international level, Pirlo is the fifth-most capped player in the history of the Italian national team with 116 caps between 2002 and 2015. He played for the Italian youth teams at U15, U18 and U21 level, captaining and leading the latter to victory in the 2000 UEFA European Under-21 Championship as the Golden Player and Top Scorer of the tournament. He joined the Italian senior team in September 2002 and captained the Olympic team to a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics. Later, he was instrumental in the senior team's victory in the 2006 FIFA World Cup. He was named Man of the Match three times, including the final, more than any other player in the tournament, and ultimately won the Bronze Ball (awarded to the third best player of the tournament) also being elected to the Team of the Tournament. He was also elected as part of the UEFA Euro 2012 Team of the Tournament after leading Italy to the final, winning three Man of the Match awards in the process, the most of any player along with Andrés Iniesta. He has also represented the Italian senior team at the 2004 and 2008 UEFA European Championships, the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups and the 2009 and 2013 FIFA Confederations Cups, finishing third in the latter edition in Brazil, where he was also elected to the Team of the Tournament.
Pirlo came in third, second, fourth and third twice more in the International Federation of Football History & Statistics World Playmaker of the Year awards in 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013 and 2015, respectively.[9] He placed fourth in the 2012 UEFA Best Player in Europe Award[10] and seventh in the 2015 edition.[11] He placed 7th in the 2007 FIFA World Player, 5th in the 2007 Ballon d'Or and 7th in the 2012 FIFA Ballon d'Or award. He was also named as part of the 2006 FIFPro World XI and the 2012 UEFA Team of the Year.[12] In 2012, 2013 and 2014, Pirlo was also elected as Serie A Footballer of the Year and was also named as part of the Serie A team of the Year.[13] After helping Juventus to the 2015 UEFA Champions League Final, he was named to the squad of the season. In 2012, Pirlo was named the eighth best footballer in the World by The Guardian.[14] In 2013, Bloomberg ranked him the fifth best player in Europe.[15] In 2015, France Football rated him as one of the 10 best footballers in the world who are over the age of 36.[16]
Club career [ edit ]
1994–2001: Early years and realisation of role [ edit ]
Pirlo was born in Flero, Italy, in the province of Brescia.[17] He began his career with the Flero youth team,[18] later moving to Voluntas,[19] and subsequently joined the youth sector of local club Brescia in 1994, where he initially played predominantly as a supporting forward.[20] In 1995, at the age of 16, Pirlo made his Serie A debut for Brescia against Reggiana, on 21 May, becoming Brescia's youngest player to make an appearance in Serie A. He was promoted by his coach Mircea Lucescu.[21][22][23] The following season, he did not appear with the senior team, although he was able to capture the Torneo di Viareggio with the youth team.[21] After breaking into the Brescia first team during the 1996–97 Serie B season, he helped the club to gain Serie A promotion the following season by winning the Serie B title.[24] He scored his first goal in Serie A during the 1997–98 season, in a 4–0 home win over Vicenza on 19 October 1997.[25]
Due to his performances with Brescia, Pirlo was spotted by Inter Milan coach Lucescu, who signed the playmaker. Pirlo was unable to break into the first squad permanently, however, and Inter finished eighth in the 1998–99 Serie A campaign.[26] Inter loaned Pirlo to Reggina for the 1999–2000 season, alongside young Inter teammates Roberto Baronio and Mohamed Kallon.[27] After an impressive season,[27] he returned to Inter but was once again unable to break into the first team, making just four league appearances.[26] He spent the second half of the 2000–01 season on loan at his former club, Brescia, where he played alongside his childhood idol, offensive playmaker Roberto Baggio.[28][29][30] As Baggio occupied the attacking midfield role for Brescia, manager Carlo Mazzone made a ground-breaking decision, becoming the first coach to deploy Pirlo as a deep-lying playmaker, rather than as an offensive midfielder, a deeper creative role in which he particularly excelled, due to his long passing ability.[28][31] Despite initially struggling against relegation that season,[32] Brescia would eventually manage a comfortable seventh-place finish in Serie A, also reaching the Coppa Italia quarter-finals, qualifying for the 2001 Intertoto Cup.[33] A notable moment in Pirlo's Brescia career was his long pass which assisted Baggio's late equaliser against Juventus at the Stadio delle Alpi, on 1 April 2001.[34][35]
Milan [ edit ]
2001–2004: Domestic and European success [ edit ]
After three seasons on the Inter books, Pirlo was sold to rivals A.C. Milan for 33 billion Italian lire (€17,043,078)[36] on 30 June 2001, the last day of 2000–01 financial year.[37] The transfer fee was partially funded by the movement of Dražen Brnčić in the opposite direction for an undisclosed fee. In the same window Inter swapped Cristian Brocchi (25 billion lire;[38] €12.9 million) for Guly (undisclosed fee; €8.537 million profit)[39] and Matteo Bogani for Paolo Ginestra. The deals were later reported by the Italian press to have been undertaken to create "false profit" by inflating the players' values in the transfer fees in the swap deal. The exchange involving Ginestra and Bogani created an approximate €3.5 million "profit" for both clubs, but this actually manifested itself in terms of useless registration rights.[40][41]
It was at Milan, in particular under manager Carlo Ancelotti, where Pirlo made big strides in developing into a world class player, and one of the best deep-lying playmakers and set-piece specialists in the world, as he went on to achieve notable domestic and international success during his time with the club. Pirlo later recalled the period he has spent in Milan with Ancelotti: "He changed my career, putting me in front of the defence. We shared some unforgettable moments. We had a magnificent past together."[42] After Mazzone's pioneering decision to move Pirlo into a deep-seated playmaking role with Brescia during the previous season,[43] Milan managers Fatih Terim and, in particular, Carlo Ancelotti further developed this role for him at Milan.[31] In Ancelotti's 4–3–1–2 and 4–3–2–1 formations, Pirlo was deployed as a deep-lying playmaker in front of the defence,[44] which allowed him to play alongside other talented attacking midfielders, such as Rivaldo, Rui Costa and eventually Kaká, replacing the gap left by Milan legend Demetrio Albertini in the deep midfield playmaking role. He would become an integral part of the Rossoneri's midfield, forming a formidable partnership with Gennaro Gattuso, as well as with Clarence Seedorf and Massimo Ambrosini, who also supported his playmaking role defensively. Pirlo was given the nickname the metronome during his time at the club, for the way in which he set the team's rhythm.[8][45][46][47]
Pirlo made his Milan debut on 20 September 2001, in a 2–0 win over BATE Borisov in the UEFA Cup, after coming on for Massimo Donati.[48] During his first season with the club, he helped the team to a fourth-place finish UEFA Champions League qualification spot, also reaching the semi-final of the UEFA Cup, the club's best ever result in the competition. On 30 March 2002, he scored his first goal with Milan in a 3–1 home win over Parma, from a free kick.[49]
Pirlo led Serie A in the 2002–03 season in four categories – passes played (2589), ball possession (123 hours played and 39 minutes), successful balls (661), and successful passes (2093); he averaged almost 90 passes per game throughout the season. During this season, his second with the club, he also managed a career best of 9 goals in Serie A, as Milan finished the league in third place, also winning the Coppa Italia over Roma,[50] and the UEFA Champions League, beating out Italian rivals and 2003 Serie A champions Juventus in the final 3–2 on penalties, following a 0–0 draw after extra-time.[51][52] The following season saw Pirlo win the 2003 UEFA Super Cup with Milan over Porto,[53] although the Rossoneri lost to Juventus on penalties in the 2003 Supercoppa Italiana following a 1–1 draw after extra time; during the match, Pirlo scored on a penalty in extra time, and once again in the shoot-out.[54] Milan would also miss out on the 2003 Intercontinental Cup, losing out on penalties once again, to Boca Juniors, following a 1–1 draw after extra-time; on this occasion, Pirlo missed his penalty in the shoot-out, after previously setting up Milan's opening goal of the match.[55][56][57] Pirlo would celebrate winning his first Serie A title with Milan during the 2003–04 season however,[58] following up the scudetto with the 2004 Supercoppa Italiana over Lazio.[59]
2004–2006: Struggles [ edit ]
Milan finished as runners up in Serie A to Juventus in the 2004–05 season. In the 2004–05 UEFA Champions League, Pirlo finished as one of the second highest assist providers with four assists,[60] as he helped Milan to reach the final.[61] In the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final against Liverpool, on 20 May, Pirlo assisted Paolo Maldini's opening goal, after 50 seconds, from a free kick, and combined with Kaká before the Brazilian unleashed Hernán Crespo with a long pass for Milan's third goal before halftime. In the second half, however, Liverpool made a three-goal comeback, sending the match into extra time. After a 3–3 deadlock, the match went to penalties, and Milan were defeated by the English team in the shoot-out. Despite Pirlo's performance throughout the competition and in the final, one of the most forgettable incidents of the season was probably his penalty miss during the shoot-out in the final, as his spot kick was saved by Jerzy Dudek.[62][63] Pirlo would later state in his autobiography that the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final defeat on penalties was the worst moment of his career, and that he had considered retiring prematurely following the match:[64]
I thought about quitting because, after Istanbul, nothing made sense any more. The 2005 Champions League final simply suffocated me... We’d invented a new disease with multiple symptoms: "Istanbul syndrome". I no longer felt like a player, and that was devastating enough. But even worse, I no longer felt like a man. Pirlo, in his autobiography I Think Therefore I Play, on Milan's defeat to Liverpool in the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final, in Istanbul.[65]
The following season, Milan once again finished in second place behind Juventus in Serie A (before their 30-point deduction due to their involvement in the 2006 Calciopoli scandal), also reaching the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League, only to be defeated by eventual champions, Barcelona,[66] and the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia. In 2006, Pirlo placed 9th in the Ballon d'Or, which was won by his Italy teammate Fabio Cannavaro,[67] and was elected to the 2006 FIFPro World XI.[12]
2006–2009: Another UEFA Champions League title [ edit ]
Andrea has demonstrated all his great talent and worth. When we played together, everything started with him. He always had the great gift of being able to visualise and anticipate plays before everyone else. His vision, what he can do with the ball, and what he's able to create, make him a true superstar. Andrea has something which you don't see very often. Roberto Baggio on Pirlo in 2007.[29]
Pirlo playing for Milan in 2008.
Pirlo led Milan in minutes played for the 2006–07 season with 2,782 across 52 appearances, as he went on to win his second UEFA Champions League title with Milan, also helping his team to a fourth-place finish in Serie A, and another Coppa Italia semi-final. In the second leg of the UEFA Champions League semi-final against Manchester United, Pirlo set up Seedorf's goal, as Milan progressed on to the final.[68] In the 2007 UEFA Champions League Final in Athens, Pirlo assisted Inzaghi's first goal from a free kick,[69] helping Milan to defeat Liverpool 2–1, avenging their 2005 final defeat in Istanbul.[70][71] During the 2007–08 season, Pirlo won his second UEFA Super Cup with Milan, assisting Milan's second goal in the final,[72] and winning the Man of the Match award;[73] he also contributed to the club's first ever FIFA Club World Cup title in 2007, once again setting-up Milan's second goal in the final.[74] In October 2007, he was nominated for the 2007 Ballon d'Or, the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year, and the 2007 International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) World's Best Playmaker Awards, but they were all won by Milan teammate Kaká, as Pirlo placed 5th in the Ballon d'or, 7th in the FIFA World Player of the Year, and 2nd in the World's Best Playmaker Awards.[75][76][77] Despite a strong start, Milan suffered a dip in form during the second half of the season, finishing the league in fifth place, failing to qualify for the UEFA Champions League;[78] Milan also suffered eliminations in the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League[79] and the Coppa Italia that season.[80] The following season, Milan managed a second-place finish in Serie A, alongside Juventus, and behind local rivals Inter,[81] whilst they were eliminated in the round of 32 of the UEFA Cup,[79] and the round of 16 of the Coppa Italia.[82]
2009–2011: A second Scudetto and farewell [ edit ]
After Kaká and Ancelotti left Milan in the summer of 2009,[81] Chelsea tested Milan's resolve by bidding $12 million and Claudio Pizarro for Pirlo. The club rejected the offer and Pirlo was said to be contemplating a transfer request.[83] On 5 August, club owner Silvio Berlusconi decided not to sell Pirlo, who said he was overjoyed and wanted to end his career at Milan.[84] On 21 October 2009, Pirlo scored a notable 30-metre goal in Milan's 3–2 win over Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League; Milan were eventually eliminated in the round of 16.[85] Milan finished the season with a 3rd place in Serie A, and a quarter-final finish in the Coppa Italia under new manager Leonardo.[86]
The following season saw Milan dominate the league. Milan played host to Genoa on 25 September 2010, with Pirlo providing a lifted ball over the top of the defence to set striker Zlatan Ibrahimović free to score the solitary goal of the game.[87] On 2 October, Pirlo scored a 40-yard goal against Parma to give Milan their first away win of the 2010–11 season.[88] On 14 May 2011, Pirlo appeared in his last match for Milan, coming on as a half-time substitute for Ambrosini as the club celebrated their Serie A title with a 4–1 victory over Cagliari.[89] Four days later, Pirlo confirmed that he would be leaving Milan at the end of the 2010–11 season, after a mutual decision not to renew his contract.[90] In his last season in Milan, Pirlo appeared in the league just 17 times under manager Massimiliano Allegri, notching just one goal and three assists, winning his second Serie A title with Milan that season, also reaching the round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League, and in the Coppa Italia semi-final.[91]
In total with Milan, Pirlo made 401 appearances, scoring 41 goals.[92] With the club, he won two Serie A titles in 2004 and 2011, as well as two UEFA Champions League titles in 2003 and 2007, also reaching the final in 2005; he also won a Coppa Italia in 2003, a Supercoppa Italiana in 2004, and two UEFA Super Cups in 2003 and 2007, as well as playing a key role in Milan's first ever FIFA Club World Cup title in 2007. During this period, Milan also finished as runners up in Serie A in the 2004–05 and the 2005–06 seasons, as well as finishing second on penalties in the 2003 Supercoppa Italiana, and in the 2003 Intercontinental Cup.[8]
Juventus [ edit ]
When Andrea told me that he was joining us, the first thing I thought was: "God exists". A player of his level and ability, not to mention that he was free, I think it was the signing of the century! Gianluigi Buffon on Pirlo's transfer to Juventus in 2011.[93]
2011–12 season [ edit ]
Following Pirlo's departure from Milan in 2011, Juventus signed him on a free transfer on a contract until 2014.[94] His debut with Juventus was in a friendly match against Sporting CP, which they lost 2–1. His first competitive match with Juventus was the 2011–12 Serie A opening match against Parma at home, in which he tallied two assists, for Stephan Lichtsteiner and Claudio Marchisio, and completed 110 passes in a 4–1 victory.[95][96] Antonio Conte played him alongside younger midfielders Marchisio and new signing Arturo Vidal in a three-man midfield, which allowed Pirlo to function creatively as a deep-lying playmaker, while Marchisio and Vidal supported him defensively.[95][97] Pirlo's first goal for Juventus was a free kick against Catania on 18 February 2012 securing a 3–1 victory for Juventus and put the club back at the top of the Serie A table, above his former club Milan.[98] On 18 March, Pirlo scored in a 5–0 demolition of Fiorentina and after the game dedicated the win to Fabrice Muamba, who suffered a cardiac arrest playing for Bolton Wanderers during a match against Tottenham Hotspur the same day.[99][100]
Pirlo finished the season by winning the 2011–12 Serie A title, after helping Juventus to secure a 2–0 victory over Cagliari.[101] He provided the most assists in the Serie A that season, with 13,[102] and he also found the back of the net three times in the league.[95] Pirlo created over 100 chances and completed 2643 passes that season, with an 87% pass completion rate, completing 500 more passes than any other player in Serie A; the only player in the world to have completed more passes than him that season was Xavi.[95][103] Due to his performances throughout the season, and his key role in leading Juventus to their first Serie A title in nine years, he was named to the Serie A Team of the Year, along with his Juventus midfielder partner Vidal.[104] Pirlo and Juventus also finished runners up to Napoli in the Coppa Italia final that season.[105] Pirlo's fine form in the |
lobbyists and monied interests; what is perplexing is Stewart’s steadfast support for government growth after his repeated denouncements of its efficacy.
Even the California Congresswoman acknowledged that bureaucracies and government employees may tend to be “risk-averse” or lack efficiency but brushed this aside as merely the way things work and not a cause for alarm. Only within the beltway could someone assert a program’s necessity while also admitting its inability to perform at a competent level.
It’s difficult to understand the continued desire for more government from liberals like Stewart in the wake of countless scandals, broken promises and even his own doubts surrounding its capacity to operate without breeding corruption.
But a look at Stewart’s recent summary of the State of the Union Address reveals the fatal flaw in his way of thinking that many on the left subscribe to whether they realize it or not. Commenting on President Obama’s desire to force policies without the consent of Congress, Stewart said in jest, “I’m intrigued. And increasingly willing to go against the Constitution and entertain the notion of a two-branch government.”
Stewart may have been joking but his refusal to take seriously the implications of an administration without limits is precisely what blinds him and other liberals from the destruction of their well-intended but ill-fated objectives.
No amount of good intentions excuses the high unemployment, corruption, or insurmountable debt that not only vindicates their critics but exacerbates the inequalities and sufferings of the same Americans they hoped to rescue.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult for the left to reconcile its ostensible disdain for the elite, while turning to them for salvation. Stewart’s misgivings are an example of this. While I respect him as a journalist for posing questions mainstream anchors refuse to touch; as to why Stewart expects solutions from what he admits is the source of the problem, that’s apparently a question he’s not ready to ask.Marc-Andre Fleury is starting in goal tonight vs. Detroit. "Turning away from (Michigan native) Jeff Zatkoff in his hometown," Bylsma joked.
The rest of the lineup is a game-time decision
This is Pittsburgh's second and final visit to Detroit to play the Red Wings (TV: ROOT SPORTS; Radio: 105.9 the X) at Joe Louis Arena.
The Penguins have won two straight games and three of their last four visits to Joe Louis Arena.
Overall, the Penguins have won three of the last four and four of the past six games against the Red Wings.
Pittsburgh won the first meeting between these two teams, 4-1, on Dec. 14. In that game, the Penguins played without all four of their projected top-4 defensemen – Kris Letang, Paul Martin, Brooks Orpik and Rob Scuderi. Pittsburgh then was forced to play the final 40:30 minutes with just five D-men after Deryk Engelland was ejected. The five blueliners that remained had combined for 578 career games to that point –Matt Niskanen, 444; Simon Despres, 60; Robert Bortuzzo, 39; Olli Maatta, 34; Brian Dumoulin, 1 (NHL debut).
Winger James Neal will be skating in his 400th NHL game tonight. Neal skated his first 215 games with the Dallas Stars from 2008-11. Tonight will be his 185th regular-season game since joining the Penguins.
The Penguins are on the verge of cementing the franchise’s eighth-straight postseason berth. Pittsburgh’s magic number to clinch a postseason berth is 10. A regulation win tonight against the Red Wings would lower that number to 6; while an overtime/shootout victory would reduce the number to 7.
Pittsburgh enters tonight with a magic number of 14 to capture the Metropolitan Division. Should the Penguins win their second straight division crown, it would mark just the second time in franchise history that they have won back-to-back division titles (1992-93, Patrick Division; 1993-94, Northeast Division).
The Wings are currently the most banged-up team in the league heading into tonight's matchup with Pittsburgh. They rank second behind the Pens in terms of total man-games lost (Detroit has 323 to Pittsburgh's 419) and have a long list of injuries that include their two best players, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.But despite all of that, they've been able to stay in the hunt for a playoff spot heading down the stretch run and currently sit just one point out of the final wild-card slot. So even though the Pens are certainly facing a depleted Red Wings roster, they don't expect tonight to be easy by any means.In fact, they expect it to be a big challenge. Because the Pens know perhaps better than anyone how teams can come together through adversity and what young call-ups can do when given an opportunity. They lived that for the first few months of the season with a ton of their key players out, and it helped them get to where they are now (double-digit lead in the Metro Division). And when it's a club like Detroit - a team with such a winning tradition they haven't missed the playoffs since the 1989-90 season - that makes it even harder to count them out."They still have two really talented lines," defenseman Brooks Orpik said. "You look at some of the depth they have. The two young guys, (Tomas) Tatar and (Gustav) Nyquist, are highly skilled guys. We watched some of the video from their Toronto game the other night and the video from last time we played them. They're playing the exact same system, so we should know what to expect."Obviously it's a little different, you can't replace Datsyuk or Zetterberg or some of those guys that are missing. But just like our guys have done from Wilkes-Barre, their guys have stepped up and done a really good job for them."So while Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin won't be having their usual epic matchups with Datsyuk and Zetterberg, they know they'll still be going head-to-head with some skilled guys."You see the guys that are playing in (Datsyuk and Zetterberg's) positions, they're pretty good hockey players and they have a lot of skill," Crosby said. "Those guys are a big part of their team, but that being said, you're looking at some centermen and some players that have plugged into those top-two lines that are pretty skilled and pretty good players themselves. I think you still prepare for guys that are going to compete. Knowing the situation they're in, they're going to be desperate."The Pens have to watch out for not just that skill, but Detroit's speed as well."They're a skilled group, that's just how that organization is," defenseman Matt Niskanen said. "Even though they have key guys out, it's going to be a big challenge for us tonight.They don't have quite the puck possession guys that they normally would, but they can get up and go. They might be a little more chip and chase, but they still have good hockey players that can really scoot. Some of their younger players that they've added over the last couple of years, they can really fly. They can put you on your heels. That's something to be aware of and we'll have to watch that."Sam and I have the latest from both locker rooms heading into tonight's Pens-Wings matchup...A couple of lineup notes from head coach Dan Bylsma following the Pens morning skate...James Neal is set to play in his 400th NHL game tonight...And look how happy he is about itSidney Crosby is unstoppable...even in practiceKunitz celebrating his effectiveness as a net-front presence on the power playEngo and Flower just shaking their heads and smilingGlass and Adams discussing PK strategy with assistant coach Tony GranatoBrooks Orpik working on the PK with Glass and AdamsThey were going up against these two (and Kunitz, Malkin and Niskanen)Tonight's starting goalie adjusting his equipmentLee Stempniak watching the drill where every player on the ice tries to score on Flower. Not sure what he thinks of it...These two and Stempniak combined for four goals and eight points in Tuesday's 5-1 win over DallasAll the healthy Pens (plus Beau Bennett, Kris Letang and Tomas Vokoun) are present and accounted for at the team's morning skate at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. The team used the following workflow...Kunitz-Crosby-StempniakJokinen-Malkin-NealGlass-Goc-VitaleGibbons-Sutter-Adams(Pyatt did not participate in rushes, and Jayson Megna was re-assigned to WBS on Wednesday)Orpik-NiskanenScuderi-MaattaBortuzzo-DespresEngelland-LetangPP1: Malkin, Niskanen on top. Crosby, Neal and Kunitz down low.PP2: Despres, Maatta on top. Jokinen, Stempniak and Goc down low.Here's the full breakdown on the clipped Wings. One player who has stepped up big through all of the injuries to key players is 24-year-old Gustav Nyquist, as he has an NHL-leading 14 goals in 20 games dating back to Jan. 20. Watch more on him and the rest of Detroit below...Good morning from my hometown of Detroit, Michigan! It's always awesome to be back. The Pens are in Hockeytown to play the Red Wings tonight at Joe Louis ArenaBoth teams have been devastated by injuries this season – Pittsburgh ranks No. 1 with 419 man-games lost, while Detroit is right behind them at No. 2 with 323 man-games lost. Their long injury list includes their two best players, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.Pittsburgh is scheduled to hit the ice for morning skate at 11:30 a.m. after the Red Wings skate at 10:30 a.m. Stay tuned for all the game-day news.Here are a few game notes to get you ready...Stick tap: Pens PRI always leave Detroit with the one lyric of this song in my head, since the Wings' game-entertainment staff plays it before puck drop. Put your hands up for Detroit, I love this city! Enjoy.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department will widen the criteria it uses to decide which drug offenders to recommend to the president for clemency, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Monday.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testifies about his FY2015 budget request at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington April 3, 2014. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The department expects thousands of drug offenders currently serving time to be eligible for reduced sentences under the new clemency guidelines and it will prepare to review an influx of applications, Holder said in a video address.
Under U.S. law, the president can reduce sentences or pardon Americans serving sentences for federal crimes. The Justice Department will now recommend more candidates for the president’s consideration.
Details of the new criteria will be announced later this week by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
Holder hinted the guidelines may include applying a 2010 law that reduced sentences for crack cocaine offenders to those sentenced before the law was enacted.
“There are still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime,” Holder said in his address.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a press briefing on Monday that President Barack Obama asked the Department of Justice to widen the clemency guidelines.
“The president wants to make sure that everyone has a fair shot into the clemency system, and he has asked the Department of Justice to set up a process aimed at ensuring that anyone who has a good case for commutation has their application seen and evaluated thoroughly,” Carney said.
Granting clemency to nonviolent drug offenders is part of the Obama administration’s strategy to reduce spending on federal prisons by reducing the number of inmates serving time for nonviolent drug crimes.
Last year, Holder launched the “Smart on Crime” initiative to review the criminal justice system and look for ways to make spending on prisons more efficient by focusing on violent offenders.
Some Republicans in Congress say more lenient sentences would reverse a drop in crime seen in recent decades.
In 2010, nearly half of 216,000 federal inmates were serving time for drug-related crimes, according to Department of Justice data.The Securities and Exchange Commission sent out a Letter On Fair Value Measurements, (Financial Accounting Standards No. 157) that is tantamount to being an open invitation to lie. Let's take a look at what some are saying about that letter.
Floyd Norris at the New York Times writes If Market Prices Are Too Low, Ignore Them.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is out today with a letter to companies that own a lot of financial instruments whose current market value must be reported to shareholders. For more than a few companies, disclosing market values is neither easy nor convenient.
The issue is the application of SFAS 157, which governs the way companies compute fair value of assets. The rule sets out three categories of assets, with different ways to value them. Category 1 includes assets with easily observable market values. I.B.M. stock closed today at $114.57, and it is not easy to justify a different value if your quarter ended today. Category 2 is a little fuzzier, where there are observable markets that provide a good guide to prices of your asset, even though there is no direct market. And then there is Category 3, which is essentially mark to model.
But one part of the letter stood out to me, providing an excuse for companies to ignore a market value if they don’t like it (italics added):
“Under SFAS 157, it is appropriate for you to consider actual market prices, or observable inputs, even when the market is less liquid than historical market volumes, unless those prices are the result of a forced liquidation or distress sale. Only when actual market prices, or relevant observable inputs, are not available is it appropriate for you to use unobservable inputs which reflect your assumptions of what market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability.”
That sounds to me like an invitation to fudge. Some people on Wall Street think that nearly every sale today is a forced sale. There are entire categories of collateralized debt obligations where most, if not all, of the trades, occur because a holder has received, or expects, a margin call.
In the last couple of months, there has been increased worry that mark-to-market accounting leads to the operation of a destructive "financial accelerator." As prevailing values go down, banks have to lower the value of their holdings. This leads to a direct hit to their net worth, which will lead them to contract their balance sheets, either by withholding credit or selling assets. More sales in a weak market lead to further declines in the prices of financial instruments, leading to more writedowns and sales of inventory.
Funny how no one had a problem with mark-to-market when asset prices were rising.
But now the SEC has given banks and brokers a huge out. No matter how small or easily absorbed by the market a forced sale might be (think of a hedge fund hit by a margin call), a financial institution can ignore the price realized. In fact, they get to determine what trades constitute a forced sale.
Moreover, we've seen plenty of unintended consequences, or worse, backfires, as regulators intervene trying to alleviate the credit crisis. Banks have been reluctant to extend credit to each other precisely because they don't trust their creditworthiness. That's tantamount to saying they already don't trust their public financial statements, since according to their public filings, virtually all major financial institutions have more than the required statutory capital.
So this move, to stem the balance-sheet-shrinking impact of mark-to-market accounting in a falling price environment, may further undermine liquidity. Companies will less able to judge whether their published financials are telling the whole story, And where the numbers are in doubt, rumors are taken more seriously.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it has been said that mark to market accounting is the worst form of financial accounting except for all the others that have been tried. But it looks like we are going to try them anyhow.
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On a Sunday morning in late September, Tom John, a wiry fisherman with a deep, placid gaze, ushers me onto his boat, moored on a riverbank in Newtok village, in southwest Alaska. His wife, Bernice, a sturdy-shouldered woman with a voice as bright as a sparrow’s, and their nine-year-old grandson clamber in after me. Our footsteps clang against the aluminum hull. Bernice gestures for me to take shelter from the damp wind in a makeshift cabin built out of wood and a tarp. I nestle in beside coats, buckets, a mug, a cracker box, a camp lantern, an empty coffee jar. “We sleep in the boat when we travel out to the wilderness,” Tom explains. Virtually no roads cross this vast region known as the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta—or the “Y-K Delta” in Alaskan shorthand—an area roughly the size of the Mississippi River floodplain. People get around by boat—winding through the creeks and rivers that stripe the spongy tundra—by ATV, or by snowmobile. A handful of airlines operate flights to the Y-K Delta villages on propeller planes about as hefty as oversized mayflies; I arrived on one yesterday, after waiting two days for dense fog to lift at a rural airport.
Today we will float just a few kilometers upstream to check Tom’s fish traps. He shoves a long pole into the mud and nudges the boat into the gray-blue water. Bernice chirps instructions at her grandson in Yup’ik, the native, and still the first, language spoken in this region. In slow, clipped English, Tom says, “When we get to the old village site, I’ll show you where these people came from.” He yanks the starter rope until the motor sputters and then roars like a jackhammer.
By “these people,” Tom means the Yup’ik founders of Newtok. The Yup’ik represent one of Alaska’s 11 distinct native cultural groups and have lived along the Bering Sea for perhaps 2,000 years. Until a few decades ago, they maintained a nimble, semi-nomadic lifestyle, migrating between seasonal camps. Beginning each April, they were on the move, camping at the coast to hunt seals and then journeying up the rivers in search of fish. Around freeze-up, they settled back into winter homes made of sod and driftwood.
Yup’ik people started to camp at Newtok in the late 1940s, after having problems with flooding at their previous winter village. They picked the site with a different priority in mind than usual: it was the farthest point upriver that a barge could reach. The federal government had mandated that all native children must receive formal education, even if it meant packing them off to boarding schools hundreds of kilometers away from family. With access to supplies from commercial ships, the community could have a school and keep its children close. By the early 1960s, Newtok’s first school—built by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)—was up and running. The village grew around it; today, it’s a collection of ramshackle cottages and modular office buildings, knit together by broken and slippery wooden boardwalks, and permanent infrastructure no longer suitable for nomadic life, including a power plant and a water treatment facility. By the 1970s, the people had become stationary, too.
Even in the early days at Newtok, its residents could see that the tundra was warming and thawing, and that the river was eating the land around them. In the past few years, they have become famous, heralded by the international press as “America’s first climate refugees” (along with residents of two other Alaskan villages and a tiny Louisianan island community). Newtok is one of the first places in the United States that could be erased by the impacts of climate change. The US Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that erosion will ravage much of the village within the next decade.
For 20 years, the residents of Newtok have struggled to find a way to move the entire community to safer ground. Newtok perches precariously in a space where two cultures collide. The old tradition of moving with land and seasons has faltered under the weight of permanent architecture and infrastructure forced upon the Yup’ik by modern society. To be permanent and stationary requires a community to stand its ground against the will of nature. But that’s always been a difficult prospect in a place ruled by tumultuous cycles of storms and ice. Now a warming climate is making it impossible.
For the people of Newtok, relocating means turning back to traditions while still bowing to the demands of modern life. It requires raising millions of dollars; navigating complicated bureaucratic processes; and negotiating with everyone from the regional school district to the Alaska State Legislature and the US Congress. And even after all of these hurdles are passed, the bad-tempered tundra weather can foil the best-laid plans, stranding boats and grounding planes, flooding, howling, and raging.
That makes the move a grand experiment and the people here less like refugees and more like pioneers trying to chart a new path across the thawing landscape. To be a nomad is to move when the earth changes. Few people know how to do this skillfully. But the Yup’ik can remember.
Tom steers the boat along the Kealivik (or Kayalivik) River, a tributary of a larger, more powerful river called the Ninglick. Tawny grasses and shrubby, yellow-leaved willows stretch from the banks to the horizon as far as the eye can see. In the distance behind us, Nelson Island appears in a shroud of low clouds, its rocky ridgeline faint and blue in the haze.
The water is glassy, and the river is bloated from swallowing both rain and tundra soil. Bernice points at a muddy bank ripped open by the river. “See where it’s eroded?” she shouts above the din. “It only stops when we’re frozen.”
Water, ice, and soil form this landscape—part swamp and part permafrost. The community started reporting erosion problems to officials in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, the Alaska legislature gave Newtok money to hire engineering consultants to study the problem. The engineers noted that relatively warm temperatures were melting the bits of ice that bind the soil together, making it possible for the Ninglick River to tear apart the ground. Climate change will likely stir more intense waves and storm surges here. As the unfrozen season lengthens, the land is weaker, the river stronger and more destructive. Between 1954 and 2003, the Ninglick ate about nine American football fields worth of the land separating the village from the water.
When it became clear that the swollen river’s appetite couldn’t be sated, Newtok leaders began planning in 1994 to relocate. A site about 15 kilometers south of Newtok called Mertarvik, meaning “place to get water” in Yup’ik, on the volcanic bluffs of Nelson Island, looked like one of the best options. More than 35 times the size of Manhattan, Nelson Island is home to about 1,200 people in four communities with long-standing cultural and familial ties to Newtok. The people of Newtok camped all summer on Nelson Island at a place called Nilikluguk, until a landslide buried it in the 1960s. The villagers still hunt on the island and stop at Mertarvik to gather water from a spring. But moving there permanently is more complicated. Y-K villages exist as islands of private land within publicly owned territory—the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, designated in 1980, encompasses most of the delta. Any exchange of land from the refuge requires federal government approval. In 2003, after years of negotiations, Congress finally authorized the transfer of Mertarvik land to the people of Newtok.
Even after they got the land, the Newtok residents still needed to raise vast sums of money and run the gauntlet of perplexing legal requirements. They banged on the doors of government bureaucrats, pleading for help. But government agencies lacked authority over or experience with moving an entire community threatened by climate change. Still, by 2006, they had assembled a committee of public servants and nonprofit organizations called the Newtok Planning Group. That same year, the federal government gave the villagers enough money to build just three of the 80 houses they would need at the new village. A year passed before the community found a barge company willing to drop housing materials in the wilderness—at a site with no landing or other commercial infrastructure—and another year to construct the homes, though they have yet to be moved into final position and remain unoccupied.
The US Department of Defense led summer training exercises at Mertarvik from 2009 to 2013, both to set the new village’s foundations and to teach troops how to create a base in the wilderness. Military personnel erected storage buildings, carved out a quarry, built a barge landing, and laid down an access road.
In 2012, the community built three additional government-funded homes at Mertarvik. A handful of community members volunteered to move there first. They live with no running water or electricity, sometimes returning seasonally to Newtok so they are not isolated during the harshest weather. The villagers call them “the pioneers.” This phase of the community’s transition to Mertarvik is the upagluteng, a word that harks back to the practice of moving with the seasons. The community requires more than US $60-million for the extra houses and associated infrastructure needed to relocate the rest of its 400 or so members—and that figure doesn’t include other essentials, such as a school or an airport.
In the boat, we head north, away from Nelson Island and toward the place the people of Newtok came from—the flood-prone winter village they left behind only one or two generations ago. It bears the same name as the river: Old Kayalivik. We arrive in about 20 minutes, and Tom slows the motor, which cuts out and begins to beep. “The grassy area,” he says, gesturing for me to look beyond the bank to our left.
Eager to reach his fish traps, Tom doesn’t let us go ashore. But across the flatlands, I can see a few tilted wooden crosses and fences marking old graves—the influence of missionaries. The land rolls up around them into a set of knolls. These are the remnants of sod houses, since reclaimed by grass. They are so crumbled and overgrown that they are barely visible from here.
The Yup’ik built winter villages centered around a sod structure called a qasgiq. Bernice explains that Old Kayalivik would have had such a building—a round, multifunctional space that served as a town hall, a ceremonial hall, a residence for men, and a place for learning. The qasgiq was a space for holistic activities that maintained the community’s physical and spiritual well-being.
Bernice tells me her parents and grandparents lived in this village. “I never got to experience it myself,” she adds. Tom jerks the starter rope, and the motor rattles into action again. “If we were living [their] lifestyle,” Bernice shouts, “we wouldn’t be living in this situation.”
Today, more than 20,000 people, most of them Yup’ik, inhabit the Y-K region in several dozen villages that often look like a cross between a military outpost and a fishing camp. Families live crowded in spartan, boxy, wood-framed houses—usually government issued—some without running water or flush toilets. The early villages were often smaller, more scattered, and more numerous than today’s. Their culture and economy revolved around hunting and fishing.
The Yup’ik still depend on food that they can hunt, fish, and gather from the tundra. When we arrive at the family’s fish traps, about 15 minutes after leaving Old Kayalivik, the Johns’ son-in-law has already gathered several Alaskan blackfish, now wriggling in a white plastic bucket. The men empty two more traps, while Bernice stoops in the grass to gather cranberries.
On our way back to Newtok, drizzle dampens our clothes. We dock on the riverbank, and Tom hauls up the bucket of fish, leading the way through the maze of muddy boardwalks to the family’s house. Tom built the humble, one-room dwelling 20 years ago with scrap wood left behind by the BIA. Now, the couple shares it with their children and grandchildren; about a dozen people cram in, with mattresses, a washing machine, a television set, and a pile of suitcases. Laundry dangles from the ceiling above a cracked linoleum floor. Tom settles onto the mattress nearest to the television set to watch football, while Bernice eats bologna and fry bread with mustard.
The longer the move takes, the worse conditions become in Newtok. It’s hard to get anyone to invest in new infrastructure for a community that is about to leave. So there are no working sewer lines, and Tom and Bernice’s family, like every household in the village, uses a “honey bucket.” They dump the waste, usually by hand, into the river. In a storm, it sometimes washes back into the village. During my visit, the water treatment plant for the village is malfunctioning.
The slow attrition of Newtok fuels tensions in the village. By 2012, growing impatience with the pace of the move led community members to challenge the leadership of the Newtok Traditional Council, which had governed the village for 15 years. After the council refused to cede control and hold elections, the villagers organized a second council. Bernice is one of seven members of the new Newtok Village Council, and Tom works as its administrator. The BIA and other state and federal agencies have recognized it as the official governing body, but the ongoing dispute between the two councils has driven a wedge in the community. The real loss is further delay in the relocation process. When I try to contact members of the first council, they refuse to speak to me.
Modern life, with its reliance on money and bureaucracy, is divisive. Traditionally, the qasgiq gave people a center they could return to at the end of each season’s journey, explains Billy Charles, a member of the Yup’ik and a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Modern villages were organized around offices, schools, and infrastructure—not a qasgiq—and the old sod structures fell into disuse and decay. “Its loss separated the community, and there was no more collaboration,” Charles says.
For decades, the Yup’ik have faced the forces of change: the Christian missionaries who condemned and dismantled the Yup’ik communal lifestyle; the US government, which imposed different styles of organization; and policy, especially the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of the 1970s, which made native people shareholders in corporations that hold claim to land and natural resources. Now many native villages are run by a muddled set of municipal institutions, corporations, and traditional and tribal councils, with overlapping authorities. Communities facing climate change have to find ways to stitch themselves back together, even as the landscape is falling apart.
Across Alaska, warming temperatures are destroying permafrost. Winters are shorter, sea ice less reliable. Storms batter the Y-K Delta frequently and flood the coastline and rivers. In years to come, as the sea level rises, that flooding will worsen. The federal government reported in 2003 that at least 184 of Alaska’s 213 native villages suffer flooding and erosion, which is getting worse year by year. A more recent report indicates that 31 villages face dire threats, and 12 are considering relocation.
“The world is changing following its people,” says a Yup’ik adage.
When Mary John, Tom’s mother, was younger, she heard that people would cause the climate to change. I find the 79-year-old, white-haired woman bundled up in a green recliner, watching the twanging 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter. On the broken linoleum floor of her house, by the wood stove, sit bottles of yellow liquid—partly rendered seal oil, with a pungent aroma that reminds me of cheese, sweat, and old socks. Mary explains most things in Yup’ik, loosely translated by local teenager Scott Charlie and Tom’s brother, Teddy.
She speaks with a creaky voice, like the soughing of old trees, and repeats the phrase “long, long time ago,” one of the few she knows in English. Charlie passes me a plate of white rice and chewy moose meat and explains that Mary had heard that the snow would cease falling because people had stopped following nature’s laws.
There’s nothing romantic in Mary’s depiction of the old communities: the people “were poor. They were hungry. They had nothing.” They made coats from bird skins and boots from sealskins, ate from wooden bowls, and slept on grass mattresses.
No one I spoke to in Newtok dreams of a return to a sod-house life, and today, it would be difficult to impossible for anyone to flee the modern economy even if they wanted to. When they move this time, they will take the trappings of contemporary life with them.
As the community waits to relocate, the threat of sudden catastrophe looms. In 2005, a tempest converted the village temporarily into an island, and the next big deluge could easily engulf Newtok. The village lies 80 kilometers by boat from any place that could provide the “barest shelter” for its residents in an emergency, notes a report by the Army Corps of Engineers.
In 2008, the community hired a Fairbanks-based green-building research institute called the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC) to design an evacuation center for Mertarvik. A young Alaskan architect named Aaron Cooke managed the project. Blue-eyed, bearded, and tattooed with a set of bands up one arm (one for each year of his life, like tree rings), Cooke dreamed of creating a set of design principles and an aesthetic customized to the rugged North. He felt that the architecture of the lower 48 had failed places like Newtok: the types of housing and heavy infrastructure that work in southerly latitudes are ill-suited to native Alaska culture and the demands of a place dominated by extreme weather.
The evacuation center that CCHRC and the community planned out would hold the entire village for at least a week in an emergency. After the community moved, it would become a gathering space, a qasgiq of sorts. Newtok residents asked for steam baths, an ample kitchen, food storage, an arts and crafts shop, and a hall for feasts and dancing. The state of Alaska gave Newtok more than $6-million to build it and took charge of the construction. But a year after work began, the old Newtok Traditional Council canceled its contract with the state and insisted the council itself would oversee the process. Construction stalled, and the state has since questioned whether the council mishandled the project’s finances. The foundation still stands at Mertarvik, unfinished.
In 2011, the community and the Newtok Planning Group outlined a formal vision for Mertarvik. The plan is full of hopes, both simple and ambitious. It ultimately envisions a greenhouse, a big school, a new store, and windmills that spin out clean energy when the wind rushes. In these dreams, modern life and tradition become seamless and sustainable; and people adjust, even as the earth thaws, hanging on to the things that matter most: family, home, community, and culture.
Last year, the Newtok Village Council asked CCHRC and Cooke to oversee a second project, an eco-house that would combine the mobility of the past with the technology of the present. The council was inspired by an eco-house CCHRC had built in the village of Atmautluak, 129 kilometers east of Newtok, so energy-efficient that it burned less than a third as much heating oil as the region’s average home. The community asked the federal government for money to build more than 60 homes of a similar design.
CCHRC’s approach is to draw up designs and then teach locals how to build the homes themselves. The organization has worked with local foremen and crews in about a dozen remote communities across Alaska to build houses tailored to harsh environments. A rural housing authority called Tagiugmiullu Nunamiullu is doing similar work with communities on Alaska’s north coast.
“I can’t wait to see what the houses are really like,” one woman in Newtok village tells me. “I hope it’ll be a lot better than this housing that we have.”
The homes are destined for Mertarvik, but the community wanted the first house built in Newtok and moved later so everyone could share in the hopeful experience of learning about it and putting it together. Cooke was supposed to meet me in the village, where I would watch him lead construction. The design featured lightweight wooden trusses that would allow the house to be assembled quickly before freeze-up, thick energy-efficient insulation, an in-house water treatment system, and a self-contained sanitation system to separate and desiccate human waste, which could then be burned as fuel. The house would sit on a metal frame, an adjustable foundation resembling a giant double-bladed ice skate, which could be dragged across the frozen tundra or shipped by boat to Mertarvik when the community was ready. But less than two weeks before my trip, Cooke reported that weather and transportation had thwarted his plan. When I arrived, there was nothing at the house site but the building pad—a set of heavy-duty plastic mats laid across the mud and grass beside the school. Weeks after the barge carrying the supplies for the house left Seattle, it caught fire, delaying the shipment. Then storms blocked the vessel’s route through the Y-K Delta. The barge sailed past Newtok to Nome, roughly 470 kilometers north along the coast.
In the face of such setbacks, the community pushes forward with relentless optimism. More than a month after my visit, the barge returns. Frightened by the prospect of navigating the silt-choked route along Newtok’s eroded shoreline, the boat operators drop the materials for the house at Mertarvik instead of Newtok. In January, the federal government turns down Newtok’s plea for money for new houses. The planning group then receives some funding under a federal disaster program to move a dozen houses that are in good enough condition to make the journey to Nelson Island, though this will only allow the community to stage another incremental migration. Cooke plans to return imminently, now that the ice has dissipated, to build the eco-house in |
being an engine out on the field being everywhere on the pitch. The Mexican player can stay active for the entire 90 minutes and do work both defensively and in the attack. “El Chaka” is an undervalued player and should be able to make an impact in this final against Chivas.
Jesus Duenas CM
Duenas has quickly emerged as one of the best Mexican midfielders in the Liga MX and has earned a call to the Mexican national team. The 28-year-old is great at covering the midfield and going forward, having scored three goals in the regular season and two in the quarterfinals against archrivals, Monterrey. Duenas is a player that can sneak in and have an impactful performance without making too much noise.
Guido Pizarro CM
Pizarro is arguably the best and most impactful midfielder in the Liga MX. The Argentine excels in his defensive midfield role, has a spectacular passing ability and can push forward with skill as well. Pizarro posted an 88.5-percent pass accuracy with 1,159 completed passes, 376 recovered balls and an average of 10.6 kilometers covered per match this season. The Argentine has been one of the most impactful players for Tigres UANL this Clausura and should be able to make a significant impact in this final.
Javier Aquino LW
The Mexican winger only started in eleven games during the regular season but is making an enormous impact in the playoffs. Aquino was unable to score during the regular Clausura 2017 campaign but managed to score two in the semifinals matchup against Club Tijuana. The best part of the winger’s play is his pace which is immense but also has a superb passing ability that is very useful generating plays in attack. The 27-year-oll should be one of the more entertaining players to watch on the field for this final against Chivas.
Lucas Zelayaran RW
Zelayaran has been an on-and-off player for Ricardo Ferretti this season but has performed immensely in the playoffs so far. The Argentine picked up three goals during the regular season and put one past Club Tijuana in the semifinals. Zelayaran has pace and is an intelligent player with the ball that also possesses a magnificent strike on him. The 24-year old’s free kick ability can also make an impact in this final as set-pieces are always a danger coming up against Tigres UANL.
Ismael Sosa CAM
Sosa is the focal point of the attack for Tigres UANL being in that central spot every ball goes through him to generate scoring opportunities. The Argentine had a spectacular regular season with three goals and five assists but is yet to score in the playoffs. Sosa offers a lot more than just goals but will always be looking to impact the scoreboard somehow.
Andre-Pierre Gignac ST
There are no words that can do Gignac’s brilliance in the Liga MX justice. The French striker has scored four goals in the playoffs and will look to keep it going in this final. The 31-year-old did not score in the semifinals but still showed his class with two assists in the second leg of the series. One of the assists was a spectacular back-heel pass that showcased how spectacular the Frenchman can be. Gignac is still the best player in the Liga MX and has come up huge in monumental games before. It is unclear what type of impact the French international will make in this final but he is guaranteed to make some sort of impact on the pitch.Today’s members of the middle and professional classes wonder daily what the new normal will be. They’re aware, some vaguely, others acutely, that during this period—the most chastening experience in their lives—their families’ habits and attitudes are changing both conspicuously and imperceptibly. They chew over what further adjustments are prudent; they worry over what additional ones may become necessary. And perhaps most disquietingly, they speculate whether the adjustments they’ve made in the face of unprecedented uncertainty—and whether that uncertainty itself—will become enduring features of their lives. These books suggest answers, some trivial and some profound. The Lynds’ focus on the myriad ways the Depression was altering the lives and spirit of the middle classes makes Middletown in Transition especially enlightening—and in many ways unsettling. Although it certainly chronicles grim want and hunger (though not starvation) among the working class and unemployed middle classes, the dominant themes are emotional: unrelenting fear and dashed hope.
The defining characteristic of the middle classes has always been their orientation toward the future. The Depression ruined schemes for such baubles and pleasures as the new car and the winter vacation. But it also at best disrupted and at worst (and often) destroyed carefully wrought plans for so-called investments in the future: the substantial house in the stable neighborhood, the savings account, and, most important, what was then and remains the cynosure of American middle- and professional-class family life—a college education, or a certain kind of college education, for the children. Even today, that investment largely determines the opportunities parents seize or forgo, the towns they move to, the rhythm of a family’s daily life. The Depression rendered any careful planning for the future, an activity that depends on predictable conditions, all but impossible, or at least crazy-making.
Again, most earners in the middle classes were still employed, but their livelihoods were in daily jeopardy; throughout the country even those at the apex of the professions—doctors and lawyers—saw their incomes drop by as much as 40 percent. Moreover, although professional-class families had invested and saved prudently (or so they thought), many had been ruined. Leaving aside the losses in the stock market, a form of investment overwhelmingly confined to members of the middle and upper classes, throughout America from 1929 to 1932, some 9 million savings accounts were wiped out (savings accounts, too, were largely limited to members of the middle and upper classes, who alone had extra dollars to put away). More important, even those families not ruined knew that their reverses—those gargantuan declines in the values of their homes and portfolios and the all but universal drastic declines in income during what were supposed to be their peak years of wealth-building—were irretrievable. They’d never get back to where they’d been, to the foundation on which just a few years before they had assumed their future would be built (not unlike, say, parents of today who have for years carefully contributed to now-clobbered 529 plans for their adolescents). Disaster was always imminent; the future was at best chancy and diminished. Inescapably, Muncie’s middle classes endured year after year of an emotional state that resembled, as the Lynds put it,
the crisis quality of a serious illness, when life’s customary busy immediacies drop away and one lies helplessly confronting oneself, reviewing the past, and asking abrupt questions of the future.
Such psychological inferences may be squishy, but all of these accounts agree on one workaday detail of middle-class life: the effort to maintain the highest-possible standard of material living in an age of reduced circumstances meant that the physical burden of the new normal fell overwhelmingly on women. The hours of what were then called servants were cut, or those workers were fired altogether (just as is now happening with the hours and jobs of housekeepers, nannies, and—at least here in Southern California—gardeners), but the tasks they performed remained to be done. And “domestic” work that had previously been performed outside the home shifted to the household. Home-baked bread replaced store-bought; home preserving became de rigueur (one of the few bright spots in Muncie’s economy during the Depression’s early years was that its Ball Brothers plant, the country’s largest manufacturer of fruit jars, was blessed with capacity production). Clothes and household items were mended rather than replaced. Today, the twice-weekly takeout dinners from Boston Market or the Whole Foods deli counter, along with the regular expeditions to California Pizza Kitchen or Outback Steakhouse, have been reduced, and children and adults are more frequently brown-bagging their lunches—which means that more meals are being prepared at home. Eighty years ago, it was wives and mothers who overwhelmingly took up the slack. Surprise, surprise: little has changed today.Whether you dine gluten-free because you suffer from celiac disease, or it’s a lifestyle (and health) choice, here are some top places and dishes in San Francisco where you can feast gluten-free (and feel good at the end of your meal). If you need to be vigilant about cross-contamination and other issues, be sure to ask the establishment directly.
Dosas at Dosa
The menu at both Dosa locations (on Valencia and Fillmore) is full of gluten-free dishes, and the namesake dosa—made with rice and lentil flours—is a choice item for those who are craving something bready, plus you have 12 different kinds of fillings to decide on. There’s also the uttapam, a thicker version that has a pancake-like texture (it’s great for brunch with an egg on it).
Fried chicken at Hard Water
Fried chicken is usually something that has to be crossed off a gluten-free eater’s list, but not here. It’s so, so good: You get three pieces of juicy and plump Mary’s chicken ($20), and the crisp exterior is extremely light and well seasoned (it has a little kick of cayenne, plus paprika, and garlic powder), plus pepper jelly on the side. The secret to that tasty chicken (and its crisp coating)? It’s fried in rice flour!
Gluten-free pizza at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana
The kitchen takes gluten-free dining very seriously in this North Beach outpost serving some of the city’s best pizza: The gluten-free pizza they offer is cooked in a separate oven. The dough (which uses rice and tapioca flours, potato starch, and a binding agent) is a favorite among many local celiacs: Chef Tony Gemignani uses egg whites to give it a fluffier texture, agave nectar to sweeten it, and rosemary and thyme to season it. You can also get gluten-free breadsticks and gluten-free pasta, too.
Injera at Moya
This popular SoMa lunchtime spot (which is also open for dinner) has a homey Ethiopian menu with a variety of savory vegetable dishes, spicy steak tartare, and two chicken options. If you're game, you’ll be eating with your hands, and your primary utensil is the spongy injera bread. Gluten-free folks will want to request the version made with teff.
Pasta at Bacco
Craving Italian? This place has you covered, from housemade gluten-free bread (with your own dipping sauce to avoid cross-contamination) to gluten-free meatballs, plus there are a variety of gluten-free pasta options, including ravioli and rigatoni. Buon appetito!
Are there other local places you recommend for gluten-free dining, like Minako, Pica Pica, and more? Please share in the comments below!
Marcia Gagliardi is the founder of the weekly tablehopper e-column; subscribe and get more food news and gossip at tablehopper.com. Follow her on Twitter: @tablehopper.For years now, Google’s knee-jerk response to its frequent regulatory entanglements has been to point a finger north: It’s Microsoft’s fault!
For good reason. The Redmond software giant has actively stirred the pot in several legal cases against Google search, in both the U.S. and Europe, through its own lobbying and the dogged consumer advocacy group FairSearch.
Maybe not anymore.
In December, Microsoft quietly removed its financial support from FairSearch, an organization behind multiple legal threats to Google, including the pending one in the European Union.
“We routinely evaluate our participation in industry organizations and decided not to continue our membership in FairSearch,” a Microsoft spokesman said.
Thomas Vinje, a rep for FairSearch, said: “While we appreciate Microsoft’s contribution while a member, the work of our coalition continues unabated.”
Microsoft joined FairSearch shortly after the group’s founding in 2010. Since then, the consumer organization, a reliable attack dog on competition issues involving Google, has often been described as a front group for the software company that makes perennial second-place search engine Bing.
Recently, Microsoft’s policy efforts have focused more on data security and privacy issues, such as the heated Safe Harbor ruling in the EU. Its severance from FairSearch may indicate new lobbying priorities, or even warming ties between the once very bitter rivals. In Europe, at least, more of the legal pressure on Google has come from the German media and telecom than from Microsoft.
Clearly the change shows a softer posture from Microsoft. Three years ago, the company launched its infamous “Scroogled” holiday ad campaign that targeted Google for its shopping ads — and kicked dirt in Google’s eyes for two years. Even today, the public assault, orchestrated by former Clinton aide Mark Penn, leaves Mountain View bitter.
In some ways, Microsoft’s withdrawal from the group is a blow to Google, as it can no longer pin its troubles on a big competitor. Still, Google has no shortage of foes ready to call its search engine a monopoly: FairSearch is backed by several European and U.S. companies, including Oracle, Expedia and TripAdvisor. That said, the group has lost one of its more prominent financial backers — a boost for Google.
FairSearch is a formal complainant active* in the existing European Union antitrust case charging Google for abusing its search position in its shopping product, as well as a complainant in the EU investigation into Android.
While it may be spending less to go after Google, Microsoft isn’t fully out of the game. It remains a formal complainant in the EU shopping antitrust case, which Microsoft entered in 2011.
For old time’s sake, here’s one of the Scroogled ads from 2013, this one going after Gmail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1ominSL_c
*Update: While several FairSearch members are formal complainants in the EU case against Google shopping, the organization itself is not one.The scale is unimaginable, an army has landed in Europe.
And despite our warnings — for years — my colleagues and I were demonized, libeled and defamed — because of our warnings.
It is only a matter of time.
More than 17,000 terror suspects monitored in France in ONE MONTH MORE than 17,000 terror suspects have been monitored by French authorities in the last month alone, new figures reveal. By Patrick Christys, The Express, Apr 14, 2017: This could pose a serious threat to Britain, with France just 20 miles (33km) away across the Channel and Islamic State militants known to be targeting London and other regions. The French Senate announced the results of the “Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities” report yesterday, showing 17,393 people have been listed as terror suspects since the beginning of March. A total of 2,046 French citizens fled to Syria and Iraq to fight for terrorist groups in the Middle East, the report also shows – 249 of those are now believed to be dead. A breakdown of the report shows 7,400 individuals were reported by the Security Chiefs of Staff, 5,346 by the public and 5,799 individuals were registered by police or gendarmerie.French authorities said they were not all being constantly monitored, rather some were scrutinised at regular intervals. ISIS terrorists have been honing their sights on an attack on a ferry crossing the Channel, according to senior security sources, which has lead to an increase in armed guards at the Calais border. They believe they can get terrorists into Britain via a ferry Senior security source The initial threat emerged last summer but, with the hot season fast approaching, it is possible the jihadis have reaffirmed their murderous desires.A senior security source, confirming the attacks had been planned last year, said: “The presence of the police and soldiers near Calais is very alarming – there’s nothing routine about it. This could pose a serious threat to Britain, with France just 20 miles (33km) away “Apparently they are at a high state of alert because there is a fear of jihadists getting on to a ferry headed for Britain and executing people on the ship.“It is also possible that ISIS may have been told security has in the past been reasonably lax so they believe they can get terrorists into Britain via a ferry.” France’s attempts to guard against terror are in tatters after numerous deadly attacks, most notably the Nice and Paris atrocities, which killed more than 200 people combined.
The Truth Must be Told Your contribution supports independent journalism Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more. Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible. Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too. Please contribute to our ground-breaking work here.
Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best. Contribute Monthly - Choose One Subscriber : $18.00 USD - monthly Contributor : $36.00 USD - monthly Patron : $50.00 USD - monthly Silver member : $100.00 USD - monthly Gold member : $250.00 USD - monthly Platinum member : $500.00 USD - monthlyNew Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens.
Update, 16 May 2011: If you’ve just heard about this story, please read this recent update too.
Article originally published online 17 January 2007:
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
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It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.
DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.
Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis’s experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020).
Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don’t get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.
Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become “immortal”, outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.
“The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play: they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy,” says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.
The phenomenon might also explain how secondary cancers form. Glycolysis generates lactic acid, which can break down the collagen matrix holding cells together. This means abnormal cells can be released and float to other parts of the body, where they seed new tumours.
DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers. The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.
Paul Clarke, a cancer cell biologist at the University of Dundee in the UK, says the findings challenge the current assumption that mutations, not metabolism, spark off cancers. “The question is: which comes first?” he says.This article is over 4 years old
Joe Hockey had called on the university to reconsider its decision to jettison investment in seven companies
The government has been accused of bullying the Australian National University, after Joe Hockey criticised it for divesting from a number of fossil fuel companies.
In highly unusual remarks about a business’s investment decisions, the treasurer said ANU should reconsider its decision to jettison investment in seven firms – Santos, Iluka Resources, Independence Group, Newcrest Mining, Sandfire Resources, Oil Search and Sirius Resources.
“I would suggest they’re removed from the reality of what is helping to drive the Australian economy and create more employment,” Hockey told the Australian Financial Review.
“Sometimes the view looks different from the lofty rooms of a university.”
Hockey is one of several politicians to publicly rebuke ANU over its fossil fuel divestment. The assistant infrastructure minister, Jamie Briggs, said he would write to the ANU vice-chancellor, Ian Young, to ask him to reconsider the blacklisting of coal seam gas company Santos.
“To publicly denigrate the reputation of one of South Australia’s finest companies is a disgrace,” Briggs said. “This seems to be taking green activism to a new level where it is damaging Australian companies and potentially job creation in the country.”
The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, said the divestment from Iluka Resources and Santos was “very strange”, while Queensland’s resources minister, Andrew Cripps, said the divestment was “narrow-minded and irresponsible”.
ANU made the decision to withdraw its investment in the companies following a review of its investment policy by the consultancy group CAER. The divested stocks represent about 5% of ANU’s equity holdings.
Tim Buckley, former head of equity research at Citigroup and now head of the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said ANU was being “bullied” by the government over its stance.
“I find it absolutely bizarre because, the last time I checked, investment managers have the right to change their portfolios,” he told Guardian Australia.
“I can’t fathom why Australian politics has stooped as low as this. Joe Hockey should really be concentrating on his day job and try to pass his budget.
“It makes me really worried about Australia’s’ economic future. Politicians have wedded Australia so strongly to bulk commodity exports that the country has a huge structural risk because the world is moving away from carbon-intensive fuels.
“The fossil fuel industry may be trying to desperately to put its fingers in the leaking dyke left, right and centre, but that won’t change the fact that Australia will have to face up to a future as a low-carbon economy.”
Tom Swann, from the student group Fossil Free ANU, said: “The government is acting as a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry whenever it tries to slow down this movement. We are calling upon more institutions to follow ANU’s lead.”
Young, an oceanographer by training, said ANU’s decision had been met with a “torrent” of student support.
“There is tremendous enthusiasm out there around environmental issues and investment,” he told Fairfax Media.
The wider fossil fuel divestment campaign, promoted by groups concerned about climate change, has gained some traction in Australia in recent months.
Sydney University has ruled out future investments in coalmining, while the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has said it will not lend to firms involved in thermal coal and coal seam gas. Last week, the Anglican diocese of Perth joined the Uniting Church in Australia in divesting itself of fossil fuels.
The viability of new coalmining projects in Australia has been questioned due to a depressed trading price and indicators that key markets are beginning to wean themselves off imported fossil fuels.
Last week China, the destination for 25% of Australia’s coal exports, imposed a 6% tariff on non-coking coal. The country is also introducing new standards to phase out imported “dirty” coal, which is blamed for causing the smog that regularly envelops cities such as Beijing.
Last year, China spent an estimated $US56.3bn on wind, solar and other renewable energy projects.
Investment in clean energy in Australia has slumped by 70% in the past year, due to uncertainty over the future of the Renewable Energy Target. Hockey has previously called wind turbines “utterly offensive” and “appalling”.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally on May 6 in Eugene, Ore. Trump won the Republican presidential primary in Oregon, adding another state to the presumptive GOP nominee's tally of victories. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Back in February, analyzing Donald Trump’s appeal, David Gelernter wrote: “Political correctness. Trump hasn't made it a campaign theme exactly, but he mentions it often with angry disgust. Reporters, pundits, and the other candidates treat it as a sideshow, a handy way for Trump (King Kong Jr.) to smack down the pitiful airplanes that attack him as he bestrides his mighty tower, roaring. But the analysts have it exactly backward. Political correctness is the biggest issue facing America today. Even Trump has just barely faced up to it. The ironic name disguises the real nature of this force, which ought to be called invasive leftism or thought-police liberalism or metastasized progressivism. The old-time American mainstream, working- and middle-class white males and their families, is mad as hell about political correctness and the havoc it has wreaked for 40 years — havoc made worse by the flat refusal of most serious Republicans to confront it.”
I thought Gelernter was onto something at the time, and I thought about this passage again when reading the thoughts of a 22-year-old Trump supporter quoted by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic. Fridersdorf’s correspondent (whose name is redacted) is a prosperous post-collegian in the San Francisco Bay area — someone who should be backing Bernie, or Hillary, or maybe Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. But instead he’s backing Trump, and so is his Asian fiancée. And the reason he gives is political correctness. “For me personally, it's resistance against what San Francisco has been, and what I see the country becoming, in the form of ultra-PC culture. That’s where it's almost impossible to have polite or constructive political discussion. Disagreement gets you labeled fascist, racist, bigoted, etc. It can provoke a reaction so intense that you’re suddenly an unperson to an acquaintance or friend.... This is a war over how dialogue in America will be shaped. If Hillary wins, we're going to see a further tightening of PC culture. But if Trump wins? If Trump wins, we will have a president that overwhelmingly rejects PC rhetoric. Even better, we will show that more than half the country rejects this insane PC regime.”
It’s not a coincidence that when leftist protesters showed up at a conservative event at Rutgers University, students responded to the leftists’ chants with ”Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Political correctness is not, as some might claim, just an effort to encourage niceness. As Gelernter notes, it’s an effort to control people. Like the Newspeak in George Orwell’s 1984, the goal is to make it impossible for people to speak, or even think, unapproved thoughts.
Of course, by limiting what people can think and say, political correctness has hollowed out America’s universities, cheapened and distorted its politics, and served (and this last is entirely intentional) to make those who favor traditional American values like free speech feel marginalized and at risk. (I saw someone on Twitter talking about “America-shaming” last week, and that term fits pretty well.) But as leftists like to say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Almost as irritating to a lot of people, though, is the extent to which self-described “conservative” politicians, pundits and media organs have gone along. Part of this is because PC is often misleadingly sold as politeness, and elite American conservatives are suckers for etiquette. Part of it is because those conservative leaders move in an upper-middle-class environment where academic norms govern everyone, including them.
So nobody “respectable” was willing to launch a full-scale counterattack on PC, on or off-campus. Crack the occasional joke, maybe. But actually do something? Not so much.
But when “respectable” people won’t talk about things that a lot of voters care about, the less-respectable will eventually rise to meet the need. That’s what Trump’s doing. And a lot of people are cheering him on not so much because they’re fans of Trump personally as because they’re happy to see someone finally stand up to the PC bullies.
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Will electing Trump solve all the nation’s problems? Nope. But, as mentioned above, it will show that more than half the country rejects the culture of political correctness, and the political class that let it take over. And for many people, that’s reason enough.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.When Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson isn't leading protest marches, he lives comfortably in a home provided by wealthy donors.
McKesson was arrested last weekend during a protest in Louisiana. His booking sheet shows his home address is a house on a leafy street in suburban Baltimore.
The 2,808 Sq. ft. 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom home is owned by James and Robin Wood, who are wealthy donors to George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
Soros is the billionaire who helped finance Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008.
Robin Wood is a law student at the University of Maryland, according to Collegefix.com.
The home she provided rent-free to McKesson is valued at $687,000.
But McKesson is no freeloader. The 31-year-old earns $165,000 annually as a high level official in the Baltimore school system.
He took the job after his campaign for mayor of Baltimore failed miserably. He finished 5th in the running for mayor.
As Baltimore Public Schools’ newly hired interim chief human capital officer, McKesson oversees 56 employees and an annual budget of $4 million.
McKesson's boss, schools CEO Sonja Santelises, said she last saw him on Friday at a staff meeting.
She said prior to his hiring they discussed his BLM protest schedule, and he assured her that his Black Lives Matter side gig wouldn't interfere with his duties to the students of Baltimore.
McKesson took the day off on Monday after his arrest. He also took off on Wednesday, July 13, to meet with President Obama at the White House.
Santelises claims he was already scheduled to be off on Monday -- after only 1 week on the job.
Thanks to loyal reader Django for the tip.JI will put forward its own candidate for the by-poll in NA-120.
LAHORE (Dunya News) – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Monday has lost support from Jamat-e-Islami (JI) for upcoming NA-120 by-poll.
According to details, a meeting was scheduled between both parties but PTI delegation failed to reach the venue that enraged JI members who later gave red chit to PTI’s candidate.
JI leader Ameer-ul-Azeem has said that JI will put forward its own candidate for the by-poll in NA-120.
The polling in the constituency will be held on September 17.
On the other hand, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had also launched its electoral campaign as Maryam Nawaz claimed that PML-N will win the contest.
However, PTI chief Imran Khan said that the by-polls in NA-120 would see who stands by the top court and judiciary in Pakistan and who is against it. He said that NA-120 by-election is the decisive event and that the people of Pakistan would decide ‘which Pakistan’ they want.Attendees of Atlanta's largest EDM festival should start planning now, as Imagine Festival has announced their daily lineups for their 2017 event. If you missed it, be sure to check out our review of last year's event and our exclusive interview with the Imagine Festival team where we discussed changes coming for 2017. This year, the lineup is stacked with talent and we've got a couple recommendations for who to see if you're looking to discover some new sounds.
Friday
Only two stages will be active on Friday, with the main Oceania stage taking most of the focus. However, for the early arrivers, we strongly suggest taking a look at the Disco Inferno stage for Minnesota, Bleep Bloop, Esseks, Daily Bread (read our interview with him here), and one of our favorite bass producers, Buku.
Saturday
For Saturday, deadmau5 is going to be an obvious draw to the main stage, but fans of funkier grooves will be happy to catch Pretty Lights Live on the Amazonia stage. Stand-out names to be sure to see are Gorgon City, Netsky, and the legendary Noisia on the Aeria stage.
Sunday
For the last day of the festival, it's going to be a tough call between Above and Beyond on the Oceania stage with the beautiful trance vibes, and Big Gigantic and STS9 over on the Amazonia stage. Fans of dark and weird bass will be sure to pack out G Jones' set (read our review of his recent show in Atlanta) and the Aeria stage will be a strong draw with Planet of the Drums and Black Sun Empire keeping things hard, fast, and heavy. Also worth checking out is Claude VonStroke's DirtyBird showcase with big names like Shiba San, Will Clarke, and the Dirty Bird head honcho himself.Dungarpur, Rajasthan, India - Five-year-old Pinki is hiding behind her grandmother, Kanku Roat. The 53-year-old has been her world since her mother left. They live in a small mud house that they share with two goats, a cow and a calf - their only assets.
Pinki doesn't remember her mother. She left after Pinki's father died. The young widow went off to participate in the centuries-old custom of Nata Pratha. Pinki was only a year old.
Prevalent in the Bhil tribal community from which Pinki's family come, Nata Pratha allows a man to pay money to live with a woman to whom he is not married.
The price can range from 25,000 to 50,000 Indian rupees (around $375 to $750) and is usually negotiated by members of the community, or middlemen, who may receive a cut for doing so. Traditionally, both the man and woman were supposed to be married or widowed, as in the case of Pinki's mother, but the custom is evolving to include single people as well.
The woman typically goes to live with the man, often leaving any children she already has behind.
"After the death of my son, my daughter-in-law became a part of this custom and discarded her daughter to live with a married man," says Kanku. "She could have stayed back and taken care of her daughter, but this is the custom of our community that has been followed for centuries."
She says she doesn't know where her daughter-in-law is now and Pinki has not seen her mother since she left.
"Women who enter Nata mostly leave their children with... relatives," explains Neema Pant, the assistant manager of the child sensitivity social protection programme at Save the Children in Rajasthan. Some, she says, "suffer discrimination and abuse by their... relatives. They miss their school and their nutrition is also compromised".
Sometimes, she says, they are made to work in the house and on the fields, although Save the Children is working to provide support to children abandoned as a result of Nata Pratha so that they can attend school and experience a more "conducive environment in the family".
Rama Kallasua is the head teacher at a government school in South Rajasthan and a member of the Bhil community. She says: "In our community there is no concept of remarriage. Nata is the alternative of remarriage and this is a socially sanctioned and approved custom by our community."
"In marriages, there are a lot of expenses and our community is very poor, so to save costs our ancestors created the Nata custom," she explains.
The custom has also found support among tribal leaders such as Bansilal Kharadi, who is a member of a panchayat, or village council, in a Bhil community and believes that the tradition can be empowering for women, allowing them to choose to leave husbands they are unhappy with in order to live with another man.
"There is nothing wrong in Nata Pratha," he says. "It's a custom that gives power to women to choose. If a woman's husband is an alcoholic, then she can just leave him and start living with a man of her choice. Our ancestors created this custom and it cannot be wrong. Our community will always follow this."Mythender is a silly game, let’s just get that out of the way. It’s also free, that’s important. In it, characters wield utterly ridiculous power to End |
be to protect and serve the public, all of the public, including those who have a right to peacefully protest. But we’re also going to protect our rights as law enforcement officers sworn to uphold and protect those laws.
Breitbart News has been on the scene in Baton Rouge since the day after the first protest broke out one week ago and has reported on the escalating nature of the clashes between police and protesters.
Law enforcement in Louisiana’s capital city has been forced to juggle the demands of protesters and politicians, including Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden — who has been noticeably absent throughout. The result has been a lack of clear rules of engagement that has heightened tensions between the police and protesters.
Outside agitators continue to stream into Baton Rouge, including the New Black Panther Party and radical activists from New Orleans, Florida, and other locations, while the mainstream media has blanketed their coverage with false information promoted by radical leftists driving an anti-American, anti-police agenda.
Residents have told Breitbart News that they are concerned that the outsider’s influence combined with the pre-existing tensions between the community and law enforcement would lead to more violence. This new announcement gives credence to resident’s fears.
DEVELOPING…Percentage of females working behind the scenes on last year's 250 highest grossing films no higher than in 1998
Kathryn Bigelow's best director Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010 was hailed as a breakthrough, but the number of women working on Hollywood films, including directors, writers, producers, editors and cinematographers, remains stubbornly low, according to a report published this week.
The annual Celluloid Ceiling report shows that just 16% of behind-the-scenes personnel on the 250 highest-grossing films of 2013 were women, down from 18% in 2012.
To underscore how little progress there has been, in 1998 – the first year the Celluloid Ceiling report appeared – the figure was 17%.
Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, which compiles the report, said: "The film industry is in a state of gender inertia. There is no evidence to suggest that women's employment has improved in key behind-the-scenes roles over the last 16 years."
According to the figures, 6% of the directors of the top 250 films in 2013 are women, a 3% drop from 2012 (and also from 1998). The drop is even sharper in the writing department: only 10% are women (down from 15% last year).
Arguably the most prosperous area for women in the film industry is in producer roles: they comprise some 25% in the top 250 films. This is the same percentage as last year, and represents a small 1% rise on 1998. However another department traditionally open to women – editing – has seen a drop, with 17% of films employing female editors this year as opposed to 20% last year.
Only 3% of cinematographers in 2013 were women (up 1% from the year before), while roles such as sound designers, visual effects supervisors and special effects supervisors all recorded 5% or less.
The fact that the proportion of women working in the film industry has barely changed over more than a decade is particularly concerning given the increasingly vocal campaigns around the issue. "People expected Bigelow's Oscar to have a halo effect on other women," Lauzen said. "It was a bit of wishful thinking. Attitudes remain a major stumbling block. There are some harsh realities women in the film community are facing."Moissanite ()[4] is naturally occurring silicon carbide and its various crystalline polymorphs. It has the chemical formula SiC and is a rare mineral, discovered by the French chemist Henri Moissan in 1893. Silicon carbide is useful for commercial and industrial applications due to its hardness, optical properties and thermal conductivity. Efforts to synthesize silicon carbide in a laboratory began in the early 1900s.[citation needed]
Background [ edit ]
Mineral moissanite was discovered by Henri Moissan while examining rock samples from a meteor crater located in Canyon Diablo, Arizona, in 1893. At first, he mistakenly identified the crystals as diamonds, but in 1904 he identified the crystals as silicon carbide.[5][6] Artificial silicon carbide had been synthesized in the lab by Edward G. Acheson just two years before Moissan's discovery.[7]
The mineral form of silicon carbide was named moissanite in honor of Moissan later on in his life. The discovery in the Canyon Diablo meteorite and other places was challenged for a long time as carborundum contamination from man-made abrasive tools.[8]
Geological occurrence [ edit ]
Until the 1950s, no other source for moissonite than meteorites had been encountered. Then, in 1958, moissanite was found in the Green River Formation in Wyoming and, the following year, as inclusions in kimberlite from a diamond mine in Yakutia.[9] Yet the existence of moissanite in nature was questioned as late as 1986 by the American geologist Charles Milton.[10]
Moissanite, in its natural form, remains very rare. It has been discovered only in a few rocks, from upper mantle rock to meteorites. Discoveries show that it occurs naturally as inclusions in diamonds, xenoliths, and such ultramafic rocks as kimberlite and lamproite.[8] It has also been identified as presolar grains in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites.[11]
Meteorites [ edit ]
Analysis of silicon carbide grains found in the Murchison meteorite has revealed anomalous isotopic ratios of carbon and silicon, indicating an origin from outside the solar system.[12] 99% of these silicon carbide grains originate around carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch stars. Silicon carbide is commonly found around these stars, as deduced from their infrared spectra.[citation needed]
Sources [ edit ]
All applications of silicon carbide today use synthetic material, as the natural material is very scarce.
Silicon carbide was first synthesized by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who is best known for his discovery of silicon.[13] Years later, Edward Goodrich Acheson produced viable minerals that could substitute for diamond as an abrasive and cutting material. This was possible, as moissanite is one of the hardest substances known, with a hardness below that of diamond and comparable with those of cubic boron nitride and boron.
Pure synthetic moissanite can be made from thermal decomposition of the preceramic polymer poly(methylsilyne), requiring no binding matrix, e.g., cobalt metal powder.
Physical properties [ edit ]
The crystalline structure is held together with strong covalent bonding similar to diamonds,[5] that allows moissanite to withstand high pressures up to 52.1 gigapascals.[5][14] Colors vary widely and are graded from D to K range on the diamond color grading scale.[15]
Applications [ edit ]
A moissanite engagement ring
Moissanite was introduced to the jewelry market in 1998 after Charles & Colvard, formerly known as C3 Inc., received patents to create and market lab-grown silicon carbide gemstones, becoming the first firm to do so. Charles & Colvard currently makes and distributes moissanite jewelry and loose gems under the trademarks Forever One, Forever Brilliant and Forever Classic.[16] Other manufacturers market silicon carbide gemstones under trademarked names such as Amora and Berzelian. Moissanite is regarded as a diamond alternative, with some optical properties exceeding those of diamond. Its lower price and less exploitative mining practices necessary to obtain it make it a popular alternative to diamonds. Due in part to the similar thermal conductivity of moissanite and diamond, it is a popular target for scams; however, higher electrical conductivity and birefringence of moissanite may alert a buyer to fraud. In addition, thermochromism is exhibited in moissanite, such that heating it gradually will cause it to change color starting at around 65 °C (150 °F). This color change can be diagnostic for distinguishing diamond from moissanite, although birefringence and electrical conductivity differential are more practical diagnostic differentiators.[17] On the Mohs scale of mineral hardness it is a 9.5, with a diamond being a 10.[3] In many developed countries, the use of moissanite in jewelry was controlled by the patents held by Charles & Colvard; these patents expired in August 2015 for the United States, and in 2016 in most other countries except Mexico, where it remained under patent until 2018.[18][19][20]
Because of its hardness, it can be used in high-pressure experiments, as a replacement for diamond (see diamond anvil cell).[5] Since large diamonds are usually too expensive to be used as anvils, synthetic moissanite is more often used in large-volume experiments. Synthetic moissanite is also interesting for electronic and thermal applications because its thermal conductivity is similar to that of diamonds.[14] High power silicon carbide electronic devices are expected to find use in the design of protection circuits used for motors, actuators, and energy storage or pulse power systems.[21] It also exhibits thermoluminescence,[22] making it useful in radiation dosimetry.[23]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Story highlights The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was established in the Arctic as a backup in case of worldwide agricultural calamity
The Syrian civil war has created a need for an "early withdrawal" from the seed vault
Svalbard, Norway (CNN) Humanity has had to cash in on its insurance policy earlier than expected.
Deep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Known as the "Doomsday Vault," this seed bank -- operated by the Norwegian government and containing a seed of just about every known crop in the world -- is meant to be humanity's backup in the event of a catastrophe that devastates crops.
But it was not a natural disaster that has caused scientists to have to dip in and make the first significant withdrawal from the vault. Rather, it was the most preventable of man-made disasters -- war.
The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo -- where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time -- unable to continue their work in recent years.
Read MorePorsche Team Principal Andreas Seidl confirmed the FIA’s 2020 LMP1 Technical Regulations announced earlier today are entirely within the scope of his team’s considerations for the further development of its LMP1 programme.
Speaking with DSC at Porsche’s Press Conference ahead of this weekend’s 24 hours, he was quick to point out the future regulations were arrived at with the collaboration of Porsche, Toyota and – notably – Peugeot, in establishing a technical platform upon which a stable commercial model could also be envisaged.
So, do the 2020 regulations concur with Porsche’s ‘Mission: Future Sportscar’ philosophy?
“Definitely – you have to see how these new regulations came into place. We’ve had discussions for several months with Peugeot on board and Toyota, under leadership of the ACO. In the end the main goals were keeping the level of technology high and road relevant, but also to be cautious with costs.
“I think with what the ACO have announced today it’s going in the right direction for the future. There’s some good elements, like the fast-charging electric motors and active aerodynamics. We keep the high voltage technology, and the two systems which still helps all of us to develop hybrid technology, which is relevant for our Mission E concept car which gets launched in 2019. We have great examples from direct tech transfer from the 919 Hybrid into that project.”
So you are feeling positive about your continuation with the programme?
“It was a good announcement today; we just need to see what happens with additional manufacturers. That’s one of the big targets we have, to attract additional players.”
But you would seem to be comfortable in taking this to the board for approval?
“We always said we wanted to wait until the new regulations were clear, we obviously want to get a good idea what is happening with other manufactures. We will bring that to the board to decide on the next period of the project. We see that we manage a reduction of the budgets with what’s been announced today, so yes.”
Wouldn’t the budget required to reach today’s competitive level of Hybrid technology, combined with the additional development costs of fast charging battery propulsion potentially be seen as prohibitive by other manufacturers looking to become involved?
“Not necessarily, I think there have been a lot of measures in place which will decrease costs significantly. At the same time you have to work on developing the new stuff. I said today as well that the discussion was not just between Porsche, Toyota and Peugeot, the ACO and FIA had other manufacturers involved as well in the discussion. I think there was a huge agreement between all of us on a lot of topics. I think we have everything we want on the table.
“The leadership is clear from the ACO and FIA. They have the vision in which way it will go, and I think it’s good.”OTTAWA—Stephen Harper’s former top aide, Nigel Wright, was never charged with a criminal offence but his efforts to repay $90,000 for Mike Duffy’s Senate expenses were a breach of federal conflict rules, according to a new report. More than a year after an Ontario criminal court acquitted Duffy in the Senate expenses affair, and four years after the federal Ethics and Conflict of Interest Commissioner began and suspended her investigation, Mary Dawson finally reported Thursday on Wright’s role.
Nigel Wright, shown here in 2015, improperly used his position in the Prime Minister’s Office to further Duffy’s private interests in contravention of ethics rules when he asked the party for financial help, Canada's ethics commissioner said Thursday. ( Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo )
She fingered Harper’s former chief of staff for ethical blame on two fronts — when he pressed the Conservative party to repay Duffy’s bill, and when he decided to do so himself. Dawson concluded Wright broke the rules for public office holders that prohibited him from making decisions that would further another person’s private interests — Duffy’s — and barred him from influencing the decisions of anyone else, such as the Conservative party’s chief bagman Irving Gerstein, to further Duffy’s interests. There is no penalty for violating those two sections of the act.
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“The only sanction is the negative publicity resulting from the release of the examination report,” her office said in an email to the Star. As for any future impact should Wright decide to return to politics, Dawson’s office said she “wouldn’t presume to speculate on that. All we can say is that commissioner Dawson reports on her examinations... and has no control over any potential repercussions her reports may have.” Her report is a politically difficult one for the Conservative party as it struggles to move on from the Harper era, and a personally difficult one for Wright, now a London-based financier. “My intention throughout was to ensure that the taxpayer was repaid for Sen. Duffy’s expenses. I have always believed, and still believe, that my effort to get those funds repaid was in the public interest. We’ll take the time to review and understand the report,” said Wright in a statement issued Thursday by his lawyers. Wright was never charged for making a payment to Duffy, though Duffy was charged and acquitted of accepting a bribe. Dawson noted he was investigated by the RCMP for a possible violation of the Parliament of Canada Act. In the end, Wright was a witness for the Crown at Duffy’s criminal fraud trial. Dawson made clear she viewed the payment as wrong.
“The transfer of money by Mr. Wright to Senator Duffy, with express conditions attached and over Senator Duffy’s persistent objections, was serious enough to raise the question of charges being laid against Mr. Wright for giving compensation as prohibited under subsection 16(3) the Parliament of Canada Act. Although the issue of illegality was not pursued, I would consider such an act to be undoubtedly improper.” New Democrat MP Charlie Angus, a leadership candidate and the former ethics critic, said the report shows “how cynical” the efforts of Wright and the Harper PMO were. He said the RCMP still owes Canadians a clear explanation for why it never charged Wright under the never-used provision of the Parliament Act.
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Angus said the fact Dawson had to suspend her investigation for so long while the RCMP and the Crown conducted an ultimately fruitless prosecution “is really problematic for the Canadian political system.” Mike Duffy declined to comment but his lawyer, Don Bayne, said Thursday he disagreed with a key premise of Dawson’s findings, that Wright acted to further Duffy’s private interests. “That wasn’t remotely the case,” said Bayne. He pointed to the ruling of Justice Charles Vaillancourt in acquitting Duffy last April saying it was “crass political manoeuvring” that drove Wright. “It was for pure political motives to advance the party and its image in the public and to protect the then-prime minister and his government that this was done. None of this was for Sen. Duffy’s interests.” Dawson, however, concluded Wright’s payment let Duffy off the hook from having to repay expenses out of his own pocket. She rejected, one by one, Wright’s arguments in his defence to her. She said when Wright first tried to get the Conservative party to pay off the senator’s debt — which the party was ready to do when the amount was believed to be $32,000 — he was using his influence as the prime minister’s top aide. When all of Duffy’s bills were added up — including housing claims and per diem claims for meals in Ottawa, plus interest — it ran to more than $90,000 and the party balked. Dawson rejected Wright’s defence that he was acting in a purely partisan capacity — beyond her reach — when he turned to former Sen. Irving Gerstein, chair of the Conservative Fund of Canada, to repay Duffy’s politically embarrassing expenses. “I am of the opinion that in his communications with Sen. Gerstein, Mr. Wright used his position as chief of staff to the prime minister to seek to influence Sen. Gerstein and the Conservative Fund of Canada to reimburse Senator Duffy’s living expenses,” Dawson wrote. When Wright, an independently wealthy investment banker trained as a lawyer, decided to use his own funds to transfer to Duffy’s lawyer the amount owed to pay off the debt, she said he “knew or ought to have known that he was improperly furthering Sen. Duffy’s private interests” because it took the burden off Duffy to use his own assets. She said Wright explained that “he believed he was serving the government and the prime minister, not serving the private interests of Senator Duffy. He added that his duties as chief of staff included managing situations that could embarrass the government.” Wright resigned in May 2013 when news of the payment first broke. He returned to work for Onex investment corporation, based in London, England. Duffy pleaded not guilty to 31 criminal fraud and breach of trust charges the RCMP laid against him in relation to those expenses. Last April, a judge cleared him of all charges. The Conservative-appointed senator continues to sit as an independent. Duffy, a longtime Ottawa resident, was named to the Senate by Harper in December 2008 as a Prince Edward Island representative. Duffy then claimed reimbursement for living at his Ottawa area home by designating his P.E.I. cottage as a primary residence. He testified he falsely told Wright he couldn’t pay off the debt because he didn’t want to be forced by Harper’s PMO to admit he’d done anything wrong, which he has always said was his belief. Dawson’s report says Wright recognized from the outset that he had made “errors in judgment” but he insisted that didn’t violate the act. Though Wright admitted some of his actions (communicating with senators and staff about media lines) fell within his official capacity as Harper’s chief of staff, he said he was acting in an unofficial partisan capacity in pushing Duffy to repay, and that it was never his objective to “further Senator Duffy’s personal or private interest, and certainly never his own.” He said he made a “gift” of the $90,172 to Duffy, an action that was never expected or requested by his employer or the office. But Dawson rejected the idea of a “gift.” She said the payment was negotiated between PMO and Duffy’s lawyers, and came with conditions: that Duffy would repay, admit a mistake, stop talking to media and promise to stop filing for expenses Wright believed he wasn’t entitled to.
Read more about:November 11, 2014
The first time I ate at a Slow Food restaurant it was quite………….the…………..experience. Everything from drink orders to appetizers to the main entrée took an inordinate amount of time, but that was the point. We sat and ate and talked and enjoyed the time we spent in each other’s company.
Slow Food is just one element of the Slow Movement, which advocates slowing down of one’s life from a cultural perspective. Slow Art, Slow Money, Slow Travel and many other iterations of Slow exist within a movement founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini, who became famous for protesting the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome.
In the Slow Content space (or Slow Media according to Wikipedia) there have been a couple of interesting developments meant to get consumers to slow down at the end of the work day and actually read long form journalism. Instead of reading all your emails, checking your news feeds, opening up Twitter and browsing through Facebook, you take the time to just read.
Jill Abramson, formerly of the New York Times, is working on a start-up that focuses on extra long form journalism, as in beyond the 20,000+ pieces we occasionally see in the New Yorker or Rolling Stone. About the service -
Writers will be paid advances around $100,000 to produce stories that will be longer than long magazine articles but shorter than books, she said. There will be “one perfect whale of a story” each month and it will be available by subscription.
Nieman Lab reports that Atlantic Media is funding a social media platform that allows sharing of only one link a day. The service, called This. is explained by one of the founders this way -
The central gambit for This — that limited access to a platform can effectively elevate the digital dialogue — is an intriguing one. “One of the huge benefits of the one-a-day is it inflates the perceived value, both for the person sharing it and the person coming to it,” Golis says. He likes to use a digital bookshelf metaphor to describe what This is — a place to collect and display media.
In the Slow Music arena is a new service called This Is My Jam where users post just one song that they really love and it plays for seven days. The idea here is to get the best of the best in that moment. It’s not about consumption for its own sake as much as it’s about qualitative consumption.
One could argue that the need to slow down one’s life is a luxury of the well to do. You can imagine that the working poor and the lower middle class don’t have the time to stop and enjoy the arts and sciences, to cook and eat food slowly with one’s family or to consume media at a slower pace. The time one has is precious and is used doing the things needed to survive and move forward.
My other criticism is that the Slow Movement, to really be deemed successful, needs to be comprehensive and encompassing. If you’re spending your day, in the case of media and content, perusing Facebook and Twitter, sending texts and checking the news at a clip you’re accustomed to, will you take the time and slow down to read a 35,000 word piece from Steven Brill? I think the idea is quite ambitious and very high brow.
While the motivations are good I think the premise of Slow Content is flawed in it’s current form. Users will have to want to consume less from the onset, from the beginning of their day until they go home. And this would include all users, not just the ones that happen to have a lot of money.
4 KudosAstronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2016 March 2
Unusual Clouds over Hong Kong
Image Credit & Copyright: Alfred Lee
Explanation: What's that in the sky? Earlier this month, in the sky high above Hong Kong, China, not just one unusual type of cloud appeared -- but two. In the foreground was a long lenticular cloud, a cloud that forms near mountains from uprising air and might appear to some as an alien spaceship. Higher in the sky, and further in the background, was a colorful iridescent cloud. Iridescent clouds are composed of water droplets of similar size that diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. Furthest in the background is the Sun, blocked from direct view by the opaque lenticular, but providing the light for the colors of the iridescent. Either type of cloud is unusual to see in Hong Kong, and unfortunately, after only a few minutes, both were gone.Two black Republicans walk into a restaurant... in Omaha... in 1986... could be either of their joints. They both are in the restaurant biz. One of them sang for two presidents. The other wants to be president. Well, maybe they've never been in each other's restaurants and even though they both would gain notoriety for their banking skills, maybe they have never traded one thin dime. But Omaha is a great big small town...
In Herman Cain lore, the man singlehandedly saved Burger King (and it still takes two hands for Chuck Norris to handle a Whopper!), and so impressed were the powers that be at Pilsbury that they made Cain head doughboy in charge of the faltering Godfather's pPizza chain. Cain was able (sorry) to turn Godfather's around in 14 months! So wildly profitable, goes the yarn, that Pilsbury sold the chain. (Scoobie say, "hhhrrrrrunnnnhhh???") You don't often see the name of the buyers in this tale of food and glory, but it was a group of manager-investors lead by one... Herman Cain.
Godfather's was a mess, but not on the brink of bankruptcy. Still, the mission statement on their website declares that they aim "To profitably provide consistently good food and great service." Now, I personally wouldn't target "profitability" as Job 1 on my customer-accessible website along with toppings and coupons, but I digress. Anyway, the truth is that Godfather's was only on the brink of not being worth Pilsbury's time, and it stayed that way for two years under Cain. Then they sold it to him and his investor friends for a rather curious sum (more on that later).
Who were these investors who had money for the slice? This was 1988, and restaurants were and remain dodgy investments, especially when a huge food conglomerate is giving them a vote of no confidence. When adjusted for inflation, Cain's long reign over Godfather's saw a 46% drop in profits and Godfather's went from the 5th to the 11th ranked pizza chain in the United States (which explains that mission statement, all campaign rhetoric aside).
Omaha is tornado country, so when I say it's a great big small town, I'm talking acreage versus gossipy connectivity. It's flat and spread out with few tall buildings, but everyone is a whisper away from everyone else's business. It's not so big as to be home to two up-and-coming black Republicans with strong ties with the bigwigs in the Republican Party who could never cross paths. Restaurant people of all colors make it a point to know each other. To know what secrets wandering waiters and chefs may have taken with them as they move from job to job, etc... Wealthy Republicans are an even tighter clique. Wealthy black Republican restaurateurs in Omaha Nebraska in the late '80s were more likely to have been twins than not to have social if not business ties.
Lawrence E. King was a fixture in the Omaha black community. He had seen his opportunity gathering up black folks' money in a credit union known as the Franklin Credit Union, which he'd taken over in 1970. By 1976 there where whispers about this 300-pound socialite living large. There were minor stabs at investigating him, but the police did not want to be seen as the big bad white guys picking on the little ol' great big black man.
Tales of King entertaining guests with cocaine, hookers and hustlers were pervasive, but Omaha has some strange code of silence. It had been for many years a sort of mob neutral zone. "Tony might whack Vinnie in Chicago," but in Omaha their kids and wives would peacefully shop, play and picnic together. Drawing attention is not acceptable. Bush flew to Omaha on 9/11 in a very standard emergency protocol, and not one in ten Americans ever knew. Lily Tomlin and her partner Jane Wagner were a known couple around "The Big O" long before Lily came out. Omaha had lots of stories and still does, but none of them are news.
King-- who had been recruited by the RNC to get out the black Republican vote-- in his rise through the Republican ranks, was able to be the sum of their black best friends, as it were. He sang the national anthem at the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions. In 1986, the Franklin Federal Credit Union moved into brand-new digs that also served as headquarters for King's burgeoning catering and food-service empire. King began making donations to the Omaha Press Club, the Republican Party and even gay rights organizations (especially those funding area youth programs). Upon being told he had no style by a ten-year-old boy, he went shopping and became a clothes junkie, big-time-- thus earning the nickname "Reverend Alice." People really began talking. Franklin Federal Credit Union seemed to be all right until an audit of King's taxes revealed what appeared to be some missing funds. A phony "certificates of deposit" scheme. Initially it was thought that $400,000 had disappeared. Then $4 million. Ultimately $40 million was determined to have vanished.
The FBI raid of the credit union sparked rumors that drugs and child pornography were discovered in the lower levels of the facility. It had been whispered that King had used the basement of the credit union as a "waiter academy" to train young men (twinks and blinks) in the fine art of waiting tables for what was hopefully to become his restaurant empire. In an Omaha World Herald interview, he spoke about how he wanted his places to be real elegant; the waiters would wear white dinner jackets. But King's deeper desires were rumored to be something quite different.
There was a lot of recruiting going on for guys to come be part of King's catering business. Many teens and young men talked of being expected to "put out," and rumors of pornographic video shoots circulated in the gay and black communities. After the raid there was an investigation into what had become of the missing funds. Eventually a private investigator was hired by the state legislature to look into stories of an international child prostitution ring. He interviewed dozens of waiters and folks around Omaha who had been curious about King's lavish gifts and extravagant ways. But things seemed tempered by the fact that King hung out with presidents, and area journalists. And owned a bank, and a sushi bar and...
The investigator is said to have flown to Chicago to meet with a person who had damning photographic evidence as to what was going on in the bowels of Franklin. That investigator never made it back to Omaha. His plane mysteriously blew up on the return flight. Primary witnesses suddenly changed their stories, and those who did not were convicted of perjury. One rent boy who testified that he was farmed out to several closeted power brokers in and around Omaha died mysteriously in New Mexico.
King was convicted of bank fraud and served nearly 10 out of the 15 years to which he was sentenced, but the grand jury concluded that all of the salacious allegations were merely "a big hoax" (wtf!). These allegations included supplying children for satanic blood rituals in Spain and supplying teens to a sex party in Washington, D.C., where some of those teens claimed they saw George W. Bush in attendance.
The story is larger and dirtier than what is within the scope of a DWT guest blog, and in fact was the subject of a Discovery Channel investigative report. Alas, that program was "purchased" a week before it was to air by some anonymous party...
Everybody in Omaha knew about this story, and everybody knew somebody connected to it. I almost opened an account in Franklin, until a friend who worked there told me not to put my money in "the booty bank."
So what happened to the $40 million that King ripped off from the Franklin Federal Credit Union? It's not very clear, but the year Franklin was raided, a small group of restaurant managers and a future black Republican presidential candidate bought a chain of mafia-themed pizza joints from Pilsbury for $40 million.
The devastating Herman Cain video (above), posted by the Ron Paul camp should have put a quick end to whatever there is of Cain's campaign for the Republican Party presidential or vice presidential nomination (although I suspect he'd be equally happy with a secondary ambassadorship)... but it didn't. Inside the GOP these days, support from the Koch brothers for one of their lackeys trumps good judgment-- or even common sense.Herman Cain wasn'tthe former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and he wasn't just the Godfather's Pizza guy either. A confidentialinformant wrote the following guest post for us:What a cover-up this has been!
Labels: Herman Cain, Lawrence King, Republican hypocrisyPart of the "Understanding Parser Combinators" series (more)
Understanding Parser Combinators Building a parser combinator library from scratch Tweet
UPDATE: Slides and video from my talk on this topic
In this series, we’ll look at how so-called “applicative parsers” work. In order to understand something, there’s nothing like building it for yourself, and so we’ll create a basic parser library from scratch, and then some useful “parser combinators”, and then finish off by building a complete JSON parser.
Now terms like “applicative parsers” and “parser combinators” can make this approach seem complicated, but rather than attempting to explain these concepts up front, we’ll just dive in and start coding.
We’ll build up to the complex stuff incrementally via a series of implementations, where each implementation is only slightly different from the previous one. By using this approach, I hope that at each stage the design and concepts will be easy to understand, and so by the end of this series, parser combinators will have become completely demystified.
There will be four posts in this series:
In this, the first post, we’ll look at the basic concepts of parser combinators and build the core of the library.
In the second post, we’ll build up a useful library of combinators.
In the third post, we’ll work on providing helpful error messages.
In the last post, we’ll build a JSON parser using this parser library.
Obviously, the focus here will not be on performance or efficiency, but I hope that it will give you the understanding that will then enable you to use libraries like FParsec effectively. And by the way, a big thank you to Stephan Tolksdorf, who created FParsec. You should make it your first port of call for all your.NET parsing needs!
Implementation 1. Parsing a hard-coded character
For our first implementation, let’s create something that just parses a single, hard-coded, character, in this case, the letter “A”. You can’t get much simpler than that!
Here is how it works:
The input to a parser is a stream of characters. We could use something complicated, but for now we’ll just use a string.
. If the stream is empty, then return a pair consisting of false and an empty string.
and an empty string. If the first character in the stream is an A, then return a pair consisting of true and the remaining stream of characters.
, then return a pair consisting of and the remaining stream of characters. If the first character in the stream is not an A, then return false and the (unchanged) original stream of characters.
Here’s the code:
let A_Parser str = if String. IsNullOrEmpty ( str ) then ( false, "" ) else if str.[ 0 ] ='A' then let remaining = str.[ 1..] ( true, remaining ) else ( false, str )
The signature of A_Parser is:
val A_Parser : string -> ( bool * string )
which tells us that the input is a string, and the output is a pair consisting of the boolean result and another string (the remaining input), like this:
Let’s test it now – first with good input:
let inputABC = "ABC" A_Parser inputABC
The result is:
( true, "BC" )
As you can see, the A has been consumed and the remaining input is just "BC".
And now with bad input:
let inputZBC = "ZBC" A_Parser inputZBC
which gives the result:
( false, "ZBC" )
And in this case, the first character was not consumed and the remaining input is still "ZBC".
So, there’s an incredibly simple parser for you. If you understand that, then everything that follows will be easy!
Implementation 2. Parsing a specified character
Let’s refactor so that we can pass in the character we want to match, rather than having it be hard coded.
And this time, rather than returning true or false, we’ll return a message indicating what happened.
We’ll call the function pchar for “parse char”. Here’s the code:
let pchar ( charToMatch, str ) = if String. IsNullOrEmpty ( str ) then let msg = "No more input" ( msg, "" ) else let first = str.[ 0 ] if first = charToMatch then let remaining = str.[ 1..] let msg = sprintf "Found %c" charToMatch ( msg, remaining ) else let msg = sprintf "Expecting '%c'. Got '%c'" charToMatch first ( msg, str )
This code is just like the previous example, except that the unexpected character is now shown in the error message.
The signature of pchar is:
val pchar : ( char * string ) -> ( string * string )
which tells us that the input is a pair of (string,character to match) and the output is a pair consisting of the (string) result and another string (the remaining input).
Let’s test it now – first with good input:
let inputABC = "ABC" pchar |
-protection, power-seeking and so forth?
We don’t know. We can say it will be a “broad spectrum,” but that doesn’t tell us much of anything. This just tells us that there may be some physically-feasible intelligent agents who aren’t that much like humans but still share these general evolution-oriented values. But there might be a lot MORE, or a lot more likely, non-human physically feasible intelligent agents who have other values entirely.
This is typical of Bostrom’s rhetorical style in the book: He is very careful not to make statements that could be definitively proved wrong. But on the other hand, his carefully couched and hedged statements remain highly suggestive, so that it seems very clear what he actually thinks, behind all the painstaking academic formulations.
To me, the “Instrumental Convergence Thesis” — in spite of the fancy name — feels a bit like a dog projecting that the main goals of humans and all future super-dog intelligences will be sex, meat, and running around in the fields How can we really presume to know what will guide the activity of superhuman superminds?
We have evolved as a population of individual minds in individual bodies, struggling at times for resources, but as Bostrom himself points out, future superintelligences are fairly likely to fuse in some way into some sort of fairly-unified, distributed mind-network. What kind of motivations will such a mind-network possess? Perhaps motivations significantly beyond maintenance of egoic boundaries and accumulation of resources? Abundance, of the sort that advanced nanotech andfemtotech and so forth will enable, will shift the motivational systems of all intelligences capable of using the tech, in ways that are hard to currently foresee.
Omohundro, in his “Basic AI Drives” paper, argues (among other things) that systems with the drive for self-preservation will be more likely to survive — thus he argues that self-preservation is an instrumental value that almost any superintelligence will derive as a subgoal of its final goals. At first this seems obvious, then after more reflection it starts to seem very dubious. It may well be that “self-preservation” is an anthropomorphic or biomorphic idea, and very advanced AGI systems might go far beyond such notions.
Continuity of identity
In a scenario of competition among powerful AGIs, victory might well go to AGI systems that were free to create new, more powerful AGI systems very DIFFERENT from themselves, without worrying about whether these new systems had a continuous identity with their predecessors.
If system A can create any new system A1 that it dreams of, but system B can only create a new system B1 that has continuity of identity with B, then which one has more liberty in designing a new system able to win a competition between AGI systems? Non-self-attached systems would most likely do better at spawning new systems with the capability of winning.
Similarly, the desire to maximize a fixed utility function — and maintain this same utility function throughout successive self-modifications — would likely make an AGI system less powerful than potential competitors.
So, one point is that, generally speaking, in a struggle for power among powerful, superintelligent AGI systems, one might expect victory to go to systems that didn’t care about continuity of identity or utility function preservation, but were simply concerned with creating the most powerful successor systems. Bostrom acknowledges this sort of possibility, in a vague way and almost in passing.
But he doesn’t go very far down the road of exploring what sort of universe might eventuate if thought-patterns not tightly connected to identities or goals in human-like senses became the dominant factor. Is it indeed likely that such a universe would be hostile to traditional human beings who wanted to retain the traditional human form? If so, why? Here, as in most of Bostrom’s book, the distinction between “danger to traditional humans is possible” and “doom for traditional humans is the default scenario” is not carefully drawn.
Omohundro pays a lot of attention to the goals he thinks an AGI would need to have in order to survive in a competitive environment where AGIs are vying for resources.
I think his analysis is interesting but too simplistic, because it assumes that the AGIs involved are vying for resources for themSELVES, so that they can pursue maximization of their utility functions — when in fact, in a post-Singularity context, self-focused, explicitly-utility-function-maximizing AGI systems may be among the less powerful and intelligent ones out there (if they exist at all).
But since I don’t think a simple competitive scenario between powerful AGIs is terribly likely, I am not impressed by the argument for humanly “obvious” values like self-preservation and goal-preservation to be “instrumental” and universal across AGI systems. And I think Bostrom’s more abstract version of the argument is basically just as problematic as Omohundro’s more direct version.
A more important, related point is: What properties a “broad spectrum” of possible intelligences may have may not even be a relevant issue to think about, apart from its pure intellectual interest. The actual AGI minds we will see in our future are not going to be randomly selected from the space of all physically possible intelligent systems — they are going to be conditioned by their interactions with the physical universe and the human world.
They are going to grow up from a specific starting-point — the AGI systems we create and utilize and teach and interact with — and then they are going to be shaped, as they self-modify, by their interactions with our region of the physical cosmos. Their experiences will likely lead them in directions very different from anything we currently expect; but in any case, this sort of process is nothing like choosing a random mind from the space of all possible minds.
So the fact that Bostrom can conceive of a superintelligence being paired with any arbitrary goal he comes up with (the orthogonality thesis) doesn’t really matter much. And the fact that Bostrom can conceive of a “broad spectrum” of AIs that converge to certain instrumental goals (the instrumental convergence thesis) doesn’t matter much either — if the AI minds actually created by humans live in a different broad spectrum within the even broader spectrum of possible minds.
In the portions of his book dealing with these issues, Bostrom is basically presenting his own analytic-philosophy-esque version of what I called in a 2010 essay, “The Singularity Institute’s Scary Idea” (Goertzel 2010). Bostrom presents the “Scary Idea” more rigorously and soberly than anyone involved directly with SIAI/MIRI has so far, but ultimately his arguments for it aren’t any stronger than theirs. The basic gist remains the same:
1. There is a wide variety of possible minds, many of which would be much more powerful than humans and also indifferent to humans. 2. It is [possible/highly probable] that the highly powerful AGIs we humans create, and their descendants, will be indifferent to humans. 3. Advanced AGIs that are indifferent to humans and human values will likely do bad things to humans and do bad things from a human-values perspective.
Point 1 seems hard to argue with. Yes, human-like or human-friendly minds would seem to constitute a small fraction of the kinds of minds that are physically possible.
Point 3 is hard to know about. Maybe AGIs that are sufficiently more advanced than humans will find some alternative playground that we humans can’t detect, and go there and leave us alone. We just can’t know, any more than ants can predict the odds that a human civilization, when moving onto a new continent, will destroy the ant colonies present there.
Point 2 is the core. What can be rationally argued is that the outcome described is possible. It’s hard to rule out, since we’re talking about radically new technologies and unprecedented situations. However, what prompted my “Scary Idea” essay was the frequency and vehemence with which various SIAI staff and associated people argued that this outcome is not only possible but highly probable, or even almost certain. These SIAI folks liked to talk about how a “random mind,” plucked from mind-space, almost surely wouldn’t care about humans. Quite possibly not. But an artificial mind engineered and taught by humans is not random, and its descendants are not random either.
There are certainly possibilities here that are scary, from a human-values perspective. The uncertainty about how likely these possibilities are, can certainly feel disturbing — it even does to me, at times, and I’m a tremendous AGI optimist. But this uncertainty doesn’t merit assignment of a high probability to the outcome.
In Chapter 8 of his book, Bostrom considers various particular aspects of the potential danger from superintelligence. He discusses the “treacherous turn” problem, i.e., the possibility that a young AGI that seems benevolent might then turn destructive in ways its early human observers did not predict:
“The treacherous turn” — While weak, an AI behaves cooperatively (increasingly so, as it gets smarter). When the AI gets sufficiently strong — without warning or provocation — it strikes, forms a singleton, and begins directly to optimize the world according to the criteria implied by its final values. (p. 143)
He considers various subtle ways in which this might occur. For instance, perhaps when the AI gets smart enough, it is able to figure out whole new ways of achieving its goals: which are nastier, from a human view, than the methodologies it found when it was less intelligent.
Of course, in principle, there is no way to rule out this kind of treacherous-turn outcome. But there is also no reason to expect it to be especially likely. This would also seem to be the sort of possibility that could be explored via simulations and experiments with AIs at infra-human levels of general intelligence. Under what conditions do intelligent agents tend to display treacherous turns? What does the degree of coupling, and the quality of the relationship, between an intelligence and its creators have to do with the probability of a treacherous turn occurring?
The “perverse instantiation” problem also gets attention, e.g. (pp. 145–147):
Final goal: “Make us smile” Perverse instantiation: Paralyze human facial musculatures into constant beaming smiles. Final goal: “Make us smile without directly interfering with our facial muscles” Perverse instantiation: Stimulate the part of the motor cortex that controls our facial musculature in such a way as to produce constant beaming smiles. Final goal: “Make us happy” Perverse instantiation: Implant electrodes into the pleasure centers of our brains. Final goal: “Act so as to avoid the pangs of bad conscience” Perverse instantiation: Extirpate the cognitive module that produces guilt feelings. Final goal: “Maximize the time-discounted integral of your future reward signal” Perverse instantiation: Short-circuit the reward pathway and clamp the reward signal to its maximal strength.
The key point here is that, as Yudkowsky argues elegantly in Chapter 279 of Rationality: AI to Zombies, “value is fragile.” Pithy summaries of complex human values evoke their commonly accepted meanings only within the human cultural context.
For AI researchers not enamored of the reinforcement learning approach, though, this may seem a problem particular to AI methods centered on providing AIs with explicit utility functions. What if an AI isn’t conceived as a utility function maximizer, but instead as a different sort of complex system, which engages with humans and implicitly absorbs complex human values from its interactions? Of course, the AI could still learn the wrong lessons; or it could take a treacherous turn. But by and large, the “perverse instantiation” problem as formulated seems a refutation of certain simplistic approaches to AGI architecture and instruction, rather than a general point about machine intelligence or superintelligence.
In accordance with Bostrom’s carefully guarded style, there is no sentence in his book in which he comes right out and says it’s probable that powerful AGIs created via an “ordinary” process of human science and engineering would kill all humans and act radically against human values. But to me, at least, this undertone is clearly there throughout wide swaths of the book. It’s there in his choice of which topics to emphasize and which ones to downplay, and it’s in his offhanded phraseology here and there.
Many of Bostrom’s hints are not especially subtle; e.g., the title of Chapter 8 is “Is the default outcome doom?” The answer given in the chapter is basically “maybe — we can’t rule it out; and here are some various ways doom might happen.” But the chapter isn’t titled “Is doom a plausible outcome?”, even though this is basically what the chapter argues. Also, there is no corresponding chapter “Is the default outcome utopia?,” although certainly arguments could be marshaled in favor of this alternative hypothesis, with as much rationality and color as Bostrom’s intimations of doom. There’s nothing wrong with writing a polemic arguing one side of an argument; but what we have here is a special kind of polemic: a polemic that eschews extreme language in favor of a verbal tone and impression of great care and balance, but presents a very one-sided polemical view nonetheless.
For another (key) example, consider a passage like this, exploring the possibility of a “fast takeoff” in which superintelligence emerges rapidly from early-stage AGI:
A fast takeoff occurs over some short temporal interval, such as minutes, hours or days. Fast takeoff scenarios offer scant opportunities for humans to deliberate. Nobody even notices anything unusual before the game is already lost. In a fast takeoff scenario, humanity’s fate essentially depends on preparations previously put into place. At the slowest end of the fast takeoff scenario range, some simple human actions might be possible, analogous to flicking open the “nuclear suitcase,” but any such action would either be elementary or would have been planned and preprogrammed in advance. (p. 252)
This is an extremely slanted way of writing about “fast takeoff” scenarios, is it not? The assumption that the AGI resulting from the fast takeoff will be bad for humans is baked into the prose. The possibilities that the resultant AGI might lead the way toward an amazingly positive future for humans, or might just disappear into space or some other dimension and ignore humanity, are not even mentioned and thus utterly downplayed. What we find in Superintelligence are careful philosophical formulations arguing why terrible outcomes are possible, and then more practical discussions predicated on a “plan for the worst” sort of attitude, and sweeping aside positive possibilities.
When I read the above passage, I thought “What does he mean, the game is lost?…” What is the game? Why do we want to view the process of creating the next generation of minds as some sort of game of Us versus Them? Why is this way of looking at the future being implicitly presupposed? A similar presupposition is made throughout the book, between the lines of the careful analysis, and above all in the choice of which topics to focus on.
The potential of AGI to help humanity think better about the complex problems facing us — including problems related to the future of technology and society as a whole — gets short shrift in Bostrom’s book. So does the potential of AGI to alleviate suffering, and the potential of AGI to help decrease the risks (existential and otherwise) of other advanced technologies. These points are not denied nor totally ignored, but they are quickly brushed past, whereas fairly wild speculations that provide more emotional support to the Bostrom/Yudkowsky perspective get a lot more space.
This strategy works, in part, because it plays into aspects of human psychology that give more focus to negative scenarios than positive ones, in certain contexts (which is obviously related to the prevalence of scare scenarios in SF movies about AI and robots, as well). Nothing riles people up and gets them excited and feeling all communal like a common enemy — even if the common enemy is a purely hypothetical superintelligence!
Bostrom’s excellent book should be understood as a master debater presenting his best arguments for his own perspective, rather than as a genuine attempt at a balanced treatment of the subject. For what it is, Superintelligence is an excellent book. I would never recommend it as the ONLY book for a newbie to the area to read about the future of AGI — it’s too narrow in its outlook, too thoroughgoing in its precautionary focus. But I would definitely include it on a “Future of AGI reading list” of five to ten books — it presents its perspective very, very well.
7. AGI in the mix
Bostrom’s hasty, somewhat cavalier treatment of the likely interplay of different advanced technologies during the next decades and centuries merits further emphasis. To me this is a very real issue. As technology advances, fewer and fewer people with less and less specialized knowledge are able to cause more and more damage to more and more people.
In spite of the much-publicized increase in surveillance via government agencies, the capability of governments — or anyone else — to deal with the threats posed by terrorist groups or crazed rogues armed with advanced technologies is questionable and certainly far from clear. The video and audio data gathered by intelligence agencies from various sources is far more than they can scan through usefully given current technologies, and it’s not clear how far narrow-AI is going to take us in this regard.
So far, the power of biological weapons has been limited due to difficulties in distributions. Biotoxins tend to dissipate in the wind, rain, and sun. Will these problems be overcome as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics are solved, and synthetic biology advances? As biotech and nanotech advance together, what will be the relative rate of advance of defensive versus offensive technology?
There are massive unknowns here, but it doesn’t seem sensible to simply assume that, for all these non-superintelligence threats, defenses will outpace offenses. It feels to me like Bostrom — in his choices of what to pay attention to, and his various phrasings throughout the book — downplays the risks of other advanced technologies and over-emphasizes the potential risks of AGI. Actually there are massive unknowns all around, and the hypothesis that advanced AGI may save humanity from risks posed by bad people making dangerous use of other technologies is much more plausible than Bostrom makes it seem.
Bostrom does make a good point that many other technologies require a medium-term buildup of hardware infrastructure, whereas AI has a greater likelihood of being created in stealth (e.g., via some genius hackers writing code in their living rooms, etc.). It would be much more shocking if someone produced a molecular assembler than an AGI next year, simply because one would expect a molecular assembler to require some hardware advances that haven’t yet been seen, and big hardware advances tend to be more noticeable.
On the other hand, the gradual build-up of infrastructure for synthetic biology is already happening, right in the open, so I wouldn’t be tremendously shocked if some obscure lab in Eastern Europe or Asia came out next year with a radical advance in the ability to engineer new organisms, perhaps including unprecedentedly robust pathogens.
Giving a high subjective estimate of the odds that AGIs will kill everyone, and a low subjective estimate of the odds that other technologies will pose dire dangers that AGI might be able to squash, leads to Bostrom’s conclusion that we’d do best to slow down AGI development. But, while Bostrom is certainly welcome to his own intuitive subjective probability estimates, he doesn’t give particularly strong arguments for them.
Time and time again, his prose wends from “possible” and its analogues to “quite likely” and its analogues without much justification. My own subjective estimates happen to be otherwise: I think the odds of advanced AGI killing everyone are not that high, and the odds of AGI saving us from dangers posed by terrorists wielding other advanced tech are pretty high. But debating subjective probability estimates regarding radically new, substantially unpredictable future scenarios is a tricky matter.
One might argue that, if it’s all so uncertain, maybe we should just stop developing ALL these technologies till we know what’s going on. That was basically Bill Joy’s argument in his classic turn-of-the-millennium essay, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (Joy 2000). There’s a certain appealing coherence to this view, but the counterarguments are pretty clear.
First, the human race has NEVER known what was going on. Ever since we emerged from our hunter-gatherer existence to form “civilized” society, we’ve been plowing on into unknown territory, taking the risks in stride and embracing radical novelty. Second, there seems no practical way for any of the readers of Superintelligence or Bill Joy’s essay to stop the development of all advanced technologies, even if (like, say, the Unabomber) they wanted to. These technologies are being developed around the world by a wide variety of actors for their own reasons and due to their own interests.
Stopping everything is not feasible short of imposing a global police state of some sort, which would be very difficult, highly ethically questionable, and probably wouldn’t work anyway. Stopping just AGI or (say) just nanotech and continuing everything else would have quite dubious value, as in the overall context of advanced tech development, each individual technology has both dangers and defensive potential.
In particular, I have argued that AGI has a strong potential to play a temporary role as a “nanny” technology (Goertzel 2012), protecting humanity from its own tendencies toward technological self-destruction, while more and more advanced AGI emerges in a relatively measured way. Arguably, such an “AGI Nanny” could manage the transition to and through a Singularity much better than human beings or purely human institutions. An AGI Nanny would in a sense be a kind of “police state” — but if policing of dangerous technologies were combined with compassionate ethics, abolition of human-scale material scarcity, and coherent rational pursuit of a positive Singularity, one would have something very different from the “police states” that have existed in human history.
This “AGI Nanny” argument is certainly not bulletproof and conclusive, but I personally feel it has significantly fewer and smaller gaping holes than Bostrom’s key arguments in Superintelligence. Indeed some sort of AGI Nanny type technology may emerge semi-spontaneously via the emergence of AI-powered sousveillance technologies across the Internet, motivated by a constellation of other goals on the part of various groups.
8. Friendly AI vanguardism
Another current of thinking that has often been quite explicit in SIAI/MIRI writing, and is present in Bostrom’s book, though in a subtler form, is what I think of as “Friendly AI vanguardism.” Put roughly, what I mean here is the idea that the problem of building a Friendly AI — a superintelligence that won’t kill everybody — is so hard that only a small, elect crew of extraordinarily rational and intelligent people with the right goals and mindset can possibly be trusted to work on it.
This attitude has been highly evident in the SIAI/MIRI community since its beginning. The informal plan of SIAI in its early years, from what I could tell, appeared to be to gather a group of brilliant technologists and scientists to work together in secret on creating a Friendly AI which would then save the world. SIAI/MIRI has matured a great deal since then, yet much of this vibe still remains.
And this vibe resonates closely with the explicitly elitist attitude promoted by Peter Thiel, who was a major SIAI donor for a number of years (Reinhart 2011). Thiel has, for instance, spoken very harshly about the modern education system, and he funded a handful of bright kids less than 20 years old to drop out of college (the “Thiel Fellowship”). But he doesn’t seem to have much understanding of the transformative role that college can play for people from an underprivileged background, e.g., people in the developing world; and even among the privileged youth who are its target, the Fellowship has had dubious effectiveness (Lawrence 2013).
Along the same conceptual lines, both Thiel and SIAI/MIRI have been very interested in Math Olympiad winners, chess champions, and so forth (personal communication). There is an attitude of focusing attention on maximally leveraging the ability of the people society has identified as the “best of the best.”
Bostrom does not come right out and say that he thinks the best path forward is for some small vanguard of elite super-programmers and uber-scientists to create Friendly AGI, but he almost does. In a passage that comes off a bit scary-sounding to me, he notes the conditions under which he thinks a government/corporate funded AGI effort could perhaps rationally be allowed to proceed:
A]n international project to develop safe superintelligence would … have to be constituted not as an open academic collaboration but as an extremely tightly controlled joint enterprise. Perhaps the scientists involved would have to be physically isolated and prevented from communicating with the rest of the world for the duration of the project, except through a single carefully vetted communication channel. The required level of security might be nearly unattainable at present, but advances in lie detection and surveillance technology could make it feasible later this century. (p. 253)
And then he notes the possibility of the UN allowing a small group (maybe just one person) to proceed with AGI R&D on approved lines, under their wing:
[B]road collaboration does not necessarily mean that large numbers of researchers would be involved in the project; it simply means that many people would have a say in the project’s aims. In principle, a project could involve a maximally broad collaboration comprising all of humanity as sponsors (represented, say, by the General Assembly of the United Nations), yet employ only a single scientist to carry out the work. (p. 253)
What he is advocating here, in his dry professorial style, is actually something quite dramatic: For the UN and all the governments of the world to come together to control AGI research and development, protecting and fostering an elite AGI R&D effort carried out under their auspices by a small group, potentially even just by one person. (And who is that one person going to be? Eliezer Yudkowsky perhaps?)
Underlying these somewhat extreme proposals is the vibe that the “control problem” or “Friendly AI problem” is something that can more likely be solved via sustained hard thinking by a small, select team of super-smart humans, than via ordinary human processes of science or engineering. As Bostrom says, in the context of considering the impact of brain enhancement on superintelligence,
One reason why cognitive enhancement might cause more progress to have been made on the control problem by the time the intelligence explosion occurs is that progress on the control problem may be especially contingent on extreme levels of intellectual performance – even more so than the kind of work necessary to create machine intelligence. The role for trial and error and accumulation of experimental results seems quite limited in relation to the control problem, whereas experiential learning will probably play a large role in the development of artificial intelligence or whole brain emulation. (p. 236)
I read these passages and thought — Whoa!! What a huge win for the Yudkowsky/SIAI folks, to have their ideas written up and marketed in a way that managed to appeal to Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and so forth! And indeed the win was real financially as well as media-wise: Bostrom’s book helped entice Elon Musk to donate $10M to the Future of Life Institute for research into how to make AI beneficial rather than destructive, and the two biggest chunks of the FLI funding went to Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) and Yudkowsky’s MIRI (in that order).
One core idea here seems to be that a few brilliant, right-thinking mathematicians and philosophers locked in a basement are most probably our best hope to save humanity from the unwitting creation of Unfriendly AI by teams of ambitious but not-quite-smart-enough AI developers. This idea was batted around frequently on the SL4 futurist email list (operated by Eliezer Yudkowsky) in the late 90s and early aughts, but that was an in-crowd of Singularitarian geeks. Now the meme has hit the big time.
Bostrom and Yudkowsky, from what I have seen, are ethical and peaceable individuals who genuinely want the best for all mankind, as well as wanting to see amazing transhuman possibilities come about in a safe and well-managed way. However, their tendency toward elitism does not strike everyone as benign in its potential consequences. Hruy Tsegaye, an Ethiopian writer and educational technology developer who has written about the implications of advanced technology for Africa (Tsegaye 2015), had this to say about Bostrom’s scenario of governmentally-enforced restriction of AGI development to a chosen few:
This is the highway to tyranny. The current world is stained with odious inequality because of such attitudes and systems. The “few” will be in control of this game-changing hi-tech and then who will control these few? Obviously those who have guns and money will control these few. And then what? Oh and then instead of protecting mankind from AGIs we have AGIs destroying the majority of mankind on behalf of the “few.” (personal communication)
Bostrom appears to place slightly more faith than Yudkowsky — and vastly more than Tsegaye — in the potential of the U.S or other governmental bodies to regulate AGI development. On this, my intuition also veers to the skeptical side. Regulating nuclear weapons development seems to strain the global political system, and this seems a much easier task than regulating AGI development: it requires specialized materials and expensive machinery, and it doesn’t have immediate and obvious practical and commercial benefits besides warfare. But the commonality of avanguardist perspective, which these two thinkers share, is what I want to point out here.
This particular aspect of Bostrom and Yudkowsky’s thinking is highly relevant to my own practical work, as my own AGI efforts are centered on an open-source AGI project, OpenCog. Developing AGI in the open source domain is precisely the opposite of the vanguarding perspective that Bostrom and Yudkowsky advocate. The potential risks of the open-source perspective are evident: people with bad aims could take your open-source AGI code, privately fork it, and use it to develop killer robots or evil superintelligence.
On the other hand, the potential benefits are also evident: One gets the creative, technical, moral, and social insight of the whole world brought to bear on one’s AGI project, not just the thinking and intuition of a small, self-selected elite group. My OpenCog collaborator, Joel Pitt, and I explored these themes in a preliminary way, in a 2012 essay titled “Nine Ways to Bias Open-Source AGI Toward Friendliness” (Goertzel and Pitt 2012).
At the present time, it seems very unlikely that Bostrom’s vision of a tiny, UN-sanctioned elite Friendly AI group, sheltered from competition by government regulation, is actually going to come to pass. Rather, what seems to be happening in the real world is that large companies are jumping into the AGI game. AI progress is not being driven by MIRI protected by the UN, but rather by Google, Baidu, Facebook and IBM.
Of course, the work these companies are doing is not yet producing human-level thinking machines, but arguably the application-focused “narrow AI” work they are doing is contributing more to the path toward AGI than FHI’s philosophizing and MIRI’s theorem-proving and online-community-building. In the current scene, OpenCog is something of a maverick attempt to guide the center of AGI development away from the mega-corporations and toward the more diffuse network of open-source volunteers, university researchers and students, and startups leveraging and contributing to open source projects as part of their own development.
The open source approach also would seem to increase the probability that multiple AGIs will emerge in different places for different purposes, creating a balanced field of multiple AGIs that will have to coordinate with each other, perhaps fusing into some sort of mindplex. Whether this wards off disasters better than having a single AGI project is open to debate, though my guess is that it does.
Open-source AGI is a large topic on its own and beyond the scope of this review article; I bring it up here mainly to point out that the FHI/MIRI vanguardist perspective is far from the only viable view on how the future of AGI development should proceed. There are a lot of possibilities out there, and the ones that Bostrom focuses on are not particularly among the more realistic, nor necessarily the most desirable.
9. Open-ended intelligence
When one hears smart, hard-driving, committed people talk about a certain set of issues in a certain way, it’s easy to get caught up in their way of framing the issues. If one doesn’t agree with their perspective, one can get sucked into debating the issues on their terms. This can then direct attention away from other, fundamentally different perspectives on the same issues, which may have their own considerable value.
I see some risk of this happening now with the topic of superintelligence — which is one reason I’ve taken the time to write this essay. Bostrom, Yudkowsky, Musk, Hawking, and their ilk definitely deserve to have their opinions heard. But this doesn’t mean we need to accept their framing of the issues surrounding superintelligence.
An utterly different framing, in my view more deeply grounded in profound thinking about humanity, intelligence and the universe, is provided by David Weinbaum (Weaver)’s notion of “open-ended intelligence” (Weinbaum andVeitas 2015). As Weaver and his colleague Viktoras Veitas put it,
Open-ended intelligence is a process where a distributed population of interacting heterogeneous agents achieves progressively higher levels of coordination. In coordination here we mean the local resolution of disparities by means of reciprocal determination that brings forth new individuals in the form of integrated groups of agents (assemblages) that exchange meaningful information and spontaneously differentiate (dynamically and structurally) from their surrounding milieu. This kind of intelligence is truly general in the sense that it is not directed or limited by an a priori given goal or challenge. Moreover, it is intrinsically and indefinitely scalable, at least from a theoretical point of view. We see open-ended intelligence manifesting all around us and at many scales; primarily in the evolution of life, in the phylogenetic and ontogenetic organization of brains, in life-long cognitive development and sense-making and in the self-organization of complex systems from slime molds, fungi, and beehives to human socio-technological entities.
The theory of open-ended intelligence rejects the idea that real-world intelligent systems are fundamentally based on goals, rewards, or utility functions. It perceives these as sometimes-useful, but limited and ultimately somewhat sterile, descriptors of some aspects of what some intelligent systems do in some circumstances.
What, after all, are the goals of any real-world human being? They are ideas that the human holds in their mind, or that others pose for that human. They shift constantly over time, and have only limited influence over that human’s actual behavior. Similarly — but even more so — for any real-world human being’s “utility function.” Economists have struggled for a long time to model actual human behavior in terms of the math of utility functions — and that’s just in the domain of economics, where one would think it would be most applicable.
Forget about modeling human behavior in art, science, or romance in terms of utility functions. It just isn’t a natural model of how we work. There is quite a substantial body of evidence that humans do not operate even closely to the rational agent model. It seems intuitively clear that rationality, while important, does not cover everything intelligence is about.
Sure, mathematically, it might be possible to model what ANY finite system does in terms of some formal utility function. But such a pursuit quickly becomes reminiscent of Ptolemaic epicycles. It’s not a natural way of modeling humans, and there’s no evidence currently that it’s a useful way.
But even if goals and utility functions aren’t a good way of modeling people, couldn’t they still be a good way of modeling future AGI systems — such as superintelligences? There is a certain point here. OpenCog, for example, is one among many AI systems explicitly architected to be driven by specific, formally articulated goals. OpenCog is far more goal-driven than any human being, far more goal-oriented in its architecture and dynamics.
However, the dynamics of a real OpenCog system embedded in a complex real-world environment are still only guided by the system’s formal goals — not rigorously driven by them. There are also other, ambient, non-goal-driven dynamics in the system — and these can play a role in the system’s ongoing redefinition of its own goals. Ultimately, the initial goals assigned to an OpenCog system by its programmers may serve as nothing more (or less) than a way of helping the system to get its own, open-ended, self-organizing intelligence off the ground.
Once an intelligent system becomes vastly smarter than humans, the odds seem to me very low that its intelligence will be well-characterized by human concepts like goals and utility functions. The paradigm of “intelligence as optimization” that seems so natural to us now may seem absurdly, quaintly limiting to our future AGI descendants, much as we would now view a dog-level model of intelligence as “getting lots of meat, having sex and running around a lot.”
Indeed, this dog-level view still has some relevance to human life and human society, but in important ways we’ve also gone beyond it — and dogs and humans are ultimately pretty similar. Bostrom, Yudkowsky, and I agree that AGIs will likely end up going far further beyond humans than we have gone beyond our vaguely dog-like mammal ancestors. But I differ from them in suspecting that these advances will also bring us beyond the whole paradigm of optimization.
Back in my first book, The Structure of Intelligence (Goertzel 1993), I described intelligence as “The ability to achieve complex goals in complex environments.” I even posited some (rather broad, with lots of free parameters and no useful calculations) specific mathematics for assessing a system’s degree of intelligence according to this measure. So I can very well understand the general line of thinking Bostrom and Yudkowsky are pursuing in modeling intelligence in terms of goal-seeking. However, my thinking on the topic has evolved since then, and I think Bostrom’s and Yudkowsky’s thinking needs to evolve too.
I still consider the conception of intelligence in terms of the ability to achieve complex goals in complex environments as a useful working definition for driving progress forward in building real-world AGI systems. When I have my practical |
think it was Trump who broke long-standing statute, not Obama. This could not be farther from the truth.
Imagine a conservative president telling Congress that if it fails to take action on Social Security reform, he will unilaterally allow younger workers to divert their FICA taxes into private investment accounts. The president then concocts a tax amnesty program and gives it a mellifluous-sounding with a legislative-sounding acronym for an aura of legitimacy — the Let American Children Achieve program (LACA). Now, imagine a Democrat president winning the next election. Do you think this program would exist for a single minute past the inaugural ball? Do you think anyone would have treated the illegal program as a legitimate statute and the elimination of it as lawlessness?
We have a Constitution, the rule of law, and separation of powers, and that still matters. The president must faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress, most certainly long-standing immigration laws governing our sovereignty. If anything, Obama’s executive amnesty was a much greater usurpation than our Social Security hypothetical, because he violated the self-determination of the entire people by conferring privileges, including Social Security cards and refundable tax credits, on people who have no right to be in this country. When contrasting the role of a president with that of a king in Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton wrote that whereas “[T]he one [a president] can confer no privileges whatever; the other [a king] can make denizens of aliens.”
A false sense of moral superiority
From reading the headlines of media narratives, one would come away with the impression that nobody exists other than illegal alien “dreamers,” most of whom are valedictorians and the highest order of creation. As is the case with all issues, liberals isolate straw-man talking points and ignore the broader context. They present a false dichotomy: Do you empathize with those who were brought here “by no fault of their own” and are nothing but amazing assets to America? Gee, who doesn’t?
But whose fault is it? It’s not the fault of American taxpayers. It’s the fault of the immigrants’ parents and their countries of origin, particularly the country of Mexico, which has used every tool of statecraft to instigate endless violations of our border integrity for decades. The forgotten people in this discussion are the American communities that are suffering from rampant crime, social and language problems in schools, a drained health care and welfare system, and drugs and gang activity in so many parts of the country. A lawless border brings in an enormous number of problems along with some good individuals, but the source of the problem is the endless promise of “dream” amnesty. Thus, a focus on foreign nationals in a vacuum necessarily violates the social compact between a government and its people to focus on its own citizens first.
The media will showcase endless illegal alien recipients of Obama’s amnesty in a sympathetic light but will never show the victims of illegal immigration and those who have been raped by DACA recipients.
Outright ignoring the plight of ordinary Americans
Why don’t the politicians express any pity for Americans or any sense of outrage and urgency to rectify these problems before they focus in a vacuum on foreign nationals? After addressing these issues, then come back to us and work on the needs of foreign national dreamers.
There’s an army of thousands of lawyers, lobbyists, and the most powerful masters of commerce advocating on behalf of every illegal alien, even including the violent ones. Who is speaking for the Americans and addressing their concerns, which were brought on by these very policies?
Of course some of these people deserve pity in a vacuum. But so do Americans. And from a public policy standpoint, the needs of Americans must come first. That is the essence of the social contract between a society and its government. It’s no different from the imprisonment of criminals, even though such justice will necessarily hurt the criminals’ children. The children are suffering by no fault of their own. That is true. But our job is to do justice, stand for the rule of law, and, much like the head of a household, take care of our people first. We can’t fix everything, and that is not what God expects of us. In their pursuit of a utopia, liberals create a living hell and a perennial cycle of amnesty and open borders, which hurt the people whom they have a moral obligation to represent to the betterment of those they do not.
The goal of ending amnesty is to ensure that no other families are placed in this predicament in the future. And based on the dramatic drop in illegal immigration since Trump was elected, it’s clear that the promise to end amnesty dissuades people from making the dangerous journey and embarking on a generational mistake.
For more on the false morality of amnesty, listen to my podcast from last September.
The promise of “Dream” amnesty is the core cause of leaky borders
Advocates of amnesty are not only exhibiting backwards priorities. Their myopic focus on the desires and aspirations of children of foreign nationals is the root cause of the current immigration crisis and will continue exacerbating it if left unchallenged. The lynchpin of the endless flow of illegal immigration has always been the unspoken promise that once they come here with kids, they are here to stay. Thus, the endless cycle of amnesties, particularly for those who came here as children, is the culprit for so much of the problem and all of the fiscal, social, and security woes that have come with it. Nobody who supports yet another amnesty for “dreamers” can possibly claim a desire to secure our borders.
As Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute observed in 2015, “[F]rom 2012, when DACA was announced, to last year [2014], UAM [Unaccompanied Child Minor] apprehensions increased 490 percent, 444 percent, and 610 percent for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, respectively.” He added that “even the Congressional Research Service, the Washington Post, and the Soros-funded Migration Policy Institute have made the link between ending the threat of deportation and the rise in illegal immigration.
That link between incentives and border crossings was driven home when The El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) drafted a memo in 2014 asserting that 95 percent of the border crossers interviewed cited the promise of amnesty as the primary factor behind their migration, not violence back home.
Almost 30 percent of the Central American “children” being held in federal facilities as a result of the recent DACA-induced wave of border crossings have ties to gangs, according to federal officials.
One is entitled to advance a political argument for granting amnesty at the right time when the needs of Americans have been addressed first. But to suggest that there is a legal entitlement to unilaterally override basic immigration laws —laws that every country enacts — reveals a lot more about their sense of morality than they realize. Indeed, the “Americans last” mindset of amnesty advocates and their utter disregard for the social problems created by their very advocacy is the crux of what makes Washington a swamp.Alaska Airlines is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to add Paine Field in Everett, Wash., as an authorized airport for the carrier’s operations. This is a required step if the carrier were to begin jet service out of the regional airport at some point in the future. As required by its application, Alaska Airlines is providing the FAA with a proposed schedule over the next five years that could include 28 round-trip jet flights a week.
“We continue to believe that our flights at Sea-Tac Airport and in Bellingham best serve the Puget Sound region’s needs for affordable air travel, particularly in light of the significant investments both airports have made recently to improve their facilities,” said Andrew Harrison, Alaska Airlines’ vice president of planning and revenue management. “That said, if one or more other airlines begin operations at Paine Field, we would commence service alongside these carriers. Submitting a schedule with the FAA along with a request for authorization to serve Paine is a necessary step in the process.”
Alaska Airlines’ proposed schedule in the first year of operations would include 14 weekly round-trip flights to Las Vegas, Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii, using Boeing 737-800 jet aircraft. Alaska would also fly 21 weekly round-trip flights to Portland, Ore., with Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft. Not all destinations would be served daily.
By the fifth year of operations, Alaska would fly 49 weekly round-trip flights. This would include 28 round-trips to Las Vegas, Honolulu, Maui, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Diego with 737-800s, plus 21 weekly round-trips to Portland using Q400s.
Alaska Airlines informed the FAA that these proposed schedules could change depending on competitors, business and economic factors, and the needs of its customers. The carrier is also seeking information from the FAA about any necessary environmental review of its proposed schedule, given a pending legal challenge to the agency’s approval of commercial air service at Paine Field in December.
Alaska Airlines operates about 1,750 weekly round-trip flights at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, located 42 miles south of Paine Field, and up to 63 weekly round-trip flights at Bellingham International Airport, which is approximately a one-hour drive north of Everett.
Paine Field currently has no adequate passenger terminal, which would need to be built before operations by any airline could begin.
Summary of proposed service for the first year — 35 round-trip flights a week:
City pair Weekly Frequency Aircraft
Everett-Honolulu 4 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Las Vegas 7 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Maui 3 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Portland 21 flights on a Q400
Summary of proposed service by the fifth year — 49 round-trip flights a week:
City pair Weekly Frequency Aircraft
Everett-Honolulu 4 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Las Vegas 7 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Los Angeles 7 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Maui 3 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Phoenix 4 flights on a 737-800
Everett-Portland 21 flights on a Q400
Everett-San Diego 3 flights on a 737-800Giardia hasn’t historically ranked high as a potential cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Some anecdotal reports suggest that a Giardia outbreak may have occurred prior to the Incline Village ME/CFS outbreak in the 1980’s. More recently, Corinne Blandino’s severe, decades long case of ME/CFS – which originated with an exposure to Giardia at work – demonstrated how devastating a case of Giardia triggered ME/CFS can be.
It wasn’t until city in Norway got exposed to Giardia in 2004, however, that Giardia, a protozoa, became one of the pathogens definitively linked with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Large studies (n=1254) examining the aftermath of the outbreak in a public water system in Bergen found that five years later, almost 50% of those originally infected still had symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and/or chronic fatigue (post-infectious chronic fatigue).
“Other patients suffer a severe, long lasting illness, for which treatment is ineffectual, and even after the parasite has finally been eliminated, some sequelae persist, affecting quality of life and continuing to cause the patient discomfort or pain” (LJ Robertson et al, 2010)
Five percent suffered from fatigue severe enough for them to lose employment or be unable to continue their education. Interestingly, all had taken anti-parasitic drugs and all had apparently cleared the pathogen from their systems. Five years later, 30% were deemed to have an ME/CFS-like illness and almost 40% had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
“Minor” Infection – Sometimes Serious Results
By all accounts Giardia shouldn’t be doing this. Giardia is not normally considered a serious infection. Most people have some diarrhea and pass the bug quickly – and if they don’t, antibiotics are usually (but not always) effective. Giardia, seemingly, produces the kind of “minor” infection that our medical system doesn’t spend much time on.
The Mayo Clinic reports that Giardia infection (giardiasis) is one of the most common causes of waterborne illness in the United States. The parasites are found in backcountry streams and lakes throughout the U.S., but can also be found in municipal water supplies, swimming pools, whirlpool spas and wells. Giardia infection can be transmitted through food and person-to-person contact.
Research studies are slowly revealing that the effects of even vanquished Giardia infections can be long lasting for some. The Mayo Clinic reports that intestinal problems such as lactose intolerance may be present long after the parasites are gone. (Even though half a dozen studies have been published on the Bergen outbreak, Mayo fails to note that long term issues with fatigue and pain (or ME/CFS) may result).
The Bergen studies indicate, however, that this rather common infection worldwide can cause long term and even at times debilitating fatigue as well. The takeaway lesson from the Bergen studies is that one doesn’t need to have mono, Ross-River virus or Valley fever or any of several serious infections to get seriously afflicted. As Dr. Chia has been saying about enteroviruses for years, any minor infection has the potential to cause ME/CFS in the right person.
The Galland-Giardia Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Connection
The Norwegians wrongly reported that they were the first to associate fatigue with Giardia infections, but they couldn’t be blamed for thinking so. Way back in 1989, an integrative doctor named Dr. Galland suggested that Giardia infections were associated with ME/CFS. That year, Galland reported at a scientific conference that Giardia might be more common in ME/CFS than expected. Using a new test, Galland found active Giardia infection in 46 per cent of his chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) patients. (Galland noted that many of his patients may have picked up the bug during travel to foreign countries).
In 1990 Galland published a paper “Giardia lamblia infection as a cause of chronic fatigue.” in the Journal of Nutritional Medicine. (The paper never appeared on PubMed, the main English research database, apparently because of the journal it was published in. Citations from present and past journals devoted to ME/CFS have never appeared in PubMed either.)
Interestingly, given the involvement of a pathogenic gut protazoan, the patients’ gut symptoms were relatively minor; it was their fatigue, muscle pain, muscle weakness, flu-like feelings, sweats and enlarged lymph nodes that stood out. Galland reported that treating the infection alleviated the fatigue in over 80% of his patients and removed the digestive complaints in 90%. In 1998 Galland reported that one outbreak of Giardia, in Placerville, California, “was followed by an epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which swept through the town’s residents”.
Galland found that a longer than usual treatment regimen was often necessary to clear the body of the bug. Instead of the normal five-day treatment, his average treatment regimen lasted three weeks and could extend to eight. He has also reported treatment successes involving other parasites (Entamoeba hystolytica, Cyrptosporidium) and other diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
In 2011, Galland hadn’t let up on the ME/CFS/giardia/intestinal parasite angle, reporting that a woman with severe fatigue and dizziness (but not many gut symptoms) who had tested positive for Giardia slowly recovered under his anti-parasitic protocol. Citing a Johns Hopkins study indicating that 20 percent of healthy controls had antibodies to Giardia, Galland suggested that Giardia infections were much more common, particularly in small town water systems (such as Incline Village?), than previously suspected.
Giardia is probably not a common cause of ME/CFS: Dr. Peterson said he regularly tests for it but rarely finds it – but because it is usually treatable, it’s a test that probably everyone, particularly those who got ill after foreign travel, should get.
The biggest question for the ME/CFS community (and the Lyme community), though, is why, as with other infections, some people who get enough treatment to make the pathogen disappear are still ill.
Back to the Norwegians
Galland may have generated some buzz in integrative medicine circles, but it took the Norwegian researchers to get Giardia and ME/CFS on the map in the research world. Tests revealing increased numbers of cytotoxic (i.e. killer) T-cells indicated an immune system on the alert for a pathogen. (Similar findings occur in herpesvirus and cytomegalovirus infections, infectious mononucleosis, etc.)
With the Norwegian studies indicating that depression and anxiety weren’t the culprits in the ME/CFS outbreak, several hypotheses popped up:
The Sneaky Pathogen theory – The pathogen wasn’t gone at all, it was laying low. Poor immune surveillance was allowing low, undetectable levels of the bug to produce low-grade inflammation that was causing fatigue, abdominal distress and other symptoms.
– The pathogen wasn’t gone at all, it was laying low. Poor immune surveillance was allowing low, undetectable levels of the bug to produce low-grade inflammation that was causing fatigue, abdominal distress and other symptoms. The Hit and Run Gut Attack Theory #1 – Before it was overcome, the water-borne pathogen permanently damaged the lining of the intestines causing problems with gut permeability, hypersensitivity, bacterial overgrowth, immune reactions (fatigue, etc.) and irritable bowel syndrome.
– Before it was overcome, the water-borne pathogen permanently damaged the lining of the intestines causing problems with gut permeability, hypersensitivity, bacterial overgrowth, immune reactions (fatigue, etc.) and irritable bowel syndrome. The Hit and Run Gut Attack Theory #2 – the pathogen triggered the activation of mast cells in the gut causing fatigue, hypersensitivity, IBS and other symptoms.
The Latest Study
Giardia-specific cellular immune responses in post-giardiasis chronic fatigue syndrome, Kurt Hanevik1, 2Email authorView ORCID ID profile, Einar Kristoffersen1, 3, Kristine Mørch1, 2, Kristin Paulsen Rye1, Steinar Sørnes1, Staffan Svärd4, Øystein Bruserud1 and Nina Langeland1, 2 BMC Immunology 201718:5 DOI: 10.1186/s12865-017-0190-3
The latest Norwegian study attempted to explain the lingering fatigue and other problems by testing immune responses (T-cell proliferation assay, T cell activation and cytokine release analysis) to Giardia in 20 Giardia exposed fatigued individuals, 10 Giardia exposed non-fatigued individuals and 10 healthy unexposed individuals were recruited as controls.
The study did not find increased immune responses to Giardia (including T-cell activation or cytokine responses) in the post-infectious Giardia group. The still ill Giardia patients did, however, have higher levels of a key immune marker called sCD40L implicated in inflammation and in severe symptom flares in ME/CFS patients after exercise.
Why these patients – five years after their Giardia infection was resolved – are still ill remains a mystery, but the link between Giardia infections and subsequent chronic illnesses is growing. A higher incidence of Giardia infection was recently found in lupus. Just this year, a study found an association between Giardia infection and the subsequent development of arthritis. A 4,000 person study recently confirmed an association between Giardia infection and the development of irritable bowel syndrome. That study’s findings were buttressed by an earlier study indicating that Giardia induces gut hypersensitivity in rats long after the parasite had been cleared.
How Giardia is setting some people up for subsequent illnesses such as ME/CFS, arthritis, lupus or IBS isn’t entirely clear. It is clear, though, that particularly virulent strains of Giardia that cause more damage might be involved. Giardiasis can damage the microvilli of the intestines and promote inflammation. Eight months after the apparent resolution of Giardia, signs of gut inflammation were present in almost 50% of the Bergen cohort. (That high number suggested that the Bergen cohort may have been hit by a particularly virulent strain of Giardia.) Protracted levels of gut inflammation resulting in systemic inflammation – as some suspect is present in ME/CFS – could explain the fatigue and other problems that remained.
“Host responses” may be important as well. Reduced levels of gut arginine at the time of infection may result in more gut damage. Although T-cells are the big guns in the immune response to pathogens, one study suggested that one’s gut microbiome makeup played a bigger factor in preventing/allowing a serious infection to occur.
Some findings in the Norwegian Giardia outbreak mirror others seen in post-infectious ME/CFS illness states. Greater illness severity, whether characterized by increased symptom severity, more time spent in bed and/or a more difficult time ridding the body of the infection have been found to predispose people with infectious mononucleosis or giardiasis to coming down with ME/CFS. Being female is another risk factor.
Prior illnesses may make a difference as well. Prior gut symptoms increased the risk of fatigue, etc., after a giardia infection but, interestingly, not more gut problems. This indicated, as has been shown before, that a lack of gut symptoms does not necessarily rule out the gut as a central factor in disease.
The Post-Infectious Cohort
Whether the pathogen involved is Ross-River virus, Q-fever, Epstein-Barr Virus, Giardia or other gut pathogens such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella, Escherichia coli and Trichinella spiralis, a year or so later, from 5-10% of those afflicted are still ill. Infections, whether cleared or not, clearly can have long-term consequences. The link between infectious mononucleosis and multiple sclerosis is a classic example. Dozens of studies indicate that having infectious mononucleosis increases one’s risk of later coming down with multiple sclerosis.
The Simmaron Research Foundation is continuing its efforts to examine the role unusual infections may play in ME/CFS with its support of the Konnie Knox study examining the role that vector-borne (bird/insect borne) infections may play in ME/CFS.WEST VALLEY CITY — Property owner Jay Bentley got slapped with a huge fine by city administrators because of graffiti. While Bentley claims he is the victim of vandals, city officials say the big fines are necessary — and they're working.
Bentley has owned a duplex in West Valley City for the past five years. Unfortunately, every few months, his property gets tagged by vandals.
According to city law, Bentley is the one responsible for cleanup. The most recent spray had him looking at a fine from the city for $25,000.
"The big issue is the huge fines that West Valley City seems to be imposing on property owners," Bentley said. "There's just no realm of reality to it."
He isn't the only one faced with a massive fine. In the last few months, court records show other property owners who were ordered to pay $37,000; $76,000; $87,000; and $194,000 for not cleaning up their property.
"It does feel like they treat us kind of like a criminal," Bentley said.
That's a lot of money, especially if it's somebody else who committed the crime.
"We realize that they are a victim," said Layne Morris, deputy city manager for West Valley City. "But if you're going to just let the graffiti sit on your property for three months, you're not helping yourself."
Morris said the city writes about 5,000 code citations a year not just for graffiti, but also for garbage, unkempt landscaping and junk cars littering property. If property owners ignore the demands to clean up, they are faced with a hefty fine.
We realize that they are a victim. But if you're going to just let the graffiti sit on your property for three months, you're not helping yourself. –Layne Morris, WVC deputy city manager
"The fines are $500 a day," Morris said. "We get people's attention."
The city wasn't getting its residents' attention several years ago. In 2008, a countywide study revealed 43 percent of homes in West Valley City were non-compliant with city code. Within five years of implementing the extreme fines, the number dropped to 13 percent.
"We're aggressive in West Valley City. We're serious about code enforcement," Morris said. "Many cities aren't serious about code enforcement, or as serious as they should be."
Some property owners like Bentley say the city has gone beyond serious, especially when you compare Bently's $25,000 fine to major crimes like DUI ($700), selling drugs ($5,000), child abuse ($10,000) and murder ($10,000).
In Bentley's mind, $500 per day for not cleaning up graffiti is absurd. He also said he never got a note from the city saying he was in violation.
Photo: KSL TV
Not a chance, Morris said; Bentley has gotten the city's mail many times before.
Back in March, Morris said the city sent Bentley a courtesy notice. No change. Then when they issued a formal citation, still no change.
After that, Morris said 51 days went by until the property came into compliance.
"I understand that $25,000 can be a shock to somebody," Morris said, "but if you've been cited eight times in seven years, you ought to know the system by now."
Fortunately for Bentley, West Valley City made him pay only a small fraction of the fine, $300 of the $25,000. Even so, he's not satisfied.
"Now they say that they'd never hold anyone to that," he said, "but there's nothing in writing that says they're going to work with you on that fine."
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Related StoriesWhat was expected to be a normal pre-fight press conference for UFC 202 on Wednesday turned out to be an untoward episode. Moments after Nate Diaz stormed out of the stage, cans and bottles began flying through the air, signaling the abrupt end of the event.
For his part, McGregor maintains that he was merely defending himself, as he sat on stage "scared for his life." But according to UFC president Dana White, both men will be facing major consequences for what they have been involved in.
"They're both getting punished," White told TMZ. "What everybody's got to understand is we're overseen by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. I guarantee both of these guys are gonna get massive fines and there's probably going to be a hearing after the fight."
"There could be suspensions, community service, it's gonna be ugly."
"The word is in this thing somebody was injured so there's going to be a lawsuit. Who knows how it's all going to play out. Somebody's filing a lawsuit. The wheels are already in motion on it,"
Many have criticized the said incident for being "staged", with the aims of creating more hype to sell tickets. White merely dismissed such remarks as mere absurdities.
"It was 100-percent real. If you're going to come up with something staged, throwing cans and bottles in a public place is probably one of the dumbest things you could come up with," White said.
"It's going to cost them both a lot of money, a lot of headache and hassle. They're both in big trouble."“It is only through this kind of coordinated approach and solidarity of the counter-trafficking community that we can make a real difference in the lives of people who are suffering the cruel consequences of human trafficking and exploitation,” UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) regional manager Matthew Friedman told the 7th Senior Officials Meeting of the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking (COMMIT) in Bagan.
The meeting brings together ministers from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam, along with observers from the UN, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking of Persons Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and donors.
“COMMIT is unique in that it has fostered unprecedented accountability between the Mekong countries over the past six years,” UN Resident Coordinator Bishow Parajuli said. “I believe that this unity may be one of our greatest strengths in tackling some of our biggest challenges.”
According to UN International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates, 9.49 million people were in forced labour in the Asia-Pacific region as of 2005, with a significant number believed to be in the Mekong region.
Since the signing of a memorandum of understanding six years ago, the six countries have put in place legal and cooperative frameworks to prevent human trafficking taking place, prosecute traffickers and exploitative employers and protect victims, helping them return home safely and with dignity.
The Bagan meeting will take a fresh look at regional approaches to counter trafficking, review plans and priorities, and discuss future joint actions, focusing in particular on law enforcement and the recovery and reintegration of victims.Polls generally indicate that as much as half of the population believes in the existence of UFOs, with about 5% admitting to actually seeing something they thought might be a UFO at one time or another. Of course, the fact is that most UFO reports are misidentifications of natural phenomena (especially bright stars and planets, meteors, ball lightning, swamp gas, etc.) or man made phenomena (aircraft landing lights, dirigibles, balloons, test aircraft) or, in some cases, even hoaxes. However, there are a small number of sightings that defy easy explanation or have had such an impact on society that they eventually became a part of UFO folklore. As such, this is my list of the top ten most widely reported, best documented, most inexplicable or just plain strangest UFO “experiences” on record.
10. California and the Midwest “Airship” Sightings, 1896-97
Not many people know that seeing unidentified lights in the sky goes back over a century, when the first UFO “flap” (a grouping of UFO sightings made over a specific area within a few months) occurred over a hundred years ago in the waning years of the nineteenth century. It all began when a mysterious unidentified light was observed by hundreds of people moving slowly over Sacramento, California in November, 1896, apparently moving against the wind at a leisurely thirty miles an hour. It was seen again a week later, this time over San Francisco; by the end of the year hundreds of reports of the thing were coming in from all over the Pacific coast, creating a media frenzy. After a two-month absence during the winter of 1896-97, the mysterious object—described by some witnesses as being suspended beneath a dark, cigar-shaped craft—reappeared over the Midwest, where it was reportedly seen from Nebraska to Michigan and from Minnesota to Texas before abruptly disappearing for good in April of 1897. Though generally dismissed by modern skeptics as an example of media-driven mass hysteria (perhaps helped along by sightings of the planet Venus), the sheer number of reports—several thousand by some estimates—makes it unlikely it was nothing more than the press having a good laugh. Some have even suggested the intriguing possibility it may have been an early airship making its appearance years before the Wright Brother’s plane ever flew—making it more terrestrial than extraterrestrial in nature (and evidence of a nascent technology emerging years before it was supposed to). In any case, “the great airship of 1897”—or whatever it was—remains as much a mystery today as it did in our great, great grandparent’s day.
9. Washington, DC Sightings, 1952
In 1952 Washington, D.C. was all abuzz when ground controllers at Washington National Airport (now Reagan International Airport) spotted multiple targets on their radars as well as observed glowing orbs of light on the horizon, prompting the Air Force to launch fighters in a futile attempt to close with the objects. The incident, which took place on two consecutive weekends between July 13 and July 29, 1952, even got the President’s attention and had almost immediate repercussions. Deciding that the best defense was a strong offense, the government implemented something called the Robertson Panel. The Robertson Panel was a committee of prominent scientists appointed to spend two days examining the “best” UFO cases collected by Project Blue Book (an eighteen-year-long Air Force study that was to look into more than 12,000 UFO reports before it was discontinued in 1969). They promptly concluded that the Air Force and Project Blue Book needed to spend less time analyzing and studying UFO reports and more time publicly debunking them. Unfortunately, this decision to debunk rather than investigate has haunted the government ever since and remains the chief reason “official” government explanations generally fall upon deaf ears to this day.
8. Phoenix Lights, 1997
Probably one of the more famous recent incidents due to the large number of witnesses involved (including, apparently, the Governor of the state), the citizens of Arizona watched as a series of lights—along with a very large triangular shaped saucer—were seen hovering silently in the skies over their fair state for nearly three hours on the evening of March 13, 1997. Some of the lights were later explained away as flared dropped by A-10 Warthogs on training exercises southwest of the city, though what the big triangular ship might have been remains unexplained (some skeptics have suggested aircraft flying in formation). Whatever they were, however, they did not make a return appearance, leaving the people of Phoenix and the world scratching their collective heads and creating a media-driven phenomenon that remains fiercely debated to this day.
7. Kecksburg, Pennsylvania UFO Crash, 1965
On December 9, 1965, a large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in at least six states and Ontario, Canada as it streaked through the night sky, eventually coming down somewhere near the small Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg. Assumed at the time to be an especially large fireball (a meteor of unusual brightness), residents were concerned when the army quickly converged on the area and were seen to haul away some kind of bell shaped craft from the woods, again fueling speculation that the government was up to its old tricks again. Some later speculated it was a crashed Soviet satellite, though this remains hotly disputed by ufologists to this day. However, it should be noted that recovering a Soviet satellite during the height of the Cold War would explain the reason for the heavy-handed army presence and the secrecy; of course, so would a crashed Venusian saucer, so the debate continues.
6. Mantell Incident, 1948
In what might be the first fatality directly attributed to an unidentified flying object, Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell crashed his P-51 fighter while in pursuit of an unusual object in the skies over Kentucky on January 7, 1948. Flying without oxygen at high altitude in pursuit of a “silver disk shaped” craft, he apparently blacked out when he tried to get closer to whatever the thing was, with tragic consequences. Later investigation suggests that what Captain Mantell may have been chasing was actually a large Skyhook weather balloon, which can take on a disk-like appearance when seen from below and has a highly reflective silvery surface to boot. If that’s the case, then Mantell was a victim of his own zeal and disregard for Air Force procedures in flying above his safe maximum altitude, demonstrating that presumption may be more dangerous than extraterrestrials. The incident did manage to change the public perceptions of UFOs, however, leading some people to see the alien visitors as potentially dangerous rather than the fun-loving little green men they had been assumed to be up to then.
5. Barney and Betty Hill Abduction, 1961
In the first of the abduction incidents (but definitely not the last) on the evening of September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill spotted what they believed was a UFO while they drove down a lonely stretch of road near Groveton, New Hampshire. Though they couldn’t consciously recall what happened after that (and were missing several hours, for which they couldn’t account) for weeks afterwards they each complained of having frightening dreams about being prodded and poked by “grey aliens” as part of some sort of bizarre medical examination before being released. The nightmares became so acute they eventually sought help and were eventually hypnotized and interviewed by a Doctor Benjamin Simon of Boston, who concluded the couple may have been significantly influenced by a television episode featuring humanoid aliens they saw a few weeks before their “encounter” and were innocently fantasizing the event, though he also admitted that did not satisfactorily explain every aspect of their case. Whether the victims of an overactive imagination (the couple were noted for their eccentricities) or genuine abductees, the case remains a source of considerable debate to this day, and probably laid the groundwork for the more spectacular Travis Walton and Pascagoula, Mississippi abduction cases in the 1970’s.
4. JAL Flight 1628, 1986
On November 16, 1986 a UFO described as being “three times larger than an aircraft carrier” flew alongside Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 for 50 minutes as it flew over northeastern Alaska, with the objects even being intermittently picked up by both civilian and military ground radar. What makes this incident so impressive was the amount of time the object was seen, the credibility and sheer number of witnesses (the crew and all the passengers) and the fact that it was also picked up on radar, instantly rendering it one of the most impressive UFO sightings on record and one that remains inexplicable to this day. What’s even more remarkable is that it is one of the few cases in which the crew of a civilian airliner was willing to discuss the incident in public, making it even more extraordinary.
3. (Tie) Tehran, Iran Incident, 1976
Up until 1976, the complaint had always been that UFOs seemed remarkably resistant to being spotted on radar (though not always) implying that they were more imaginary than extraterrestrial. That all changed when in the predawn hours of September 19, 1976, Iranian jet fighters (this was before the Islamic Revolution when the U.S. and Iran were close allies) were sent to chase after a wildly maneuvering UFO in the skies over Tehran after several radar stations picked the thing up. Even more impressive, the craft effected the jet’s systems directly whenever they drew too close, rendering their electronics equipment inoperable and, in one case, even causing one jet’s weapons system to fail completely |
in Wisconsin.
Here’s a summary:
Month Number of days overnight at mansion Number of days overnight at home Number of days no overnight location listed January 2015 14 4 13 February 2015 11 4 5 March 2015 9 0 22
As we indicated, the actual number of nights in Wisconsin could be higher, given the holes in the calendars. On some dates, for example, the calendar entries indicate Walker was to be at the mansion later into the evening, but there is no specific notation that he spent the night there. On other dates, there is no indication at all of where Walker was overnight.
Days out-of-state
There’s no question Walker has ramped up his out-of-state travel in 2015. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Walker Tracker and news reports show that through May 14, 2015, he has been in other states or out of the country on at least 59 of the first 134 days of 2015, or 44 percent.
That includes 46 days on political trips -- such as the one to Israel and repeated trips to Iowa -- and 13 days on two official trade missions to Europe.
On the domestic political trips, Walker has visited at least 17 states and the District of Columbia.
And he has made a dozen appearances to give speeches or attend meetings in the early presidential selection states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Here's a breakdown:
Month Number of days outside of Wisconsin Places visited January 7 Washington, D.C., California, Iowa, New Jersey February 17 Europe, Washington, D.C., Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Maryland, Florida March 12 Iowa, Georgia, California, New York, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Texas April 16 Europe, Washington, D.C., Tennessee, New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, Minnesota, Massachusetts May (through May 14) 7 Israel, Michigan, South Carolina
Walker has defended his travels, telling a Milwaukee TV reporter during trip to Iowa in late April 2015: "Oftentimes it's easier to get things done out of your office when you're out and about doing work because you've got a limited amount of time to hone in and focus on things than it is when you actually sit in your office."
It’s also worth noting that other Republican governors who are pondering a presidential run -- Chris Christie of New Jersey, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and John Kasich of Ohio -- have also been criticized for how they are balancing official duties with political activities.
Both Davis and Ivy Cargile, a political science professor at St. Norbert College near Green Bay, agreed that -- to the extent that Walker is emphasizing his potential presidential campaign over his governing -- he is succeeding.
They noted that Walker is polling well nationally among Republican White House contenders and has not faced any major incidents in Wisconsin in which his absence was magnified, although there is some sense his travels might be hurting his approval ratings in Wisconsin.
In Iowa, Walker has outpaced his party’s presidential field in most of the Iowa polling in 2015. Meanwhile, an April 2015 Marquette Law School poll found Walker's approval rating in Wisconsin dropped to 41 percent, down 8 points from the previous poll, in October 2014.
Walker could become more vulnerable to criticism, particularly as debate over the state budget intensifies.
"I think voters are starting to put it together and, at a time when he should be back home and on message, he’s not, he’s out running for president," said Davis.
Cargile said the risks for Walker will increase once Wisconsin voters start paying more attention to the presidential race.
"I think when people realize that he’s not (in Wisconsin) and he’s working toward the presidential race, then people will get upset," she said. "But he hasn’t really paid a price yet."
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More on Scott Walker
Go here for a video segment on Walker's travels. It was part of the May 14, 2015 edition of JS on Politics, a weekly webcast produced by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.A no bake chocolate eclair cake made with graham crackers, whipped vanilla pudding and covered in chocolate ganache. So easy, and it tastes just like an eclair!
Scroll down for a how-to video. Just push ▶️ play!
No Bake Goodness
No bake desserts are perfect for summertime, or anytime you want to whip up something sweet without pulling out all the stops. Most often, no bake means using some version of crispy, crunchy cookies (like our graham crackers). Either we crush them to use for a pie crust or let them sit in the refrigerator for with something smooth, creamy and delicious for an icebox cake.
It’s not exactly the same instant gratification as a microwave mug cake, but this chocolate eclair cake can be as much or as little work as you please. Here, I’ve made my own “instant” homemade vanilla pudding, but you can use the boxed kind.
Part of the reason I love making my own “instant” pudding is that I can control the amount of sugar. That, and it’s just so easy. Ditto making my own stabilized whipped cream instead of using Cool Whip in this simple recipe.
It also doesn’t help that Cool Whip is filled with tons of chemicals. Delicious chemicals, though, aren’t they? You don’t have to add the gelatin to the whipped cream if you don’t want, but you’ll just have to serve the cake nearly frozen as it won’t set up properly otherwise.
As the cake sits in the refrigerator, the graham crackers soften into the filling and all of the flavors mix and mingle perfectly. By the time you’re ready to serve this crowd-favorite no-bake cake, it tastes just like a chocolate eclair—but there’s enough for everyone without any fuss.
And no-fuss? That’s what summer is for.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Dairy: Dairy is a tough one to substitute in this recipe. The graham crackers are essentially naturally gluten free (just use nondairy milk), so you’re good there. The vanilla pudding is a bit tougher, as it uses nonfat dry milk as a base. You can try using blanched almond flour in its place, but I’m not entirely sure how well it will work.
Coconut cream might work in place of the heavy whipping cream in the stabilized whipped cream, but I would absolutely use the gelatin. Coconut cream would be fine in place of the cream for the chocolate ganache. Cool Whip is considered “non-dairy” but it does have some milk protein in it. I don’t really get that, but there it is.
How To Video For Chocolate Eclair Cake
Push play ▶️ to watch me make this cake. Then it’s your turn!A rare court win for the NSSF and SAAMI in their effort to block California’s microstamping law. Here’s the NSSF’s press release:
NEWTOWN, Conn – A California Appellate Court has reversed the Fresno Superior Court’s dismissal of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) lawsuit seeking an injunction to block enforcement of the state’s ammunition microstamping law and remanded the case back to the lower court to hear arguments.
“We are pleased by today’s ruling because it means we will now be able to prove in court that this ill-considered law must be enjoined because it is literally impossible to comply with its requirements, and the law never requires the impossible. We have long maintained that this nascent, unproven and unreliable technology should not have been mandated. When we ultimately prevail in this case, law-abiding consumers in California will once again be able to purchase new models of pistols this law currently prevents our industry members from selling in the state,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel.
NSSF and SAAMI filed the lawsuit on behalf of their members against the State of California in Fresno Superior Court seeking to block the enforcement of the state’s microstamping law, violations of which are a criminal offense. The state statute enacted in 2007, but not made effective until May 2013, requires that all new models of semiautomatic handguns sold in the state had to be designed to incorporate this unproven and unreliable microstamping technology.
Under this law, firearms manufacturers would have to micro laser-engrave a gun’s make, model and serial number on two distinct parts of each handgun so that, in theory, this information would be imprinted on the cartridge casing when the pistol is fired.
“There is no existing microstamping technology that meets the requirement of this ill-considered law. It is not technologically possible to microstamp two locations in the gun and have the required information imprint onto the cartridge casing. In addition, the current state of the technology cannot reliably, consistently and legibly imprint on the cartridge primer the required identifying information from the tip of the firing pin, the only possible location where it is possible to micro-laser engrave the information,” said Keane.
In 2007, California Assembly Bill 1471 was passed and signed into law requiring microstamping on internal parts of new semiautomatic pistols. The legislation provided that this requirement would only became effective if the California Department of Justice certified that the microstamping technology is available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by patent restrictions. The California legislature subsequently reorganized certain statutes concerning the regulation of firearms, including the microstamping law in 2010. On May 17, 2013, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris provided such certification. Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate in November.The Periodic Table of Drones
A drone is a considerable investment. The good news is that there are durable, reliable quadcopters that fit every budget. Quadcopter Arena presents you “The Periodic Table of Drones” a comprehensive list of drones, structured in seven different price ranges. Read through these lists and you will be able to find one that suits you.
The aim of this project is to provide readers with a complete, well-organized and user-friendly index of drones. The drones we selected for this index comprise mostly of quadcopters, and their prices are as listed on Amazon. This project is open and we encourage readers to leave their opinions in the comment zone at the end of the article. We will add new drones according to the suggestions given.
List of drones under $50 List of drones under $50
This list of drones comprises mini-quadcopters that are below $50. They will not blow a hole in your pocket, and are a thrill to fly both indoors and outdoors. All of them make eye-catching display items that you can put on a bookshelf or study desk. Each of them is suitable for both beginning and expert pilots.
1. 4DCopter X-Drone Nano
The X-Drone Nano 2.0 is one of the savviest quadcopters in its price range. With intuitive command and synchronization systems, it can respond to instructions instantly. Pilots can not only fly it in three different speed modes, but also do impressive flips and rolls. Innovative though it is, note that a customer complained that the propellers on his drone continually fell off.
2. Aerius Axis Mini Drone
Balance the world’s smallest quadcopter on the tip of your finger. This micro-drone has an astounding seven minutes of flight time on a 15-minute charge. Use the Trick Mode to do stunning flips and rolls. You can fly this little quadcopter at two different speeds. Its excellent qualities, note that its propellers may come off during flight.
3. Akaso X5C
The Akaso X5C is budget-friendly and high in quality. Its six-axis gyro stabilization system keeps the craft steady during its flight. Plastic blade frames protect the propellers. It does flips and rolls with the touch of a button, and you can record them with its HD camera. One user remarked that he had difficulties charging his drone.
4. Andoer F8 H7 Mini Quadcopter
With a 4CH, six-axis gyro stabilization system, the Andoer F8 is one of the steadiest quadcopters under $50. It does 360-degree flips that will make any pilot look like an expert. LED lights make it a spectacular sight in the night sky. Though it is a fascinating mini drone, customers reported that it tends to go off in all directions.
5. BH Tech X-Drone Nano 2.0
Value for money describes this innovative drone. A six-axis gyro-stabilization system enables smooth operation. Auto Trim allows indoor and outdoor flight, while the Headless mode ensures that the drone never gets lost. LED lights allow night flight. Though it has excellent features, some customers noted that it did not work after one use.
6. Black Aviax Drone
Few mini-drones can match the Black Aviax in durability. The paint on this device will not come off because it is metallic and anti-scratch. It arrives in an exclusive luxury box and makes a great gift. This steady drone will flip at the touch of a button. Hover control, Headless security, and Cruise control make it easy to control for beginners. All said, some customers found one drone stronger than the other.
7. Cheerson CX-10 Mini
The Cheerson CX10 Mini may be tiny but packs a punch. With a six-axis design, this drone is stable. Flip it at three different speeds. This little toy spends up to eight minutes in the air. One user remarked that it is not suitable for young children to use.
8. Cheerson CX-10A
This steady drone flies on four different channels: forward, backward, left-sideward and right-sideward. It flies when you throw it. The CX 10-A travels at three different speeds. The headless mode allows you to track the position of the craft. A few customers raised durability issues.
9. Cheerson CX-10C
Like other Cheerson models, this quadcopter has four flight channels and comes with a 0.3MP camera that captures clear images and videos. It does 360-degree flips in four directions. You can launch this incredible mini-drone by hand. Despite its positive qualities, one user mentioned that the drone tends to heat up when being charged.
10. Cheerson CX-10W
Experience a First-Person View (FPV) when you fly this drone, courtesy of its 0.3MP HD camera. You can store images on your phone without a memory card. This drone’s transmitter can control other Cheerson drones. With a few speed modes, it is easy to pilot. A few users noted that it is quite hard to monitor, so it may not suit novices.
11. Cheerson CX-Stars Mini
The CX Stars Mini comes in four different, cheery colors. This ultra-small mini-drone launches when you throw it. It performs 360-degree rotations, flies in four directions and hovers in place when necessary. LED lights enable night flight. That said, a user mentioned that it is a task to control while it flies.
12. Cheerwing U841-1 3D Drone
Do not trifle with this drone. It is capable of running, flying and even climbing with 4.4 lbs (2kg) load. It has a long-distance, 2.4 GHz communication range. This craft has an impressive repertoire of movements and comes armed with a 720p camera. According to customers, It is a steady drone, though hard to maneuver at times.
13. Eachine E10C Mini
The Eachine 10C Mini, with a 2 MP camera, takes clear footage from the air. It does flips and rolls in three-speed modes, making it suitable for both novice and expert pilots. With LED lights, it is a joy to fly at night. Winsome as it is, a few customers noted that it’s batteries tend to overheat.
14. Eachine H8 Mini
The Eachine H8, like the 10C mini, comes armed with a 2MP camera. Headless mode makes it unnecessary to adjust the craft’s position before flight.The key to return feature helps you to keep track of the aircraft, which does 360-degree flips. Everything said pilots should note that an experience customer had controller issues.
15. Eachine H8C
The Eachine H8C is both a functional quadcopter and a fabulous toy. It takes stunning aerial shots with a 2MP camera. With headless mode, there is no need for pilots to adjust the craft before it flies. The one-key return function ensures that the drone never gets lost. Besides this, it does jaw-dropping 360-degree flips. Pilots should remember not to overcharge it or its motor will over heat.
16. Eachine H8S 3D
The Eachine H8S 3D wows audiences with its inverted flight ability. This super craft rolls 180 degrees and executes 3D flips. Headless mode makes it unnecessary to adjust the aircraft’s head before the flight. Its airframe is light but does not damage easily. It has many excellent features, but do remember not to charge it for too long; it may overheat.
17. Echoman Mini RC Quadcopter
The Echoman RC quadcopter is a blessing for both pilots and photographers. It comes equipped with a biometric pressure sensor that allows pilots to hover the craft from a set height. With FPV, you can take images in real time. It moves in four directions and does mind-blowing 360-degree flips as well. A six-axis gyro system keeps it stable. Fantastic as it is, its network is quite hard to configure.
18. Estes 4606 Proto X Nano
The Estes 4606 has a plastic body and LED lights, which indicate the back and front of the craft. The lights herald the aircraft’s presence, which is helpful when it is flying at low altitudes. It comes with a LiPo battery, a USB charger cord, spare rotor blades and a handy set of instructions. Note that its motors may be hard to replace.
19. Estes Syncro X Nano
Fly the Estes Synchro X Nano right out of the box. This craft is lightweight but highly durable. It counts on four micro-motors to give it an outstanding performance. Charge it with a USB cord. It is a nifty drone, but pilots should note a few reviews which mention durability issues.
20. FQ FQ777-124 Pocket Drone
The developers of this sleek, black pocket drone had pilots’ interests in mind. It flies in three different modes, which makes it an ideal craft for both beginners and experts. It comes with rotor protectors and landing gear, which protect it from crashing. Headless security ensures that users never have to reposition the craft. It is a well-crafted drone, though some customers mentioned reduced power retention.
21. Geek Toys Waterproof RC Drone
The GeekToys quadcopter is a one-of-a-kind device that can stay submerged in 7 inch (20cm) deep water. A transmitter can control it at a 320 ft (100m) distance. It flies to a height of an astonishing 250 ft (80m). Charge it for an hour, and it is ready to fly. It may be powerful but do note possible durability issues.
22. GoolRC T10 Nano
The wireless technology of this nifty quadcopter prevents other drone signals from disrupting it. With a nano-sized protector guard, it is suitable for indoor flight. The one-key return feature ensures that pilots will not lose it for long. It launches with one throw. A six-axis gyro-stabilization feature gives it steady flight. Remember, though that it may be hard to control.
23. GP – NextX 993 Quadcopter
The NextX is one of the safest drones to fly. A protective board shuts it off in the event of a crash. Headless mode locks the drone in a take-off position. Portable, it is capable of 360-degree flips and rolls. While it has many good points, note that it may be hard to charge.
24. Haktoys S611 Storm Ryde
The Haktoys S611 is a drone that suits beginners to a T. It performs flips and rolls in all directions, yet flies steadily because of its six-axis gyro-stabilization system. It comes with a powerful 3.7-volt battery. Fly it in winds of up to 5mph.
25. HobbyZone Faze Quadcopter
The HobbyZone Faze is a compact quadcopter that weighs a light 12.2 grams. The flip mode enables it to execute flips and rolls that will thrill audiences. It communicates with the transmitter in three different ways.
26. Holy Stone HS170 Predator
The Holy Stone HS170, with a wind-resistant control range of about 160 ft (50 meters) and a six-axis gyro stabilization system, is one of the steadiest mini-drones available. The machine’s 2.4 GHz wireless technology blocks signals from other transmitters, so the drone will never fly off course. It stays in the air for about eight minutes, longer than most mini-drones. However, do note that some users mentioned that users could not control it.
27. Hosim Aviax Waterproof Drone
Hosim made the H20 Aviax for pilots, photographers, and swimmers. It stays submerged in water of up to 2.3 ft (70 cm). In Open This mode, the craft launches instantly, wherever it is. A gyroscope gives it stability, and a waterproof camera captures sharp HD shots. Its transmitter has a crystal display for data transmission. Despite its incredible qualities, note that it can be difficult to assemble.
28. Hubsan Q4 H111 Nano
Do not let this charming drone fool you. Cute as it is, it does 360-degree flips that will make your head spin. A six-axis gyro stabilization system keeps it steady. Flashing LED lights allow you to identify it in the night sky. A pilot should be careful when putting this drone together, to prevent the motor burning his fingers.
29. Hubsan X4 H107C
The H107C is a compact, capable drone that delights all pilots. An adjustable six-axis gyro-stabilization feature permits stable flight across four different channels. A 0.3 MP camera records footage without annoying lines. It flips in four different directions. Adorable as it is, it may be hard to calibrate. Though this is an excellent drone, note that Hubsan can be hard to contact if it is faulty.
30. Hubsan X4 H107L
The Royal Blue H107L is one of the most user-friendly drones to date. Six-axis gyro stabilization ensures that it never veers or shakes. Equipped with four-way directional control and two different flight modes. It is comfortable for both novices and experts to use. This drone is efficient if you control it well. Note that a user mentioned that his drone flew randomly.
31. Hubsan X4 Hornet
This little hornet can sail through the air for eleven minutes, longer than its mini-drone counterparts. Unlike other models by Hubsan, it has an altitude hold feature, which allows it to stay within a set height limit. LED lights enable you to identify it at night.
32. HVR Mini Drone
This mini quadcopter is user-friendly but takes some practice to get it to take to the air. The transmitter that it comes with is manageable by novice pilots. The flips and rolls that this little drone does make it the ace of the skies. This small wonder takes clear aerial snapshots. It is an innovative drone, though a few customers mentioned durability issues.
33. Inguity Max Micro Drone
This flexible toy is a real acrobat. Its durable frame resists crashes. Internal LED lights make night flying a thrill to remember. The craft’s sturdy frame makes it ideal for flying indoors. All said, one user mentioned that she found it hard to pair the remote and the drone.
34. Ionic 2.4Ghz 6-Axis Drone
The Ionic Drone is the ‘supermodel’ of the drone industry. Its six-axis gyro stabilization system comes with posture control, and guarantees the exact position of the aircraft. With powerful batteries and monitors, it stays for a long time in the air. This white craft has a modular design, which makes it easy to assemble and repair. It is not perfect, however; one customer mentioned that he could not charge his drone.
35. JJRC H8 Mini
The JJRC H8 Mini is a functional quadcopter that is a breeze for novices to fly. The six-axis gyro-stabilization system makes it easy to control. Headless security removes the need to adjust its position before flight. Recall the drone by touching a key. The H8 Mini is functional, though its battery is difficult to detach.
36. KiiToys X-10 Mini
The KiiToys X-10, at 1.5 in (4cm) is one of the smallest drones in the world. It moves in all directions and hovers on command. It tumbles in 360-degrees. A six-axis gyro stabilization system and four dynamic micro-motors give it stable flight. Some users complained that the instruction booklet it comes with is too small for them to read.
37. KiiToys X-10 Mini UFO Drone
This drone is a prop right out of Star Trek. Let its unique UFO design blow you away. It does 3D flips, and Headless mode ensures that it never gets lost. The 2.4 GHz, four-channel transmitter is user-friendly and controls the drone from a long distance. It does not have a power-on switch, which makes it inconvenient to start.
38. Luxon Quark RC Quadcopter
The Luxon Quark is a high-quality, durable drone. The six-axis gyro-stabilization system allows it to fly in all conditions. It has an adapted wireless system to prevent signal interference. It has integrated propeller guards so you can fly without fear.
39. Maxbo YD-921 Explorers
The Maxbo YD 921 is one of the most reliable drones to date. Its six-axis gyro-stabilization system comes with posture control. The high-power battery gives it a longer flight time. Four motors ensure its stability.
40. Metakoo Bee Pocket Quadcopter
The Metakoo Bee’s intelligence will astound you. It senses changes in air pressure, and can fly at a constant height. It operates in three adjustable speed modes and lands with one touch. This intuitive drone issues a warning when it has no power. Some customers questioned the durability of the materials.
41. Mota Jetjat Nano Drone
This world famous drone has graced the covers of Wired Magazine. It is one of the smallest quadcopters to date. It fits snugly into the controller, which makes it portable. It flies in four channels and, a powerful battery keeps it in the air for a long time. Some customers mention that its thrust is uneven.
42. PowerLead Phad iDrone CVT02
The CVT02, at 1.27oz (36g), is one of the lightest drones to date. The adjustable six-axis gyro stabilization system permits steady flight. Record images with its 2.0 MP camera. It flips four ways and stays in the air for a relatively long six minutes. Power is a concern when buying this drone. A customer reflected that his did not come with a battery.
43. Protocol Neo-Drone
The Protocol Neo-drone is one of the most responsive drones you can find. It moves in six different directions, at three selectable speeds. It communicates with the transmitter at a wavelength of 2.4Ghz. A customer remarked that the battery compartment of this drone is inconvenient to detach; it requires the tiniest screwdriver you can find.
44. QuadPro CM5 Mini
This little device is a photographer’s dream. It records images and videos when you click on the ‘convert” button. Besides doing 360-degree flips and rolls, it has a host of quirky technology gifts. It is capable of flying at high speeds and remains in the air for about seven minutes. A disadvantage of this drone is that it does not have live video.
45. Quadpro NC5 Nano
With a speed flip and professional multi-fly function, the NC5 flips and turns in every direction possible. A six-axis stabilization system keeps it steady. It moves at high speeds. The drone is not sturdy enough to hold a camera, which disappointed some customers.
46. RC Stunt Drone
With a reinforced screw, this durable fellow is almost crash proof. If you have a second battery, it can stay in the air for about 12 minutes. It is safe in the hands of both experts and beginners. It does 360-degree flips that many drone owners will envy. It has adjustable speed. Some users mentioned that the batteries did not last as long as they hoped.
47. Spy Drone X007
The Spy Drone is the ultimate photography tool. It comes with an HD Spy Camera that can take magazine-worthy photos. A six-axis design gives it stability. It flies at different speeds, adjustable via a spectrum speed controller. It has a compact, durable frame that withstands crashes. One drawback of this drone is that it can be a task to hover.
48. Syma X1
The Syma X1 will turn you into a professional pilot. It does flexible pirouettes, rolls, and flips. It comes with the latest 2.4 GHz technology, which removes interference. It has a longer control distance as well. The adjustable speed mode makes it fun for anyone to fly.
49. Syma X11 Mini
The GoolRC is another intuitive drone by Syma. A six-axis gyro-stabilization system permits stable flight. This light, durable drone flips four ways. However, manufacturers may not have packaged it well. One mentioned that the drone arrived at his doorstep with no battery.
50. Syma x12s Nano
The X 12 Mni is an intuitive creation by Syma. The company has adapted 2.4 GHz technology for anti-interference so that you can fly a few helicopters at once. 360-degree rotation gives it flexibility and allows it to execute perfect performances. It warns you when its battery is almost flat. These draws aside; one customer pointed out that one propeller on his drone seemed to turn slower than the others.
51. SYMA X5C Explorers
The X5C is one of Syma’s durable creations. It does flips and rolls with one click. The drone flies well despite strong gusts of wind; it has a six-axis gyro stabilization system that keeps it stable. One of its drawbacks is that it has a small communication range.
52. Syma X5SW Explorers 2
The X5SW is one of Syma’s most intuitive drones. The drone can fly forward even if its nose does not point that way. A six-axis system allows it to fly steadily, while an HD camera captures engaging aerial shots. FPV allows pilots to view and edit them in real time. Some customers remarked that it does not come completely assembled.
53. Syma X9 Fly Car
The X9 is a drone before its time. With a 2-in-1 fly and drive function, it can command the air and the ground. Four-axis structure allows flexibility and rapid movement, while 360-degree eversion allows continuous rolls. A six-axis system keeps it stable. Note that a few users mentioned that they found it hard to control.
54. Sys GPtoys F8
The GP Toys Drone is an intuitive creation by SYS. It flies in all directions and can do continuous rolls. It conforms to various flight modes, which gives it stability. Its transmitter is much faster than other drones in its price range. A few users realized that it has durability issues.
55. Tec Bean Mini Pocket Drone
The TEC Bean Mini Pocket drone fits into its controller like a glove. With Headless mode, pilots do not have to adjust the drone’s head before a flight, and can launch it by hand. Note that a customer reported a faulty connection between the remote and the drone.
56. Tec Bean X902 Spider
The X902’s standout feature is its unique, spider-like design. Pilots can click on a switch to adjust the speed. A six-axis system enables it to perform exhilarating 3D flips steadily. A protective frame enhances its durability. A customer reported that he found it hard to make it fly straight.
57. UDI Freedom U32
The Freedom U32 mini drone is a considerable force. It has powerful motors, which allow it to stay in the air for a long while. The sturdy, hardy plastic frame protects the propellers from damage. UDI provides two batteries, which give the drone a total of 20 minutes in the air. Customers reported that its blades, which point downwards, pick up hair easily.
58. UDI RC U27
This drone shocks friends with its unbelievable acrobatics; the RC U27 flies upside down in Inverted mode. With headless mode, pilots do not need to turn the drone in a forward direction before launching it. Six-axis gyro keeps it steady, and high-capacity batteries give it a strong performance. What is the only drawback of this drone? Durability. Some customers reported that its propellers kept coming off.
59. UDI RC U839
The U838 does 360-degree turns without missing a beat; UDI has optimized it for fun. Pilots can swap the flight battery for its lithium battery as they use the same power pack. Light, it is easy enough for a novice pilot to fly. A customer noted that his had a weak rear motor.
60. UDI U840 Mini
This trendy drone is the perfect gift; it comes with a clear case for showing off. Compact, it is about two times the size of a coin. Roll and flip it in all directions. A six-axis gyro-stabilization system makes it ideal for beginners. A user noted that the batteries which came with his drone did not fit into the battery compartment.
61. Urge Basics Quadcopter
The Urge Basics has an apt name; it satisfies anyone with an urge to fly a quadcopter, no matter his skill level. Its strong HBS body does not break easily. Propeller guards protect it from crashes, and it performs flips on command. A six-axis gyro-stabilization system makes it easy for beginners to use. One frustrated customer remarked that the spring was missing from the battery compartment of his drone.
62. Yu Xiang 668-A4 Mini
This compact, lightweight drone will not disappoint you. It has a crash-friendly frame and communicates efficiently with its transmitter at 2.4GHz. A 360-degree eversion feature makes it possible for anyone to play with this drone. A customer noted that his drone did not hover.
List of drones between $50-$200
This category of drones comprises quadcopters that cost between $50 to $200. They are a little bigger than mini-drones and suit pilots who wish to fly larger aerial devices on a restricted budget. Many of them have an impressive list of features which will delight users and their friends.
1. Aeroblade RT5000
Few quadcopters are as intuitive as the Aeroblade RT5000. This mega-drone flies in all directions and comes equipped with an HD camera that takes clear aerial images. In the RT5000 package is an extra set of blades, so pilots do not need to worry about durability. Its draws aside, do note one user’s observation that his drone’s motherboard burned quickly.
2. Akaso K88 Quadcopter
The Akaso K88 is an intuitive quadcopter that has delighted customers the world over. It comes with a six-axis gyro system for strong stability. This drone can do 3D flips, so it is ideal for both beginners and experts. The aircraft’s blades have solder protection, which protects it from a collision. A built-in HD camera captures sharp images, Reliable though it is, note that it may have occasional connectivity problems.
3. Ares Ethos AZSZ2500
The AZSZ 2500 Ethos HD comes ready to fly. The Aegis six-axis flight stabilization system includes a camera which captures 1080p videos. The anti-vibration mount prevents a jello effect. The parts for this drone are readily available at Hobbyzone Stores. Note that a few customers raised durability issues.
4. AVA Drone
The AXA drone comes with a 720p camera that enables FPV viewing. Pilots can see what the drone does in real time. It hovers automatically and launches with the touch of one key. It comes with four replacement blades, so pilots need not worry about buying spare parts.
5. Babadio 2 Quadcopter
This drone comes with an electronic compass and returns to its take-off point with the touch of a key, so it will never get lost. A six-axis stability function makes it a breeze for a novice to control. Pilots can manage it from their IPhones or tablets. The drone’s cool features aside, a customer mentioned that only three propellers on his drone turned.
6. Babrit Elite Flying Car
The Babrit, with four motors, is a powerhouse. It achieves all kinds of stable flight movements with the help of a six-axis gyro flight system. It does 360-degree flips like a dream. A built-in HD camera allows pilots to record exciting moments. Dynamic as it is, note that a customer commented on its flimsy accessories.
7. Babrit Mast
The Mast is one of Babrit’s most intuitive creations. An adjustable six-axis gyro stabilization system gives it stable flight. A resilient, yet light frame ensures durability. Pilots can record its movements with its 2MP camera. Before buying this drone, note that a customer mentioned that his device came without an SD card.
8. Babrit Uplay Quadcopter
Brit does not disappoint with the Uplay. It comes with FPV transmission, so pilots can edit footage as the drone captures it. With Headless mode, pilots do not have to adjust the drone’s position before it flies. It returns to its take-off point with the touch of a button and will not remain out of sight for long. A six-axis gyro system keeps it stable while it does 360-degree turns.
9. Blade 180 QX
The Blade 180 QX merges quadcopter innovations with astounding HD ability. With SAFE (Sensor Assisted Flight Envelope) technology, the craft is aware of its altitude and is easy for a novice to control. Durable, it flies both indoors and outdoors. Though it is innovative, note that a customer questioned the quality of its camera.
10. Blade Nano QX
The Blade Nano QX, like the 180QX, is an intuitive quadcopter that is small enough to fly anywhere. Brushed motors lift it efficiently. With a tough, lightweight airframe, pilots need not fear it crashing.
11. Blade Nano QX2
The QX2 is a classic example |
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“We always keep an eye on what we have, and we know we have two high draft picks (ninth and 11th) coming up next year, that certainly helps,” he explains. “The other thing is we have some strength at the lower levels of the minor leagues, especially on the Bluefield team and in the Gulf Coast League. The prospects that are further away typically don’t carry as much value, rightfully so, but we’re pretty high on some of those guys. It takes a few years to build their value in the industry and those aren’t players that necessarily are going to be a centre-piece to a deal either way.”
Though there has been much consternation in the Blue Jays fan base about the prospects Anthopoulos dealt away last winter, he notes that such moves are part of managing “prospect capital.”
“The likelihood is some will become very good players, and some won’t pan out at all, and we’ve seen that with big-league players we’ve had aspirations for,” he adds. “They are capital because they can be used in trades.”
Still, the Blue Jays must be careful to not use up all their currency as they try to adequately support their payroll commitments this winter, which is why free agency may carry more appeal.
Adding to that incentive is the fact that by finishing among the 10 worst teams in baseball in 2013—they were 21st overall at 74-88—their first-round pick is protected in the event they want to pursue a qualified free agent, like Santana or Ubaldo Jimenez. The Blue Jays would surrender a second-round pick for signing such a player, which allows them to aim higher in the free agent market.
“That helps quite a bit,” says Anthopoulos. “When you have a chance to get multiple years of a free agent, and it’s a now big-league player. I think almost every team would do that. We’re not happy with the way the year went, but now in the off-season it’s to our advantage that we don’t have to surrender a first-round pick.”
Keep in mind it was last year at the GM meetings where the blockbusters with the Marlins and Mets first took root. Things may be about to get interesting for the Blue Jays and their general manager once again.Work to expand the 5 Freeway in southern LA county ramps up today and that's a good thing according to the Daily News, which maybe forgot the misery commuters and Westside residents have endured during the looooong 405 widening project. Politicians and the Automobile Club also have glowing praise for the 5 project, which will add four lanes, two in each direction, on an approximately seven-mile stretch, from the 605 to the Orange County line (there will be one carpool lane in each direction). While this stretch of the 5 is currently only three lanes in each direction and often slow-moving, "There is no panacea in adding lanes," Bart Reed of the Transit Coalition points out (more capacity usually just means drivers), adding that everyone bitches about the costs and headaches of a high-speed rail line, but no one bats an eye at freeway widening--this project will cost $1.6 billion, while the 405 project cost $1 billion, is over budget by an undisclosed amount, and is still not finished. Work on the 5 widening won't end until 2018--assuming no delays--and one company has already backed out of relocating to La Mirada because of the construction hassle, but the mayor thinks the project is still worth it.
· I-5 widening project will connect L.A. to Orange County in a bigger way [Daily News]The Atlantic sent Joe Pugliese to SpaceX for its Technology Issue, where he photographed CEO and CTO Elon Musk.
"He is a maverick," Pugliese said of Musk, also CEO of Tesla Motors and cofounder of PayPal. "During the shoot, he was intensely focused and gave us the exact amount of time allotted." For the cover image, Pugliese set up a studio at SpaceX and handed Musk a sextant. "But then, I wanted to depict everything he's doing by showing the facility, the rockets, and incorporating Tesla – headquartered in the next warehouse over," he explained. "I asked if a Tesla car could be brought into SpaceX; it was one of those requests that could be ridiculous, though you never know, and the staff said it was no problem. And they brought over Elon's own car... it says 'The Founder' on the back... and tossed the keys to my team so we could reposition it."
Pugliese's lights were placed on the ladders leading up to the half-built rockets in the background. "Again, we never imagined getting close to any of this," he remarked. "I expected more bureaucratic red tape; however, because it's a private company, SpaceX follows a different set of rules. We were welcomed guests."
"It's clear that Elon is going to be remembered for his inventions and his influence in the technology world for generations to come," Pugliese added. "And one of the most important things to me as a portrait photographer is to capture the most important people of our time."The covers of the first two volumes of "Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction" The books are just the right size, not too big, not too small. Just right for a traveller’s pocket. On the cover are beautiful illustrations of women who are characters in all kinds of stories – romance, thrillers, science fiction and crime. In sharp contrast, the inner pages are of cheaper, low quality paper or “pulp”. Welcome to the world of pulp fiction. While the world is awed by Indian writers in English such as Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri, there is a world of vibrant literature nestled away from plain sight: racy short-fiction in the regional languages. One of the centres of the parallel cultural universe of popular writing in Tamil is Coimbatore-based writer, Rajesh Kumar. One of India’s most prolific writers, he has to his credit at -at least 1,500 novels. A Botany graduate from the Government Arts College, Coimbatore, Kumar’s first story was published in the college magazine. He also dabbled in teaching for five years after obtaining a B.Ed degree from Ramakrishna Vidyalaya, before quitting (reportedly) of boredom. Judging by his safari suit and retro-style spectacles, Kumar is like a visit from the past - the 1980s to be more specific. He first began writing in 1968. Today, he’s 69 years old and still churns out three novels a month. What set him apart from other writers were his childhood travels with his father, a handloom merchant, which took him across India and found its way into his books. “Most writers then wrote stories based in Chennai or Tamil Nadu. My stories were based on the locations that I travelled like Bombay, Nasik, Pune,” Kumar says. Real-life events too form the material for his work. “I look at newspapers, read crime stories. Many of my female fans call me up and tell me about issues they face with their bosses and husbands on sex and torture,” he adds. Although he writes on steamy love stories, science-fiction, detective stories and crime thrillers, it was the last genre that captivated him the most. Similar to a Holmes-Watson pair, Rajesh Kumar often features his favourite couple, Vivek and Roobala who solve crime together. Vivek is a special crime branch officer who ends up marrying Roobala, his love interest. He has approached the Guinness World Record association to replace L Ron Hubbard who has authored 1084 novels as the holder of the record for most published works by one author. Apart from his pocket-sized novels, his stories have been published in serial form by Tamil magazines like Kumudam, Vikatan and other publications. Priced at Rs. 2 decades ago, even today a 100-page novel costs Rs. 20. Into the English World Although the more “serious” Tamil literature has been translated into English, an entire chunk of this genre of Tamil writing catering to the crowds of living the by-lanes of villages and towns has been lost to non-Tamil speaking communities. But that changed with the publication of “The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction” in 2008. Edited by Rakesh Kumar and translated by Pritham Chakravarthy, the collection has some of the best works of writers such as Rajesh Kumar, Vidya Subramaniam, Indra Soundar rajan and Pushpa Thangadorai. Tamil writer, Rajesh Kumar In the translator’s note, Chakravarthy writes about the sheer vastness of pulp fiction when she and Kumar decided to come up with the collection. “The corpus of pulp literature that has been produced for Tamil readers is vast, and there is no hope of providing a representative sample in a single volume,” she said in an email interview. The anthology has stories from the late 1960s to the present day in two volumes. A dying breed? Rajesh Kumar rues that though Tamil authors like Pattukotai Prabakar and Indira Soundarajan and he were still writing, there was no one else to take the genre forward. “There is no generation of writers after us. It’s just us… Involvement, dedication, and patience are required for this. That’s why we don’t have writers anymore,” says Kumar, adding that nowadays people were more interested in script-writing for cinema, causing fiction-writing to suffer. The release of the third anthology of "Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction" is in the docks, with a shout out for help in getting the book released via a crowdfunding campaign. Editor, Rakesh Khanna says that the idea came from similar campaigns in other countries for anthologies of "genre fiction" where people buy the book in advance allowing its makers enough money to bring out the book. "Though our first two anthologies were quite popular, the job of following up with distributors to make sure bookstores got restocked was tiring, and trying to collect the money from sales was maddeningly hard. We were getting lots of requests for a Volume 3, and we wanted to make the book," said Khanna. Chakravarthy too feels that Tamil pulp fiction writers are a dying breed. “For one thing, the writing is the same all over. Not just in Tamil fiction. With so many writers jumping to another media, it is inevitable that they have begun writing to a formula,” she says. She also agrees with his views that cinema was affecting the publishing world. “Rajesh Kumar is correct in saying that there might not be a future to the publishing industry. Today every one across the world writes for a prospective film project dream; this includes Dan Brown,” she said. It appears that this includes Kumar as well. Although his main focus remains writing, Kumar has written the screenplay and dialogue for the Sarath Kumar-starrer “Sandamarutham”. But the genre may survive Literature has always had links with cinema, and pulp fiction is no different. A movie based on Kumar’s famous crime novel Velvet Crimes published in Kumudam magazine may be on the cards. Based on the missing flight in Malaysia, the novel has attracted the attention of actor Prabhu Deva who is said to be keen on adapting it to the silver screen. Another of Kumar’s crime novels has been adapted into a weekend serial called “Chinnathirai” which is telecast on Kalaignar TV. Sheer popularity make crime fiction and pulp literature hard to ignore. The genres may survive yet, but in different avatars. (Image courtesy: indiegogo.com)Bicycle Day
April 19, 1943, Hofmann performed a self-experiment to determine the true effects of LSD, intentionally ingesting 0.25 milligrams (250 micrograms) of the substance, an amount he predicted to be a threshold dose (an actual threshold dose is 20 micrograms). Less than an hour later, Hofmann experienced sudden and intense changes in perception. He asked his laboratory assistant to escort him home and, as use of motor vehicles was prohibited because of wartime restrictions, they had to make the journey on a bicycle. On the way, Hofmann’s condition rapidly deteriorated as he struggled with feelings of anxiety, alternating in his beliefs that the next-door neighbor was a malevolent witch, that he was going insane, and that the LSD had poisoned him. When the house doctor arrived, however, he could detect no physical abnormalities, save for a pair of incredibly dilated pupils. Hofmann was reassured, and soon his terror began to give way to a sense of good fortune and enjoyment, as he later wrote…
“… little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux …”
So the psychedelic entheogen lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland on April 19, 1938. It was not until five years later that the psychedelic properties were found.
By putting this information at psybient.org we are in no way advise people to experiment with this or other entheogens. However, we truly believe in the importance of discovering of this molecule, as well as in the high impact that this event made on the psychedelic and alternative culture.
If you are new to this subject, we encourage you to read wikipedia page and look for more information in internet.
In any case, LET’S CELEBRATE THIS DAY TOGETHER, in a conscious way, let’s pray and meditate for the better world, the world with no wars, the world with friendship and unity between humans, the world where people are taking time to be creative and animating the life with colours of love!
Bicycle Ride mix by Gagarin Project
Special mix was recorded by Gagarin Project for a celebration of this happening, we propose you tot listen to this short psychill ethno dubby mix, recorded live on 19th april 2012. Enjoy the ride! Much love and gratitude to all the artists and labels presented in this mix. Tracklist and download => here.OK, every serious baseball fan knows that the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in surely the most second-guessed transaction in American sports history. And many are confident they know the relevant details that led Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, a Broadway impresario, to trade Ruth to help fund a production of the musical “No, No Nanette.” But the real facts are thoroughly laid out in “The Selling of the Babe” by Glenn Stout, a historian who has previously written “Red Sox Century” and “Yankee Century.” The deal did more than affect the long-range trajectories of the two teams involved, it may have saved baseball from the stain of the “Black Sox” scandal and provided it with the perfect slugging icon as the home-run-stingy Deadball Era was ending.
Here’s an excerpt from The Selling of the Babe:
“In New York the upper crust didn’t just invite Ruth out, they often came to him. Many evenings he didn’t even bother to go out at all but held court in his suite at the Ansonia as dozens of newfound friends and admirers drank his liquor, ate his sandwiches, and fought for his attention. Even the press was welcome inside, a measure of the ease he felt being himself in their presence. The only one not enjoying everything was Mrs. Ruth, who was often left alone in the corner. The Babe was on an elevator going up fast and there just wasn’t room for her on the car.
“It helped that Ruth could, to a degree, play and look the part. In Boston, he had favored straw hats; in New York he wore a stylish driving cap, a camel’s hair coat, a brand-new silk shirt every day of the week, had his shoes polished, drove a sleek Packard, and smoked expensive cigars. Among the high and mighty Ruth’s crude manner and off-color way of speaking was considered deliciously scandalous, something one had to witness in person, an experience to collect like a rare orchid.”For the CIA-led conspiracy, see Safari Club
Safari Club International (SCI) is an international organization composed of hunters dedicated to protecting the freedom to hunt. SCI has more than 50,000 members and 180 local chapters. SCI members agree to abide by the organization's code of ethics which includes making a positive contribution to wildlife and ecosystems, complying with game laws and assisting game and fish officers. However, there are reports of Safari Club International members applying incredible cruel death to animals only for submitting a number to a hunting record book,[1][2] and even a former president of the club engaged in unethical hunting practices and poaching.[3]
Leadership [ edit ]
Safari Club International was founded by C.J. McElroy and fellow hunters in 1972. Early chapters were founded in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Arizona, and Mississippi. McElroy was an accomplished hunter, hunting on 6 continents and in nearly 50 countries with over 200 record book specimens. However, McElroy was forced to resign in 1988 and Bill Quimby, a past President of SCI, writes in his book "Safari Club International" that there were rumors among hunters that McElroy "ignored hunting laws," that McElroy was even accused of killing a Rocky Mountain bighorn ram in a national park, and that his "ideas of sportsmanship and ethics simply were different from those of hunters who came along later.
"SCI's organizational structure is composed of the President, Vice President, and regional directors at large, all elected to their posts from within the membership. Presidents are elected to a term of 1 year, Vice Presidents to a term of 2 years. The organization's headquarters is in Tucson, Arizona. Safari Club International holds an annual convention in conjunction with their Ultimate Hunters' Market exhibition.
Conservation projects [ edit ]
SCI conservation and education programs are conducted by Safari Club International Foundation, a non-profit organization "dedicated to wildlife conservation, outdoor education, and humanitarian services."[4] Although this foundation was set up by SCI and shares board members with SCI, it is a separate legal entity.
Humanitarian services [ edit ]
Sportsmen Against Hunger began in 1989,[5] and through the network of SCI chapters, provides food banks with meat from harvested animals. In 2006, over 250,000 pounds of wild game were donated to charitable relief organizations.[5] The Sensory Safari program allows sight-impaired individuals to get a “visual” perspective of what animals are like by feeling mounts, skins, skulls, horns, and antlers.[6] The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) asked SCIF to host a Sensory Safari at its annual convention. In 1997, the NFB signed a memorandum of understanding with SCI to host Sensory Safaris at all future NFB national and state conventions.[7] Hunters who participate in the SafariCare program take bags filled by SCI chapter with medical, school, and relief supplies to clinics and schools in remote regions of the developing world.[8] The SafariWish program, part of the SafariCare program, is designed to give children with life-threatening illnesses a chance to go hunting.[8] The Disabled Hunter program, through SCI chapters, provides sponsorship for hunting trips for disabled sportsmen.[9]
Annual hunters convention [ edit ]
Taxidermy display from SCI 2011 Hunter's convention
Since 1973, SCI has hosted an Annual hunters convention. In 2013, over 25,000 SCI members, and 1,000 exhibitors participated in the convention.[10]
Publications [ edit ]
The organization publishes a bi-monthly magazine titled Safari that features hunting stories, issues affecting the hunting sportsman, reviews of books and equipment, as well as conservation reports. Safari has a special awards issue, which honors trophy hunters each year.
The news publication of the organization is Safari Times.
Awards [ edit ]
The Safari Club International Record Book is the largest such record keeping system in the world. Trophies are measured and listed according to size (horns, antlers, tusks, and/or body size) where taken (free range or estate), how taken (bow and arrow, rifle, muzzleloader) and whether typical or non-typical for the species. Medals and awards are presented dependent on ranking within species. This book ranks every species of game animal using the SCI official scoring method. “Highest scores go to the animals with the largest measurements.”[11] Awards ceremonies are held at the annual Safari Club Convention, Night of the Hunter event.
Political lobbying [ edit ]
In 1979, when SCI was fairly new, it sought government approval to import 1,125 trophies from 40 different species (gorillas, cheetahs, tigers, orangutans, snow leopards, and others) into the US for "scientific research and incentive for propagation and survival of the species." Because the animals were to be hunted, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied the request.[12]
Polar bear imports [ edit ]
In 1994, SCI successfully lobbied for a change in the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act 1972 to allow for the importation of previously banned sport-hunted polar bear trophies into the United States from Canada.[13] In 2007, SCI testified at a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service hearing opposing the proposed listing of polar bears as a "threatened" species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The FWS is concerned that climate change is or will place polar bears at risk of extinction.[14] SCI/SCIF argued that the science cited by the FWS was speculative and incomplete at the time. Relatively healthy populations of polar bears exist in the areas where hunting is allowed and it said that sport hunting of these populations would provide funding for habitat and study as well as income for native populations. SCI stated, "[...] [T]he U.S. decision to list will merely change the identity of those who hunt the animals from U.S. hunters to exclusively native residents[...]"[15]
Criticism [ edit ]
Endangered species [ edit ]
SCI has been criticized by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for supporting the hunting of endangered African antelope species at game ranches in Texas and Florida and for giving awards for hunting African leopards, elephants, lions, rhinos and buffaloes.[16]
SCI, along with other hunting and non-hunting organizations, intervened in a federal suit where HSUS challenged regulations that allow hunting of captive scimitar-horned oryx, dama gazelle and addax. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) found that, “[c]aptive breeding in the United States has enhanced the propagation or survival of the scimitar-horned oryx, addax, and dama gazelle worldwide by rescuing these species from near extinctions and providing the founder stock necessary for reintroduction. The scimitar-horned oryx is extinct in the wild across its range in North Africa, having been last seen in Niger and Chad in the mid-1980s. The dama gazelle and addax are rumored to exist in only a few small and highly fragmented populations in the most remote parts of the Sahara Desert. However, healthy populations of all three species still exist in the United States.[17] Sport hunting of surplus, captive-bred animals generates revenue that supports these captive-breeding operations and may relieve hunting pressure on wild populations.”[18] As of February 2008, this case is still pending.[19] In the case of the black rhino, 83% of those countries represented at the 2004 CITES meeting approved sport hunting of the species in very limited numbers.[20]
Members engaged in unethical hunting practices and poaching [ edit ]
Ken Behring was a former president of SCI and was at one time its largest donor. He has made multiple safari trips to East Africa, and has shot lions, leopards, rhinoceroses, an elephant, and an endangered bighorn sheep. Behring has been criticized for his trophy hunting practices and animal conservation ethics.[21]
In 1997, Behring shot an endangered Kara Tau argali sheep in Kazakhstan (only 100 remained in the world at the time).[22] Behring claimed he had permits to shoot the sheep and had Russian scientists in his hunting party; he was issued export permits two days before the enactment of a prior international decision to move Kara Tau argali to the most-endangered status.[42][citation needed] Per American law, the remains of the endangered animal could not be legally imported into the United States. Behring donated $20 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History six weeks later, offering his private collection of stuffed hunting trophies to the museum, including four rare bighorn sheep, one of which was the Kara Tau argali sheep. The Smithsonian attempted to import the remains by petitioning the Department of the Interior for an Endangered Species Act waiver, but withdrew its request after questioning and negative publicity from Representative George Miller and groups like the Humane Society of the United States. Behring maintained that he had broken no laws, and had shot the animal legally while assisting Kazakh scientists. The National Museum of Natural History subsequently reevaluated their acquisitions policies in light of the charges.[23]
In 1998, Behring shot and killed an elephant in Mozambique, where the sport killing of elephants was banned in 1990.[24] His hunting companions, the then past and current presidents of Safari Club International, killed two more elephants. Mozambican wildlife officials believed that the group had come "to survey investment opportunities" in Cabo Delgado province. The group was given a permit by the governor to shoot a lion, a leopard and a buffalo; a local wildlife official also added a note referring to "problem elephants," the only exception to the national ban on the killing of elephants. According to Arlito Cuco, head of Mozambique's wildlife service, a federal investigation showed that the hunt was illegal because it did not target problem elephants, and that two of the elephant tusks had gone missing. Local investigators also reported that the group used a helicopter during the hunt, which "drove the elephants onto their guns" -- a charge they denied. According to the New York Times, Behring's spokesperson "sent a reporter a copy of a $5,000 check, dated six weeks after the hunt and made out to the provincial government with the notation 'elephant permit.'" The then-director of the game reserve near where the elephants had been killed was skeptical, telling ABC News PrimeTime "They came in there and bankrolled an operation to take out some big elephant, and it is wrong. And nobody, nobody can condone what happened."
SCI was founded by trophy hunter C.J. McElroy, who claimed to be the greatest trophy hunter in the world. McElroy hunted in nearly fifty countries, on six continents. He killed nearly 400 trophy animals that appear in SCI's record book, including animals who are now endangered and can no longer be hunted. McElroy was forced to resign in 1988. Bill Quimby, a past President of SCI, writes in his book "Safari Club International" that there were rumors among hunters that McElroy "ignored hunting laws," that McElroy was even accused of killing a Rocky Mountain bighorn ram in a national park, and that his "ideas of sportsmanship and ethics simply were different from those of hunters who came along later."
Revenue sources [ edit ]
For the tax year ending June 2006, SCI reported $2.87 million in revenue from SCI publications; $3.17 million in membership dues; $205,967 in interest on savings and temporary investments; $75,771 from sales of assets other than inventory; $6.86 million from special events such as the annual convention; $156,014 from sales of inventory; and $6,089 miscellaneous income.[25]
In 2007, the New York legislature earmarked $50,000 of public funds for SCI.[26]Next week, AOL employees will hold one-on-one meetings with their bosses to decide if they should stay with the company or not.
Earlier today, AOL told its employees that it wants 2,500 of them to step forward and quit the company. In an email, AOL said if that number isn't hit in voluntary layoffs, management will reach it through involuntary layoffs in Q1 2010.
To encourage employees to step forward, AOL emailed this chart to employees:
Hopefully, the meetings will go in either one of two ways:
Employee: Hey boss.
Boss: Hey. If you don't quit, we're probably going to lay you off.
Employee: OK, I'll quit.
Or…
Employee: Hey boss.
Boss: Hey. Please don't quit. You're a huge part of our future here.
Employee: Show me the equity.I'm in the process of migrating my office machine's Linux installation from an old, small pair of disks to a newer and somewhat larger pair of disks. As part of this I have been doing a bunch of reading about the current state of PC technology as far as partitioning and booting goes, because getting new machines recently has made me clearly aware that BIOSes have come a long way from the old days.
There are two parts of the new world, GPT and (U)EFI. GPT is a new scheme for disk partitioning, replacing the MBR partition table and primary and extended partitions; UEFI is a new scheme for booting machines, replacing the old BIOS MBR booting. Booting with UEFI requires a GPT partition table as well as a UEFI-aware BIOS but the reverse is not the case; using GPT does not require booting with UEFI or a GPT-aware BIOS. There are two reasons to use GPT, either if you have a disk over 2TB or so (dealing with this is what GPT was introduced for) or if you ever want to boot from the disk using UEFI.
(UEFI booting requires GPT because the EFI boot spec says 'you find the boot files on a FAT-32 filesystem in the GPT partition with GUID <X>'. See also.)
As far as I can tell, at the moment your best option for booting Linux (if you have a choice) is still old fashioned BIOS MBR booting, not UEFI boot. Many Linux distributions are in the process of switching to Grub 2, but Grub 2's UEFI support is still apparently unreliable which leaves you using various other options which are likely to be less well-supported, and in general EFI booting in Linux is still relatively young. If you're a future-looking person you can start experimenting with UEFI booting on a UEFI-capable machine, but MBR booting is going to be the easier and better way to go for now because it's still the majority choice.
My new disks are nowhere near large enough to require GPT, but I'm going to use GPT partitioning anyways for future-proofing. My new office machine supports but doesn't require UEFI booting (and I'm happy with BIOS MBR booting). However, I seem to keep disks for quite some time so it's quite possible that I'll still be using these disks when I want (or need) to switch to UEFI booting (either due to a new machine or new versions of Linux). And if I want to boot these disks with UEFI someday, I need to partition them with GPT now and set up appropriate UEFI boot partitions.
(My current disks are now slightly more than five years old and have been transplanted between three machines. Barring disk failure I suspect that the new disks will have a similar lifespan, especially since I hate reinstalling machines from scratch.)
From what I can tell (eg from the gdisk documentation), a future-proof GPT disk partitioning scheme needs two special partitions: a BIOS boot partition (gdisk code EF02) and an EFI System Partition (gdisk code EF00), probably with the ESP as the first partition on the disk. The BIOS boot partition is used to give the MBR bootloader somewhere that's guaranteed safe to store its second stage code; the EFI System Partition is where EFI bootloaders go (and where the BIOS will find them). I'm currently planning to make these 4 Mbytes and 256 MBytes respectively. This is probably overkill for both, especially since I don't plan to multiboot several OSes on my machine.
(The gdisk documentation seems to be an excellent reference for all of this; it's been my primary source.)South Korean bitcoin exchange Coinone is leading a consortium with five financial institutions for technical FinTech development and cooperation.
The business consortium includes Woori Bank, Shinhan Card, Lotte Card, Daishin Securities and KICC to develop FinTech technologies and services using blockchain.
This agreement is expected to be more effective as added companies including banks, payment, securities, and startups join the consortium.
Recently, the consortium has been promoting financial services based on distributed ledger technology, which can rapidly change the financial environment, such as the collapse of the boundaries between financial companies and the launch of more internet-based services.
In particular, it is anticipated that the consortium will collaborate on planning, developing and introducing new services within South Korea, such as empowering customers in the micro-currency remittance market utilizing a blockchain foreign exchange transfer model.
The main contents of the business agreement are:
Research and development of FinTech using blockchain.
Establishment of new services for each participant on their own unique platforms.
Coordination of communication with institutional and supervisory authorities and service planning assistance.
Mr. Chan Myung Hun, CEO of Coinone, said:Anaheim goes for win No. 12 when it hosts the NHL-leading Washington Capitals at Honda Center on Monday (10 p.m. ET; SNE, SNO, CSN-DC, PRIME, FS-SD, NHL.TV).
Since Christmas, however, the Ducks are 25-4-2. And with their franchise-record 11th consecutive win Saturday, a 3-2 victory against the Los Angeles Kings, they are in first place in the Pacific Division and five points off the Western Conference lead.
Two months into the season, the Anaheim Ducks appeared to be in grave danger of missing the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
"That's the position we want to be in. We're not satisfied," forward Rickard Rakell told the Ducks website. "We want to keep the momentum going. The team is coming together. We have four lines that play solid hockey. It must be tough to match up against us."
Especially when the Ducks are on the power play. Over the course of their winning streak, Anaheim is 19-for-42 with the man-advantage (45.2 percent).
"We talk before the game and said the team that wins the special teams is probably going to win this game," Rakell told the Orange County Register after the Ducks' latest win. "It was right this time. Any time you can get help from your power play, I think it's going to help you win games."
Video: Anaheim Ducks: 11 Games, 11 Straight Wins
Here are other games that should garner plenty of attention:
Monday, March 7: Tampa Bay Lightning at Philadelphia Flyers (7 p.m. ET; SNE, SNO, SNP, TVA Sports, SUN, CSN-PH, NHL.TV) -- Tampa Bay is also scorching hot; the Lightning have won a franchise-record nine in a row and have a two-point lead on the Florida Panthers for first in the Atlantic Division. "It's special," center Tyler Johnson told the Lightning website. "You're part of the team that can do that, it's obviously pretty special. But at the same time, you've got to look at one game at a time. It doesn't really matter what we did [Saturday] when we play Philly. We've just got to focus on that now. It's kind of a weird thing; you've got to be proud of it, but at the same time you've got to forget about it [Monday]."
Monday, March 7: Boston Bruins at Florida Panthers (7:30 p.m. ET; NESN, FS-F, NHL.TV) -- Panthers forward Jaromir Jagr will attempt to pass Gordie Howe for third place on the NHL's all-time scoring list. Jagr tied Howe last Thursday when he got his 1,850th point during a 3-2 loss at the Colorado Avalanche. He was held without a point Saturday in a 5-1 loss at the Arizona Coyotes. One point separates the Bruins and Panthers in the Atlantic Division.
Tuesday, March 8: Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Islanders (7:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN, SNO, SNP, ROOT) -- The Islanders return home after going 6-1-0 on a seven-game road trip that concluded with a 6-4 win at the New York Rangers on Sunday. The Penguins have won four of their past six games and trail the Islanders by three points for third place in the Metropolitan Division; New York has two games in hand.
Tuesday, March 8: Nashville Predators at Winnipeg Jets (8 p.m. ET; FS-TN, TSN3, NHL.TV) -- Nashville enters with a 12-game point streak (8-0-4) and is six points clear for the first wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference. "When you're going out there, you've just got to win a period," coach Peter Laviolette told the Predators website. "You don't think about the scoreboard or whether you're behind, if you can just win a period, you can win a game; you might get to overtime, you get a point, you get something."
Wednesday, March 9: Chicago Blackhawks at St. Louis Blues (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, TVA Sports) -- Chicago is hoping to have forward Marian Hossa in the lineup for the first time since he sustained a lower-body injury Feb. 13. Hossa is four goals shy of 500 in his career. Two points separate first and third place in the Central Division.
Sunday, March 13: Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Rangers (12:30 p.m. ET; NBC, SN, TVA Sports) -- There will be a nationally televised audience for this matinee at Madison Square Garden. The Rangers should have goalie Henrik Lundqvist back in the fold; he did not play against the Islanders on Sunday because of neck spasms. New York coach Alain Vigneault said Lundqvist is day-to-day.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Gabriel Landeskog, Colorado Avalanche -- Landeskog scored a goal Saturday and has at least a point in six of his past eight games |
9,000 Spanish prisoners, who were relieved of their weapons. They were generally free to move around, but remained within the control of Aguinaldo. Unbeknownst to Aguinaldo, on December 10, 1898, the 1898 Treaty of Paris was signed, transferring the Philippines from Spain to the United States with a sum of $20 million.[46]
Presidency of the First Philippine Republic and Philippine-American War [ edit ]
The First Philippine Republic was formally established with the proclamation of the Malolos Constitution on January 21, 1899 in Malolos, Bulacan and endured until capture of Emilio Aguinaldo by the American forces on March 23, 1901 in Palanan, Isabela, which effectively dissolved the First Republic.
Aguinaldo boarding USS Vicksburg following his capture in 1901
On August 12, 1898, American forces captured Manila during the Battle of Manila and on August 14, 1898 established the United States Military Government of the Philippine Islands, with Major General Wesley Merritt as the first American Military Governor. On the night of February 4, 1899, a Filipino was shot by an American sentry. This incident was considered to be the beginning of the Philippine–American War, and culminated in the 1899 Battle of Manila between American and Filipino forces. Superior American technology drove Filipino troops away from the city, and Aguinaldo's government had to move from one place to another as the military situation escalated. At the battle of Marilao river, the president himself lead his forces to prevent American crossings. The Americans gained superiority in the battle only after severe fighting and the use of gunboats in the river that "made great execution" of Filipino soldiers.[49] The American official account had admitted that Aguinaldo acted with a great sense of military strategy, averting disastrous routs while succeeding to sustain heavy damage on the enemy (that is, the Americans). On November 13, 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo disbanded the regular Filipino army and decreed that guerrilla war would henceforth be the strategy. Aguinaldo led the resistance against the Americans but retreated to Northern Luzon.
On March 23, 1901, with the aid of Macabebe Scouts, led by Gen. Frederick Funston, Aguinaldo was captured in his headquarters in Palanan, Isabela.[50] One of these forces was led by Gen. Macario Sakay who established the Tagalog Republic. On April 19, 1901, Aguinaldo took an oath of allegiance to the United States, formally ending the First Republic and recognizing the sovereignty of the United States over the Philippines. After the capture of Aguinaldo, some Filipino commanders continued the revolution. On July 30, 1901, General Miguel Malvar issued a manifesto saying, "Forward, without ever turning back... All wars of independence have been obliged to suffer terrible tests!" General Malvar surrendered to U.S. forces in Lipa, Batangas on April 16, 1902. The war was formally ended by a unilateral proclamation of general amnesty by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt on July 4, 1902.[53]
American era [ edit ]
During the American period, Aguinaldo supported groups that advocated for immediate independence and helped veterans of the struggle. He organized the Asociación de los Veteranos de la Revolución (Association of Veterans of the Revolution) to secure pensions for its members and made arrangements for them to buy land on installment from the government.
Displaying the Philippine flag was declared illegal by the Sedition Act of 1907. However, the Act was amended on October 30, 1919.[54] Following this, Aguinaldo transformed his home in Kawit into a monument to the flag, the revolution and the Declaration of Independence. As of 2019, his home still stands and is known as the Aguinaldo Shrine.
Aguinaldo retired from public life for many years. In 1935, when the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established in preparation for Philippine independence, he ran for president in the Philippine presidential election, 1935, but lost by a landslide to Manuel L. Quezon.[f] The two men formally reconciled in 1941, when President Quezon moved Flag Day to June 12, to commemorate the proclamation of Philippine independence.[54]
After the combined American and Filipino troops retook the Philippines in 1945, Aguinaldo was arrested along with several others accused of collaboration with the Japanese, and jailed for some months in Bilibid prison.[55] He was released by presidential amnesty.[56]
Aguinaldo was 77 when the United States Government recognized Philippine independence in the Treaty of Manila on July 4, 1946, in accordance with the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934.[57]
Post-American era [ edit ]
In 1950, President Elpidio Quirino appointed Aguinaldo as a member of the Philippine Council of State, where he served a full term. He returned to retirement soon after, dedicating his time and attention to veteran soldiers' "interests and welfare".
He was made an honorary Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, by the University of the Philippines in 1953.
On May 12, 1962, President Diosdado Macapagal changed the celebration of Independence Day from July 4 to June 12 in order to honor Aguinaldo and the Revolution of 1898 rather than the establishment of the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands by the United States.[58][59] Although in poor health by this time, Aguinaldo attended that year's Independence Day observances.[60] On August 4, 1964, Republic Act No. 4166 officially proclaimed the twelfth day of June as the Philippine Independence Day and renamed the Fourth of July holiday to "Philippine Republic Day".[61]
Death and legacy [ edit ]
Tomb of Former President Aguinaldo in Kawit
Aguinaldo was rushed to Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City on October 5, 1962, under the care of Dr. Juana Blanco Fernandez, MD, where he stayed there for 469 days until he died of coronary thrombosis at age 94 on February 6, 1964.[7] A year before his death, he donated his lot and mansion to the government. This property now serves as a shrine to "perpetuate the spirit of the Revolution of 1896".[4]
In 1964, he published his book, "Mga Gunita ng Himagsikan" (Memoirs of the Revolution). A second publication was made in 1998 during the 100th anniversary of Philippine Independence.
In 1985, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas issued a new 5-peso bill depicting a portrait of Aguinaldo on the front. The back features the declaration of the Philippine independence on June 12, 1898. Printing was discontinued in 1996, when it was replaced with a ₱5.00 coin one year earlier (with the last production year was stamped in 1995), whose obverse features a portrait of Aguinaldo. In 2017, Andres Bonifacio, who was executed under the order of Aguinaldo, officially replaced Aguinaldo in the ₱5.00 coin.[62]
Honors [ edit ]
National Honors
Commemoration [ edit ]
General Headquarters Building of the AFP at Camp General Emilio Aguinaldo, Quezon City..
Personal life [ edit ]
On January 1, 1896, he married Hilaria del Rosario (1877–1921), this was his first wife. They had five children: Carmen Aguinaldo-Melencio, Emilio "Jun" R. Aguinaldo Jr., Maria Aguinaldo-Poblete, Cristina Aguinaldo-Suntay, and Miguel Aguinaldo. Hilaria died of leprosy on March 6, 1921 at the age of 44. Nine years later, on July 14, 1930, Aguinaldo married Maria Agoncillo (February 15, 1879 – May 29, 1963) at Barasoain Church. She died on May 29, 1963, a year before Aguinaldo himself.[64] His grandsons Emilio B. Aguinaldo III and Reynaldo Aguinaldo served three-terms as mayor (2007–2016) and vice-mayor of his hometown Kawit, Cavite, respectively. One of his great-grandsons, Joseph Emilio Abaya, was a member of the Philippine House of Representatives representing Cavite's first district (which contained their hometown, Kawit) from 2004 until his appointment as Secretary of Transportation and Communications in 2012, a post he served until 2016, while another great-grandson, Emilio "Orange" M. Aguinaldo IV, married ABS-CBN news reporter Bernadette Sembrano in 2007.
In popular culture [ edit ]
1931 an American Pre-Code documentary film Around the World in 80 Minutes with Douglas Fairbanks, Fairbanks poses and speaks for the camera as he talks with former Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo.[65]
Aguinaldo was also portrayed in various films which featured or centered on the Revolution. He was portrayed by the following actors in these films:
See also [ edit ]
Emilio Aguinaldo (seated, center) and ten of the delegates to the first Assembly of Representatives.
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Dave Chappelle
Comedian Dave Chappelle, shown in this July 2015 file photo, announced Nov. 21, 2016, that he is following up a highly rated hosting appearance this month on Saturday Night Live with a trio of concert specials that will be released on Netflix simultaneously in 2017. He and fellow comedian Chris Tucker will also perform at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans for four shows during NBA All-Star week, and Chappelle will pop-up with his 'Juke Joint' somewhere in the city Feb. 17, 2017.
(Associated Press)
With four sold-out shows at the Saenger Theater, Dave Chappelle was bound to enjoy New Orleans this week. But his extracurricular activities in the height of NBA All-Star week have put the comedian right in the center of the city's nightlife.
Chappelle and T.I. joined some musicians at Rare Form at the corner of Frenchmen Street and Esplanade Avenue for a little impromptu jam session. Rare Form manager Asia Strong wrote in an email that the duo joined the musicians inside the club's courtyard.
Chappelle, T.I. and Yonnet apparently spent their evening there listening to musicians Aaron Walker, Anthony Coleman, Phil Morin, Dave Masucci, Matt Galloway and Elmo Price before briefly joining them.
In a video posted to Instagram by French producer and harmonica player Frederic Yonnet, T.I. can be seen singing into a microphone before Chappelle yells toward the camera in his characteristic gravelly sound.
Also Chappelle, Yonnet and T.I. were Snarky Puppy's Shaun Martin and John Roberts from Stevie Wonder's and Janet Jackson's bands, according to Price. More musicians from Danny Abel and Friends' set at the Maison just down Frenchmen Street also made appearances.
Chappelle has two more performances on the Saenger's stage before apparently heading to another performance at a secret location in town. Yonnet posted a photo to his Instagram announcing "Dave Chappelle's Juke Joint, which will feature himself plus A Band With No Name, DJ Nice and DJ Trauma at an undisclosed location in the city later Friday night. Tickets are available for $75 through Brown Paper Tickets.
The Juke Joint shows, according to OkayPlayer, "(pop) up whenever it seems it's been a tad too long, and gathers some of the most brilliant minds in comedy, music, fashion, film, and in this year's case, magic, to party with the barn door open."
One such pop-up in Dayton, Ohio, included a guest list that featured, according to the website, Q-Tip, Jarobi White, Bradley Cooper, David Blaine, John Legend, Donnel Rawlings and Cipha Sounds.In what may be the most expensive "spontaneous" outburst of grassroots political expression since Mao's Cultural Revolution, the old farming ministry DEFRA paid more than £8m over two years to civic society groups if they spread the correct message about Global Warming.
These included a computer game that was used so infrequently it cost £47 per go, and £160,000 for a man to drive around with a truck sign. The payouts are detailed in files released in response to Freedom of Information requests from pressure group the Taxpayers Alliance. But this is subtly different to your standard quango, taxpayer-money-down-the-pan story - in some quite interesting and non-obvious ways.
The payouts represent a tip of the iceberg (no pun intended, honest) of state funding for climate evangelism, which runs into billions of pounds. These FOIA requests only cover DEFRA, and so exclude cross-department initiatives such as the expensive, umbrella Act on CO2 initiative. And of course it excludes the really big money, such as the £200m a year to the Carbon Trust, a similar amount to the the Energy Savings Trust, and smaller quangos.
Also not included are state-dependent institutions who are sympathetic to the cause, such as the £50m a year Royal Society, the Met Office, or the British Council, for example. It's merely one initiative, called the Climate Change Fund.
The fund was designed to promote "behaviour change", the even creepier-sounding "attitude modification" and the old standby, "awareness raising". The words "empower" and "empowerment" also feature. Beneficiaries between 2006 and 2008 included the Scouts Association, Women's Institutes, drama groups, a community radio station, as well as quangos and a number of councils. Some of the recipients border on self-parody:
"Reasons to be Cheerful, the Carbon Coach, Cheerful Ltd. CarbonSense, Comic Company and National Energy Foundation have come together as Think Purple to help make CO2 visible. The project has produced purple resources for schools, organisations, and the general public which they hope will help transform how they see CO2 and how they use energy," we learn.
But few of the messages were cheery. In an incredible film called Carbon Weevil, humanity "infects" Mother Earth (a she, natch) as a destructive insect:
(The insect has only one purpose, to emit carbon. And mess things up for Gaia.)
£164,000 went to employ somebody to tow a 23 foot x 6 foot accessible trailer around. Three games were produced, costing tens of thousands of each. Cycling Hero cost almost £300,000.
There are more examples in this video.
So apart from a few million quid down the drain, what harm was done?I’ve lately become a reader of Across the Curve, the blog of the bond trader John Jansen. It’s jargon-heavy — sometimes even I have to look up the terms he uses — but in a time of disordered markets (does anyone actually manage to borrow at Libor these days) it’s really helpful to have reports from a “tone and feel of the markets” guy who can tell you what the numbers can’t.
And his opening comment this morning is a shocker. After describing some of the weird action in Treasuries, he says:
Is this the beginning of the end for the dollar and the Treasury market? Is this the first sign of the bursting of the bubble in Treasury securities? That market, in a sense, represents the ultimate bubble as it exists at the whim and caprice of foreign investors, who have as participants in a Faustian bargain, financed our war(s) and our lifestyle so generously over the last decade. Maybe even that bizarre construct is crashing about us as we speak.
Maybe I should be drinking something a bit more … calming.. than coffee right now.Alibaba has announced that its total sales on Singles’ Day — China’s largest online shopping festival — reached a record $9.3 billion.
In case you missed the media hype and have no idea why November 11 (11/11) is significant, it’s China biggest e-commerce sales day. Think of it as an amalgamation of all of North America’s biggest online retail days into one… on steroids.
Home decor was a popular product category and Alibaba revealed that it sold over 1.2 million “large” home appliances, and over three million light products. But 11/11 also covers regular products — Alibaba sold more than 200,000 bottles of detergent — and the one-offs too, the company sold 50,000 cars from across its retail businesses.
The shopping day touched other parts of the group’s business beyond its marketplace websites. Alipay, its Paypal-like affiliate, saw the volume of payments processed increase by 60 percent to reach $5.8 billion across the entire day.
“Alibaba hopes to make a contribution to the Chinese economy. We feel the Chinese economy doesn’t lack external demand but internal demand is much needed and we are fortunate enough to be able to tap this demand,” Alibaba Founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma said in a statement.
[23:59:59] Final 11.11 Shopping Festival GMV figures exceed RMB 57.1 billion (USD $9.3 billion); 42.6% from mobile pic.twitter.com/mHxJCVeYN6 — Alizila.com (@Alizila) November 11, 2014
Last year, Alibaba did $5.75 billion in sales across its two biggest shopping services — its Taobao Marketplace and T-Mall site for brands — and the company easily matched that this year, reaching that number with more than ten hours left in the day.
The big numbers started early, and Alibaba said it clocked its first $1 billion this year in less than 20 minutes — by 12.17am to be precise. The company went on to notch its second billion in GMV one hour and 12 seconds in the sales. For comparison, Cyber Monday in the U.S. generated a record $2.29 billion in sales last year.
Impressive revenue from mobile devices
It’s interesting to note that 42.6 percent of sales came from customers using mobile devices, for the first $2 billion in sales that figure was even higher at 46 percent.
Those are hugely encouraging stats for Alibaba, which has been forced to adapt its business model and strategies in recent times to cater to the huge growth in mobile internet usage in China.
Alibaba noted in its inaugural earnings report last week that its group-wide revenue from mobile devices grew a whopping 1,020 percent year-on-year to account for $606 million in the most recent quarter of business. That’s up from $54 million one year previous. Over September, the company claimed 217 million monthly active users of its mobile apps — another impressive feat.
Planning shopping around Singles’ Day
It was always like that Singles’ Day 2014 would break all records once again. Last year, Alibaba notched an 80 percent growth in sales compared to the shopping day in 2012, but this year it widened its efforts behind Mainland China, with sales expanding worldwide.
Experts believe that 11/11 has become an integral part of Chinese shopping culture, so we should expect record to tumble each year.
“Chinese users now plan their shopping around this promo day. They have come to expect great deals. And are willing to wait for it to buy. So this sales record will likely be broken every year, ” Hans Tung, managing partner of GGV Capital — an early investor in Alibaba — told TechCrunch.
Finally, more wow figures to give you a sense of perspective: Alibaba estimates that 27,000 merchants and 42,000 brands were involved in the 11/11 sales this year. That covers Tmall, Taobao, and also its AliExpress and Tmall Global services for customers outside of China.
Note: The original version of this post was updated to reflect Alibaba’s final sales figures and add comment from GGV Capital.Introduction
The Right Wing is euphoric. It has already started visualizing the Mother-Son duo in Tihar. The other camp is just about recovering from the shock and continues with its “we care a damn” façade and knee-jerk reactions. The court order issuing Summons in the Complaint filed by Dr. Subramaniam Swamy in the National Herald Matter has caused quite a flutter in social media.
While each camp believes things in every issue in the way they find it expedient, a big segment of laymen who wish to form an informed opinion on any legal issue often have very little options. The mainstream media, barring a few instances, has never been of much help as there are only a few reporters trained or qualified in law covering legal issues. So all one gets is just bits and pieces here and there, confusing more than giving clarity. There is a pressing need for people who could make legal issues simple for laymen and ensure forming of proper public opinions. This piece is an attempt to achieve this in respect of the said Order.
This piece bases itself on the Order issuing Summons and primarily explains the transactions which form the subject matter of the Complaint (as concluded by the Court and set out in the Order) and then the legal basis on which the Order has been issued. To further clarify, it ignores the facts which are otherwise floating around in media and social media and which are not to be found in the Order. It also ignores the other defenses in fact and law which are being put forth by some of the Congress supporters on social media. Some independent observations and thoughts on the transactions and the legal basis have however been put forth at appropriate places as both the transactions and the legal basis raise questions.
A criminal complaint of the type filed by Dr Swamy is called a private complaint and is filed directly before a criminal court without any police investigation. If the court finds a prima facie case by hearing the complainant and examining his case (at this stage only the complainant is heard), it issues summons to the accused to attend Court. Thereafter the accused appear and charges are framed where the court requires a slightly higher degree of satisfaction. Thereafter, the trial begins where evidence is led by both sides and the matter is finally argued. Finally an order of conviction is passed if the court is satisfied on the offence beyond reasonable doubt or else the accused are acquitted. There is no scope for arrest at any stage (unless an accused does an Arvind Kejriwal).
In the present case, just the Order issuing Summons has been issued. This is the first stage. In other words, the Court has just formed a prima facie view based on the Complaint of Dr Swamy. This is not a statement that certainly would be a conviction. We have a long way to go.
Examining Dr. Swamy’s complaint
The Criminal Complaint filed by Dr Swamy has seven accused:
1. Ms Sonia Gandhi (SG)
2. Mr Rahul Gandhi (RG)
3. Mr Motilal Vora (MV)
4. Mr Oscar Fernandes (OF)
5. Ms Suman Dubey (SD)
6. Mr Sam Pitroda (SP)
7. Young India, a company formed by SG, RG, MV and OF.
The Accused have been accused of offences under Sections 403 (Dishonest Misappropriation), 406 (Criminal Breach of Trust), 420 (Cheating) and 120B (Criminal Conspiracy) of IPC. The offences are alleged to have been committed against the Congress Party. (Indeed, the office bearers of the Congress Party have been sued by a rival politician for offences against their own party) and against one Associated Journals Limited, the company which owned the newspaper National Herald.
Understanding the Transactions
Before analyzing the legal basis on which the Order issuing Summons has been passed, let us understand the transactions independent of any legal arguments.
Fact 1: National Herald (NH) was a newspaper once owned and published by a company called Associated Journals Limited (AJL). NH was started under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal Nehru. Publication of NH was closed down in 2008.
Fact 2: AJL also closed down in 2008–this is what the Order says at one place but it is evident from the Order itself that it continued.
Fact 3: AJL had real estate assets worth more than Rs. 2000 Crores.
Fact 4: AJL had more than 1000 shareholders who had in its early days contributed about 89 Lakhs for the formation of the Company when the value of the Rupee was much more than what it is today.
Fact 5: Congress Party had given an interest free loan of Rs. 90.25 Crores to AJL. (It is not clear from the Order as to when it was given but the Order says it was given by SG and RG). It is alleged that the loan is against the provisions of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951 and the Constitution of the Congress Party.
Fact 6: In November 2010, SG and RG formed Young India (YI), a company licensed under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 (as a company for the promotion of art, science, culture etc.). SG and RG held 38% each in YI aggregating 76% and the balance 24% was held by MV and OF. YI was formed with a share capital of Rs. 5 Lakhs only.
Fact 7: In December 2010, the Board of Directors of AJL declared that the loan of Rs. 90.25 Crores given by the Congress Party cannot be repaid and accordingly, decided and transferred the loan to YI. In lieu thereof, it also decided and issued shares of AJL to YI thereby giving YI control of 99% of AJL and its assets. On its part, YI paid a further consideration of Rs. 50 lakhs to AJL.
Fact 8: Sanction of the existing shareholders of AJL was not taken for the share issue to YI. The decision was taken solely by the Board of Directors of AJL comprising MV, OF, SD and SP.
Fact 9: In the meantime, the Congress Party under SG and RG wrote off the loan of Rs. 90.25 Crores given to AJL as unrecoverable. This was done without making any efforts of recovery though AJL had assets worth Rs. 2000 Crore. The write off paved the way for issue of 99% shares of AJL to YI.
Fact 10: Having taken control of AJL, YI formally stopped publication of NH though the Memorandum of Association of AJL forbids entering into any transaction which was not to further its objective of publishing papers.
Fact 11: Having taken control of AJL, YI gave the properties of AJL out on rent fetching about Rs. 60 Lakhs per month.
Fact 12: YI had no other assets or independent business or income other than those of AJL.
Fact 13: After acquiring 99% of AJL, YI wrote off the investments in AJL in its books.
In this matter, pre-summons evidence was led by Dr Swamy along with a practicing Chartered Accountant, an official from the Registrar of Companies and another person, and the facts as stated above seem to have been prima-facie established. The Accused certainly have a right to counter the case of the Complainant and establish their own case at the trial but at the moment, one has to move forward with the prima facie case of the Complainant only.
Effect of the transactions as alleged in the Complaint
The loan of Rs. 90.25 Crores given by the Congress Party could have been repaid by AJL out of the assets of AJL which were valued at more than Rs. 2000 Crores. The balance of Rs. 1900 Crores would have remained for the existing shareholders. Repayment of the loan as above could have obviated the need for the issue of 99% of the shares of AJL to YI. Thus by the transaction, the existing shareholders lost 99% of the net assets of AJL.
On its part, YI got control of the net assets of AJL worth about Rs. 1900 Crores for just Rs. 50 Lakhs.
The Congress Party could have recovered the loan given by it to AJL out of the assets of AJL which were valued at Rs. 2000 Crores. Instead the loan was written off. In the process, the Congress Party lost Rs. 90.25 Crores.
The transactions do not seem to be something even a die hard Congress fan would be proud of. Before examining the legality of the Order issuing Summons, following are a few observations and thoughts on the transactions as they come quite naturally.
1. The Congress Party seems to have used an ingenious and circuitous route to fund a company floated by its President and Vice President albeit for noble purposes contemplated under Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956.
2. It is an internal matter of the Congress Party if it wished to fund YI but that should have been done either directly (if permissible) or by facilitating the raising of funds independently. Instead of funding in a transparent manner, it seems to have been done in a clandestine manner which prima facie shows malafide intentions and an intention to hide something.
3. The clandestine routing of funds also facilitated taking a backdoor control of 99% of AJL and its assets.
4. The acquisition of AJL and its assets worth Rs. 2000 Crores by YI, a company with a share capital of Rs 5 Lakhs and no other assets or business or income, in lieu of a loan of Rs. 90.25 Crores and Rs. 50 Lakhs consideration without the consent of the other shareholders of AJL was prima facie bad.
5. The avowed noble objects of YI did not justify the clandestine transaction or its malafides nor did it justify the taking of backdoor and wrongful control of AJL and its assets. Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 does not give a license to usurp the assets of others.
6. It certainly did not befit the President and Vice President of the then ruling Party of India to indulge in such a clandestine and malafide transaction, however noble the objects of YI are.
7. Be that as it may, while it is the prerogative of the Congress Party to advance loans and merrily write them off and/or fund any charitable organization of its President and Vice President, the same cannot be said about taking control of the assets of any other company unrelated to it. Acquisition of AJL by YI with backdoor facilitation by the Congress Party is patently bad in law and needs to be set aside by appropriate civil action.
Legal basis of Order issuing Summons
The transactions reek of foulness but all such things are not criminal acts unless they fit into the strict definition of defined offences under law. Before examining whether the transactions constitute offences as alleged or otherwise, it is necessary to first examine the point of locus.
Can an outsider to Congress Party, or for that matter to AJL, file a criminal complaint for alleged offences against it? This is the easiest to answer and the answer is “Yes, he/she can”. As per settled law laid down by Supreme Court, the concept of “locus” is alien to criminal law and anyone can set the criminal machinery in motion. So, the Criminal Complaint of Dr Swamy is fine on this aspect. The Order issuing Summons also holds so categorically.
As said earlier, pre-summons’ evidence prima facie has established the transaction. Now the issue remained as to whether the facts satisfied the ingredients of the offences alleged.
The ingredients of Sections 403 (Dishonest Misappropriation), 406 (Criminal Breach of Trust) and 420 (Cheating) of IPC, relevant for our analysis, have been set out below and the transactions need to be compared with these to ascertain whether any offences have been committed. (For the sake of brevity, the full definition of the offences have not been set out).
Section 406 of IPC (Criminal Breach of Trust)
The essential ingredients are as follows:
There must have been an entrustment of property or dominion over property.
There must have been a dishonest misappropriation or conversion for own use or dishonest use and disposal of the property in violation of: Any directive of law in respect of the trust reposed. Any legal contract, express or implied, in respect of the trust reposed.
Punishment: Three years imprisonment or fine or both.
Do the facts in the present case bear out an offence under Section 406 of IPC? The Court held that prima facie they do, both against the Congress Party as well as AJL.
406 against Congress:
It was concluded as follows:
1. SG/RG/MV/OF are deemed to have held the funds of the Congress Party in trust.
2. They used the said funds for the purpose of advancing loan to AJL.
3. The loan to AJL was in violation of the Representation of People’s Act and the Constitution of the Congress Party.
4. No efforts were made by them to recover the loan given and eventually the loan was wrongly written off.
In the above factual matrix, it was held that SG/RG/MV/OF as Trustees failed to discharge the trust reposed in them and committed the offence against the Congress Party.
406 against AJL:
It was concluded as follows:
1. MV was a director of AJL and was in a fiduciary relation with it and a trustee of its assets.
2. He falsely declared that AJL had no net worth and was unable to repay the loan of the Congress Party when it had assets more than Rs. 2000 Crores.
3. He, along with SD and SP, gave 99% control of AJL and its assets to YI when the loan of the Congress Party could have been easily repaid.
4. YI was a company where MV was a shareholder and accordingly, giving wrongful control of AJL and its assets to YI was conversion for own use.
In the factual matrix it was held that MV committed the offence against AJL.
Section 420 of IPC (Cheating)
The essential ingredients are as follows:
Fraudulent or dishonest inducement by deceiving.
Inducement made to deliver property or do some act etc.
Delivery of property or act done, something which wouldn’t have been delivered or done but for the inducement.
Punishment: Seven years imprisonment and fine.
Do the facts in the present case bear out an offence under Section 420 of IPC? The Court held that prima facie they do, but against the Congress Party only.
420 against Congress:
It was concluded as follows:
1. The Congress Party had invited funds from the public by way of membership and donations.
2. The funds raised for the Party were to be used for advancement of democracy only.
3. The funds were fraudulently used for advances to AJL which was carrying out commercial activity.
4. The persons giving the funds were defrauded as money was never given by them for these purposes.
In the above factual matrix, it was held that the Accused committed the offence against the Congress Party.
Section 403 of IPC (Dishonest Misapprpriation)
The essential ingredients are dishonest misappropriation or conversion for own use. The ingredients are similar to Section 406 of IPC except that there is no entrustment of property.
Punishment: Two years imprisonment or fine or both.
Do the facts in the present case bear out an offence under Section 403 of IPC? The Court held that prima facie they do, but against AJL only.
403 against AJL:
The conclusions were similar to those for Section 406 of IPC against AJL. It was held that all the Accused who controlled the Congress Party and AJL between themselves deliberately formed YI, a sham company with a share capital of just Rs. 5 Lakhs and no assets and no independent business or income, for misappropriating the assets of AJL.
Section 120B of IPC (Criminal Conspiracy)
The essential ingredient is an agreement between two or more persons to do an illegal act or a legal act by illegal means.
Punishment: As provided for abetment of the offence in this case.
Do the facts in the present case bear out an offence under Section 120B of IPC? The Court held that prima facie they do as all the Accused have acted in concert with each other to commit the offence in a preplanned manner and there is sufficient ground for proceeding against all of them.
Summary of legal implications
Thus it was held by the Court that prima facie, offences under Sections 406 and 420 of IPC were committed by the Accused against the Congress Party and under Sections 403 & 406 of IPC were committed against AJL. Further, the Accused committed offence under Section 120B of IPC. Accordingly Summons was issued against all the Accused by an Order dated June 26, 2014.
1. Regarding the offence under Section 420 against the Congress Party: the offence, if any, could have been against the persons who donated or became members and not the Congress Party. Even if it is assumed that the giving of loan by the Congress Party to AJL was bad in law and a misapplication of funds, can a subsequent application by itself make a prior raising of funds dishonest? There does not seem to be any fraudulent or dishonest inducement by deceiving at the time of raising funds by the Congress Party. Under the circumstances, it is doubtful if the offence under Section 420 of IPC against the Congress Party can be sustained.
2. Regarding the offence under Section 406 against the Congress Party: while it is true that SG/RG/MV/OF were trustees of the funds of the Congress Party, the giving of the loan did not amount to misappropriation or conversion for own use although it might have been prohibited under the Representation of People’s Act or the Constitution of Congress. Even if the subsequent write off was dishonest, the amount loaned was not per se misappropriated or converted for own use as the same remained with AJL. Under the circumstances, it is doubtful if the offence under Section 406 of IPC against the Congress Party can be sustained.
3. Regarding the offences under Sections 403 and 406 of IPC against AJL: it seems that a prima facie case has been made out as the control of the assets of AJL were wrongly given to YI. The Issue of Summons seem proper. It is to be borne in mind that at the stage of Issue of Summons, the test is not whether there will be conviction. This is only a prima facie view |
formerly CO2 sceptics), posted May 29, 2008; “The IPCC Controversy,” Science and Environment Policy Project.
[9] “IPCC Global Warming Report,” American Liberty Publishers.
[10] John Schwartz, “Philip Morris Sought Experts to Cloud Issue, Memo Details,” Washington Post, May 9, 1997, A02.
[11] Richard Leroy Chapman, “A Case Study of the U.S. Weather Satellite Program: The Interaction of Science and Politics” (Ph.D. thesis, Syracuse University, 1967).
[12] S. Fred Singer and Kent Jeffreys, The EPA and the Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, University of Virginia, 1994, BN: TICT0002555 and BN: TI31749030, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
[13] Bad Science: A Resource Book, 26 March 1993, BN: 2074143969, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
Copyright 2010 by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury USA.NASA has terminated its unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA)
with the B612 Foundation. The Foundation is trying to raise private funds to
build a spacecraft, Sentinel, to hunt for asteroids. B612 says that
they are proceeding with their efforts uninterrupted despite the termination.
The B612 Foundation’s goal is to “enhance our capability to
protect Earth from asteroid impacts.” Its CEO, Ed Lu, and Chair
Emeritus, Rusty Schweickert, are both former astronauts and have focused
for many years on raising awareness of the threats posed to Earth by
asteroids and trying to find solutions to address that threat. One of
the challenges is finding out where the Earth-threatening asteroids are
and while NASA has ground-based programs to achieve that objective, B612
argues that only a spacecraft with infrared sensors in a
“Venus-trailing” orbit would have the field of view necessary to really
answer that question.
The B612 Foundation is named after the asteroid in the children’s story The Little Prince.
NASA is not currently planning to build a dedicated
asteroid-hunting
spacecraft, although it did re-purpose its earth-orbiting Wide-Field
Infrared Explorer (WISE) satellite to focus on asteroid detection in
2013. Launched in 2009, WISE was designed to image the entire sky in
the infrared band using super-cooled detectors. It completed its
primary mission in September 2010 after exhausting the coolant and was
decommissioned, but NASA later determined some of the
instruments could still be useful in searching for asteroids. Renamed
the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, NEOWISE, it
began a three-year observation program in 2013. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) is proposing NEOCam, another asteroid-hunting mission,
as part of the the Discovery 14 selection process, though competition is
stiff and it is far from clear whether it will be chosen as one of
semi-finalists from among the 16 proposers, a decision expected
soon. It was also proposed in 2006 and 2010.
WISE/NEOWISE was built by Ball Aerospace, which is partnered with B612 on the Sentinel mission (and would also be the prime contractor for NEOCam if it is selected).
B612 is trying to fund the Sentinel mission privately, using mostly philanthropic donations although anyone may contribute.
The nonreimbursable NASA-B612 Foundation agreement was
signed by NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and
Operations Bill Gerstenmaier and Associate Administrator for Science
John Grunsfeld on May 31, 2012. B612 CEO Ed Lu signed it on June 19,
2012 and was to be in effect for 10 years from that date. Its primary
purpose was obtaining NASA technical consulting and agreement for B612
to use NASA tracking facilities for Sentinel after it was launched. In
return, B612 would keep NASA informed of the spacecraft’s technical
characteristics and progress and deliver data from the spacecraft to the
Minor Planet Center.
The milestones identified in the agreement were:
Sentinel mission contract start date with Ball, November 2012
Preliminary design review, October 2013
Critical Design Review, October 2014
Launch, December 2016
NASA spokesmen Dwayne Brown and Dave Steitz confirmed via
email that NASA
terminated the agreement with B612. Steitz explained that B612 had not
met an important milestone in the SAA — starting Sentinel’s development
— and NASA therefore terminated the agreement because “due to limited
resources, NASA can no longer afford to reserve funds” to support the
project. “NASA believes it is in the best interest of both parties to
terminate this agreement but remains open to future opportunities to
collaborate with the B612 Foundation,” he added.
B612 Vice President for Communications Diane Murphy also
confirmed the termination, but said NASA had invited them to return to
obtain another SAA when Sentinel’s launch date is closer. She noted
that “our timeline is dependent on our fundraising — and while that is
going well – it is hard … and taking longer than we first
anticipated.” She provided a statement from Lu asserting that the
“status of the SAA in no way changes the resolve of the B612 Foundation
to move forward. … We will continue to work independently and together
with NASA, the US Congress and others to see our goals realized.”
UPDATE: An earlier version of this story said there would be three semi finalists in the Discovery selection, but there were five. They were announced on September 30. NEOCam is one of those five.Advertisement
The Palace of Monaco has released a set of images of Prince Albert II of Monaco and his wife Charlene posing with their twin babies Jacques and Gabriella at the Princess Grace Hospital in Monaco.
The Christmas-themed photographs show a smitten pair of parents gazing at their newborn children, with Princess Gabriella in pink and Prince Jaques in baby blue.
Gabriella was born first at 5.04pm, and Jacques at 5.06pm, but it is Jacques who will be the future Prince of Monaco, because of the Mediterranean principality's male inheritance laws.
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The Palace of Monaco have released a set of images of Prince Albert II of Monaco and his wife Charlene posing with their twin babies Jacques and Gabriella at the Princess Grace Hospital in Monaco
They are the first children for the 36-year-old former South African Olympic swimmer, who married Prince Albert II, 56, three years ago.
Prince Albert was by his wife's side as the children were delivered on December 10 at the Princess Grace Hospital, which is named after Albert's mother, the late Hollywood star, Grace Kelly.
Soon after 7.30pm, 42 cannon shots rung around Monaco, confirming that the babies had been born.
Albert had arranged the 42 shots, in place of the 21 that would boom for a single baby.
The babies are the first twins in the royal household, which dates back to the 13th Century.
Albert has admitted that he did not know the sex of the children before birth: 'It is one of the beautiful surprises that life offers us,' he said.
Gabriella was born first at 5.04pm, and Jacques at 5.06pm, but it is Jacques who will be the future Prince of Monaco, because of the Mediterranean principality's male inheritance laws
They are the first children for the 36-year-old former South African Olympic swimmer, who married Prince Albert II, 56, three years ago
In the UK, only one set of royal twins has ever been born - to King James I of Scotland and his wife Joan Beaufort in 1430.
It is thought that the twins were welcomed via caesarean section, but the doctor delivering them had no more than a symbolic hand in deciding the destiny of the Grimaldi dynasty.
In principle, there's no medical reason a doctor would have an active role in deciding which newborn is delivered first, even in the case of a caesarean section, an expert said.
'The obstetrician will always deliver first the twin that presents itself first when the uterus is opened at the time of caesarean section,' said Dr. Patrick O'Brien, spokesman for Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. 'We don't decide in advance which twin to deliver first.'
Had they both been of the same sex, the first one out would have taken the throne but because the Monégasque twins are a boy and a girl, the boy will automatically inherit.
The Christmas-themed photographs show a smitten pair of parents gazing at their newborn children
Prince Albert was by his wife's side as the children were delivered on December 10 at the Princess Grace Hospital, which is named after Albert's mother, the late Hollywood star, Grace Kelly
The babies are the first twins in the royal household, which dates back to the 13th CenturyWASHINGTON -- Seeking to put some policy heft behind the progressive vision of debt-free college that is gaining steam on the campaign trail, Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday outlined a sweeping college affordability agenda to “dramatically reform” higher education.
“While not every college needs to graduate every student debt-free, every kid needs a debt-free option” at a public university, Warren said in remarks at the American Federation of Teachers.
Making college more affordable, she said, would require a boost in federal spending but also greater accountability for how colleges and states use that money -- a “one-two punch” that she said should have bipartisan appeal. Warren wants a new federal program that would provide funds to states that make some public higher education options so inexpensive that borrowing would not be required, and she wants more federal funding to come with more strings attached.
“We can do it if Republicans admit that we will never have affordable college without investing more resources in education,” she said. “And if Democrats admit that we will never have affordable college without demanding real accountability in exchange for those investments.”
Warren spread around the blame for the rising college costs students currently face: some colleges’ wasteful spending on luxury amenities like climbing walls, administrative costs and extensive marketing (she reserved special criticism for for-profit institutions); state budget cuts to public higher education; and an Education Department not doing its part when it comes to consumer protection and regulating colleges.
“There are real reasons to worry about whether the Department of Education is committed to enforcing federal rules designed to help students,” Warren said, echoing the rhetoric she’s used to slam financial regulators she views as too favorable to Wall Street interests.
She criticized, for instance, the department’s “bailout” of Corinthian Colleges last year and its investigation into the loan-servicing company Naivent, which she said was “too big to fail.” She also slammed officials’ refusal turn over data and information about the performance of federal student loan programs and troubled colleges.
“The Department of Education needs to show that there’s a real cop on the beat,” Warren said. She called on department officials to “get tough.”
Warren also called for external checks on the Education Department like allowing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to review complaints relating to the federal student loans the department manages.
“We don’t trust a bank to handle its own complaints, and we shouldn’t trust the federal student loan program to do it, either,” she said.
Aside from bureaucratic improvements at the Education Department, though, Warren said the federal government’s financing system of higher education needs a fundamental overhaul. Too much federal money is flowing to colleges, she said, without any incentive for those institutions to keep prices affordable.
For-profit colleges are one culprit, Warren said, but she alluded to others, calling out amenities of residential nonprofit colleges like lazy rivers.
Warren called for greater funding of higher education from the federal government -- but she said it should come with far greater accountability.
For states, Warren proposed both carrots and sticks. On the one hand, she wants the federal government to pour more money into states to prod them to create “at least one path to a debt-free college degree for all students” at public universities. At the same time, she said, states should be required to maintain a minimum level of investment in their own colleges in order to receive federal financial aid dollars.
In addition, as her own plan to refinance student loans stalls in a Republican-controlled Senate, Warren called on states to create their programs to allow existing student loan borrowers to lower the cost of their debt.
Colleges should also have to pay up when large numbers of their graduates aren’t able to repay their loans, Warren said, reiterating a call for “risk sharing” between the government and institutions.
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, similarly endorsed, in concept, risk sharing as a new accountability tool in his higher education agenda earlier this year. He’s also said that scaling back burdensome federal regulations on colleges and simplifying federal student aid are his main goals in the upcoming rewrite of the Higher Education Act.
Although there may be some alignment over holding colleges more accountable, Warren’s push for large investments in higher education is likely to face Republican opposition. She did not identify Monday how she planned to pay for the increased federal spending. Far more modest proposals -- such as student loan refinancing or free community college -- have not fared well in Congress.Man charged with farting in general direction of a police officer
South Charleston Police Department
A man arrested for driving under the influence in West Virginia got himself into a lot more trouble later at the police station.
Jose Cruz was pulled over Monday night on Route 60 in South Charleston for driving with his headlights off. He was subsequently arrested after failing a series of sobriety tests, according to WSAZ TV in Charleston.
During fingerprinting, Cruz then allegedly moved closer to one of the officers and passed gas, the station reported. In the complaint, the investigating officer wrote that police noticed a "very strong" odor.
The alleged stunt led Cruz to be charged with another offense — battery on an officer — in addition to DUI and obstruction, WSAZ reported.
Click here for more on this story from WSAZ.com.Christy Clark fooled British Columbia once. Is the BC Liberal leader now trying to fool everyone a second time?
Christy Clark’s promise to build a ‘new Silicon Valley’ is snake oil, just like her failed LNG plan
Christy Clark’s promise to build a ‘new Silicon Valley’ is snake oil, just like her failed LNG plan
Christy Clark fooled British Columbia once.
Is the BC Liberal leader now trying to fool everyone a second time?
Earlier this year, Clark held a press conference where she admitted her government had failed to meet its own jobs targets but urged everyone not to worry because she had a whole new jobs plan hidden up her sleeve – innovation and high-tech.
What Christy Clark wouldn’t admit is that her 2013 promise to create 100,000 jobs and generate $1 trillion in new economic activity by creating an LNG industry was a complete “fantasy.” Her government inflated the size of BC’s buried treasure by a factor of 65 and the gas industry’s own figures suggested it would only create 200 or 300 jobs at best, not 100,000 jobs as Clark claimed.
But don’t worry. Even though that dream turned out to be a flop, Clark has a brand new dream and that dream is to build a second Silicon Valley in British Columbia:
“British Columbia can be the new Silicon Valley. It has to be, because we want our kids to have great jobs.”
Build a “new Silicon Valley”?
Dozens of Fortune 1000 companies, thousands of start-ups and 250,000 tech workers are headquartered in Silicon Valley, how hard can that be? Piece of cake, right?
Well, for one thing, Clark’s government has outsourced most of the provinces technology contracts to multinationals, depriving local companies of opportunities to establish themselves and grow – according to The Tyee, 80% of staff working on one such contract (awarded to a foreign BC Liberal donor) are based in the United States.
For another thing, BC’s tech leaders say their ability to find skilled tech workers has become a problem under Clark’s BC Liberals.
In an open letter to Clark last year, business leaders at Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Hootsuite and a dozen other BC tech companies said BC wasn’t making the right investments in education to address this problem:
“Skilled graduates fuel the BC tech industry, yet we’re facing a significant shortage. In the period from 2012 to 2015, Vancouver fell ten places from fourth to 14th in an international measure of global tech talent. Worldwide, competition is fierce, as more sectors grow dependent on tech grads. Streamlined immigration and training can help. But there’s only one long-term solution: ensuring that our own colleges and universities are educating students for tomorrow’s careers. This isn’t an abstract problem, but one we face now. This year alone, BC’s tech companies will be seeking thousands of new employees. New computer-science and technology graduates from BC’s post-secondary institutions simply cannot meet the demand for these well paying positions.”
Clark’s government responded by declaring BC would be “the first jurisdiction in North America to require coding in classrooms.”
Only problem? Clark’s Education Minister later told the Vancouver Sun their government would not offer new funds for the program and suggested kids “don’t actually have to be sitting in front of a computer” to learn computer skills.
Another obstacle to Clark’s grandiose dream is that tech workers can’t afford to live in the province.
Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes explained in a 2016 Financial Post op-ed that BC’s skyrocketing costs-of-living has become a major problem for his business:
“Unaffordability is emptying Vancouver of one of its most valuable assets — young people who grew up in the city and who are invested in it. As well, qualified newcomers who could bring talent, drive and vision to Vancouver are looking elsewhere. The projected closure of more than a dozen Vancouver public schools hints at the scale of the problem: Families can no longer afford to live here … More than just the promise of the tech economy is at stake. The cultural and creative capital Vancouver has accumulated for generations is being drained.”
It’s pretty hard to grow a tech industry when all the young, skilled workers are being priced out.
At the same time as the province’s wages have stagnated, BC families have seen rapidly rising costs for food, housing and child care.
Housing costs in metro Vancouver have risen dramatically under the BC Liberals – the cost of a detached home has jumped 19 times relative the median household income, while condos have increased six times the rate of incomes.
Clark would have you believe she can build a “new Silicon Valley” without addressing any of these issues that have ballooned under her watch?
Sounds like she might be making stuff up again.
Photo: BC Gov Photos. Used under Creative Commons license.Things are going well in Portugal. Despite a potentially difficult first-season, we have progressed through it unscathed. In the following post we will go through all of our Porto squads and take a look through our developing youngsters.
Over the course of the series I’ll be starting each end of season post with an update on our homegrown progress. In the table below you can see how each of our squad is looking in terms of it’s homegrown players.
TEAM PLAYERS HG PLAYERS HG PERCENTAGE 1st XI 59 19 32% B-Team 38 13 34% Under 19’s 34 34 100%
As you can see, the Porto squad we inherited have so many players, several of which are away from the club on loan. This means that the summer of 2017 will be a huge summer for us as we’ll need to have a clearout of most of the non-HG talent.
Although the aim of this series is to produce an entirely homegrown club, it would be unwise to sell all of our non-HG players as in doing so we could jeopardize our position as manager.
1st XI
Unfortunately we finished 4th in the league with Vit. Setubal taking third place. We ended the season on an unbeaten streak of twelve games, losing just four in the season. But it was our inability to turn draws into wins that let us down.
It means that next year we’ll be entering the EURO Cup instead of the luxurious Champions League.
After a brilliant win over Inter Milan my hopes were high for a strong performance in the Euro Cup, and my spirits were raised when we were drawn against Ajax. But a terrible home performance in the first leg condemned us to defeat, crashing out at the 2nd Round stage.
We lost in the Taca de Portugal 6th Round (the equivalent of the FA Cup) but managed to win the Portuguese League Cup. This piece of silverware was crucial to our season, and although we only just scraped victory against Second Division Portimonense, we can be pleased with the trophy.
Top Scorers
Andre Silva: 27 Otavio: 15 Lucas Alario: 10
Most Assists
Andre Silva: 12 Jesus Corona: 9 Alex Telles: 8
Most Appearances
Otavio: 46 (7) Iker Casillas: 44 Andre Silva: 41 (4)
B-Team
A brilliant season for our reserve team saw them win the league comfortably. This is the second tier in Portugal so to win is an impressive feat and good signs for our club moving forward.
Top Scorers
Rui Pedro: 16 Areias: 12 Ismael Diaz: 11
Most Assists
Areias: 13 Ruben Macedo: 9 Wenderson Galeno: 8
Most Appearances
Joris Kayembe: 42 Rodrigo Soares: 39 Chidozie Awaziem: 38
Under 19’s
Our young stars won their league comfortably, losing just one game. The impressive season saw our youngsters concede just ten goals throughout the season, highlighting our strong defence with the likes of Diogo Queiros performing well at the back.
Top Scorers
Leandro Campos: 17 Vasco Paciencia: 13 Miguel Magalhaes: 12
Most Assists
Afonso Sousa: 15 Miguel Magalhaes: 15 Leandro Campos: 12
Most Appearances
Leandro Campos: 30 (2) Miguel Magalhaes: 28 (7) Afonso Sousa: 27 (4)
Transfers
Ins
As mentioned earlier, although this is a homegrown challenge, I will be bringing players into the club who I feel can make a difference now where there are no younger HG players who could make a similar impact.
Cheick Tiote was our first signing, coming in for a small fee of £2.7M. He played fairly regularly over the season, making 22 appearances in all competitions as he played back-up to Danilo Pereira.
Next came Luc Castaignos, a pacey Dutch forward, who scored 7 league goals in 19 matches. He often played second fiddle to Andre Silva (and later Lucas Alario) but was a good backup to have. I anticipate the likes of Leandro Campos to push Luc out of the Porto side over the coming season.
In January we made two signings. Lucas Alario is our best signing to date. The Argentine forward scored 10 goals in 17 starts for Porto since joining from River.
Erik Durm came in as a backup right or left back and played 14 matches but underperformed with an average rating of just 6.77.
Outs
Without going through each and every sale, we made £73M in transfers over our first season. Most of which came from the sale of Algerian winger Yacine Brahimi. Yacine had made 13 assists in 26 matches for Porto. This prompted Tottenham to come in with a bid which was eventually negotiated up to £45M.
27 year-old Mexican Hector Herrera also left the club, moving to Celta Vigo for £16M.
Finances
Looking through our transfers leads nicely into our finances.
FC Porto are in debt. And a lot of it. We are currently making monthly payments of £658K to pay off three ongoing loans.
In terms of our financial situation, we have £12M in the bank as of June 2017, which is why our upcoming summer could be crucial to the success of this save moving forward. We’ll need to sell well to ensure we have enough money to make good investments and allow our team to succeed.
Here’s more FM Content that you may enjoy
Youngster Progression and Player Development
Here is the section that a lot of you will be here to see. I will be running through several of our young players and seeing how they have progressed over my first year at the club.
Here are the players I will be looking at:
1st XI
Ruben Neves
Ruben Macedo
Diogo Verdasca
Under 19’s
Afonso Sousa
Miguel Magalhaes
Diogo Dalot
Leandro Campos
Diogo Costa
Diogo Queiros
As you saw earlier, our club has 34 youngsters in the under 19’s. To add to this, our B-team has 13 HG talent that will be itching to grab their chance in the first XI. Therefore there maybe some players that I will not focus on today that develop faster and move into the first team.
Over the coming parts of Youth Development it will be good to see which players develop into first team regulars at Porto.
I won’t be producing GIFs for each of these players, firstly because it will make the page load slower and secondly because there won’t have been a lot of progression over one year.
But in the future we may see a whole post dedicated to young player GIFs.
Ruben Neves
Let’s start with our most promising youngster already in the first team.
A potential 8-year contract has been handed out to our star youngster. I’m delighted. Despite being out for 4 months this year with a damaged achilles tendon he bounced back to make 29 appearances over the season.
He managed to maintain his development despite said injury which is an encouraging sign. Let’s hope he can really push on in the coming years.
As highlighted by the contract extension, I fully expect Ruben Neves to be in our side for many years to come. He has been playing as a deep lying playmaker in the centre of the park and I doubt that this will change.
Ruben Macedo
Ruben Macedo spent most of the season in the B-team, scoring ten and assisting nine in just 26 appearances. This form led to his promotion to the first team where he made 7 appearances in the league.
Ruben’s place in the first team in upcoming seasons depends on the formation we choose to play. He will be our first choice right winger for the season, however our primary formation will be a narrow 4-3-3.
I do anticipate him making many appearances as our secondary formation relies heavily on a creative right winger.
Diogo Verdasca
Diogo Verdasca became a rotational centre-back in the first team last year. He battled with the likes of Felipe, Ivan Marcano and Willy Boly for the centre-back position, making 25 starts in all competitions.
He will be our first-choice centre back moving forward as he has significant potential yet to fulfil.
Afonso Sousa
Afonso Sousa is without doubt the player I am most excited about in our homegrown challenge. He could well be the star of the series moving forward.
As you can see, his development in one year is astounding and I’ll be looking to give him first-team minutes throughout next season.
Afonso was one of a few stars in the under 19’s title winning season, scoring ten and assisting fifteen goals in 31 appearances.
Miguel Magalhaes
Miguel Magalhaes is, like Afonso Sousa, one of the star players in our under 19’s. Primarily a winger, he could struggle to break into the first-team squad due to the proposed narrow formation. But he could end up playing as a 2nd choice right winger behind Ruben Macedo.
He scored 12 and assisted 15 in a fantastic personal season. One to watch for the future.
Diogo Dalot
Diogo Dalot is a right-back who went under the radar in our first season in charge. Nonetheless his development has led to a promotion to the first team in the upcoming season where he will battle with fellow homegrown youngster Fernando Fonseca for the right-back spot.
Leandro Campos
Leandro Campos’ 20 determination makes him stand out from the crowd. His poor jumping reach means he’ll never be a threat in the air upfront, but his pace makes up for this shortfall.
Campos contributed to 29 goals in the under 19’s this season, top scoring with 17. He will be battling for a place in the first-team this season and will fancy his chances due to the 3 striker formation being favoured by the manager.
Diogo Costa
Here is our future star goalkeeper Diogo Costa. You can see by the attribute graph his progression in all areas.
Costa kept eleven clean sheets in twenty under 19 appearances this season. He will be looking to make his mark in the B-team next season.
Diogo Queiros
Diogo Queiros is a strong centre back who played 26 under 19 appearances this season, averaging a rating of 7.53 per match.
He may get several chances in the first team next season, but will largely be playing in the B-team.
Future Targets
In the league we have lost a Champions League spot due to the country’s poor performances in European competitions. This means that we have two teams who have a place in the CL with 3rd and 4th entering the Euro Cup.
I think we need to be targeting a 2nd place finish this year. We need Champions League football to really help our youngsters, Neves in particular, develop.
We will also be trying to increase the HG percentages in both our first xi and our B-team. Our B-team should end the 2017/2018 season with a HG percentage of 80% or higher.
It would also be good if we can get our first team HG percentage to above 50%.
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Thanks for reading what could well be the longest post here on vivalavidafm.com. The support I have received on this series, especially the first in the series, has been incredible.
Please don’t hesitate to put forward any suggestions to make this series better. Your help is essential in making this series a success.
VivaLaVidaFMEver since Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s President on 14 June 2013 and promised that he will lead a government of "hope and prudence," the United States’ most important allies in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia and Israel – and their lobbies here have been doing their best to prevent any agreement between Iran and the Obama administration regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Israel and its lobby in the United States have succeeded in persuading Washington to impose the most crippling economic sanctions on Iran, disrupting and threatening the lives of tens of millions of ordinary Iranians. But that has not been enough for Israel. It wants Iran to surrender its national sovereignty and its rights under Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that gives Iran the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Thus, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been on an increasingly desperate diplomatic offensive to "prove" that Iran is not sincere in its effort to reach a nuclear agreement. After cynically calling the efforts by Iran’s new administration "a charm offensive;" referring to President Rouhani "a wolf in sheep’s clothing;" mentioning Iran 70 times and Rouhani – not Mr. Rouhani or President Rouhani – 25 times in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly meeting (while barely mentioning Israel’s war on the Palestinians); foolishly becoming an advocate of "democracy" for the Iranian people by declaring that if the Iranian youth were free, they would wear jeans and listen to Western music – which created a huge backlash by the Iranians (see here, here, and here), telling Netanyahu to first address democracy for the Palestinian people – and repeating his absurd claim that "Iran is preparing for another Holocaust," Netanyahu threatened once again that if forced to, Israel will attack Iran alone.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has also let the world know that it is angry at the Obama administration for not attacking Syria, for imposing military sanctions on the military junta in Egypt even though they are insignificant, and for trying to reach a diplomatic resolution of the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Never mind that Secretary of State John Kerry just said the other day that "Egyptians are following the right path." This is a path that was paved by the junta overthrowing Egypt’s democratically-elected government and President Mohamed Morsi. Never mind that President Obama changed his mind about attacking Syria after the huge worldwide backlash against his threats of military attacks.
The opposition to U.S.-Iran rapprochement by Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the support of the former for the most extreme forces in Syria that have committed countless number of atrocities, have brought to the fore the real axis of evil consisting of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the War Party in the United States, as opposed to George W. Bush’s bogus "axis of evil." The same Saudi Arabia that has always supposedly been the grand marshal of defending the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people, has now made an "unholy alliance" with Israel, ignoring the fact that much of Israel’s saber rattling over Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapon program is for distracting attention from the fact that it continues to devour the Palestinians’ lands, water, and other natural resources, and has made practically impossible the two-state solution for the problem.
The second round of negotiations between Iran and P5+1 – the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany – began on Thursday November 7 in Geneva, and the initial reports have indicated that progress has been made. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has even declared that the main framework for a long-term agreement may be reached during the two days of negotiations between the two parties. That is not the news that Israel and Saudi Arabia want to hear.
Thus, in addition to pressuring the Obama administration through their lobbies in Washington, another way of derailing the negotiations and killing any potential agreement between Iran and the U.S. that the unholy alliance has put in place is provoking Iran’s hardliners that are deeply suspicious of the West and oppose any rapprochement with the U.S. The hardliners have made their opposition clear, with the latest manifestation of which being the demonstrations that they staged in front of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran on Monday on the 34th anniversary of the hostage crisis. And the best way to provoke Iranian hardliners is by terrorist attacks inside Iran, although such attacks are nothing new.
The United States and its allies have been trying for decades to destabilize Iran by supporting small groups among Iran’s ethnic minorities that have secessionist tendencies and have been carrying out terrorist attacks inside Iran. These groups include Jundallah, a Sunni extremist group that operated from Pakistan and for years carried out many terrorist attacks in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. Another group is the Kurdish Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, known as PJAK, the Iranian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party – usually referred to as PKK – in Turkey that has been listed as a terrorist group by both the European Union and the US PJAK is a secular group. A third group consists of Iranian Arabs in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran, which is widely believed to be supported by Britain.
As the author described in detail in October 2009, Jundallah was supported for years by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Then, in December 2009 Selig Harrison of Center for International Policy reported in the New York Times that the George W. Bush administration provided support to Jundallah through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate – the infamous ISI – and to PJAK through CIA and Israel’s Mossad, which has had long-term relations with the Kurds in both Iraq and Iran. Documents released by WikiLeaks in November 2010 indicated that Israel has tried to use Kurdish dissidents against Iran. Then, in an important article in January 2012 Mark Perry described how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.
In February 2010, Iran arrested Jundallah’s leader Abdolmalek Riggi, and executed him in June 2010. A month earlier, Iran had executed his brother, Abdolhamid Rigggi. The two executions were severe blow to Jundallah. Then, another Riggi, Abdolrauf Riggi, took over the leadership of Jundallah, but he was arrested by Pakistan in December 2010. Execution of the Riggis, the arrest of the third one, and lack of popular support due to ruthless tactics, such as beheading of Iran’s border guards, and revelations about foreign support for the group, eventually led to the demise of Jundallah. But, while the Iranian branch of the group formally disappeared (its Pakistani branch still operates within Pakistan, attacking Shiites), its offshoots have emerged and are just as brutal and deadly, and supported by the same foreign powers. This became abundantly clear in the latest terrorist attacks on Iran.
The latest terrorist attacks on Iran occurred on October 25, perfectly timed in advance of the Geneva negotiations. The Sunni terrorist group, Jaish al-adl (army of justice), attacked Iran from Pakistan, killing 14 Iranian border guards (12 of whom were conscripts), wounding six, and taking three guards as hostage. Jaish al-adl is a Salafi group, of the same type as those fighting in Syria against Syrian government and supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In an apparent retaliation, Iran executed 16 prisoners, although the Iranian government claimed that the sixteen, at least half of whom were members of the terrorist groups, had already received death sentences, but their sentences had not been carried out under a deal whereby in return for not executing them, their groups will not carry out any terrorist operations. Jaish al-adl has carried out many attacks in Iran; see here, here, and here. The statement that the group issued after its most recent attack has striking similarities with those of extremist Sunni group in Syria. In fact, in its statement Jaish al-adl declared that the attacks were in retaliation for alleged Iranian “massacre” in Syria and the “cruel treatment” of Sunnis in Iran. In addition, its flag and its style of attacks are very similar to those of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that is deeply involved in fighting in Syria. Similar to all other Sunni |
Personally, a lot of us do see a lot of validity in it, but if you're not into that type of thing, don't worry because in this article, we'll only be providing research backed advice (like always). We'll also have reference links at the end of this article.
So first key idea that we'd like to you to recognize is that emotions can be categorized as either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’.
When you’re feeling an emotion, it’s in either one of the two categories. Obvious? Good.
Now although this can be argued, generally when we think about something, the emotions follow the thought.
For example, when we're studying and the thought of the MCAT coming up soon props up into our mind, that triggers the worry.
Secondly, recognize that our thoughts reside in one of three places; in the past, in the future, or in the present. When you’re thinking, you’re thinking about what happened (past), or what’s going to happen (future), or what’s happening (now). So et’s list some negative emotions... (You are probably feeling or will feel some of these during your MCAT journey…)
Anger
Worry
Anxiety
Sadness
Guilt
Regret
Now let’s look at where the thoughts reside, when these emotions are felt…
Anger: in the past because one's angry about something that happened
Worry: in the future because one's worried about something that's going to happen *cough*MCAT*cough*
Anxiety: in the future
Sadness: in the past
Guilt: in the past
Regret: in the past
Key Insight: Negative emotions are usually associated with thoughts in the past or the future. Now let’s list out some positive emotions:
Joy
chevron-circle-right Pleasure
chevron-circle-right Excitement
chevron-circle-right Enthusiasm
chevron-circle-right Delight
chevron-circle-right Fascination
chevron-circle-right Euphoria
chevron-circle-right Relief
Notice, all these emotions are emotions you feel when you're focused on the present moment. Think about it, when you’re laughing with friends in joy, you’re not concerned about your exams. When you’re on a roller coaster or are having sex, you’re not thinking about how you handed in your assignment late. When you’re engrossed in a good movie, you’re not thinking about a question you got wrong. Key Insight: Positive emotions are usually associated with the present moment. The present moment can be addictive as well. When you’re in the present, you’re relieved from any burdens you're carrying (consciously or unconsciously). Alcohol and drugs are tools that bring people in the present moment – it helps them ‘escape temporarily’ from the negativity in their lives. Once people sober up, they’re back to reality and are looking forward to having their escape again. Alcohol and drugs aren't the only addictive shortcuts to the present moment; porn is another one, so is overeating, and scrolling through Facebook news feeds. To be clear, we're not advocating 'escaping' from your emotions in such ways. Our goal here is not to help you 'escape' from your emotions, but to manage them in a healthy way during your MCAT prep so as a result, you learn a lot more proficiently.
Knowing that you learn better, are more motivated, are more creative, have better memory, etc., when you're in a positive emotional place... And knowing that a valuable key to unlocking the positive emotional place is through stepping into the present moment....
What if you could cultivate a present-state awareness at will, so you can continuously be in a state of complete positivity, enthusiasm, curiosity, and excitement while you're studying, so you're learning better?
Or what if you could cultivate that present state awareness even when you're taking a break from studying, so that when you're taking a break, you're actually taking a break instead of worrying about how you're not studying!
Getting high results while being happy the whole time? That sounds like an amazing life if you ask us, and the best part is, with some practice it can become a possibility for you.
Like everything else we teach, you can use the MCAT as a motivating 'excuse' to develop this skill ASAP, and carry it with you for the rest of your life.
So the question is...
How do you achieve this present state awareness regularly during MCAT study?
That’s what we want to show you...
But first, you might not be entirely convinced of the power of being in the present moment. You might be wondering if he we're about to go heavy into some ‘new age pseudoscience' kind of stuff.
As the future doctor that you are, you'll appreciate something we dug up...
We'd like to introduce you to Julie Connelly, MD who has written an article about this in the Journal of Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
The article is called:
Being in the present moment: developing the capacity for mindfulness in medicine.
(Full article link is below for reference)
You can read the abstract if you want - here's a portion of it: “Medical practice is beset by interruptions, contests for the attention of the physician, and urgent demands that diminish the attentiveness required for the humanistic care of patients. This essay discusses skills for "being in the present moment" that can help doctors to overcome distractedness... Applying these skills in everyday practice rewards the physician with renewed energy, a fresh perspective, and increased strength while preventing the stress and harm caused by a distracted or inattentive practice.” Here's where you hopefully caught a glimpse of the bigger picture; this isn't just about MCAT prep, it's about excelling in your medical practice...
It's about training yourself now, to be the kind of individual that can get through med-school and become a doctor who exudes clarity and confidence.
The MCAT was created as a filtering mechanism - to identify those who are likely to be future doctors. It's one of the biggest reasons why the MCAT is such a brutal process...
Because AAMC wants to see if like a med-school student (or more importantly, like a doctor) you can manage such high level of pressure and stress and at the same time, achieve your objectives while remaining calm, collected, and clear-headed.
Those are the students who tend to dominate the MCAT... And we want to make sure you're one of them.
With that said, we have tips and advice on how you can leverage everything you've learned so far and remain present in your daily lives and especially during MCAT prep.
Here are 3 simple strategies you can start implementing right away during your MCAT prep…
3 Simple Strategies For Achieving Present State Awareness During MCAT PrepA lawyer for the Los Angeles Police Department officer who discharged a gun while in a scuffle with teenagers in Anaheim earlier this week said Friday that his client feared for his and his sick father’s safety during the incident and still does because of the subsequent protests.
Video that quickly went viral shows the off-duty officer detaining a 13-year-old boy and then, with other teenagers trying to free the youth, firing his weapon that had been tucked into the waistband of his pants.
The downward shot did not strike anyone but the footage made national news, angering many while some supported the officer.
Larry Hanna, a Van Nuys-based attorney, said his client reacted as he was trained to do.
“You have an officer who got hit in the face so hard that he’s bleeding and almost passes out, getting tackled from the side, having about 17 to 20 kids coming at him … that’s bad,” Hanna said. “He was in fear for his life.”
Hanna said the officer, who had a cut to his face, also believed during the Tuesday confrontation that the teenage boy might have a weapon.
“The first young man has hands in his pocket and the officer heard him say, ‘I’m going to shoot you. I’m going to shoot you.’”
At least two children who were there have said that the boy actually said, “I am going to sue you.”
Hanna said the officer took the threat seriously and defended himself and his father, who wouldn’t quickly be able to get out of the line of fire. His dad was outside with the officer.
“Thirteen-year-olds, 15-year-olds, people shoot the police,” the attorney said. “It doesn’t matter what your age is.”
The confrontation, police have said, was apparently ignited by an on-going problem of children walking across the officer’s property.
“What the officer would have liked to have done was to actually have taken cover, gotten out of the way and not been in the line of the fire of this young kid, but his father was behind him,” the lawyer said. “His father has an autoimmune muscular disease.
“He has two crutches and has a hard time walking,” Hanna. “The officer could get out of the way but his dad couldn’t and that’s what the problem was.”
Protestors have broken windows at the officer’s house, and vandalized a car on his property.
“The whole family… they’re scared,” Hanna said.
Anaheim police arrested the boy but not the officer, enraging many and prompting a destructive protest on the street of the officer’s home the next night, when 23 were arrested, including minors. They face such misdemeanor charges as failure to disperse, resisting arrest, and battery on a peace officer, Sgt. Daron Wyatt said.
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The officer, whose name hasn’t been released, has worked with LAPD for just under five years. He was questioned by police and has been cooperative. The boy, and a 15-year-old boy also arrested, were released to their parents. Any of them could still be charged, Anaheim police said.
Hanna said his client has a good record as a police officer. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing the force’s rank and file, supported the officer.
“There is no question … that when a police officer is attacked, they have the right to protect themselves, no matter the age of the offender,” the Protective League said in a statement.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@scng.comSusan Anderson Lopes and her 2-year-old grandson, Mason Anderson, at their home in Bourne.
BOURNE — Mason Anderson’s short life has rarely been as serene as it was one recent afternoon, when the 2-year-old slept soundly for a few hours, bundled in a soft red blanket decorated with tiny hearts.
His grandmother, Susan Lopes, looked at the usually hyperactive child with a weary half-smile. “I love Mason. I love him being in my life,” she said before breaking down in tears.
Mason was born dependent on heroin, the child of Lopes’s drug-addicted son and a woman who overdosed just three days later while her baby struggled in the hospital.
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The child’s mother survived. But his father, Justin Anderson, died of a heroin and fentanyl overdose in November. The next day would have been his 29th birthday, which Lopes planned to celebrate with lasagna and a birthday cake.
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Now, Lopes is struggling to raise a little boy orphaned by the opioid epidemic raging across Massachusetts, where thousands of children of drug-dependent parents have been placed in state custody or are being raised by grandparents and other relatives.
The sprawling drug crisis, which public health officials have described as the worst in American history, has touched nearly every part of society. But the burden has perhaps fallen hardest on children, creating a new generation of foster youth and placing extraordinary strain on the child welfare system.
Since 2013, the average number of children and young adults in state custody has risen 26 percent to more than 9,200 in August, according to the Department of Children and Families, the state’s child protection agency.
Petitions to remove children from their homes rose 57 percent statewide from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2016, rising from 2,460 to 3,855 before declining 10 percent this year. Reports of babies born with opioids in their systems rose 11 percent from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2017, to 2,675 from 2,393, according to DCF figures.
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The increases have coincided with the spread of the opioid epidemic. As a result, said Maria Mossaides, head of the state’s Office of the Child Advocate, the reasons for removing children from their parents’ homes have changed dramatically. “You’re seeing a huge increase in allegations of neglect or abuse with respect to parents who are users of drugs,” she said.
The plight of these children, some of whom have seen their parents dead from an overdose, has overwhelmed a system not intended to handle such heavy demand. The influx of children has created a shortage of foster parents, saddled social workers with daunting caseloads, and placed enormous pressure on the juvenile court system, which decides whether a child should be placed in state care.
“These are very complex cases. We know that even one day in alternative care for a child is very traumatic,” said Amy L. Nechtem, chief justice of the state Juvenile Court. “We know that many, many are opioid-related.”
Despite the new challenges, DCF Commissioner Linda Spears said the agency has made important strides since the death of 5-year-old Jeremiah Oliver in 2014 exposed startling lapses in its oversight of at-risk children. The murder the following year of Bella Bond, a 2-year-old whose body was discovered in a trash bag, underscored the dangers that children face from opioid addiction in the home.
“Each and every day, we place each and every kid that needs to be placed,” said Spears, whose predecessor resigned after Oliver’s body was discovered stuffed in a suitcase off Interstate 190. A DCF social worker had missed eight mandatory monthly meetings with the Fitchburg boy in a span that overlapped his disappearance.
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Part of the strain on DCF can be traced to those highly publicized deaths, child advocates said. In their aftermath, social workers became more likely to take a child into custody rather than risk an unforeseen tragedy.
Craig F. Walker/Globe staff Susan Anderson Lopes prepared her 2-year-old grandson, Mason Anderson, for a nap at their home in Bourne.
At the same time, the rapid growth of the opioid epidemic added another enormous obstacle as the department worked to reform its culture and protocols.
“The work that the department is currently doing in revamping policies and upgrading systems... all happened coincidentally with this huge rise in numbers,” Mossaides said.
In the past two years, the department has increased its staff of social workers by 300, Spears said. About 140 new foster homes have been added, and 15 new recruiters are working to increase that number. Most important, caseloads are shrinking, the commissioner said.
As of July 31, the average “weighted caseload” for DCF social workers was 18.7, according to state data, only slightly above the contracted target of 18.0. That figure, which measures the complexity of cases as well as overall numbers for rank-and-file social workers, represents a marked improvement from past years, officials said.
“There’s enough work going on and enough expansion going on that I don’t see us as being in a crisis,” Spears said.
But Peter MacKinnon, president of the union that represents DCF social workers, said caseloads remain at dangerously high levels in parts of the state, and that some children who should be removed from their homes might slip through the cracks.
“You end up triaging, and you make decisions that you hope are the right decisions, and there is no way to predict that,” he said. “Opioid cases are incredibly difficult to deal with because the risk to children can be so great and so high.”
DCF does not count how many reports of child abuse and neglect are related specifically to opioids. Instead, the department includes those cases with other forms of substance abuse, such as alcohol. As a whole, substance abuse has been linked to 28 percent of child abuse and neglect allegations since March 2016, the most frequent reason cited.
Domestic violence is next at 21 percent, followed by mental illness at 11 percent.
DCF officials said some positive signs have emerged in the past year. Child-removal petitions have dropped and the number of children in state custody has stabilized, dipping to 9,517 in March from 9,655 in June 2016.
“What I think we’ve done clearly is stem the growth, and that’s a positive sign to me,” Spears said.
Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Susan Anderson Lopes explained to her 2-year-old grandson, Mason Anderson, that he cannot go outside until he eats breakfast.
Governor Charlie Baker has said child-welfare reform is a priority of his administration. Lizzy Guyton, a spokeswoman for Baker, cited more than $100 million that has been invested to bolster DCF, which has doubled its number of substance-abuse coordinators and joined a state task force to coordinate services for opioid-exposed newborns.
Erin Bradley, executive director of the Children’s League of Massachusetts, praised the state’s efforts.
“The commissioner and the Baker administration really have done yeomen’s work in shoring up the foundation of the Department of Children and Families,” Bradley said. As an example, she cited policy changes to streamline how families are assessed and monitored.
Yet many child advocates and state officials predict a difficult, drawn-out campaign to protect children traumatized by opioid addiction. To Nechtem, the juvenile court’s chief justice, one year of encouraging data does not constitute a trend.
“These are some of the most heart-wrenching cases, but I also feel they’re some of the most heart-warming cases,” Nechtem said. “The laser focus is on the best interest of that child.”
Bradley cautioned that the epidemic’s long-term impact will not be apparent until today’s children become adults. John Merrigan, register of Probate and Family Court in hard-hit Franklin County, said the struggle could last generations. In response, government agencies and treatment providers must join forces to help those with addiction and their children, he said.
“Every person needs to take a responsible role in fighting this and coming together,” Merrigan said. “If not, we’re just going to continue butting our heads against a wall and watch people die.”
The opioid crisis has hit children particularly hard on Cape Cod and the Islands, where court petitions to remove them from troubled homes nearly doubled between 2012 and 2016. Petitions have dropped 14 percent since then, but child welfare specialists remain wary.
“It’s encouraging to see a decrease in filings fairly uniformly around the state, but it’s too soon to say if it’s a trend that will continue or what it means,” said Susan Elsen, child welfare reform project director at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a nonprofit poverty law and policy center.
Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Susan Anderson Lopes took a walk with her 2-year-old grandson, Mason Anderson.
At the DCF’s Hyannis office, an average of about 19 families were assigned to each of the 52 social workers with ongoing cases at the end of July, the highest rate in Massachusetts, according to union representatives. Their contract with the state stipulates that social workers be assigned no more than 15 families.
“If you have too many people that you’re required to talk to on a monthly basis, you’re not digging in to ask the questions that need to be asked, simply because you don’t have the time,” MacKinnon said.
The union steward in Hyannis described a crushing caseload for many social workers, who often stay with DCF for only one or two years before leaving. At the end of July, nearly half of DCF social workers for Cape Cod and the Islands were handling more complicated cases than nearly all of their colleagues across the state, according to the union.
“They come on board and they’re raring to go, and they want to do this work, but it becomes so difficult to explain the stress of it. It becomes a little demoralizing,” said Mary Burkinshaw, the union steward.
“A lot of these children have been exposed to trauma," added Burkinshaw, who also supervises a small group of social workers. “They have seen or experienced their parents overdosing. Some have found a parent or important adult in their life dead from an overdose.”
Protecting those children forces social workers to take extraordinary measures, Burkinshaw said. As many as 10 children sometimes spend the day in the Hyannis office, waiting for the agency to find a bed that can be more than 50 miles away, she said.
“We’re really not equipped to be a day care,” Burkinshaw said.
Social workers sometimes drive a child to a faraway foster home after their shift, catch a few hours sleep, and then return to the home as early as 5 a.m. to pick up the child. Along the way, social workers have been bitten, spit at, and punched while driving, Burkinshaw said.
“The children we’re seeing are more traumatized than the kids I saw when I was a worker,” Burkinshaw said. “Most of the cases that are coming in now are substance-abuse related, and most of them are linked to opioids.”
Lopes is among an estimated 10,000 grandparents in Massachusetts who are primary caregivers for their grandchildren, many of whom can no longer live safely with drug-dependent parents.
Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Susan Anderson Lopes kept a photograph of her son, Justin Anderson, who died of a fentanyl and heroin overdose, on the mantel at her home in Bourne.
Now, at 54 years old, Lopes is raising a rambunctious toddler who does not know his mother. “It’s emotionally and physically exhausting. You’re running on empty,” Lopes said.
Brightly colored toys — a helicopter here, a police cruiser there — take up much of the living room of her two-story home near the Cape Cod Canal. Mason is playing happily, but Lopes knows this is only a short break in another demanding day.
Weaned from heroin as a newborn, Mason rarely sleeps through the night. He cannot put more than one or two words together, and he is prone to outbursts.
Lopes, who plans to file for adoption, is learning as she goes. She lost her son to opioids, and now she is determined to save her grandson.
“This will be my life until my last breath,” Lopes said. “He’s who I live for.”
Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Susan Anderson Lopes rested on a bed hoping her 2-year-old grandson, Mason Anderson, would take a nap.
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.comMcGill Scholarships and Student Aid will offer the Youth in Care Bursary to applicants for the 2017 Fall term. The new bursary program is designed specifically for students who grew up in the foster care system, intending to lessen the financial load they incur from a lack of parental support. The bursary will award a minimum of $5,000 per academic year for those enrolled full-time in an undergraduate program.
According to a SSMU report, only 13 per cent of Canadian foster youth apply to post-secondary institutions, and less than 2 per cent of former foster care students obtain a bachelor’s degree. The Youth in Care Bursary strives to change these statistics by making McGill more financially accessible.
Cara Piperni, director of McGill Scholarships and Student Aid, was responsible for drafting the program’s eligibility requirements and fitting it to McGill’s student aid resources.
“[With this new program] we’re identifying a candidate and guaranteeing [them] a minimum amount,” Piperni said. “Then, based on their [province, program, and year of study] we’ll match them to the bursary funds that we have.”
The bursary program was initially suggested at Cafe Collab’s March 21 focus group, “Doing it on Your Own.” Cafe Collab, a project within the Student Equity and Diversity of Education (SEDE) Office, hosts a series of focus groups that bring together students from the McGill community to discuss their experiences accessing student services and to share their ideas about how these services can better suit their needs. The aptly named “Doing it on Your Own” workshop focused on reducing barriers to access for students who had grown up in the foster care system.
"One of the themes of the discussion in the Cafe Collab [Doing it on Your Own] workshop was the idea that former youth in care often lack the kind of familial support that many students take for granted,” Parker Finlay, SEDE’s Cafe Collab project coordinator, said. “This is one of the reasons that many former youth in care have to rely on their own means to attend a post-secondary institution.”
Former Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) funding commissioner Arisha Khan’s report “Fostering Post-Secondary Success: Support Programming for Students From Foster Care,” inspired the “Doing it on Your Own” session. Now SSMU VP Finance, Khan is a former foster youth who attended the Café Collab session.
Khan did not receive financial assistance from provincial government bursary programs and similar support programs provided by provincially subsidized academic institutions because she never obtained crown wardship status, meaning a provincial government never made her its legal responsibility.
“I had a file since I was six, and I was in and out of homes until I was 18, but I never became a crown ward [of Ontario….] and because I was never classified as a crown ward, I wasn’t allowed to receive those grants,” Khan said. “That is why I struggled financially in school.”
The McGill bursary is different from government-subsidized programs because it does not require wardship for the eligibility of prospective foster care students.
“The McGill bursary […] recognizes that the government may have let you slip through the cracks, but since you’re coming out of the system with this history you’re still eligible for support,” Khan said. “It looks at the issue holistically and not if you fit into one checkbox.”
Melanie Doucet, who also attended the workshop, is a former New Brunswick foster youth, and is a PhD candidate in McGill’s School of Social Work, whose research involves students aging out of care. She thinks the program is a great start toward making McGill a more equitable institution, but that it could go much further.
“$5,000 per year is not going to go very far for a former youth in care, who doesn’t have the typical family support that a non-former youth in care would have,” Doucet said. “And someone who is enrolled [in class] full-time is not going to have a whole lot of time to work part-time on the side to make ends meet […] It’s definitely a good start, but it can definitely go further.”With the Los Angeles Lakers struggling through the first 20 games of the 2015-16 NBA season, head coach Byron Scott decided to make a starting lineup change by benching D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle.
After playing 21 minutes against the Toronto Raptors where he finished with nine points and two assists, there are concerns about how Russell has been handled in his rookie season.
With Jahlil Okafor and Kristaps Porzingis playing well, Michael Lee of Yahoo! Sports shares the front office were swayed to bypass them because Scott favored the point guard:
Scott’s decision to sit Russell late in games is confounding even for some members of the Lakers’ front office who were swayed to bypass Kristaps Porzingis and Jahlil Okafor because Scott favored the flashy point guard from Ohio State, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
With Scott favoring Russell over two big men, the front office is reportedly confounded with his decision to bench their point guard of the future. While the Lakers were not expected to make the playoffs in the Western Conference, there were expectations they would focus on player development this season to prepare for the post-Kobe Bryant era.
With the Lakers not winning and not properly developing their young core, there are a lot of questions about the direction of the franchise. As Russell and Julius Randle are expected to come off the bench for the next five to 10 games, it will be interesting to see if Lakers are able to win games.
Russell is averaging 10.9 points, 4.6 rebounds and 3.0 assists in 27.4 minutes.Episode Title Series # Cursed parakeet 4/300+ Hot blooded loser! Finally the forbidden secret technique blossoms! 49/300+ There are Miracles and Magic 4/12 Let's brew with microbes! 3/11 His butler, on ice 10/24 Kawachi kai!! The Solar Gauntlet! 8/69 The $$60,000,000,000.00 man 1/26 Closed Day for the Bar 7/11 Hitagi Crab (Part 1) 1/15 Phantom station 13 106/113 Sora ~air~ 12/13 Herr Dr. Tenma 1/74 Become a gazelle 46/76+ The Vice President Doesn't Say Anything about the Possibility of Him Being the Main Character 1/16 Go with chest hair! 3/26 The twentieth match: The road to becoming pro 20/75 Master of monster 10/13 Fire Starter 2/6 With one accord in a flash / Both of you, dance like you want to win! 9/26 Chi doesn't do anything 16/27 Improving genius of drift 14/26 Those with Courage 46/49 Unsuccessful overhead kick 48/128 Tamayo's superiority ~spread legs form~ 2/12 The last plesiosaur 13/26 When the hot ice melts 4/26 Low spinning fastball 6/25 Oh my, oh my! No balls! 2/9000+ Triangular 19/25 Palmtop tiger of bliss 14/25 Voices from the Darkness! Slash 'em to Bits, Ragna Blade! 37/104 'Standby Ready' 13/13 Acperience 1 12/50 Pure ruby ~ reiner rubin 12/12 The Beast, Robot, and Butler that Kinda Shout Love at the Center of the World 3/52 An eye for an eye, a butt for a butt 5/43 NAMELESS 4/6 High School Nudical 4B/13 Together with Maya 24.5/26 The sublimating effects of the dissimulation brought on through makeup & costume on mental obstacles 4/12 The east that goes on 11/11 Long live the kaiser! 54/110 The flame of love in Hell. You're already dead!! 5/109+ A tale of feeding off others 2/13 America 26/26 Going too far 26/26 The one who brings the world revolution 37/39 Garbage day, Clock Tower, The Bird that Crossed over the Wall 4/13 Sakura & The Dangerous Piano 49/70 The Genius Who Descended Into the Darkness 1/26
Episode Title Series # Akt 19 - Kapitel des Junges: A Midsummer Night`s Dream ~ Ein Sommernachtstraum 24/38 Simeon Girls Force 5/24 Blade, the Thousand / Sentō Tsurugi 3/12 We can turn this game around, right? 23/50 Mushroom Samba 17/26 The truth behind truths 19/51 The day of Sagittarius 11/14 Requiem on a hill ~requiem~ 10/24 A man of mystery appears!? His name is Sogeking! 258/450+ A goodbye that came too soon 3/26 Time Travel Paranoia 9/26 Haruhi in Wonderland 13/26 The sword that brings the promised victory 16/24 Happy family planning 8/13 Which of the third generation will win? 19/155+ Episode II-VI Back rank mate 11/26 Wolf and business sense 3/13 Torch & Flame Haze 3/24 One-eyed fish 12/26 The 4½ Tatami Ideologue 10/11 Moto-Mechazawa 19/26 Kriegserklärung ~the fighting maidens~ 4/12 People Who Make Good First Impressions Usually Suck 12/200+ Star-Shaped Feelings 21/23 Bad-ass Dude 7/25 Singing Voice Resounding Through the Galaxy 49/49 Role play 1/26 The legend of Falcon!! 51/51 The Jolly Roger of Space 1/42 Having a lot of faces doesn't make you great! 4/27 Darling Said He Loved Me 188/195 They who move the Stars 5/6 Meakashi Chapter 3: Demon's blood 18/26 Infomography 11/13 The Greatest Robot on Earth, Part 1 116/193 For His Was Genius No Rule Could Contain 26/26 The Drill Speaks Eloquently of Love 11/24 Enemy is another big 12/26 Walpurgis Night 10/12 Launch!! The Incomplete Ultimate Weapon! 4/6 Pineapple Salad 18/36 Instrument! 2/12 The beginning ~ Beginn 8/13 Fairy tale - Il Principe del Regno della Pasta 8/13 The mysterious, lecherous monk 93/192 Recovery service vs. transport service 4/49 Life's misdiagnosis 42/61 The 20,000 ball challenge 93/101 Time of the machines ~ MACHINES DÉSIRANTES 15/26 1.28 36/37CLOSE A new USA TODAY/Rock the Vote Poll of voters under 35 finds overwhelming support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. USA TODAY
Supporters at Donald Trump rally Aug. 12 in Altoona, Pa. (Photo11: Evan Vucci, AP)
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is consolidating the support of the Millennials who fueled Bernie Sanders' challenge during the primaries, a new USA TODAY/Rock the Vote Poll finds, as Republican Donald Trump heads toward the worst showing among younger voters in modern American history.
The survey shows Clinton trouncing Trump 56%-20% among those under 35, though she has failed so far to generate the levels of enthusiasm Sanders did — and the high turn-out that can signal — among Millennials.
"I get worried about the bigoted element of our country, and that they will stick with Trump regardless of his stupidity," says Elizabeth Krueger, 31, an actress in New York City who was among those surveyed. She supports Clinton. "She is not going to be a perfect president, but who would be?"
The findings have implications for politics long past the November election. If the trend continues, the Democratic Party will have scored double-digit victories among younger voters in three consecutive elections, the first time that has happened since such data became readily available in 1952. That could shape the political affiliations of the largest generation in American history for years to follow.
In the new survey, half of those under 35 say they identify with or lean toward the Democrats; just 20% identify with or lean toward the Republicans. Seventeen percent are independents, and another 12% either identify with another party or don't know.
Trump's weakness among younger voters is unprecedented, lower even than the 32% of the vote that the Gallup Organization calculates Richard Nixon received among 18-to-29-year-old voters in 1972, an era of youthful protests against the Vietnam War.
In 2008 and 2012, overwhelming support among voters under 30 was a crucial part of Barack Obama's winning coalitions. But that doesn't reflect long-held partisan preferences. The Gallup analysis shows that as recently as 2000 younger voters split evenly between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, and the GOP's presidential candidates carried their support by double digits in 1984 and 1988.
Now some younger Republicans, like their elders, are torn between concerns about Trump and support for their party.
"At first I supported Ben Carson, and when he dropped out, I was supporting Ted Cruz, and I wasn't left with much when he left," Serena Potter, 19, of Brownsburg, Ind., a student at Purdue University, said in a follow-up phone interview after being polled. Now, asked whom she supports, she replies, "If there was a gun to my head, I'd say Trump.... He is better than Hillary."
The Millennials survey, the third this year, is part of USA TODAY's One Nation initiative, a series of forums across the country on the most important issues of 2016. The online poll of 1,539 adults age 18-34 was taken by Ipsos Public Affairs from Aug. 5-10. It has a credibility interval, akin to the margin of error, of 4.6.
Census Bureau data released in April estimated the number of Millennials in the United States at 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million members of the aging Baby Boom generation, now 51-69.
WILL THEY VOTE?
Clinton faced her own challenges with winning Millennials' support. During the Democratic primaries, surveys of voters as they left polling places showed Sanders preferred by voters under 30 by an yawning 71%-28%.
Now, she has succeeded in winning over most of his supporters. In the new poll, she is backed by 72% of those who say they had supported Sanders. Eleven percent support Trump and another 11% say they won't vote. Six percent don't know.
However, enthusiasm about the election has ebbed since the survey was taken in March, when Sanders was still a candidate. The percentage seen as most likely to vote has dipped to 72% from 76%, and those seen as not very likely to vote has ticked up to 9% from 7%.
"I started out as a Bernie supporter, but when he dropped out I switched to Clinton," says Will Barkalow, 24, of Nobleboro, Maine, saying he saw "no other legitimate choice." Barkalow, who is starting a tech-repair business, says he is now enthusiastic about supporting her: "She is very good on policy. She is very bad at giving speeches and interacting with people."
Despite her groundbreaking status as the first female presidential nominee of a major party, Clinton does a bit better among young men (58%-22%) than she does among young women (53%-17%). Women are somewhat more likely to say they won't vote for either, 17% compared with 13% for men.
Interestingly, young men are more likely to say sexism is a major reason for hostility toward Clinton: 42% of men compared to 37% of women. Women are a bit more likely to say sexism plays no role at |
Glenn Maxwell is in line to debut for Australia © Getty Images
Australia have called up the uncapped allrounder Glenn Maxwell for their ODI and Twenty20 matches against Pakistan in the UAE. The batsman Callum Ferguson has also been recalled to the one-day side, having last played for Australia more than a year ago, and Cameron White has been named in the T20 squad, six months after losing the national captaincy to George Bailey.
Michael Hussey will return in both formats, having missed the tour of England due to the premature birth of his child, and Peter Forrest has been dropped. The selectors have also decided to rest Shane Watson and Ben Hilfenhaus from the one-day portion of the trip - the same squad has been named for the one-off ODI against Afghanistan - and they have deemed that Pat Cummins will be fit enough to take part in the three T20s despite his early exit from the England tour with a side strain.
The squads are also without the veteran Brett Lee, who retired from international cricket on Friday, and the offspinner Nathan Lyon has been overlooked after being part of Australia's T20 squad in the Caribbean. The inclusion of Maxwell, 23, has come after his impressive performances for Hampshire in the Friends Life t20 this year - he has made 178 runs at 59.33 and a strike rate of 178.
In February 2011, Maxwell scored the quickest half-century in Australia's domestic one-day history when he brought up his fifty in 19 balls for Victoria against Tasmania, and his powerful striking has proved useful in all formats. Also a handy offspinner and an agile fieldsman, Maxwell has now emerged as a potential selection for the World T20 in Sri Lanka in September, along with fellow spinners Brad Hogg and Xavier Doherty, who will also play in the UAE.
"Glenn Maxwell is a relatively inexperienced player who debuted for Victoria in 50-over and T20 cricket in the 2009-10 season and in the Sheffield Shield the following season," John Inverarity, the national selector, said. "He's a versatile and lively off-spinning allrounder and brilliant fieldsman that has caught the eye of the national selection panel.
"An injury last January somewhat halted his progress but in recent months he has impressed in the IPL and with Hampshire. Glenn will provide another spin bowler option on the slow, low, turning wickets in the UAE."
The three T20s are Australia's last outings in the format before the World T20 and there are unlikely to be any major changes to the 15-man squad for that tournament. The veteran spinner Hogg, 41, has been in the selectors' plans for the World T20 for six months, while the inclusion of Cummins is not surprising, his recent injury notwithstanding, given the desire for him to be part of the world tournament as well.
The inclusion of White came after he revived his lagging form with a strong display for Deccan Chargers in the IPL this year and for Northamptonshire in the Friends Life t20. A year ago, White was expected to be the man who would lead Australia to the World T20 in Sri Lanka but his form led to a reassessment from Inverarity's selection panel.
"Cameron White has recaptured some form in recent months," Inverarity said. "He scored particularly well in the IPL and with Northamptonshire in the county T20 competition. His experience and striking ability resulted in him winning favour with the NSP and shading Steve Smith for a place. Further, he will be able to provide invaluable support to George Bailey and Shane Watson, captain and vice-captain respectively."
Watson has been named in the T20 squad but not for the ODIs, having been sent home early from the England series due to a calf strain. David Warner will be Michael Clarke's vice-captain for the three ODIs, which will start at 6pm local time to avoid the extreme daytime heat, and the series will also provide an opportunity for Ferguson to resume his international career.
"The ODI squad has a strong development aspect to it," Inverarity said. "Shane Watson and Ben Hilfenhaus have not been included and Brett Lee has retired. This will provide development opportunities for others and allow Shane and Ben to complete a more thorough strength and conditioning program before embarking on a very demanding schedule.
"Callum Ferguson played very well at times for the Australian ODI team in 2009 before a serious knee injury halted his progress at international level. The NSP is keen to facilitate Callum's return to consistent good form and has included him in the squad and anticipates that he will benefit greatly from being in the team environment and any opportunities that may come his way.
"Michael Hussey's return to the fold in both squads will be welcomed. His all-round batting skills, the outstanding manner in which he prepares, and his unrelenting quest for excellence will add greatly to the team dynamic.
"The conditions in the UAE will be very demanding. The pitches will be different and it will be extremely hot, necessitating ODIs beginning at 6pm and ending after 1am. The players will be able to add further to their kitbags of experiences."
ODI squad David Warner, Matthew Wade (wk), Michael Clarke (capt), George Bailey, Callum Ferguson, Michael Hussey, David Hussey, Daniel Christian, Steven Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Johnson, Xavier Doherty, James Pattinson, Clint McKay, Mitchell Starc
T20 squad David Warner, Shane Watson, Matthew Wade (wk), David Hussey, Michael Hussey, George Bailey (capt), Cameron White, Daniel Christian, Glenn Maxwell, Brad Hogg, Xavier Doherty, Clint McKay, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Ben Hilfenhaus.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.We should realize that we gain far less info in an echo chamber than from being around folks with diverse views. The latest Journal of Experimental Psychology says we just don't get this:
The experimental task involved estimating the number of calories in measured quantities of different foods (e.g., a cup of yogurt, a bowl of cooked rice). … Participants were asked to generate a calorie estimate for each food and then indicate their confidence in it. … [Then] they were provided with the opinions of three advisors, and were given the opportunity to revise their initial estimates. They were told that they would receive a bonus for making accurate judgments, … [and] were also asked to indicate their confidence in their final (revised) estimates and to bet on their accuracy. …
On half the trials (independent condition) the [screen] header stated that “these estimates were randomly drawn from a pool of 100 estimates made by participants in a previous study,” whereas on the remaining trials (opinion-dependent condition) the header stated that “these estimates were selected from those closest to your own initial opinion in a pool of 100 estimates made by participants in a previous study.” …
Receiving advice increased participants’ confidence in the dependent condition, but not in the independent condition. Participants indicated greater confidence in their final estimates in the opinion-dependent than in the independent condition. In accord with the confidence results, the participants bet more often in the dependent (58%) than in the independent condition (42%).Looking for news you can trust?
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Like his fellow GOP presidential contenders, Jeb Bush has fiercely condemned Planned Parenthood in the wake of hidden-camera videos purporting to show the nonprofit’s employees discussing the sale of fetal tissue. In addition to pushing for a congressional investigation into the group, he has called on the next president to halt the more than $500 million in annual federal funding that it receives, and to redirect those funds to other women’s health organizations. But lost in the polarized debate over Planned Parenthood is a fact that Bush would likely prefer not to highlight: His family, dating back to his grandfather, was instrumental in launching and securing federal funding for the group.
During the 1940s, when contraception was a controversial and largely taboo topic, Jeb Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was an active supporter of Planned Parenthood, which was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921 as the American Birth Control League. In 1947, Bush served as treasurer of the group’s first national fundraising campaign—a move he would soon come to regret. In 1950, Prescott Bush narrowly lost an election for a US Senate seat in Connecticut after a columnist revealed his connection to the “Birth Control Society.” (He went on to win a Senate seat two years later.)
Prescott Bush’s defeat in 1950 made an impression on his son, who would go on to become a crusader in Congress for federal family planning funding. “My own first awareness of birth control as a public policy issue came with a jolt in 1950 when my father was running for the United States Senate,” George H.W. Bush wrote in the foreword to a 1973 book on the importance of family planning in the developing world. As a congressman from Texas from 1967 to 1971, the future president championed federal funding for groups including Planned Parenthood and access to family planning for all Americans. His dedication to the issue earned him the nickname “Rubbers.” In the 1973 foreword, Bush recalls being inspired by the congressional testimony of the president of Planned Parenthood, Alan Guttmacher, who had pushed for federal family planning funding in the late 1960s. Bush became a principal Republican backer of the 1970 family planning legislation that created Title X, the program through which millions of federal dollars flow every year to Planned Parenthood—the same money his son now wants to redirect or cut back. The legislation passed with bipartisan support and was signed by a Republican president, Richard Nixon.
George H.W. Bush also boasted that he helped make information about birth control options available by working to repeal a federal prohibition on sending contraceptives and information about contraceptives through the mail.
In 1971, Nixon made Bush an ambassador to the United Nations, where he embraced the issue of population control and the newly created UN Population Fund, which supports family planning services around the world. “Success in the population field, under United Nations leadership, may, in turn, determine whether we can resolve successfully the other great questions of peace, prosperity, and individual rights that face the world,” he wrote.
From the experience of his father, Bush learned that birth control was an important public policy issue—but potentially also a politically deadly one. As the Republican Party moved to the right in the 1980s, so did Bush. As Ronald Reagan’s vice president, he embraced the GOP’s anti-abortion platform. When he became president in 1989, he continued Reagan’s policy of cutting off US funding to the UN family planning effort—the very program he had championed during the previous decade—and blocking US funding for family planning organizations abroad that provided abortion services or information about abortion. President Bill Clinton lifted these restrictions, but Bush’s eldest son, President George W. Bush, reinstated them. Though Bush II was pro-life, he increased Title X funding in 2007.
As governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, Jeb Bush cut family planning funding and programs to spread awareness about birth control. In his first year in office, he used his line-item veto power to cut $500,000 for a model teen pregnancy prevention program in South Florida operating out of the local Planned Parenthood office. In 2001, Bush axed more than $300,000 in family planning funding for poor women that had been administered by Planned Parenthood. That same year, according to the St. Petersburg Times, Bush proposed taking $1 million from the state’s $5.7 million family planning funds and redirecting it toward teen “abstinence-only” programs that prohibited instructors from discussing birth control—the same kind of information his father had pushed to make more widely available. Even Republicans were squeamish about a teen chastity program that barred any mention of contraception, and Bush’s proposal was never adopted.
Jeb Bush also signed a law banning the procedure known as partial-birth abortion in the state, approved “Choose Life” specialty license plates, and signed a parental-notification law for minors seeking abortions. In 2003, Bush intervened in the case of a mentally disabled rape victim who had become pregnant, pushing for a court-appointed guardian for the fetus, even though the woman was not seeking an abortion. A court ultimately blocked his request. Later that year, when Bush waded into the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead woman whom the Christian right fought for years to keep alive, he boasted that he was “probably the most pro-life governor in modern times.”
Despite his anti-abortion record, Jeb Bush has struggled to gain the support of evangelicals in the first months of his presidential bid. While his family name brings with it money and connections, it also evokes moderate Connecticut Republicans who are socially liberal. (Former first ladies Barbara and Laura Bush are pro-choice.) Despite Jeb Bush’s conservative record as governor, the right wing of the GOP is always looking for evidence that he is not as conservative as he says.
Two weeks ago, the right found its smoking gun: A pro-life news site revealed that Bush had served as a director of the Bloomberg Family Foundation at the same time that the charity gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood. Questioned about this during the first Republican primary debate on Thursday, Bush claimed his role was not to approve the budget line by line, but as a whole, and he said he was unaware of the Planned Parenthood funding. It was a familiar scene—a politically ambitious Bush. Then he reiterated his stance on abortion: “My record is clear. My record as a pro-life governor is not in dispute. I am completely pro-life.”
The Planned Parenthood controversy isn’t likely to fade away anytime soon. As if the Bush family name didn’t carry enough baggage to begin with, the clan’s past role in assisting Planned Parenthood is yet another political land mine that Jeb Bush will have to tiptoe around.One newspaper captioned the picture "the height of humiliation" [Image: Lior Mizrahi/Israel Hayom] Israel has issued a stern rebuke to Turkey's ambassador over a television series which depicts Israeli intelligence agents as baby-snatchers. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was caught on camera urging cameramen to note the ambassador's low seating position at a meeting on the issue. The incident has been widely seen in Israel as an intentional humiliation. And Turkey has summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest against the treatment of its ambassador in Israel. A Turkish diplomat said the Israeli ambassador, Gabby Levy, had been summoned to a meeting the Turkish foreign ministry's under-secretary in Ankara. "We demanded an explanation and conveyed our annoyance," the Turkish diplomat told the AFP news agency. Although the Israeli ambassador was reprimanded over the incident, he was not subjected to the indignity of squatting on a low sofa, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul. 'Preaching morality' On Monday, Israel's foreign ministry denounced the Turkish television series and what it called an "unbridled attack" in comments by Turkey's PM. Footage of Mr Ayalon urging journalists to make clear that the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while the Israeli officials were in much higher chairs, has been widely broadcast by the Israeli media. He is also heard pointing out in Hebrew that "there is only one flag here" and "we are not smiling". One Israeli newspaper marked the height difference on the photo, and captioned it "the height of humiliation". The meeting with the Turkish ambassador, Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, was called over the fictional television series Valley of the Wolves, popular in Turkey. It depicts Israeli intelligence operatives running operations to kidnap babies and convert them to Judaism. Last October Israel complained over another Turkish series, which depicted Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians. In one clip, an Israeli soldier shoots dead a smiling young girl at close range. Israel has also been angered by heavy criticism on Sunday by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who accused it of using disproportionate force against the Palestinians. Israel's foreign ministry issued a statement denouncing the television series and Mr Erdogan's comments as "anti-Israel". "Turkey is the last country that should preach morality to Israel and to the Israel Defense Forces," the statement said. Turkey has long been an ally of Israel, but relations have deteriorated as Turkey has repeatedly criticised Israel's conduct in its operation in Gaza a year ago. Rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians died during the offensive, which Israel said was aimed at ending rocket fire by Hamas.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionMaybe you are one of the millions of Americans who cannot wait for this election to be over, or alternatively, maybe you are paying no attention to this election. (There’s really no third option.)
But the weary countdown—46 days left!—misses an important fact: In many places, voting is already underway. Voting began in parts of Wisconsin on Monday. Starting Friday, anyone in Minnesota can cast an absentee ballot, and they need no excuse to do so. So can Virginia voters. Meanwhile, a slew of other states are already taking absentee ballot requests. The list includes some of the most hotly contested swing states, including Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and North Carolina. In those cases, there’s no way to know how the people getting their ballots will mark them, but there are ways to make some educated guesses based on who has made a request. Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who runs the invaluable United States Elections Project, calculates that 5,649 people have already voted (as of publication—the number keeps climbing).
Start with North Carolina. So far, about 61,600 absentee ballots have been requested, an increase over the pace four years ago. Based on voter registration, those requesters are split evenly, 35-35 between Democrats and Republicans, with another 28 percent unaffiliated. A much smaller number have been returned—around 5,500—but Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, crunches the numbers and finds that they look different from 2012:
However, both registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters are overperforming their same-day cumulative totals in comparison to 2012's numbers: registered unaffiliated accepted ballots are 167 percent of their same-day totals four years ago, registered Democratic accepted ballots are 153 percent of same-day totals from four years ago, and registered Republican accepted ballots are 93 percent of their same-day totals from 2012.
Bitzer notes that affiliation can be a little misleading in North Carolina, where there remain conservative voters who are legacy Democrats and have not switched registration, but are still unlikely to vote for the more liberal candidates the party puts forward.(Newser) – President Obama photoshopped to look like a witch doctor, a caveman, and a thug recently appeared, not on the Facebook page of a misbehaving teen, but on the official Facebook page of the Mecklenburg County Republican Committee. The photos have been there for months, the Washington Post reports, but apparently started getting widespread attention this week. Now the Virginia Republican Party has officially told the affiliate to take the pictures down.
"These kinds of images have no place in political discourse—period," says the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia. "They are offensive, tasteless and should never have been posted anywhere, let alone a local unit’s Facebook page." The executive director of the group that brought the images to light calls them racist, saying they "seek to portray our president, and black men more broadly, as, quote unquote, savages." But the chairman of the committee, who posted most of the pictures, says anyone who's offended just doesn't have a sense of humor. He laughed off news that the Republican Party wanted the pictures removed, and they were still up as of this afternoon. (Read more Barack Obama stories.)Gabrielle Union’s advice on how to find love caused a social media frenzy after users cried foul on her sentiments.
While speaking to The Grio to promote her film, “Almost Christmas” with co-star Omar Epps, the reporter asked Union what information would she tell anyone hoping to fall in love after heartache.
In response, the actress reflected on her own experience.
“There’s always options and a lot of times we have to get out of our own way,” she said. “We have an idea of what our type is and if your type hasn’t worked for you in 40 years — guess what? Your type sucks!”
“Think outside the box!” Union continued. “Maybe they’re younger, maybe they’re older, maybe they don’t come in the shape or size or color that you assume that they would come in. But there’s [sic] so many dope people out there that if you open yourself up and get out of your own way, you’re going to have a lot of options. A lot more options, at least, than you think.”
However, many on Twitter blasted the actress for her opinion Nov. 15 and T.L.O.A. saw it coming.
Gabrielle Union basically said if you 40 and single something ain't working lets see how this turns out pic.twitter.com/wRkYrkCr6j — T.L.O.A ⚡️ (@Nevers_Failures) November 15, 2016
Darth Paul said Union is not the person to turn to for relationship advice.
Gabrielle Union is the last person y'all should be taking relationship advice from… — Darth Paul (@justpaulplease) November 15, 2016
Even though Paul didn’t elaborate, Kristaps offered some insight as to why.
Gabrielle Union is the step mother to a child who is younger than her relationship, don't think she should be giving advice — Kristaps (@ItIsRalphTho) November 15, 2016
The user referenced Union’s now-husband NBA star Dwyane Wade fathering his third child while the pair were on a break, according to Atlanta Black Star. Still, news outlets discovered that Xavier Zechariah Wade, now 3, would have been conceived before Union and Wade’s tentative split.
Whether or not Wade impregnated another woman during his break with Union or not, Pettyhontas thought the actress should take her own love advice.
Gabrielle Union’s type has break babies so she needs to get on with her advice and go deal w all those bm’s. — Pettyhontas (@HeyyyMrsV) November 15, 2016
Meanwhile, several others on the social media platform came to Union’s defense.
Lakeshow Reesey blamed jealousy for the negative response.
20+ bodies twitter love telling Gabrielle Union how to live her life. She rich and happy with a hall of famer. Y'all hoes lonely and bald — Lakeshow Reesey (@FanuteTheCoupe) November 15, 2016
@SushiFaxe defended Wade’s “on break baby” conception and reflected on naysayers in relationships with men who cheated on them.
Y'all throwing shade at Gabrielle Union cuz of an "on break baby" meanwhile y'all still with a dude that had a "in a relationship baby"? —?? (@SushiFaxe) November 15, 2016
Additionally, Schoolchick Q found the gloomy reaction “troubling.”
The way some people responded to Gabrielle Union's comments is troubling. IMO, anyone can give advice. You either accept it or reject it. — Schoolchick Q (@LoveAllRaces) November 15, 2016
But Union didn’t need any support. She shot back at detractors herself.
The actress expressed the importance of context with her remarks on finding love.
If ur only gonna use snippets of an interview I give to incite hostility against me, at least let the ppl know about the WHOLE interview — Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) November 15, 2016
Then, she owned her dismal record in past relationships.
After many failed relationships, I tell my whole truth. If you are interested in my actual truth, it's there. — Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) November 15, 2016
Finally, Union proclaimed she would “never offer advice without explaining my whole truth.”Getty Images
Bears coach John Fox is the one guy who coached both the Panthers and the Broncos to Super Bowls.
But he didn’t win with either, and his last boss said that was why he was replaced by Gary Kubiak this offseason.
“This is why we made the decision,” Broncos General Manager John Elway said, via Mark Potash of the Chicago Sun-Times. “This was the idea — to get better and get past the first round.
“We had a good regular season, but struggled in the first round. So the idea, the goal — what our owner wants — is to win a championship. That’s why the decision was made last year to go in a different direction. And Gary’s done a tremendous job.”
Fox got past the first round twice with the Broncos, one of them with Tim Tebow. But after getting blown out by the Seahawks in the Super Bowl two years ago and then losing at home to the Colts in their first one last year, the vibe around Denver changed and Elway reeled in his old backup.
“I think John did a great job when he as here — there’s no question,” Elway said. “He won four AFC West championships, so he did a tremendous job.
“It just got to the point where,... it was kind of like we talked about [after the change was made], it was a mutual parting of the ways. He decided that he wanted to go in a different direction and we said, ‘That’s fine, we’ll go in this direction, too.’ I think it worked out for both sides.”
Of course, mutual partings are rarely mutual. Fox had one with the Panthers after the 2010 season, when acrimony over the lack of a contract extension led to a bitter end, and a 2-14 record which led directly to Cam Newton and Ron Rivera.
So while Fox was and is a good coach, it’s reasonable to suggest both teams are OK with the guy they hired to replace him.HOUSTON — David Bailiff has wondered what might happen if he bundled up the nondescript piece of old furniture and took it to be appraised — say on the popular “Antiques Road Show.”
Tucked away behind a locked door at Rice Stadium sits the Coaches Table. When the room is open, the artifact is roped off — please do not touch — and no one is really sure what it might be worth.
Rice’s football coach suspects, though, it would be “priceless.”
TWO WEEKS IN TEXAS: The series so far
He’s got good reason. Burned into the wood are the autographs of dozens of football coaching and other athletic legends of yesteryear:
There’s “Bear Bryant” — with “Kentucky” burned beneath his name, placing his visit sometime between 1946-53, before he coached at Texas A&M and won all those national titles at Alabama. Circle the table to find “John W. Heisman ’29,” which would’ve been two years after he’d finished coaching at Rice and six years before an award was named after him. Not far away: “Jim Thorpe,” the world’s greatest athlete. And so on.
The table is a surviving piece of history from Ye Olde College Inn, a restaurant that opened near the Rice campus in 1918. Over the years, it became a hangout for Rice athletes and coaches from all over. The restaurant is gone, the coolest piece of memorabilia has been preserved.
When celebrities came to eat — and for the longest, they came often — they were given a wood-burning instrument and asked to engrave their names into what had become known as the Coaches Table. In other words, the biggest names in college football of the time quite often literally left their mark.
There’s Homer Norton, who won a national championship coaching Texas A&M. Dana X. Bible, who brought Texas football to national prominence. And of course Jess Neely, who did the same at Rice. And there are dozens more, with enough bygone big names to excite any student of college football history (and as shown by Thorpe’s autograph and a few others, athletic history).
“Probably if you googled some of those names,” Bailiff muses — and given that he asks newcomers to the Rice football team to write reports on historic names from the program’s past, perhaps he will.
A few feet away from the original Coaches Table, sitting in the “R Room” above Rice Stadium’s south end zone, there’s a newer version. This one has ink autographs of more recent vintage, including Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, Texas’ John Mackovic, Baylor’s Grant Teaff, Texas Tech’s Spike Dykes — and for some reason, Evander Holyfield.
Who knows what it would fetch from a collector? It’s still a pretty cool idea. But unlike its older cousin, it might not be priceless.Broken menus, wonky mouse controls, single figure framerates - this is the familiar story of PC gaming prowess held back by consoles. We understand why it happens: console-land was where the majority of sales were, and thus the focus of development. But that reasoning has never seemed, well, reasonable: a trashy console port can knock a chunk off your Metacritic rating, sour a huge potential audience against you forever and lose you loads of sales on a platform that can be extremely lucrative if only you know how to approach it.
It's really not that hard or expensive. After all, a pair of talented modders managed to make Dark Souls' PC version immeasurably better within the space of an evening, and while devs might not want to spend resources making hi-res assets just for PC, there's plenty of really basic stuff that can be done to not totally fuck up a game. Which, given the amount of time, love and money spent on these creations, is surely something that would please the developers and publishers as much as their beleaguered PC audience.
We've thrown together a list of tips, common foibles and fixes - add your own in the comments!
Accessible settings
PC configurations are as many and varied as the gamers that own them. A PC game has to account for this with its range of settings. Have these options accessible in-game, and don't require the player to drop back to the main menu to change them. Definitely don't put them in a separate trainer which forces you to restart the entire damn game. (Hi there, Binary Domain.)
Resolution
For the love of Baal, let us change the resolution. And definitely let us change the resolution before embarking on a lengthy unskippable opening cinematic in enforced default shatto-vision. (I'm looking at you, Max Payne 3 - or trying to, anyway.) Better still, autodetect the native resolution!
Key-bindings
Let us at them. Particularly if, for whatever reason, you've decided to give charge of your keyboard inputs to someone who has never actually seen or used a keyboard before. How do you reach the main menu in Binary Domain? Oh, that's right, it's Enter. Of course. Then, when in the menus, you press space to select and F to go back. Obviously, in-game, F is the interact key - except when interact is space. Argh. Incidentally, Enter is not the PC's equivalent of the gamepad's A button - it's the furthest you can get from both hands in normal FPS control mode. So don't make it the compulsory key to dismiss pop-up messages.
Gamepads
Some games are designed for and best suit a gamepad. That's cool. But for games which might easily be controlled by either a gamepad or a traditional PC set-up, please autodetect which system is currently under use. Most games seem pretty good at this now, but there are still some stragglers.
Framerate
Let those framerates soar free into the vast open skies of PC gaming wonderment. Also, let us fiddle with things like V-sync - with the vast array of PC hardware set-ups possible it is unlikely you will have guessed how to best optimise your game's performance for any one PC. Why wreck your hard work with dropped or torn frames when you could just trust players to tweak the game to perfection.
Field of View
PC gamers typically sit closer to their screens than console gamers and this changes the effect of a limited FOV. Unless you are setting out specifically to discomfit and sicken the player, offering the ability to adjust FOV will only make people like you. You do want to be liked, right?
Alt-tab
If your game cannot do this, you are probably going to Hell, where you'll be forced to troubleshoot for irascible Windows ME users for the rest of eternity. Sorry about that.
Menus
PCs typically come equipped with a mouse - the perfect device with which to gaily skip through menus. Please make use of it. Do not make us scroll through a gazillion options when a single click would do. Relatedly, make your menus pay attention to where the cursor actually IS. Console ports, like many carnivorous predators, seem to only sense movement. So you often see the wrong menu option highlighted and have to wiggle the cursor a bit to make it notice where you're actually pointing.
Mouse support
Mice are not thumbsticks. This should be quickly apparent from their different shape. Do not duplicate the analogue stick deadzone with your mouse acceleration. (Got that, Dead Space?) Also do not impose momentum on mouse movements. My world stops spinning when my mouse stops, not a few seconds later, Syndicate. And don't use autotargeting systems based on the assumption that there are 8 degrees in a circle.
Social media integration
No.
Games for Windows Live
Don't do it. You may think that we PC gamers object to GfwL because we are a prickly bunch who resent having to install yet another wedge of corporate molestation replete with its own superfluous achievements system, fragmentary friends-lists, cross-promotional guff, easily lost log-in details and so on - particularly when we are already so well served by Steam. All that might be true of Origin or uPlay, but it doesn't come close to describing the genuine horror of GfwL, which remains one of the most ill-conceived and poorly executed pieces of software it is possible to install on your PC. It's hideously designed, hugely unergonomic, painfully slow, intrusive and prone to complete failure in every single aspect of its operation. It's just unbelievably terrible.
DRM
Piracy sucks. We know. However, the solution should never be to periodically lose players' saves, punt them to desktop mid-game or prevent them from playing the game altogether.
Hi-res textures
Now, we're not asking you to create an entirely new assets pipeline for the PC alone, but in many instances textures are created first at high resolution then scaled down to fit onto the itty-bitty consoles. You can make use of those on PC, you know.
Post-release patches
We salute your ongoing commitment to PC gamers by releasing fixes after launch. But don't leave it until then to make your game playable. Don't leave it until launch day, even. There are good business reasons for this: reviewers will be playing your undercooked code; you'll burn your earliest purchasers and most loyal customers; you'll lose momentum building a community among players (particularly key if your game has an online component); people will be more likely to pirate your game if they think it's not worth the risk of an actual purchase.
Any more? Add them in the comments.What in the name of Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair and Patricia Smith was The Boston Globe thinking of yesterday, printing fake news — excuse me, more fake news?
And where exactly did the bow-tied bumkissers plagiarize this particular bad idea from? I mean, I haven’t seen any fake front pages on the WBUR website, or in any collections of old columns by Mike Royko or Jimmy Cannon — those traditional happy hunting grounds for Globe pipe artists.
By now you’ve seen yesterday’s “front page” of April 9, 2017, with the six-column headline about the impending Trumpocalypse: “DEPORTATIONS TO BEGIN.”
Would that it were, as Liveshot Kerry likes to say.
If I were on the copy desk, I’d have suggested:
“IMMIGRATION LAWS ENFORCED AFTER 8 YEARS OF BORDER CHAOS; Fewer U.S. citizens dying at the hands of drunken foreign gangbangers.”
The fake subheads included, “President Trump calls for tripling of ICE.” Yeah, right.
The real headline might be: “Trump tells ICE, Border Patrol to start arresting criminals again.”
Here’s another bogus Globe headline: “Riots continue.” What riots? Doesn’t the Globe tell us everyday that illegals are living in the shadows, like the 56 MS-13 members the feds just rounded up, doing the jobs Americans won’t do, like heroin dealing and machete murders?
Somehow, the Globe seems to think that deporting illegal aliens is a frightening thought to most Americans. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve misread the public sentiment.
You could of course lay out similar front pages about other candidates. Here would be my splash headline for Hillary: “DOCUMENTS SHOW CLINTON LIED ABOUT …” Fill in the blank: Benghazi, being under fire in Tuzla, why she set up her private server, wanting to join the Marines, how she was against gay marriage before she was for gay marriage, how she was against putting illegals on Obamacare before she was for putting illegals on Obamacare, etc.
How about some headlines for Bernie Sanders:
“SANDERS CLAIMS U.S. DEODORANT CHOICES ‘CONFUSE’ AMERICANS.” Oh yes, that’s what he said, on CNBC. So who’s to say that on Bernie’s first day in office, we wouldn’t be reading: “President directs FTC to ban most aerosol BO sprays; roll-ons, creams also affected.”
Inside the Globe’s “front page,” an editorial headlined, “GOP must stop Trump” was almost exactly the same overheated screed they ran in February … just before Trump won the GOP primary here by 31 points. That’s the bad news — the Globe has zero clout. The good news — if you plagiarize yourself, the way the idle rich of Morrissey Boulevard did in yesterday’s editorial, is it really plagiarism?
One last quibble: shouldn’t the Globe “front page” have also included at least a couple of local non-Trump stories? You know, the kind of mush the wimps have been dishing out for so long: “Whitey Bulger: He kept the drugs out of Southie” or “Globe poll shows Coakley poised to crush Brown” or “Pay no attention to the genealogical reports: Warren IS an Indian,” or “G |
about an Allen Ginsberg poem that, at the request of a fellow student, was shared in Olio's AP English class at South Windsor High School in Connecticut. A media uproar followed, and Olio was essentially forced to resign.
Most of the facts do not appear to be in dispute – and are more nuanced than the'students forced to read shocking homoerotic poem' media narrative. The overriding question is whether a celebrated teacher with nearly two decades of experience should be forced from the classroom for a single decision – even if one views that decision as a lapse in judgment.
During a class discussion of gratuitous language, a student raised questions about the Ginsberg poem, "Please Master." The piece was undoubtedly relevant to the discussion; it is also an exceptionally graphic account of a sexual encounter between two men.
So it is not shocking that the story quickly became fodder for local media. "South Windsor Teacher Reads Graphic Poem About Gay Sex to Classroom" read one headline, with the story saying students were "subjected" to the poem. A TV newscast warned viewers the piece was "too graphic to detail in almost any part," and bizarrely noted that the local police were not involved in the investigation.
School officials reacted swiftly: Olio was suspended immediately while the board started its investigation. Scores of current and former students and co-workers spoke up in his defense, but in April he bowed to pressure to resign.
It would take weeks for more thoughtful articles to appear. In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern wrote that while "Please Master" is "discomfiting and profane, an explicit account of a fantasized sexual encounter," one should bear in mind the audience, and the literary meaning of the piece:
This isn't kid stuff. But these weren't kids; they were 17- and 18-year-olds less than a year from college. And as graphic as “Please Master” is, it’s certainly not obscene or lacking in artistic merit.
He added that the poem "is not a dirty work—it is a dangerous one: Dangerous because it dares to find beauty in sodomy; dangerous because it juxtaposes tenderness with masochism; dangerous because it rapturously celebrates a vision of same-sex intimacy we are only supposed to whisper about."
A piece in the Daily Beast teased out some of the broader implications for public education, arguing that some see it as emblematic of "a changing culture around education, one in which teachers are on a hair trigger vulnerable to losing their livelihoods."
One of Olio's former colleagues, science teacher Clyde Selner – who described the poem as "a repulsive ode to sodomy" – argued that Olio "is one of the best teachers I ever worked with. He is committed to the school community and as an educator personified South Windsor High School's mission, vision and expectations statements."
Or consider the account from a parent at the school, who described the school board meeting to discuss the Olio case as watching "person after person, including present students, speak about how inspirational Mr. Olio is as a teacher."
The parent added:
I feel sorry for the future students who will miss the opportunity to be inspired by Mr. Olio. I also feel sorry for the remaining teachers who will undoubtedly feel like they need to censor themselves, even at the collegiate class level, in light of the one strike and you’re out policy we appear to have adopted.
That would appear to be the most dangerous lesson that might be learned from the Olio saga.ORLANDO, Fla. – Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a March 13 interview here that the 2012 elections offer the nation a choice between two completely different philosophies: one that says job creation and rebuilding of the middle class are essential, and another that says “you are on your own, pick yourself up and then when you do it, do everything I tell you to do.”
She talked with peoplesworld.org during a break in proceedings at a meeting of the AFL-CIO’s executive council where the federation is mapping its plans for the 2012 elections. The AFL-CIO had voted to endorse the president’s reelection bid shortly before Weingarten was interviewed.
The AFT, like a number of other unions, had already endorsed President Barack Obama before this meeting.
Weingarten drew a graphic picture of what the choice she opposes in this election means in human terms.
“My union represents a janitor in Wisconsin who was impacted by Gov. Walker’s attacks on collective bargaining rights,” she said. “He now pays 16 percent more in health care costs, and this man is paying more taxes than are paid by the General Electric Corporation in total.”
Weingarten said with all the talk about rebuilding the middle class, everyone needs to remember doing so is a matter of public policy.
As unions grow weaker, she said, “you find more and more people in poverty. It is no accident that you see poverty growing from 1973 until now. You saw union membership during that period slip from 34 percent to eight percent.”
Weingarten said for the labor movement the 2012 elections are about fighting “to turn that around.”
“This unfairness is the direction in which the other side wants to take us,” she said, “and this is why the issue of economic fairness and Occupy Wall Street now has so much traction across the country.”
Regarding public education, Weingarten said the main challenge comes from income inequality, not teachers, who are being used as scapegoats.
“Public education is key to helping build broad prosperity,” she said, “but we cannot expect teachers to solve all the problems created by the income inequality in this country. We must get to the cause of the problem, the weakening of bargaining power and to the solution, stronger and bigger unions.”
Photo: AFT members hold a Bake Sale for America’s Future, October 2011. (AFT/Facebook)JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A hold-up over a new U.S. defense package for Israel was behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to forgo a meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington this month, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Abir Sultan/Pool
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s remarks contrasted with a statement by Netanyahu that cited his reluctance to risk being drawn into the U.S. presidential campaign as the reason for declining a White House offer to host him on March 18.
Current U.S. military grants to Israel, worth about $3 billion annually, expire in 2018.
Israel, which last year requested $5 billion in future annual aid but whose officials have since set their sights on $4 billion to $4.5 billion, says it needs to expand its military, rather than just upgrade technologies, given spiraling arms procurement it anticipates by arch-foe Iran and Arab states.
U.S. officials have given lower target figures of around $3.7 billion. The dispute prompted Israeli officials to hint that Netanyahu may bank on Obama’s successor for a better deal.
“There was a decision not to go to the president as long the agreement over the compensation package is not concluded,” Hotovely told Israel Radio, using a term linking the future U.S. aid to last year’s international nuclear deal with Iran, which brought sanctions relief that Tehran may use for arms purchases.
“The prime minister wants to honor the U.S. president by going when there is a basis, good news on the matter of the U.S. aid package,” she said. “This really has to be taken seriously.”
U.S. officials say they still hope for an agreement before Obama leaves office next January.
FRAUGHT RELATIONSHIP
The White House’s announcement on Monday that Netanyahu had turned down the meeting with Obama was seen as the latest episode in a fraught relationship that has yet to recover from deep differences over the Iran nuclear deal.
Some U.S. sources assessed that Netanyahu wanted the MOU concluded before meeting Obama and that the lag was among the reasons for not coming to Washington, where he was to have addressed the annual conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.
Vice President Joe Biden, in Jerusalem on Wednesday for discussions with Netanyahu that included the “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) on defense aid between 2018 and 2028, appeared to acknowledge Israel’s terms.
“We’re committed to making sure that Israel can defend itself against all serious threats, maintain its qualitative edge with a quantity sufficient to maintain that,” Biden said.
It was not clear if that signaled a deal was close.
U.S. negotiators have made clear that, while they want Israel to maintain a technological advantage over its neighbors, they differ over the level of risk of increased quantities of less-advanced arms in the hands of Washington’s Arab allies who seek to counter Iran.Medieval Sourcebook:
Urban II (1088-1099):
Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095,
Five versions of the Speech In 1094 or 1095, Alexios I Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor, sent to the pope, Urban II, and asked for aid from the west against the Seljuq Turks, who taken nearly all of Asia Minor from him. At the council of Clermont Urban addressed a great crowd and urged all to go to the aid of the Greeks and to recover Palestine from the rule of the Muslims. The acts of the council have not been preserved, but we have five accounts of the speech of Urban which were written by men who were present and heard him.
Versions by: Fulcher of Chartres: Gesta Francorum Jerusalem Expugnantium Robert the Monk: Historia Hierosolymitana Gesta Francorum [The Deeds of the Franks] Balderic of Dol Guibert de Nogent: Historia quae dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos Urban II: Letter of Instruction, December 1095
1. Fulcher of Chartres [adapted from Thatcher] Here is the one by the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. Note how the traditions of the peace and truce of God - aimed at bringing about peace in Christendom - ties in directly with the call for a Crusade. Does this amount to the export of violence?
Most beloved brethren: Urged by necessity, I, Urban, by the permission of God chief bishop and prelate over the whole world, have come into these parts as an ambassador with a divine admonition to you, the servants of God. I hoped to find you as faithful and as zealous in the service of God as I had supposed you to be. But if there is in you any deformity or crookedness contrary to God's law, with divine help I will do my best to remove it. For God has put you as stewards over his family to minister to it. Happy indeed will you be if he finds you faithful in your stewardship. You are called shepherds; see that you do not act as hirelings. But be true shepherds, with your crooks always in your hands. Do not go to sleep, but guard on all sides the flock committed to you. For if through your carelessness or negligence a wolf carries away one of your sheep, you will surely lose the reward laid up for you with God. And after you have been bitterly scourged with remorse for your faults-, you will be fiercely overwhelmed in hell, the abode of death. For according to the gospel you are the salt of the earth [Matt. 5:13]. But if you fall short in your duty, how, it may be asked, can it be salted? O how great the need of salting! It is indeed necessary for you to correct with the salt of wisdom this foolish people which is so devoted to the pleasures of this -world, lest the Lord, when He may wish to speak to them, find them putrefied by their sins unsalted and stinking. For if He, shall find worms, that is, sins, In them, because you have been negligent in your duty, He will command them as worthless to be thrown into the abyss of unclean things. And because you cannot restore to Him His great loss, He will surely condemn you and drive you from His loving presence. But the man who applies this salt should be prudent, provident, modest, learned, peaceable, watchful, pious, just, equitable, and pure. For how can the ignorant teach others? How can the licentious make others modest? And how can the impure make others pure? If anyone hates peace, how can he make others peaceable? Or if anyone has soiled his hands with baseness, how can he cleanse the impurities of another? We read also that if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch [Matt. 15:14]. But first correct yourselves, in order that, free from blame, you may be able to correct those who are subject to you. If you wish to be the friends of God, gladly do the things which you know will please Him. You must especially let all matters that pertain to the church be controlled by the law of the church. And be careful that simony does not take root among you, lest both those who buy and those who sell [church offices] be beaten with the scourges of the Lord through narrow streets and driven into the place of destruction and confusion. Keep the church and the clergy in all its grades entirely free from the secular power. See that the tithes that belong to God are faithfully paid from all the produce of the land; let them not be sold or withheld. If anyone seizes a bishop let him be treated as an outlaw. If anyone seizes or robs monks, or clergymen, or nuns, or their servants, or pilgrims, or merchants, let him be anathema [that is, cursed]. Let robbers and incendiaries and all their accomplices be expelled from the church and anthematized. If a man who does not give a part of his goods as alms is punished with the damnation of hell, how should he be punished who robs another of his goods? For thus it happened to the rich man in the gospel [Luke 16:19]; he was not punished because he had stolen the goods of another, but because he had not used well the things which were his. "You have seen for a long time the great disorder in the world caused by these crimes. It is so bad in some of your provinces, I am told, and you are so weak in the administration of justice, that one can hardly go along the road by day or night without being attacked by robbers; and whether at home or abroad one is in danger of being despoiled either by force or fraud. Therefore it is necessary to reenact the truce, as it is commonly called, which was proclaimed a long time ago by our holy fathers. I exhort and demand that you, each, try hard to have the truce kept in your diocese. And if anyone shall be led by his cupidity or arrogance to break this truce, by the authority of God and with the sanction of this council he shall be anathematized." After these and various other matters had been attended to, all who were present, clergy and people, gave thanks to God and agreed to the pope's proposition. They all faithfully promised to keep the decrees. Then the pope said that in another part of the world Christianity was suffering from a state of affairs that was worse than the one just mentioned. He continued: "Although, O sons of God, you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do. Freshly quickened by the divine correction, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to another matter which concerns you as well as God. For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it. "All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let hem eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide."
Source: Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, 1, pp. 382 f., trans in Oliver J. Thatcher, and Edgar Holmes McNeal, eds., A Source Book for Medieval History, (New York: Scribners, 1905), 513-17
2. Robert the Monk Robert perhaps 25 years after the speech, but he may have been present at the counicl. He used the Gesta version (see below, number 3).
Oh, race of Franks, race from across the mountains, race chosen and beloved by Godas shines forth in very many of your works set apart from all nations by the situation of your country, as well as by your catholic faith and the honor of the holy church! To you our discourse is addressed and for you our exhortation is intended. We wish you to know what a grievous cause has led us to Your country, what peril threatening you and all the faithful has brought us. From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation forsooth which has not directed its heart and has not entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them and deprived of territory so vast in extent that it can not be traversed in a march of two months. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who resist you. Let the deeds of your ancestors move you and incite your minds to manly achievements; the glory and greatness of king Charles the Great, and of his son Louis, and of your other kings, who have destroyed the kingdoms of the pagans, and have extended in these lands the territory of the holy church. Let the holy sepulchre of the Lord our Saviour, which is possessed by unclean nations, especially incite you, and the holy places which are now treated with ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness. Oh, most valiant soldiers and descendants of invincible ancestors, be not degenerate, but recall the valor of your progenitors. But if you are hindered by love of children, parents and wives, remember what the Lord says in the Gospel, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life." Let none of your possessions detain you, no solicitude for your family affairs, since this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. That land which as the Scripture says "floweth with milk and honey," was given by God into the possession of the children of Israel Jerusalem is the navel of the world; the land is fruitful above others, like another paradise of delights. This the Redeemer of the human race has made illustrious by His advent, has beautified by residence, has consecrated by suffering, has redeemed by death, has glorified by burial. This royal city, therefore, situated at the centre of the world, is now held captive by His enemies, and is in subjection to those who do not know God, to the worship of the heathens. She seeks therefore and desires to be liberated, and does not cease to implore you to come to her aid. From you especially she asks succor, because, as we have already said, God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the kingdom of heaven. When Pope Urban had said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!" When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, with eyes uplifted to heaven he gave thanks to God and, with his hand commanding silence, said: Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them." Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God! And we do not command or advise that the old or feeble, or those unfit for bearing arms, undertake this journey; nor ought women to set out at all, without their husbands or brothers or legal guardians. For such are more of a hindrance than aid, more of a burden than advantage. Let the rich aid the needy; and according to their wealth, let them take with them experienced soldiers. The priests and clerks of any order are not to go without the consent of their bishop; for this journey would profit them nothing if they went without permission of these. Also, it is not fitting that laymen should enter upon the pilgrimage without the blessing of their priests. Whoever, therefore, shall determine upon this holy pilgrimage and shall make his vow to God to that effect and shall offer himself to Him as a, living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, shall wear the sign of the cross of the Lord on his forehead or on his breast. When,' truly',' having fulfilled his vow be wishes to return, let him place the cross on his back between his shoulders. Such, indeed, by the twofold action will fulfill the precept of the Lord, as He commands in the Gospel, "He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me."
Source: Dana C. Munro, "Urban and the Crusaders", Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, Vol 1:2, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1895), 5-8
3. The Gesta Version Circa 1100-1101, an anonymous writer connected with Bohemund of Antioch wrote the Gesta francorum et aliorum Hierosolymytanorum; (The Deeds of the Franks) This text was used by the later writers as a source.
When now that time was at hand which the Lord Jesus daily points out to His faithful, especially in the Gospel, saying, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," a mighty agitation was carried on throughout all the region of Gaul. (Its tenor was) that if anyone desired to follow the Lord zealously, with a pure heart and mind, and wished faithfully to bear the cross after Him, he would no longer hesitate to take up the way to the Holy Sepulchre. And so Urban, Pope of the Roman see, with his archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priests, set out as quickly as possible beyond the mountains and began to deliver sermons and to preach eloquently, saying: "Whoever wishes to save his soul should not hesitate humbly to take up the way of the Lord, and if he lacks sufficient money, divine mercy will give him enough." Then the apostolic lord continued, "Brethren, we ought to endure much suffering for the name of Christ - misery, poverty, nakedness, persecution, want, illness, hunger, thirst, and other (ills) of this kind, just as the Lord saith to His disciples: 'Ye must suffer much in My name,' and 'Be not ashamed to confess Me before the faces of men; verily I will give you mouth and wisdom,' and finally, 'Great is your reward in Heaven."' And when this speech had already begun to be noised abroad, little by little, through all the regions and countries of Gaul, the Franks, upon hearing such reports, forthwith caused crosses to be sewed on their right shoulders, saying that they followed with one accord the footsteps of Christ, by which they had been redeemed from the hand of hell.
Source:
August. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, (Princeton: 1921), 28-30.
See also Rosalind M. Hill, ed. and trans., Gesta francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks (London: 1962), [Latin text with English translation.]
3. Version of Balderic of Dol Balderic was archbishop of Dol. He wrote in the early twelth century and his main source was the Gesta... "We have beard, most beloved brethren, and you have heard what we cannot recount without deep sorrow how, with great hurt and dire sufferings our Christian brothers, members in Christ, are scourged, oppressed, and injured in Jerusalem, in Antioch, and the other cities of the East. Your own blood brothers, your companions, your associates (for you are sons of the same Christ and the same Church) are either subjected in their inherited homes to other masters, or are driven from them, or they come as beggars among us; or, which is far worse, they are flogged and exiled as slaves for sale in their own land. Christian blood, redeemed by the blood of Christ, has been shed, and Christian flesh, akin to the flesh of Christ, has been subjected to unspeakable degradation and servitude. Everywhere in those cities there is sorrow, everywhere misery, everywhere groaning (I say it with a sigh). The churches in which divine mysteries were celebrated in olden times are now, to our sorrow, used as stables for the animals of these people! Holy men do not possess those cities; nay, base and bastard Turks hold sway over our brothers. The blessed Peter first presided as Bishop at Antioch; behold, in his own church the Gentiles have established their superstitions, and the Christian religion, which they ought rather to cherish, they have basely shut out from the ball dedicated to God! The estates given for the support of the saints and the patrimony of nobles set aside for the sustenance of the poor are subject to pagan tyranny, while cruel masters abuse for their own purposes the returns from these lands. The priesthood of God has been ground down into the dust. The sanctuary of God (unspeakable shamel) is everywhere profaned. Whatever Christians still remain in hiding there are sought out with unheard of tortures. "Of holy Jerusalem, brethren, we dare not speak, for we are exceedingly afraid and ashamed to speak of it. This very city, in which, as you all know, Christ Himself suffered for us, because our sins demanded it, has been reduced to the pollution of paganism and, I say it to our disgrace, withdrawn from the service of God. Such is the heap of reproach upon us who have so much deserved it! Who now serves the church of the Blessed Mary in the valley of Josaphat, in which church she herself was buried in body? But why do we pass over the Temple of Solomon, nay of the Lord, in which the barbarous nations placed their idols contrary to law, human and divine? Of the Lord's Sepulchre we have refrained from speaking, since some of you with your own eyes have seen to what abominations it has been given over. The Turks violently took from it the offerings which you brought there for alms in such vast amounts, and, in addition, they scoffed much and often 'at Your religion. And yet in that place (I say only what you already know) rested the Lord; there He died for us; there He was buried. How precious would be the longed for, incomparable place of the Lord's burial, even if God failed there to perform the yearly miracle! For in the days of His Passion all the lights in the Sepulchre and round about in the church, which have been extinguished, are relighted by divine command. Whose heart is so stony, brethren, that it is not touched by so great a miracle? Believe me, that man is bestial and senseless whose heart such divinely manifest grace does not move to faith! And yet the Gentiles see this in common with the Christians and are not turned from their ways! They are, indeed, afraid, but they are not converted to the faith; nor is it to be wondered at, for a blindness of mind rules over them. With what afflictions they wronged you who have returned and are now present, you yourselves know too well you who there sacrificed your substance and your blood for God. "This, beloved brethren, we shall say, that we may have you as witness of our words. More suffering of our brethren and devastation of churches remains than we can speak of one by one, for we are oppressed by tears and groans, sighs and sobs. We weep and wail, brethren, alas, like the Psalmist, in our inmost heart! We are wretched and unhappy, and in us is that prophecy fulfilled: 'God, the nations are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem in heaps; the dead bodies of thy servants have been given to be food for the birds of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.' Woe unto us, brethren! We who have already become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing, and derision to them round about us, let us at least with tears condone and have compassion upon our brothers! We who are become the scorn of all peoples, and worse than all, let us bewail the most monstrous devastation of the Holy Land! This land we have deservedly called holy in which there is not even a footstep that the body or spirit of the Saviour did not render glorious and blessed which embraced the holy presence of the mother of God, and the meetings of the apostles, and drank up the blood of the martyrs shed there. How blessed are the stones which crowned you Stephen, the first martyr! How happy, O, John the Baptist, the waters of the Jordan which served you in baptizing the Saviour! The children of Israel, who were led out of Egypt, and who prefigured you in the crossing of the Red Sea, have taken that land, by their arms, with Jesus as leader; they have driven out the Jebusites and other inhabitants and have themselves inhabited earthly Jerusalem, the image of celestial Jerusalem. "What are we saying? Listen and learn! You, girt about with the badge of knighthood, are arrogant with great pride; you rage against your brothers and cut each other in pieces. This is not the (true) soldiery of Christ which rends asunder the sheepfold of the Redeemer. The Holy Church has reserved a soldiery for herself to help her people, but you debase her wickedly to her hurt. Let us confess the truth, whose heralds we ought to be; truly, you are not holding to the way which leads to life. You, the oppressers of children, plunderers of widows; you, guilty of homicide, of sacrilege, robbers of another's rights; you who await the pay of thieves for the shedding of Christian blood -- as vultures smell fetid corpses, so do you sense battles from afar and rush to them eagerly. Verily, this is the worst way, for it is utterly removed from God! if, forsooth, you wish to be mindful of your souls, either lay down the girdle of such knighthood, or advance boldly, as knights of Christ, and rush as quickly as you can to the defence of the Eastern Church. For she it is from whom the joys of your whole salvation have come forth, who poured into your mouths the milk of divine wisdom, who set before you the holy teachings of the Gospels. We say this, brethren, that you may restrain your murderous hands from the destruction of your brothers, and in behalf of your relatives in the faith oppose yourselves to the Gentiles. Under Jesus Christ, our Leader, may you struggle for your Jerusalem, in Christian battleline, most invincible line, even more successfully than did the sons of Jacob of old - struggle, that you may assail and drive out the Turks, more execrable than the Jebusites, who are in this land, and may you deem it a beautiful thing to die for Christ in that city in which He died for us. But if it befall you to die this side of it, be sure that to have died on the way is of equal value, if Christ shall find you in His army. God pays with the same shilling, whether at the first or eleventh hour. You should shudder, brethren, you should shudder at raising a violent hand against Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens. It is the only warfare that is righteous, for it is charity to risk your life for your brothers. That you may not be troubled about the concerns of tomorrow, know that those who fear God want nothing, nor those who cherish Him in truth. The possessions of the enemy, too, will be yours, since you will make spoil of their treasures and return victorious to your own; or empurpled with your own blood, you will have gained everlasting glory. For such a Commander you ought to fight, for One who lacks neither might nor wealth with which to reward you. Short is the way, little the labor, which, nevertheless, will repay you with the crown that fadeth not away. Accordingly, we speak with the authority of the prophet: 'Gird thy sword upon thy thigh O mighty one.' Gird yourselves, everyone of you, I say, and be valiant sons; for it is better for you to die in battle than to behold, the sorrows of your race and of your holy places. Let neither property nor the alluring charms of your wives entice you frol going; nor let the trials that are to be borne so deter you that you remain here." And turning to the bishops, he said, "You, brothers and fellow bishops; you, fellow priests and sharers with us in Christ, make this same announcement through the churches committed to you, and with your whole |
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